Читать книгу Glimpses of the Past - W. O. Raymond - Страница 15

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The rapid progress of New England caused Louis XIV to express dissatisfaction at the slow development of Acadia, and he desired a report of the condition of the colony to be transmitted to Versailles. Monsieur de Meulles, the intendant, accordingly visited Acadia in 1686 where he found the French settlements “in a neglected and desolate state.” He caused a census to be taken which showed the total population to be 915 souls, including the garrison at Port Royal. There were at that time only five or six families on the St. John river. Bishop St. Vallier made a tour of Acadia the same year, visiting all the Indians and French inhabitants he could find. The Marquis de Denonville in a letter to the French minister of November 10, 1686, announced the safe return of the bishop to Quebec after a most fatiguing journey and adds: “He will give you an account of the numerous disorders committed in the woods by the miserable outlaws who for a long while have lived like the savages without doing anything at all towards the tilling of the soil.”

ESTAT

PRESENT

DE L’EGLISE

ET DE LA

COLONIE FRANCOISE

DANS LA NOUVELLE

FRANCE

Par M. L’Evèque de Quebec

A PARIS,

Chez Robert Pepie, ruë S. Jacques,

à l’image S. Basile, au dessus de la

Fontaine S. Severin.

M. DC. LXXXVIII.

Many interesting incidents of the tour of Mgr. St. Vallier are related in a work entitled “The Present State of the Church and of the French Colony in New France,” printed in Paris in 1688. A fac-simile of the title page of the original edition appears opposite. As this rare little volume contains the first published references to the upper St. John region some extracts from its pages will be of interest. The bishop was accompanied by two priests and five canoe men. They left the St. Lawrence on the 7th of May and proceeded by way of the Rivers du Loup and St. Francis to the St. John.

“Our guides,” the bishop says, “in order to take the shortest road, conducted us by a route not usually traveled, in which it was necessary sometimes to proceed by canoe and sometimes on foot and this in a region where winter still reigned; we had sometimes to break the ice in the rivers to make a passage for the canoes and sometimes to leave the canoes and tramp amid snow and water over those places that are called portages (or carrying places) because it is necessary for the men to carry the canoes upon their shoulders. In order the better to mark our route we gave names to all these portages as well as to the lakes and rivers we had to traverse.

“The St. Francis is rather a torrent than a river; it is formed by several streams which descend from two ranges of mountains by which the river is bordered on the right and left; it is only navigable from the tenth or twelfth of May until about the end of June; it is then so rapid that one could make without difficulty twenty to twenty-five leagues in a day if it were not crossed in three or four places by fallen trees, which in each instance occupy about fifteen feet of space, and if they were cut out, as could be done with very little expense, the passage would be free; one would not suppose that it would cost 200 pistoles to clear the channel of these obstacles which much delay the traveler.

“The River St. John is of much greater extent and beauty than that just named, its course is everywhere smooth and the lands along its banks appear good; there are several very fine islands, and numerous tributary rivers abounding in fish enter its channel on both sides. It seemed to us that some fine settlements might be made between Medogtok and Gemesech, especially at a certain place 36 which we have named Sainte Marie, where the river enlarges and the waters are divided by a large number of islands that apparently would be very fertile if cultivated. A mission for the savages would be well placed there: the land has not as yet any owner in particular, neither the king nor the governor having made a grant to any person.”

The place here referred to by St. Vallier afterwards became the mission of Ekouipahag or Aukpaque. A mission for the Indians has been maintained in that vicinity, with some interruptions, to the present day. The islands which the bishop mentions are the well known and beautiful islands below the mouth of the Keswick stream. There is no mention by St. Vallier of the Indian village at Aukpaque, which was probably of rather later origin: there may have been a camping ground in that locality, however, for the Indians had many camping places on the islands and intervals, particularly at the mouths of rivers, to which they resorted at certain seasons. The name Ekouipahag or, as our modern Indians call it, Ek-pa-hawk, signifies “the head of the tide,” or beginning of the swift water. The charms of the place have excited the admiration of many a tourist since St. Vallier’s day. At the time of the Acadian expulsion a number of fugitives, who escaped their pursuers, fled for refuge to the St. John river, and took up their abode at this spot where they cultivated the intervals and islands until the arrival of the Loyalists in 1783, when they were again obliged to look for situations more remote.

The progress of Bishop St. Vallier coming down the St. John river was expeditious, the water being then at freshet height. At the mouth of the Madawaska, which he named St. Francois de Sales, he met a small band of savages, who pleaded for a missionary. The day following, May 17th, he came to the Grand Falls, or as he calls it “le grand Sault Saint Jean-Baptiste.” His book contains the first published description of this magnificent cataract[4]. The rapidity of the journey is seen in the fact that the bishop and his party slept the next night at the Indian village of Medoctec, “the first fort of Acadia,” eighty miles below the Grand Falls. Here they found a hundred savages, who were greatly pleased when informed that the bishop had come for the purpose of establishing a mission for their benefit. This promise was fulfilled soon after by the sending to them the Recollet missionary Simon, of whom we shall hear more ere long. It is evident that the French adventurers the bishop encountered in the course of this wilderness journey led a pretty lawless life, for he observed in his narrative: “It is to be wished that the French who have their habitations along this route, were so correct in their habits as to lead the poor savages by their example to embrace Christianity, but we must hope that in the course of time the reformation of the one may bring about the conversion of the other.”

Medoctec was undoubtedly the principal Indian village on the St. John at this time; it was situated on the right bank of the river, eight miles below the 37 Town of Woodstock. Here the Maliseets had a palisaded fort and large cabin, similar to that described by Lescarbot at the village Ouigoudy on Navy Island, where de Monts was welcomed by Chkoudun in 1604. The only other fortification constructed by the Indians on the St. John river, so far as known, was that at the mouth of the Nerepis, at Woodman’s Point, called by Villebon, in 1697, “Fort des Sauvages de Nerepisse.” It was evidently merely a palisaded enclosure, and on Southack’s map of that period is marked “Wooden Fort.”

Hitherto the Indians of Acadia had lived peaceably with the whites, but the closing years of the seventeenth century were destined to witness a sad transformation.

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