USA > Michigan > A history of the northern peninsula of Michigan and its people, its mining, lumber and agricultural industries, Volume I > Part 19
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INDIANS LOSE FAITH IN FRENCH
The condition at the time is best pictured by quotations from a let- ter written in November, 1689, by Father Carheil, to Frontenac, then governor general, in which he says:
" I am very sorry to see myself compelled to write you this letter, to inform you that we are at last reduced to the condition to which I have always believed that the hope of peace would reduce us. I have never doubted that peace was im- possible; nor that all those who, from the experience of a long residence among them, know the disposition of the Iroquois, and especially of the Onmontagues, the most treacherous of all. Notwithstanding the difficulty we had up to the time designated for the assembly, in sustaining the minds of the poor savages amid the continuni displeasure caused them by the negotiations for a peace-which they knew to be only begged-by dint of attentions, by honors, and of presents; and which, consequently, were but so many publie proofs of our weakness; we were, never- theless, fortunate enough to maintain them in their duty that time.
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"After that it was for those who conducted those negotiations to demonstrate by performance the truth of what they bad promised; and to let our tribes see the enemy, who, as they supposed, had become docile and submissive to their will. But, alas! at the time this should have been done, what had they obtained! Nothing but houses burned, French killed or captured, scalps taken and bodies ripped open ; but a universal destruction of all Lachine, which should, nevertheless, have been the best guarded on all the sides; and, finally, but universal consternation throughout the whole of Montreal. This is not the success promised them by embassies and peace conferences, but it is that which they feared and the dread whereof would constitute all their trouble. What do we wish them to think now when, as they say, they see Onnontio deceived and vanquished up to the present by the enemy ; what hope can they still retain of his protection when they see naught but weakness and impotence! Can one suppose that, after their departure from Montreal-where they had just seen the Iroquois triumph throughout the whole cam- paign, during which he was allowed to do as he pleased-they could take any other action than that which compelled us to carry on war to overawe him! They then undertook to make peace themselves, through their own negotiations with the enemy, who had taken away many of their people whom they were holding as captives. Our savages were prevented from doing so and were induced to resolve upon carrying on war with us. But, instead of continuing it, as soon as the first decision was taken it was changed, I know not how, into negotiations for peace; that gave the enemy both time and means to vanquish not only them, as formerly, but also our- selves. They now see themselves, by this conduct of pure inaction, reduced once more to the necessity of again taking the same step, and of doing without Onnontio 's participation, what they would have desired him to do.
"Therefore, in their council held since they returned from Montreal, they have resolved by unaminous consent to regain the friendship and alliance of our enemy, by means of an embassy which they are sending to the Sonnontonans, and afterwards to the other nations to obtain peace.
"They will have no difficulty because it will separate them from us; because it will take away our greatest strength from us, to give it to the enemy; and be- cause the ambassadors are their own prisoners, whom LaPetite Racine, accompanied by some other Ontoanais, is to deliver into the hands of the Iroquois. Moreover it is no longer a hidden design that they wish to conceal from our knowledge, and which we have secretly learned from confidential sources; but it is a matter of public notoriety, and one which they have chosen to tell us by a solemn declaration in full council.
** Although the Huron be concerned in it perhaps even more than is the Onto- anais, nevertheless, as he is always more politie than the others in keeping on good terms with us, he did not speak with so much bitterness and arrogance as did the Ontoanais. He contented himself with saying that he was too much of a child to interfere in an undertaking of that nature, or seek to raise any opposition to it; that he left his brothers to act, as they thought that they had more sense than he, regarding that matter; that it was for them to be answerable for the result, and not for him, who had much less penetration than they,
"Such Monseigneur, is the state of affairs in this quarter,-that is to say, at the last extremity which they cau reach. For the result of that embassy can only be to bring at once both the Iroquois and the Fleming-the Iroquois as the master in war; the Fleming as the master in trade and commerce; and both as sovereigns of all these nations, to our exclusion. This is infallible and will happen with such dilligence and promptness that I know not whether you will have time to forestall its execution. They have hastened to conclude the embassy, through fear that, after the defeat of the French at Montreal and in despair of ever obtaining a firm and lasting peace by means of negotiations, it might be decided once more for all to make war; and that afterwards an order might come from you to do so. This must no longer be thought of, because it is too late. It should have been done while they were still at Montreal, immediately after the blow struck by the enemy. Then they desired it and all would have been found ready for it; but at present they must not be relied upon for the war, since the departure of their ambassadors, which com- pelled them to remain quiet to awnit their return and the result of their negotiations. "All the ceremonial honors paid to the prisoners on the eve of their dismissal, by the famous calumet dance, which is a public token of alliance, shows us, but too clearly, in what manner and how firmly they will be united against ns. But what makes this still more evident is that, at the very moment when they were giving
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these public proofs of esteem to the prisoners whom they were about to send away, they, on the other hand, expressed the contempt they felt for our alliance and for our protection. When we strongly opposed their sending the prisoners away, and represented to them the order given us by Onnontio in his last commande-to make them keep their prisoners quiet on their mats, until he made known to them his last wishes with regard to their captives-they nevertheless persisted in the agreement made between them; and to show us that they were not entering upon that under- standing without having considerable cause therefor, they wished to give us their reasons publicly.
"These may all be reduced to one prime reason, which is, that Ounontio's protection-on which they had based all their hopes of being delivered from all their enemies-was not what they had wrongly imagined it to be; but hitherto they had always thought that the Frenchman was warlike through numbers, through courage and through the number and diversity of the implements of war that he could make, Experience had shown them, however, that he was much less so than the Iroquois; and they were no longer surprised that he had remained so long with- out doing anything for their defense, since it was the knowledge of his own weak- ness that hindered him. After seeing the cowardly manner in which he had al. lowered himself to be defeated on this last occasion at Montreal, it was evident to them that they could no longer expect anything from his protection. ยท From all these evident proofs, it was easy to see that the Frenchman is so little in a position to protect them that he cannot even defend himself; so much so, that he had been compelled to have recourse to the protection of the English, and to beg them, through an ambassador sent expressly for the purpose to Orange (Albany), to check the continual incursions of the Iroquois.
"But what most displeares them is that the alliance of the Frenchmen, besides being useless to them through their powerlessness, is all injurious to them both for commerce and for war. It is so in commerce, because it takes away from them, against their will, the trade of the English, which was incomparably more advan- tageous to them in order to keep them bound to Onnontio. . * They said that if he had no other protection to give them than a peace of that nature, they pre- ferred to protect themselves and to go to negotiate their peace by their own acts, rather than to let themselves be abandoned by France to the certain vengeance of their enemy.
"From this it will be seen that our savages are much more enlightened than one thinks; and that it is difficult to conceal from their penetration anything in the course of affairs that may injure or serve their interests. The respect that I owe to the rule of all persons to whom God has given the power of government over us would have made me scruple to communicate to you, as freely as I have done, senti- ments as unfavorable as these, had 1 not believed that the public welfare demanded that you should know them just as they exist among the savages. I do so in order that you may thereby judge of the disposition of their minds, of what they are capable of doing against us in favor of our enemy, and of the remedy to be applied. It is certain that if the Iroquois be not checked by the extent of the operations against him on your side down below, or of those against the Flemings who origi nate his movements, he will not fail to come here to make himself master of every thing. It is sufficient for us that you should know it, to rely thereafter upon the enlightenment of your wisdom; and, in spite of the danger in which we are placed, to live in entire confidence, waiting to see in what manner Divine Providence shall please to dispose of us."
This letter, written in 1689, from St. Ignace mission, where Father Carheil had been for two years as the successor to Father Potier, is most potent in its illustration of the situation and the desperate straits to which the missionaries had been brought, largely as the result of the fallacies attendant upon the methods of the French in their affairs of commerce, as well as of government.
WHY MISSIONS WERE DESTROYED
With the establishment of the Northwest Fur Company, in 1694, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, was appointed to the command at Mich-
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ilimackinac, where the natives were exhibiting the same feelings of unrest and hostility that pervaded practically all Indian nations at that period. This fur company established its base of operations at Michihimackinac, thereby largely increasing the number of traders that ranged throughout the surrounding country with that place as the center of operations; and a more extensive armed force seemed essen- tial, and was provided for the subjugation of the natives in that see- tion. The coming of Cadillac as commander, and his methods of gov- ernment were so obnoxious to, and were so resisted by the missionaries of the locality, that it became notorious that he meant to destroy their missions.
In writing from Michilimackinac to the governor general. August 3. 1695, Cadillae said : "The village is one of the largest in all Canada ; there is a fine fort of pickets, and sixty houses that form a street in a straight line. There is a garrison of well-disciplined chosen soldiers. consisting of about two hundred men, besides many others who are resi- dents here during two or three months of the year." He also com- ments on the air as being penetrating, and therefore making the daily use of brandy a necessity to prevent sickness. He speaks of the In- dian villages in the vicinity being about a pistol shot distant from the French village, and of its having a population of six thousand or seven thousand persons. He also speaks of their occupation, and says that all lands are cleared for about three leagues around the village, and that they were very well enltivated, and of them he says: "They produce a sufficient quantity of Indian corn for the use of both the French and the savage inhabitants. The question is then, What reason can there be for this prohibition of intoxicating drinks in regard to the French who are here now? Are they not subjects of the king. even as others? In what country, then, or in what land, until now, have they taken from the French the right to use brandy, provided they did not become disorderly ?"
This letter is not only authoritative evidence of the popularity of this part of the country in the eye of the Indians, but it shows that the French had attained to a considerable settlement and that the fields were made to add to the products of the forests and the waters. their qnota of a substantial and varied sustenance sufficient for all.
It is also a serious commentary on existing conditions wherein a strife had grown up between the traders and the missionaries, and wherein Cadillac took the part of the traders, who in order to promote advantageous bargains had brought into the country large quantities of brandy which they disposed of alike to the Indians and the French. This was against the protests of the missionaries, who found it seri- ously affected and impeded their ecclesiastical work, and was demor- alizing, generally, to the inhabitants of both races. Cadillae's letter was written because of complaints made by the missionaries to the home government of this evil effeet of the traffic, and Cadillac seems to have placed the advantage of a more profitable trade above the
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moral question of the effect upon the characters of the people, as judged from the form of his argument. He quotes upon this subject from an address to him by some of the chiefs and inhabitants as fol- lows: "Oh chief, what evil have thy children done to thee that thou shouldst treat them so badly? Those that came before thee were not so severe upon us. It is not to quarrel with thee that we come here; it is only to know for what reason thou wishest to prevent us from drinking brandy. Thou shouldst look upon us as thy friends, and the brothers of the French, or else as thy enemies. If we are thy friends. leave us the liberty of drinking; our beaver is worth thy brandy, and the Master of Life gave us both, to make us happy. If thou wish to treat us as thy enemies, do not be angry if we carry onr beavers to Orange (Albany) or to Cortland, where they will give ns brandy, as much as we want."
This question of the effect of the liquor traffie caused serions con- fliet between the missionaries on the one hand and the military and the traders on the other, from which much friction resulted at a time when they were seriously in need of the closest harmony. It is claimed to have had much to do in adding to the turbulent temper of the sav. ages, and their unrest which the events of the whole country were then bnt too plainly evincing; and who can tell how great a part it may have had in firing the temper of those savages to the point of the subsequent massacres? The friction thus engendered between the mis- sionaries and the military, as well as the threatening attitude assumed by the Indians, may well be considered as the cause of the disruption that soon followed, when the Jesuits withdrew from this section of the country, and their work in this vicinity was abandoned with little perceptible enduring effect : for, noble as was the work, it was applied almost exclusively to the Indian race, and its effects were very largely effaced in the absolute reign of the traders that was paramount for the century to follow.
Another event of the times exhibited still further discord between the missionaries and the military, which latter were in accord with the officials of the goverment, The savage Iroquois had waged furi- ous wars upon the Hurons and punished them relentlessly in many en- counters, and the French believed that the Iroquois' assaults were at the instigation of the English.
The French, for the purpose of protecting their interests in this lake country against the intrusions of the English, endeavored to harmonize and unite the opposing Indian nations, and therefore form a barrier to English progress. The French and the English had clashed over the territory west of the Alleghanies, and the Jesuits who had been active as missionaries among the Iroquois found themselves out of sympathy with the Canadian officials. This is strongly evi- deneed by the fact that when Cadillac took up the mission of estab- lishing a colony at Detroit but one Jesnit came with him. He was Father Nalliaut and he did not remain a day. He was later succeeded by 'representatives of the Recollet order.
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Immediately on the return of Cadillac to Quebec, in 1697, he pre- sented to Governor Frontenac his plans for the establishment of a fort at Detroit, and the advantages of the location for that purpose. Before any definite action was taken thereon Frontenac died, and was succeeded, in 1698, by Louis Hector de Callieres, as governor general. Father Carheil presented to the newly appointed governor general the protest of the mission of St. Ignace against the plans of Cadillac as being calculated to destroy the missions at and about St. Ignace; but, notwithstanding this protest, in 1701 Cadillac obtained authority to establish a military post at Detroit.
That the cessation of the work of the missionaries and the aban- donment of the missions in northern Michigan are directly attribut- able to the counteracting forces of the soldiers and traders, and to the attitude of the provincial government in sustaining them in their nefarious practices against the protests of the missionaries, seem to be beyond question, for it is evidenced by the numerous addresses of the missionaries to the governor general, treating earnestly of the then existing conditions and the inevitable dangers arising therefrom. After the experience they had had with Cadillae as commandant, the pioneer missionaries of the Sault and St. Ignace, who had given up the best of their lives to the noble work of evangelizing the savages of this then wilderness, and who had toiled incessantly and endured the most severe hardships and privations, and even suffered cruelty from the heathen they were seeking to benefit-these missionaries, who during all these trials and vicissitudes, the extent and terrors of which it is impossible to fully depict, had been firm in their allegiance to the government of France, and had on all possible occasions held up to their savage pupils the greatness, the power and the grandeur of the king and his force of captains, were severely tried in their faith, on realizing that their beloved and boasted government had failed to make good their teachings, and instead thereof was permitting, if not encouraging, the growth of evil practices that could not other than undermine and destroy the fabric of Christianity they had toiled so arduously to construct. Cadillac was to them the impersonation of these evils, and they had hoped, by their representations to the pro- vincial governor, to arouse the government to an appreciation of true conditions and to the necessity of radical reforms.
When Cadillac finally secured the allowance of his petition and was permitted to establish a post at Detroit, and the missionaries real- ized that all their protests had availed them nothing, and also learned, to their dismay and disgust, that their earnest and extensive repre- sentations had been "pigeon-holed" with the provincial officials and had never been forwarded to the authorities in France-their indig- nation was only equalled by their keen and cutting sorrow; indignant that the provincial officials had betrayed them and forsaken the prin- ciples which the government of France had sought to implant in the virgin soil of New France as the foundation of a government to ac-
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cord with their religious beliefs; overcome with sorrow at the realiza- tion that the true mission of the government had been thwarted by its own trusted, but untrustworthy representatives, and that the race of savages they had suffered so much to benefit and convert was now to be plunged into an environment that was breeding vices more dan- gerous even than those they had struggled so hard to overcome.
The real situation, and the deep and heart-felt feeling and regret . of the missionaries on being brought to the full realization thereof, were emphatically expressed in a lengthy epistle addressed by Father Carheil from Michilimackinac August 30, 1702, to the governor gen- eral of the province. After reciting quite at length the work that had been undergone, the protests that had been unavailing, and the con- ditions that had now become unbearable. he says, referring to the traffic in brandy by the military, in words the force, meaning and applica- tion of which could not have been misunderstood: "Had His Maj- esty but once seen what passes, both here and at Montreal, during the whole time this wretched traffic goes on I am sure that he would not for a moment hesitate, at the first sight of it to forbid it forever under the severest penalties.
"In our despair there is no other step to take than to leave our missions and abandon them to the brandy traders, so that they may establish therein the domain of their trade of drunkenness and of immorality. That is what we shall propose to our superior in Canada and in France, being compelled thereto by the state of uselessness and inability to which we have been reduced by the permission given to carry on the deplorable trade-a permission that has been obtained from His Majesty only by means of a pretext apparently reasonable; but known to be false; a permission that he would not grant, if they upon whom he relies to ascertain the truth really made it known to him, as they themselves and the whole of Canada with them know it; a permission that is at once the elimax and the source of all the evils that are now occurring. If that permission be not revoked by a prohibition to the contrary, we no longer have occasion to re- main in any of our missions up here, to waste the remainder of our lives and all our efforts in purely useless labor, under the domination of continual drunkenness and of universal immorality.
"If His Majesty desires to save our missions and to support the establishment of religion, as we have no doubt he does, we beg him most humbly to believe what is most true, namely: that there is no other means of doing so than to abolish completely the two infamous sorts of commerce which have brought the missions to the brink of destruction, and which will not long delay in destroying these if they be not abolished as soon as possible by his orders, and be prevented from ever being restored. The first is the commerce in brandy; the second is the commerce of the savage women by the French. Both are carried on in an equally publie manner, without our being able to remedy the evil, because we are not supported by the comman- dants."
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The writer then asserts that the commandants, instead of assisting to prevent the evils complained of, themselves carry them on with greater freedom than do their subordinates, and by their example cause them to become common to all the French who come there to trade; and he adds that if the work of the missionaries is to continue they must be "delivered from the commandants and from their garri- sons;" and he further says of them: "Since they have come up here we have observed but one universal corruption, which by their scandalons mode of living they have spread in the minds of all these nations, who are now infected by it. All the pretended service which it is sought to make people believe that they render to the king is reduced to four chief occupations, of which we earnestly beg you to inform His Majesty. The first consists in keeping a publie tavern for the sale of brandy, wherein they trade it continually to the savages, who do not cease to become in- toxicated. notwithstanding all our efforts to prevent it. . Their third occupation consists in making of the fort a place that I am ashmed to call by its proper name, where the women have found out that their bodies might serve in lien of merchandise, and would be still better received than beaver-skins; accordingly, that is now the most usnal und most continual commerce, and that which is most extensively carried on. Whatever efforts the missionaries may make to abolish it. this traffic increases instend of diminishing, and grows daily more and more. All the soldiers keep apen house in their dwellings for all the women of their acquaintance." He speaks of gambling as the fourth ocenpation, and of its resulting in drunken brawls and furious publie fights; he says that the commandants have obtained ascendancy over the missionaries and hold them in domination, and after detailing the troubles occasioned by them he adds: "You see, Monseigneur, that I have dwelt to a great extent on the subject of commandants and garri- sons, to make you understand that all the misfortunes of our missions are due to them. It is the commandants, it is the garrisons, who, nnit- ing with the brandy traders, have completely desolated the missions by almost universal drunkenness and lewdness. It is for you to inform His Majesty of the extremity to which we are reduced, and to ask him for our deliverance, so that we may be able to labor for the es- tablishment of religion without the hindrances that have hitherto im- peded it."
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