Читать книгу A Canadian History for Boys and Girls - Emily Poynton Weaver - Страница 14
ОглавлениеCount de Frontenac, 1672.
Louis de Buade, Count de Frontenac, now became governor. He had been a soldier since he was fifteen, and was poor, proud and hot-tempered. He quarrelled constantly with those whose duty it was to help him to govern Canada, but he showed a wonderful talent for managing the savages.
Soon after his arrival at Quebec, Frontenac formed a little parliament or assembly, chosen from the three different classes of clergy, nobles, and commons. He also set the people to elect a mayor and two aldermen for the government of the city. But Louis XIV did not like these proceedings at all. He forbade the count ever again to call the assembly together, and said that “it was important that no man should speak for all, but each only for himself.”
Fort at Cataraqui.
By this time the Indians had found that they could get better prices for their furs from the English than from the French. They had therefore begun to carry them to Albany; but Frontenac thought that if a French fort were built at Cataraqui, where Kingston now stands, much of the old trade might be regained. He accordingly required Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers each to provide him with a certain number of labourers, and in July he went to meet the Iroquois at Cataraqui. He took with him four hundred men, two gorgeously painted boats, and a great number of canoes. He called the Indians “children,” threatened them with punishment if they dared to disobey him, and delighted their hearts with presents. Then he set his men to build, and before he left, only a few days later, a strong wooden fort had risen in the wilderness before the wondering eyes of the savages.
A Canadian
Soldier.
The Coureurs de Bois.
The French were forbidden to go into the woods unless they had received from the government special leave to trade with the Indians; but many cared nothing for the law. Perrot, the governor of Montreal, was one of these. He employed a number of coureurs de bois, as the men who traded without leave were called, and he even sold brandy to the Indians with his own hands. There were great disorders in Montreal, and at last Frontenac threw Perrot into prison. When this came to the ears of the king, he blamed Perrot, but also blamed the governor for being too high-handed, and sent out a new intendant, Duchesneau, to be a check on him.
This only made matters worse. Duchesneau and Frontenac each accused the other of unlawfully employing coureurs de bois, and found numberless other causes of dispute, in which Laval sometimes joined. Amongst these was the old question of the brandy trade, which the governor would not put down.
Explorers.
Frontenac was as anxious as Talon to encourage the explorers. During his rule many discoveries were made. Louis Joliet and the Jesuit Marquette found their way to the Mississippi; and Du Luth, the daring leader of a band of coureurs de bois, explored the regions about Lake Superior.
La Salle.
A still more notable discoverer was La Salle. He belonged to a rich old French family, and was educated in the schools of the Jesuits. He came to Canada at the age of twenty-three, and received a grant of land near Montreal, which, in allusion to his hope of finding the long-sought western passage to China, was named “La Chine.” He soon wearied of improving his grant, and went exploring and trading instead. Then the governor gave him another grant at Cataraqui, where he built a stone fort in place of Frontenac’s wooden one. A little later he went to France and obtained leave to build forts in the west, and to search for a way to Mexico by the Mississippi. For his expenses he was to have the sole right of trading in buffalo hides.
From the first La Salle was unfortunate. He tried to build a fort at Niagara and failed; his vessels were wrecked, and his creditors, pretending to think him dead, seized his property at Fort Frontenac. He was so much disappointed that he gave the name of Crévecoeur, or Heartbreak, to a fort which he built on the Illinois. From that place he made a terrible journey on foot, through spring floods and half-melted snow, to obtain fittings for a ship he was building. He was sixty-five days in reaching Fort Frontenac. Soon afterwards he heard that his own men had destroyed Fort Crévecoeur and carried off his goods.
Still La Salle kept on trying to make his way to the mouth of the Mississippi. At last, in the spring of 1682, after a toilsome journey down the river, he had the joy of standing on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. He claimed the country for the king of France, calling it Louisiana in his honour, the name afterwards used for the whole region lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies.
Frontenac Recalled, 1682.
Meanwhile great changes were taking place in Canada. Tired of their quarrels, Louis XIV recalled both Frontenac and Duchesneau. The new governor, La Barre, proved a bitter enemy to La Salle. He seized Fort Frontenac, and gave the Iroquois leave to kill the explorer.
La Salle’s Colony.
But La Salle again went to France, and was put in command of an expedition to plant a colony on the Mississippi. Unhappily everything went wrong. The leaders of the party quarrelled, and missing the mouth of the river, sailed far past it. At last La Salle built a fort on the coast of Texas, but afterwards he tried again and again to reach the Mississippi. In the meantime his ships were lost, and, after three years of misery, he set out by land to try to bring help to his colonists from Canada. Once he was forced to return. On making a second attempt he was murdered by his men, whom he had sometimes treated harshly. But two or three of his companions managed to reach Canada, and Tonty, one of his few faithful friends, made a brave attempt to rescue the unfortunate colonists on the Gulf of Mexico. He failed to reach them, however, and they were all murdered or made captive by the Indians.
