1667-1672

EDUCATION

AT QUEBEC: JACQUES LEBER, JEANNE LEBER, CHARLES LE MOYNE (OF LONGUEUIL), LOUIS PRUDHOMME—MARGUERITE BOURGEOYS' SCHOOL AT MONTREAL—"GALLICIZING" INDIAN CHILDREN—GANNENSAGONAS—THE SULPICIANS AT GENTILLY—THE JESUITS AT MADELEINE LA PRAIRIE.

Another effort of Louis XIV, through his minister Colbert, was the furtherance of education in the colony. It was naturally of a very rudimentary character in these early days of scarce population. To help, Colbert sent from the king, 6,000 livres on April 5, 1667. The work of education was in the hands of the clergy and religious with the exception of that done at Montreal by Marguerite Bourgeoys, who had not yet established her order. At Quebec, the Jesuits had since 1635 commenced a college for boys at which later young Joliet, who afterward with PÈre Marquette, was the discoverer of Illinois, was taught to defend philosophical theses. The Ursulines had a pensionnat of thirty girls, of whom Marie l'Incarnation, writing in 1668, says: "They gave more trouble than sixty in France. The externes give us some more trouble." Still she says that there is a great desire to educate the French girls and "they learn to read and write, to say their prayers, learn Christian morals and all that a girl ought to know." Among the pensionnaires was Jeanne Leber, the daughter of Jacques Leber, the Montreal merchant, and she was pious, and clever at elocution and lace work.

At Montreal, as the population began to grow, Marguerite Bourgeoys now handed over the boys, who were beginning to be educated with the girls in the little primary school in the stable, to M. Souart, who, since the return of M. de Queylus, had been supplanted as curate by M. Gilles PÉrot, and we find him styled in the documents of the time "former curÉ—schoolmaster." In this occupation he was assisted by M. RÉmy, a deacon, who was afterwards entrusted for some time with the primary education of the town. The education was given gratuitously, but to maintain the schoolmaster, the syndic, accompanied by the clerk of the court, canvassed subscriptions from private individuals. In the fall, the Seminary made up the deficit. Marguerite Bourgeoys, and her four companions, still taught during the day for nothing, without any assistance as before, but during the night they worked at manual labour for their support. "Thus," says Dollier de Casson writing of 1652, "what I admire most about these young women, is that being without goods and willing to teach gratuitously, they have nevertheless acquired by the grace of God and without being a charge to anyone, houses and lands in the island of Montreal." In fact on August 29, 1668, Marguerite Bourgeoys bought a house thirty-six feet square adjoining the "Congregation" from the widow of Claude FÉzeret. On September 21, 1668, she acquired from FranÇois Leber a grant of land, with a house on it, at Pointe St. Charles. The site of this house, with its buildings, can be seen to this day.

In 1669, she acquired, from Maturin Roulier, another piece of land with a granary and a meadow, situated in the direction of Sault St. Louis. All this, added to the original donation from M. de Maisonneuve, and sixty arpents and more granted through the Seigneurs, out of which she had put thirty-two under cultivation and on which she had placed a granary, went in great part to support her community of pious lay associates. In addition, on July 6, 1672, she bought an arpent of land adjoining the "Congregation" and built on it a larger establishment, as the number of her pupils surpassed the limited space of her stable school.

On October 9, 1668, Laval at Quebec started his "petit sÉminaire," out of the boys of which he hoped to draw the nucleus of a Canadian clergy. He started with six Hurons, to whom were added eight French boys. In 1669 there were three Montrealers being educated there, probably on a bourse from the king's bounty, viz., Charles Le Moyne, de Longueuil; Jacques Leber, brother of Jeanne, and Louis Prud'homme. The French boys, supported by the king's bounty, boarded, however, at the Jesuit College. Soon others joined, but as it was found that many of them did not care for study, they were sent to Cap au Tourment, where they learned mechanical trades and arts suitable to young colonists.

In 1670, there were only five teachers for the many calls on the education of the girls, so Marguerite Bourgeoys went to France for assistance, and after six months she saw Colbert, who promised to assist her so that her congregation in May, 1671, received the approval of the "Roi Soleil," Louis XIV, who was then with his brilliant court at Dunkerque. She returned to Quebec in 1672, on August 14th, bringing back a miraculous oaken statue of the Blessed Virgin, of some eight inches in height for the church of Bonsecours, already projected in 1651 and to be built shortly. With her came several novices to join her order, some of noble families, Elizabeth de la Bertache, Madeleine de Constantin, ThÉrÈse Soumillard, Pierrette Laurent, GeneviÈve Durosoy, Marguerite Soumillard, and Marguerite SÉnÉcal, who was the bursar of the very slender funds of the party.

In addition to the externes the congregation was beginning to have boarders and was reaching such a point of utility, when she might extend her work throughout the colony, that she had been persuaded to ask for the above royal letters patent of incorporation. Her eventual aim was to establish a regular congregation, with religious vows of its own. For the present, Laval did not favour such a plan; he rather wished to avoid a multiplicity of religious congregations in a poor country, and he would have preferred her companions to join the Ursulines at Quebec, becoming if necessary a branch establishment.

To this the independent Marguerite Bourgeoys was opposed. The Ursulines was an enclosed order and the Montreal congrÉganistes wished indeed to live in community, but to circulate freely among the people—a new idea then among religious congregations of women, very untried and to which consequently the conservative bishop of Petrea was not favourable. Yet, in 1689, on a visit of Laval to Montreal, the foundress was authorized to spread her fellow workers over his diocese, and it was about this time that they began to adopt a form of dress based on an Acadian model.

The education of Indian children was greatly promoted under the new policy of Louis XIV, and Laval, in the intention of "Gallicizing" the natives in language, religion and customs, and eventually of allying them in marriage with the colonists from France. This had been one of Laval's objects in founding the "petit sÉminaire" of Quebec. He persuaded the Jesuits and the Ursulines to start Indian schools for Algonquin boys and Huron and Algonquin girls at Quebec. On September 27, 1670, Marie de l'Incarnation announced the marriage of some of her girls to Frenchmen, with domestic success.

Laval also induced the Sulpicians at Montreal to undertake the work for the children of those Algonquin and Huron parents who had been captured by the Iroquois. The city archives contain the contracts of July 16, 1669, by which Jacques Akimega, thirteen years of age, and Louise Resikouki, an Algonquin girl of twelve years, bind themselves to be lodged and educated like French people till eighteen years of age, at the seminary on a gift of 500 livres, provided by Dollier de Casson on the stipulation that if the contract was broken the money shall go for the education of other savage children.

Other Indian girls being forthcoming, Marguerite Bourgeoys undertook their training at the congregation, and on November 14, 1672, we have the contract of marriage between one of them, Marie Magdalene Catherine Nachital, and Pierre Hogue, born at Belle-Fontaine, near Amiens.

One of the pupils of the congregation, called Gannensagouas and baptized Marie ThÉrÈse, after the queen of France, later in 1681 made her religious profession as a nun in the congregation order, by that time erected.

But the work of Gallicizing and civilizing these wayward, liberty-loving, capricious children of the woods was an ungrateful task. Most of those who entered the cloister of the Ursulines were like birds of passage and they flew over the cloister walls to escape the melancholy of their restrained lives, even when their parents did not take them away. Nor did the Jesuits succeed any better. The Sulpicians made a bold attempt by taking their Indian school into the country. M. de FÉnelon, one of their number, was charged to form an establishment under the name of La PrÉsentation at Gentilly, situated on the bank of the St. Lawrence above Lachine, and in addition he secured a concession on January 9, 1673, of the three islands opposite between Lachine and Cap St. Gilles, which had been granted originally to PicotÉ de BÉlestre and were now exchanged for land on the island. These islands were then named the Iles de Courcelles, after the governor general, and on one of them at a place called the Baie d'UrfÉ, after the name of one of the Sulpician missionaries, an Indian mission was established. We may here mention the Jesuit missions, on the south shore facing Montreal of the seigneuries of Madeleine la Prairie and St. Lambert, which commenced with a few savages in 1669, the progenitor of the fifth site, the Caughnawaga reservation, as known today.

NOTE

Caughnawaga, or Sault St. Louis, an Iroquois reservation, situated on the south bank of the St. Lawrence, about ten miles above Montreal. Area, 12,327 acres. Population in 1905, 2,100, all Catholics except five or six families. The language is the Mohawk dialect. The sault (or rapids) was an old seigniory, or concession, granted to the Jesuits in 1680. To PÈre Ruffeix, S. J., is due the idea of thus grouping the Iroquois neophytes on the banks of the St. Lawrence to guard them from the persecution and temptation to which they were subject amid the pagan influences of their own villages. In 1667 the missionary prevailed upon seven communities to take up their residence at La Prairie, opposite Montreal. Other Christian Iroquois from different localities soon came to join the settlement, and in 1670 there were twenty families. As the proximity of the whites was prejudicial to the Indians, the mission was transferred, in 1676, several miles higher up the river. This second site is memorable as the scene of the saintly life and death of Catherine Tekakwitha (died 1680). In 1890 a granite monument was erected on the site, in memory of the humble Iroquois virgin. In 1689, to escape the threatened attacks of their pagan tribesmen, the Christian Iroquois sought refuge in Montreal, where they remained eight or nine months. When the danger had passed they founded another settlement a mile or two above the last. In 1696 another migration took place to a fourth site. Here it was that PÈre Lafitau, S. J., discovered the famous "ginseng" plant, so valuable in the eyes of the Chinese. The discovery created a great sensation, and was for a time the source of lucrative commerce. The fourth site still proving unsatisfactory, the settlement was moved to the present site of Caughnawaga in 1716. From 1667 to 1783 the mission was conducted by the Jesuits; from 1783 to 1903 by secular priests and oblates. In 1903 it was again confided to the Jesuits. Among the more noted missionaries were Fathers Bruyas, S. J.; ChauchetiÈre, S. J.; Lafitau, S. J.; Burtin, O. M. I.; Marcoux, who composed an Iroquois dictionary and grammar; and Forbes, who drew up complete genealogical tables of the settlement. The Indians are intelligent and industrious. Some are engaged in farming, others take rafts down the Lachine rapids. The industries are principally bead work and the making of lacrosse rackets and snowshoes. Besides the presbytery, dating from 1716, and the church built in 1719 and restored in 1845, there are in the village the ruins of a French fort of 1754, two schools and a hospital. The government by chiefs was, in 1889, replaced by that of a mayor and council. Note by Joseph Gras, S. J.

N. B.—Joseph Gras, S. J., the writer of this monograph, is assistant missionary at Caughnawaga.