1667-1672

EXPEDITIONS FROM MONTREAL

LA SALLE—DOLLIER DE CASSON—DE COURCELLES

A FEUDAL VILLAGE AND ITS YOUNG SEIGNEUR—LA SALLE'S JESUIT TRAINING—AN EX-JESUIT—THE SEIGNEURY OF ST. SULPICE—SOLD—THE FEVER FOR EXPLORATION—LA SALLE, DOLLIER DE CASSON AND GALINEE—SOLDIER OUTRAGES ON INDIANS—THE EXPEDITION TO LAKES ERIE AND ONTARIO—LA SALLE RETURNS—HIS SEIGNEURY NICKNAMED "LA CHINE"—THE SULPICIANS TAKE POSSESSION OF LAKE ERIE FOR LOUIS XIV—RETURN TO MONTREAL—DE GALINEE'S MAP—THE SUBSEQUENT EXPEDITION OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL, DE COURCELLES.

One of the feudal villages rising at this period was that now known as Lachine. Its original name was St. Sulpice. It was granted provisionally in 1667 as a fief to RenÉ Robert Cavelier de La Salle, a brother of M. Jean Cavelier, a young doctor in theology and a Sulpician who had joined the seminary at Montreal on September 7, 1666.

La Salle, as the former is known to us, became afterwards the celebrated discoverer of the Mississippi down to the sea and as a Montrealer deserves special notice here.

He was born at Rouen, November 21, 1643, and was educated at the Jesuit College there. In his fifteenth year he entered the Jesuit noviceship, on October 5, 1658. During the two years of noviceship, the pÈre maÎtre, or novice master, had a difficult task to train the impetuous, vigorous, impressionable, headstrong, exuberant, healthy youth of fifteen, to the calm regularity of obedience, and the soldierly, intellectual routine demanded by the Jesuit traditions; but it is just this type of strong character, so powerful for good, if brought under wise subjection, that the Jesuits love to mould; and so the young man was allowed to take the simple vows of Evangelical Poverty, Chastity and Obedience on October 10, 1660. The next two years he spent as a Jesuit scholastic at the Royal College of La FlÈche studying philosophy and the physical sciences, showing ability in the latter courses. Instead of finishing the third year, the restless young man went out to teach as a Jesuit professor at AlenÇon for a year. He then resumed his delayed third year. From October, 1664, to October, 1665, he taught at Tours, and from 1665 to 1668 at Blois. In the September of 1666 he returned to La FlÈche to study theology. He was then only twenty-three years of age, and had been promoted to the theology course seven or eight years ahead of the usual Jesuit course, because his inability to stay long in any one place and his want of success in a humdrum professorship for which he had no taste, and which was irritating to him and his students, forced his superiors to allow him to hurry through his studies, thinking doubtless that this ardent spirit might find congenial work in the distant mission fields with every facility for exercising his fiery zeal, with less restraint, and under less conventional circumstances than in France.

This resolution was brought about by Cavelier's own insistency in demanding immediately the foreign missions, in a letter of April 5th, written from Blois, to the general of the Jesuits, Jean Paul Oliva. The general on May 4, 1666, answered temporizingly to the young man, advising him to continue his studies and prepare himself usefully for the sacred ministry, and in the meantime maintain that most "perfect indifference," which is one of the most striking characteristics of the Jesuit philosophical training and has been subjected to so much criticism of praise or blame. To this Cavelier replied that he had still the same desire, but the general wrote that he could give no different reply. To understand Cavelier's nature he is described in the Jesuit informations of the time as "inquietus" and "scrupulosus," which words are very nearly English. Hardly had the theological studies at La FlÈche commenced than he wrote to the general, on December 1, 1666, asking to be sent to Portugal for his studies. No doubt the restless Cavelier was undergoing a nervous strain of scrupulosity and doubt as to his fitness for religious and priestly life, and he thought that he could find peace of mind again in a change of scene. The general replied kindly, bidding him remain quietly in his own "Province," to conclude his studies, and after the third year of probational novitiate, which all Jesuits undergo after being ordained and before taking their final "solemn" vows, his zealous desire for the foreign missions would be satisfied.

This answer brought to a head Cavelier's doubts as to his fitness for the calmer repose of a studious life. On the one hand there were holding him his three simple vows, not lightly to be laid down, and to which he had been doubtless substantially faithful; on the other, he felt that his natural character was impelling him to a freer life than that of restrained self-sacrifice he had honourably tried to follow up. So that making use of the privilege of a Jesuit scholastic, not irrevocably bound to the Society till the taking of the last vows, and after laying his conscience open to his superior and not "hiding his moral infirmities," and probably exaggerating them, he applied, canonically, for his letters of release. By January 28th, in the year following, the final application was sent to Rome by the Jesuit rector of La FlÈche, and on March 1st, the general, Jean Paul Oliva, wrote to the Jesuit provincial of France: "After a serious examination of the informations which you have sent us, we authorize you to accept the resignation of Robert Ignatius Cavelier, approved scholastic." Ignatius was a name taken by Cavelier on taking his simple vows in 1660 in admiration of Ignatius Loyola, the soldier saint and founder of the Society of Jesus.

Robert Ignatius Cavelier left the College of La FlÈche on March 28, 1667, an ex-Jesuit. Before his final letters of freedom were given him he received a kind letter from the general, in which he was told that the French provincial had been instructed by him "to absolve you from your vows and set you free." He added in Latin, "But do you, dearest brother, wheresoever and in whatever state you shall find yourself, be ever mindful of the state from which you have gone forth, and attend to the rock from which you have been hewed, and although you may be separated from us in time and place, strive always to be in heart with us and to live in Christ with us. May His grace be always with you!" (Archives General S. J.) Cf. Rochemonteix "Les JÉsuites et la Nouvelle France."

Circumstances in later life separated him largely from intercourse with the Jesuits, as his career took him across the Sulpicians and the Recollects.

Cavelier de La Salle is free! Where will he turn his steps? He has no position and very little of a fortune, for on becoming a Jesuit he had yielded up his inheritance to others of his family. Canada calls him, for his brother FranÇois, the priest, had gone there in the September of 1666. Canada, therefore, had doubtless been luring him during his late mental struggles at La FlÈche, and the summer of 1667 found the ex-Jesuit with his brother, the Sulpician, at Montreal.

The AbbÉ de Queylus received the young man of twenty-four years kindly, and doubtless for his brother's sake gave him a "fief noble" of great extent opposite the Sault St. Louis. To encourage him to make good, the title was not given in writing to him till January 9, 1669, when he paid a medal of fine gold, which was to be repaid to the Seminary at every subsequent change of seigneur.

The adventurous Sieur de La Salle set whole-heartedly to work in his new vocation. He gratefully called the seigneury "St. Sulpice" and, commencing the clearing of the land, he mapped out the borders of his future village and subdivided his land as grants to his feudal tenants in lots of sixty arpents, with half an arpent in the village itself. He relieved them of any seigneurial dues till the year 1671, provided they had built their homes by the feast of St. John, 1669. He gave them the right of hunting on their lands and of fishing in front. He took off 200 arpents of land from his fief towards Lake St. Peter for a "common," whereon each could feed his beasts at a feudal fine of five sous a year, while he reserved 400 arpents for his seigneurial manor. This, however, he sold in 1670, when the passion for travel and discovery seized him, as shall be later described.

We have ventured to give the romantic details of the history of one of the early seigneurs because they illustrate the adventuresome period and also because many of these facts surrounding the life of La Salle were not generally known, even by many of the leading historians of Canada. They will help as a key to explain the temperament and character of the celebrated discoverer, in his Canadian life, his enterprises and his misfortunes, his extreme need of movement, his uncertainty, his passion for travel, his reputation for learning, and also his active and ardent faith deepened by his Jesuit training.

His robust health and his commanding figure were of powerful avail to him in his adventurous tasks. The generous blood of Normandy flowed freely in his veins and, like his countrymen, he was active, intelligent, industrious, resourceful and self-regarding. He made a better pioneer than a patient, plodding land owner, as we shall see, and the defects of an untractable youth made the success of the man as an explorer.

We left the young La Salle organizing his seigneury, but before long he is to be found, gun on his shoulder and knapsack on his back, traversing the woods and in his canoe exploring all the rivers and lakes around the neighbourhood. Trading his merchandise for beaver skins with the Indians and coming in contact with the coureurs de bois, he learns the directions of the rivers and the products of the countries through which they pass, and soon there seizes him the great desire to discover the long-sought-for northwest passage to China and Japan and thus to open out a fruitful field for commerce for France, and glory and fortune for himself.

During the autumn of 1668 some Seneca (Tsonnontouan) Indians stopped at St. Sulpice and from them he learned that the river he called the Ohio entered into the Mississippi, which emptied its waters into the "River of the Sault," which he thought to be the Pacific. [104] With the aid of these he started to master the Iroquois language.

Meanwhile, a similar idea of exploring and evangelizing the Shawnee district had presented itself to Dollier de Casson who was now at Quebec, making arrangements with M. de Queylus for his departure.

Dollier had spent the winter of 1668 in the woods with the Indians at Lake Nipissing, learning an Algonquin dialect from a Nipissing chief named Nitaukyk. This latter had a Shawnee slave who, on a visit to Montreal, so enthused Queylus, that he sent a letter back by the slave, telling M. de Casson of his desire to convert the Shawnee people who seemed to provide special aptitude for Christianity, and offering this mission to the zealous Dollier, who hastened to his superior at once and thence to Quebec.

To raise the money for La Salle's expedition the seigneurs bought back a great part of his land for 1,000 livres, payable in merchandise to arrive by the vessels at Quebec. But he still wished to retain his seigneurial domain of 400 arpents. Indeed on January 11th he received the written titles of these from the seminary.

But on February 9th, following, La Salle, still in need of funds, sold his seigneurial domain for 2,800 livres to Jean Milot—a very good bargain considering that he had been granted it for very little, and that the documents of the transaction reveal that he had only cleared nine or ten arpents; and that, on the other part, the wood had only been felled, and not logged, and buildings had only been commenced. [105] Then he set out to Quebec to interest M. de Courcelles, the governor, in his project and to obtain all the necessary passports and authorizations to range the woods and lakes.

De Courcelles warmly approved of his enthusiasm, seeing glory for his own administration at no cost to himself, and he even allowed soldiers to quit their companies and join La Salle. He also persuaded Dollier de Casson, then in Quebec, consulting de Queylus on the Shawnee mission, to combine with La Salle's expedition, thus giving it a certain governmental Éclat and public importance. Dollier de Casson received his letters from Laval on May 15, 1669. On returning to Montreal, preparations were made for departure. La Salle engaged four canoes and fourteen men, among whom was the Sieur Thoulonnier and the surgeon, La RoussilliÈre. To meet additional expenses he had to sell another piece of land above St. Sulpice to Jacques Leber, for 600 livres tournois, on July 6, 1669, the day of departure.

De Casson had three canoes and seven men, and with them M. de GalinÉe, a Sulpician deacon, an astronomer and mathematician, who joined only three days before the departure. They took a Hollander to interpret the Iroquois language.

Before leaving Montreal the party witnessed the execution of three French soldiers of the Carignan Regiment, who were put to death for the assassination, near Point Claire on Lake St. Louis, of an Iroquois chief of the Senecas (Tsonnontouans). On the eve of this date it was found out, by a confession to La Salle, that three other Frenchmen had committed, near Montreal, on the River Mascouche, a more atrocious assassination of six Oneida Iroquois (Onneiouts), three of whom were a woman and two children. Yet the bodies were never found, so this remains a mystery. Rewards were offered for the capture of the prisoners, but they were never taken. Both of these horrible slaughters had been caused by a desire of seizing the peltry belonging to the Indians. Such treachery was likely to rekindle war with the natives. On this occasion, therefore, M. de Courcelles came up to conciliate the assembled Indians and to assure them, by presents, of the governmental displeasure at these acts. Under these critical and dangerous circumstances, the expedition of seven canoes containing twenty-two Frenchmen and guided by two other canoes of those Tsonnontouans who had lived with La Salle, left Montreal.

They made their way to the great village of Tsonnontouan and stayed there a month, trembling in fear of their lives, for the chief, lately murdered at Montreal, came from this place. Added to this one of those drunken bouts, the results of the liquor traffic, seized the inhabitants and threatened the Europeans' safety. While here Dollier de Casson, worn out by the unaccustomed hardships of the journey, fell into a great fever and was near his end, but happily recovering, the explorers left and arrived at a river whose cataracts marked the descent of the waters of Lake Erie into those of Lake Ontario.

Five days' journey brought them to the other side of Lake Ontario. While here a fever also fell upon La Salle which in a few days imperilled his life. On September 22d, they journeyed again and on the 24th reached a village named Tenaoutoua, where they met the explorer, Joliet, arrived there the evening before. He had previously set out from Montreal with canoes and merchandise, under instructions from M. de Courcelles, to seek the whereabouts of a copper mine said to be situated on Lake Superior. Finding the winter coming on, he had relinquished this project and was about to return to Montreal. He gave a description of the places he had visited and GalinÉe, the Sulpician geographer, entered them on his map.

La Salle now determined that he also would return to Montreal, urging for excuse the state of his health and the inexperience of his men to stand a winter in the woods, where they were likely to perish of hunger. But the missionary party was firm in its resolution to proceed to the Mississippi Indians. Thus it was that some of La Salle's party arrived the autumn of 1669 in Montreal alone. Whether La Salle returned with them is doubted, for his traces for two years are hard to follow. The failure of his expedition to discover La Chine was commemorated in derision by the wags of Montreal who henceforth dubbed his seigneury of St. Sulpice, as that of "La Chine." Such it soon began to be named, even in the official documents, as for example one of June 10, 1670, "this place La Chine, so called." So La Chine it has remained to this day.

Meanwhile the Montreal missionaries, after leaving Tenaoutoua on October 1, 1669, arrived, the 13th or 14th, on the banks of Lake Erie, which seemed to them like a great sea lashed and tossed by the tempestuous winds. At the mouth of a pleasant river, after three days they built their cabin and there they remained for fifteen days, till the fierce lake winds drove them to a more sheltered place in the woods, about a quarter of a league away, on a bank of a stream. There they reconstructed their cabin, but more strongly, and wintered for five months and eleven days.

When spring came, they determined to push on to the Mississippi Indians, but before doing so, an event is to be chronicled in the history of discovery, from Montreal. On March 23d, on Passion Sunday, descending to the banks of Lake Erie, the explorers took possession of the country in the name of Louis XIV.

The following procÈs verbal, then drawn up and preserved in the marine archives of France, fully explains the picturesque ceremony:

On the 26th of March they proceeded further on their journey, but in Easter week, having halted by the side of Lake Erie, and drawn some of their canoes onto the land, leaving others on the sandy shore near the water's edge, wearied out with fatigue after a day's journey of twenty leagues, the party fell asleep. A great wind arose and heaped up the waters so that the awakened sleepers had difficulty in rescuing their canoes. One they utterly lost, as well as apparel and chapel accoutrements. A barrel of gunpowder floating on the waves was saved but the ammunition was lost. This disaster made them resolve to turn back to Montreal.

They chose for their return voyage the route passing by the mission of Sault Ste. Marie. On their way, after 100 leagues' navigation, they destroyed a rude Indian idol, and after entering Lake Huron arrived on May 25th at Sault Ste. Marie Fort, where they were joyously received by the Jesuits, Dablon and Marquette, with the little colony of twenty to twenty-five Frenchmen.

Thence they started on May 28th, with a guide from the fort, and after a strenuous journey of twenty-two days reached Montreal on June 18, 1670.

M. de GalinÉe on his return made a corrected copy of his map, which he sent to M. Talon, with a copy of the "prise de possession," already described, and these were of great use later, to the French government, which sent them to London in 1687 as evidences of the pretensions which the French claimed over Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the neighbouring countries.

Dollier de Casson wrote a history of this voyage but no copy has been found. Though the journey was unsuccessful in the conversion of the Indians, yet it paved the way to succeeding explorations which were quickly sent by Talon, and to the eventual evangelization of these parts.

Of La Salle's experience, after leaving the Sulpicians, we have little to record, as he was lost to civilization; but we see him coming back at intervals to Montreal as his base to obtain supplies for his explorations. On the 6th of August, 1671, he received on credit "in his great need and necessity" from the hands of Migeon de Branssat, procureur fiscal of Ville Marie, merchandise to the sum of 454 livres tournois. Again on December 18, 1672, being in Montreal, there is an "obligation" recorded at the city greffe of a promise to pay, on the August following, the same sum in peltry or money, either at the house of Jacques Leber, where he lived, or at Rouen at the house of his relative, M. Nicholas CrevÊt, king's councillor and master of accounts.

Montreal, being at the head of navigation, became the starting point of many subsequent expeditions. We may add here the expedition of Governor General de Courcelles to Lake Ontario, which left Montreal on June 2, 1671. The object of the voyage was to conciliate the Indians who had made peace but who were in danger of breaking it, irritated as they had been by such breaches of faith as that related to have recently occurred at Montreal, by the brutal assassinations, and to show them by a dignified appearance among them not, in canoe, but "en bateau" that their waters were not inaccessible, and that the French knew how to punish and keep them in check. Another motive was to explore the lands bordering on Lake Ontario with the view of establishing a fort and colony and of diverting the peltry trade into French instead of English hands, and of claiming those lands for the French.

Accordingly de Courcelles arrived at Montreal with a specially constructed bateau of two or three tons under the management of Sergeant Champagne and eight other soldiers. The governor's daring expedition was joined at Montreal by M. Perrot, the local governor of Montreal; M. de Varennes, that of Three Rivers; Charles Le Moyne, M. de Laubia, M. de La ValliÈre, M. de Normanville and several others, as a mark of esteem for the governor; finally the genial Dollier de Casson as chaplain. It is from him that we have the history of the expedition.

The party of fifty-two went by road to La Chine and embarked above St. Louis Rapids on the governor's barque and thirteen birch bark canoes. On June 12th it reached the mouth of Lake Ontario. On the way a party of Iroquois had been met and impressed with fear and respect. These were now sent with letters to the missionaries to publish around news of the mission of the governor general. The Iroquois were overwhelmed by the dignity of the governor and his party, and for a time they kept dumb with their hands and their mouths, in astonishment. Of the French they said that they were demons and brought to a conclusion everything they wanted. The governor, they thought an incomparable man. He made capital of his success and menaced destruction to those who should revolt, whose settlements he would take and destroy at will.

The party returned on June 14th and soon arrived in Montreal, the whole expedition having taken only fifteen days. It was most successful with the Indians and restrained their trade with the Dutch and English, and even the latter, according to Marie l'Incarnation (letter No. 89) feared lest they should be driven from their trading posts.