1666-1672

COLONIZATION AND POPULATION

ENCOURAGEMENT OF MARRIAGE—BACHELORS TAXED—"FILLES DU ROI"—DOWRIES—PENSIONS FOR LARGE FAMILIES—MONTREAL HEALTHY FOR WOMEN—NOTE ON IMMIGRATION.

One of the outstanding failures in New France so far had been that of inadequate attempts to increase the number of colonists. This the king was now anxious to remedy. To this end, when the war was over, through the efforts of Colbert and Talon and before Tracy had left with his glittering train, he offered inducements to the Carignan soldiers to remain as colonists and to take up land. To each such concessions of land were granted with a bonus of 100 livres, or fifty livres and provisions for one year. The sergeants would receive a year's provisions and one hundred to one hundred and fifty livres. Thus 400 of the Carignan regiment remained to swell the population.

To increase this number six infantry companies of fifty-three men each were sent back in 1669. To each of the six captains he gave a bonus of 1,000 livres, with another 6,000 to be divided among the lieutenants and ensigns. This military colonization largely influenced the future of Canada.

To encourage permanent settlement efforts were now redoubled to provide wives for the men. In 1665, 100 girls were sent over. In 1666, twice as many; in 1667, and 1668, still more; in 1669, 150 and the same in 1670. An ordinance published in Montreal November 30, 1670, shows the efforts of the government to promote match-making—all volontaires and others not married being forbidden the privilege of hunting, fishing and trading with the savages [100] and even of entering the bush under any pretext whatever, the latter prohibition probably being intended to prevent a bachelor finding a temporary Indian substitute for a French wife. Bachelors had a hard time. Colbert, writing to Talon on February 20, 1668, says: "It will be appropriate that those, who seem to have renounced wedlock, shall have to bear additional charges and to be deprived of all honours and even to have some marks of infamy added to them."

To press the execution of these commands, all those soldiers and unattached workers not having taken up land, were ordered to marry within fifteen days of the arrival of the ships bearing the girls. Thus, Marie de l'Incarnation tells us, in 1669, that no sooner are the vessels arrived than the young men go wife hunting, and marriages are celebrated thirty at a time.

Among the children of those already settled, early marriages were encouraged. "I pray you," wrote Colbert to Talon on February 20, 1668, "to command it to the consideration of the whole people that their property, their subsistence, and all that is dear to them, depend on a general resolution, never to be departed from, to marry youths at eighteen or nineteen years, and girls at fourteen or fifteen; since abundance can never come to them except through the abundance of men." And for this purpose the "king's present" of twenty livres to each of the contracting parties was given. Fathers of families, according to the decrees of the state council of this period, who did not marry their boys and girls when they had reached the ages of twenty-one and sixteen were fined, and following this up, they had to appear every six months after before the clerk of the court to give reason for further delays under penalty of fines to be made applicable to the hospitals.

We have already given indication of the extreme care that had been exercised at Montreal in the reception of such prospective mothers of the colony; how Marguerite Bourgeoys had herself brought over on her different voyages girls of noted virtue, whom she trained to become good housewives, and for many she found eligible partners in life.

At Quebec a similar work was carried on, by a Madame Bourdon, with motherly skill and devotion. If she was not as successful as Marguerite Bourgeoys this was not surprising, since the latter was singularly endowed by nature for such a task.

These girls were chaperoned, across the ocean, by the nuns or pious persons, or by Madame Bourdon herself, and then placed under her charge until marriage. We find an item of expense for 1671 paid by the king to a Demoiselle Etienne for the care she had taken in taking girls from the general hospital to Canada and in looking after them till they were married. These were received by Madame Bourdon.

Human nature, being very much the same then as now, we can imagine that some of these girls, drawn from the orphanages of Paris and Lyons, and carefully trained by the nuns, were rude and difficult to handle, but on the whole the venture was a great success. There was, of course, as Marie de l'Incarnation says, in 1668, "mixed goods," and in 1689, "along with honest people a great deal of 'canaille,' of both sexes who cause a great deal of scandal."

But such care was taken from the very beginning of colonization, since New France was viewed in the nature of a mission field, only to send persons of good repute and to deport undesirables, that French Canadians have no need to blush at their parentage. The families descending from the Carignan soldiers may point with pride to their origins. A caustic writer, La Hontan, writing twenty years after, by his amusing, witty, and scurrilous descriptions of the matrimonial market of this period, has done much to slander these early marriages, but he is discredited, and his version is regarded as a caricature and maliciously untrue, as Parkman points out.

These girls were called "les filles du roi," since they were maintained at the charge of the king's bounty in the philanthropic orphanages of France. At Montreal, under Marguerite Bourgeoys, they were lodged with her in a house bought by Saint Ange, since the old stable was too small. There, they were carefully instructed in religion and practical affairs to become good mothers of families, and they did not leave her till the day of their marriages. At this time, a pious congregation of lay women was formed by Marguerite Bourgeoys; these met on Sundays for the practice of virtue and many of the newly arrived girls were kept in touch with the gentle and motherly Marguerite, long after their marriages. It was from this date that her home began to be affectionately spoken of as "The Congregation."

In addition to girls of a humble class, demoiselles of a more superior station were also encouraged to come to provide wives for the officers and others, of whom Colbert wished to form the nucleus of a Canadian noblesse. Several others, who first thought of passing through the noviceship at the HÔtel-Dieu and joining the HospitaliÈres Sisters, found their vocation otherwise, like Perrine de BÉlestre, sister of PicotÉ, who married Michel Godefroy, Sieur de Linlot, at Three Rivers.

When the king's daughters married, they were given the king's dowry, varying in form and value. Sometimes it was a house with provisions for eight months, more often, fifty livres in household supplies, besides a barrel or two of salted meat. [101] And when they were married they were encouraged to rear up a fruitful progeny, for in the "Edits et Ordonnances" of the Province of Quebec, p. 67, a decree is found that "in future all inhabitants of the said country of Canada, who shall have living children to the number of ten, born in lawful wedlock, not being priests, monks or nuns, shall each be paid out of the moneys sent by His Majesty to the said country a pension of 300 livres a year, and those who shall have twelve children a pension of 400 livres; and that to this effect they shall be required to declare the number of their children every year, in the months of June or July, to the intendant of justice, police and finance, established in the same country, who having verified the same, shall order the payment of the said pensions, one-half in cash, and the other half at the end of eight years." Furthermore, he ordered that fathers of large families should have preference over others unless there was strong contrary reason. The decreasing birth rate in France at that period prompted such regulations in New France. The king's activity through Colbert in peopling his colony is seen in numerous letters to his officials. In an instruction to the Intendant Bouteroue in 1668 Colbert writes: "The end and rule of all your conduct should be the increase of the colony; and on this point I should never be satisfied, but labour without ceasing to find every imaginable expedient for preserving the inhabitants, attracting new ones and multiplying marriages."

These encouragements bore fruit. Laval, writing in 1668, says: "The families of our French people in this country are very numerous; for the most part they consist of eight, ten, twelve, and sometimes as many as fifteen or sixteen children. The savages, on the contrary, have only two or three and rarely do they go beyond four."

The AbbÉ de Queylus, now superior of the seminary at Montreal, wrote to Colbert on May 15, 1669, that owing to the efforts of the king "the number of the inhabitants of New France has increased two-thirds."

The population propaganda at Montreal was left largely to the seigneurs of the seminary. In 1666, there were 582 persons; in 1667, there were 766; in 1672, the population was doubled to 1,500 or 1,600 souls, as Dollier de Casson relates in his account of this year, which is the concluding chapter of his "History of Montreal."

We may fitly conclude this chapter by giving two of the worthy Dollier's reflections:

"First reflection, on the advantage that the women have in this place (Montreal) over men, which is, that although the cold climate is very healthy for the one and the other sex, it is incomparably to the advantage of the feminine, which finds itself here almost immortal—this is what everyone says since the birth of this settlement and what I myself have remarked for six years, for although there are fourteen to fifteen thousand souls here, there has only been the death of one woman for the last six years."

"The second reflection will be on the facility which people of this sex have of marrying here, a fact which is apparently clear to all the world since it is practiced every year, but which is admirably shown by an example I am going to tell you of one qui sera assez rare. It is of a woman who, having this year lost her husband, has had one of the bans published, and being dispensed of the two others had her marriage performed and consummated before her first husband was buried. These two reflections in my opinion will be sufficiently strong to thin out the HÔpital de la PitiÉ and to secure a good party of girls from all the Paris orphanages if only they are desirous, to live long, or to cultivate a devotion to the seventh of our sacraments."

NOTE

IMMIGRATION—1665-1670

The Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, which had been granted the domain of New France from May 16, 1664, one year after the forced retirement of the Hundred Associates, brought over on the king's account, in 1665,[3] 429 men and 100 women and girls; in 1667,[3] 184 men and 92 women and girls; and in 1668, [102] 244 of both sexes.

In addition, during the above period 422 officers and soldiers of Carignan regiment were established in the colony. In 1666 the company sent out on its own account 35 hired men (engagÉs); in 1669,[4] 200 men and 150 women; in 1670,[4] 100 men and 100 women; in 1671,[103] 100 men and 150 women; in 1672, the war in Holland stopped the movement.

In 1670 there came five companies of fifty men each, making with their officers an effective force of 266. Thus for the first period we have sent at the king's account about one thousand four hundred persons, and for the second 1,116 about two thousand five hundred and sixteen in all. But there was a certain number of others who came to find a position, or were brought over by the owners of fiefs or by the seigneurs of Montreal.

Talon encouraged marriages so that with the establishments of the officers and the soldiers, joined to the activity of the emigration movement from 1665 to 1668, the families had more than doubled their numbers, and the population was also almost doubled during this period.

In 1665 the first census under Talon shows, at the commencement of 1666, 3,215 souls and 533 families; at the commencement of 1668, 6,282 souls and 1,132 families.

Yet the official report of Frontenac in 1673 after the departure of Talon gave only a population of 6,705. This seems incredible and Colbert expressed surprise. From 1669 to 1672 the king had sent over 820 persons without counting the soldiers arriving in 1670. Add to this the material increase, the six to seven hundred births of 1671 and those of 1672, estimated in advance by Laval at 1,100, and it is difficult to admit that the population had only increased by 423 souls from 1668 to 1673. The census of 1675 gives 7,833. This is more reasonable and leads to the conclusion that the returns of 1673 were too small.

The population of Montreal, according to Morin "Le Vieux Montreal," was as follows: 1642, 72; 1650, 196; 1660, 472; 1665, 525; 1667, 760; 1662, 830; 1680, 1,400; 1690, 1,567; 1700, 2,100; 1710, 3,492; 1720, 5,314; 1730, 6,351; 1740, 7,710; 1750, 8,224; 1760, 8,321.

[100] FranÇois Le Noir was summoned before the judge at Montreal in December, 1670, for breaking this ordinance.