Parkman Vol. 4, Chapter 13

If the colony was to grow from within, the new settlers must have wives.

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

Previously in The Old Regime In Canada. Beginning chapter 13

The peopling of Canada was due in the main to the king. Before the accession of Louis XIV. the entire population, priests, nuns, traders, and settlers, did not exceed twenty-five hundred; [1] but scarcely had he reached his majority when the shipment of men to the colony was systematically begun. Even in Argenson’s time, loads of emigrants sent out by the Crown were landed every year at Quebec. The Sulpitians of Montreal also brought over colonists to people their seigniorial estate; the same was true on a small scale of one or two other proprietors, and once at least the company sent a considerable number: yet the government was the chief agent of emigration. Colbert did the work, and the king paid for it.

[1: Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foy, II 4]

In 1661, Laval wrote to the cardinals of the Propaganda, that during the past two years the king had spent two hundred thousand livres on the colony; that, since 1659, he had sent out three hundred men a year; and that he had promised to send an equal number every summer during ten years. [2] These men were sent by squads in merchant-ships, each one of which was required to carry a certain number. In many instances, emigrants were bound on their arrival to enter into the service of colonists already established. In this case the employer paid them wages, and after a term of three years they became settlers themselves. [3]

[2: Lettre de Laval envoyée à Rome. 21 Oct., 1661 (extract in Faillon from Archives of the Propaganda).]

[3: Marie de l’Incarnation, 18 Août, 1664. These engagés were some times also brought over by private persons.]

The destined emigrants were collected by agents in the provinces, conducted to Dieppe or Rochelle, and thence embarked. At first men were sent from Rochelle itself, and its neighborhood; but Laval remonstrated, declaring that he wanted none from that ancient stronghold of heresy. [4] The people of Rochelle, indeed, found no favor in Canada. Another writer describes them as “persons of little conscience, and almost no religion,” adding that the Normans, Percherons, Picards, and peasants of the neighborhood of Paris, are docile, industrious, and far more pious. “It is important,” he concludes, “in beginning a new colony, to sow good seed.” [5] It was, accordingly, from the north-western provinces that most of the emigrants were drawn. [6] They seem in the main to have been a decent peasantry, though writers who, from their position, should have been well informed, have denounced them in unmeasured terms. [7] Some of them could read and write, and some brought with them a little money.

[4: Colbert a Laval, 18 Mars, 1664.]

[5: Mémoire de 1664 (anonymous)]

[6: See a paper by Garneau in Le National of Quebec, 28 October, 1856, embodying the results of research among the papers of the early notaries of Quebec. The chief emigration was from Paris, Normandy, Poitou, Pays d’Aunis, Brittany, and Picardy. Nearly all those from Paris were sent by the king from houses of charity.]

[7: “Une foule d’aventuriers, ramasses au hazard en France, presque tous de la lie du peuple, la plupart obérés de dettes ou chargés de crimes.” etc. La Tour, Vie de Laval, Liv. IV. “Le vice a obligé la plupart de chercher ce pays comme un asile pour se mettre à couvert de leurs crimes,” Meules, Dépêché de 1682. Meules was intendant in that year. Marie de l’Incarnation, after speaking of the emigrants as of a very mixed character, says that it would have been far better to send a few who were good Christians, rather than so many who give so much trouble. Lettre du — Oct., 1669.

Le Clerc, on the other hand, is emphatic in praise, calling the early colonists, “très honnêtes gens, avant de la probité, de la droiture, et de la religion…. L’on a examiné et choisi les habitants, et renvoyé en France les personnes vicieuses.” If, he adds, any such were left “ils effacaient glorieusement par leur pénitence les taches de leur première condition.” Charlevoix is almost as strong in praise as La Tour in censure. Both of them wrote in the next century. We shall have means hereafter of judging between these conflicting statements.]

Talon was constantly begging for more men, till Louis XIV. at length took alarm. Colbert replied to the over-zealous intendant, that the king did not think it expedient to depopulate France, in order to people Canada; that he wanted men for his armies; and that the colony must rely chiefly on increase from within. Still the shipments did not cease; and, even while tempering the ardor of his agent, the king gave another proof how much he had the growth of Canada at heart. [8]

[8: The king had sent out more emigrants than he had promised, to judge from the census reports during the years 1666, 1667, and 1668. The total population for those years is 3418, 4312, and 5870, respectively. A small part of this growth may be set down to emigration not under government auspices, and a large part to natural increase, which was enormous at this time, from causes which will soon appear.]

The regiment of Carignan-Salières had been ordered home, with the exception of four companies kept in garrison, [9] and a considerable number discharged in order to become settlers. Of those who returned, six companies were, a year or two later, sent back, discharged in their turn, and converted into colonists. Neither men nor officers were positively constrained to remain in Canada; but the officers were told that if they wished to please his Majesty this was the way to do so; and both they and the men were stimulated by promises and rewards. Fifteen hundred livres were given to La Motte, because he had married in the country and meant to remain there. Six thousand livres were assigned to other officers, because they had followed, or were about to follow, La Motte’s example; and twelve thousand were set apart to be distributed to the soldiers under similar conditions. [10] Each soldier who consented to remain and settle was promised a grant of land and a hundred livres in money; or, if he preferred it, fifty livres with provisions for a year. This military colonization had a strong and lasting influence on the character of the Canadian people.

[9: Colbert a Talon, 20 Fev., 1668.]

[10: Ibid.]

But if the colony was to grow from within, the new settlers must have wives. For some years past, the Sulpitians had sent out young women for the supply of Montreal; and the king, on a larger scale, continued the benevolent work. Girls for the colony were taken from the hospitals of Paris and of Lyons, which were not so much hospitals for the sick as houses of refuge for the poor. Mother Mary writes in 1665 that a hundred had come that summer, and were nearly all provided with husbands, and that two hundred more were to come next year. The case was urgent, for the demand was great. Complaints, however, were soon heard that women from cities made indifferent partners; and peasant girls, healthy, strong, and accustomed to field work, were demanded in their place. Peasant girls were therefore sent, but this was not all. Officers as well as men wanted wives; and Talon asked for a consignment of young ladies. His request was promptly answered. In 1667, he writes: “They send us eighty-four girls from Dieppe and twenty-five from Rochelle; among them are fifteen or twenty of pretty good birth; several of them are really demoiselles, and tolerably well brought up.” They complained of neglect and hardship during the voyage. “I shall do what I can to soothe their discontent,” adds the intendant; “for if they write to their correspondents at home how ill they have been treated it would be an obstacle to your plan of sending us next year a number of select young ladies.”

[“Des demoiselles bien choisies.” Talon a Colbert, 27 Oct. 1667.]

Three years later we find him asking for three or four more in behalf of certain bachelor officers. The response surpassed his utmost wishes; and he wrote again: “It is not expedient to send more demoiselles. I have had this year fifteen of them, instead of the four I asked for.”

[Talon ‘a Colbert, 2 Nov., 1671.]

As regards peasant girls, the supply rarely equalled the demand. Count Frontenac, Courcelle’s successor, complained of the scarcity: “If a hundred and fifty girls and as many servants,” he says, “had been sent out this year, they would all have found husbands and masters within a month.”

[Frontenac a Colbert, 2 Nov., 1672. This year only eleven girls had been sent. The scarcity was due to the indiscretion of Talon, who had written to the minister that, as many of the old settlers had daughters just becoming marriageable, it would be well, in order that they might find husbands, to send no more girls from France at present.

The next year, 1673, the king writes that, though he is involved in a great war, which needs all his resources, he has nevertheless sent sixty more girls.]

The character of these candidates for matrimony has not escaped the pen of slander. The caustic La Hontan, writing fifteen or twenty years after, draws the following sketch of the mothers of Canada: “After the regiment of Carignan was disbanded, ships were sent out freighted with girls of indifferent virtue, under the direction of a few pious old duennas, who divided them into three classes. These vestals were, so to speak, piled one on the other in three different halls, where the bridegrooms chose their brides as a butcher chooses his sheep out of the midst of the flock. There was wherewith to content the most fantastical in these three harems; for here were to be seen the tall and the short, the blond and the brown, the plump and the lean; everybody, in short, found a shoe to fit him. At the end of a fortnight not one was left. I am told that the plumpest were taken first, because it was thought that, being less active, they were more likely to keep at home, and that they could resist the winter cold better. Those who wanted a wife applied to the directresses, to whom they were obliged to make known their possessions and means of livelihood before taking from one of the three classes the girl whom they found most to their liking. The marriage was concluded forthwith, with the help of a priest and a notary, and the next day the governor-general caused the couple to be presented with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in money.”

[La Hontan, Nouveaux Voyages, I. 11 (1709). In some of the other editions, the same account is given in different words, equally lively and scandalous.]

As regards the character of the girls, there can be no doubt that this amusing sketch is, in the main, maliciously untrue. Since the colony began, it had been the practice to send back to France women of the class alluded to by La Hontan, as soon as they became notorious.

[This is the statement of Boucher, a good authority. A case of the sort in 1658 is mentioned in the correspondence of Argenson. Boucher says further, that an assurance of good character was required from the relations or friends of the girl who wished to embark. This refers to a period anterior to 1663, when Boucher wrote his book. Colbert evidently cared for no qualification except the capacity of maternity.]

Those who were not taken from institutions of charity usually belonged to the families of peasants overburdened with children, and glad to find the chance of establishing them. [11] How some of them were obtained appears from a letter of Colbert to Harlay, Archbishop of Rouen. “As, in the parishes about Rouen,” he writes, “fifty or sixty girls might be found who would be very glad to go to Canada to be married, I beg you to employ your credit and authority with the curés of thirty or forty of these parishes, to try to find in each of them one or two girls disposed to go voluntarily for the sake of a settlement in life.” [12]

[11: Témoignage de la Mère du Plessis de Sainte-Helène (extract in Faillon).]

[12: Colbert a l’Archevêque de Rouen, 27 Fev., 1670.]

Mistakes nevertheless occurred. “Along with the honest people,” complains Mother Mary, “comes a great deal of canaille of both sexes, who cause a great deal of scandal.” [13] After some of the young women had been married at Quebec, it was found that they had husbands at home. The priests became cautious in tying the matrimonial knot, and Colbert thereupon ordered that each girl should provide herself with a certificate from the cure or magistrate of her parish to the effect that she was free to marry. Nor was the practical intendant unmindful of other precautions to smooth the path to the desired goal. “The girls destined for this country,” he writes, “besides being strong and healthy, ought to be entirely free from any natural blemish or anything personally repulsive.” [14]

[13: That they were not always destitute may be gathered from a passage in one of Talon’s letters. “Entre les filles qu’on fait passer ici il y en a qui ont de légitimes et considérables prétentions aux successions de leurs parents, même entre celles qui sont tirées de l’Hôpital Général.” The General Hospital of Paris had recently been established (1656) as a house of refuge for the “Bohemians,” or vagrants of Paris. The royal edict creating it says that “les pauvres mendiants et invalides des deux sexes y seraient enfermés pour estre employés aux manufactures et aultres travaux selon leur pouvoir.” They were gathered by force in the streets by a body of special police, called “Archers de l’Hôpital.” They resisted at first, and serious riots ensued. In 1662, the General Hospital of Paris contained 6262 paupers. See Clement, Histoire de Colbert, 113. Mother de Sainte-Helène says that the girls sent from this asylum had been there from childhood in charge of nuns.]

[14: “Beaucoup de canaille de l’un et l’autre sexe qui causent beaucoup de scandale.” Lettre du — Oct., 1669.]

– The Old Regime In Canada, Chapter 13 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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