History of Kalamazoo county, Michigan, Part 2

Author: Durant, Samuel W. comp
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia. Everts & Abbott
Number of Pages: 761

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Two stockade forts were erected, and Cartier named the place " Charlesbourg Royal." Here the colony passed a long and dreary winter, and in the spring, becoming dis- gusted with their hard fortune, they went on board their ships and sailed for Europe. Cartier encountered Roberval in the harbor of St. John, but neither threats nor persua- sions could induce him to return, and he bore away for France.

Roberval, who had sailed on the 16th of April, 1542, with three ships and two hundred colonists, from Rochelle, made his way to the abandoned Charlesbourg, where he erected barracks, mills, and store-houses for a permanent settlement ; but the project was unsuccessful and the enter- prise was soon after abandoned, and from that time to the year 1608 no further attempt was made to found a settle- ment on the St. Lawrence, except that possibly fur-trading posts were kept up at Tadoussact and a few other points along the lower portion of the river.

CHAMPLAIN.

Samuel de Champlain was born at the small seaport of Brouage, on the Bay of Biscay, in 1567. He held the rank of captain in the royal navy, and had seen service with the army under St. Luc and Brissac in Brittany, for which he had been pensioned by Henry IV. Subsequently he com- manded an exploring ship of the Spanish marine during more than two years in the West Indies, where he acquired a great amount of geographical knowledge, and brought back a curiously illustrated journal of his travels.

Returning to the French court, he met Aymor de Chastes, commander of the order of St. John, and Governor of Dieppe, who was organizing a company for the purpose of establishing settlements and missions in America. The gray-haired veteran easily persuaded Champlain to accept a position in the new company, which, by the consent of the king, he agreed to, and in 1603, in company with one Pontgrave, he set sail from Honfleur for the mouth of the St. Lawrence, which river he ascended as far as Montreal. The busy Huron town of Hochelaga had vanished, and in its place were found a few scattering Algonquin families.

Champlain returned to France to find his patron, De Chastes, dead, and the Sieur de Monts at the head of the com- pany. From this time to the year 1608 he was engaged along with De Monts, Pontgrave, D'Orville, Beaumont, La Motte, and others, in founding missions and trading-posts

* Norembega was an early name for Nova Scotia, Southern New Brunswick, and a portion of the present State of Maine, called also " Arambec." Baccalaos was the Basque name for codfish or the fish- ing region.

This place was at the mouth of the Saguenay River.

EARLY DISCOVERIES.

in Acadia, and in exploring the coasts and islands of the Atlantic as far south as Cape Cod, in Massachusetts Bay.

In July, 1608, Champlain began the permanent settle- ment of Quebec, which has since grown into an important seaport and become the capital of a flourishing province .* In 1609 he, with two or three French soldiers and a band of sixty Algonquin Indians, discovered the lake which bears his name, and explored it as far south as the outlet of Lake George, near which, on the 30th of July, in that year, he fought a battle with the Mohawks, and thereby laid the foundation for that unrelenting enmity which con- tinued for a period of one hundred and fifty years, and was one of the principal causes of the loss of the French pos- sessions in America.

In 1611, Champlain founded Montreal by establishing a trading-post on its site, though it was not until 1642 that a permanent settlement was made. Thus he became the founder of two of the principal cities of Canada of the present day. Near the site of Montreal he fought a second fierce battle with the Iroquois in the spring of 1610.

In 1613, accompanied by four Frenchmen, he made a journey with canoes up the Ottawa River as far as the great island of Allumette, in the vain effort to find a water route to Hudson's Bay. Forty canoes, loaded with Indians, fol- lowed him on his return.

In 1615 occurred Champlain's great expedition to the Huron region of Lake Manatouline, or the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, and his arrival at the head of a vast swarm of natives in the country of the Iroquois. An immense concourse of the Western Indians-Hurons, Ojibways, Otta- was, Nipissings, and others-assembled at Montreal in the spring of that year for the purposes of trade. Here Cham- plain met them, and entered into a treaty offensive and de- fensive against the Iroquois. At the breaking up of the assembly Champlain returned to Quebec to make prepara- tions for his journey to the Huron country, while the Fran- ciscan friar, Joseph le Caron, and twelve French soldiers accompanied the Indians in their long journey to the western wilderness.

Champlain followed shortly after in two canoes, accompa- nied by Etienne Brulé, an interpreter, one other French- man, and ten Indians. His route was the same which he had pursued two years before,-up the rapid Ottawa, across the portage to Lake Nipissing, and thence down the French River (the outlet of the lake) to Lake Huron, which he named " Mer Douce," the fresh-water sea of the Hurons.

Coasting for a hundred miles along the eastern shore of the Georgian Bay, he finally landed at the inlet known as Thunder Bay, a little west of the present port of Penetan- guishine. Pushing inland in a southeasterly direction, he reached the village of Carhagouha, where he found Le Caron and his companions. Here the friar built a forest altar, and on the 12th of August, 1615, in the presence of Champlain and less than a score of Frenchmen, surrounded by a wondering horde of savages, he celebrated the first mass in the Huron country.

On the 17th of August they reached the Huron metrop- olis, which the savages called Cahaigué, situated in what is the present township of Orilla, about ten miles west of the River Severn, the outlet of Lake Simcoe. It was a pal- isaded town of about two hundred lodges, and here in the course of a few days assembled the two thousand five hun- dred warriors who had promised to co-operate with Cham- plain against the far-off Iroquois.

On the 8th of September the curious army was in mo- tion. Brulé, the interpreter, at his own request, was sent with twelve Indians to hasten the co-operation of the five hundred promised Eries, or Carantouans, as Brule called. them. The intrepid interpreter was gone three years before he succeeded in escaping from the wilderness and rejoining his countrymen. He had a most remarkable experience among the Eries, and as a prisoner with the Senecas, more marvelous than the wildest imaginings of fiction. He was treacherously murdered by the Hurons, near Penetangui- shine, in 1632.+

The grand army, if we may so designate a naked crowd of savages, crossed Lake Simcoe, passed the portage to Balsam Lake, and thence followed the zigzag course of the River Trent to its entrance into the Bay of Quinté, and out upon the broad, spreading waters of Lake Ontario, the Outonoronons of the Hurons, and landed, probably, in one of the arms of Black River Bay, the Niaourha of the Iro- quois. Secreting their canoes, they took up their march by land, along the sand beach of the lake, across Sandy Creek, Salmon River, and the outlet of the central lakes of New York, and on into the country of the Senecas.

The scene of the great fight between this host and the Iroquois is located by Dr. O'Callaghan, of New York, at the outlet of Canandaigua Lake, though several writers disagree with him, some locating the Indian town on Onon- daga Lake, near the present city of Syracuse.

The Iroquois town was strongly fortified by a quadruple row of lofty palisades, strongly bound together, and sur- mounted by a gallery from which the garrison could annoy the besiegers with arrows, spears, and stones. There was one peculiarity attending this " siege" which has not been seen on any other occasion in the history of the continent. To enable his followers to attack the enemy upon an equal footing, and to counteract the superior advantages of his lofty platforms, Champlain constructed one or more mov- able towers, high enough to overlook the palisade, and upon which he placed his French arquebusiers to shoot down the enemy upon his ramparts.

Great wooden shields were also constructed to screen his Indian allies from the fire of the besieged. The towers were drawn forward by the united strength of two hundred warriors, and the attack began in earnest.

But the Hurons were entirely unmanageable, so that Champlain could do nothing with them, and after a furious contest of three hours' duration, the whole army fell back to their fortified camp, with the loss of seventeen warriors wounded. The French commander was also wounded by an arrow in the knee. He tried every means to persuade his followers to a renewal of the attack, but they persist-

* This was the third permanent settlement on the Atlantic coast of North America; St. Augustine, in Florida, settled by the Spaniards, in 1565, and Jamestown, by the English, in Virginia, in 1607, being earlier.

+ Parkman.

HISTORY OF KALAMAZOO COUNTY, MICHIGAN.

ently refused, unless joined by the expected reinforcement. from the Eries.

Waiting five days in their camp and hearing nothing from their allies, they made a rapid retreat to their canoes, carrying their wounded in large baskets, Champlain among the rest. Crossing Lake Ontario, the great war-party di- vided into small hunting-bands and scattered through the forests.

Champlain had been promised an escort to Quebec, but after regaining their own side of the lake the Indians re- fused to furnish it, and he was compelled to remain and pass the winter with them. Once during the winter hunt he was lost in the wilderness and well-nigh perished, but at length found his way back to his band. In the course of the winter, in company with Le Caron, he visited all the villages of the Huron-Iroquois people, and may, very prob- ably, have penetrated near to the borders of Michigan.

In the spring, Champlain returned via his old route down the Ottawa, and reached Quebec on the 11th of July, after a year's absence, and was received as one from the dead, with great rejoicing. Le Caron had preceded him, and also arrived in safety. No further attempts were made by the Franciscans to establish missions among the Lake Huron Indians ; and it was not until 1628 that the Jesuits first settled among them.

Thus ended Champlain's second expedition into the country of the Iroquois. He had attacked the Mohawks on the eastern flank of the confederacy in 1609 and gained a temporary success ; the attack upon the Senecas on the western flank in 1615 ended in failure.

A century and a half of almost incessant warfare repaid upon the inhabitants of Canada the short-sightedness of the great explorer.

Champlain continued as Governor of New France until his death at Quebec, on the 25th of December, 1635, with the exception of a period of four years, from 1629 to 1633, during which the English held the country for three years, and Emery de Caen was Governor one year,-1632-33.

His administration had extended over a period of twenty- seven years.

CHAPTER II.

THE FRANCISCANS AND THE JESUITS.

The Hundred Associates-Capture of Quebec by the English-Early Explorations and Missions in the Lake Region - Destruction of the Hurons.

THE FRANCISCANS.

THE year 1615 witnessed the inauguration of that re- markable system of missionary work which the Catholic Church labored so persistently to build up among the sav- age nations of Canada. The Franciscans, an order founded in the thirteenth century by St. Francis of Assisi, led the advance and furnished the pioneers in this great under- taking.

The Recollets, a reformed branch of the order, with the help of a generous subscription taken up among the car- dinals, bishops, and nobles of the Church, assembled for

the States-General, fitted out four friars at the earnest re- quest of Champlain, himself a zealous Catholic, to begin the great work of Christianizing the American Indians. The four named were Denis Jamet, Jean Dolbeau, Joseph le Caron, and Pacifique du Plessis, who embarked at Hon- fleur in the spring of 1615, and arrived at Quebec in the end of May.

At Quebec their first business was to construct a convent and adopt a system of operations. The vast field was divided among them, Le Caron being assigned to the Hu- ron nations and Dolbeau to the Montagnais of the lower St. Lawrence, whom a French writer aptly designated as " the paupers of the wilderness." Jamet and Du Plessis were for the present to remain at Quebec.

As we have seen, Le Caron repaired at once to Montreal, where he studied the Indian languages, and when Cham- plain's expedition was preparing for the country of the Hurons, he accompanied it and remained a year among the savages, returning, in 1616, to Quebec.

Like the Pilgrim and Puritan Fathers of New England, the French leaders in America designed to establish a re- ligious as well as commercial dominion, and while pushing their explorations far into the wilderness for purposes of conquest and of gain, the zealous representatives of the mother-church everywhere accompanied the mailed warriors of the king.

The cross was planted wherever the golden lilies waved, and the rude chapel arose within or beside the strong stock- ade and the primitive trading-house. Indeed, the daring son of the church, girded with the vestments of his order, and bearing the cross and rosary, not unfrequently preceded the mousquetaire, and his awe-inspiring ceremonies were the avant couriers of that interminable pageantry which every- where and at all times characterized the French occupation of Canada.

The military leaders dreamed of an interior water-passage to the " Great South Sea," and, in imagination, beheld the dominion of the "great king" extending over the yet un- known regions of the " forest continent ;" while the follow- ers of Loyola enthusiastically looked forward to a grand gathering of all the Indian nations within the pale of the Christian Church, or, in the event of a disastrous failure, to a glorious crown of martyrdom bravely won in the service of their Master.

The Recollets, with their scanty means (for they were vowed to perpetual beggary), continued their self-appointed work among the Indians of the lower St. Lawrence until about 1625, when, feeling their utter incapacity to cope with so vast a field, they reluctantly called in the assistance of the Jesuits.

THE JESUITS.

This powerful and aggressive order was founded by Ignatius Loyola, formerly a soldier, who had been severely wounded at the siege of Pampeluna, in Spain, and who had subsequently dedicated himself wholly to the service of the Church. The order took the name "Society of Jesus," and was approved by the Pope in 1540.

Its pioneers in America were Fathers Charles Lalemant, Enemond Masse, and Jean de Brebeuf.

In 1628, Brebeuf proceeded to the field of his future

THE FRANCISCANS AND THE JESUITS.

labors and tragical death, among the Hurons living around the southeastern borders of the Georgian Bay. He was accompanied by Father de la Noue and one of the friars.

THE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES.

It is necessary at this point to consider, for a few para- graphs, the organization and purposes of an institution which controlled the destinies of New France for many years .* In 1627, Cardinal Richelieu was the great cham- pion of absolutism, which had become supreme in France. About this date he turned his attention to the affairs of New France.

Under his patronage a powerful company was formed, consisting of a hundred members, with the cardinal at its head. It was called the " Company of the Hundred Asso- ciates," or "Company of New France." The sovereignty of the whole of the French possessions in North America was conferred upon it, and it was granted a perpetual monopoly of the fur-trade, together with a monopoly of all other commerce, for the period of fifteen years, and its entire trade was declared free from all duties for the same period.

The company obligated itself to settle in the colony, be- fore the year 1643, four thousand persons, including men of all trades, and persons of both sexes; to support them for three years, and to furnish them cleared lands for main- tenance.

This colony was to be exclusively French, and every settler must be a Catholic.

The Huguenots, the most enterprising class, and almost the only one inclined to emigration, were strictly forbidden to touch the shores of New France. The bigoted king gave his royal sanction to these measures, and, as an earnest of his good-will, furnished two ships-of-war completely armed and equipped. The establishment of the company was fully consummated in the beginning of 1628. The Jesuits were chosen as the spiritual managers of the colony ; the Francis- cans were virtually driven from the country, and the com- pany commenced operations with a paid-up capital of three hundred thousand livres, or about sixty thousand dollars.

Champlain was made governor of the colony, with civil and military jurisdiction.

This bigoted arrangement carried within itself the seeds of destruction. The historian, Francis Parkman, in speak- ing upon this subject, justly remarks: "There is nothing improbable in the supposition that, had New France been thrown open to Huguenot emigration, Canada would never have been a British province; that the field of Anglo- American settlement would have been greatly narrowed, and that large portions of the United States would at this day have been occupied by a vigorous and expansive French population."+

Had the Huguenots been given an even chance with the Catholics it is more than probable that they would, at an early day, have penetrated to the lower peninsula of Michigan,

and possibly carried their settlements out upon the fertile prairies beyond the lakes. They would, at least, have been likely to live at peace with their Protestant brethren of the English colonies, and thus the devastating wars of the early part of the eighteenth century in America would have been avoided. Upon the caprice of a single individual how often hang the destinies of nations !

CAPTURE OF QUEBEC BY THE ENGLISH.

In 1628-29 the bigoted treatment extended to the Hu- guenots by the French government returned to plague its abettors. That oppressed people rose in arms against the king, and Charles the First, of England, espoused their cause, not from any love of the principles for which they contended, but through jealousy of the power of France.

As a natural consequence of war with England, many Huguenots took service under her banner. Among these were the three brothers, David, Louis, and Thomas Kirk, Calvinists, of Dieppe. Following the advice of the refugees, the government of England resolved to attack the French settlements in Canada, and in July, 1628, Admiral Sir Da- vid Kirk entered the St. Lawrence, captured several trans- ports laden with supplies for the half-famished inhabitants of Quebec, and sent a polite summons to Champlain to sur- render that important post. The veteran governor was not frightened at his words, and as politely declined. But the loss of the needed supplies reduced the garrison and inhab- itants to great straits,t and when, on the 19th of July, 1629, Louis Kirk, brother of the admiral, appeared before Quebec and demanded its surrender, Champlain had no alternative, and on the 20th gave up the post, and with it the control of all the French possessions on the St. Lawrence.

This transfer of sovereignty interrupted all the plans of the Jesuits, and they beheld the despised Huguenots taking possession of the very regions from which they had been haughtily excluded. Their work had come to naught, and gathering up their scanty effects, they embarked with Cham - plain and eventually reached France. From this time to 1632, when the country was restored to the French by the treaty of Suza, in April, 1629, which had been actually concluded three months previous to Champlain's surrender, it remained in possession of the English.

In July, 1632, Emery de Caen appeared before Quebec in a French ship and received its keys from the English commander. Caen was to hold the post for a twelvemonth, to indemnify him for losses in the war, and then turn it over to the Hundred Associates. With him came back two of the Jesuits, and these were soon followed by others.

On the 23d of May, 1633, Champlain arrived and re- sumed his duties as governor on behalf of the company, which he continued until his death.

Champlain was one of the most remarkable men of an age memorable for its bigotry and persecutions. He was, in fact, a century in advance of his time, and while not wholly cosmopolitan in his religious belief, he yet possessed that broad humanity which, even under the iron restraints of superstition, will manifest itself in behalf of the rights of others, regardless of creeds and sectaries. To Champlain,

* This company was disbanded in 1645, and its franchises and property transferred to the inhabitants of Canada.

t It is even yet possible that the descendants of the French in Canada may eventually succeed the English-speaking people among the hills of New England. The latest census returns show a steady current of migration setting in that direction.

# The inhabitants, by Champlain's account, were reduced to the ne- cessity of subsisting upon acorns and even roots.

HISTORY OF KALAMAZOO COUNTY, MICHIGAN.

more than to any other leader, New France owed whatever of prosperity she enjoyed down to the time of his death, though the task he essayed was herculean and the obstacles in his pathway well-nigh insurmountable.

The name of Champlain will always occupy a prominent place among the rulers, statesmen, and explorers of the French nation. The three prominent commanders under French rule in America were Champlain, Frontenac, and Montcalm, and the founder of the province loses nothing by comparison with the others.

EARLY EXPLORATIONS AND MISSIONS.

The earliest recorded visit by Europeans to the territory of Michigan was made in September and October, 1641, by Charles Raymbault and Isaac Jogues, two Jesuits, who made the journey in a birch canoe, by way of the Ottawa River, Lake Nipissing, and Lake Huron to the Sault St. Marie, at the foot of Lake Superior .* From them the place received its name. The Jesuit missions in the country of the Hurons were re-established in 1634 by Brebeuf and Daniel, who were joined in 1635 by Pijart and La Mer- cier.

In 1636 came Jogues, Chatelain, and Garnier; in 1643, Cabanel, and subsequently others.

In 1642 the site of Montreal was permanently settled by a colony under Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maissonneuve, who had been appointed governor of the place in 1640.

The company was somewhat similar to the Hundred As- sociates of fourteen years before, and was designated "The Forty-five Associates of Montreal." The place had been a trading-post since 1611. Under the new régime it was re-christened " Ville Marie de Montreal," in honor of the Holy Family.

Between 1634 and 1639, Jesuit missions had been estab- lished at seven different points within a radius of twenty miles around the Matchedash Bay of Lake Huron. These were by name St. Marie, St. Louis, St. Ignace, ; St. Michel, St. Jean Baptiste, St. Joseph, and La Conception.}

In 1639, St. Marie, which was situated on the little river Wye (flowing from the south into Matchedash Bay), near its mouth, was strongly palisaded and made the central and chief mission for the Huron country. Here the Jesuit fathers labored with a zeal probably never before displayed in the history of the church militant for the regeneration of a race of savages, who but illy reciprocated their good intentions, and upon whom their labors might be almost said to have been expended in vain.

Whatever may be thought of their doctrines and modes of propagation, their endless ceremonies, and the parapher- nalia of their order, one thing we must admit : they were sincere in their profession to the verge of fanaticism, and

# It is related that one Jean Nicollet, a Frenchman, who had dwelt among the Indians of Lake Nipissing and Allumette Island and had thoroughly mastered their language, was sent on a mission to the Winnebagoes in 1639, during which journey he crossed over to the Fox River, and thence to the Wisconsin, which he descended nearly or quite to the Mississippi. This journey would have taken him through the territory of Michigan. The story is not authentic.

+ Not to be confounded with St. Ignace of the Straits of Mackinac. # The Huron nation included, according to a Jesuit enumeration by Brebeuf in 1635, a population of thirty thousand souls.

most faithfully labored, at the cost of every comfort and even life, in the thankless attempt to bring the wild children of the forest into what they steadfastly believed to be the true and only church.

DESTRUCTION OF THE HURONS.

But a terrible doom awaited them. The fierce, uncon- querable warriors of the Hodenosaunee penetrated the wil- derness and overwhelmed alike the Huron and the Jesuit, the bark lodge of the savage and the sacred chapel of the self-denying missionary, in one common ruin. From 1638 to 1649-50 a series of bloody encounters, burnings, massa- cres, and occasional attempts at negotiation ensued between the Hurons and the Iroquois. The Eries and Andastes were at times persuaded into a league with the Hurons, and at one period the Mohawks were in great danger of extermination by the Andastes ; but the superior discipline of the Iroquois at length triumphed over superior numbers, and the Huron country was completely overrun, and its people destroyed or driven into distant lands. The missions shared the common fate, and most of the Jesuit fathers fell martyrs to the cause of their religion.

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History of Kalamazoo county, Michigan, Part 2

Author: Durant, Samuel W. comp Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Philadelphia. Everts & Abbott Number of Pages: 761

Author: Durant, Samuel W. comp
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia. Everts & Abbott
Number of Pages: 761