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3. First Settlements
From Canadian History Portal - HCO
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A Colony on the St. Lawrence
In response to the desire of other French merchants to gain access to the lucrative fur trade, Pierre de Gua de Monts lost his monopoly. As a result, Port-Royal, the colony he had established on the Bay of Fundy, was abandoned. Samuel de Champlain and the other colonists returned to France. However, within a year Champlain returned, this time to Quebec, rather than Port-Royal.
Champlain proved to be a tireless worker on behalf of the fledging colony. In all, he made twenty-three trans-Atlantic crossings promoting Quebec to the Crown, merchants, and investors. In addition, Champlain was a daunting explorer venturing into the interior of the continent.
Champlain was a highly skilled map maker detailing his explorations in amazing accuracy that would be used by many subsequent explorers. He was a skilled negotiator and diplomat forging successful alliances with several tribes, including the Huron, the Montagnais, and the Mi'kmaq.
He wrote six books. Champlain was an able administrator as the first governor of Quebec from 1608 until his death on Christmas Day, 1635. Truly Samuel de Champlain was the Father of New France.
However, the tale of first settlements had its origins with the undeniable failure suffered in the several attempts at colonization in Acadia. The combination of the lack of support and lack of preparation against the inhospitable conditions made defeat virtually inevitable. Champlain recognized that a more inviting location might produce different results. After convincing King Louis XIII of the religious and trade advantages of a permanent French colony in the New World, on April 13, 1608, Champlain left St. Malo, arriving at Tadoussac on June 3rd. But that would not be the site of his new settlement. He found the Basque whalers there far too unruly for his liking. In fact, Champlain firmly established his authority by hanging Jean Duval, who had hatched a plot to kill him, and then impaling the severed head on a spike and displaying it prominently.
The choice for the new settlement was blessed with an excellent harbour and high - 98-metre high - protective cliffs at Kebec [meaning, "where the river narrows"], upriver from Tadoussac.
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There was another advantage to Quebec. It was uninhabited as Donnacona and his people had departed. One month after landing, on July 3rd, Champlain began construction of the habitation, a fortified trading post. A storehouse, sleeping quarters, palisades and ditches were built from wood found in the nearby forests.
The start at Quebec was not overly successful. The heat and humidity was the backdrop to the backbreaking labour required to build the habitation. The devastating Canadian winter exacted a far more savage toll. Bitter cold and deadly scurvy led to the deaths of twenty of the twenty-eight colonists. The aboriginal peoples would teach the French that making a tea from the bark of the white cedar tree could prevent the deadly disease.
But it was not in time to save the first settlers. Champlain recognized that no colony had much chance of success unless a number of conditions were met. They included both positive relations with the indigenous people and concerted support from France. The first was achieved through his alliance with the Huron - which created fierce enemies out of the Iroquois - while the second would have to wait half a century until the 1663 creation of Royal Government.
From the outset, Quebec served a variety of purposes. Not least of them was the religious one. The desire to convert the aboriginal population and increase the spread of Catholicism in the New World was the product of both altruistic and greedy motives. Many sincerely believed in the uplifting role that religion could play in raising the perceived backward and savage native population. Christianity would civilize them in the contemporary racist view. On the other hand, gaining converts, either forced or willing, would augment the power of one religion engaged in a life-and-death struggle with another. Catholics had fought Protestants in Europe and now the conflict was being transferred to the New World. The missionary work of different Catholic orders, Récollets and Jesuits most notably, was the vanguard of the conversion attempts.
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Louis Hebert: Canada's First French Colonist
On February 4, 1623, French apothecary, herbalist and farmer Louis Hébert was granted the seigneury of Sault-au-Matelot by Henri, Duc de Montmorency, in his capacity as Viceroy of New France.
Hébert returned to Paris, but the lure of the new world was strong. He was persuaded to join Champlain in Québec, and arrived with his wife and children in 1617. The family set up a farm to grown food and medicinal herbs for the colony. Hébert was the first European to make his living by farming and outside the fur trade.
In 1623, he asked for legal recognition of his ownership of "a certain lot of land bounded by an enclosure at the place called Quebec." Three years later, Montmorency's successor, the Duc de Ventadour, added a square league of land on the St. Charles River to the initial grant. It was henceforth Herbert's "to have and to hold in fief noble [i.e., without charges or obligations] for him and for his heirs and others having a right to it in the future, as his own legal acquisition to dispose of fully and peaceably as he shall see fit." This was the first of 150 seigneuries founded during the French regime, and began a feudal system that lasted until 1854.
Hébert died on January 27, 1627 when he slipped and fell on ice. He left his wife, Marie Rollet, and their three children, Guillaume, Guillaumette, and Anne.
His last words were regarding his Huron friends: "je meurs content, disait-il, puisqu'il a plu à Notre-Seigneur de me faire la grâce de voir mourir des sauvages convertis. J'ai passé les mers pour les venir secourir plutôt que pour aucun intérêt particulier, et je mourrais volontiers pour leur conversion, si tel était le bon plaisir de Dieu. Je vous supplie de les aimer comme je les ai aimés et de les assister de tout votre pouvoir. Dieu vous en saura gré et vous en récompensera en paradis... Ils sont créatures raisonnables comme nous. Par vos bons exemples, par vos prières, il faut leur apprendre à le connaître."
The First Missionaries
The first to arrive were the Récollects who came as early as 1615. They sought to convert the Montagnais who lived around the St. Lawrence River, as well as the Huron who lived further inland. The Récollets disbanded and were replaced by the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuits. Originally founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1534, the Black Robes were much more aggressive in their missionary efforts compared to the Récollets. They became the dominant religious order in New France, in part because of their numbers and their zeal. The fact that Cardinal Richelieu, the King's First Minister, expelled the Récollets in the mid-1630s, only confirmed their standing.
The Black Robes did some selfless work living among the Aboriginal Peoples. They built the first Roman Catholic mission at Tadoussac. They traveled deep into the interior living among the Montagnais and Huron.
They learned native languages and ate their food. At the same time, the Jesuits baptized and taught the ways of Catholicism. As they moved further inland, they built a number of different missions, the largest of which was Sainte-Marie among the Hurons at present-day Midland, Ontario.
The clash of cultural and religious values produced some decidedly negative results. Native beliefs and spirituality were threatened. Aboriginal societies were deeply divided. One group favoured conversion and one group refused it. The first faction received not only new religious values but also preferential trading privileges. The second group adamantly refused, fearing the assimilation of their traditional ways. A smallpox epidemic, introduced to the Hurons by the Jesuits, devastated the population, killing more than half. As a result, the aboriginals viewed the Black Robes with increasing suspicion and distrust. The legacy of the missionaries was at best an ambivalent one.
The Company of New France
Missionaries were not the only group to forge relationships with the aboriginal peoples. There were also the fur traders. Following the termination of de Monts' monopoly in 1607, merchants in Rouen and St. Malo established the Canada Company that controlled the lucrative fur trade in New France for the next dozen years. However, Cardinal Richelieu wanted something far more centralized and formalized. So in 1627, he formed the Company of 100 Associates, later known as the Company of New France.
In return for a complete fur trade monopoly, the Company was to administer, organize, and populate the colony. The requirement was that they were to send at least 4 000 colonists to New France over a fifteen-year period and provide them with accommodation and employment. However, since colonization demanded time and money - and interfered with the fur trade - the Company never fulfilled the requirement. Stagnant population growth would be the Achilles' heel of New France. Even twenty years later when the Company of 100 Associates transferred its monopoly to the Company of Habitants, there was no change in the lack of commitment to the colonization drive.
Coureurs des bois or unlicensed fur traders forged important European-Aboriginal relationships. Originally Champlain wanted to expand the fur trade. Even with the changing European styles that demanded that men wear beaver hats - especially the highly prized castor gras - the market could only sustain about 20 000 kg of fur annually. However, believing that if he did not get it, some hated rival would, Champlain dispatched scores of independent fur traders. As a result, for many years, fur traders became victims of their own success as thousands of unsold pelts were allowed to rot in warehouses in order to keep the prices high.
The coureurs des bois - notably Étienne Brulé and Jean Nicollet - greatly expanded the boundaries of the fur trade, forged alliances with the aboriginal peoples, and explored the uncharted interior of the continent. Romanticized in the pages of history, they are often seen as daunting and intrepid men in their birch bark canoes going off bravely into the unknown. There may have been a little bit of that. However, for many of them, it was a golden opportunity to escape the drudgery and problems associated with farm and family.
Champlain's military and diplomatic decisions were another impetus to forging the aboriginal-European relationship. He saw that such an alliance was essential if the fur trade was to be expanded. Anxious to make friends with the Huron because he recognized the many invaluable things they could teach the French settlers, he awaited his opportunity. A critical event in the subsequent history of French-aboriginal relations occurred in 1609.
The Montagnais and Algonquin, members of the Huron Confederacy, asked Champlain and the French to fight against the dreaded Iroquois. During the battle that took place near the lake that bears his name, Champlain and two Frenchmen made a fateful decision. Using his arquebus, Champlain killed two Iroquois chiefs after which he himself received a non-fatal neck wound. The alliance lineup had now been irrevocably determined - the French and the Hurons facing off against the English and the Iroquois.
The Kirkes Capture Québec
An intriguing interlude in the history of New France took place in 1628. The five Kirke brothers, led by David and Lewis, were privateers - licensed pirates who received support from their monarch - who wrecked havoc on the colony in 1628.
After attacking Acadia, they sailed upriver to Tadoussac and captured it from the unsuspecting Basque whalers. Knowing that they had cut off Quebec from any outside support, they demanded Champlain surrender his colony to them. Champlain refused. But fate was on the brothers' side. The Company of One Hundred Associates had just sent their first large expedition to New France. Lying in wait for them as they came around the Gaspé peninsula, the Kirkes captured eighteen of the twenty ships and took 600 prisoners along with valuable supplies.
Those supplies were vital for the survival, especially over the winter, of Quebec. The Kirkes returned to Europe prior to the onset of winter and leaving Champlain and his colonists to face starvation. The heartless strategy worked for when the brothers returned in the summer of 1629, Champlain surrendered and was taken back to England a prisoner.
Both Acadia and New France remained in English hands for the next four years as the Kirkes feasted on the riches of the fur trade. The evolution of Canada might have been very different were it not for one of those unexpected quirks of history. The English treasury was in a pitiful state, so King Charles, in order to stave off bankruptcy, agreed to return the French colonies in return for a large payment. But the Kirkes had one last role to play. Before departing, they razed most of the settlement to the ground forcing Champlain to start all over again when he returned in 1632, as the newly appointed royal governor.
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