A DAUGHTER OF FRANCE.• IT is customary to regard with
indulgence books published for a charitable purpose, but there is no call for indulgence in coming to an
• d Daughter of New France: being a Story of the Difs and Times of Atagdeialne its Vereheres, 1605-1692. By Arthur G. Doughty. With • Frontispiece by her Royal highness Princess Patricia, and other illustrations hi Colour. Edinburgh: at the Dall.unsne Press.
opinion about Major Doughty's historical sketch of Canada under the rule of Louis XIV. of France. It is a charmingly drawn picture, even though life was not charming for the " habitants " under that paternal Government and in those hungry and dangerous times. The account of the life led by the seigneurs and their certsitaires, with the Iroquois Indians lurking outside their settlements, leads up to the chief episode— the eight days' defence against the Iroquois of a wooden fortified place by a girl of fourteen, Magdelaine de Vercheres. Year by year the search of archives has added to the facts of Magdelaine de Vercheres's story, and enough is known now to establish this brave and resourceful French girl as a kind of Canadian Grace Darling. One might even go further and say that she is the Jeanne D'Arc of Canada. It would be natural enough if French-Canadians boasted of her as /a puce& of the Dominion; what is more graceful and agreeable is the fact that this enthusiastic tribute to the French maid should have been written by one who is not French in origin. The two racial streams of Canada have become one, and both sides indifferently express their pride in its sources. At Vercheres Point, near the site of the former wooden fort, there stands now a bronze statue to Magdelaine de Vercherea, which may be seen by all visitors who arrive in Canada by way of the St. Lawrence.
Montreal, Trois Rivieres, and even Quebec, lived in constant terror of raids in the second half of the seventeenth century. The French expeditions against the Mohawks and the Iroquois wore haphazard affairs. It is not surprising that they generally failed ; it would have been surprising indeed if they had succeeded. We read of small forces travelling uncertain routes, insufficiently clothed in appalling weather, and with a commissariat consisting of a few biscuits. Tho French marched solidly against Indian villages, always to be disappointed of the pitched battles which they expected. To destroy the empty villages was to destroy little of value. The Indians had vanished, only to continue thoir scalping raids when the expedition had returned home. We are reminded of a story of the Roman General who taunted the head of the Marsians because he would not come out and give battle. The very apt and conclusive answer of the head of the Marsians was : " If you are the great general you are said to be, compel me to come out." Louis took a genuine enough interest in his own way in his Canadian colony. To reflect that he was looked upon as practically a direct ruler so far across the seas must have flattered his vanity. And what a paternal Government his was ! The colonists had only to make a poor enough mouth about their sufferings and their grievances for the Royal agents to dole out sops to faltering loyalty in the shape of food, or cattle, or —what was generally much more needed—clothes. These Canadians wore kept in a state of almost bankrupt dependence. They were never helped to stand upon their own legs. Yet they could have done so, we may be sure. What could be more truly martial in spirit and more admirably turned in expression than the answer of Frontenac when the Puritan naval expedition from Now England under Phips demanded the surrender of Quebec within one hour ? Frontenac replied : " I will not keep you waiting so long. I have no answer to give your General but from the mouths of my cannon. Let him do his best and I will do mine." Those words would be hard to beat for propriety and temperate calmness. As it happened, Frontonac had been warned of the approach of Mips, had called in the able-bodied men from all the surrounding district, and was able to withstand the attack.
The toll of French subjects who fell to the scalping Iroquois was enough to affect sensibly a population which had no power of reproduc- tion, since it consisted entirely of men. Louis was appealed to, and decided to send out suitable wives. There are some amusing passages in which we learn that later " Le Roi Soleil " felt that his grandeur would be more properly preserved if there were persons about the " Government House " of the day in Canada who were fit to represent the Court. The more humble wives who had been shipped out previously fell at once into a posture of revolt against the threatened sway of Louis's smart set. Were they to be shouldered out now that they were fairly established and had daughters of their own who were, in their opinion, ornaments of society I The Intendant must have had a harassing time, but we gather from the letters of one official who filled this position that ho, at least, was a man of tact and discretion, who could turn aside an awkward discharge of resentment. The manorial system, under which the seigneurs were not allowed, for a long time at all events, to engage in trade, was an extraordinarily hollow method on which to raise a social structure. The seigneurs were not even allowed to work on their own farms. They were not noble by birth, but received patents of nobility in return for public service, although they often had no money to support the dignity which Louis seemed to suppose was being displayed vicariously by them to his glorification. A rich trader might drive by in his coach while the seigneur tramped in the dust on foot. Yet the seigneurs had the bodies and souls of the censitaires in their possession. As roads were not developed, it was thought important to open now tracts for cultivation with long water frontages. The moult was thin ribbon-like farms along the rivers, which were of the worst possible shape for protection against the Iroquois. Concentration round fortified places was the only way of safety so long as the Indians were unbeaten.
In spite of the unceasing hostility of the Indiana, there was a good deal of trade with them, particularly in beaver-skins. Something like good fellowship and a spirit of banter existed on the occasions when the two aides met for trade, not unlike, wo imagine, tho hatred. tempered
with jocularity, between the Israelites and the Philistines. Coureurs de bola who received permission to wander where they liked at their own risk sometimes lapsed into the ethics of the tribes they regularly visited. Wealth and savagery combined had strange results. Major Doughty says :- " At times bands of these drunken brawlers, decked out as court gallants with plume in hat and sword at side, would swoop down upon Montreal for a grand carousal. Some were not content with the prevailing fashion in France, but added a touch of Indian finery in order to make an impression ; while others, still bolder, abandoned clothes and adopted the inadequate disguise of war paint. Sometimes the natives accom- panied them. Decrees ordering their arrest and punishment were posted up at all points, but they heeded them not. Ever ready to meet opposi- tion with a sword-thrust or crack of the skull, they were treated with the utmost deference and respect. As long as their supply of beaver skins lasted, they spent their days in drinking and their nights in gambling ; until, bankrupt, jaded, and morose, they returned again to the woods to procure the means for another orgy. Sometimes a few in a repentant mood would return to their homes, but they looked with contempt on ordinary mortals and impressed upon their relatives that they belonged to a distinct class, the equal of any noble in the land."
Convivial association with the Indians on certain occasions was freely practised by the French ruler, Frontenao, himself. At the " castles " of the Indians he was a welcome guest. He would smoke, sing, and dance with them, and even witness their savage rites. Hero are some words from an address by him to the Iroquois, which has been preserved among the New York Colonial Documents :— " Hark ye, I speak to you as a father. My body is big. It is strong, and cannot die. I suppose what you witnessed above Montreal has frightened you. But think ye I am no more, or that I am in the humor of remaining in a state of inactivity, such as has prevailed during my absence ? and if eight or ten hairs have been torn from my children's heads when I was absent, that I cannot put ten handsful of hair in the place of one which has been torn out or that for one piece of bark that has been stripped from my Cabin, I cannot put double the number in its stead, so as to make it stronger ? Children, know that I always am." The British, we fear, incited the Iroquois against the French as a matter of policy, and, what with English rum and French brandy, excitement was never difficult to raise. The Iroquois hoped to exterminate the French colony, and when Louis authorized the policy of a scalp for a scalp corruption was added to barbarism, for the number of Indian scalps returned to the Government did not tally with the money paid out at the rate of twenty crowns a scalp.
We have not left much space to speak of Magdelaine's feat, because we hope that many people will take our advice and read the episode in Major Doughty's little book. The girl was examining her father's boats on the morning of October 22nd, 1692, when a raiding party of Iroquois " came down like a wolf on the fold." All the able-bodied men had gone to Quebec to defend it against Phips, and Magdolaino, on barely escaping into the palisaded fort near by, found herself with her two young brothers, an old man of eighty, two soldiers, who wore not remarkable for courage, a woman servant, and some women and children from the surrounding fields. She took the situation in hand from the first, made her dispositions, and issued her orders. " Remem- ber," said this girl of fourteen, " the lessons our father taught us : gentlemen aro not born but to shed their blood in the service of God and the King." So there was something in the old seigneurial system after all, even as practised in Canada under Louis XIV. Twice Magda. labia left the fort when no one else had courage to do so, on the first occasion to bring in some clothes which had been left on the river bank—note the value of clothes under the highly uneconomic regime of Louis—and on the second to guide some fresh arrivals to the garrison. Each time the Indians could not believe that such pluck was serving its transparent purpose ; they supposed that the girl was trying to divert attention from a sally of the garrison, and she went and came unharmed. The fact was that by firing the cannon and by skilfully using her followers as a stage army she had thoroughly deceived the Indians as to the number of people inside the fort. When a rescue party arrived on the ninth day, Magdelaine formally handed over the fort to the commanding officer. "Sir, you are weloome," she said. "I surrender my arms to you." "Mademoiselle," said he, " they are in good hands." "Better than you think," said she. It is interesting to know that a direct descendant of Magdelaine de Vereheres is now fighting for the Allies in Europe.
We are grateful to Major Doughty for a delightful book. Englishmen should learn mach from it in a very pleasant way about the origins of the Dominion. The illustrations are exceptionally good. The frontis- piece is by Princess Patricia of Connaught, and several of the other
illustrations have been specially drawn by Canadian artists. The colour has been singularly woll reproduced in Canada. The book can be bought from Mine. T. Chase-Casgrain, c/o The High Commissioner for Canada, 19 Victoria Street, S.W. The proceeds go to Red Cross work in England and France.
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