Book: Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV

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In 1681, Seignelay, the son of Colbert, entered upon the charge of the
colonies; and both Frontenac and Duchesneau hastened to congratulate
him, protest their devotion, and overwhelm him with mutual
accusations. The intendant declares that, out of pure zeal for the
king's service, he shall tell him every thing. "Disorder," he says,
"reigns everywhere; universal confusion prevails throughout every
department of business; the pleasure of the king, the orders of the
Supreme Council, and my ordinances remain unexecuted; justice is
openly violated, and trade is destroyed; violence, upheld by
authority, decides every thing; and nothing consoles the people, who
groan without daring to complain, but the hope, Monseigneur, that you
will have the goodness to condescend to be moved by their misfortunes.
No position could be more distressing than mine, since, if I conceal
the truth from you, I fail in the obedience I owe the king, and in the
fidelity that I vowed so long since to Monseigneur, your father, and
which I swear anew at your hands; and if I obey, as I must, his
Majesty's orders and yours, I cannot avoid giving offence, since I
cannot render you an account of these disorders without informing you
that M. de Frontenac's conduct is the sole cause of them." [Footnote:
_Duchesneau au Ministre_, 13 _Nov_., 1681.]

Frontenac had written to Seignelay a few days before: "I have no doubt
whatever that M. Duchesneau will, as usual, overwhelm me with
fabrications and falsehoods, to cover his own ill conduct. I send
proofs to justify myself, so strong and convincing that I do not see
that they can leave any doubt; but, since I fear that their great
number might fatigue you, I have thought it better to send them to my
wife, with a full and exact journal of all that has passed here day by
day, in order that she may extract and lay before you the principal
portions.

"I send you in person merely the proofs of the conduct of M.
Duchesneau, in barricading his house and arming all his servants, and
in coming three weeks ago to insult me in my room. You will see
thereby to what a pitch of temerity and lawlessness he has transported
himself, in order to compel me to use violence against him, with the
hope of justifying what he has asserted about my pretended outbreaks
of anger." [Footnote: _Frontenac au Ministre,_ 2 _Nov.,_ 1681.]

The mutual charges of the two functionaries were much the same; and,
so far at least as concerns trade, there can be little doubt that they
were well founded on both sides. The strife of the rival factions grew
more and more bitter: canes and sticks played an active part in it,
and now and then we hear of drawn swords. One is reminded at times of
the intestine feuds of some mediæval city, as, for example, in the
following incident, which will explain the charge of Frontenac against
the intendant of barricading his house and arming his servants:--

On the afternoon of the twentieth of March, a son of Duchesneau,
sixteen years old, followed by a servant named Vautier, was strolling
along the picket fence which bordered the descent from the Upper to
the Lower Town of Quebec. The boy was amusing himself by singing a
song, when Frontenac's partisan, Boisseau, with one of the guardsmen,
approached, and, as young Duchesneau declares, called him foul names,
and said that he would give him and his father a thrashing. The boy
replied that he would have nothing to say to a fellow like him, and
would beat him if he did not keep quiet; while the servant, Vautier,
retorted Boisseau's abuse, and taunted him with low birth and
disreputable employments. Boisseau made report to Frontenac, and
Frontenac complained to Duchesneau, who sent his son, with Vautier, to
give the governor his version of the affair. The bishop, an ally of
the intendant, thus relates what followed. On arriving with a party of
friends at the château, young Duchesneau was shown into a room in
which were the governor and his two secretaries, Barrois and Chasseur.
He had no sooner entered than Frontenac seized him by the arm, shook
him, struck him, called him abusive names, and tore the sleeve of his
jacket. The secretaries interposed, and, failing to quiet the
governor, opened the door and let the boy escape. Vautier, meanwhile,
had remained in the guard-room, where Boisseau struck at him with his
cane; and one of the guardsmen went for a halberd to run him through
the body. After this warm reception, young Duchesneau and his servant
took refuge in the house of his father. Frontenac demanded their
surrender. The intendant, fearing that he would take them by force,
for which he is said to have made preparation, barricaded himself and
armed his household. The bishop tried to mediate, and after protracted
negotiations young Duchesneau was given up, whereupon Frontenac locked
him in a chamber of the chateau, and kept him there a month.
[Footnote: _Mémoire de l'Évesque de Quebec, Mars,_ 1681 (printed in
_Revue Canadienne,_ 1873). The bishop is silent about the barricades
of which Frontenac and his friends complain in several letters.]

The story of Frontenac's violence to the boy is flatly denied by his
friends, who charge Duchesneau and his partisans with circulating
libels against him, and who say, like Frontenac himself, that the
intendant used every means to exasperate him, in order to make
material for accusations. [Footnote: See, among other instances, the
_Défense de M. de Frontenac par un de ses Amis,_ published by Abbé
Verreau in the _Revue Canadienne,_ 1873.]

The disputes of the rival factions spread through all Canada. The most
heinous offence in the eyes of the court with which each charged the
other was the carrying of furs to the English settlements; thus
defrauding the revenue, and, as the king believed, preparing the ruin
of the colony. The intendant farther declared that the governor's
party spread among the Indians the report of a pestilence, at
Montreal, in order to deter them from their yearly visit to the fair,
and thus by means of _coureurs de bois_ obtain all their beaver skins
at a low price. The report, according to Duchesneau, had no other
foundation than the fate of eighteen or twenty Indians, who had lately
drunk themselves to death at La Chine. [Footnote: _Plumitif du Conseil
Souverain,_ 1681.]

Montreal, in the mean time, was the scene of a sort of by-play, in
which the chief actor was the local governor, Perrot. He and Frontenac
appear to have found it for their common interest to come to a mutual
understanding; and this was perhaps easier on the part of the count,
since his quarrel with Duchesneau gave sufficient employment to his
natural pugnacity. Perrot was now left to make a reasonable profit
from the illicit trade which had once kindled the wrath of his
superior; and, the danger of Frontenac's anger being removed, he
completely forgot the lessons of his imprisonment.

The intendant ordered Migeon, bailiff of Montreal, to arrest some of
Perrot's _coureurs de bois_. Perrot at once arrested the bailiff, and
sent a sergeant and two soldiers to occupy his house, with orders to
annoy the family as much as possible. One of them, accordingly, walked
to and fro all night in the bed-chamber of Migeon's wife. On another
occasion, the bailiff invited two friends to supper: Le Moyne
d'Iberville and one Bouthier, agent of a commercial house at Rochelle.
The conversation turned on the trade carried on by Perrot. It was
overheard and reported to him, upon which he suddenly appeared at the
window, struck Bouthier over the head with his cane, then drew his
sword, and chased him while he fled for his life. The seminary was
near at hand, and the fugitive clambered over the wall. Dollier de
Casson dressed him in the hat and cassock of a priest, and in this
disguise he escaped. [Footnote: _Conduite du Sieur Perrot, Gouverneur
de Montréal en la Nouvelle France_, 1681; _Plainte du Sieur Bouthier_,
10 _Oct._, 1680; _Procès-verbal des huissiers de Montréal_.] Perrot's
avidity sometimes carried him to singular extremities. "He has been
seen," says one of his accusers, "filling barrels of brandy with his
own hands, and mixing it with water to sell to the Indians. He
bartered with one of them his hat, sword, coat, ribbons, shoes, and
stockings, and boasted that he had made thirty pistoles by the
bargain, while the Indian walked about town equipped as governor."
[Footnote: _Conduite du Sieur Perrot_. La Barre, Frontenac's
successor, declares that the charges against Perrot were false,
including the attestations of Migeon and his friends; that Dollier de
Casson had been imposed upon, and that various persons had been
induced to sign unfounded statements without reading them. _La Barre
au Ministre,_ 4 _Nov.,_ 1683.]

Every ship from Canada brought to the king fresh complaints of
Duchesneau against Frontenac, and of Frontenac against Duchesneau; and
the king replied with rebukes, exhortations, and threats to both. At
first he had shown a disposition to extenuate and excuse the faults of
Frontenac, but every year his letters grew sharper. In 1681 he wrote:
"Again I urge you to banish from your mind the difficulties which you
have yourself devised against the execution of my orders; to act with
mildness and moderation towards all the colonists, and divest yourself
entirely of the personal animosities which have thus far been almost
your sole motive of action. In conclusion, I exhort you once more to
profit well by the directions which this letter contains; since,
unless you succeed better herein than formerly, I cannot help
recalling you from the command which I have intrusted to you."
[Footnote: _Le Roy à Frontenac,_ 30 _Avril,_ 1681.]

The dispute still went on. The autumn ships from Quebec brought back
the usual complaints, and the long-suffering king at length made good
his threat. Both Frontenac and Duchesneau received their recall, and
they both deserved it. [Footnote: La Barre says that Duchesneau was
far more to blame than Frontenac. _La Barre au Ministre,_ 1083. This
testimony has weight, since Frontenac's friends were La Barre's
enemies.]

The last official act of the governor, recorded in the register of the
council of Quebec, is the formal declaration that his rank in that
body is superior to that of the intendant. [Footnote: _Registre du
Conseil-Supérieur_, 16 Fév., 1682.] The key to nearly all these
disputes lies in the relations between Frontenac and the Church. The
fundamental quarrel was generally covered by superficial issues, and
it was rarely that the governor fell out with anybody who was not in
league with the bishop and the Jesuits. "Nearly all the disorders in
New France," he writes, "spring from the ambition of the
ecclesiastics, who want to join to their spiritual authority an
absolute power over things temporal, and who persecute all who do not
submit entirely to them." He says that the intendant and the
councillors are completely under their control, and dare not decide
any question against them; that they have spies everywhere, even in
his house; that the bishop told him that he could excommunicate even a
governor, if he chose; that the missionaries in Indian villages say
that they are equals of Onontio, and tell their converts that all will
go wrong till the priests have the government of Canada; that directly
or indirectly they meddle in all civil affairs; that they trade even
with the English of New York; that, what with Jesuits, Sulpitians, the
bishop, and the seminary of Quebec, they hold two-thirds of the good
lands of Canada; that, in view of the poverty of the country, their
revenues are enormous; that, in short, their object is mastery, and
that they use all means to compass it. [Footnote: Frontenac, _Mémoire
adressé à Colbert_, 1677. This remarkable paper will be found in the
_Découvertes et Établissements des Français dans l'Amérique
Septentrionale; Mémoires et Documents Originaux,_ edited by M. Margry.
The paper is very long, and contains references to attestations and
other proofs which accompanied it, especially in regard to the trade
of the Jesuits.] The recall of the governor was a triumph to the
ecclesiastics, offset but slightly by the recall of their instrument,
the intendant, who had done his work, and whom they needed no longer.

Thus far, we have seen Frontenac on his worst side. We shall see him
again under an aspect very different. Nor must it be supposed that the
years which had passed since his government began, tempestuous as they
appear on the record, were wholly given over to quarrelling. They had
their periods of uneventful calm, when the wheels of administration
ran as smoothly as could be expected in view of the condition of the
colony. In one respect at least, Frontenac had shown a remarkable
fitness for his office. Few white men have ever equalled or approached
him in the art of dealing with Indians. There seems to have been a
sympathetic relation between him and them. He conformed to their ways,
borrowed their rhetoric, flattered them on occasion with great
address, and yet constantly maintained towards them an attitude of
paternal superiority. When they were concerned, his native haughtiness
always took a form which commanded respect without exciting anger. He
would not address them as _brothers,_ but only as _children_; and even
the Iroquois, arrogant as they were, accepted the new relation. In
their eyes Frontenac was by far the greatest of all the "Onontios," or
governors of Canada. They admired the prompt and fiery soldier who
played with their children, and gave beads and trinkets to their
wives; who read their secret thoughts and never feared them, but
smiled on them when their hearts were true, or frowned and threatened
them when they did amiss. The other tribes, allies of the French, were
of the same mind; and their respect for their Great Father seems not
to have been permanently impaired by his occasional practice of
bullying them for purposes of extortion. Frontenac appears to have had
a liking not only for Indians, but also for that roving and lawless
class of the Canadian population, the _coureurs de bois_, provided
always that they were not in the service of his rivals. Indeed, as
regards the Canadians generally, he refrained from the strictures with
which succeeding governors and intendants freely interlarded their
despatches. It was not his instinct to clash with the humbler classes,
and he generally reserved his anger for those who could retort it. He
had the air of distinction natural to a man familiar all his life with
the society of courts, and he was as gracious and winning on some
occasions as he was unbearable on others. When in good humor, his
ready wit and a certain sympathetic vivacity made him very agreeable.
At times he was all sunshine, and his outrageous temper slumbered
peacefully till some new offence wakened it again; nor is there much
doubt that many of his worst outbreaks were the work of his enemies,
who knew his foible, and studied to exasperate him. He was full of
contradictions; and, intolerant and implacable, as he often was, there
were intervals, even in his bitterest quarrels, in which he displayed
a surprising moderation and patience. By fits he could be magnanimous.
A woman once brought him a petition in burlesque verse. Frontenac
wrote a jocose answer. The woman, to ridicule him, contrived to have
both petition and answer slipped among the papers of a suit pending
before the council. Frontenac had her fined a few francs, and then
caused the money to be given to her children. [Footnote: Note by Abbé
Verreau, in _Journal de l'Instruction Publique_ (Canada), VIII. 127.]

When he sailed for France, it was a day of rejoicing to more than half
the merchants of Canada, and, excepting the Récollets, to all the
priests; but he left behind him an impression, very general among the
people, that, if danger threatened the colony, Count Frontenac was the
man for the hour.




CHAPTER V.

1682-1684.

LE FEBVRE DE LA BARRE.

HIS ARRIVAL AT QUEBEC.--THE GREAT FIRE.--A COMING STORM.--IROQUOIS
POLICY.--THE DANGER IMMINENT.--INDIAN ALLIES OF HIS PAST LIFE.--HIS
SPECULATIONS.--HE TAKES ALARM.--HIS DEALINGS WITH THE IROQUOIS.--HIS
ILLEGAL TRADE.--HIS COLLEAGUE DENOUNCES HIM.--FRUITS OF HIS
SCHEMES.--HIS ANGER AND HIS FEARS.


When the new governor, La Barre, and the new intendant, Meules,
arrived at Quebec, a dismal greeting waited them. All the Lower Town
was in ashes, except the house of the merchant Aubert de la Chesnaye,
standing alone amid the wreck. On a Tuesday, the fourth of August, at
ten o'clock in the evening, the nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu were roused
from their early slumbers by shouts, outcries, and the ringing of
bells; "and," writes one of them, "what was our terror to find it as
light as noonday, the flames burned so fiercely and rose so high."
Half an hour before, Chartier de Lotbinière, judge of the king's
court, heard the first alarm, ran down the descent now called Mountain
Street, and found every thing in confusion in the town below. The
house of Etienne Planchon was in a blaze; the fire was spreading to
those of his neighbors, and had just leaped the narrow street to the
storehouse of the Jesuits. The season was excessively dry; there were
no means of throwing water except kettles and buckets, and the crowd
was bewildered with excitement and fright. Men were ordered to tear
off roofs and pull down houses; but the flames drove them from their
work, and at four o'clock in the morning fifty-five buildings were
burnt to the ground. They were all of wood, but many of them were
storehouses filled with goods; and the property consumed was more in
value than all that remained in Canada. [Footnote: Chartier de
Lotbiniere, _Procès-verbal sur l'Incendie de la Basse Ville; Meules au
Ministre,_ 6 _Oct.,_ 1682; Juchereau, _Histoire de l'Hôtel-Dieu de
Québec,_ 256.]

Under these gloomy auspices, Le Febvre de la Barre began his reign. He
was an old officer who had achieved notable exploits against the
English in the West Indies, but who was now to be put to a test far
more severe. He made his lodging in the château; while his colleague,
Meules, could hardly find a shelter. The buildings of the Upper Town
were filled with those whom the fire had made roofless, and the
intendant was obliged to content himself with a house in the
neighboring woods. Here he was ill at ease, for he dreaded an Indian
war and the scalping-knives of the Iroquois. [Footnote: _Meules au
Ministre,_ 6 _Oct.,_ 1682.]

So far as his own safety was concerned, his alarm was needless; but
not so as regarded the colony with whose affairs he was charged. For
those who had eyes to see it, a terror and a woe lowered in the future
of Canada. In an evil hour for her, the Iroquois had conquered their
southern neighbors, the Andastes, who had long held their ground
against them, and at one time threatened them with ruin. The hands of
the confederates were now free; their arrogance was redoubled by
victory, and, having long before destroyed all the adjacent tribes on
the north and west, [Footnote: Jesuits in North America.] they looked
for fresh victims in the wilderness beyond. Their most easterly tribe,
the Mohawks, had not forgotten the chastisement they had received from
Tracy and Courcelle. They had learned to fear the French, and were
cautious in offending them; but it was not so with the remoter
Iroquois. Of these, the Senecas at the western end of the "Long
House," as they called their fivefold league, were by far the most
powerful, for they could muster as many warriors as all the four
remaining tribes together; and they now sought to draw the confederacy
into a series of wars, which, though not directed against the French,
threatened soon to involve them. Their first movement westward was
against the tribes of the Illinois. I have already described their
bloody inroad in the summer of 1680. [Footnote: Discovery of the Great
West.] They made the valley of the Illinois a desert, and returned
with several hundred prisoners, of whom they burned those that were
useless, and incorporated the young and strong into their own tribe.
This movement of the western Iroquois had a double incentive, their
love of fighting and their love of gain. It was a war of conquest and
of trade. All the five tribes of the league had become dependent on
the English and Dutch of Albany for guns, powder, lead, brandy, and
many other things that they had learned to regard as necessities.
Beaver skins alone could buy them, but to the Iroquois the supply of
beaver skins was limited. The regions of the west and north-west, the
upper Mississippi with its tributaries, and, above all, the forests of
the upper lakes, were occupied by tribes in the interest of the
French, whose missionaries and explorers had been the first to visit
them, and whose traders controlled their immense annual product of
furs. La Salle, by his newly built fort of St. Louis, engrossed the
trade of the Illinois and Miami tribes; while the Hurons and Ottawas,
gathered about the old mission of Michillimackinac, acted as factors
for the Sioux, the Winnebagoes, and many other remote hordes. Every
summer they brought down their accumulated beaver skins to the fair at
Montreal; while French bush-rangers roving through the wilderness,
with or without licenses, collected many more. [Footnote: Duchesneau,
_Memoir on Western Indians in N. Y. Colonial Docs.,_ IX. 160.]

It was the purpose of the Iroquois to master all this traffic, conquer
the tribes who had possession of it, and divert the entire supply of
furs to themselves, and through themselves to the English and Dutch.
That English and Dutch traders urged them on is affirmed by the
French, and is very likely. The accomplishment of the scheme would
have ruined Canada. Moreover, the Illinois, the Hurons, the Ottawas,
and all the other tribes threatened by the Iroquois, were the allies
and "children" of the French, who in honor as in interest were bound
to protect them. Hence, when the Seneca invasion of the Illinois
became known, there was deep anxiety in the colony, except only among
those in whom hatred of the monopolist La Salle had overborne every
consideration of the public good. La Salle's new establishment of St.
Louis was in the path of the invaders; and, if he could be crushed,
there was wherewith to console his enemies for all else that might
ensue.

Bad as was the posture of affairs, it was made far worse by an
incident that took place soon after the invasion of the Illinois. A
Seneca chief engaged in it, who had left the main body of his
countrymen, was captured by a party of Winnebagoes to serve as a
hostage for some of their tribe whom the Senecas had lately seized.
They carried him to Michillimackinac, where there chanced to be a
number of Illinois, married to Indian women of that neighborhood. A
quarrel ensued between them and the Seneca, whom they stabbed to death
in a lodge of the Kiskakons, one of the tribes of the Ottawas. Here
was a _casus belli_ likely to precipitate a war fatal to all the
tribes about Michillimackinac, and equally fatal to the trade of
Canada. Frontenac set himself to conjure the rising storm, and sent a
messenger to the Iroquois to invite them to a conference.

He found them unusually arrogant. Instead of coming to him, they
demanded that he should come to them, and many of the French wished
him to comply; but Frontenac refused, on the ground that such a
concession would add to their insolence, and he declined to go farther
than Montreal, or at the utmost Fort Frontenac, the usual place of
meeting with them. Early in August he was at Montreal, expecting the
arrival of the Ottawas and Hurons on their yearly descent from the
lakes. They soon appeared, and he called them to a solemn council.
Terror had seized them all. "Father, take pity on us," said the Ottawa
orator, "for we are like dead men." A Huron chief, named the Rat,
declared that the world was turned upside down, and implored the
protection of Onontio, "who is master of the whole earth." These
tribes were far from harmony among themselves. Each was jealous of the
other, and the Ottawas charged the Hurons with trying to make favor
with the common enemy at their expense. Frontenac told them that they
were all his children alike, and advised them to live together as
brothers, and make treaties of alliance with all the tribes of the
lakes. At the same time, he urged them to make full atonement for the
death of the Seneca murdered in their country, and carefully to
refrain from any new offence.

Soon after there was another arrival. La Forêt, the officer in command
at Fort Frontenac, appeared, bringing with him a famous Iroquois chief
called Decanisora or Tegannisorens, attended by a number of warriors.
They came to invite Frontenac to meet the deputies of the five tribes
at Oswego, within their own limits. Frontenac's reply was
characteristic. "It is for the father to tell the children where to
hold council, not for the children to tell the father. Fort Frontenac
is the proper place, and you should thank me for going so far every
summer to meet you." The Iroquois had expressed pacific intentions
towards the Hurons and Ottawas. For this Frontenac commended him, but
added: "The Illinois also are children of Onontio, and hence brethren
of the Iroquois. Therefore they, too, should be left in peace; for
Onontio wishes that all his family should live together in union." He
confirmed his words with a huge belt of wampum. Then, addressing the
flattered deputy as a great chief, he desired him to use his influence
in behalf of peace, and gave him a jacket and a silk cravat, both
trimmed with gold, a hat, a scarlet ribbon, and a gun, with beads for
his wife, and red cloth for his daughter. The Iroquois went home
delighted. [Footnote: For the papers on this affair, see _N. Y.
Colonial Docs_., IX.]

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