CARTIER TAKING POSSESSION FOR FRANCE.

Preface

"Time's noblest offspring is the last."

This history is intended to meet, so far as it may, the want for brief, compact, and handy manuals of the beginnings of our country.

Although primarily designed for young people, the fact has not been overlooked that the same want exists among adult readers, to whom an intelligent view of the subject, in a little space, is nowhere accessible.

For the purpose in hand, the simplest language consistent with clearness has been made use of, though I have never hesitated to employ the right word, whenever I could command it, even if it were of more than three syllables.

As in the "Making of New England," "this book aims to occupy a place between the larger and lesser histories,—to so condense the exhaustive narrative as to give it greater vitality, or so extend what the narrow limits of the school-history often leave obscure as to supply the deficiency. Thus, when teachers have a particular topic before them, it is intended that a chapter on the same subject be read to fill out the bare outlines of the common-school text-book.

"To this end the plan has been to treat each topic as a unit, to be worked out to a clear understanding of its objects and results before passing to another topic. And in furtherance of this method, each subject has its own descriptive notes, maps, plans and pictorial illustration, so that all may contribute to a thorough knowledge of the matter in hand. The several topics readily fall into groups that have an apparent or underlying connection, which is clearly brought out."

In this volume, I have followed up to its legitimate ending the work done by the three great rival powers of modern times in civilizing our continent. I have tried to make it the worthy, if modest, exponent of a great theme. The story grows to absorbing interest, as the great achievement of the age,—of the Anglo-Saxon overcoming the Latin race, as one great wave overwhelms another with resistless force.

Under the title of "The Great West," the present volume deals mostly with the section lying beyond the Mississippi. Another is proposed, in which the central portion of the Union will be treated. The completed series, it is hoped, will present something like a national portrait of the American people.

Folk Lore of the Pueblos.

While professing Christianity, the Pueblo Indians have mostly kept some part of the idolatrous faith of their fathers. Thus the two have become curiously blended in their worship. We often see the crucifix, or pictures of the Virgin hanging on the walls of their dwellings, but neither the coming of the whites, nor the zeal of missionaries could wholly eradicate the deeply grounded foundations of their ancient religion. The little we know about this belief, in its purity, comes to us chiefly in the form of legendary lore, although since the Zuñi have been studied1 with this object we have a much clearer conception of it than ever before.

By this uncertain light we find it to be a religion of symbols and mysteries, primarily founded upon the wondrous workings of nature for man's needs, and so embodying philosophy growing out of her varied phenomena. Therefore sun, moon, and stars, earth, sky, and sea, and all plants, animals, and men were supposed to bear a certain mystical relation to each other in the plan of the universe. Instead of one all-supreme being, the Zuñi worshipped many gods each of whom was supposed to possess some special attribute or power. Some were higher, some lower down in the scale of power.

The phenomena of nature, being more mysterious, were thought to be more closely related to the higher gods. If there was drought in the land, the priests prayed for rain from the housetops, as the Prophet Elijah did in the wilderness. Each year, in the month of June, they went up to the top of the highest mountain, which they called the "Mother of Rain," to perform some secret ceremony touching the coming harvest. And because rain seldom falls in this country, they made earnest supplication to water, as a beneficent spirit, who ascended and descended the heavens in their sight, and to the sun as the twin deity in whom lay the power of life and death,—to ripen the harvest or wither all living things away into dust.

Like the ancient Egyptians, of whom they constantly remind us, the Zuñi believed animals possessed certain mystic powers, not belonging to man, so investing them with a sacred character. Beasts of prey were supposed to have magic power over other animals, hence the bear stood higher in the Zuñi mythology than the deer or antelope. The Indians call this magic power medicine, but the Zuñi gave it form to his own mind—the substance of a thing unseen—by making a stone image of the particular animal he had chosen for his medicine, which he carried with him to war or the chase as a charm of highest virtue. We call this fetich-worship.

Each pueblo had one or more close, underground cells2 in which certain mysterious rites, connected, it is believed, with the worship of the people, were solemnized. We are told that, at Pecos, the priests kept watch night and day over a sacred fire, which was never suffered to go out for a single moment, for fear some calamity would instantly happen to the tribe. It is also said that when Pecos was assaulted and sacked by a hostile tribe, the priests kept their charge over the sacred fire while the tumult of battle raged about them. And when, at length, the tribe itself had nearly died out, the survivors took the sacred fire with them to another people, beyond the mountains, where it is kept burning as the symbol of an ever-living faith.

RUINS OF PECOS.

Another legend goes on to say that an enormous serpent was kept in a den in the temple of Pecos to which on certain occasions living men were thrown as a sacrifice. Both legends would seem to point to Pecos as a holy place, from which the priests gave out instruction to the people, as of old they did from the temples of the heathen gods.

The tradition of the origin of the Zuñi, as told by Mr. Cushing, is almost identical with that held by the Mandans of the Upper Missouri. Each says the race sprung from the earth itself, or rather that the first peoples lived in darkness and misery in the bowels of the earth, until at length they were led forth into the light of day by two spirits sent from heaven for their deliverance, as the Zuñi say, or by discovering a way out for themselves, as the Mandans say.3

A tradition of the Pimos4 Indians makes a beautiful goddess the founder of their race. It says that in times long past a woman of matchless beauty resided among the mountains near this place. All the men admired and paid court to her. She received the tributes of their devotion, grain, skins, etc., but gave no favors in return. Her virtue and her determination to remain secluded were equally firm. There came a drought which threatened the world with famine. In their distress the people applied to her, and she gave them corn from her stock, and the supply seemed endless. Her goodness was unbounded. One day as she was lying asleep a drop of rain fell upon her and produced conception. A son was the issue, who was the founder of the race that built these structures.

But Montezuma5 is the patriarch, or tutelary genius, whom all the Indians of New Mexico look to as their coming deliverer.

One tradition runs that Montezuma was a poor shepherd who tended sheep in the mountains. One day an eagle came to keep him company. After a time the eagle would run before Montezuma, and extend its wings, as if inviting him to seat himself on its back. When at last Montezuma did so, the eagle instantly spread its wings and flew away with him to Mexico where Montezuma founded a great people.

Ever since then the Indians have constantly watched for the second coming of Montezuma, and thenceforth the eagle was held sacred, and has become a symbol among them. He is to come, they say, in the morning, at sunrise, so at that hour people may be seen on the housetops looking earnestly toward the east, while chanting their morning prayers, for like the followers of Mahomet, these people chant hymns upon the housetops. Although beautiful and melodious these chants are described as being inexpressibly sad and mournful.

CEREUS GIGANTEA.

In person the people are well formed and noble looking. They are honest among themselves, hospitable to strangers, and unlike nomads, are wholly devoted to caring for their crops and flocks. They own many sheep. They raise corn, wheat, barley and fruit. One pueblo raises corn and fruit, another is noted for its pottery, while a third is known for its skill in weaving.

But after all, these Pueblo Indians are only barbarians of a little higher type than common. Whenever we look closely into their habits and manners, we are struck with the resemblances existing among the whole family of native tribes. If we assume them to have known a higher civilization they have degenerated. If we do not so assume, the observation of three centuries shows them to have come to a standstill long, long ago.

Pueblo Customs. When the harvest time comes the people abandon their villages in order to go and live among their fields, the better to watch over them while the harvest is being gathered in.

PUEBLO IDOLS.

Grain is threshed by first spreading it out upon a dirt floor made as hard as possible, and then letting horses tread it out with their hoofs. It is then winnowed in the wind.

The woman, who is grinding, kneels down before a trough with her stone placed before her in the manner of a laundress's wash-board. Over this stone she rubs another as if scrubbing clothes. The primitive corn-mill is simply a large concave stone into which another stone is made to fit, so as to crush the grain by pressure of the hand.

The unfermented dough is rolled out thin so that after baking it may be put up in rolls, like paper. It is then the color of a hornet's nest, which indeed it resembles. Ovens, for baking, are kept on the housetops.

The processes of spinning and weaving, than which nothing could be more primitive, are thus described by Lieut. Emory, as he saw it done on the Gila, in 1846.

"A woman was seated on the ground under one of the cotton sheds. Her left leg was turned under with the sole of the foot upward. Between her great toe and the next a spindle, about eighteen inches long, with a single fly, was put. Ever and anon she gave it a dexterous twist, and at its end a coarse cotton thread would be drawn out. This was their spinning machine. Led on by this primitive display, I asked for their loom, pointing first to the thread, and then to the blanket girded about the woman's loins. A fellow who was stretched out in the dust, sunning himself, rose lazily up, and untied a bundle which I had supposed to be his bow and arrows. This little package, with four stakes in the ground, was the loom. He stretched his cloth and began the process of weaving."

But these self-taught weavers were behind their brethren of the pueblos, whose loom was of a more improved pattern. One end of the frame of sticks, on which the warp was stretched, would be fastened to the floor, and the other to a rafter overhead. The weaver sat before this frame, rapidly moving the shuttle in her hand to and fro, and so forming the woof.

HIEROGLYPHICS, GILA VALLEY.

Pottery was in common use among them as far back as we have any account of the Pueblo Indians. Jars for carrying and holding water were always articles of prime necessity, though baskets of wicker-work were sometimes woven water-tight for the purpose.

Pueblo Government. Each pueblo is under the control of a head chief, chosen from among the people themselves. When any public business is to be transacted, he collects the principal chiefs in the underground cell, previously mentioned, where the matter that has brought them together is discussed and settled.

The pueblos also have officers, corresponding with the mayor and constables6 of a city, whose business it is to preserve order. In every pueblo there is also a public crier who shouts from the housetops such things as it may concern the people at large to know.

In some of the pueblos there is an abandoned Spanish mission church of unknown antiquity. The one at Acoma has a tower forty feet high with two bells in it, one of which is lettered "San Pedro, A.D. 1710." The church at Pecos is a picturesque ruin.

Footnotes

1. Zuñi have been studied by Mr. F. H. Cushing, who joined the tribe for the purpose.

2. Underground Cells, Spanish Estufas, were circular, without doors or windows, and had a kind of stone table, or altar, in them. One at Taos was surrounded with a stockade, and entered through a trap-door.

3. The Mandans say that the roots of a grape-vine, having penetrated into their dark abode, revealed to them the light of the upper world. By means of this vine, half the tribe climbed to the surface. Owing to the weight of an old woman the vine broke, leaving the rest entombed as before.

4. The Pimos live along the Gila, having moved up from the Gulf Coast within fifty years. They are a pastoral and agricultural people.

5. Montezuma of the traditions is not the Montezuma of Spanish-conquest celebrity.

6. Mayor and Constable. The first is called an al´cal´de, the second an al´gua´zil.

Last Days of Charles V. and Philip II.

We have here reached the high-water-mark of Spanish advance into territory now embraced within the United States. The moment seems well chosen in which to take a parting look at the two great men of their age, whose talents and energy had builded an empire so vast that, when the master-hand was taken away, it tottered to its fall.

Last Days of Charles V. Charles V. is thought to have hastened his death by the indulgence of so strange a whim, that one is led to doubt the soundness of his intellect.

He chose, now in his lifetime, to have his own funeral obsequies performed. For the purpose he laid himself down in his coffin which the monks then lifted on their shoulders and bore into the church. When the bearers had set the coffin down in front of the altar, the solemn service for the dead was chanted, the Emperor himself joining in all the prayers said for the repose of his soul. In the hush which followed the last office paid to the illustrious dead, all the attending monks passed silently out of the church, leaving Charles to pray alone in his coffin.

"The chamber in the Escurial Palace where Philip II. died is that in which he passed the three last years of his life, nailed by the gout to a sofa. Through a narrow casement, his alcove commanded a view of the high altar of the chapel. In this manner, without rising, without quitting his bed, he assisted every day at the holy sacrifice of the mass. His ministers came to work with him in this little chamber, and they still show the little wooden board which the king made use of when writing, or signing his name, by placing it upon his knees."

Tombs of Charles and Philip. "At the right and left of the altar, at the height of about fifteen feet, are two large parallel niches hollowed out in the form of a square. The one at the left is the tomb of Charles V., that at the right of Philip II. At the side of Philip II., who is on his knees in the attitude of prayer, are the prince, Don Carlos, and the two queens whom Philip successively espoused, all three also on their knees in prayer. Underneath, one may read in letters of gold:

PHILIP II., KING OF ALL THE SPAINS,
OF SICILY, AND OF JERUSALEM,
REPOSES IN THIS TOMB, WHICH HE
BUILT FOR HIMSELF WHILE LIVING.

"The Emperor Charles V. is also represented on his knees in the act of prayer. He too is surrounded by a group of kneeling personages who are identified in the inscription, of which we give only part.

TO CHARLES V., KING OF THE ROMANS,
HIGH AND MIGHTY EMPEROR, KING OF
JERUSALEM, ARCHDUKE OF AUSTRIA,
HIS SON PHILIP.

"All these statues are of gilt bronze, of a grand style and admirable effect. Those of the two sovereigns, above all, with their armorial mantles, are of a severe magnificence."—Alex. Dumas, the Elder.

Sword and Gown in California.

California is the name1 given in an old Spanish romance to a fabulous island of the sea lying out toward the Indies.

After a time, the Spaniards found out that what they had supposed to be a large island2 was really a peninsula, so the name presently spread to the mainland.

Cabrillo3 sailed yet higher up, and others higher still, till the work of tracing the coast as far as Cape Mendocino4 itself was completed.

CALIFORNIA COAST.

Spanish power in the New World received now and here its first serious check, though possibly little was thought of it at the time, in Europe. Like David before Goliath, little England confronted the bully of Europe where least expected, with menace to her great and growing empire of the West.

The greatest seaman of his age, Francis Drake, whose name was the terror of Spaniards everywhere, had passed the Straits of Magellan with one little vessel, into the Great South Sea, which Balboa discovered and claimed for Spain. Stopping at no odds, one day fighting and the next plundering, Drake kept his undaunted way a thousand leagues up the coast. His ship being already full-freighted with the plunder of the ports at which she had called, Drake thought to shorten the way back to England by sailing through the North-east Passage,5 so outwitting the Spaniards who were keeping vigilant watch against his return southward,—for his men were but a handful against a world of foes, and his ship too precious to be risked in fight. So Drake sailed on into the north. He sailed as far as the Oregon coast, when the weather grew so cold that his men, who were come from tropic heats, began to murmur. Drake was therefore forced to put his ship about and steer south again, along the coast, looking for a harbor as he went, to refit his ship in. Finding this harbor6 in 38°, the Golden Hind dropped anchor there on the 17th of June, 1579, showing a flag which had never before been seen in that part of the world.

Drake lay quietly at anchor in this port for five weeks. During all this time the natives came in troops to the shore, drawn thither to see the strange bearded white men who spoke in an unknown tongue, and kept the loud thunder hid away in their ship. It is even said that the king of that country took the crown off his own head, and put it on Francis Drake's in token of submission. All this and much else is fully and quaintly set forth in the narrative of Master Fletcher, who was Drake's chaplain on board the Golden Hind.

Before leaving this friendly port, Drake took formal possession of the country by setting up a post, to which a plate of brass was fixed, with Queen Elizabeth's name engraved on it.

The white cliffs of the coast that rose about him, would seem to have recalled to Drake's mind those of Old England, for he gave the name of New Albion to all this great land he had merely coasted. We should not forget that Elizabeth herself afterwards said of such acts that "discovery is of little worth without actual possession."

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.

Having planted this thorn in the side of the Spanish Empire of the West, Drake merrily sailed away for England by way of the Cape of Good Hope.7

Spain complained. Elizabeth listened with impatience. When the Spanish ambassador insisted on his master's sole right to navigate the western ocean, the Queen lost her temper. She roundly told Mendoza that "the sea and air are common to all men." Yet the claim itself shows what mighty hold Spain had on the other powers. In eight years the question was fought out in the English Channel with all Europe for spectators. Spain was so sure of victory, that the popular feeling even got into the nursery rhymes of the day. A child is supposed to be saying,

DRAKE SAILS AWAY.

Drake had perhaps done as much as any man to bring about the issue. He was there in the thick of the fight.8

So the spell of Spanish invincibility was broken at last. Spain was no longer mistress of the seas.

Next on her brilliant roll of navigators, comes Juan de Fuca, who (1592) discovered the straits that now bear his name. Spain still wanting a harbor in which the Manila galleons could refit when homeward bound, Sebastian Vizcaino (1602-1603), sometimes called "the Biscayner," entered the haven of San Diego, and that of Monterey,9 which he then named, as he also did the one lying within Point Reyes, called by him Port San Francisco.10 Exploration of this coast then ceased for a century and a half.

The real advance into California (1768), like all other Spanish movements on this continent, originated in a half-monkish, half-military plan for the conquest, conversion and civilization of the country. Enough was known of its soil and climate to show how far both exceeded the sterile steppes of New Mexico, where Spanish advance had already reached its farthest limit, and like a stream that meets an obstacle in its path, was turned into another channel. For where plants grow and rivers flow, God has fixed the abodes of men.

This movement began11 from the missions of Lower California. It was designed to extend the system by which Spain had first conquered, and since ruled, Mexico into the unoccupied and little-known province of Alta, or Upper, California. The viceroy was to furnish soldiers, the president-prelate of the Franciscan order, missionaries.

Thus coast batteries and forts were to be built for the defence of the best harbors, as well as to sustain the missions themselves, so forming a line of military strength along the coast sufficient to repel assault by sea or land, while the mountains behind them would be a barrier between the missions and the wild tribes who lived in the great valleys beyond. One arm was to seize upon and firmly hold the country in its grasp, while the other should gradually bring it into subjection to the Catholic faith. Then, with clerical rule once established, civil order was to come in. Therefore the first essential thing was to build a fort, and the second a church. In this way it was proposed to make rallying-points for civilization of these missions,12 although the plan founded an oligarchy and nothing else.

OLD MAP, SHOWING DRAKE'S PORT.

The Spaniards did not mean to till the soil themselves, but to make the Indians do it for them. Setting this scheme at work, a Franciscan mission was begun at San Diego in July, 1769. The next year another was established at Monterey. From these missions explorers presently made their way out to the valley of the San Joaquin, and even as far north as the great bay of San Francisco (1772), which took to itself, a little later, the name of the old Port San Francisco, with which it must not be confounded.

CARMEL MISSION CHURCH.

In 1776 the Mission of San Francisco was founded. Monterey being the chief settlement, the governor's official residence was fixed there; and now, so late as the period of American Independence, we have the machinery for civilization in California fairly set in motion.

The plan which the founders had proposed to themselves also included the building-up of pueblos, which should be located in suitable places outside the missions, though actually meant for their support, and therefore in a sense dependencies of them. But these pueblos were to be inhabited by Spanish colonists only. One was thus begun (1777) at San José, and a second (1781) at Los Angeles. Here then are plants of two distinct types in the growth of the country,—native vassals and foreign freemen.

As, one by one, missions were created, the native Californians were told they must come and live in them, and submit themselves to the fostering care of the fathers, who would teach them how to live as the whites did, and make known to them the blessings of Christianity, so that their children might exceed their fathers in knowledge, and as they were a docile, submissive and indolent people, they mostly obeyed the order unresistingly, and were set to work building houses, tilling the soil, or tending flocks or herds belonging to the missions, into which it was the aim of the fathers to draw all the wealth of the country.

These pious fathers, however, thought more of converting the Indian than of making a man of him. It is true they baptized and gave him a Christian name, but they held him in servitude all the same. The system looked to keeping him a dependant rather than rousing his ambitions, or showing him how he might better his condition. For instance, the Indian could hold no land in his own right. His labor went to enrich the mission, not himself. He was fed and clothed from the mission. He was a mere atom of society, a vassal of the Church, and was so treated. Men and women were put in the stocks or whipped at the pleasure of their masters, just the same as in slave plantations. If an Indian ran away, he was pursued and brought back by the military. The missionaries found him free, but took away his liberty. In short, spite of all the romance thrown round him, and though his condition was somewhat better than it had been in times past, yet when all is said, the mission Indian was hardly more than a serf. Still the work of the missions so prospered that by the end of the century there were eighteen of them with 13,500 converts. But at this time there were 110 more than 1,800 whites in the country, or only one hundred to a mission.

SPANISH MAP OF 1787, SHOWING MISSIONS, PRESIDIOS, AND ROUTES.

Such, briefly, were the Spanish missions of California, which undertook a noble work, not nobly done, which kept the word of promise to the ear and broke it to the hope.

If we look at the commercial policy of the province, and it is what we should most naturally turn to next, we shall find almost no business transacted with the outside world. Once a year the Manila galleon came to Monterey and took away the furs that had been collected there. Spain's policy shut out all other nations from her colonies, and to the same extent shut the colonies in. So foreign vessels were forbid to enter her ports at all. To this fact we owe the meagre and unfrequent reports of what was going on in the country, nor was it till 1786 that the world learned something of its true condition and worth.

MAP FROM ARCANO DEL MARE, 1647

In that year a French discovery ship put into Monterey. Her commander was La Peyrouse,13 whom Louis XVI. had sent to the Pacific to look into the fur trade of the north-west coast, and who, after touching there, had come down the coast to refit in a Spanish port. La Peyrouse used the six weeks of his stay in Monterey to such purpose that we owe to him the first and only intelligent view of California had up to this time.

As a matter of course, communication with the neighbor provinces was mostly carried on by sea. There was a little trade with San Blas, and so with Old Mexico, but it was long before the way was opened to New Mexico by crossing the Colorado desert. One of the fathers, in 1776, set out from San Gabriel for the Colorado River, passing safely over the route now followed by the Southern Pacific Railway. Afterwards, a little trade sprung up between the provinces, but the way was long and the road beset with dangers.

The first American vessel to enter a California port was the ship Otter of Boston, in 1796. She was an armed trader, carrying a pass signed by Washington, of whom it was doubtful if the Californians had even so much as heard, though they admitted the Otter to trade with them.

The Spaniards had found the natives singularly free from the vices of civilization, but intermingling of the two races soon led to mingling of blood, and subsequent growth of an intermediate class half Spanish and half Indian, so combining certain traits of both without the native vigor of either.

Footnotes

1. California the Name, as applied to the peninsula, first appears in Preciados' diary of Ulloa's voyage.

2. California an Island on English maps so late as 1709 (H. Moll, "Present State of the World").

3. Cabrillo's Voyage is reprinted in the Report of the Wheeler Exploring Expedition.

4. Cape Mendocino. Bancroft ("The Pacific States") thinks the name was given in honor of the viceroy Mendoza.

5. North-east Passage here, or North-west Passage from the Atlantic side, was a thing firmly believed in by the sailors of all nations.

6. Drake's Harbor is not satisfactorily identified. Authorities differ. Some, like Admiral Burney, believe the present port of San Francisco to have been Drake's anchorage; others, like Bancroft, maintain this to be wholly improbable, and think Old Port San Francisco, under Point Reyes, was the place. See Fletcher's account, "The World Encompassed," or Bancroft's Monumental History.

7. Drake's Voyage round the World. A chair made from his ship was presented to the University of Oxford.

8. The Invincible Armada of Philip II., 1588.

9. Monterey, literally King's Mountain.

10. Punta de los Reyes, or Kings' Point.

11. Began from La Paz.

12. Missions were founded with funds given by benevolent persons, at the solicitation of the monks. A royal grant was sometimes the foundation. They were invariably named in honor of a saint. The buildings usually formed a square, enclosed by a high wall, one end being occupied by the church, while the apartments of the friars, granaries, storehouses, etc., occupied the remaining sides.

13. La Peyrouse, an officer of the French navy who had gallantly fought in our war for independence. He lost his life among the islands of the New Hebrides, on one of which his ship was thrown, not a soul surviving to tell the tale.

II.
The French

Prelude

After the discovery of America by Columbus, the French were among the first to turn their attention to this side of the Atlantic, not so much to make conquests in the spirit of universal dominion, as the Spaniards were doing, as to seek new outlets or new sources of supply for their commerce and fisheries.

Spain, as we have seen, forced other nations to follow her lead at a respectful distance. With one foot planted in Europe and the other in America, she bestrode the Atlantic as the colossus of the age.

But the newly awakened spirit of discovery would not down at the bidding of prince or pontiff, let him be never so great or so powerful. Once aroused it was sure to find ways by which some part of the benefits to accrue to mankind from this grand discovery should not be monopolized by a single nation. We might even say that all the nations of Europe instinctively felt this to be their opportunity,—the opportunity of the human race.

France had the ships, and France had the sailors. Sir Walter Raleigh tells us—and surely he is an unbiassed witness—that in Cæsar's time the French Bretons were the best sailors in the world. Were we disposed to call in question their right to this title at a later day,—the time of Columbus, Cabot, Cortereal, and Magellan,—what can be said of their boldly setting sail across an unknown ocean, like the Atlantic, in vessels not larger than a modern oyster-boat?

Yet the names they left behind them in their adventurous voyages make it certain that these Basque and Breton fishermen pushed their way into the Gulf of St. Lawrence soon after Cabot carried home to England the news that he had been in seas alive with codfish.

SHIPS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

The knowledge thus gained pointed with unerring finger to the St. Lawrence as the open door through which French discoverers should pass into the spacious interior of our broad continent, though never, in their wildest flights of fancy, could they have conceived what lay beyond this door. So accident rather than choice led them on through the colder region of the north. And while the Spaniards had missed the Mississippi, a more fortunate chance led Frenchmen to find it by a very different, though no less certain, route. To them be the honor of the achievement!

Just as the march of Spanish civilization is traced in the names given by explorers of that nation, so, in like manner, those conferred by Frenchmen shall direct us in the lines by which they journeyed onward toward the setting sun.

Although Jacques Cartier1 ascended the St. Lawrence so early as 1534-35, it was not till Champlain founded Quebec (1608), that the work of settling a French colony in Canada began in earnest. But even here, at Quebec, three hundred miles from the ocean, the great river poured its undiminished floods out of the wilderness beyond, and it bore its greatness on its face.

Astonished to find themselves only on the threshold, as it were, of the continent, the adventurous pioneers caught their first glimpses of its undoubted grandeur. That they were dazzled by it, is something we may easily conceive.

Whence came this silent river, this daily riddle for men to guess, and whither would it lead them? In what far country would its tiny tributary rills be found? Did they lie hid among the feet of far-off mountains, over-peering all the land like hoary giants, or gush forth from the bosom of some vast plain? Was it indeed the road to India?2

To such questions as these the future must make answer. All believed it would lead to India. But Champlain and those who, like him, looked at things broadly and deeply, were convinced that whoever should hold that river throughout its course would be masters of the continent it undoubtedly drained. And as Frenchmen ever loyal to their king and country, whose glory they would see increased, they purposed making here, in the wilderness, a New France which some day, perhaps, should rival, if not eclipse, the old.

To this work the French brought one qualification peculiarly their own. It was this. Of the three nations who have contended for control in our country, none have so readily adapted themselves to the original people as the French have. None have so thoroughly respected their feelings and prejudices. And none have so easily won their confidence, or so fully commanded their services.

A WOOD RANGER.

Moreover, the French being rather traders than colonists in the true sense, because in Canada the fur trade3 was chiefly looked to, and colonization was thought unfavorable to it, exploration became the profession, we might say, of many who trained themselves for it by living among the Indians, studying their language, their habits, learning how to use the paddle, making long canoe voyages, and so inuring their bodies to the toil and hardship of savage life. While the English remained in their villages, the French wandered everywhere.

If we add to this that the French are a nation of explorers, in whom discovery speedily develops into a passion, we shall get at the true animating spirit which carried them so far into the interior, whether as simple traders, soldiers, or missionaries.

The world could ill spare one of its pioneers. They are heralds of civilization following the guiding star of its destiny.

Footnotes

1. Jacques Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence as high as Montreal (Royal Mount), which he named for the mountain back of the city.

2. The Road to India was no less the goal of early French explorers than with those of other nations.

3. The Fur-trade of Canada, rather than agriculture or fisheries, was considered its truest source of wealth because it gave immediate returns, and was thought to be inexhaustible. Hence it became the engrossing occupation of the inhabitants. It was granted first to De Monts, then to others who undertook to colonize Canada at their own cost.

Westward by the Great Inland Waterways.

From Quebec Champlain pushed on up the river to the island of Montreal, where he established a trading-post. Hither came the Hurons of the lake to barter their furs for French goods. They came by way of Lake Nipissing and the Ottawa. These Indians told the French all about their country, and the way to it. One of them showed Champlain an ingot of copper, and described the way his people refined it from the native ore. Interpreters began to study the Indian dialects, and eager traders to push out farther and farther into the wilderness for the sake of larger gains.

But the route to the west was not without perils which the French found it hard to overcome. Two great rival families of savages were divided from each other by the St. Lawrence and the Lakes. Those living north of the river may be included in the general name of Hurons;1 those on the south were called Iroquois.2 The two waged perpetual war with each other, drawing to them kindred or tributary tribes. In an evil hour Champlain had taken part with the Hurons, so identifying the French, in the minds of the Iroquois, with their worst enemies.

CHAMPLAIN.

If to natural obstacles be added the enmity of a most valiant people, whose country stretched along the whole southern shore of Lake Ontario, who controlled the portage round the Falls of Niagara, and were undisputed masters of the lake itself, we shall go forward with some idea of the impediments to peaceful exploration and of the consummate folly which had put this stumbling-block in the way of it.

We know that before 1612 Champlain had informed himself quite thoroughly about Lake Ontario, because we find the lake outlined on his map of that year. For a like reason we judge him to have known of the Niagara River and Falls.3 But that way the Iroquois lay.

This state of things forced exploration into a quite different channel. The French now had to take the roundabout and difficult way through the country of the friendly Hurons, their allies, or in other words to reach Lake Huron by making a canoe voyage up the Ottawa, across Lake Nipissing, and thence down French River to the lake, instead of going through the open waters of Lakes Ontario and Erie.

A PORTAGE.

In 1615 Champlain brought some Franciscan missionaries to Quebec, one of whom made his way up the Ottawa to Lake Huron a little before him. In 1626 came the Jesuit Fathers,4 who brought the zeal of their order to the cause of evangelizing the Indians. Then Richelieu,5 who held the reins of the monarchy in his hands, founded his famous Company of New France, to whom the King not only granted full powers of government, but also a monopoly of the fur trade, so turning Canada over to private hands.

An unprosperous beginning, however, awaited the new order of things. Civil war had broken out in France. Richelieu was beleaguering the heretics of La Rochelle when England mingled in the fray. In 1629 the English took Quebec from the French, and did not restore6 it again till 1632.

At this time the conquerors had carried Champlain to England, a prisoner of war. He returned to Quebec in 1633, again in chief command, though soon (1635) to die at his post, greatest among all the explorers of his time.

With Champlain's death,7 a new force came into the cause of discovery and conversion, for since the coming of the Jesuits the two were henceforth to go hand in hand.

At the pleasure of the general of the order, its missionaries might be sent with scrip, staff, and wallet to the uttermost parts of the earth. Like John the Baptist in the wilderness, we find them living on such scant fare as nature supplied. Their beds were the bare ground. Under a canopy of green boughs they reared the altar of their humble missions for the worship of the ever-living God. Thus in exile and in want, they began their ministrations among the rude peoples of the wilderness because God and the Blessed Virgin had given them this pious work to do. Their food was often more nourishing to the imagination than the body, yet when compared with what they might expect at the hands of the Iroquois, hunger counted for little, since these barbarians of the New World burnt a missionary alive with the same zest that Christians of the Old did a heretic.

Men willing to undertake such duties, undergo such hardships, live such lives, are sure to leave their impress on any country. We shall find they did so on ours.

On their part the savages truly wished for knowledge of the white man's God, who they were told, and believed, was able to raise them up out of their lowly condition and make them rich and powerful like the whites. So much, at least, of the Jesuits' teachings they could comprehend.

No long time elapsed before these Jesuits made their way to the Hurons of the lake, and here (1634) they established their first missions.

Some say that in this same year a French trader, named Jean Nicolet,8 made his way as far west as the Green Bay of Lake Michigan. There is hopeless confusion about the date, but none as to the fact of his being the first white man to set foot in what is now the State of Wisconsin.

When Nicolet got back to Quebec, he told the missionaries there that he had been on a river which would have taken him to the sea, had he kept on as he was going but three days longer. Hearing this story, the fathers believed themselves on the eve of no less a discovery than the long-sought outlet to India.

Although the Spaniards said little about the discoveries they were making on that side, they could not prevent some knowledge of what they were doing in New Mexico and on the Pacific from leaking out through the Jesuits who were themselves concerned in all these discoveries, and so were better informed than others in regard to their progress.

But from the year 1640, when the missionaries so certainly thought the key to the South Sea was in their hands, on to 1650, or one whole decade, the Iroquois gave the French and their allies other work to do at home. Hardly could the French consider themselves safe in their fort at Montreal, much less venture abroad upon new schemes of discovery. In vain the missionaries cried out upon the Iroquois as the great scourge of Christianity. In vain the elements were invoked to destroy them. The heathen were at the doors of their monasteries, the Dutch9 were behind the Iroquois, urging them on, and the future of New France looked gloomy indeed.

TOTEM OF THE FOXES.

Finally (1650) the Iroquois carried the war into the heart of the Huron country itself. The Hurons fought well, but were soon overpowered and driven from their villages into perpetual exile. Some fled to the east, some to the west, thereby becoming so thoroughly dispersed as never more to be a united nation.

With brief periods of cessation from active warfare, which were rather truces than peace, war raged until 1661, and as the Iroquois now commanded all the routes to the west, the French were effectually shut out from the Great Lakes for the time being.

FRENCH COSTUMES.

A brighter day dawned at last. In 1660 some Lake Superior Indians arrived at Quebec in their canoes. When they were ready to go back, they offered to take a missionary home to live with them. It was a terrible journey, but the offer could not be neglected. Accordingly one was sent back in their company, but died in no long time after reaching their country, of misery and want. The Indians then asked for another missionary. The next to go was Father Allouez,10 who set out in the summer of 1665 in company with some returning savages. Nothing was heard of him for nearly two years. He had about been given up for lost when he appeared at Quebec bringing strange tidings indeed. On the southern shore of Lake Superior, in the forest, among savage hordes, he had set up a mission. He had been much among the neighbor tribes, and had seen and talked with the dreaded Sioux, who proudly told him their country reached to the end of the world. They also told him of a great river, which he supposed must "fall into the sea by Virginia." The father wrote down the name as the Sioux pronounced it,—Messipi.11

Following in the footsteps of Allouez (1668), Fathers Dablon12 and Marquette13 were sent to the mission at the foot of Lake Superior. Afterward Dablon founded that at Sault St. Marie. With Dablon, Allouez (1670) made a journey from Green Bay up Fox River to Winnebago Lake, which they crossed. Going still farther on, they reached the head waters of the Wisconsin, which was then found to be a tributary of the Mississippi.

FOX RIVER.

Thus, in the course of a few years, the Jesuits had planted missions at La Pointe, on Lake Superior, at Sault St. Marie, its outlet, at the Straits of Michilimackinac, and Green Bay. All were first fishing-places, next missions, and then outposts of civilization in the western world.

In the spring of 1671, with much ceremony, the French took formal possession of Sault St. Marie, the lakes Huron and Superior, and all the country as far as the western sea. In token of sovereignty a cross of wood was reared with the arms of France fixed upon it. Amid volleys of musketry, and shouts of "God save the king!" France thus proclaimed herself mistress of the Great West.

Footnotes

1. Hurons, or Wyandots, occupied the east shore of Lake Huron and contiguous country between this and Lake Simcoe. "Their women were their mules."—Champlain. The Wyandots now live in Kansas, and are civilized.

2. Iroquois, called so by the French; by the English, Five Nations, and subsequently Six Nations. The confederated Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Senecas, to whom the Tuscaroras of North Carolina being joined, made the sixth. They attributed their origin to five different handfuls of seed, sowed by the Creator.

3. Niagara River is properly laid down. That Champlain knew of the Falls, is evident from the words "Saut d'eau," meaning waterfall, which he has put down not quite where they belong, but not far out of the way.

4. The Jesuits, or Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola, 1534. The brothers were vowed to chastity, poverty and obedience. See Encyclopædia; also article Jesuit's Bark, or Cinchona.

5. Richelieu, at this time minister of Louis XIII.

6. Did not restore Quebec till the arrears of Queen Henrietta's dowry (queen of Charles I.) had been paid in full.
"How strange are the freaks of destiny! Mary de Medicis, widow of Henry IV., exiled and abandoned, had a daughter, Henrietta, widow of Charles I., who died at Cologne, in the house where, sixty-five years before, Rubens, her painter, was born."—V. Hugo.

7. Champlain, Samuel de, the father of Canada, and first among French explorers in the New World, ought to be held in high esteem by Americans. The work he did was for all time. A man of sterling qualities; of resources; of solid judgment; never effervescent, sometimes headstrong, yet prompt to act in emergencies. Though not noble, he had a chivalric nature united with capacity for affairs. His Voyages is a storehouse of information concerning Canada and New England.

8.Jesuit Relations