The White and the Gold (35 page)

In 1659, just as the Iroquois storm threatened to break over Montreal, a second son was born and was given the name of Jacques. In 1661, after the storm had dissolved, a third son would put in an appearance. This lusty infant would be given the name of Pierre. The temptation to cast ahead into the future becomes irresistible at this point, for the sturdy third son of the family was destined to become the great paladin of New France, the forever renowned fighter on land and sea who is known in history as Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville. A still further cast ahead would introduce a boy born in 1680, the eighth of the line, who carried the name of Jean Baptiste le Moyne de Bienville to lasting fame as the founder of New Orleans and the lifelong governor of Louisiana.

All of the sons who survived had careers distinguished by bravery of the highest order; a truly fantastic family, representing the finest qualities of the French-Canadian people and earning for themselves
the title of the Canadian Maccabees, for reasons which will soon become apparent.

During the first half of the year 1660, when the clouds hovering over Montreal reached their blackest stage, the colony lacked the inspiring presence of two women who had come to typify the religious side of the settlement, Jeanne Mance and Marguerite Bourgeoys. The latter, a resident of Troyes in Champaigne, had come to Montreal to found a school for girls when she was thirty-three years old. She was practical, zealous, and hard-working and made a perfect foil for the spirituelle and inspiring Jeanne Mance. Soon after the hospital had been built, the continuous pounding of the Iroquois had made it necessary temporarily to use the building for defense purposes. The patients had been moved into a low building of two rooms near the fort, an arrangement which continued for four and a half years. The house contained a low attic and, for lack of anything better, this had been turned into a schoolroom for Marguerite Bourgeoys and her students. It was cold and drafty, with a small hearth and a tiny cupboard. The house had been built of green wood, and cracks in the walls had opened through which the winter winds whistled and the snow drifted. The food had to be kept in front of the small spluttering fire to keep it from freezing. The pupils sat in huddled misery at the raised planks which served as desks, their hands numb, their noses blue. They were not acquiring education easily, these unhappy children.

A somewhat similar situation prevailed belowstairs, where there were always more patients than beds and no place for the nuns to sleep. It was in the hope of obtaining additional funds and better equipment that the two heads had decided to pay a joint visit to France.

Jeanne Mance seems to have had a genius for communicating her enthusiasm to others and spurring on to action all with whom she came in contact. Gentle of manner and soft of speech, she was a seventeenth-century Florence Nightingale, nevertheless, filled with a deep pity for the ill and the poor and ready to batter down walls in her desire to aid them. The hardships of ocean travel were beyond description, and it was folly for her to undertake a journey at a time when she was suffering from the worst of health. She refused to
be deterred by such considerations. She, and she only, could get the help so badly needed.

On a previous visit to France she had succeeded in effecting a reorganization of the Montreal Company, something which needed doing very badly. Borrowing the policy of secrecy from the Duc de Ventadour and his order of Saint-Sacrament, the company eschewed the use of names except those of Dauversière and Fancamp. These two men of single purpose and fanatical zeal had been allowed to exercise all authority in connection with the affairs of the company and, as neither of them possessed any administrative capacity whatever, they had reduced things to a sorry tangle. Arriving on the scene, she went promptly to work and convinced the chief contributors that a change would have to be made unless they were content to have their contributions wasted. The silent partners of the company gave her authority to make changes. The names of all the main partners were given out. Jean Jacques Olier was made president and Louis Seguier secretary. The displaced pair were not very happy about this new policy, but they could not check the thoroughly aroused and determined Jeanne Mance. She continued to have her way; and this turned out to be a very good thing for the people of Montreal.

It was agreed also that the company would convey ownership to the hospital of two hundred arpents of land with the understanding that this would be divided up into tracts of thirty arpents each for any individuals who would take possession and cultivate the land. Under this arrangement the owners developed a system of co-operation by which they helped each other in clearing the land and building houses.

With this same decisiveness and clarity of vision Jeanne Mance proceeded on her arrival in France to fight for the lives and the well-being of her fellow residents. She went to Madame de Bouillon first of all. The unknown benefactress, who seems to have been entertaining doubts as to the wisdom of devoting her charitable efforts so exclusively to this one purpose, was won back to enthusiastic support. The glowing eyes, the eloquent tongue could not be withstood. In perfect accord once more, the kindly patroness and the young evangel of kindness and mercy made plans between them for the extension of the work and also for the bettering of the defenses of the town. As a first installment of the funds promised, Mademoiselle Mance carried away with her twenty-two thousand
livres. This was a big sum for a woman to have in her possession. Highwaymen haunted the roads and cutpurses lurked in the dark streets of the cities. She decided to keep two thousand livres for the immediate needs she would encounter on returning to Montreal and confided the remainder to the Sieur de la Dauversière for investment.

The final step was the selection of new helpers. Three young nuns were chosen from among the members of a nursing community which Dauversière had established at La Flèche. Marguerite Bourgeoys was equally successful at Troyes, where she found three recruits who were willing to face the rigors of pioneering life, Sisters Châtel, Crolo, and Raisin. There was some difficulty at La Flèche, where the story had spread among the townspeople that Dauversière was sending the young nuns out to Canada against the wishes of their parents. This, of course, was not true, but the rumor gained so much circulation that a mob gathered at the gate of the convent to prevent the departure of the party. Force had to be used to clear the street.

The party gathered finally at La Rochelle, including men who had been recruited to aid in the defense of Montreal and a few young women who were going out to find husbands in the colony. Before sailing time Dauversière put in an appearance to give them his blessing. He was in very evident bad health, which showed itself in the pallor of his cheeks and the unsteadiness of his gait. Under the skirt of the semi-clerical garb which he had begun to affect he displayed something about himself which had never before been observed, a pair of wide clay feet.

After expressing his hopes to the hospital aides that they would enjoy their work, he was asked by one of them, who was acting as treasurer, what steps she should take to receive in due course the interest on the money which had been left with him for investment.

Now it happened that the tax collector of La Flèche had become involved in financial difficulties and had already applied the twenty thousand livres to this personal deficit. He showed some embarrassment in answering.

“My daughter,” he said finally, “God will provide for you.”

The money was never paid back, and as a result Jeanne Mance and her helpers lived at their hospital for years thereafter in such poverty that they were never able to afford new gowns. The clothes they wore were so patched and repaired that before they were discarded
it would be impossible to tell of what material they had consisted when new.

The ship made a slow crossing, but the party reached Montreal in time to participate in full in the most trying days of the Iroquois encirclement.

T
HE North American Indian had evolved over the ages a few tools and weapons, a few conceptions of tribal organization, a few vague beliefs; and with these he had been content until the white man came along and upset everything. But he made two remarkable inventions, the snowshoe and the bark canoe.

The canoe remains today one of the few nearly perfect vessels. It can be handled easily, it develops great speed, it skims over shoal water, it races down rapids with grace and daring. It is so light, moreover, that it can be carried with relative ease. It was the canoe which opened up the continent to the white man. It carried him up and down rivers and over lakes and it traveled on his head when he encountered the need to cross land. The
coureur de bois
thought nothing of setting out from Three Rivers or Montreal to winter along Lake Michigan or in the rich country north of Lake Superior. The French-Canadian explorers, who so often wore the black gown of the Jesuit, did not consider Hudson’s Bay or the Mississippi beyond the range of their efforts. The canoe was like a pair of seven league boots.

But there were times when even the canoe failed its master, and one of the hardest of obstacles was the Ottawa River. In earlier stages of world’s history, long before a two-legged creature named man had been evolved and had constituted himself its historian, the Ottawa had served as the outlet of a vast sea which lapped the base of the Laurentian range. It remained a stream of furious power, which was augmented as one tributary after another drained into it. It joins the St. Lawrence at the southwestern tip of Montreal Island through four passages like the fingers of a hand. The Ottawa has
variety to offer at every turn; it is full of fancies and surprises, and it is always rough in its play. It broadens between wide shores and becomes deceptively passive, it gains in depth and impetuosity as the shores narrow, it roars through close defiles.

Entering the Ottawa from the St. Lawrence puts a strain on even the strongest of arms. After negotiating one of the four passages and crossing the Lake of Two Mountains, the first serious obstacle is encountered in the Carillon Rapids. The name does not derive from the sound the river makes at this point, for the deep bass voice of the Ottawa has none of the soft and dulcet tone of bells. After the Carillon come the rapids of Chute à Blondeau. Still farther along on the broad westward sweep of the stream the entrance to a lake is reached, and this proves to be the most formidable of the many bottlenecks along the lower course of the brawling river. The water pours in roiling fury down a long narrow passage which is called the Long Sault.

The Long Sault, always a menace and a source of delay, made it necessary to unload canoes three times in an ascent. It had grown in importance since domination of the Ottawa had become a part of Iroquois strategy. When parties of Frenchmen approached it from either direction it was always with the expectation of finding Iroquois bands hidden along its banks; and the shoe was on the other foot when it was the Iroquois themselves who were on the move.

The Long Sault will never be forgotten because here was enacted the great epic story of early Canadian history.

There was in Montreal at this time, in the capacity of an officer of the armed forces, a young man named Adam Dollard (sometimes, but erroneously, called Daulac), Sieur des Ormeaux. He had come out from France three years before, at the age of twenty-two, and it was generally believed that some kind of shadow had settled on his name at home. In fairness to this brave soldier, whose exploit places him on a level with those two great holders of historic gaps, Leonidas at Thermopylae and Horatius on the bridge at Rome, there is nothing in the records to warrant the assertion save a statement by Dollier de Casson in his story of Montreal. Dollard was seeking a chance, declared the Sulpician historian, “to be of use to him on account of something which was said to have happened in France.”

It may have been that Dollard himself had talked of the matter or at least that he had dropped a hint. Certainly this was not the kind of rumor or canard which would have been invented in the years immediately following the great stand at the Long Sault, when all New France rang with praise of the little band. More likely the story would have been suppressed, and banished from all minds, if there had been any feeling that it could cast the slighest shadow on this new-made grave. Dollier de Casson arrived in Montreal six years after the event and doubtless heard the story then, told without rancor or any desire to detract from the glorious record of Adam Dollard. Certainly Dollier de Casson would not have invented it. That gentle ex-soldier, with his big generous heart in his huge frame, was incapable of such malice.

Here, then, was Adam Dollard des Ormeaux, looking eagerly for a chance to strike a bold blow for New France and perhaps to win something for the bare shield of a seventeenth-century Tor. He went to Maisonneuve and told him of a plan he had formed. The war clouds had been getting denser and lower all the time. Iroquois warriors had wintered on the upper Ottawa, several hundreds of them, and a still larger concentration was under way along the Richelieu. At least a thousand braves were out on the warpath. Would it not be the best kind of defense to go immediately on the offensive? Dollard proposed to the governor that he be allowed to recruit a small band of men and make a stand on the Ottawa in the hope of preventing a junction of the two forces.