By Canadian Streams Part 2

If anything remained to heap the cup of Iroquois resentment to the brim, it was provided the following year, when Champlain again lent his a.s.sistance to the Algonquins and Hurons, and, encountering a war-party of Iroquois, a hundred strong, near the mouth of the Richelieu, killed or captured every one of them. The day was to come when the tables would be turned with a vengeance, when the war-cry of the Iroquois would be heard under the walls of Montreal and Quebec, and the death of each of the hundred warriors avenged a hundredfold.

But the sanguinary story of the Richelieu is not limited to Indian wars, or the conflict between Indian and French. In later years it was to become the road of war between white and white, between New England and New France, and again between the revolted colonists of New England and the loyal colonists of Canada. On the very spot where Champlain and his Algonquins had defeated the Iroquois, one hundred and fifty years later another conflict took place, curiously similar in some respects, though different enough in others. Again one side fought behind a barricade, while the other gallantly rushed to the a.s.sault, and again the defeat was overwhelming; but there the resemblance ends. Behind the impregnable breastwork at Ticonderoga stood Montcalm with his three or four thousand French; without stood Abercrombie, with fifteen thousand British regulars and Colonial militia. Abercrombie's one and only idea was to carry the position by a.s.sault, and throughout the long day he hurled regiment after regiment up the deadly slope, only to see them mown down by hundreds and thousands before the breastwork. Champlain's victory was one of civilisation over savagery; Montcalm's was one of skill over stupidity.

Seventeen years after the battle of Ticonderoga, the Richelieu once more became the road of war. Down its historic waters came Montgomery, with his three thousand Americans, to capture Montreal and to be driven back from the walls of Quebec. Among all the singular circ.u.mstances that led up to and accompanied this disastrous attempt to relieve Canadians of the British yoke, none was more remarkable, or more significant, than the fact that the bulk of the plucky little army with which Guy Carleton successfully defended England's northern colony consisted of French-Canadians--the same down-trodden French-Canadians on whose behalf Congress had sent an army to drive the British into the sea. As for the Richelieu, having served for the better part of two centuries as the pathway of savage and civilised war, its energies were at length turned into channels of peaceful commerce.

V

THE RIVER OF THE CATARACT

That dread abyss! What mortal tongue may tell The seething horrors of its watery h.e.l.l!

Where, pent in craggy walls that gird the deep, Imprisoned tempests howl, and madly sweep The tortured floods, drifting from side to side In furious vortices.

KIRBY.

Father Louis Hennepin, in his _New Discovery of a Vast Country in America_, gives the earliest known description of the river and falls of Niagara. "Betwixt the Lake Ontario and Erie," he says, "there is a vast and prodigious Cadence of Water which falls down after a surprising and astonis.h.i.+ng manner, insomuch that the Universe does not afford its Parallel. 'Tis true, Italy and Suedeland boast of some such Things; but we may as well say they are but sorry Patterns, when compar'd to this of which we now speak. At the foot of this horrible Precipice, we meet with the River Niagara, which is not above half a quarter of a League broad, but is wonderfully deep in some places. It is so rapid above this Descent that it violently hurries down the wild Beasts while endeavouring to pa.s.s it to feed on the other side, they not being able to withstand the force of its Current, which inevitably casts them down headlong above Six hundred foot. This wonderful Downfall is compounded of two great Cross-streams of Water, and two Falls, with an Isle sloping along the middle of it. The Waters which Fall from this vast height, do foam and boil after the most hideous manner imaginable, making an outrageous Noise, more terrible than that of Thunder; for when the Wind blows from off the South, their dismal roaring may be heard above fifteen Leagues off. The River Niagara having thrown itself down this incredible Precipice, continues its impetuous course for two Leagues together, to the great Rock, with an inexpressible Rapidity: But having pa.s.sed that, its Impetuosity relents, gliding along more gently for two Leagues, till it arrives at the Lake Ontario, or Frontenac."

This same year, 1678, when Hennepin visited the great falls, La Salle, with his lieutenants Tonty and La Motte, were busy with preparations for their western explorations, and in these the Niagara River was to play an important part. It was about the middle of November when La Motte, with Father Hennepin and sixteen men, sailed from Fort Frontenac (Kingston) in a little vessel of ten tons. "The winds and the cold of the autumn," says Hennepin, "were then very violent, insomuch that our crew was afraid to go into so little a vessel. This oblig'd us to keep our course on the north side of the lake, to shelter ourselves under the coast against the north-west wind." On the twenty-sixth they were in great danger, a couple of leagues off sh.o.r.e, where they were obliged to lie at anchor all night. The wind coming round to the north-east, however, they managed to continue their voyage, and arrived safely at an Iroquois village called Tajajagon, where Toronto stands to-day. They ran their little s.h.i.+p into the mouth of the Humber, where the Iroquois came to barter Indian corn, and gaze in open-mouthed wonder at the marvellous inventions of the white men. Contrary winds and trouble with the ice kept them there until the fifth of December, when they crossed the lake to the mouth of the Niagara. "On the 6th, being St. Nicholas's Day," says Hennepin, "we got into the fine River Niagara, into which never any such s.h.i.+p as ours enter'd before. We sung there Te Deum, and other prayers, to return our thanks to Almighty G.o.d for our prosperous voyage." After examining the river as far as Chippewa Creek, La Motte, Hennepin and the men set to work to build a cabin, surrounded by palisades, two leagues above the mouth of the river. The ground was frozen, and hot water had to be used to thaw it out before the stakes could be driven in. The Iroquois, who according to Hennepin had been very friendly on their arrival at the mouth of the river, presenting them with fish, imputing their good fortune in the fisheries to the white men, and examining with interest and astonishment the "great wooden canoe," grew sullen and suspicious when they saw the strangers building a fortified house on what they considered peculiarly their own territory. La Motte and Hennepin went off to the great village of the Senecas, beyond the Genesee, to obtain their consent to the building of the fort, but without much success. Soon after their departure, La Salle and Tonty reached the Seneca village, on their way from Fort Frontenac to the Niagara. More persuasive, or more fortunate than his lieutenant, La Salle secured permission not only for the fortified post at the mouth of the river, but also for a much more important undertaking which he had planned, the building of a vessel at the upper end of the Niagara River, to be used in connection with his western explorations.

During the winter the necessary material for the _Griffin_, as the new vessel was to be called, was carried over the long portage to the mouth of Cayuga Creek, above the falls, where a dock was prepared and the keel laid. La Salle sent the master-carpenter to Hennepin to desire him to drive the first bolt, but, as he says, his profession obliged him to decline the honour. La Salle returned to Fort Frontenac, leaving Tonty to finish the work. The Iroquois, in spite of their agreement with La Salle, watched the building of the _Griffin_ with jealous dissatisfaction, and kept the little band of Frenchmen in a state of constant anxiety. Fortunately, one of their expeditions against the neighbouring tribes took the majority of them off, and the work was pushed forward with redoubled zeal, so that it might be completed before their return. The Indians that remained behind were too few to make an open attack, but they did their utmost to prevent the completion of the s.h.i.+p. One of them, feigning drunkenness, attacked the blacksmith and tried to kill him, but was driven off with a red-hot bar. Hennepin navely remarks that this, "together with the reprimand he received from me," obliged him to be gone. A native woman warned Tonty that an attempt would be made to burn the vessel. Failing in this, the Senecas tried to starve the French by refusing to sell them corn, and might have succeeded but for the efforts of two Mohegan hunters, who kept the workmen supplied with game from the surrounding forest. Finally, the _Griffin_ was launched, amid the shouts of the French and the yelpings of the Indians, who forgot their displeasure in the novel spectacle.

She was towed up the Niagara, and on the seventh of August, 1679, La Salle and his men sailed out over the placid waters of Lake Erie, the booming of his cannon announcing the approach of the first s.h.i.+p of the upper lakes. In the _Griffin_ La Salle sailed through Lakes Eric, St.

Clair, and Huron, to Michilimackinac, and thence crossed Lake Michigan to the entrance to Green Bay, where some of his men, sent on ahead, had collected a quant.i.ty of valuable furs. These he determined to send back to Canada, to satisfy the clamorous demands of his creditors, while he continued his voyage to the Mississippi. The _Griffin_ set sail for Niagara on the eighteenth of September. She never reached her destination, and her fate has remained one of the mysteries of Canadian history.

VI

THE HIGHWAY OF THE FUR TRADE

Dear dark-brown waters, full of all the stain Of sombre spruce-woods and the forest fens, Laden with sound from far-off northern glens Where winds and craggy cataracts complain, Voices of streams and mountain pines astrain, The pines that brood above the roaring foam Of La Montague or Des Erables; thine home Is distant yet, a shelter far to gain.

Aye, still to eastward, past the shadowy lake And the long slopes of Rigaud toward the sun.

The mightier stream, thy comrade, waits for thee, The beryl waters that espouse and take Thine in their deep embrace, and bear thee on In that great bridal journey to the sea.

LAMPMAN.

While Champlain was in Paris, in 1612, a young man, one Nicolas de Vignau, whom he had sent the previous year to visit the tribes of the Ottawa, reappeared, with a marvellous tale of what he had seen on his travels. He had found a great lake, he said, and out of it a river flowing north, which he had descended and reached the sh.o.r.es of the sea, where he had seen the wreck of an English s.h.i.+p. Seventeen days' travel by canoe, said Vignau, would bring one to the sh.o.r.es of his sea.

Champlain was delighted, and prepared immediately to follow up this important discovery. He returned to Canada, and about the end of May 1613 set out from Montreal with Vignau and three companions. The rest of the story is better told in Parkman's words--and Parkman is here at his very best.

"All day they plied their paddles, and when the night came they made their campfire in the forest. Day dawned. The east glowed with tranquil fire, that pierced, with eyes of flame, the fir-trees whose jagged tops stood drawn in black against the burning heaven. Beneath the glossy river slept in shadow, or spread far and wide in sheets of burnished bronze; and the white moon, paling in the face of day, hung like a disk of silver in the western sky. Now a fervid light touched the dead top of the hemlock, and, creeping downward, bathed the mossy beard of the patriarchal cedar, unstirred in the breathless air. Now, a fiercer spark beamed from the east; and now, half risen on the sight, a dome of crimson fire, the sun blazed with floods of radiance across the awakened wilderness.

"The canoes were launched again, and the voyagers held their course.

Soon the still surface was flecked with spots of foam; islets of froth floated by, tokens of some great convulsion. Then, on their left, the falling curtain of the Rideau shone like silver betwixt its bordering woods, and in front, white as a snow-drift, the cataracts of the Chaudiere barred their way. They saw the unbridled river careering down its sheeted rocks, foaming in unfathomed chasms, wearying the solitude with the hoa.r.s.e outcry of its agony and rage."

While the Indians threw an offering into the foam as an offering to the Manitou of the cataract, Champlain and his men shouldered their canoes and climbed over the long portage to the quiet waters of the Lake of the Chaudiere, now Lake Des Chenes. Past the Falls of the Chats and a long succession of rapids they made their way, until at last, discouraged by the difficulties of the river, they took to the woods, and made their way through them, tormented by mosquitoes, to the village of Tessouat, one of the princ.i.p.al chiefs of the Algonquins, who welcomed Champlain to his country.

Feasting, the smoking of ceremonial pipes, and a great deal of speech-making followed. Champlain asked for men and canoes to conduct him to the country of the Nip.i.s.sings, through whom he hoped to reach the North Sea. Tessouat and his elders looked dubious. They had no love for the Nip.i.s.sings, and preferred to keep Champlain among themselves.

Finally, at his urgent solicitation, they agreed, but as soon as he had left the lodge they changed their minds. Champlain returned and upbraided them as children who could not hold fast to their word. They replied that they feared that he would be lost in the wild north country, and among the treacherous Nip.i.s.sings.

"But," replied Champlain, "this young man, Vignau, has been to their country, and did not find the road or the people so bad as you have said."

"Nicholas," demanded Tessouat, "did you say that you had been to the Nip.i.s.sings?"

"Yes," he replied, "I have been there,"

"You are a liar," returned the unceremonious host; "you know very well that you slept here among my children every night, and got up again every morning; and if you ever went to the Nip.i.s.sings, it must have been when you were asleep. How can you be so impudent as to lie to your chief, and so wicked as to risk his life among so many dangers? He ought to kill you with tortures worse than those with which we kill our enemies."

Vignau held out stoutly for a time, but finally broke down and confessed his treachery. This "most impudent liar," as Champlain calls him, seems to have had no more substantial motive for his outrageous fabrication than vanity and the love of notoriety. Champlain spurned him from his presence, and in bitter disappointment retraced his steps to Montreal.

From the days of Champlain to the close of the period of French rule, and for many years thereafter, the Ottawa was known as the main thoroughfare from Montreal to the great west. Up these waters generation after generation of fur-traders made their way, their canoes laden with goods, to be exchanged at remote posts on the a.s.siniboine, the Saskatchewan, or the Athabasca, for skins brought in by all the surrounding tribes. Long before the first settler came to clear the forest and make a home for himself in the wilderness, these banks echoed to the shouts of French _voyageurs_ and Indian canoe-men, and the gay songs of Old Canada. Many a weary hour of paddling under a hot midsummer sun, and many a long and toilsome portage, were lightened by the rollicking chorus of "En roulant ma boule," or the tender refrain of "A la claire fontaine." These inimitable folk-songs became in time a link between the old days of the fur-trade and the later period of the lumber traffic. It is indeed not so many years ago that one might sit on the banks of the Ottawa, in the long summer evenings, and, as the mighty rafts of logs floated past, catch the familiar refrain, softened by distance:

Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant, En roulant ma boule roulant, En roulant ma boule.

VII

THE RED RIVER OF THE NORTH

But, in the ancient woods the Indian old, Unequal to the chase, Sighs as he thinks of all the paths untold, No longer trodden by his fleeting race, And, westward, on far-stretching prairies damp, The savage shout, and mighty bison tramp Roll thunder with the lifting mists of morn.

MAIR.

In September 1738 a party of French explorers left Fort Maurepas, near the mouth of the Winnipeg River, and, skirting the lower end of Lake Winnipeg in their canoes, reached the delta of the Red River of the North. Threading its labyrinthine channels, they finally emerged on the main stream. The commander of this little band of pathfinders--first of white men to see the waters of the Red River--was Pierre Gaultier de la Verendrye, one of the most dauntless and unselfish characters in the whole history of exploration. Paddling up the river, La Verendrye and his men finally came to the mouth of the a.s.siniboine, or the Forks of the Asiliboiles, as La Verendrye calls it, where he met a party of Crees with two war-chiefs. The chiefs tried to dissuade him from continuing his journey toward the west, using the usual native arguments as to the dangers of the way, and the treachery of other tribes; but La Verendrye had heard such arguments before, and was not to be turned from his purpose by dangers, real or a.s.sumed. He had set his heart on the discovery of the Western Sea, and as a means to that end was now on his way to visit a strange tribe of Indians whose country lay toward the south-west--the Mandans of the Missouri. Leaving one of his officers behind to build a fort at the mouth of the a.s.siniboine, about where the city of Winnipeg stands to-day, he continued his journey to the west.

Somewhere near the present town of Portage la Prairie, he and his men built another small post, afterwards known as Fort La Reine. From this outpost he set out in October, with a selected party of twenty men, for an overland journey to the Mandan villages on the Missouri. Visiting a village of a.s.siniboines on the way, La Verendrye arrived on the banks of the Missouri on the third of December. Knowing the value of an imposing appearance, he made his approach to the Mandan village as spectacular as possible. His men marched in military array, with the French flag borne in front, and as the Mandans crowded out to meet him, the explorer brought his little company to a stand, and had them fire a salute of three volleys, with all the available muskets, to the unbounded astonishment and no small terror of the Mandans, to whom both the white men and their weapons were entirely unknown. After spending some time with the Mandans, La Verendrye returned to Fort La Reine, leaving two of his men behind to learn the language, and pick up all the information obtainable as to the unknown country that lay beyond, and the prospects of reaching the Western Sea by way of the Missouri. The story of La Verendrye's later explorations, and his efforts to realise his life-long ambition to reach the sh.o.r.es of the Western Sea, is full of interest, but lies outside the present subject.

Returning to the Red River of the North, and spanning the interval in time to the close of the eighteenth century, we find another party of white men making their way up its muddy waters. This "brigade" of fur-traders, as it was called, was in charge of a famous Nor'-Wester known as Alexander Henry, whose voluminous journals were resurrected from the archives of the Library of Parliament at Ottawa some years ago.

Henry gives us an admirably full picture of the Red River country and its human and other inhabitants, as they were in his day. One can see the long string of heavily laden canoes as they forced their way slowly up the current of the Red River, paddles dipping rhythmically to the light-hearted chorus of some old Canadian _chanson_. At night the camp is pitched on some comparatively high ground, fires are lighted, kettles hung, and the evening meal despatched. Then the men gather about the camp-fires, fill their pipes, and an hour is spent in song and story.

They turn in early, however, for the day's paddling has been long and heavy, and they must be off again before daylight on the morrow. So the story runs from day to day.

They reach the mouth of the a.s.siniboine, and Henry notes the ruins of La Verendrye's old Fort Rouge. Old residents of Winnipeg will appreciate his feeling references to the clinging character of the soil about the mouth of the a.s.siniboine: "The last rain had turned it into a kind of mortar that adheres to the foot like tar, so that at every step we raise several pounds of it."

These were the days when the buffalo roamed in vast herds throughout the great western plains. One gets from Henry's narrative some idea of their almost inconceivable numbers. As he ascended the Red River, the country seemed alive with them. The "beach, once a soft black mud into which a man would sink knee-deep, is now made hard as pavement by the numerous herds coming to drink. The willows are entirely trampled and torn to pieces; even the bark of the smaller trees is rubbed off in places. The gra.s.s on the first bank of the river is entirely worn away." As the brigade nears the point where the international boundary crosses the Red River, an immense herd is seen, "commencing about half a mile from the camp, whence the plain was covered on the west side of the river as far as the eye could reach. They were moving southward slowly, and the meadow seemed as if in motion."

One further glimpse from Henry's Journal will serve to give some idea of life on the banks of the Red River at the beginning of the last century.

Henry is describing the "bustle and noise which attended the transportation of _five_ pieces of trading goods" from his own fort to one of the branch establishments.