Parkman Vol. 4, Chapter 6

The Genius of the Forest now appeared, with a retinue of wild Indians from the interior.

Previously in The Old Regime In Canada

Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians.

Continuing from Chapter 5

Hence it is not surprising to find a memorial, drawn up apparently by Argenson, and addressed to the council of state, asking for instructions when and how a governor–lieutenant-general for the king–ought to receive incense, holy water, and consecrated bread; whether the said bread should be offered him with sound of drum and fife; what should be the position of his seat at church; and what place he should hold in various religious ceremonies; whether in feasts, assemblies, ceremonies, and councils of _a purely civil character_, he or the bishop was to hold the first place; and, finally, if the bishop could excommunicate the inhabitants or others for acts of a civil and political character, when the said acts were pronounced lawful by the governor.

The reply to the memorial denies to the bishop the power of excommunication in civil matters, assigns to him the second place in meetings and ceremonies of a civil character, and is very reticent as to the rest.

[Advis et Résolutions demandés sur la Nouvelle France.]

Argenson had a brother, a counsellor of state, and a fast friend of the Jesuits. Laval was in correspondence with him, and, apparently sure of sympathy, wrote to him touching his relations with the governor. “Your brother,” he begins, “received me on my arrival with extraordinary kindness;” but he proceeds to say that, perceiving with sorrow that he entertained a groundless distrust of those good servants of God, the Jesuit fathers, he, the bishop, thought it his duty to give him in private a candid warning which ought to have done good, but which, to his surprise, the governor had taken amiss, and had conceived, in consequence, a prejudice against his monitor.

[Lettre de Laval à M. d’Argenson, frère du Gouverneur, 20 Oct, 1659.]

Argenson, on his part, writes to the same brother, at about the same time. “The Bishop of Petraea is so stiff in opinion, and so often transported by his zeal beyond the rights of his position, that he makes no difficulty in encroaching on the functions of others; and this with so much heat that he will listen to nobody. A few days ago he carried off a servant girl of one of the inhabitants here, and placed her by his own authority in the Ursuline convent, on the sole pretext that he wanted to have her instructed, thus depriving her master of her services, though he had been at great expense in bringing her from France. This inhabitant is M. Denis, who, not knowing who had carried her off, came to me with a petition to get her out of the convent. I kept the petition three days without answering it, to prevent the affair from being noised abroad. The Reverend Father Lalemant, with whom I communicated on the subject, and who greatly blamed the Bishop of Petraea, did all in his power to have the girl given up quietly, but without the least success, so that I was forced to answer the petition, and permit M. Denis to take his servant wherever he should find her; and, if I had not used means to bring about an accommodation, and if M. Denis, on the refusal which was made him to give her up, had brought the matter into court, I should have been compelled to take measures which would have caused great scandal, and all from the self-will of the Bishop of Petraea, who says that a bishop can do what he likes, and threatens nothing but excommunication.”

[“ — Qui dict quun Evesque peult ce qu’il veult et ne menace que dexcommunication.” Lettre d’Argenson a son Frère, 1659.]

In another letter he speaks in the same strain of this redundancy of zeal on the part of the bishop, which often, he says, takes the shape of obstinacy and encroachment on the rights of others. “It is greatly to be wished,” he observes, “that the Bishop of Petræa would give his confidence to the Reverend Father Lalemant instead of Father Ragueneau;” [1] and he praises Lalemant as a person of excellent sense. “It would be well,” he adds, “if the rest of their community were of the same mind; for in that case they would not mix themselves up with various matters in the way they do, and would leave the government to those to whom God has given it in charge.” [2]

[1: Lettre d’Argenson à son Frère, 21 Oct., 1659.]

[2: Ibid., 7 July, 1660.]

One of Laval’s modern admirers, the worthy Abbé Ferland, after confessing that his zeal may now and then have savored of excess, adds in his defense, that a vigorous hand was needed to compel the infant colony to enter “the good path;” meaning, of course, the straightest path of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. We may hereafter see more of this stringent system of colonial education, its success, and the results that followed.

Chapter 6

When Argenson arrived to assume the government, a curious greeting had awaited him. The Jesuits asked him to dine; vespers followed the repast; and then they conducted him into a hall, where the boys of their school — disguised, one as the Genius of New France, one as the Genius of the Forest, and others as Indians of various friendly tribes — made him speeches by turn, in prose and verse. First, Pierre du Quet, who played the Genius of New France, presented his Indian retinue to the governor, in a complimentary harangue. Then four other boys, personating French colonists, made him four flattering addresses, in French verse. Charles Denis, dressed as a Huron, followed, bewailing the ruin of his people, and appealing to Argenson for aid. Jean François Bourdon, in the character of an Algonquin, next advanced on the platform, boasted his courage, and declared that he was ashamed to cry like the Huron. The Genius of the Forest now appeared, with a retinue of wild Indians from the interior, who, being unable to speak French, addressed the governor in their native tongues, which the Genius proceeded to interpret. Two other boys, in the character of prisoners just escaped from the Iroquois, then came forward, imploring aid in piteous accents; and, in conclusion, the whole troop of Indians, from far and near, laid their bows and arrows at the feet of Argenson, and hailed him as their chief.

[La Reception de Monseigneur le Vicomte d’Argenson par toutes les nations du pais de Canada a son entrée au gouvernement de la Nouvelle France; a Quebecq au College de la Compagnie de Jésus, le 28 de Juillet de l’année 1658. The speeches, in French and Indian, are here given verbatim, with the names of all the boys who took part in the ceremony.]

Besides these mock Indians, a crowd of genuine savages had gathered at Quebec to greet the new “Ononthio.” On the next day — at his own cost, as he writes to a friend — he gave them a feast, consisting of “seven large kettles full of Indian corn, peas, prunes, sturgeons, eels, and fat, which they devoured, having first sung me a song, after their fashion.”

[Papiers d’Argenson. Kebec, 5 Sept., 1658.]

These festivities over, he entered on the serious business of his government, and soon learned that his path was a thorny one. He could find, he says, but a hundred men to resist the twenty-four hundred warriors of the Iroquois; [3] and he begs the proprietary company which he represented to send him a hundred more, who could serve as soldiers or laborers, according to the occasion.

[3: Mémoire sur le subject (sic) de la Guerre des Iroquois, 1659.]

The company turned a deal ear to his appeals. They had lost money in Canada and were grievously out of humor with it. In their view, the first duty of a governor was to collect their debts, which, for more reasons than one, was no easy task. While they did nothing to aid the colony in its distress, they beset Argenson with demands for the thousand pounds of beaver-skins, which the inhabitants had agreed to send them every year, in return for the privilege of the fur trade, a privilege which the Iroquois war made for the present worthless. The perplexed governor vents his feelings in sarcasm. “They (the company) take no pains to learn the truth; and, when they hear of settlers carried off and burned by the Iroquois, they will think it a punishment for not settling old debts, and paying over the beaver-skins.” [4] “I wish,” he adds, “they would send somebody to look after their affairs here. I would gladly give him the same lodging and entertainment as my own.”

[4: Papiers d’Argenson, 21 Oct., 1659.]

Another matter gave him great annoyance. This was the virtual independence of Montreal; and here, if nowhere else, he and the bishop were of the same mind. On one occasion he made a visit to the place in question, where he expected to be received as governor-general; but the local governor, Maisonneuve, declined, or at least postponed, to take his orders and give him the keys of the fort. Argenson accordingly speaks of Montreal as “a place which makes so much noise, but which is of such small account.” [5] He adds that, besides wanting to be independent, the Montrealists want to monopolize the fur trade, which would cause civil war; and that the king ought to interpose to correct their obstinacy.

[5: Papiers d’Argenson, 4 Août, 1659.]

In another letter he complains of Aillebout, who had preceded him in the government, though himself a Montrealist. Argenson says that, on going out to fight the Iroquois, he left Aillebout at Quebec, to act as his lieutenant; that, instead of doing so, he had assumed to govern in his own right; that he had taken possession of his absent superior’s furniture, drawn his pay, and in other respects behaved as if he never expected to see him again. “When I returned,” continues the governor, “I made him director in the council, without pay, as there was none to give him. It was this, I think, that made him remove to Montreal, for which I do not care, provided the glory of our Master suffer no prejudice thereby.”

[Ibid. Double de la lettre escripte par le Vaisseau du Gaigneur, parti la 6 Septembre (1658).]

These extracts may, perhaps, give an unjust impression of Argenson, who, from the general tenor of his letters, appears to have been a temperate and reasonable person. His patience and his nervous system seem, however, to have been taxed to the utmost. His pay could not support him. “The costs of living here are horrible,” he writes. “I have only two thousand crowns a year for all my expenses, and I have already been forced to run into debt to the company to an equal amount.” [6] Part of his scanty income was derived from a fishery of eels, on which sundry persons had encroached, to his great detriment. [7] “I see no reason,” he adds, “for staying here any longer. When I came to this country, I hoped to enjoy a little repose, but I am doubly deprived of it; on one hand by enemies without, and incessant petty disputes within; and, on the other, by the difficulty I find in subsisting. The profits of the fur trade have been so reduced that all the inhabitants are in the greatest poverty. They are all insolvent, and cannot pay the merchants their advances.”

[6: Ibid. Lettre a M de Morangi, 5 Sept., 1658.]

[7: Délibérations de la Compagnie de la Nouvelle France]

– The Old Regime In Canada, Chapter 6 by Francis Parkman

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Introduction.

If, at times, it may seem that range has been allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or on personal observation.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

With respect to that special research which, if inadequate, is still in the most emphatic sense indispensable, it has been the writer’s aim to exhaust the existing material of every subject treated. While it would be folly to claim success in such an attempt, he has reason to hope that, so far at least as relates to the present volume, nothing of much importance has escaped him. With respect to the general preparation just alluded to, he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any means within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true.

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