Discoverers and Explorers in Canada

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~HEhius'tra\tions in this portfoHo, which"

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has 'ai' its 'subject 's~pr'esent1!-tive c\is-. , " \ c.ove~er\s wd exploreq in Can<t;da [r'om 1497 to 1763'; are from-- the Imperi,~l 9il [01I'lectiofll of drawings and paintings by t'he late Charles Vf Jefferys, the weJI-knbwn G:ana'dian '--historical artisf. Imperial 'Oil commissioned'Malcolm G. P';rks to prepare the accomp~nying texj:s which, it is hoped, will make this portfolio more useful to teachers'" of Canadian history.

Prior to his death in 1951, Dr. Jefferys had produced more than 1,000 hist-orical drawings -and,paintings 'duripg~a 10ng;9-u d busy career.

Although som,e "of his work was published duriq'g hisAifetime, pro Jefferys retained most d tne originals as a collection, foreseeipg their value tq !tjudents of history,'and?-r-tJ' ' f

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" ! ~The~accou~ts 'of explorations in Canada ,...,., r ' \ ;Vf~ch; acc~mp~hy t,~e\A~~wi,~gt.h-have been wtltteh pnmanly__ for. / teac1ie1'-~rathet tran pupils,. The ni'tiri dbject of the acc0l;lnts'ls to 'describe systematically each :explprer's attempts to' push bac~, ~h:e b.3undflr~\ \of the unknown - to trace h1S routes arid (to tell ,b:t)efly hi~ adventures'. Sonie incidents that~re col6urflll but a:l\e either of mmor jrl;,p;rtance or outside 'the subject of exploration have recei:r.ed li~t:le attenticlll. For-exilmple, Champlain's battles with the Iroquois-are q.ndoubtedly intere~ting; one could e'asily de-,sc;ibe the~ in detail and run no risk oeboring the reader. In an <l:ccount of Champl~in's explorations, hawever;>-. they are sidelights and must be subordir;at~d. ' _ .., I A

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W~e1fJmperial Qil approac!i~d'L?(Jeffer s ',' / -"\Most of Callacd~'s, pathfinders ,ar~ repreiri 1950 .vvith a propo,sal to1Jut~J1ase)the dr~w- ./ seJ;1t~~ in the Jefferys q~ll~ction, and among

. ~1 ' ,/ ..."-. . d' br. \ . h 11 I, ( ,! , 1t;lgs an ,.)l.s.seffi I e ~ ~~,l~ a,)~~rmarnent co ec- . them are',two men ofteq ne,glected in "hist,ofies ti'<?n, (he g~fYe his re,ady "asg,ept:-- In 1952, the ., "- df Canadian exploration ...!- Etienne' Brule' and dr~wifrgs" ~ere acquired ~ah~ s1.bst)quentl/"" Roald kmundsen."R-eg·f~tt~bly,..the c9-il~cddn catalo,gu~d, ipdexed, and photograph~d. It 1S includes n.,p dtawings'_of three men who nave a the intention of the Company,to mak~ ,the rightful pla-ce in a dironide of explorers of colle.cti(>nava:i~able for educational purposes.

Canada - ijemy Hudsoq, George Vancouver, If this portfolio is fo,,!nd t9 be a usefu~ aid to and Anth,ony Henaay:.' ~ ~ teachers, other portfolios will eventually be published. _ ~- The_ac~(lUnts have been ba~ed upon the / . , 'J . '/' expl0rers'" own journals, with the exception of The 11ine craftstn,aqsh1p of the Jefferys _ 't1}ose on Cabot an4 Brule,. two e~plo'i-ers who dra-y:ings is obvious. Wha~ the casualrviewer left - ~o accounts of ' their- travels'. Secondary maynQt know, howeyer, is ,that they ~18'0 are / _'sources have ¥so been con~ulted. ,works sf scholarship. Dr. J e,fferys was a ./ ~ I" I ' );neticulous tesearcher in Canadian history" and ~ The short 1:?ibliogr::rphy at the end of each ./1 I. he, Jook' gre~t pains tb make his 'drawings articl~_is itrtended, to supply the teacher with I 1 authentic. ai's delineiiions~6f'tlie) €Ostumes., ,die tit)~sJof a few use~~l oOoks.'

Listed •are the - \' I ~ "'~ '\ / J I \ . . , ~ ;/ r furnifure,"W yal"ons, anci butldings(,pf lbygon e / best editiiOIT lo,r editions .of ,the- explorer's I T ( , r ' , K ,generati6n s ar~ as tn,le to _histo1iY - as' the' j,o\lrna)s 'apd, a fe,,:, of :th~ 'best secondary ,episodes many 'of his dmwing~ -record. 'The, squrc.es.

"Ph;.e I ' 'i ' , r- omisslcpn .oftnany titles, however, st~dent ' of 'Canadi.ah hi~tory can ~afely 'rely ~was~ u1,1avoidable; -especially w~ere literature upon th~m,as records of the Canadian heritage. on an explorer was voluminous.

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POR TFOLIo

JOHN

SIGH TING

Fro~ thelm NORTH AME .RICA

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1497

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I, NUMBER 1

JOHN CABOT THE DISCOVERER OF NORTH AMERICA

Our knowledge of John Cabot l, the discoverer of North America, is decidedly scanty. There are only a few contemporary records that tell us anything concrete about Cabot's voyages, and the tendency of later writers to present as facts assumptions that are usually based on weak or misleading evidence has resulted in much confusion. There has also been some confusion of Sebastian Cabot's voyages with John Cabot's voyages of 1497 and 1498. As a consequence, any summary of John Cabot's life and voyages must be sketchy and rather inconclusive. We can only hope that the archives of Europe will some day present historians with more conclusive information about John Cabot. One book on Cabot, however, handles the available evidence in a scholarly and careful manner. This book, J. A. Williamson's The Voyages of the Cabots, is therefore the basis of the following sketch.

The date of John Cabot's birth is unknown. Cabot first appears in recorded history on March 29, 1476, when he was granted Venetian citizenship. Since such a grant was issued only to those who had been residents of Venice for fifteen years, Cabot probably settled in Venice not later than 1461. By birth he was either English or Genoese, probably the latter. He was employed in the foreign trade of Venice until 1476 and is said to have visited Mecca as a trader.

At some time during his years in Venice, Cabot must have evolved his scheme, similar to that of Columbus, of reaching the east coast of Asia by sailing westward across the Atlantic Ocean.

Cabot, like Columbus, was a well-read man who would have no doubts about the spherical shape of the earth. Besides being an experienced trader and navigator, Cabot was a practical cartographer. We know, on the authority of an Italian who heard Cabot lecture on the voyage of 1497 shortly after his return, that Cabot used a globe he had made himself as an aid in explaining his voyage. Cabot's motive in urging that such a westward voyage should be undertaken was like that of Columbus - to reach the rich spice trade of the Orient by a direct sea route.

With his project still in mind, Cabot settled in Bristol, England, sometime between 1484 and 1490. It seems that he settled in Bristol because that city, though far behind London and Southampton in commerce, was the best base in England for voyages of discovery and because he, unlike Columbus, wished to sail for Asia along a northern route, believing that such a route would be shorter than the less stormy southern route. Of his attempts to win support for his voyage we know nothing, although it is not unlikely that Cabot tried to interest the French king, Charles VIII, in his project. At any rate, his arguments finally convinced Henry VII of England, for on March 5, 1496, King Henry gave letters of patent to Cabot. These letters gave him full and free authority, faculty and power to sail to all patts, regions and coasts of the eastern, westetn and northern sea [not, one notices, of the southern sea, for Spain had claimed a monopoly of the ttade areas west of her shores, and Henry VII had no desire to offend the Spanish king, at least openly], under our banners, flags and ensigns ... to find, discover and investigate whatsoever islands, countries, regions or provinces of heathens and infidels, in whatsoever part of the world placed, which before this time were unknown to all Christians. 2 There seems to be a contradiction in Henry's directions to Cabot, for at one point Henry implies that the English ships must not sail south into the region claimed by Spain and at

another he. allows Cabot to "lind, discover and investigate" any non-Chnstlan and unknown lands "in whatsoever part of the world placed." Williamson offers a reasonable explanation of this apparent contradiction: He [Henry VII] would respect the Spanish claim to monopoly of wesrward navigation within the Atlantic belt already covered by Columbus, and as far as the islands found by Columbus, .but no farther. Cabot was to outflank the Spaniards by ctossmg n?rthward of thelf .watets, findmg the continent, and followmg lts coast wherever lt went, since it must manifestly lie beyond and nor rhis side of the Spanish discoveries. 3 The letters of patent gave Cabot Henry's commission to set out as the representative of England, but Cabot gained something of more practical value - a monopoly of any trade that might arise from his discoveries. This monopoly gave Cabot and his heirs the right to control such trade themselves and to license and levy royalties upon all others who wished to engage in it. As for Henry VII, he gave his royal support and a sum of about three hundred pounds (Bristol merchants bore most of the financial risk) to an expedition that was to discover North America.

Cabot did not sail in 1496, however, perhaps because Henry waited to test the attitude of Spain to the proposed voyage.

Cabot's project did receive the royal consent in the following year.

Our knowledge of the voyage of 1497 comes mainly from reports by two contemporaries of Cabot residing in England Lorenzo Pasqualigo, a Venetian living in London, and Raimondo de Raimondi de Soncino, the Milanese ambassador to England 4 â&#x20AC;˘ Cabot sailed from Bristol on May 2, 1497, in the Matthew, a small decked ship, with eighteen persons on board. Besides a crew of about a dozen English sailors, there were a Genoese barber-surgeon, a Burgundian, and a few Bristol merchants.

John Cabot's son Sebastian may have sailed in the Matthew, but he could have had no major part in the expedition because he was a mere boy of about fourteen at the time.

Cabot crossed the Atlantic and made a landfall on June 24 on what he thought to be an outlying part of north-eastern Asia.

He went ashore and took formal possession of the country by planting flags of England and of St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice. Disputes have gone on for decades about the site of Cabot's landfall. Williamson chooses Cape Breton as the most likely landing place, but he admits that it may have been on the coast of Newfoundland. Some other historians, among them a Canadian, G. R. F. Prowse, argue strongly for the east coast of Newfoundland, particularly Cape Bonavista. At any rate, Cabot then sailed southward along the coast for about three weeks. If Williamson is right, this coasting trip would have taken Cabot from Cape Breton to near the Penobscot River in Maine. In his short survey, Cabot landed now and then. According to Pas-

1.

As John Cahot was not a Ftenchman, his surname should never he pronounced without the final consonant. It is often spelled "Cahotto" in Italian documents of the period, hut in Italian, as in English, the final consonant is sounded.

2.

Williamson, The Voyages of the Cabots, p.

26.

3. Ibid, p. 155.

4. See translations of these reports in Williamson, pp. 29-32, and Jameson, pp. 423-429.

qualigo, he saw no inhabitants but found snares set for game, a native needle similar to a fisherman's netting needle, and trees felled by axes. He also observed that the tides on the strange coast were much slacker than the tides of the Bristol Channel.

Soncino tells us that the Matthew encountered great schools of fish: They [Cabot's companions] assert that the sea there is swarming with fish, which can be taken out not only with rhe net, but in baskets let down with a scone, so that it sinks in the water. I have heard this Messer Zoane [Master John] state so much. These same English, his companions, say rhat they could bring so many fish that this kingdom would have no further need of Iceland, from which place rhere comes a very great quantity of the fish called scockfish.

Cabot sailed for home about the middle ofJuly and arrived in Bristol on the sixth day of August. He then went to London where, on August 10, he received a grant of ten pounds from King Henry and a promise of a permanent pension, a promise that was fulfilled in the following December. Apparently Cabot spent a short time in London as a hero, for Pasqualigo writes that "he is called the Great Admiral, and vast honour is paid to him, and he goes dressed in silk." In the meantime, preparations for a second voyage were going forward.

In 1498 Cabot set sail again for the west, still without any suspicion that the land he had reached in 1497 was a continent between Europe and Asia. This time he had about five ships with cargoes of "slight and gross merchandises, as coarse cloth, caps, laces, points and other trifles." (Williamson, p. 181). Probably the fleet left Bristol in May. It soon ran into a heavy storm, and one of the ships, badly damaged, had to put into an Irish port.

The other ships continued their voyage. At this point we reach the end of existing records; there is no further information about the voyage, except that contemporary chronicles say no tidings of the ships had reached England by September. As Williamson says, "the Atlantic swallowed Cabot and all his men, and not one of them can be positively proved ever to have come home."

However, there are several bits of presumptive evidence to indicate that the ships reached North America and that at least some of the men returned. Although it is usually thought that Cabot died in 1498, there is no proof for such a belief. It is quite likely that he returned and lived for several more years. At least he was not known to be dead in 1499, for his pension, which would have ceased with his death, was still being paid in that year.

We may wonder today why there should be no records of this second voyage and especially why John Cabot, the discoverer of North AmericaS, should have been so much neglected by contemporary chroniclers and letter-writers. The answer is quite simple. His contemporaries did not realize what Cabot had done.

Even if he did return from his voyage of 1498, he must have done so without having found China and Japan, without having _disposed of his cargoes in trade, and without any spices. In the eyes of his contemporaries, who thought that both Columbus and Cabot had reached Asia, such a voyage would have been considered an outright failure. The truth about the American continent was not known for several years 6. Even then the new continent was not valued highly by Europeans. It was considered mainly as an obstacle in the way of trade with the Orient. Many years passed before North America became the object of European trade and colonization.

5. Perhaps a more accurate term would be "the re-discoverer of North America", for the Norsemen reached the shores of Narch America centuries before 1497. Their voyages, however, were unknown to other Europeans and were recorded only in rhe Norse sagas. Chrisropher Columbus, who reached rhe New World in 1492, made his landfall on one of rhe islands of rhe Bahamas, not rhe Narch American continent.

6. By 1508, when Sebastian Cabor made his first voyage, ir was realized rhar a great continent lay between Europe and Asia, for Sebastian ser out ro look for a norch-wesr paSJage through the land John Cabot had discovered.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Williamson, James A. The Voyages of the Cabots. London: The Argonaut Press, 1929.

2.

Williamson,]. A. "The Voyages ofJohn and Sebastian Cabor", Historical Association Pamphler No. 106. London: G. Bell and Sons Ltd., 1937.

3. Beazley, C. Raymond John and Sebastian Cabot. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1898.

4.

Biggar, H. P., ed. The Precursors of Jacques Cartier. Ortawa: Public Archives of Canada, 1923.

5. Jameson,]. Franklin, ed. The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot. Vol. I of Original Narratives of Early American History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906.

6. Winship, G. P. Cabot Bibliography. London: Stevens, 1900.

7. Prowse, G. R. F. "Cabot's Bona Vista Landfall". Winnipeg: Privately printed, 1946.

8. Prowse, G. R. F. "Cabot's Surveys". Winnipeg: Privately printed, 1931.

PORTFOLIO I, NUMBER 2

From the Imperial Oil Collection

CAR TIE R ME E T S THE IN D I A N S 0 F THE ST. LAW R ENe E, 1 5 3 5 .

THE BEGINNING OF THE FRENCH REGIME IN CANADA

The explorations of Jacques Cartier, the "discoverer of Canada", are mote fully recorded than those of many early voyagers. Either Cartier himself or one of his companions wrote and preserved full and detailed accounts of the voyages. The journals of the first two voyages have come down to us in the otiginal French versions, while the account of the third voyage has survived in an English translation which appeared in 1600 in the third volume of Richard Hakluyt's Principal! Navigations!. Probably all of the journals were derived from Cartier's log-books: "Cartier's Relations must originally have taken the form of an ordinary day by day ship's log. On his return to Sr. Malo, these jotirtlatix de bord would be worked up into the present Relations." (Biggar, xii).

We do not know very much about the personal life of Cartier. He was born in Sr. Malo, a small seaport in Brittany, in 1491. In 1519, at the age of twenty-eight, he matried Marie Katherine des Granches, the daughter of a tOwn official, the Chevalier Honore des Granches. At that time, according to the civil register of St. Malo, Cartier was "master-pilot of the port of Saint-Malo". Thus, while there ate no records of early voyages

by Cartier, he must have made some Atlantic voyages before 1519 to gain the title of "master-pilot". There is some evidence to indicate that he had been to Brazil, perhaps in the expeditions formed in 1523 and 1524 by the French king, Francis 1. The baptismal register of Sr. Malo also throws a little light on Cartier's personal life. His name appears seventy-three times on the register; twenty-seven times he is named principal godfather, which proves that from the age of twenty (the first entry is for August 21, 1510), he had acquired local renown. When one remembers that a godfather was then almost invariably chosen on the basis of his social importance, one must conclude that Cartier was a person of consequence in Sr. Malo even before he made his famous voyages.

In 1534 King Francis I commissioned Cartier to lead an expedition to North America. The purpose of the voyage was to discover a strait through the continent that would allow ships to reach China and Japan, for no longer was North America thought to be an outlying part of Asia. The expedition, commanded by Cartier and consisting of two sixty-ton ships and a total of sixtyone men, left St. Malo on Monday, April 20, 1534.

The passage across the Atlantic was uneventful, and on May 10 Cartier reached Cape Bonavista on the eastern coast of Newfoundland. Finding much ice around the shore, he spent ten days at Catalina Harbour and then sailed north, stopping at Funk Island and then sailing on to reach the Strait of Belle Isle on May 27. Again icebergs and bad weather held him back, and he was forced to remain in the harbour of Kirpon for several days. On June 9 he entered the Strait and sailed southwestward along the coast of the mainland, entering several harbours and recording compass bearings, soundings, and coastal features.

Cartier remarks upon the barrenness of this coast (the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence): If the soil were as good as the harbours, it would be a blessing; but the land should not be called the New Land, being composed of stones and horrible rugged rocks; for along the whole of the north shore [of the Gulf], I did not see one cartload of earth and yet I landed in many places. Except at Blanc Sablon there is nothing but moss and short, stunted shrub. In fine I am rather inclined to believe that this is the land God gave to Cain. (Biggar, pp. 21-22).

Sighting the western coast of Newfoundland (which they thought to be part of the mainland) from the harbour of Bonne Esperance, the French crossed the Gulf and sailed southward along the Newfoundland coast as far as Cape Anguille, then turned westward and reached, on June 26, Brion Island. Cartier suspected that there might be a passage to the south of Newfoundland and that Newfoundland might therefore be an island, for the journal runs thus: In the neighbourhood of these islands [the Bird Rocks and Brion Island] the tides are strong and run to all appearance south-east and north-west. I am rather inclined to think from what I have seen that there is a passage between Newfoundland and the Breton's land. If this were so, it would prove a great saving both in time and distance [as a more convenient passage than the Strait of Belle Isle], should any success be met with on this voyage. (Biggar, pp. 34-35).

The ships soon reached the Magdalen Islands and thence sailed to Prince Edward Island. Going ashore in longboats at Kildare, the French were much impressed by the fertile soil and rich vegetation they found there and elsewhere on the island.

After coasting along the northwestern shore of Prince Edward Island, Cartier crossed Northumberland Strait to Miramichi Bay, thinking that the Strait was a landlocked body of water. Reaching the Baie de Chaleur, he had hopes of it being a strait, but on July 10 the longboats sighted the head of the bay, much to Cartier's disappointment.

Cartier's encounters with the Indians on the first voyage are of considerable interest. Cartier had sighted Indians on the Gulf coast and in Prince Edward Island, but in Baie de Chaleur came the first actual contact with them. Near Paspebiac Point the men in one of the longboats saw forty or fifty canoes full of Indians crossing the bay. The Indians noticed the strange boat and soon surrounded it. Cartier's men were alarmed, in spite of the friendly attitude of the Indians, and when the Indians did not heed their signs to go back, they shot off the small cannons of the longboat and two fire-lances (long hollow sticks charged with gunpowder and inflammable materials), whereupon the Indians paddled away in haste. A few days later, on July 7, a party of Indians arrived at Port Daniel, where the two ships lay anchoted, and offered to barter with the white men. Cartier sent two men ashore to trade with the Indians, giving them ironware and getting furs in return. Three days later, on July 10, more trading took place at Tracadigash Point on the north shore of Chaleur Bay, where the longboats came upon three hundred Indians. Then the ships left Port Daniel and sailed along the Gaspe coast to Gaspe Harbour, where Cartier and his men spent eight days.

After much trading with the Indians, Cartier and his men, on July 24, erected at Gaspe Harbour a thirty-foot cross bearing a shield with three fletir-de-Iys and the words "Vive Le Roy De France." After they returned to the ships, the local Indian chief, accompanied by his three sons and his brother, came out to them in a canoe. The French lured the canoe close to Cartier's ship and then caught hold of it and made the Indians come on board:

1.

The best modern edition of these journals is Biggar's The Voyage! of jacque! Cartier. Biggar presents both the original French (for the first and second voyages) and an English translation, and supplements the text with copious footnotes.

When they had come on boatd, they were assured by the captain [Cartier] that no harm would befall them, while at the same time every sign of affection was shown to them; and they were made to eat and drink and to be of good cheer. And then we explained to them by signs that the cross had been set up to serve as a land-mark and guide-post on coming into the harbour, and that we would soon come back and would bring them iron wares and other goods; and that we wished to take two of his [the chief's] sons away with us and afterwards would bring them back again to that harbour. And we dressed up his two sons in shirts and ribbons and in red caps, and put a little brass chain around the neck of each, at which they were greatly pleased.

(Biggar, pp. 66-67).

The two young Indians, Taignoagny and Dam Agaya, whom Cartier thus retained, as the journal has it, were taken back to France and accompanied Cartier on the second voyage.

Cartier left Gaspe on July 25 and crossed over to Anticosti Island, thinking that the passage between the Gaspe peninsula and Anticosti was a bay. He skirted eastward along the island, sailed around the eastern end and along the northern shore, then crossed over to the Quebec coast and sailed abour trying to discover whether the passage the ships were traversing was a bay or a strait. Heavy head-winds and strong tides kept the ships from sailing west into the St. Lawrence River, although Cartier, thinking the strong tide flowing against them might issue from a strait, tried unsuccessfully to make headway against it. Finally, on August 5, Cartier decided to return to France, for the season of Atlantic gales was approaching. The ships turned eastward and passed rhrough the Straits of Belle Isle out into the Atlantic. They reached St. Malo on September 5, having made the crossing from Blanc Sablan in about twenty days.

Cartier set our again from St. Malo on May 19, 1535. This time he had three ships: La Grande Hermine (The Great Ermine), one hundred to one hundred and twenty tons; La Petite Hermine (The Little Ermine), sixty tons; and L'Emerilion (Merlin), forty tons. The little fleet ran into heavy storms in the Atlantic, and the ships became separated. La Grande Hermine, Cartier's own ship, sighted Newfoundland on July 7, proceeded to Blanc Sablan, and waited there for the other two ships. On July 26 the two smaller ships arrived, and on July 29 the fleet sailed along the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Anticosti Island, then to the Gaspe shore. From Gaspe Cartier turned north again to explore the part of the north shore of the Gulf he had not coasted before, on the chance that there might be a strait. By August 24 he was sure that no strait existed on the north shore, so he set sail into the St. Lawrence. On September 7 the three ships reached De d'Orleans, where many Indians were engaged in fishing.

Casting anchor in Orleans Channel, the French went ashore, taking with them Taignoagny and Dam Agaya, the two Indians they had seized on their former voyage. At first the Indians on shore ran away, until Cartier's two Indians had spoken to them and told them that they were Taignoagny and Dam Agaya 2 â&#x20AC;˘ Then the Indians became friendly, and after welcoming the French, spent the whole day in visiting the ships, where Cartier received them and treated them well.

On the next day, Donnacona, the "lord of Canada" 3, visited the ships and was well entertained by Cartier. Then the French moved their ships to the Charles River where stood the Indian village of Stadacona under the north brow of Cape Diamond. They were met by Donnacona and Cartier's two interpreters, Taignoagny and Dam Agaya, who had rejoined their tribe. Donnacona appeared to be as friendly as ever, but the two Indians who had been to France with Cartier showed signs of ill-will : And all came over towards our ships, showing many signs of joy, except the two Indians we had brought with us, to wit, Taignoagny and Dom Agaya, who were altogether changed in their attitude and goodwill, and refused to come on board our ships, although many times begged to do so. At this we began somewhat to distrust them. (Biggar, pp. 127-128).

On September 16, Cartier prepared for the winter by placing La Grande Hermine and La Petite Hermine in the St. Charles River, leaving the Emerillon in the St. Lawrence for a proposed trip to Hochelaga (Montreal). All the while the Indians seemed opposed to Cartier's intention of going on to Hoche1aga, perhaps because they did not wish to see such lavish bestowers of gifts transfer their presents to another tribe. The Stadacona Indians made several unsuccessful attempts to dissuade the French from their purpose, first by oratory and then by sending a canoe with three Indians dressed as devils past the ships, shouting as they went. The French were mystified rather than frightened by this performance and asked Taignoagny and Dam Agaya the meaning of it: They answered that their god, Codouagny by name, had made an announcement at Hochelaga, and that the three abovementioned Indians had come in his name to tell them the tidings, which were that there would be so much ice and snow [at Hochelaga] that all [the French] would perish. (Biggar, p. 139).

When the Indians saw that this most solemn ruse did not move the French, they offered no further opposition, although none of them would accompany Cartier to Hochelaga.

The French, going as far as Lake St. Peter in the Emerillon and the rest of the way in longboats, reached Hochelaga on Saturday, October 2, and were met by 1,000 friendly Indians.

They spent the week-end there, visiting the Indian village4, observing the Indians' customs, and surveying the country from the top of Mount Royal. On Monday, October 4, Cartier left Hochelaga, returned to his ship at Lake St. Peter, and was back at Stadacona a week later.

Cartier's company spent a hard winter by the St. Charles.

Fearing a sudden attack by the Indians, they built a fort on the shore, set up cannon, and kept constant guard. An attack did not come, but the cold and an outbreak of scurvy made their lives miserable. The disease broke out first in the Indian village and then spread to Cartier's men. By February almost all of the French were ill with scurvy. Twenty-five of the seamen died before a remedy was found - a drink made by boiling in water bark and twigs from the hemlock or spruce tree. When Cartier's men drank this potion they were completely cured.

Meanwhile Cartier suspected that the Indians were planning an attack, for on April 22 Donnacona arrived in Stadacona with a large number of strange Indians. Cartier decided to take the offensive: The Captain, on being informed of the large number of Indians at Stadacona, though unaware of their purpose, yet determined to outwit them, and to seize their Chief [Donnacona], Taignoagny, Dam Agaya, and the head men. And moreover he had quite made up his mind to take Chief Donnacona to France, that he might relate and tell to the king all he had seen in the west of the wonders of the world. (Biggar, pp. 220-221).

On May 3 the act was done. Cartier seized the Indians and soon convinced Donnacona that he would be well treated and that he would be honoured by an audience with the French king. Donnacona pacified his aroused tribesmen by addressing them from the deck of one of the ships.

2.

Although these two Indians had been picked up at Gaspe Harbour in 1534, rhey were narives of the Quebec region and spoke the same language as the Indians of Stadacona. The Indians Cartier found ar Gaspe in 1534 were merely camping there during the fishing season.

3.

In Carrier's journal "Canada" refers to a relatively small region along the St. Lawrence from Grosse Island on the east to a point between Quebec and Three Rivers on the west.

4. "On the map of the modern city this village of Hochelaga would be

bounded by the four streets, Metcalfe, Mansfield, Burnside, and Sherbrooke, just below the site of McGill University" (Leacock, The Mariner olSt. Malo, p. 71).

On May 6 La Grande Hermine and Emerillon (the Petite Hermine was abandoned and left in the St. Charles River) sailed for France. This time Cartier proved Newfoundland to be an island when he sailed between it and Cape Breton. Sailing along the south coast of Newfoundland, he reached St. Pierre and Miquelon, remained there a few days, and then set sail for St. Malo, reaching home on July 16, 1536.

Cartiet did not make another voyage until 1541, for the war between France and Spain fully occupied the king's attention.

In 1540 preparations were made for the third voyage. The Sieur de Roberval was appointed commander of the enterprise, with Cartier as captain-genetal. By May, 1541, Cartier was ready to sail, and when Roberval still delayed, Cartier waited no longer but left St. Malo on May 23 with five ships. The expedition had a rough voyage but finally reached Newfoundland and sailed on to Stadacona. Cartier went as far as the Lachine Rapids by longboat and then returned to winter quartets at Cap Rouge. No mote is known about this voyage, for Hakluyt's account ends with Cartier teturning to Cap Rouge. We do know, however, that in the summer of 1542 Cartier returned to France with his five ships, meeting Roberval, who was westward bound, at St. John's, Newfoundland. It is probable that Cartier made a fourth voyage to Canada for the purpose of bringing back Roberval and his unsuccessful colonists, fot a record of 1544 credits Cartier with "a service of eight months spent in returning to Canada to bring Roberval home." (Leacock, p. 109).

Cartier seems to have passed the last thirteen years of his life (1544-1557) in quiet retirement in St. Malo and at his manorhouse at Limoilou. There is some evidence to indicate that he was knighted by the king in 1549, for his name appears in records after that date as Sieur de Limoilou. It is fairly certain that Cartier died in 1557, for a record of St. Malo dated September 1, 1557, bears this marginal note: "This said Wednesday about five in the morning died Jacques Cartier."

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Averill, Esrher The Voyages ofjacques Cartier. New York: The Domino Press, 1937.

2. Biggar, H. P., ed. The Voyages ofjacques Cartier. Publications Gfthe Public Archives of Canada, No. 11. Ortawa: The King's Printer, 1924.

3. Guernier, Eugene jacques Cartier et la Pensee Colonisatrice. Paris: Editions de l'Encyclopedia de l'Empire Fran,ais, 1946.

4. Leacock, Srephen The Mariner of St. Malo. Vol. III of Chronicles of Canada Series. Toronro: Glasgow, Brook & Co., 1921.

5. Srephens, Hiram B. jacques Cartier and his Four Voyages to Canada.

Momreal: W. Drysdale & Co" 1890.

6. Surhecland,]. C. "Jacques Cartier". Ryerson Canadian History Readers.

Toromo: Ryerson Press, 1926.

Every reasonable care has been taken ro trace ownership of copyright material. The publishers, Imperial Oil Limited, would welcome information that might help to rectify any credit or reference.

PORTFOLIO I. NUMBER 3

Fro

the Imperial Oil Collection

LPERVISI:\G THE BCILDI:\G OF THE HABIT:\TIO~- f\T PORT ROYAL 1605.

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN THE EARLY VOYAGES AND THE EXPEDITION TO ACADIA

Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635) was born in Brouage, a small seaport on the Bay of Biscay!. His family was not of the nobility, but it possessed sufficient social standing for father (Antoine de Champlain) and son to use de before the surname and for the son to be called, at least after 1604, "Sieur de Champlain". Champlain himself tells us all we know of his early life in his Brief Discours, the account of his voyage to the West Indies in 1599. He says that he was a quartermaster' in the army of Henry IV and that he served in Brittany for "some years" until the war ended in 1598 and the army was discharged. Finding himself "without any charge or employment", he decided to go to Spain and take passage on a ship sailing to the West Indies. With the help of his uncle, a certain Captain Provenc;:al who was PilotGeneral of the Spanish fleet, Champlain sailed from Blavet (now Port Louis) in Brittany on the St. Julien, a ship Provenc;:al was taking back to Spain carrying the Spanish soldiers of the Blavet garrison. Champlain spent four months at Cadiz, Sanlucar de Barrameda, and Seville until the St. Julien was engaged to accompany the king's fleet in its annual voyage to the West Indies.

When Provenc;:al was engaged to serve elsewhere, Champlain was given command of the ship.

Champlain gives a full account in the Brief Discours of his first voyage and supplements the text with many of his own maps and charts. The fleet sailed in January, 1599, and reached the Indies in about two months. For two years Champlain sailed about the Spanish Main, landing here and there and recording his impressions of the plants, animals, climate, and inhabitants of the Spanish possessions. He even made an excursion to Mexico City, a journey of about 200 miles from old Vera Cruz, where lay his ship. In 1601 the fleet returned to Spain.

Champlain seems to have spent the next two years at home, writing the Brief Discours and looking for another chance to display his talents as geographer and navigator. His opportunity came when Aymar de Chastes, governor of Dieppe, formed a trading company and outfirted two ships for a voyage to the St. Lawrence.

Franc;:ois Grave, Sieur du Pont (usually called Pontgrave), was engaged as commander of the expedition, and Champlain sailed in Pontgrave's ship as geographer, representing what Colby (The Founder of New France, p. 20) calls "the extra-commercial motive" of the expedition. The two ships sailed from Honfleur on March 15, 1603, and reached Cape St. Mary, Newfoundland, on the sixth of May. Sailing into the St. Lawrence, they anchored at Tadoussac, where Champlain studied the customs of the Indians while Pontgrave carried on trade. Thereafter the ship went as far as Montreal, Champlain making excursions up the St. Maurice and Richelieu rivers and to the Lachine Rapids. On July 9 the ship left Quebec, sailed back to Tadoussac and then across the Atlantic to France, arriving in Havre on the twentieth of September. Champlain's account of the voyage, published in 1604 as Des Sauvages (Of Savages), deals mainly with the life of the Indians of Gaspe and the St. Lawrence.

When Champlain arrived back in France, he learned that De Chastes had died shortly before the return of his expedition.

De Chastes' charter was soon taken over by the Sieur de Monts, who also obtained from the king a monopoly of the fur trade in Canada and a commission to establish settlements there. The motives of De Monts and his associates in this monopoly, accord-

ing to the text of the commISSIOn issued to De Monts, were mainly commercial (to make a profit in the fur trade) and political (to occupy Acadia so that another nation would not seize it before the French). Champlain, however, had other motives. In his journal of the voyage he refers to the long-sought passage to China and says that a permanent French settlement in New France is necessary as a base of operations for the search.

De Monts' expedition consisted of two ships, the larger (La Bonne-Renommee) carrying De Monts, the Sieur de Poutrin-

court, and Champlain, the smaller having Pontgrave as commander. The two ships also carried 120 workmen. La Bonne Renommee sailed from Havre de Grace on March 7, 1604, and was followed on March 10 by Pontgrave's ship. The two ships were to meet at Canso. De Monts, however, changed his mind when he was on the high seas and set his course for Port Mouton, a more southerly harbour. On May 1 De Monts sighted Sable Island and on May 8 made land at Cape La Have. 3 Going up the coast, he arrived at Porr Mouton on May 13 and there sent his men ashore to set up camps. Champlain" as geographer, left Port Mouton on May 19 in a pinnace to explore the coast to the westward. He went as far as Weymouth on St. Mary's Bay and then rejoined the ship at Porr Mouton. De Monts then collected his men and sailed over the route Champlain had covered, finally anchoring in St. Mary's Bay 4 From St. Mary's Bay Champlain, this time accompanied

by De Monts, set off again in a pinnace, on the lookout for a good site for a permanent settlement. On June 16 they reached Port Royal (Annapolis Basin), which Champlain calls "one of the finest harbours I had seen on all these coasts, where a couple of thousand vessels could lie in safety." (Biggar, I, p. 256). They found the land around the Annapolis River "the most suitable and pleasant for a settlement that [they] had seen", but they passed on to Advocate Harbour and sailed across Chignecto Bay, reaching the St. John River on June 24 and then coasting southwestward until they came to the Ste. Croix River. Sailing into the mouth of this river, they decided upon Dochet (Ste. Croix) island as a good site for their settlement, and setting his men to work on shore, De Monts sent for the ship lying in St. Mary's Bay. When the ship arrived, the work of settlement began: "Then, without loss of time, the Sieur de Monts proceeded to set the workmen to build houses for our residence, and allowed me [Champlain] to draw up the plan of our settlement." (Biggar, I,

1.

According to E. G. Bourne (The Voyages and Explorations of Samuel de Champlain, xiv-xv), Brouage is no longer on the seacoast: "The once excellent harbour has long since been filled in by the sea, and the little peasant village now lies nearly two miles inland."

2.

"A non-commissioned officer of cavalry, corresponding in rank to a sergeant of infantry" (Biggar, p. 3).

3.

In Green Bay, inside Cape La Have, where De Monts' ship anchored for about three days, Champlain drew his first map of the Acadian coast. His maps, the earliest relatively accurate ones of the Acadian and New England coasts, are as interesting as his rext. On rhis voyage he drew three general maps, thirteen charts of important harbours, and three picture plans. All of them are reproduced in Biggar's edition.

4.

This is the method De Monts and other early explorers followed.

The ship remained in harbour while the coasr was explored in a pinnace, which would draw only a few feet of water.

p. 275). Thus the first permanent settlement of Europeans in North America was established.

When the buildings were erected, De Monts sent Poutrincourt back to France with La Bonne Renommee. Champlain, in order to learn something of the coast south of Ste. Croix before winter set in, made a coasting trip in a pinnace as far as Muscongus Bay (south of the Penobscot River), arriving back at Ste. Croix on the second of October.

The winter of 1604-1605 was unusually severe, and the French at Ste. Croix suffered many hardships. The snow lay to a depth of three and four feet until the end of April. Scurvy broke out and thirty-five out of seventy-nine men died. The French surgeons could discover no remedy for the disease. Great cakes of ice in the passage between their island and the mainland prevented the French from going to the mainland for badly needed water and fuel. Champlain concludes his account of their hardships with what must be an understatement: "All these circumstances made the Sieur de Monts and others dissatisfied with the settlement." (Biggar, I, p. 307).

On June 17, 1605, De Monts decided to look for a better site. With a fifteen-ton pinnace he, Champlain, and a few others coasted along the shore of New England as far as Nauset Harbour, south of Cape Cod. Finding themselves low on provisions and having failed to find a place suitable for settlement, they sailed back to Ste. Croix, arriving there on August 3 and finding one of De Mont's supply ships from France anchored off the river. De Monts, assured of supplies, waited no longer, but sent Pontgrave and Champlain to Port Royal (Annapolis Basin) to choose a site for a new settlement. They chose a spot on the north side of the Basin, where the village of Lower Granville now stands, and set abour clearing the land and erecting houses. 5 Champlain drew up the plans for the habitation, and De Monts, who soon brought the settlers of Ste. Croix to the new site, directed the work. When most of the buildings had been completed, De Monts decided to go back to France to defend his trading monopoly against a group of French merchants who were trying to have it repealed. When De Monts left, some of the colonists accompanied him, leaving forty or forty-five of their fellows at Port Royal with Pontgrave and Champlain.

During the autumn of 1605, the settlers at Port Royal made gardens. Champlain himself made an irrigated garden and lrmilt a summer-house. Scurvy again broke our, and although the disease was not as severe as it had been at Ste. Croix, twelve of the forty-five men died. The winter turned out to be quite mild, with frequent rain and a moderate snowfall.

On March 16, 1606, Pontgrave and Champlain set out in a pinnace on a voyage of discovery to the Florida coast. They ran into bad weather, were almost wrecked near Grand Manan, and returned to Port Royal. On April 9 they set out again, but this time they ran on the rocks at the entrance to Port Royal, lost the pinnace, and barely escaped drowning. The loss of the pinnace brought an end to their proposed coasting trip.

During the late spring of 1606, the men at Port Royal awaited the arrival of ships from France. De Monts, in handing over his command of the settlement to Pontgrave before he left for France, had directed that the settlers should leave Port Royal if the ships from France did not appear by the sixteenth of July.

That date came with no sign of the ships. Therefore, on July 17 the men sailed for Cape Breton in two pinnaces, hoping to find French vessels at Canso that would take them back to France.

Two men volunteered to remain behind at Port Royal to guard the stores. The pinnaces sailed as far as Cape Sable, where Ralleau, De Monts' secretary, encountered them and told them that De Monts was sending a vessel (the Jonas, with Lescarbot on board) commanded by Pourrincourt. This news made Pontgrave and Champlain turn back, and when they reached Port Royal on

July 31, the Jonas was lying in the harbour. It was then suggested

by Poutrincourt and agreed by all that they should remain at Port Royal for at least another year. 6 Poutrincourt sent labourers across the harbour to cultivate the open land on which the town of Annapolis Royal now stands and had several kinds of grain sown there.

On August 29 Pontgrave left Port Royal in the Jonas to -sail back to France, while Champlain and Poutrincourt set out in a pinnace for the Florida coast. They reached Stage Harbour, where several of the French were killed in a skirmish with the Indians, and then turned back, having gone only a few miles farther than De Monts and Champlain on the previous coasting trip. After breaking their rudder and battling against gales, they reached Port Royal on the fourteenth of November. Lescarbot, who had remained in Port Royal when the Jonas sailed, welcomed the returning voyagers by presenting a pageant of his own composition, The Theatre of Neptune, on the waters of the harbour.

As the settlement made preparations for the winter, Poutrincourt built a water-mill and Champlain constructed a walk along the edge of the woods. The winter turned out to be mild. Scurvy again took its toll, but this time there were only seven deaths from the disease. To help the settlers through the winter of 16061607, Champlain established the "Order of Good Cheer", an arrangement by which the colony was well fed: We spent the winter very pleasantly, and had good fare by means of the Order of Good Cheer which I established, and which everybody found beneficial to his health, and more profitable than all sorts of medicine we might have used. This Order consisted of a chain which we used to place with certain little ceremonies about the necks of one of our people, commissioning him for that day to go hunting. The next day it was conferred upon another, and so on in ordet. All vied with each other to see who could do the best, and bring back the finest game. We did not come off badly, nor did the Indians who were with us.

(Biggar, I, pp. 447-448).

On May 24 a pinnace arrived bearing bad news from France. De Monts' company had been dissolved and his monopoly of the fur trade had been revoked. With the supporting company out of existence, Port Royal had to be abandoned. De Monts' letter directed Poutrincourt to bring back the settlers to France. Champlain and Pourrincourt made a short trip into Minas Basin and then returned to the settlement. On July 30 most of the French left Port Royal in three long-boats for Canso, where the Jonas was waiting to take them back to France. Poutrincourt and Champlain remained behind for a few days, and on August 11 they also abandoned Port Royal. They reached Canso on August

5.

6.

In 1938, when the Dominion Government undertook the reconstruction of this site, C. W. Jefferys, whose drawing accompanies this essay, worked on the project as historical consultant. The following paragraph is his account of the work: "The soil was carefully excavated and the foundation stones of the buildings were discovered.

Their positions agree with the descriptions and the engraving in Champlain's works, and show that the buildings wete gtouped around a rectangular court of abour sixty-four by fifty-two feet. A well was found in the middle of the courtyatd, with many of its stones still in position. It was excavated to a depth of about eighteen feet, whete a copious flow of water was reached. Every detail of consttuction was carefully worked out in accordance with the building methods and the style of the period. The massive chimneys wete built of local stone, the fiteplaces lined with bricks made from the nearby clay pits from which Poutrincourt made bricks over three hundred years ago. All the beams, planks, and shingles were hewn or sawn by hand, the nails and other iron works all hand wrought." (c. W. Jefferys, The Picture Gallery a/Canadian HiJtary, Vol. I, p. 116.)

See also a full account by Jeffreys in The Canadian Hiltarical Review, December, 1939.

Ganong's footnote is of intetest here: "Lescarbot shows that Poutrincourt had instructions from De Monts to explore southward beyond Mallebarre [Nauset Hatbour], and to remove the settlement to some place with a better climate than that of Ste. Croix or Port Royal.

Apparently the first intention was to remove the entire colony the next season, exploring as they went, while the second thought, which was actually carried out, was to utilize the remainder of the summer in making an exploration, leaving the actual removal for another year." (Biggar, I, p. 390.)

27, where they wete met by Lescarbot. On September 3 the Jonas set sail for France, reaching Brittany over three weeks later on the twenty-eighth of September.

3. Besson, Maurice. Champlain. Paris: Editions de I'Encyclopedie de l'Empire Fran<;ais, 1946.

4. Colby, Charles W. The Founder of New France. Vol. III of The Chronicles of Canada. Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Company, 1921.

S. MacDonald, Adtian. "Samuel de Champlain". The Ryerson Canadian History Readers. Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1927.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Biggar, H. P., ed. The Works of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1. Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1922.

2. Bourne, E. G. (ed.) and A. N. Bourne (trans.) The Voyages and Explorations ofSamuel de Champlain (1604-1616). 2 vols. New York: A. S. Barnes & Company, 1906.

6. Dionne, N. E. Samuel Champlain: Histoire de sa Vie et ses Voyages. 2 vols.

Quebec: A. Cote et Cie, 1891.

7. Lescarbot, Marc. La Histoire de la Nouvelle France. Trans. and ed. by W. L. Granr and H. P. Biggar. Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1914.

8. Bishop, Morris Gilbert. Champlain: The Life of Fortitude. McLelland & Stewarr, Toronto, 1948.

Every reasonable care has been taken to trace ownership of copyright material. The publishers" Imperial Oil Limited, would welcome information that might help to rectify any ctedit or refetence.

PORTFOLIO I, NUMBER 4

From the Imperial Oil Collection

CHAMPLAIN TAKING AN OBSERVATION WITH THE ASTROLABE, ON THE OTTAWA, 1613.

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN THE LATER EXPLORATIONS AND RESIDENCE AT QUEBEC (1608-1635)

After the withdrawal of De Monts' monopoly in 1607 and the subsequent abandonment of Port Royal, De Monts and Champlain turned their attention westward to the St. Lawrence region. De Monts managed to obtain a new trade monopoly for the year 1608, and with it in his possession he succeeded in persuading several French merchants to invest in an expedition.

Again the fur trade was to cover the expenses of the activities uppermost in the minds of De Monts and Champlain - exploration and settlement. De Monts appointed Champlain as commander of the expedition and instructed him to spend the winter in Canada. Pontgrave was given the responsibility of trading with the Indians and was to return with the ships in the autumn.

The two ships, one commanded by Champlain and the other by Pontgrave, set out from Honfleur in April. Champlain reached Tadoussac on June 3 and there found that Pontgrave had been defied by some Basque traders who persisted in disregarding De Monts' monopoly and that the'Basques had opened fire on Pontgrave's ship and seriously wounded Pontgrave. Their respect for Champlain and their conviction that they had gone too far in using force made the Basques agree to Champlain's terms - a solemn promise that they would no longer oppose Pontgrave or the monopoly of De Monts.

Having settled this dispute, Champlain pushed on to Quebec and immediately set his workmen at the task of clearing land and building a storehouse on the point of land projecting into the St. Lawrence.! No sooner was the work begun than Champlain learned of a conspiracy against his life. A locksmith, Jean Duval by name, had gathered four of the most corrupt men in the ship's company about him and, with their help, had succeeded in enlisting most of the other workmen. Their plan was to kill Champlain and deliver Quebec into the hands of the Basque traders, from whom they expected a large reward. However, one of the conspirators, Antoine Natel, thought better of his share in the plot and disclosed the whole scheme to Champlain, who seized the ringleaders and brought them to trial. The plotters confessed their guilt, and a tribunal composed of Champlain, Pontgrave (who had come from Tadoussac), the ship's captain, and several other officers condemned Duval to death. Duval was hanged, and Pontgrave took the three other prisoners back to France when he sailed from Quebec on the eighteenth of September.

Champlain spent the autumn of 1608 in directing the sowing of wheat and rye, the planting of vines, and the building of living quarters. When winter came, the settlers were well housed and comfortable. It was not long, however, before scurvy and dysentery broke out. Eighteen of Champlain's men were stricken with scurvy, and ten of them died. Five others died of dysentery. Early in June, when news of Pontgrave's arrival at Tadoussac was brought to Quebec, Champlain's company had shrunk from twenty-four to eight, and half of -the eight survivors were ill.

After the almost disastrous winter had passed, Champlain began a course of action which was to have an important effect on the history of Canada: he allied himself with the Huron and Algonquin Indians and actively helped them in their perpetual war against the Iroquois. His policy was dictated mainly by expediency. If the French were to be successful in their exploration

and colonization of New France, they must be on friendly terms with the natives. It so happened that most of the Indians who brought furs to the French and inhabited the Laurentian water路 shed, the area of French interest, were Hurons and Algonquins.

The Iroquois lived far to the south and never traded with the French. Therefore the Hurons and Algonquins had to be secured as friends of the French, and the best way to win their favour and promote the extension of their territories was to fight on their side against their enemies, the Iroquois.

During the summer of 1609 Champlain made his first trip into 'Iroquois country, accompanied by a band of his Indian allies. 2 He set out with a shallop and a band of armed Frenchmen, but when they reached the St. Louis Rapids ar Chambly on the Richelieu River, they found that the shallop could not be taken any farther. Champlain was not to be so easily daunted, however, and sending back most of his men, he and twO volunteers continued on with the Indian war-party, consisting of sixty Indians with twenty-four canoes. They entered Lake Champlain and paddled south into the Iroquois territory. Late in the evening of July 29 they met a body of Iroquois on the warpath. Immediately the two groups prepared for battle, but they soon agreed that they must wait for rhe dawn so that they could distinguish friend from foe. At dawn the encounter took place, the Iroquois standing firm as the Algonquins advanced toward them with Champlain walking twenty yards in front. Taking aim with his arquebus 3 at the Iroquois chieftains, Champlain fired, killing two of them and wounding the third. Seeing their leaders dead and hearing another shot from the guns of Champlain's two companions who were hidden in the woods, the Iroquois took to flight. After a short pursuit in which several more of the Iroquois were killed and others taken prisoner, the victorious party set off for home. The Algonquins and Hurons left Champlain when the party reached the St. Louis Rapids, a number of the Montagnais (members of an Algonquin tribe living north of the St. Lawrence) accompanying him back to Quebec.

In the autumn of 1609 Champlain and Pontgrave returned to France after installing Captain Pierre Chauvin as commander at Quebec for the winter. Champlain gave De Monts a full report of the year in Canada and had an interview with King Henry IV. De Monts tried unsuccessfully to obtain a new commission for the fur trade, but he did succeed in persuading his partners (Collier and Le Gendre, merchants of Rouen) to support the settlement at Quebec and the further exploration of the country.

Pontgrave, no longer in possession of a monopoly, was to carry 1. "This site . . . was on the point in the Lower Town now enclosed,

according to Laverdiere, between the Place, the rue Notre-Dame, and the river" (The Works of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 11, plate 111).

2. Only the slightest of summaries of this and subsequent expeditions against the Iroquois can be given in this sketch. Champlain's accounts of his life with the Indians, howevet, are the most interesting parts of all his writings, being full of gtaphic descriptions and having the authenticity of first-hand reports.

3. The arquebus was a clumsy muzzle-loader fired by means of a slowburning fuse. Its fire was destructive, but the process of priming, loading, and firing it took so long that it was not a good weapon.

At first the Indians were terrified by its loud report, its power of destruction, and the smoke and flame that issued from the barrel, but it was not long before they realized that their own bows and arrows were really more efficient.

on trade at Tadoussac in competition with any othets who should appear on the scene.

Pontgrave and Champlain arrived at Tadoussac on April 23 (1610) and learned that the settlers at Quebec had experienced

a mild and scurvy-free winter. Champlain went on to Quebec, where there soon arrived sixty of the Montagnais to ask his aid in a raid upon the Iroquois. They were quickly reassured, and by June 19 Champlain had joined a large war party at the mouth of the Richelieu River. A hundred Iroquois were discovered nearby, protected by a well-built barricade. Champlain directed the attack, which was so successful that not one of the Iroquois escaped, fifteen being captured and the rest being killed in the fighting.

After the battle, the Indians returned to their own territories and Champlain went back to Quebec. Champlain directed repairs and put the settlement in order. Then leaving Du Parc in command at Quebec, he and Pontgrave returned to France.

Champlain's voyage of 1611 was relatively uneventful, except for trouble with icebergs and drift-ice off the coast. His ship narrowly missed several icebergs, and it was trapped in ice fields for several days. At last, forty-three days after he left Honfleur, Champlain reached Tadoussac. He soon went on to the Lachine Rapids, where he awaited the promised arrival of his Indian allies. While he was waiting for them, Champlain chose a site for a new settlement on Callieres Point at the mouth of the St. Pierre River and had two gardens made. On June 13, two hundred Hurons arrived. They returned to Champlain a young Frenchman (Etienne Bnlle) he had left with them in 1610, and he gave back to them an Indian lad of their tribe whom he had taken to France with him. The Hurons feared the traders who had followed Champlain to the meeting-place, and after giving him furs and assuring him of their goodwill, they went back to their country. On July 12 a large band of Algonquins arrived to meet Champlain. Shortly afterwards he returned to Quebec and left for France in a ship bound for La Rochelle.

During the winter of 1611-12 in France, De Monts and Champlain tried to secure protection against the unscrupulous merchants who were using Champlain's friendship with the Indians to reap profits for themselves. These traders, although uninvited, had begun to follow Champlain in his excursions inca Indian country, never aiding him with men or supplies but always ready to make easy profits by trading in the territories he had opened up. Champlain's own words reveal his annoyance with these traders: They only want people to run a thousand risks in discovering nations and countries in order that they may keep the profits and the others the hardships. It is unreasonable when one has caught the sheep for another to have the fleece. Had they been willing to share our explorations, use their resources, and risk their persons, they would have shown that they possessed honour and a love of renown; but, on the contrary, they clearly show that they are driven by pure malice to seek to enjoy equally with us the fruits of our labours (Works, Vol. II, p. 218).

De Monts' partners were unwilling to continue the partnership because they had no monopoly of trade. Finally, De Monts bought their shares in the Quebec settlement and sent out a few men to protect it. He tried again to have the monopoly renewed, but in vain, for his influence at court had declined since the death of Henry IV in 1610. Therefore Champlain assumed the task. He encountered much opposition from various merchants, who did everything they could to checkmate him, but by the end of 1612 most of the opposition had been overcome and Champlain had secured a limited commission authorized by the passports of his patron, the Prince de Conde.

Champlain left France in 1613 with the intention of finding a northern sea of which he had heard. 4 Nicholas de Vignau, a young man of Champlain's company who had spent some time living among the Indians, had circulated in Paris a report that he had reached the shores of this sea by going up the Ottawa

River. From the first Champlain doubted Vignau's story, but it was supported by so many details that, after Vignau had solemnly sworn to its truth in the presence of witnesses, Champlain decided to go over the route himself with Vignau accompanying him.

He sailed to Tadoussac and then began his expedition from Ile Ste. Helene on May 27, accompanied by four Frenchmen and an Indian guide. Going up the Ottawa, he encountered many rapids and difficult portages. Between Olmsted Lake and Muskrat Lake he lost his astrolabe. 5 When he reached Morrison Island, in Lower Allumette Lake, Champlain found an encampment of Algonquin Indians. These Indians welcomed Champlain as a friend, but they were reluctant to aid him in his search for the "northern sea". When Champlain told them Vignau's story, they immediately said it was a lie and would have killed the young Frenchman on the spot if Champlain had not prevented them.

At last, no longer able to keep up the pretence, Vignau confessed that his story was entirely a lie concocted to win for him undeserved fame in France and a passage back to Canada. He explained that he had agreed to accompany Champlain because he did not think Champlain would undertake the search and that he thought he could forestall the disclosure of his falseness. Bitterly disappointed, Champlain retraced his route back to the Lachine Rapids, accompanied by a large party of Indians with merchandise to barter.

After a public confession of his imposture, Vignau was pardoned on condition that he would earnestly search for the northern sea. Soon after, Champlain returned to France, arriving at St. Malo on the twenty-sixth of September.

Champlain spent the year 1614 in France, completing the organization of the trading company which had been given only tentative power in 1613, and so well did he succeed that by the spring of 1614 the new company possessed an eleven-year monopoly. He was appointed lieutenant to the viceroy of New France (De Conde, the company's patron) and Quebec was made the headquarters of the company. During 1614 Champlain was also active in persuading the Recollets to send several priests to New France. When he sailed in April, 1615, four Recollet friars accompanied him to Quebec and set up the first Christian mission on the St. Lawrence.

In the summer of 1615, Champlain went up the Ottawa to the Huron territory around Georgian Bay. He visited many of the Indian villages and then went on the warpath with the Indians.

The war party went south, crossed the eastern end of Lake Ontario, and attacked an Iroquois fort. Much to Champlain's disgust, the Hurons and Algonquins lacked discipline and failed to follow his directions for taking the fort. They withdrew and finally retreated, after Champlain and several of the Indians had been wounded. Champlain went back with the Indians and spent the winter going from village to village, recording in some detail the tribal customs of the various groups. When spring came he returned to the Lachine Rapids, met Pontgrave there, and spent a few weeks at Quebec. On August 3 he sailed with Pontgrave to France.

4. This "northern sea" could be Hudson Bay. Henry Hudson had reached

the Bay in 1611 and had there been set adrift in a small boat with eight men. He was never heard of again, but his mutinous crew took back to England Hudson's mar of his discovery and had it published in 1612.

Champlain was aware 0 this English discovery, and he thought that路 this "northern sea" might be the long-sought passage to China.

5. This astrolabe, losr in 1613 by Champlain, was found in 1867 by E. G. Lee (See Charles Macnamara, "Champlain's Asrrolabe," The Canadian Field-Natura/ist, XXXIII, No.6, Dec., 1919, for an account of its

discovery). The astrolabe was a circular plate of brass, graduated in degrees, having a double-bladed bar crossing its face and pivored on its centre. It was suspended by irs hinged ring and was used to measure the degree of the sun's elevarion. From this angle a calculation of latitude was made. This insrrument enabled the observer to calculate latitude to abour one-quarter of a degree. Astrolabes were superseded, even before Champlain's death, by the quadrant. See Russell's article for the evidence by which the astrolabe found in 1867 is identified with Champlain's astrolabe.

Champlain went on no more exploring expeditions after 1616, when he was forty-nine years of age. He spent the rest of his life as the king's representative in New France, working hard for the colonization of the country and doing his best to foster its welfare. His hopes for New France seemed about to be realized in 1627 when Richelieu established the Company of One Hundred Associates and prepared to send many more colonists from France. However, a powerful Huguenot revolt in France which drew the English into war with the French occupied Richelieu's attention. In 1629 the greatest blow of all fell- Lewis Kirke forced the surrender of Quebec to the English, and Champlain was sent back to France. The loss of New France was temporary, however, for in 1632, by the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, the country was given back to France. Champlain returned to Quebec in that year and resumed his administration of the colony, performing his public duties with his customary vigour and doing

everything in his power to aid the Jesuit mission that had replaced the Recollets at Quebec. Stricken with paralysis in the autumn of 1635, Champlain died on Christmas Day of the same year.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Biggar, H. P., ed. The Works 0/ Samuel de Champlain, Vols. II & III. Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1925-29.

2. Colby, Charles W. The Founder 0/ New France. Vol. III of Chronicles Canada. Toronto: Glasgow, Brook and Company, 1921.

0/

3. MacDonald, Adrian. "Samuel de Champlain". The Ryerson Canadian History Readers. Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1927.

4. Russell, A. ]. "On Champlain's Astrolabe". Montreal: The BurlandDesbarars Lirh. Co., 1879.

5. Bishop, Morris Gilbert. Champlain: The Li/e & Stewart, Toronto, 1948.

Every reasonable care has been taken to trace ownership of copyright material. The publishers, Imperial Oil Limited, would welcome information rhat might help to rectify any credit or reference.

0/

Fortitude. McLelland

PORTFOLIO I, NUMBER 5

From the Imperial Oil ColleCTioll

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16 1 5 .

AN ADVENTURER AMONG THE INDIANS

Today Etienne BrUle is a shadowy or even a forgotten figure to most Canadians. Yet he was one of Canada's most energetic explorers. There is little doubt that Brule was the first white man to go up the Ottawa River and on to Georgian Bay; the first to see Lake Huron; the first to see Lake Superior; the first to see Lake Ontario and the site of Toronto; and the first to follow the Susquehanna River in what is now Pennsylvania down to its mouth on Chesapeake Bay. It is also probable that BrUle was the discoverer of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. With such a list of important discoveries to his credit, BrUle certainly deserves to be more widely known.

The reasons for BrUle's comparative obscurity are not far to seek. First and most important of all, BrUle left no written account of his journeys, not even a hastily-composed journal; he described his journeys verbally to Champlain and to the Recollet and Jesuit missionaries. Secondly, Champlain and other of BrUle's contemporaries who might have recorded his exploits in detail generally ignored them. When we ask why they did so, we come to the final reason for Brule's obscurity - his bad character in the eyes of Champlain and the missionaries. Though fearless and daring, BrUle was neither a moral nor a religious man.

He adopted the habits and customs of the Indians among whom he spent most of his life, and in doing so he appears to have accepted and practiced, among other Indian customs, the sexual promiscuity common among the Hurons. It is also evident that BrUle was as little concerned with the religion of his countrymen as with their morality. The missionaries who knew him are unanimous in condemning him for godlessness as well as immorality. Brule's conduct was particularly embarrassing to rhe missionaries who were trying to convert the Indians to Christianity, for his bad example tended to make a mockery of the way of life the fathers were trying to impress upon the savages. Moreover, the possibility of BrUle's explorations receiving the publicity they deserved through Champlain and subsequently through historians became even more unlikely when Brule turned traitor and aided the English to capture Quebec from Champlain in 1629.

BrUle was born about 1592 in Champigny, a small town south of Paris. Nothing is known of his childhood or of the circumstances that led to his' association with Champlain. He first appears in New France in 1608 as Champlain's servant, and probably he was one of the eight survivors of the first winter at Quebec. When Champlain returned to France for the winter of 1609-10, he must have left BrUle behind in Quebec. l In 1610 BrUle accompanied Champlain on his expedition against the Iroquois. After the French and their Indian allies (Algonquins and Montagnais) had overcome an Iroquois fort, a party of Hurons arrived too late to share in the victory. A great celebration followed, .during the course of which the Indians invited Champlain to go back with them to their homes. Champlain had to decline the invitation, but in his place he asked them to take the young Brule, who apparently had previously expressed his desire to live among the Indians and learn their language. 2 Chief Iroquet of the Hurons was willing, but his tribesmen feared that an accident might befall BrUle and cause Champlain to make war against them. Their reluctance was overcome when Champlain agreed to take a young Huron, Savignon by name, back to France with him if the Hurons would accept BrUle. The exchange was

made, and BrUle accompanied the Indians up the Ottawa River to Georgian Bay, thus becoming the first white man to penetrate the wilderness beyond the mouth of the Ottawa.

The following summer (1611) Champlain was again on the St. Lawrence. In June he went to the Lachine Rapids to await the Indians, who had promised to meet him there, bringing with them BrUle and receiving Savignon in return. On June 13 the Indians arrived and the exchange was made, both parties being much pleased at the good treatment that had been experienced

by BrUle and Savignon. Now BrUle, who had learned the Huron language during the wintet, was able to act as Champlain's mterpreter.

We have no record of BrUle's activities from 1611 to 1615.

Ir is almost certain, however, that BrUle went back again with the Hurons and lived among them for the next four years. Evidence for this assumption is supplied by Champlain in his account of his travels in 1618, where he tells of meeting Etienne Brule, who, he says, had spent the last eight years (1610-1618) among the Hurons. Probably BrUle also lived among the Montagnais and rhe Algonquins,3 for his contemporary Sagard, in his Histoire du Canada, mentions that BrUle had some difficulty in mastering the pronunciation of the various tongues because of the different meanings taken on by identical words when a slight change was made in the accent or cadence.

BrUle next appears in the summer of 1615, when Champlain met the Hurons at the Lachine Rapids and promised to aid them in another attack upon the Iroquois. Telling the Indians he would rejoin them in four or five days and go with them to their country, Champlain returned to Quebec in order to equip himself for the expedition. With him went BrUle, who probably had come to the Lachine Rapids with the Hurons. Unfortunately, Champlain spent ten days in going to Quebec and returning to the meetingplace. The Indians, thinking he must have been ambushed by the Iroquois, gave up hope of his return and went back to Huronia without him, accompanied by Father Le Caron, one of the Recollet friars. When Champlain did return and found that the Indians had left, he followed them up the Ottawa, with two canoes and accompanied by Brule (as guide and interpreter), another young Frenchman, and ten Indians. The party reached Georgian Bay, paddled through the Thirty Thousand Islands, crossed Matchedash Bay, and landed at Otouacha, a village of the Bear tribe of

1. In his account of the summer of 1610, Champlain says that his "young

lad" (BruIe) had already spent two winters (1608-9 and 1609-10) at Quebec.

2. For several years Champlain followed a policy of sending yOung Frenchmen co live with the Indian tribes. Btul" was one of sevetal such agents.

Champlain's purpose was three-fold - co gain an intimate knowledge of his Indian allies, co extend the exploration of the country, and co secure a gcoup of interpreters CO help him in his various communications with rhe Indians. (See Burterfield, pp. 24-25).

3. In Brule's time the chief Indian rtibes around the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario were located in the following manner: Montagnais (closely related CO the Algonquins), along the St. Lawrence and rivers CO the north; Algonquins, along the Orcawa River and northward CO Georgian Bay; Hurons, along rhe sourh-eastern shore of Geotgian Bay and north of Lake Simcoe; Iroquois, in what is now New York State.

the Huron nation. 4 Receiving Champlain with great joy as he and Brule visited village after village, the Indians prepared for the warpath.

While the Hurons were preparing for war, they received a message from the Andastes or Carantouannais, a tribe living south of the Iroquois 5 in what is now Pennsylvania. The Andastes were allies of the Hurons, and having heard of the projected Huron attack on the Iroquois, they offered to send five hundred warriors to join the attack. Upon receipt of this good news, the Hurons decided to choose twelve warriors who were to go in two canoes to Carantouan, main village of the Andastes, and inform the Andastes of the day set for the attack upon Onondaga. Brule asked permission to accompany the twelve Hurons, and Champlain readily granted his request.

Champlain, BrUle, and the whole war party set out on the first of September. They haIred at rhe Narrows between Lake Couchiching and Lake Simcoe and chose the twelve warriors Brule was to accompany. On September 8, the main war party left to pursue its way to the eastern end of Lake Ontario. BrUle and the twelve Hurons chose the shortest route. Travelling down Lake Simcoe, they went up the Holland River as far as possible and then made a twenty-eight-mile portage to the mouth of the Humber River. 6 It is not certain how they proceeded from the site of the city of Toronto, but it is likely that they paddled along the lake to Hamilton Bay and on to the mouth of the Niagara River. 7 Then, according to Champlain (Works, Vol. III, p. 215), BrUle and the Hurons went overland, seeking "a more secure path by traversing woods, forests and dense and difficult thickets, and by marshy swamps, frightful and unfrequented places and wastes, all to avoid the danger of an encounter with their enemies."

They did meet a few Senecas, but easily defeated them, killing four and taking two prisoners with them. Reaching Carantouan (the site is probably near Athens, Pennsylvania), they were given an uproarious welcome by the Andastes.

In spite of their willingness to aid the Hurons, the Andastes delayed so long that when they set out on the warpath and finally reached Onondaga, Champlain and the Hurons had already made their unsuccessful attacks and retreated to Lake Ontario. Without making an attack themselves, the Andastes and Brule returned to Carantouan, where Brule decided to spend the winter. His interest in exploration, however, soon led Brule to explore the country of the Andastes. During the winter he descended the Susquehanna River (BrUle was the first white man to explore this region) to its mouth on Chesapeake Bay and coasted some distance, perhaps as far as Cape Charles. In the spring he returned to Carantouan and soon afterwards set out for Huronia with five or six Andastes as guides.

On the return journey Brule narrowly escaped death. He and the Andastes ran into a large band of Senecas. Being greatly outnumbered, the Andastes scattered, and Brule ran for his life into the Jorest. He wandered about for several days, until, weak from hunger, he came upon an Indian trail and decided to follow it, in his desperation heedless of the likelihood that he would fall into the hands of the Senecas. He soon met three Senecas who conducted him to their village, where he was at first given food and treated kindly. When answering the many questions of the Senecas, however, BrUle told them that he belonged to a better nation than the French, who made war upon them, and that his nation wished to be friendly to them. The Senecas must have doubted this statement, for they rushed upon BrUle, tearing out his nails, burning him with fire-brands, and plucking out his beard. Probably this torture would have followed its usual course until Brule was dead, but an unusually severe thunderstorm suddenly burst upon the village, filling the Indians with terror and causing them to flee, leaving Brule bound and helpless. Apparently interpreting the sudden storm as an angry gesture of the gods, the Indians feared to approach BrUle again. Finally the Seneca chief

unbound him and dressed his wounds. Thereafter BrUle was an honoured guest of the Senecas, and was invited to all their dances, feasts, and merry-making. When he expressed his desire to return to the French, several of the Senecas guided him part of the way.

Brule did not go to Quebec, however, but returned to Huronia.

Probably BrUle spent the next year (1617) among the Hurons. We hear of him next in July, 1618, when he met Champlain at Three Rivers and explained why the Andastes had failed to reach Onondaga in time to join the Hurons in their attack. Champlain also asked Brule to remain in Huron country and to explore the territories westward from Georgian Bay. Then BrUle returned with the Hurons. He may have explored the country as far as the North Channel in 1618 and stayed there during the winter. In 1621, however, Brule set out on a very important journey.8 With a Frenchman named Grenolle as companion and perhaps accompanied by a few Hurons, he paddled up the North Channel to St. Mary's River, passed the rapids, and entered Lake Superior. From the very sketchy report of the historian Sagard, who knew Brule personally, we gather that the party then travelled to the western end of Lake Superior where the cities of Duluth and Superior now stand. Moreover, the appearance of the Straits of Mackinaw on Champlain's map of 1632, which was based partly on BrUle's reports, suggests that BrUle crossed the mouth of Lake Michigan, perhaps on his return journey. As Cranston says, "If so, the credit for discovering all five of the Great Lakes, Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario, must go to Etienne BrUle" (p. 92).

According to Butterfield, BrUle visited Quebec in July, 1623, and then returned to Huronia. The next year (1624) he accompanied Father Sagard to the St. Lawrence by way of the Ottawa River. Then, in 1625, Brule, having passed the winter in Huronia, made another journey of exploration, this time to the country of the Neutral Indians, a tribe living along the northern shore of Lake Erie. 9 Their name came from the fact that they remained neutral in the warfare between the Hurons and Iroquois.

On this visit to the Neutrals, BrUle almost certainly reached Lake Erie and thus completed his survey of the Great Lakes.

The next event in the story of BrUle's life is not attractive.

Brule aided the English in the capture of Quebec from his old master, Champlain. Soon after war broke out between France and

4. Otouacha was probably on the western side of Penetanguishene Bay. See Ctanston for the locations of various Huron villages.

5. At this time the Iroquois group consisted of five nations - the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas - whose territories stretched, in the order named, approximately from Lake Champlain in the east to the Genesse River in the west. Champlain had fought against the Mohawks in 1609. In 1615 his plan was to attack Onondaga, a village of the Onondagas nation.

6. This portage, usually called the "Toronto Carrying-Place", was part of the most direct route from the northern lakes to Lake Ontario. See Robinson, Toronto During the French Regime, for a full account of this much-travelled route. C. W. Jefferys' own note on Bnlle (The Picture Gallery of Canadian History, Vol. I, p. 121) refers to the drawing: "The picture shows him halting for a moment in sight of Lake Ontario, at the end of the Toronto Carrying-Place, where the trail dips down to rhe Humber River bank." Champlain, who was taking a much longer route, must have been the second, not the first white man to see Lake Ontario.

7. It is evident that Bnlle did not go on to Niagara Falls. If he had done so, he would surely have described the grandeur of the Falls to Champlain. Champlain, however, knew of the Falls only from the reports of Indians, for from his description of them in the index to his map of 1632 it is plain that he had no knowledge of their size and magnificence.

8. The date is not certain. Butterfield places the journey to Lake Superior in 1621, but Cranston favours 1618.

9. "The Neutral homeland lay in a wide belt along the shores of Lake Erie, and between the Niagara River on the east and the Detroit River on the West. Their northern boundary was approximately on a line between the present town of Oakville on Lake Ontario and the village of Hillsboro in Lambton county" (Cranston, pp. 100-101).

England in 1628, David Kirke appeared before Quebec with a fleet of ships and demanded its surrender. Champlain, who was in command at Quebec, refused, whereupon Kirke withdrew, believing the settlement to be strongly defended. In 1629, however, Kirke returned. At Tadoussac he lay in wait for a fleet of eighteen French supply ships on the way to Quebec, and when it appeared Kirke sank or captured seventeen of the eighteen ships.

Then BrUle, who had come down the river to Tadoussac to guide the French ships to Quebec, went over to the English. With three other Frenchmen, he piloted Kirke's ships to Quebec. Champlain, no longer able to conceal the weakness of his defences, was forced to surrender and was then taken to Tadoussac. There he met BrlUe for the last time and harshly rebuked him for his treachery.

There is no record of Brule from 1629 until the time of his death. Probably he lived with the Hurons, and perhaps he served the English as an interpreter. In 1632 or 1633 his life came to a sudden and terrible end ~ he was murdered and eaten by the Hurons. There has been much speculation upon this curious event, for while murder itself was not an unusual act among these Indians, cannibalism was much less common. Perhaps all we will ever know about Brule's death is summed up in the words of Sagard:

Bruh; ... was killed and then eaten by the Hurons, whom he had so long setved as interpteter; and all for the hatred which they bote him; but I do not know what offense he committed against them. There were many years that he was living among them, foUowing the customs of the country and serving as interpreter; and all that he received as his reward was a painful death - a nefarious and unhappy end. I pray God co be merciful coward him, if it please Him, and to have pity on his soul (Butterfield, p. 121).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1.

Butterfield, C. W. History ofBrUle's Discoveries and Explorations. Cleveland: The Helman-Taylor Company, 1898.

2.

Cranston,]. Herbert Etienne Brule, Immortal Scoundrel, Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1949.

3. Robinson, Petey]. Toronto During the French Regime. Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1933.

4. Biggar, H. P., ed. The Works of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. III. Toromo: The Champlain Society, 1929.

5. Sagard, Gabriel, The Long Journey to the Huron County)'. Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1939.

Every reasonable care has been taken to trace ownership of copyrighr material. The publishers,.

Imperial Oil Limited, would welcome information that might help to rectify any credit or reference.

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PIERRE RADISSON (1636-1710)

A DARING FUR TRADER AND EXPLORER

The exploits of the most colourful of our early explorers, Pierre Esprit Radisson, have been known in full only since 1885. In that year translations of Radisson's manuscript journals were discovered after two centuries of oblivion. The history of these journals is as extraordinary as the life of Radisson itself.

Several of Radisson's accounts, translated from the original French into English in 1669 by an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company, were first owned by Samuel Pepys, the great English diarist. In 1703, when Pepys died, his collecrion of manuscripts was carelessly dispersed by the executors of his estate. Many bundles of them were eventually bought by London tradesmen for use as wastepaper. The great collector Richard Rawlinson heard of them and fortunately was in time to buy what he called "the best parr of the fine collection of Mr. Pepys." Among Rawlinson's purchases were Radisson's accounts of his journeys between 1652 and 1664. Radisson's narrative for the years 1682-83 was bought by the British Museum in 1839, and the narrative for 1684 by Sir Hans Sloane, who deposited it in Hudson's Bay House, London. All of these manuscripts came to the notice of historians for the first time in 1885 and were published by the Prince Society. 1 Radisson was born about the year 1636 in or near Avignon, in southeastern France. About the year 1651 he came to Canada and settled at Three Rivers, which was then a small stockaded forr.

His life of adventure began in 1652, when he was captured by a band of Mohawk Indians. Radisson and two other French lads were hunting not far from the forr when they were warned [hat some Iroquois braves might be nearby. Radisson's compamons were alarmed, and even his taunts of cowardice failed to make them go on with him. They turned back, and Radisson trudged on for another eighr miles, bringing down more game than he could carry. Retracing his steps, he walked along without mishap until he was close to the place where he had left his friends.

Hearing a noise in the wood behind him, he crepr from tree to tree until, within a mile of Three Rivers, he stumbled over the dead, mutilated bodies of his two friends. Immediately he sought cover, bur in a moment he was surrounded by Indians. He made a futile dash for the river, firing at his pursuers as he ran, but he was soon caught and made prisoner. The Mohawks, always admirers of courage, spared his life, for they had witnessed his behaviour from the beginning of rhe hunting expedition and realized that Radisson was an exceptionally daring lad. They were quite right. In this early episode of Radisson's life there appears the same daring and disregard for danger that was to be characteristic of all his later behaviour.

The Mohawks carried Radisson back to their villages south of Lake Champlain. There they treated him very kindly. An old couple who had lost a favourite son adopted Radisson and protected him from the few slight indignities that he, even as a favoured prisoner, would otherwise have had to suffer. After several weeks of carefree life in rhe Mohawk village, Radisson went on a long hunring trip with three of his Indian acquaintances.

On their way back to the village they met an Algonquin prisoner of the Mohawks who urged Radisson to join him in an attempt to escape from his three companions. Radisson was very reluctant to agree to the Algonquin's plan of killing the three Mohawks as they slept, but his homesickness and the traditional enmity of the Iroquois towards his countrymen finally prevailed: "At last I consented, considering they were morral enemies to my country, that had cut the throats of so many of my relations, burned and murdered them" (Voyages, p. 43).

Radisson and the Algonquin fell upon rhe sleeping Mohawks, killed them, and fled. They reached Lake St. Peter, but when the Algonquin failed to heed Radisson's pleas for caution, they were discovered and captured by a band of Mohawks. The Algonquin was killed immediately, but Radisson was taken. back to his own village. There he would have been killed had It not

been for the intercession of his Indian "parents". He was taken from them and torrured for his parr in the slaying of the three Mohawks, but his "father", an influential chief, saved him from mutilation and death and gained a pardon for him. Thereafter Radisson again was well treated.

In 1653 Radisson accompanied the Mohawks on raids in the Niagara region and on a bloodless attack upon the Dutch settlements at Orange (Albany). The Dutch recognized Radisson as a Frenchman and offered to ransom him from the Mohawks, but he refused. Back in the Mohawk village, Radisson regretted his refusal and decided to escape. In the autumn of 1653 he got away and reached Orange safely. The governor at Orange sent Radisson to New Amsterdam (New York), from which town he sailed to Holland, reaching Amsterdam in January, 1654. From Amsterdam he went to La Rochelle and remained in that city until spring.

Wishing to rejoin his family at Three Rivers, Radisson sailed with the French fishing fleet in rhe spring of 1654. He reached his home in May and there found that his half-sister Marguerite had recently married Medard Chouarr, Sieur des Groseilliers, a fur trader who had been a lay helper to the Jesuits of Huronia. Groseilliers soon left on a journey to the region of Lake Michigan, a journey on which his companion may have been the first white man to reach the Mississippi. 2 It is improbable that Radisson accompanied Groseilliers on this trip, for it has been discovered that he signed a document in Quebec on November 7, 1655.

The next imporrant episode in Radisson's life began in 1657. In that year Radisson accompanied a large parry of French and Indians to Onondaga, a French colony and mission established in Iroquois country shortly after the peace arranged between the French and the Iroquois in 1654. The parry consisted of two Jesuits, twenty French colonists, and one hundred Hurons.

A band of Iroquois going to meet the expedition lost seven men in an accident at the Lachine Rapids. According to Indian convention, it was necessary for them to seek revenge for their misforrune. Accordingly they decided to kill the Hurons as soon as they should enter the Iroquois territory. After many suspicious actions, the Iroquois ambushed their Huron companions, savagely attacked them, and massacred all bur one man. Only the bold stand

1. Ever since the publication of the journals in 1885, there has been much

doubt of Radisson's veracity. Grace Lee Nute (Caesars o/the Wilderness, 1943) has admirably clarified the problem. Her research has established the following information about the six journals of Radisson: (1) that the first journal, which recounts Radisson's experiences as a prisoner among the Iroquois (1652-1654), was written in French in 1669 and was translated shortly afterwards by an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company; (2) that the second journal, telling of the French colony and mission at Onondaga in 1657-1658 and the escape of the French from the Iroquois, was also written in 1669 and similarly translated; (3) that Radisson, in writing the third journal, drew upon information given to him by Groseilliers to produce what purports to be an account of a journey by himself and Groseilliers to the areas now known as southern Michigan and Illinois, and eastern Wisconsin, a journey on which it is almost certain Radisson was not present (Radisson is believed to have placed himself in the role of Groseilliers' unknown companion in the account for the purpose of impressing the Hudson's Bay Company with his knowledge of the Great Lakes region); (4) that rhe fourth journal is an account, written in 1669 and then translated into English, of Radisson and Groseilliers' journey to Lake Superior in 1659-1660; (5) that the fifth journal (of which the original French manuscript survives), a narrative of Radisson's voyage to Hudson Bay in 16821683, was wrirten in 1685; (6) and thar the final or sixrh journal, a narrarive of Radisson's voyage to the Bay in 1684 that also survives in the original French manuscript, was written in 1685.

2. The journal says that, while Groseilliers lay ill in camp, his companion (who has never been identified) went westward to a "great river."

(See note 4)

of the Ftench saved the Huron women from the same fate.

Resuming their journey, they went up the Oswego River and reached Fort Onondaga. .

It was not long before the French in Onondaga perceived signs of trouble. Bands of Iroquois assembled around the fort until it was surrounded by hundreds of Indians. The French daily expected an attack, but the Iroquois were probably held back be the knowledge that the governor of Quebec had captured several Iroquois and was holding them as hostages. Throughout the winter of 1657-58, the French did not dare to leave the fort. Only the Jesuits and Radisson were safe among the besiegers. Fortunately, Radisson's Mohawk "father", one of the Indians encamped around the fort, was still friendly. Through him and the Jesuits the French were able to keep track of the Iroquois' plans.

At this stage of affairs the French devised a plan of escape.

One of them, probably Radisson himself, hit upon an ingenious scheme. The French had been building strong rafts for some time, realizing that an attempt to escape down the ice-jammed rivers to Montreal in canoes would be foolhardy. With the means of escape ready, the French decided to give the Indians a great feast and to escape when they were glutted with food and asleep. 3 Word of the feast spread rapidly through the Indian encampments. For two days the French kept the Iroquois waiting outside the gates while they prepared huge pots of food. When the feast did begin, on Match 20, the expectations of the French were fulfilled. The Indians gorged themselves and, probably with the aid of drugs added to the food, were soon fast asleep. Launching their rafts, the French slipped away from the fort. After a difficult but uninterrupted voyage, they reached the safety of Montreal on April 3.

So far Radisson had done little exploring. In 1659 he set out on the first of a series of expeditions that were to make him one of the greatest of Canadian explorers. 4 The departure of Radisson and Groseilliers, the brother-in-law who was henceforth to be Radisson's partner, was delayed when D'Avaugour, the governor of Three Rivers, demanded one half of all the profits they should make in return for a trading licence. The two explorers refused bluntly. D'Avaugour then forbade them to leave Three Rivers. Disgusted with the governor's unfairness and eager to be on their way, they slipped out of Three Rivers one night in August and joined a party of friendly Ojibway Indians beyond Lake St. Peter. On their way up the Ottawa River they were attacked several times by bands of Iroquois, but Radisson, with his customary cleverness and daring, defeated or evaded all the Iroquois parties on their route. In October they reached Lake Superior and in November coasted the south shore. Arriving at Chequamegon Bay (on the south shore of the lake near its western end), they built a small fort and trading post while they waited for their Indian companions to return from a visit to their families in the Wisconsin woods. 5 When the Indians returned, Radisson and Groseilliers moved on with them into the forest. They travelled four days and reached an Indian encampment on the western side of a small lake, probably Court Oreille Lake in northwestern Wisconsin.

The Indians welcomed the Frenchmen with great ceremony and took them into their village for the winter. In the following months the encampment suffered much from famine. A very heavy fall of snow impeded the hunters in their pursuit of game.

Food was so scarce that the Indians were reduced to eating dtied pelts, powdered bones, and even tree bark. Hundreds died of starvation. Relief finally came when a crust strong enough to bear a man's weight formed on the deep snow and the hunters could kill deer.

In the late winter of 1660, messengers from the Sioux Indians arrived to invite Radisson and Groseilliers to visit their nation. Around the same time the Indians held a great gathering to which came representatives of many tribes for a period of feasting and speech-making. Radisson took an active part in the ceremonies, cleverly impressing the Indians by appearing before them in a colourful costume and by chanting a song, throwing gunpowder into the fire, and presenting gifts as he delivered an oration. After the feast was over, Radisson and Groseilliers set out westward on a visit to The Sioux, a journey of twelve days.

They spent six weeks among the Sioux and then returned to Lake Superior with a company of Chippewa Indians, 6

At Chequamegon Point on Lake Superior, the explorers built another fott. When spring came they started northward across the western end of Lake Superior to visit the country of the Cree Indians. To their dismay, they found that the ice on the lake was breaking up, but after a hazardous trip they reached the north shore, where they were welcomed by a large assembly of Crees.

The next event recorded in Radisson's journal is looked upon with suspicion by most historians. Radisson says that he and Groseilliers travelled from the north shore of Lake Superior to the "Bay of the North" (Hudson Bay) and spent the summer there. If this account is true, Radisson and Groseilliers were the first white men to reach Hudson Bay by land. However, the evidence against Radisson's story is practically conclusive. 7 In the early summer of 1660 Radisson and Groseilliers left Lake Superior for the St. Lawrence, accompanied by a large company of Indians with furs. Only one incident that occurred during the trip is noteworthy. At the Long Sault on the Ottawa River, the explorers came upon the dead bodies of Adam Dollard and the little band of Frenchmen who had withstood an attack by a large Iroquois war party until they were destitute of food and water and overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Radisson realized that the heroic stand of Dollard and his men had saved his own party from an Iroquois attack. On August 20, Radisson's fleet of canoes reached Montteal. Although the sixty canoe-loads of furs brought

3. A. C. Laut's explanation of Indian gluttony is useful here: "He [Radisson] realized, as critics of Indian customs fail to understand, that the fearful privations of savage life teach the crime of waSte. The Indian will eat the last morsel of food set before him if he dies for it. He believes that the gods punish waste of food by famine. The belief is a religious principle and the feasts ... are a religious act" (PathfinderJ of the West, p. 60).

4. Before the publication of Caesars of the Wilderness in 1943, it was generally assumed that the journey undertaken by Groseilliers and an unidentified companion in 1654-56 was made by Radisson and Groseilliers in 1658-60. Grace Lee Nute's evidence shows that Radisson's first journey of exploration took place in 1659-60. Moreover, the events of this journey (1659-60) were formerly ascribed (wrongly) to the years 1661-1663. For details of the evidence, see Nute, p. 56ff.

5. Radisson was always temarkably sagacious in his treatment of the Indians. Knowing that neighbouring Indians might be tempted to attack the little fort and murder him and Groseilliers for their firearms, Radisson devised a way to win their profound respect. Rolling gunpowder in tubes of birch bark, he made a circle around the fort. Then, when a number of Indians were present, he put a torch to the birch.

The Indians wete amazed to see a leaping line of fire run around the forr. Ascribing the strange sight ro the magical powers of the French-' men, the Indians were thoroughly impressed and promptly forgot any designs they may have had upon the possessions of the explorets.

6. The Sioux Indians were then living both east and west of the upper Mississippi River. It is therefore possible that Radisson and Groseilliers reached the Mississippi on this visit to the Sioux in 1660. Therefore, they may have been the first white men to see the Mississippi. There is, however, a possibility tnat Groseilliers' unnamed companion on the expedition in 1654-56 also reached the Mississippi. However, no certain evidence exists for either assumption.

7. According ro Radisson, the journey to and from Hudson Bay extended over a summer, apparently the summer of 1660. Yet the summer months of both 1659 and 1660 are otherwise accounted for: in the summer of 1659 Radisson and Groseilliers were on their way to Lake Superior, and in the corresponding season of 1660 they were on the way back to the St. Lawrence. Moreover, it is known that Groseilliers (and therefore Radisson also) was absent from his home on this expedition for no longer than eleven months. Even the vagueness and lack of detail in Radisson's account of the trip to Hudson Bay leads one to doubt its veracity, for the account of the 1654-56 expedition is characterized by similar vagueness. Grace Lee Nute offers a credible explanation for both Radisson's invention of a journey to Hudson Bay and his knowledge of the Bay itself. In 1669, when he was writing the narrative of his journeys for the recently-organized Hudson's Bay Company, Radisson wished to impress his employers with his knowlege of the Bay and the country between it and Lake Superior, for he and Groseilliers had been somewhat extravagant in their conversations with the company directors, apparently with the conviction that a little exaggeration of their knowledge would be justified if it helped to promote exploration and settlement in North America. As for Radisson's knowledge of the country he so vaguely describes, that is accountd for by the Jesuit relation of 1659-1660. There one of the Jesuits tells of meeting an Algonquin Indian who went from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay in the spring and summer of 1659 and returned to the St. Lawrence by way of rivers connecting with Lake St. John and the Saguenay. In the summer of 1660 the same Jesuit met Radisson and Groseilliers at Quebec soon after they had returned from the West. In the conversation among the three men, the Indian's account would almost certainly have路 been related by the Jesuit (See Nute, pp. 66-67).

down by the two explorers probably saved New France from economic ruin, the governor of Quebec took his revenge upon rhem for trading without an official licence. He had Groseilliers imprisoned, fined the two explorers, and seized a large parr of their profits.

After 1660 Radisson made no more journeys to the West.

During the remainder of his life his interest was to focus upon Hudson Bay. His expeditions had convinced him that the rich fur country west and norrh of the Great Lakes could best be served by establishments on the Hudson Bay. This conviction, and the belief that a passage could be found between Hudson Bay and the Western Sea (the Pacific Ocean), lay behind all of his latet activities.

Radisson and Groseilliers were naturally furious over the seizure of most of their profits. Groseilliers went to France in the winter of 1660-1661 to seek justice but returned without having gained any satisfaction. Gradually the two explorers, unable to advance rheir interests in trading and exploration in New France, developed a plan of dealing with either the British settlers of New England or the Dutch on the Hudson River. As it turned out, they went to New England and spent nearly three years there.

New England merchants fitted out a vessel for them, in which they sailed as far as the straits leading into Hudson Bay, having to turn back when the captain refused to go any farrher. Another voyage was planned in 1664, but the merchants delayed so long that it had to be given up. Then, in July, 1664, the King's commissioners arrived in Boston. Meeting Radisson and Groseilliers, they advised the two explorers to go to England and offer rheir services to King Charles.

After a voyage in which they were captured by the Dutch and put ashore in Spain, Radisson and Groseilliers reached -London late in 1665. The Grear Plague was raging in London, so they soon went to Oxford, where they were granted an audience witlP King Charles. In April, 1666, rhey were back in London.

A projected voyage to Hudson Bay was postponed twice. Then, l路ate 路in 1667, several prominent men, chief of whom was Prince Ruperr, invested capital in Radisson's venture. Charles II granted them a naval vessel, the Eaglet, and another ship, the Nonsuch, was sold to the group in 1667.

On June 3, 1668, Radisson and Groseilliers sailed for Hudson Bay. Groseilliers, on the Nonsuch, reached the Bay, but the Eaglet, Radisson's ship, was badly damaged by storms in the North Atlantic and had to return to England for refitting. During the winter of 1668-1669, Radisson wrote his Voyages, which were immediarely translated into English for the Hudson's Bay Company. Shortly after the completion of his journals, he set sail for Hudson Bay in the Wivenhoe, but for some unknown reason the ship got no farther than Hudson Straits. In October, 1669, Groseilliers returne~ i? the Nonsuch. wit~ a cargo of beaver pelt~.

Radisson and Groseilhers were reuOlted 10 London. The Hudsons Bay Company, highly pleased wirh Groseilliers' success, was preparing for another voyage and also trying to secure a charter.

The King issued the royal charter on May 2, 1670, thus establishing a corporation thar has survived for almost three centuries. A few weeks later Radisson and Groseilliers sailed for Hudson Bay with two ships, the Wivenhoe and the Prince Rupert.

Inside the Bay, Radisson's ship, the Wivenhoe, bore westward to take possession of the region around what is now Port Nelson and to found a factory there. The Prince Rupel-t, with Groseilliers on board, sailed into James Bay, where winter quarters were set up at Fort Charles, on the Rupert River. The men at Fort Charles were soon joined by their friends from the Wivenhoe, who had taken possession of the Port Nelson region but had had to sail south to James Bay when they were unable to get their ship inside rhe harbour. The winter of 1670-1671 passed without any serious hardship, and in October, 1671, the Witlenhoe and Prince Rupert were back in England.

Radisson and Groseilliers went again to the Bay in 1672, Groseilliers remaining there while Radisson returned to England.

In England Radisson married one of Sir John Kirke's daughters.

Late in 1673 the Hudson's Bay Company presented him with a gold medal and chain as a recognition of his outstanding services.

In 1674, however, he did not go to the Bay, apparently because he did not receive what he considered a fair salary from the Company. Then, in 1675, unable to suPPOrt his family on the pension he was receiving and being lured by the offer of a French

gtant for establishing a seal fishery in New France, Radisson crossed the Channel and again entered the service of France.

With him went Groseilliers.

The change in allegiance brought Radisson no imporrant commissions. After serving honourably in the French navy, he tried to get support for an expedition to Hudson Bay, but the complex intrigues going on among the various factions in France interested in exploration and the fur trade constantly frustrated his designs. Ar last, in 1681, he found a sponsor (La Chesnaye) and was joined by Groseilliers on a fur-trading voyage to Hudson Bay. Three rival parties arrived in Hudson Bay about the same time in 1682: Radisson and Groseilliers with two ships; Benjamin Gillam, with a New England ship; the Hudson's Bay Company ship with the governor on board. All set up winter quarters within a few miles of each other in the Port Nelson region. Leaving Groseilliers to build a fort on the north shore of the Hayes River, Radisson explored the Hayes River towards Lake Winnipeg, making trade agreements with the Indians on the way. Back on Hudson Bay, Radisson spent a busy winter (1682-1683) keeping his small, undermanned fort out of the hands of his two rivals, the contraband traders from New England and the Hudson's Bay Company men. Radisson played one against the other so ingeniously that by spring he had captured the New Englanders' fort and had taken both of his rivals prisoner. s When they returned to Quebec in October, 1683, Radisson and Groseilliers again were involved in disputes over the quartertax on furs. They went to France to plead rhe case before Colbert, apparently hopeful that he would settle it in their favour. Upon arriving in France, however, they found that Colbert had recently died and that Louis XIV was paying heed to the complaints of the Hudson's Bay Company against them. Unable to penetrate the maze of French politics, the explorers appealed for aid to the very persons who were glad to use their discomfort to further their own intrigues. The final disappointment came in 1684 when Radisson and his parrner, by an ordinance of Louis XIV, lost all of the profits they had been promised on the cargo of furs they had brought from Hudson Bay in 1683. At the same time Radisson received a message from a member of the Hudson's Bay Company urging him to return to England and his former service. Finding himself in a very awkward position in Paris, Radisson went to England again, this time permanently.

The Hudson's Bay Company was very pleased to see Radisson again, ptesenting him with gifts and stock in the Company. A few days after he landed in England he set sail for Hudson Bay in the Happy Return. His voyage was a great success, for he persuaded a French party there to submit to him and go over to the Hudson's Bay Company. The French also loaded thousands of furs on Radisson's vessels, so that when he reached England in the autumn he had made a huge profit for the Company. He sailed to the Bay again in 1685 as superintendent of the Company's trade. When he returned to England in 1687 he was given a pension of 拢100 a year. War with France, which broke out in 1689, curtailed the Company's trade in the Bay, and Radisson settled down in London.

By 1694 Radisson was suffering from poverty, for his pension had been withdrawn. In that year he began a suit against the Hudson's Bay Company for the renewal of the pension, a suit which dragged on until 1697, when it was decided in his favour.

For the rest of his life the Company carried out the court's decree.

Radisson spent his last years quietly and comfortably in London. He died some time between June 17 and July 2, 1710.

8. Radisson's cleverness and daring are nowhere better displayed rhan in this battle of wits. See Nute, pp. 190-196, for a full account.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 0/ Peter Esprit RadiJJon. Boston: The Prince Society, 1885.

Nute, Grace Lee. Caesars 0/ the WilderneJJ. New York: AppletonCentury Company, 1943.

Vestal, Stanley. King 0/ the Fur TraderJ. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940.

Fremont, Donatien. Pierre Radisson. Montreal: Editions Alben Levesque, 1933.

Hale, Katherine. "Pierte Esprit Radisson." The Ryerson Canadian History Readers. Toromo: The Ryerson Press, 1930.

Laut, A.C. Pathfinders 0/ the West. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1904.

1. Scull, Gideon D., ed. VoyageJ

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Every reasonable care has been taken to trace ownership of copyright material. The publishers, Imperial Oil Limited, would welcome information that might help to reerify any credit or reference.

PORTFOLIO I, NUMBER 7

FATHER HENNEPIN AT NIAGARA FALLS,

LA SALLE ON T HE TORONTO CARRYI NG-PLACE , 1681

LOUIS HENNEPIN (r64o-r7??)

THE DISCOVER Y OF

Father Louis Hennepin is a relatively minor figure in the history of Canadian exploration, but as the first white man to see Niagara Falls he deserves some attention. His other achievements as an explorer are slight, for most of his journeys were made in the company and under the command of the great explorer La Salle.

Like Champlain, Hennepin published accounts of his journeys. His accounts, however, are not to be trusted. Hennepin was a strange man, a self-satisfied boaster who repeatedly vaunted his own cleverness, importance, and courage while he was reluctant to give other men just praise. At his worst he was a liar who tried to gain for himself the credit for La Salle's explorations.

His extreme egotism reveals itself in page after page of his writings: "Throughout all of his books runs the assumption that he, Father Hennepin, was the person who originated and planned the explorations which he records, but which posterity perversel)' associates chiefly with the name of La Salle; although sometimes he magnanimously allows the latter ... equal honors with himself" (Thwaites, xvii).

Hennepin was born in Belgium, then a possession of Spain. about the year 1640. When still a boy he entered the Recollet convent at Bethune as a novice. From the first he seems to have been discontented with a cloistered life and on the "'atch for any commission that would enable him to see the world. After a journey ro Italy and Germany and a year in Hainaut, Hennepin was sent as a mendicant friar to Calais. Later, in 1673, he was at Maestricht, where he served as a chaplain during the war between the Prince of Orange and the French. Then, in 1674, his desire to travel was about to be fulfilled when he was ordered to go to Rochelle and there seek passage on a ship bound for Quebec.

In the summer of 1675 Hennepin sailed for New France with Laval-Montmorency, bishop of Quebec, and La Salle, governor of Fort Frontenac. At Quebec Hennepin received the post of preacher in Advent and Lent to the cloister of Sr. Augustine, but his charge did not prevent him from spending most of the year in roaming the country around Quebec, acting as a missionary to the French fur traders of the Sr. Lawrence. In 1676 he was sent to Fort Frontenac! (Kingston) where, he says, he read many accounts of voyages and made plans for the exploration of the Mississippi valley. After over t\vo years setting up a mission and visiting the surrounding country, Hennepin returned to Quebec to join La Salle's expedition into the interior. 2 La Salle arrived at Quebec in September, 1678, and prepared for his journey, sending Hennepin in advance to Fort Frontenac. Carrying only a "portable chapel, one blanket, and a mat of rushes ... for bed and quilt," Hennepin arrived at Fort Frontenac on November 2. On November 18, he set out in a small vessel commanded by the Sieur de la Morte, one of La Salle's associates. La Motte sailed to the Niagara River. Hennepin and some others went up the river in a canoe and then passed the Falls on foot, trudging through snow a foot deep as they looked for a good building site. It was on this trip that Hennepin saw and made a sketch of Niagara Falls,3 "a vast and prodigious cadence of water which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel." Here is his further description: This wonderful downfall is compounded of two great cross-screams of water, and two falls, with an isle sloping along

IAGARA FAllS

the middle of ir. The waters which fall from this vast height, do foam and boil after the most hideous manner imaginable, making an outrageous noise, more tetrible than that of thunder; for when the wind blows from off the south, their dismal roaring may be heard above fifteen leagues off (Thwaites, I, 54-55).

The party returned to the ship and warped her up the river until they reached swift water, where they put her ashore and built a palisaded habitation. On January 20, 1679, La Salle arrived from Fort Frontenac, and two days later a site above the Falls, at the mouth of Cayuga Creek, was chosen for the building of a ship, the Griffon. In February La Salle made an overland trip back to Fort Frontenac to get more equipment, for the loss of a supply ship in Lake Ontario had deprived him of essential rigging and provisions. He left Henri de Tonty in charge of the ship-building, and the Griffon was soon launched. Later in the spring Hennepin returned to Fort Frontenac in a fur-trading vessel to bring several more Recollets to Niagara. By July he was back at Niagara, and on August 4, La Salle, Hennepin, and the three new Recollets reached the Griffon.

The expedition of the Griffon, the first ship to sail the upper lakes, belongs to the story of La Salle. Hennepin stayed on board the Griffon until she reached Washington Island, off Green Bay in Lake Michigan, where La Salle loaded a cargo of furs.

When the ship sailed for Niagara, Hennepin accompanied La Salle southward on Lake Michigan to the mouth of the Sr. Joseph River and then up the river, past what is now Utica and on to Peoria Lake, where La Salle erected Fort Crevecoeur. At the end of February, 1680, La Salle sent Hennepin with two companions, Michel Accau and Antoine Angel, to go down to the mouth of the Illinois River and out upon the Mississippi.

Hennepin safely reached the mouth of the Illinois River and then ascended the Mississippi to its upper waters. On April 12 he and his two companions were taken prisoner by the Sioux near Lake Pepin, five hundred miles above the mouth of the Illinois.

As Hennepin and the two other men were working on the river bank, over a hundred Indians appeared on the river. Quickly surrounding the white men, the Sioux carried them off to Sioux territory in the Mille Lacs region and took them on several hunting expeditions through what are now the scates of Minnesota and Wisconsin. At the end of July the Sieur du Luth, leader of a French expedition into the Sioux country, met the Indians and their captives near the site of modern Minneapolis. Du Luth, who was highly respected by the Sioux, soon gained the release of the three captives and escorted them down the Mississippi, up the Wisconsin River, and down the Fox River to Mackinac on Lake Huron, where stood a Jesuit mission.

1.

Forr Frontenac was built by Frontenac in 1663. Atthetime ofHennepin's sojourn in Canada, it was commanded by La Salle. was custOmary for a missionary to accompany exploring parties. As Thwaites says, "terrirorial expansion meant new fields not only for the beaver trade but for the possible conversion of the heathen." Hennepin was chosen by La Salle to accompany the expedition as a missionary, as Marquette had accompanied Joliet. As usual Hennepin tells the stOry as if he, rather than La Salle, were leader of the expedi tion.

2. It

3.

Hennepin was probably the first white man to see the Falls. He was cerrainly the first to publish a full and accutate description of rhem.

Carrier and Champlain had merely heard of the Falls from the Indians, but they had no conception of their size. Brul" must have gone within a few miles of the Falls, but it is almost certain that he never saw them.

Hennepin passed the winter pleasantly at the Mackinac mission, fishing through the ice and skating with one of the Jesuit fathers. In Easter week, 1681, he left the mission with Accau and Angel, went back through the lakes to Niagara, and finally reached Fort Frontenac, where, he teIls us, he was joyously welcomed. At Montreal he was received by Frontenac. Hennepin sailed for Europe from Quebec in the autumn of 168l.

The rest of his life has no direct connection with the history of Canada. In Europe Hennepin published several accounts of his voyages, accounts that are remarkable for his attempts to disparage La Salle and get the credit for the latter's discoveries.

The last record we have of Hennepin is in a letter written from Rome in March, 1701, according to Thwaites:

The wrirer, one Dubas, mentions that the friar, now in his sixty-first or sixty-second year, was then in a convent in the city, hoping soon to return to America, under the protection of Cardinal Spada. Certain it is that our author never went upon this mission; bur what adventures befell him in his later years, or when or where he died, we know not. (Thwaites, Vol. I, p. xii).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Dionne, N. E. Hennepin, ses Voyages et ses Oeuvres. Quebec: Raoul Renault,

1897.

2. Hennepin, Louis. A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America. Ed. R. G. Thwaites. 2 vols. Chicago: A. C McClutg & Co., 1903.

SIEUR DE LA SALLE (1643-1687) EXPLORER OF THE MISSISSIPPI

Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle!, was born in Rouen in November, 1643. He received a good education at the CoIlege of Jesuits in Rouen and entered the Society of Jesus as a novice.

He soon left the Society, however, and it was as an adventurer and colonist, not as a missionary, that he went to New France in the spring of 1666. In Montreal (then caIled ViIlemarie), La SaIle, with the help of his elder brother, a priest of St. SuI pice, gained a grant of a large tract of land on the St. Lawrence above the Sault St. Louis. During his first two years in Canada, La Salle cleared land, laid out a viUage, and attracted several settlers who formed a settlement called St. Sulpice (later Lachine).

Like most of the earlier explorers, La SaIle wished to find a passage through North America to China. Several conversations with Indians from the west made La Salle interested in the Ohio River and adjacent territories, so that in 1669 he sold most of his land, got letters of patent from Governor de Courcelles, and prepared for an expedition into the interior.

La Salle was accompanied on this first expedition by two Sulpicians, Dollier and Galinee. The party left La SaIle's seigniory on July 6, 1669, and proceeded along the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Just west of this lake the two Sulpicians left the main party and struck out for Lake Superior. La SaIle searched for a river leading south from Lake Ontario to the Ohio River. In spite of the desertion of some of his men, La SaIle went south from Lake Ontario and discovered the Ohio. There is no journal of this trip to teIl us how far he went. Some historians believe he traveIled as far as the faIls near LouisviIle, Kentucky; others think he reached the junction of the Wabash. AIl agree, however, that he did not reach the Mississippi on this expedition. On August 6, 1671, La SaIle arrived back in Montreal, where he was given a cool welcome 2 â&#x20AC;˘ In his absence his seigniory of St. Sulpice had been given the derisive name "La Chine" - sufficient indication of what most of his countrymen in Canada thought of La SaIle's ambition to find a waterway to China.

La Salle went on a second expedition in 1672. There is strong evidence that he reached the Mississippi River on this trip, about a year before Joliet and Marquette went down the upper part of the great river and laid claim to its discovery3. La SaUe's

VALLEY

route was by way of Lake Ontario, the Ohio River, Lake Erie, Lake St. Clair, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and the Checagou and Illinois rivers. His southern terminus on the Mississippi was probably not far from what is now the northern border of the state of Arkansas. By December 18, 1672, La SaUe had returned to Montreal.

After the trip of 1672, La SaIle seems to have given up his dream of a waterway to China and to have replaced it with an ambition to open up an inland route connecting Canada with the Gulf of Mexico. For several years, however, he was unable to set out on a major expedition. In 1673 he served Frontenac in communications with the Indians and commanded Fort Frontenac.

In 1675 La SaUe was in France, where he was made a nobleman

by King Louis XIV and given the governorship of Fort Frontenac.

He also obtained his main object - a monopoly of trade in the Illinois valley. In 1676, back in Canada, La SaUe rebuilt Fort Frontenac and made it a major settlement by attracting settlers and a RecoIlet mission. In 1677 La Salle again went to France. He asked for royal permission to establish himself in the Illinois vaIley and to build one forr at the entrance to Lake Erie and another at the outlet of Lake Michigan. In return for these concessions, he promised to go down to the mouth of the Mississippi and there discover a harbour for French ships. After much difficulty caused by Father Ragueneau, a Jesuit who was trying to

1. La Salle was one of the gteatest explorers of North America. It is only

because most of his explorations were made in what is now the United States rather than in Canada that he is tteated more btiefly in this seties than some other important men.

2. La Salle was probably the most unlucky and most harassed of all the great explotets. Almost all the powerful organizations of New France opposed him - the Jesuits, the various fur-trading companies, some government officials, and even the Sulpicians, of which his brother was a member. The machinations of his numerous enemies cannot

be desctibed here, bur La Salle's career is not fully intelligible without an understanding of them. See Chesnel and Parkman for descriptions of the plots against La Salle.

3. See Chesnel, Chapter III, for the evidence that points to La Salle as the ptedecessor of Joliet and Matquette on the Mississippi. It is probable, howevet, that Radisson, not La Salle, was rhe fitsr white man to see the Mississippi. For evidence, see Laut, A. C, Pathfinders of the West.

block his attempts, La Salle received the desired grant and returned to Canada in September, 1678, with Henri de Tonty, La Motte de Lussiere, and thirty men.

The expedition of 1679-1680 was typical of both La Salle's courage and his ill fortune. He and his lieutenants (Tonty and La Motte) set up habitations on the Niagara River and selected a place where Cayuga Creek joins the Niagara for the building ot a ship to sail the Great Lakes. This ship, the Griffon, was launched in May, when La Salle returned from a hurried visit to Fort Frontenac and piloted her into Lake Erie. The Griffon, first ship on the upper lakes, sailed to Green Bay, Lake Michigan, where La Salle loaded a cargo of pelts and then sent her back to Niagara 4.

La Salle then went to the mouth of the Sr. Joseph River, erected a fort there, and taking Hennepin with him, went up the St. Joseph, along the Illinois River, and built Fort Crevecoeur near what is now the town of Peoria. Needing more materials to build a small ship, La Salle left Tonty at Crevecoeur and returned to Niagara, sending Hennepin on to the Mississippi. After an extremely arduous journey, La Salle reached Niagara only to learn that his supply ship from France had been sunk in the Sr. Lawrence and that his creditors had seized his property at Fort Frontenac. He hurried to Fort Frontenac and there learned that the workmen at Fort Crevecoeur had deserted and carried off most of the supplies. When he also heard that these desertets had destroyed the little fott on the St. Joseph and were coming eastward to assassinate him, he set an ambush for them at Fort Frontenac. When they appeared they walked into the trap and wete clapped into prison, In August, 1680, La Salle set out on his fourth expedition.

This time he took the short route over the Toronto carryingplace and across Lake Simcoe to Georgian Bay. Proceeding through the lakes to the foot of Lake Michigan, he reached the main village of his allies, the Illinois Indians, only to find it destroyed. An Iroquois invasion of the Illinois territory had swept the length of the Illinois River. Reaching the Mississippi and finding no trace of Tonty, La Salle returned, spent part of the winter in an abandoned Illinois village, and then went back to the fort on the St. Joseph River. There he learned that Tonty was alive. After labouring to fotm an alliance of Indian tribes against the Iroquois, La Salle went back to Fort Frontenac.

The expedition of 1681-82 was the most successful of all, for in 1682 La Salle descended the Mississippi to its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico. He followed the route of his fourth voyage up Lake Ontario, over the Toronto carrying-place (see Jefferys' drawing) to Lake Simcoe, and on through the lakes to Fort St. Joseph at the foot of Lake Michigan. During the winter of 1681-82, La Salle went down the Illinois, using his canoes as sleds on the river ice. Going down the Mississippi, he visited several friendly Indian tribes. On March 12, 1682, he formally took

possession of "the country of Louisiana" for France. On April 6, he came in sight of the Gulf of Mexico, and there he again took possession of the whole Mississippi valley in the name of the French kingS. On the return journey up the Mississippi, La Salle became seriously ill, but he recovered and continued on, building a new fort (St. Louis) on the Illinois and spending the winter of 1682-83 there.

The last years of La Salle's life were full of tragedy. In 1684, after he had collected a fleet in France, he set out to establish

a colony in Louisiana and to take northern Mexico from the Spaniards. The story of this disastrous expedition belongs entirely to American history. We need only record that after over two years of struggling against treachery and misfortune in Louisiana, La Salle was murdered by one of his own men on March 19, 1687.

1. J. Cox, in the introduction to his edition of La Salle's journeys (pp. xx-xxi) thus sums up the character and achievement of La Salle: His enemies were numerous and vindictive, but he neither took the pains to conciliate them, not appatently had he the tact to do so, had he tried. He was coldly ambitious, reserved to hauteur, over-confident in his own judgment, with great natural ability and equal determination, imaginative to a fault, and consequently often more visionary than practical. Had he been allowed to carry our his plans unopposed, it is hardly too much to say that more than one seven years' war would have been necessary to shake the hold of France upon the interior; but when those plans ran counter to the schemes of]esuit missionaries and irresponsible fur traders, human nature, to mention nothing higher, could not be restrained from persistent opposition. Yet the essential failure of his colonizing and monopoly projects should not obscure his real services as the greatest French explorer of the Mississippi Valley.

4.

The Griffon was lost on Lake Huron and never reached Niagara. It appears that Indians kiIled the crew, stole the cargo, and sank the ship. See Chesnel, p. 124.

5.

France held possession of Louisiana until 1762, when by a secret treaty it was transferred to Spain. In 1800 the colony was given back to France.

Then, in 1803, Napoleon I sold it to the United States for fifteen miIlion doIlars.

1.

Chesnel, Paul. History of Cave/ier de /a Sal/e. Trans. A. York: G. P. Pumam's Sons, 1932.

2.

Cox, Isaac Joslin, ed. The journeys of Rene Robert Cave/ier, Sieur de /a Salle. 2 vols. New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1905.

BIBLIOGRAPHY C.

Meany. New

3. Gaither, Frances. The Fata/ River: The Life and Death of La Sal/e. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1931.

4, Lockridge, Ross F. La Sal/e. New York: World Book Company, 1931.

5.

Parkman, Francis. The Discovery of the Great West. Part III of France and Eng/and in North America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1869.

Evety reasonable care has been taken to trace ownetship of copyright material. The publishers, Imperial Oil Limited, would welcome information that might help to rectify any credit or reference.

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LA VERENDRYE AND HIS SONS THE SEARCH FOR THE WESTERN SEA

Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Verendrye, and his sons were the last important explorers during the French regime in Canada. Like many of their predecessors, they pushed westward in spite of lack of support from the king or his officials in Quebec, and in spite of the selfishness and greed of the merchants, who equipped their expeditions only to take all of the large profits of the fur trade made possible by energetic exploration.

La Verendrye was born on November 17, 1685, in the settlement of Three Rivers, where his father was governor. 1 He entered the army as a cadet in 1697. In 1704 he took part in a raid upon Deerfield, a settlement in the British colony of Massachusetts, and in 1705 he fought under Subercase when a French force raided St. John's, Newfoundland. In 1707 La Verendrye went to Europe and served with a regiment in Flanders against the English under the Duke of Marlborough. At the battle of Malplaquet (1710) he was wounded several times. Upon his recovery he was promoted to lieutenant, and in 1711 returned to Canada. For several years La Verendrye served in the colonial forces. In 1712 he married and settled on the island of Dupas, near Three Rivers. There his four sons were born - Jean-Baptiste, Pierre, Franc;ois, and Louis-Joseph.

In 1726 La Verendrye received the command of a trading post on Lake Nipigon, north of Lake Superior. At this lonely post his desire to find the great sea which lay somewhere to the west was quickened by the rumours he heard from the Indians. 2 An Indian named Ochagach told La Verendrye that he had reached tidal water by going far westward to a great lake and then down a river. Fear of the coastal tribes, he said, had prevented him from going on to the mouth of the river, but he had been told that the river fell into a great sea and that a powerful nation lived in fortified towns on the coast. Although La Verendrye was fully aware that the Indians habitually exaggetated and coloured their accounts of distant regions, he was convinced that all such tales had a basis of truth and that the Western Sea lay somewhete to the west. Henceforth the controlling ambition of La Verendrye's life was the discovery of this sea.

In 1730 La Verendrye left Lake Nipigon and went to Quebec, where he hoped to get men and equipment for an expedition to the far West. At Quebec the governor-general, the Marquis de Beauharnois, received him with kindness and became genuinely interested in his plans. Then came the disappointment so common in the lives of the early explorers. Beauharnois wrote to King Louis requesting men and supplies for La Verendrye, but the king flatly refused to grant any money for exploration. All that he offered was a monopoly of the western fur trade, by means of which La Verendrye would have to pay the costs of exploration with the profits he could derive from trading. La Verendrye was disappointed, for even if he could establish a profitable fur trade west of Lake Superior, the demands of business would curtail his explorations. Moreover, he was faced with the ptoblem of getting money for the initial costs of hiring men and buying supplies.

Putting all of his own small fortune into the enterptise, he went to Montreal and for support applied to various metchants there.

The merchants, though uninterested in his plans for exploration, agreed to supply him with wages for his men, goods for trading, and all necessary equipment if he would grant them all of the profits of the fur trade. La Verendrye agteed to this arrangement and prepared for the voyage.

In the summer of 1731 the fleet of canoes left Montreal.

With La Verendrye went three of his sons, Jean-Baptiste, Pierre, and Franc;ois, and his nephew La Jemeraye. Their route was up the Ottawa River, across Lake Nipissing, down the French River, and from Lake Huron to Lake Superior. They stopped at Fort Michilimackinac, the trading post at the mouth of Lake Michigan, and then went on to the mouth of the Pigeon River, southwest of the present city of Fort William. At this portage La Verendrye's crews, influenced by wild tales of horrors that awaited them and apprehensive of the hard portages ahead, mutinied and refused to go any farther. At last a compromise was reached. La Verendrye agreed to spend the winter with half the men at Kaministikwia (now Fort William) on Lake Superior while La Jemeraye went ahead and built a fort on Rainy Lake.

In the spring of 1732, La Jemeraye rejoined La Verendrye on Lake Superior, bringing furs from the post he had built on Rainy Lake. This post, called Fort St. Pierre, was erected on the southern side of Rainy Lake, at the mouth of the Rainy River.

La Verendrye lost no time in leaving for the new fort. A month later he was on Rainy Lake, and after resting at the fort, he went on to the Lake of the Woods. There he built Fort St. Charles on the southwest side of the lake.

In 1733, when these two posts had been built, La Verendrye found himself in a difficult position. He was unable to pay his men. His supplies of everything, but especially food, were low, yet the Montreal metchants refused to send him any more.

Therefore in 1734, after he had sent one of his men to build Fort Maurepas at the mouth of the Winnipeg River, La Verendrye made the long journey back to Montreal and saw his partners.

Bearing their unjust reproaches, he convinced them that his string of trading posts would soon pour profits into their hands. They agreed to equip the expedition again, and after spending the winter of 1734-35 as the guest of Beauharnois, La Vetendrye, taking with him his youngest son, Louis-Joseph, set out for the West and arrived at Fort St. Charles in September.

In June, 1736, La Verendrye's eldest son, Jean, came from Fort Maurepas with the bad news that La Jemeraye had died.

A second blow soon followed. Because the men at Fort St. Charles were badly in need of food, in June, 1736, La Verendrye sent three canoes under the command of his son Jean down to Kaministikwia for supplies. With Jean went the Jesuit missionary, Father Aulneau.

On an island in Lake of the Woods the French were attacked by a party of one hundred Sioux warriors. 3 Taken completely by

1. Local governors held office at Montreal and Three Rivers. The governor-

general, who ruled the whole colony of New France, lived at Quebec.

2. French explorers had been seeking this Mer de I'Ouest from rhe time of Cartier. At first it was thought to be somewhere not far west of Montreal. Then explorers gradually worked their way westward and discovered that the Great Lakes, including Lake Superior, were not even parts of the great western sea. Radisson had gone several hundred miles west of Lake Superior without reaching the sea, but La Verendrye, apparently ignorant of Radisson's most westerly excursions, knew only that the sea must be somewhere beyond Lake Superior.

3. This apparently unprovoked attack was later explained. Earlier in 1736 a party of Sioux on the way to Fort St. Charles had been fired upon by Chippewas in ambush. When the surprised Sioux had shouted "Who fire on us)" the Chippewas had replied, "The French". The Sioux, believing what they had heard, made a vow to avenge themselves upon the French at the first opportunity.

surprise, Jean and his men offered only a feeble defence. All were massacred, even the Jesuit, Father Aulneau.

La Verendrye did not undertake his proposed expedition in 1737. Saddened by the deaths of his eldest son and his nephew, and having to use all his skill to prevent the Chippewas and Crees from making war upon the Sioux for their act of treachery against the French, he remained at Fort Sr. Charles for part of the year, doing his utmost to prevent his fiery allies from beginning what he feared would develop into a genetal war among the neighbouring Indian tribes. In the summer of 1738, however, he prepated to set out for the country of the Mandans, an Indian tribe about which he had heard many marvellous tales. La Verendrye was especially interested in two details from the many accounts of the Mandans related to him by the Indians - that they were white like the French and that they lived on a river that flowed into the sea. He thought that the mysterious Mandans might be Spaniards who had moved north from the Spanish territoties far to the south, and he believed that, whoever they were, they would be able to show him the way to the ocean.

Taking Franc;ois and Louis with him,4 he went down the Winnipeg River to Fort Maurepas, then crossed Lake Winnipeg and went up the Red River to the mouth of the Assiniboine, the site of the present city of Winnipeg. After meeting a band of Crees at this place, La Verendrye went up the Assiniboine as far as the site of the town of Portage la Prairie, where he built Fort La Reine. In the meantime one of his men, Louviere, went back to the mouth of the Assiniboine and built Fort Rouge on the south bank of the Assiniboine where it enters the Red River.

When La Verendrye had completed Fort La Reine, he chose twenty men to accompany him and set out for the country of the Mandans. He soon met a band of Assiniboines from a neighbouring village. These Indians, who had heard of the white men from some of their tribesmen La Verendrye had met at Fort La Reine, invited the Frenchmen to their village.

At the Assiniboine village, La Verendrye and his men were greeted joyfully. La Verendrye, keeping in mind the fur trade that supported his explorations, gave presents to the chiefs and asked them to bring their furs to Fort La Reine. The Assiniboines promised to do so and then, to La Verendrye's surprise, asserted that the whole village would accompany the French on their journey to the Mandans, to whom word had been sent of their coming. Two days after La Verendrye had reached the village, the whole party set out tOgether, with the six hundred Indians marching in orderly array over the prairie.

Near the end of November, La Verendrye reached the place appointed for the meeting with the Mandans. A Mandan chief appeared with a small band of men and presented La Verendrye with tokens of friendship. To La Verendrye's surprise, these Mandans looked much like the Assiniboines; they were certainly not white men, as the Crees had told him. The Mandans invited La Verendrye and his men to the nearest Mandan village, but they were annoyed at the presence of so many Assiniboines.

As a means of getting rid of the Assiniboines without appearing inhospitable, the Mandan chief invented a stOry about the Sioux being on the warpath in the vicinity, hoping that the Assiniboines, who were afraid of the savage Sioux, would leave for their homes in haste. He explained to La Verendrye that the Mandan village could hardly feed such a large number of guests. The Assiniboines, however, suppressed their fears when their chiefs shamed them for their cowardice, and they decided to go forward with the French and Mandans.

When the party reached the Mandan village, 5 La Verendrye was surprised to find it an elaborate, strongly-built fort, unlike any other Indian settlement he had seen. The Mandans treated La Verendrye with the utmost respect. However, his attempts to get information from them were not very successful. When the Assiniboines left the village a few days after their arrival, La

Verendrye's Cree interpreter, unknown to La Verendrye, went with them. With difficulty La Verendrye understood the Mandans to say that their own nation lived in several large villages along the Missouri, that hostile tribes lived farther south, and that far down the Missouri where it became very wide (the Mississippi) lived a race of white men (the Spaniards). In the hope of getting more information, he sent one of his sons (the Chevalier) to another Mandan village, but the language barrier again made intelligible communication about routes to the westward impossible. "Seeing that it was useless for us to try to question them," says La Verendrye, "we had to fall back on feasting the whole time we stayed at their fort; even so, we could not go to all the feasts to which we were invited." (Burpee, pp. 345-346).

In December (1738) La Verendrye prepared to return to Fort La Reine. A sudden illness postponed the departure for a few days, but in the middle of the month he left two of his men with the Mandans to learn the language and set out over the prairie with the rest of his men. After a very difficult march in bitterly cold weather, he reached Fort La Reine on the Assiniboine. 6 In the autumn of 1739 the two Frenchmen returned from the Mandan village, bringing tidings of a nation of Indians who lived far to the west of the Mandans. Some of these Indians had visited the Mandan villages during the summer, riding horses and bringing other horses to carry their supplies. The two Frenchmen had found one of these Horse Indians who could speak Mandan. This Indian had told them that there were strangers in his country who resembled white men. The country of the strangers, he said, was on the shores of a great salt lake. La Verendrye heard this account of white men and the Western Sea with joy, for at last he appeared to have found in the Horse Indians a definite means of reaching the ocean.

La Verendrye himself was unable to make another journey westward, but in 1740 he sent Pierre to the Mandans. Pierre returned to Fort La Reine in the summer of 1741, having failed to meet any of the Horse Indians. In the spring of 1742, however, Franc;ois and Louis set out with two men for the Mandan country.

They reached a Mandan village and awaited the arrival of the Horse Indians. Three months passed. Then, tired of waiting, they found twO Mandan guides who promised to lead them to the Horse Indians and set out towards the southwest. For twenty days they travelled on horseback in a southwest direction and along the valley of the Little Missouri River toward the Black Hills of what is now South Dakota. Then they turned westward toward the Powder River. country and, on August 11, camped on the Powder Hills and waited for the Horse Indians to return to their homes from a hunting expedition. 7 A fortnight later the first of their Mandan guides left them. About the middle of September

4. In his journals and letters, La Verendrye very seldom calls his sons by their names. Consequently, it is often difficult and sometimes even impossible to know which son is referred to in the text. To make matters worse we cannot be sure which of his three surviving sons (Jean.Baptiste: the eldest, was killed in 1736) he calls "the Chevalier."

Burpee's conclusion is that "the question is still unsettled, but the balance of proof points to Louis-Joseph" (Journals, p. 13). In thiS essay the Chevalier is identified with Louis-Joseph, but no claim IS made for the correctness of the identification.

5. The Mandans lived around the Upper Missouri River in what is now North Dakota.

6. During the next year (1739) Fran~ois established several trading posts: Forr Dauphin (on Lake Manitoba), Fort Bourbon (on Cedar Lake, near the mouth of the Saskatchewan River), and Fort Paskoyac (on the Saskatchewan, at a place now known as The Pas).

7. The route taken and the farthest point reached by the La Verendrye brothers on this journey have been the subject of much speculation.

The account given here is probably the most Widely accepted. The journal of the Chevalier, our only source of informatIOn, IS not at all precise in the recording of directions and distances. See Burpee, pp. 17-28, for a summa"ry of the vanous theones advanced by lustorians.

a band of the Good-looking Indians or Crows appeared. The second of their two Mandan guides, afraid of these enemies of his nation, left the La Verendryes and went back to the Missouri. The Crows guided the French to a band of the Little Foxes, who in turn guided them on to an encampment of the Horse Indians. .

When Franl;ois and Louis reached the Horse Indians, they found the tribe recovering from an attack by the Snake Indians in which many of their warriors had been killed. They could tell the French nothing about a route to the sea because, they said, the country of the" fierce Snake Indians lay between their lands and the sea. They guided the explorers, however, to a camp of the Bow Indians, the only tribe that could make war against the Snakes. On November 21 the two brothers reached this camp and were welcomed by the Bow chief, who told them that his warriors were about to march against the Snakes and that their route would take them to the mountains near the sea. The French, not knowing that the Rocky Mountains were hundreds of miles from the ocean, thought that they were close to their goal. When the large war party of the Bows set out in December, the two brothers accompanied it. On January 1, 1743, they came in sight of the mountains. 8 For eight days they advanced toward the foothills, hoping to surprise the Snakes in their winter camp. Franl;ois then stopped to guard the baggage in the base camp while Louis went ahead with the war party to the foot of the mountains. When the Bows found that the Snakes had abandoned their winter camp. evidently because they feared to fight the Bows, the latter turned and hurried back to the base camp, thinking that the Snakes had tricked them into leaving their women and children unprotecred.

The chief's efforts to reason with them were in vain. Louis was therefore forced to turn back with the Bows without having ascended the mountains.

On the return journey to the base camp, the four Frenchmen became separated from the Bows and were ambushed by a small party of Snakes. A few shots from the Frenchmen's muskets made the Snakes flee, but the explorers wandered about for twO days and with great difficulty found the Bow camp. The Frenchmen accompanied the Bows for a few days on the homeward journey. Then, wishing to turn more directly toward the Missouri River, they went their own way, travelling in a fairly straight line eastward. In March they encountered a strange tribe of Indians, the People of the Little Cherry, and remained with them for two weeks. Before he left these Indians, Louis buried on a hill near the Missouri a tablet of lead bearing an inscription claiming the country for France. 9 On May 18 the explorers were back at the

Mandan villages, from which they returned to Fort La Reine with" a band of Assiniboines. They reached the fort on July 2 and were welcomed by their anxious father.

The story of La Verendrye and his sons after 1743 is anticlimacteric. The elder La Verendrye' s enemies, jealous of his monopoly, became more active in their misrepresentation of his motives until father and sons were summoned to Montreal. De Noyelles .was given La Verendrye's monopoly. In 1749, however, the acting governor of New France, the Marquis de la Galissoniere, restored the western monopoly to La Verendrye and decorated him with the Cross of St. Louis. Unfortunately, this recognition came too late. In the midst of preparations for a new expedition, La Verendrye became ill and died on December 5, 1749.

His sons tried to carry out his plans, but they soon discovered that the favour given to their father in 1749 did not extend to them. The new governor, La Jonquiere, appointed instead Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, a man ignorant of the West and of Indian customs. The brothers protested the injustice of their rejection and based their claims upon their experience in the West, bur their pleas fell upon deaf ears. Without money or influence, they fell into obscurity. Saint-Pierre failed to accomplish anything, and the task of making an overland journey to the Pacific Ocean was left for the British to attempt and eventually to accomplish.

8. These mountains were probably rhe Big Horn Mountains in northern Wyoming, an easrerly parr of the Rocky Mountains.

9. This rablet was found in March, 1913, by a young gitl. The location was on rhe west bank of the Missouri River opposite Pierre, South Da.-ora.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Burpee, Lawrence]., ed.Journals and Letters ofLa Verendrye and his Sons.

Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1927.

2. Rumil1y, Roben. La V,relldr)'e, Decouvreur Canadien. Montreal: Editions Albert Levesque, 1933.

3. Constantin-Weyer, Maurice. La V'rendr)'e. Toulouse: Didier, 1941.

4. Laut, A. C. Pathfilldm ofthe West. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1904.

5. Burpee, Lawrence]. Pathfilldm of the Great Plaills. Vol. 19 of Chronicles of Canada. Toronto: Glasgow, Brook and Company, 1921.

6. Reeve, G. ]. "La Verendrye". The Ryerson Canadian History Readers.

Toronro: The Ryerson Press, 1928.

Every reasonable care has been raken to trace ownership of copyright marerial. The publishers, Imperial Oil Limited, would welcome information that might help to rectify any credit or reference.