Canada by Sir John George Bourinot (10 best novels of all time TXT) 📕

and generous appreciation on account of the devotion of his wife and of the obstinate fight he waged under tremendous disadvantages against a wealthy rival, supported by the authority of France. He was made of the same material as those brave men of the west coast of England who fought and robbed the Spaniard in the Spanish Main, but as he plundered only Puritans by giving them worthier {109} mortgages, and fought only in the Acadian wilds, history has given him a relatively small space in its pages.

Acadia remained in possession of England until the Treaty of Breda, which was concluded in July of 1667, between Charles II. and Louis XIV. Temple, who had invested his fortune in the country, was nearly ruined, and never received any compensation for his efforts to develop Acadia. In a later chapter, when we continue the chequered history of Acadia, we shall see that her fortunes from this time become more closely connected with those of the greater and more favoured colony of France in the valley of the St. Lawrence.



[1] See _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, vol. x., sec. 2, p. 93.

[2] This story of the capture of Fort La Tour rests on the authority of Denys (Description Geographique et Historique de l'Amerique Septentrionale, Paris, 1672), who was in Acadia at the time and must have had an account from eyewitnesses of the tragedy. The details which make D'Aunay so cruel and relentless are denied by a Mr. Moreau in his _Histoire de l'Acadie Francaise_ (Paris, 1873). This book is confessedly written at the dictation of living members of the D'Aunay family, and is, from the beginning to the end, an undiscriminating eulogy of D'Aunay and an uncompromising attack on the memory of La Tour and his wife. He attempts to deny that the fort was seized by treachery, when on another page he has gone so far as to accuse some Recollets of having made, at the instigation of D'Aunay himself, an attempt to win the garrison from Madame La Tour who was a Protestant and disliked by the priests. He also admits that a number of the defenders of the fort were executed, while others, probably the traitors, had their lives spared. The attacks on Madame La Tour's character are not warranted by impartial history, and clearly show the bias of the book.



VIII.


THE CANADIAN INDIANS AND THE IROQUOIS: THEIR ORGANISATION, CHARACTER, AND CUSTOMS.

At the time of Champlain's death we see gathering in America the forces that were to influence the fortunes of French Canada--the English colonies growing up by the side of the Atlantic and the Iroquois, those dangerous foes, already irritated by the founder of Quebec. These Indians were able to buy firearms and ammunition from the Dutch traders at Fort Orange, now Albany, on the beautiful river which had been discovered by Hudson in 1609. From their warlike qualities and their strong natural position between the Hudson and Niagara rivers, they had now become most important factors in the early development of the French and English colonies, and it is consequently important to give some particulars of their character and organisation. In the first place, however, I shall refer to those Indian tribes who lived in Canada, and were closely identified with the interests of the French settlements. These Indians also became possessed of {112} firearms, sold to them from time to time by greedy traders, despite the interdict of the French authorities in the early days of the colonies.

Champlain found no traces of the Indians of Cartier's time at Stadacona and Hochelaga. The tribes which had frequented the St. Lawrence seventy years before had vanished, and in their place he saw bands of wandering Algonquins. It was only when he reached the shores of Georgian Bay that he came to Indian villages resembling that Hochelaga which had disappeared so mysteriously. The St. Lawrence in Cartier's day had been frequented by tribes speaking one or more of the dialects of the Huron-Iroquois family, one of the seven great families that then inhabited North America east of the Mississippi, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Hudson's Bay. The short and imperfect vocabulary of Indian words which Cartier left behind, his account of Hochelaga, the intimacy of the two Gaspe Indians with the inhabitants of Stadacona--these and other facts go to show that the barbarous tribes he met were of the Iroquois stock.

The Indians have never had any written records, in the European sense, to perpetuate the doings of their nations or tribes. From generation to generation, from century to century, however, tradition has told of the deeds of ancestors, and given us vague stories of the origin and history of the tribes. It is only in this folk-lore--proved often on patient investigation to be of historic value--that we can find some threads to guide us through the labyrinth of mystery to which we come in the prehistoric {113} times of Canada. Popular tradition tells us that the Hurons and Iroquois, branches of the same family, speaking dialects of one common language, were living at one time in villages not far from each other--the Hurons probably at Hochelaga and the Senecas on the opposite side of the mountain. It was against the law of the two communities for their men and women to intermarry, but the potent influence of true love, so rare in an Indian's bosom, soon broke this command. A Huron girl entered the cabin of an Iroquois chief as his wife. It was an unhappy marriage, the husband killed the wife in an angry moment. This was a serious matter, requiring a council meeting of the two tribes. Murder must be avenged, or liberal compensation given to the friends of the dead. The council decided that the woman deserved death, but the verdict did not please all her relatives, one of whom went off secretly and killed an Iroquois warrior. Then both tribes took up the hatchet and went on the warpath against each other, with the result that the village of Hochelaga, with all the women and children, was destroyed, and the Hurons, who were probably beaten, left the St. Lawrence, and eventually found a new home on Lake Huron.[1]

Leaving this realm of tradition, which has probably a basis of fact, we come to historic times. In Champlain's interesting narrative, and in the Jesuit _Relations_, we find very few facts relating to Indian history, though we have very full information {114} respecting their customs, superstitions, and methods of living. The reports of the missionaries, in fact, form the basis of all the knowledge we have of the Canadian tribes as well as of the Five Nations themselves.

It is only necessary that we should here take account of the Algonquins and Huron-Iroquois, two great families separated from one another by radical differences of language, and not by special racial or physical characteristics. The Eskimo, Dacotah, Mandan, Pawnee, and Muskoki groups have no immediate connection with this Canadian story, although we shall meet representatives of these natural divisions in later chapters when we find the French in the Northwest, and on the waters of the Missouri and Mississippi. The Algonquins and Huron-Iroquois occupied the country extending, roughly speaking, from Virginia to Hudson's Bay, and from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. The Algonquins were by far the most numerous and widely distributed. Dialects of their common language were heard on the Atlantic coast all the way from Cape Fear to the Arctic region where the Eskimo hunted the seal or the walrus in his skin kayak. On the banks of the Kennebec and Penobscot in Acadia we find the Abenakis, who were firm friends of the French. They were hunters in the great forests of Maine, where even yet roam the deer and moose. The Etchemins or Canoemen, inhabited the country west and east of the St. Croix River, which had been named by De Monts. In Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and Prince Edward Island, we see the Micmacs {115} or Souriquois, a fierce, cruel race in early times, whose chief, Membertou, was the first convert of the Acadian missionaries. They were hunters and fishermen, and did not till the soil even in the lazy fashion of their Algonquin kindred in New England. The climate of Nova Scotia was not so congenial to the production of maize as that of the more southern countries. It was the culture of this very prolific plant, so easily sown, gathered, and dried, that largely modified and improved the savage conditions of Indian life elsewhere on the continent. It is where the maize was most abundant, in the valley of the Ohio, that we find relics of Indian arts--such as we never find in Acadia or Canada.

On the St. Lawrence, between the Gulf and Quebec, there were wandering Algonquin tribes, generally known as Montagnais or Mountaineers, living in rude camps covered with bark or brush, eking a precarious existence from the rivers and woods, and at times on the verge of starvation, when they did not hesitate at cannibalism. Between Quebec and the Upper Ottawa there were no village communities of any importance; for the _Petite Nation_ of the river of that name was only a small band of Algonquins, living some distance from the Ottawa. On the Upper Ottawa we meet with the nation of the Isle (Allumette) and the Nipissings, both Algonquin tribes, mentioned in a previous chapter. They were chiefly hunters and fishermen, although the former cultivated some patches of ground. On Georgian Bay we come to a nation speaking one of the dialects of a language quite distinct from that {116} of the Algonquins. These were Hurons, numbering in all some twenty thousand souls, of whom ten thousand or more were adults, living in thirty-two villages, comprising seven hundred dwellings of the same style as Cartier saw at Hochelaga. These villages were protected by stockades or palisades, and by some natural features of their situation--a river, a lake, or a hill. Neither the long houses nor the fortifications were as strongly or as cleverly constructed as those of the Iroquois. Maize, pumpkins, and tobacco were the principal plants cultivated. Sunflowers were also raised, chiefly for the oil with which they greased their hair and bodies. Their very name meant "Shock-heads"--a nickname originating from the exclamation of some Frenchmen, when they first saw their grotesque way of wearing their hair, "_Quelles hures!_" (What a head of hair!) Champlain speaks of a tribe whom he met after leaving Lake Nipissing, in 1615, and called the _Cheveux Releves_, or people with the stiff hair, but they were wandering Algonquins. Champlain called the Hurons, Attigouantans, though their true name was Ouendat, afterwards corrupted to Wyandot, which still clings to a remnant of the race in America.

They were brave and warlike, with perhaps more amiable qualities than the more ferocious, robust Iroquois. The nation appears to have been a confederacy of tribes, each of which was divided into clans or _gentes_ on the Iroquois principle, which I shall shortly explain. Two chiefs, one for peace and one for war, assisted by a council of tribal chiefs, {117} constituted the general government. Each tribe had a system of local or self-government--to use a phrase applicable to modern federal conditions--consisting of chiefs and council. The federal organisation was not, however, so carefully framed and adjusted as that of their kin, the Iroquois. At council meetings all the principal men attended and votes were taken with the aid of reeds or sticks, the majority prevailing in all cases.