Canada under British Rule 1760-1900. John George Bourinot
all the efforts of the French government for some years, the total immigration from 1663 until 1713, when the great war between France and the Grand Alliance came to an end by the treaty of Utrecht, did not exceed 6000 souls, and the whole population of the province in that year was only 20,000, a small number for a century of colonization. For some years after the formation of the royal government, a large number of marriageable women were brought to the country under the auspices of the religious communities, and marriages and births were encouraged by exhortations and bounties. A considerable number of the officers and soldiers of the Carignan-Salières regiment, who followed the Marquis de Tracy into Canada, were induced to remain and settle new seigniories, chiefly in palisaded villages in the Richelieu district for purposes of defence against Iroquois expeditions. Despite all the paternal efforts of the government to stimulate the growth of a large population, the natural increase was small during the seventeenth century. The disturbing influence, no doubt, was the fur-trade, which allured so many young men into the wilderness, made them unfit for a steady life, and destroyed their domestic habits. The emigrants from France came chiefly from Anjou, Saintonge, Paris and its suburbs, Normandy, Poitou, Beauce, Perche, and Picardy. The Carignan-Salières regiment brought men from all parts of the parent state. It does not appear that any number of persons ever came from Brittany. The larger proportion of the settlers were natives of the north-western provinces of France, especially from Perche and Normandy, and formed an excellent stock on which to build up a thrifty, moral people. The seigniorial tenure of French Canada was an adaptation of the feudal system of France to the conditions of a new country, and was calculated in some respects to stimulate settlement. Ambitious persons of limited means were able to form a class of colonial noblesse. But unless the seignior cleared a certain portion of his grant within a limited time, he would forfeit it all. The conditions by which the censitaires or tenants of the seigniorial domain held their grants of land were by no means burdensome, but they signified a dependency of tenure inconsistent with the free nature of American life. A large portion of the best lands of French Canada were granted under this seigniorial system to men whose names frequently occur in the records of the colony down to the present day: Rimouski, Bic and Métis, Kamouraska, Nicolet, Verchères, Lotbinière, Berthier, Beloeil, Rouville, Juliette, Terrebonne, Champlain, Sillery, Beaupré, Bellechasse, Portneuf, Chambly, Sorel, Longueuil, Boucherville, Chateauguay, Lachine, are memorials of the seigniorial grants of the seventeenth century.
The whole population of the Acadian Peninsula in 1710–13, was not more than 1500 souls, nearly all descendants of the people brought to the country by Poutrincourt and his successors Razilly and Charnisay. At no time did the French government interest itself in immigration to neglected Acadia. Of the total population, nearly 1000 persons were settled in the beautiful country which the industry and ingenuity of the Acadian peasants, in the course of many years, reclaimed from the restless tides of the Bay of Fundy at Grand Pré and Minas. The remaining settlements were at Beau Bassin, Annapolis, Piziquit (now Windsor), Cobequit (now Truro), and Cape Sable. Some small settlements were also founded on the banks of the St. John River and on the eastern bays of the present province of New Brunswick.
SECTION 3.—French exploration in the great valleys of North America.
The hope of finding a short route to the rich lands of Asia by the St. Lawrence River and its tributary lakes and streams, influenced French voyagers and explorers well into the middle of the eighteenth century. When Cartier stood on Mount Royal and saw the waters of the Ottawa there must have flashed across his mind the thought that perhaps by this river would be found that passage to the western sea of which he and other sailors often dreamed both in earlier and later times. L'Escarbot tells us that Champlain in his western explorations always hoped to reach Asia by a Canadian route. He was able, however, long before his death to make valuable contributions to the geography of Canada. He was the first Frenchman to ascend the River of the Iroquois, now the Richelieu, and to see the beautiful lake which still bears his name. In 1615 he found his way to Georgian Bay by the route of the Ottawa and Mattawa Rivers, Lake Nipissing and French River. Here he visited the Huron villages which were situated in the district now known as Simcoe county in the province of Ontario. Father le Caron, a Recollet, had preceded the French explorer, and was performing missionary duties among the Indians, who probably numbered 20,000 in all. This brave priest was the pioneer of an army of faithful missionaries—mostly of a different order—who lived for years among the Indians, suffered torture and death, and connected their names not only with the martyrs of their faith but also with the explorers of this continent. From this time forward we find the trader and the priest advancing in the wilderness; sometimes one is first, sometimes the other.
Champlain accompanied his Indian allies on an expedition against the Onondagas, one of the five nations who occupied the country immediately to the south of the upper St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario. The party reached Lake Ontario by the system of inland navigation which stretches from Lake Simcoe to the Bay of Quinté. The Onondagas repulsed the Canadian allies who returned to their settlements, where Champlain remained during the winter of 1616. It was during this expedition, which did much to weaken Champlain's prestige among the Indians, that Étienne Brulé an interpreter, was sent to the Andastes, who were then living about the headwaters of the Susquehanna, with the hope of bringing them to the support of the Canadian savages. He was not seen again until 1618, when he returned to Canada with a story, doubtless correct, of having found himself on the shores of a great lake where there were mines of copper, probably Lake Superior.
With the new era of peace that followed the coming of the Viceroy Tracy in 1665, and the establishment of a royal government, a fresh impulse was given to exploration and mission work in the west. Priests, fur-traders, gentlemen-adventurers, coureurs de bois, now appeared frequently on the lakes and rivers of the west, and gave in the course of years a vast region to the dominion of France. As early as 1665 Father Allouez established a mission at La Pointe, the modern Ashland, on the shores of Lake Superior. In 1668 one of the most interesting persons who ever appeared in early Canada, the missionary and explorer, Father Marquette, founded the mission of Sainte-Marie on the southern side of the Sault, which may be considered the oldest settlement of the north-west, as it alone has a continuous history to the present time.
In the record of those times we see strikingly displayed certain propensities of the Canadian people which seriously interfered with the settlement and industry of the country. The fur-trade had far more attractions for the young and adventurous than the regular and active life of farming on the seigniories. The French immigrant as well as the native Canadian adapted himself to the conditions of Indian life. Wherever the Indian tribes were camped in the forest or by the river, and the fur-trade could be prosecuted to the best advantage, we see the coureurs de bois, not the least picturesque figures of these grand woods, then in the primeval sublimity of their solitude and vastness. Despite the vices and weaknesses of a large proportion of this class, not a few were most useful in the work of exploration and exercised a great influence among the Indians of the West. But for these forest-rangers the Michigan region would have fallen into the possession of the English who were always intriguing with the Iroquois and endeavouring to obtain a share of the fur-trade of the west. Joliet, the companion of Marquette, in his ever-memorable voyage to the Mississippi, was a type of the best class of the Canadian fur-trader.
In 1671 Sieur St. Lusson took formal possession of the Sault and the adjacent country in the name of Louis XIV. In 1673 Fort Frontenac was built at Cataraqui, now Kingston, as a barrier to the aggressive movements of the Iroquois and an entrepôt for the fur-trade on Lake Ontario. In the same year Joliet and Marquette solved a part of the problem which had so long perplexed the explorers of the West. The trader and priest reached the Mississippi by the way of Green Bay, the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. They went down the Mississippi as far as the Arkansas. Though they were still many hundreds of miles from the mouth of the river, they grasped the fact that it must reach, not the western ocean, but the southern gulf first discovered by the Spaniards. Marquette died not long afterwards, worn out by his labours in the wilderness, and was buried beneath the little chapel at St. Ignace. Joliet's name henceforth disappears from the annals of the West.
Réné Robert Cavelier, better known as the Sieur de la Salle, completed the work commenced by the trader and missionary. In 1666 he obtained a