The White and the Gold (18 page)

The history of these early years is based to a great extent on the long letters which the priests faithfully indited and sent to their superiors in France and Rome. It is from these priestly epistles, written with weary fingers after the Captain at four o’clock had ordered the natives to depart, when the cares of the day, beginning always at four in the morning, were over, that most of the story of the long and ferocious Indian wars are drawn. They told the blood-chilling incidents of a great Huron victory. The northern warriors did not follow the Iroquois custom of giving notice of the number of prisoners captured with a loud halloa for each as the canoes came within sounding distance of the home villages. This would have been difficult on the occasion in question, for the number of Iroquois who had been brought back as prisoners was so great that the woods would have echoed and re-echoed to the signals of triumph. The Hurons, however, had a custom of their own. They carried upright sticks in their canoes to signify the number, and for good measure they placed on the ends of the sticks the scalps they had taken. The exultant squaws and the stay-at-home old men and children were driven to a frenzy of excitement by the fact that one hundred poles had been raised in the canoes of the victorious party!

A sequel to this must be told. The torturing of the prisoners began at once, and as each man died his remains were roasted and devoured. The priests strove desperately to stop the slaughter but found their charges so carried away over their victory that they paid no attention. The Jesuits protested so long that finally the Indians became angry and tossed the hand of one of the victims through the door of the mission lodge. The Jesuits had been allowed to baptize each prisoner before he was led out to the stake, and so the hand was sorrowfully buried in consecrated ground.

The most regular correspondent was Father Paul le Jeune, who became the Superior at Quebec. Father le Jeune had the capacity to convey in what he wrote the fervor which animated the men in the field. His letters, filled with stories of their trials and triumphs, began to attract attention in France. This gentle priest had a sense of humor as well as a burning zeal and he told many stories which added to the interest in his reports. He did not hesitate, for instance, to tell of one difficulty the Jesuits encountered in learning Indian languages. A habit of some interpreters caused them much trouble, a tendency to teach obscene words in place of the right ones, which resulted in the unwitting priests sending their listeners into spasms
of mirth. He told also of the Indian tendency to interrupt all discourses. In the middle of an address one of the elder statesmen would be likely to interject some such remark as: “Listen, young men, do you understand clearly what the father is telling us? You are not doing right; mend your ways!” When they approved of what was being said, the whole company would wag their heads and declaim, “
Ho, ho!
” or “
Mi hi
,” which meant “That is good,” or even “
Me ke tiang
,” “We will do that.”

The priests had no conception at first of the interest these epistles were creating in France, not knowing of a daring experiment which had been decided upon by the Superior of the Society in France. The latter made up his mind that the letters of Father le Jeune should be published so that they would be made available to everyone, and accordingly he effected an arrangement with Sébastien Cramoisy, the most prominent of the printers of Paris. The Cramoisy colophon was known as
La Marque aux Cicognes
, two storks, one feeding the other in flight. The printers proceeded to produce the letters with the utmost care in vellum-bound volumes, small octavo in size, and put them on the market at twenty
sols
. The sales proved nothing short of phenomenal. The distribution was so great, in fact, that it was decided to put out a volume a year and to call the series the
Relations
. Publication was kept up for over forty years, the scope of the series being extended to take in all letters from priests and many incidental papers relating to affairs in Canada. Cramoisy continued as publisher and printer most of that time. After his death his grandson carried on the work under the firm name of Sébastien Fabre-Cramoisy.

Not since the publication of the
Imitatio Christi
two hundred years before had such a wave of spiritual fervor been evidenced.

The writer of the letters, Paul le Jeune, received his first intimation of what was happening when a vessel from France arrived at Quebec and delivered to him huge packets of letters. He began to open them in wonder and discovered that they were from people who had read the
Relations
and whose concern in the work of the missions had been so stimulated thereby that they desired to help. They carried the signatures of men and women of the highest rank, of great diplomats and soldiers, of men prominent in the administrative departments, of priests and nuns, of lowly people who could not be of financial help but had felt impelled to write through feelings of gratitude. It was made evident that in every religious college in
France, in monastery and nunnery, ardent souls were thirsting for a chance to join in the work.

To his great astonishment, Father le Jeune discovered that he had become famous. Everyone was reading his letters, everyone was talking about him and about the work he depicted so graphically. That he was gratified goes without saying, but at the same time he was clearheaded enough to realize that a checkrein was going to be needed. He wrote to the Father Provincial in France, “They [the Ursuline mothers] write me with such ardor … that if the door were open a city of nuns would be formed and there would be found ten sisters to one pupil.” He was equally well aware of the poor quality of the settlers who were being sent out to the colony. On this point he wrote, “Every year the ship brings us many people; this number like coin is of mingled gold and base alloy; it is composed of choice and well-selected souls, and of others indeed base and degraded.”

The success of the
Relations
stimulated the missionaries to further efforts. More priests were sent out to join the hard-worked fathers in the field. Sometimes workmen were sent with them. An outstanding example of the collaboration which developed was the importation into the Huron country of nearly a score of artisans to build the chapel at Ihonatiria. The carpenters and joiners went in canoes over the water trails for many hundred leagues, carrying their tools and some of the materials with them.

It was thus made abundantly clear that, of all men, the Jesuits were the best fitted for missionary work among the Indians. Individually they were brave, resolute, unflinching, and ready for any sacrifice. As a body they were backed by great wealth and influence.

Quebec had continued to grow in the meantime, but very slowly. The population was now slightly in excess of one hundred, but the settlement had not learned to be self-supporting. Champlain, adroit and resourceful though he was, could not make useful citizens out of the dregs who were sent to him by his profit-mad partners. These misfits and unfortunates hunted and fished sporadically; they loafed, they drank, they diced, and continued as hostile to honest toil as they had been when plucked from the stews and prisons of Paris.

The truth of the situation finally reached the one man in France who was capable of finding the solution. Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, the young Bishop of Luçon, had left his mean episcopal
palace and had attached himself to the service of the lumpish, lazy, and vindictive Queen Regent. Although the fall of her favorites, the Concinis, to whom Richelieu had paid lip service, set him back for several years, he was soon in the saddle again and in full charge of foreign affairs. A man of such relentless will and transcendent ability could not be checked once he was in a position to display his gifts. Richelieu, who had now received the red hat from Rome and was called thereafter the cardinal, moved with consummate skill through the conspiracies of the corrupt court and in time gained a complete ascendancy over the weakling son of Henry IV who had succeeded to the throne as Louis XIII.

The once sickly and sullen son of the great King had grown up into a very strange and far from healthy young man, as different from his illustrious sire as any human being could be. He took little interest in affairs of state, except for sudden gusts of unpredictable energy which made it necessary for the cardinal to exercise all his skill in order to retain his hold on the reins. Ordinarily the capricious young King concerned himself with boyish fancies. He was very much interested in cookery and became quite expert in the making of garlic spreads for bread and salades with sauce rousse. In a court noted for the beauty and immorality of its women, the young King showed no tendency to emulate the gallantry of his father. He took little or no interest in New France.

Richelieu soon became convinced that the control of the French colony must be assumed by the government and he acted then with characteristic vigor.

A frail man in the red robe of a cardinal sat behind his desk on a gusty day which the calendar registered as April 29, 1627. Before him lay a document from which the title seemed to spring out and command the eye.

Acte pour l’Etablissement de la Compagnie des Cent Associés
.

The Company of One Hundred Associates! This organization with the euphonious name which has impressed itself firmly on the pages of Canadian history was the answer which Richelieu was supplying for the problem of Canada.

The man behind the desk was thin and austere. His face fell away from a fine wide brow to a chin so delicate and pointed under its
small beard that it suggested a sensitive nature (which was completely misleading); and the result would have been to give his ample nose too much prominence if it had been possible to notice anything about this extraordinary man but the uncanny power of his unblinking pale eyes. The Richelieu eyes, it was currently believed, could look through anything: the most astute politician who might face him, the walls which surrounded him, the knotty problems he had to solve. His hands had an almost feminine daintiness, but in their capacity to seize and hold and rend they more nearly resembled the talons of a bird of prey. There was uncanniness also in this man’s gift for knowing everything that went on about him, for knowing instinctively the right course to pursue, for the perfection of his choice of words in convincing those about him, for his unerring judgment of men. He was utterly unscrupulous and, of course, without kindness or pity. No other great minister of state ever quite equaled him; not Wolsey or Fouquet or Colbert, not Bismarck or Disraeli.

The slender forefinger which rested on the front page of the charter had assisted in cutting with vigorous surety through all obstacles in the way of the measure. The cardinal had abolished the office of admiral of France and had set up a new post in its stead, the Grand Master and Superintendent of Navigation and Commerce, assuming the duties himself. The prevailing charter held by the Cȧėns and their associates had been revoked.

This bold measure may have originated in the brain of another man, that strange figure who stood so often at the shoulder of the cardinal and whispered in his ear—François Leclerc du Tremblay, the Capuchin who was called by the populace Father Joseph of Paris and sometimes
L’Eminence Grise
, Gray Eminence. Father Joseph became the “familiar spirit” of Richelieu, his sword blade in diplomacy, his director of intelligence and spying. He followed the great minister everywhere; but whereas Richelieu traveled in state with a long train of prancing horses, the silent, glowering Capuchin followed on foot, striding tirelessly on bare feet over the rough and muddy roads. A man of the most intense faith, he was nevertheless the most consistent exponent of the theory that the end justifies the means. He was created Apostolic Commissary of Missions by Pope Urban VIII, and his influence can be detected in the course which Richelieu was now following.

With no further evidence than this to draw upon, it is clear that
the unseen fingers of Father Joseph had been at work on the skeins, shaping the destiny of a distant land sometimes called Canada.

It is probable that in the long room where the cardinal worked so steadily hour after hour, day after day—with its candles guttering in long silver sconces and its blood-red curtains looped in silver brackets—were some of the men who had already agreed to become members of the new organization. In respect to social position they were decidedly a mixed lot. All men of ministerial rank were included, some of the nobility, some merchants, some men in holy orders. The name of Cardinal Richelieu headed the list. Somewhere—far down on the page, no doubt—was a man too far away to be consulted, Samuel de Champlain. Each member was obligated to pay three thousand livres.

A reading of the act makes it clear that this was no halfway measure, no hastily contrived piece of legislation to correct defects in the present situation. It conferred on the company the whole of the North American continent from Florida to the farthest northern point, and from the Atlantic seaboard to the western sources of the St. Lawrence River. The fur trade was to belong to them exclusively for all time, and they were to control the trade of the colony, with the exception of the coast fisheries, for a term of fifteen years. No duty would be charged on the goods they would import to France. In return the Associates engaged to send three hundred people to Canada each year and to bring the total to four thousand by the expiration of the fifteen years; supporting the settlers, moreover, for three years and providing each community with three priests.

No point seemingly had been overlooked in this thorough document. It was provided that the members of the nobility might become Associates without any prejudice to the dignities which formerly had excluded them from participation in trade. On the other hand, twelve patents of nobility were to be distributed among the men of lesser degree, the merchants and the shipping heads. All settlers sent to Canada were to be French and Catholic. The government was to stand back of the company and to provide immediately two warships fully equipped for service.