The White and the Gold (33 page)

At Three Rivers that resourceful young man, Pierre Radisson, went ashore to join his family. Here he met for the first time a man ten years his senior who was destined to become his partner in some of the most unusual exploits in history, one Médard Chouart des Groseilliers. This newcomer had married Radisson’s half sister Marguerite, the widow of the Sieur de Grandmesnil. The title “Des Groseilliers” had become his in the first place as a joke. Chouart had acquired a corner of land at Three Rivers overrun with brambles and gooseberry bushes; hence the name, which, bestowed in jest, became accepted seriously later.

Médard Chouart was born on July 31, 1618, at Charly-sur-Marne. Coming to Canada at an early age, he went first to the mission at Lake Nipissing with Father Dreuillettes. After that he turned up in Huronia as an
engagé
and lived through the bitter days of the war of extermination, returning with the last of the party to leave the island of St. Joseph. Coming to Three Rivers after the departure of young Pierre with the Onondaga party, he met Marguerite Hayet Véron, who had been left with three children when her first husband died. He married her and seemed disposed for the first time in his life to settle down.

It was a natural thing for a man of his disposition and antecedents to come to Three Rivers, which owed its name to a mistake made by Pontgravé. He had been led by the splitting of the St. Maurice where it joined the St. Lawrence into believing that it was due to the junction there of three rivers. This small settlement had become the meeting ground of the hardy spirits who had an itching of the foot, the
coureurs de bois
. Quebec was the port, the administrative center of New France; Montreal was a brave experiment, an outpost existing in a state of spiritual fervor; Three Rivers was the starting point of exploration. Woodsmen had fallen into the habit of making it their winter quarters.

Its importance was due largely to its strategic position. By taking the route of the St. Maurice, which joins the St. Lawrence at Three Rivers, and crossing to the Gatineau, one of the more important tributaries of the Ottawa, it was possible to reach the upper Ottawa and the rich hunting country of the North without encountering the risks and dangers of the junction of that river with the St. Lawrence. It was a short cut and, for a time at least, free of the interference of the Iroquois. As a result it was much in favor with the fur brigades. Turning off into the Gatineau with their heavily loaded canoes, the Indian trading parties escaped the steaming rapids and were free of what seemed to them the dark and bloody land around Montreal Island. For many years the fur trade centered at Three Rivers.

Wealth began to accumulate there, and the first men ennobled in Canada were residents of Three Rivers: Boucher, Godefroy, Hestel, and Le Neuf.

Marguerite Hayet Véron must have been a comely woman to attract the eye of this born wanderer. He even showed a tendency to settle down and raise a second family with the young widow. It soon developed, however, that Marguerite was a determined woman, one of the managing kind. The soft light in her eye could change in the fraction of a second to a steely glint. She managed the property her first husband had left her, she ran a small shop, she trained her three children and brought into the world five more during the much-interrupted span of her married life with Chouart. For good measure she indulged in feuds with neighbors and spent much time in court. She was quarreling with her new husband over his attitude toward her first children when young Pierre came home.

The two men took one look at each other and realized that there was a kinship between them more enduring than the conjugal tie which bound Groseilliers to his family. A spark passed from eye to eye. They were birds of a feather, animated with the desire to leave no horizon unexplored, the soles of their feet always having the itch for exploration. Neither was of the kind to settle down to the humdrum existence of a little frontier trading post, burdened with household cares and the squalling of young children. The old English couplet applied to both:

Before long they were off together for the West, Radisson leaving his parents, who had come to expect little from him but his absence,
Groseilliers abandoning for the time being his buxom Marguerite to the cares of their growing household.

They departed secretly, for a number of reasons. The governor at Quebec had promulgated a law that no French subject could devote himself to the fur trade without a permit, and permits were hard to come by. The number issued each year was limited, the total at first being twenty-five. To obtain these much-coveted and striven-for permits would have meant an open avowal of their intention to leave and a prompt negative from Marguerite of the dark brows and the unbending will.

Luckily for them, Groseilliers had been elected captain of the borough of Three Rivers. One night the pair took to the water and paddled down the St. Maurice. When they came to the lookout post at the entrance to the St. Lawrence, they were challenged by the night guard. Groseilliers answered in his capacity as borough captain and was allowed to proceed.

Radisson and Groseilliers! These became magic names, names to create visions in the minds of other young men; visions of the far North and the mighty inland sea known as Hudson’s Bay, of the far West and the country of the Great Lakes. An important moment in history, this; Radisson and Groseilliers off on their first journey together. Let the masterly Marguerite stir uneasily in the couch she must occupy alone. What would it matter that officials frowned over the fact that a pair of young fellows had taken to the woods without permits? Two of the greatest and least appreciated men in Canadian annals were beginning their rocketing career together.

The success of the
Relations
had been teaching the Jesuit fathers something about popular tastes, and they had begun to vary the fare, injecting matters of a lighter nature in the course of more serious discussions. Conscious, perhaps, that so much talk of Indian wars might weary the reader with its repetition of horror, Father Ragueneau injected into his reports at this stage a chapter on Indian customs as compared with French. Perhaps for the same reason it may be advisable to pause also and review briefly what he tells.

The habits, the beliefs, the likes, the dislikes of the aborigines of North America were, of course, diametrically opposed to those of Europeans. The Indian found the smell of grease and oil, which he
daubed all over his body, most agreeable to his senses, whereas it was like carrion to the French. On the other hand, “the rose, the pink, the clove, the nutmeg are insipid to him.” The same divergence was to be found in all respects.

Civilized music was nothing but a confusion of sound in the savage ear. The warrior, who never seemed to sing except when under torture or at the approach of death, considered his own heavy and dismal songs “as beautiful as the blush of dawn.” There is an amusing story in this connection, drawn from another section of the
Relations
. Once a party of haughty Iroquois chiefs arrived at Quebec to discuss terms of peace. They were in a belligerent mood, and it occurred to the French leaders that a little music might soothe their savage breasts. They conducted the peace party to the seminary of the Ursulines, where Madame de la Peltrie’s little Indian charges lined up and sang a hymn for the visitors. The Iroquois listened with no hint of pleasure or approval on their scowling brows. In fact, they scoffed openly at the efforts of the children and then lined up themselves to demonstrate what music should be, intoning in concert some mournful dirge. The children responded with another song, a gay madrigal. The chiefs expressed even deeper scorn and gave another sample of their preference in music. And so it went on for some time, the bitter chiefs determined to prove their superiority; and departing finally, convinced that they had done so.

In the matter of food the Indian liked his meat smoked, which, to the French palate, gave it a taste like soot. “Yellow porridge,” the Indian term for mustard, was the most obnoxious of all foods to the Indian since the day when one of their number, offered a dish of mustard, scooped up the whole contents and took it down at a single gulp. Tears which he could not check poured from his eyes, but otherwise he concealed his suffering like a victim at the torture stake. From that moment, to proffer yellow porridge was a deadly insult. The Indians had a weakness for eggs but preferred them when they contained a bird nearly ready to hatch. Meat bones were seldom given to the eager dogs because of a superstition that they made animals harder to catch. Only when a dog’s master was dining on the flesh of an animal which had allowed itself to be caught easily would the bones be held in sufficient contempt to be tossed down to the hungry beast.

The Indians admired their own small black eyes and long features. Contrary to the general impression, they disliked the white skins
of the French. They found curly hair grotesque, while beards seemed to them nothing short of loathsome. A savage would often look into the face of a bearded Frenchman, shudder and say, “Ugh, how ugly you are!” The Indians were surprised at the roughness of European skins; their own were soft and delicate, as a result of the constant application of oil and grease.

Father Ragueneau tells a story to illustrate the peculiarity of the Indian attitude toward dress. A pretty Indian girl, on leaving the seminary at Quebec, was given a dress by the Ursuline mothers. As she had been a favorite with them, they went to great pains to make it attractive. It was a white gown and no doubt had ribbons and a touch of lace and unquestionably a very fine sash. The girl was married immediately after, and to the dismay of the donors the husband was seen soon after decked out in his wife’s finery. They tried to tell him that the white gown was not suitable for masculine wear, that it was for his wife’s use only. He shook his head emphatically. If anyone was to wear anything as fine as this, he as the head of the family was the one. He strutted and posed about the streets, and when white people laughed at him he accepted their raillery as proof of their approval.

The natives, in fact, wore anything that suited their fancy. The good father had seen a tall Huron warrior wearing a boat pulley about his neck with open ostentation. Another wore a bunch of keys. As the keys had been stolen, this prideful display proved unprofitable in the end. The women tried to dress in ways which accentuated their size. One of their habits was to wear two belts, the first above the stomach, the second around the waist. The fold of the dress was allowed to hang out between, thus serving a double purpose: it made the wearer seem buxom and provided a convenient pocket.

The worthy priest then proceeded to speak of the country. The soil was so productive that in a few years the husbandman not only found himself free of need but in a position to make money out of his crops. The streams abounded with fish and most particularly with eels, the latter an important item, for Frenchmen love a stew of eels above most dishes. During the months of September and October, when the eels reached a fine stage of fatness, an expert plier of the spear could catch from forty to seventy thousand, thus assuring a supply for the whole winter. A good huntsman could go out into the
woods during the winter and kill moose by the score. The air, moreover, was so clear and healthy that men attained to a great strength. Few children died in the cradle as they did in France. They grew up straight and tall and strong, and filled with a rare degree of courage.

This review of the wonderful possibilities of the great new land which they still proudly called New France but would be equally proud later to name Canada led the narrator to speak of the one factor which nullified all the advantages, the hostility of the Iroquois. “We chanted the
Te Deum
,” he wrote, “with much feeling, it is true, but with conflicting emotions; for we seemed to hear at the same time our captive Frenchmen singing on the scaffolds of the Iroquois.”

Later he added: “A rumor is current that all the Europeans occupying the long coast line from Acadia to Virginia, incensed against the Iroquois, the common foe of all nations, wish to form an alliance for their destruction.”

He did not say, because no resident of New France had any inkling of the truth, that while Europeans contented themselves with thoughts of concerted action, the wily and determined men of the Long House were going much farther. They were planning a campaign which, they were sure, would result in the destruction of all the Frenchmen in America and the burning of their settlements.

A
LULL before the storm. Through the middle fifties peace had come to the St. Lawrence, a temporary peace while those implacable and unpredictable foes, the Iroquois, mulled over their savage plans and waited to strike again. It was also an uneasy peace, for the French still suffered from weak leadership and their allies had been massacred and dispersed by the hammer blows of the Iroquois confederacy.