A Historical Geography of the British Colonies Part 5

The French policy was {47} one of conquest and conversion; they looked to holding in subjection the lands and the peoples of the New World. They worked under a government which was absolute, but whose absolutism, in the main, encouraged perpetual moving forward, and they worked in a land where moving forward was comparatively easy.

Thus dispersion ensued on a greater scale than in South Africa. The negative force which promoted trekking in the Cape Colony was present also in Canada--antipathy to a rigid system, to hard and fast rules; and the counterpart of the Dutch voortrekkers, though under very different conditions, was to be found in the Canadian fur-traders and _coureurs de bois_. But in South Africa the positive force was wanting which shaped Canadian history, the forward policy of an ambitious state. The agents of the French Government in Canada, military and religious, went far afield--adventurous and enterprising, intriguing with savage races, establis.h.i.+ng outposts in the interior, strong to carry out a preconceived plan of a great French dominion. The malcontent Dutchmen in South Africa moved slowly and sleepily away in their wagons to be out of reach; the country aided their intent by being difficult of access. Along the rivers and the lakes of Canada the Frenchmen lightly pa.s.sed, those who worked the will of the Government as well as those who were impatient of control.

[Sidenote: _Contrast between English and French in North America._]

The rivalry then between the two European nations who colonized North America, the English and the French, was rivalry at every point. It was a conflict of race, of religion, of geographical conditions, of new and old, of European government and American colonists. On the one side were seaboard settlements, comparatively continuous, in which there was much instinct and little policy, much freedom and little system; where the population steadily grew by natural causes and by immigration, democratic communities in which the real work was done from below, the products of {48} a wholly different era from that which preceded it, and in which picturesque adventurers had failed to colonize. On the other side were the beginnings of continental colonization along the natural lines of communication.

The dispersion was great, the settlers were few, the settlements were weak. All was done from above, except where unlicensed adventurers roamed the woods. The elements of an older day were preserved and stereotyped, attractive but unprogressive. Old forms transplanted to a New World did not lose their life, but renewed it. Feudal customs took root in the soil. Despotism, supported by the Roman Catholic Church, did not survive merely, but grew stronger. The adventurer remained an adventurer, and did not turn into a businesslike colonist. There was much that was great, there was more that was uniform, but there was little or no growth.

[Sidenote: _Elements of strength on the French side._]

The ultimate outcome of such a contest must necessarily have been, in the course of generations, the triumph of the side on which were the forces and the views of the coming time. But, while the struggle lasted, the French gained not a little from being less vulnerable than the English, as being more dispersed; from being better situated for purposes of attack; from being organized, so far as there was organization, under one government and one system instead of many; from the extraordinary energy and quickness of some of the French leaders in Canada; from the strong military element in the population; from the fanatical devotion of the French missionaries; and last, but not least, from the Frenchmen's better handling of the natives.

[Sidenote: _The waterways of North America._]

The sources of the Mississippi are close to the western end of Lake Superior, and the eastern half of North America is therefore nearly an island, created by the Mississippi, the great lakes, the St.

Lawrence, and the sea. An inner circle is formed by the Mississippi, the Ohio, Lakes Erie, Ontario, and the St. Lawrence, the head waters of the Ohio river being within easy distance of Lake Erie. The course of the Ohio {49} is from north-east to north-west. It flows, very roughly, parallel to the Alleghany mountains, and drains their western sides. The Alleghanies in their turn are parallel to the Atlantic, and between them and the sea is a coast belt from north to south. Here was the scene of the English settlements. Here, cut off by mountain ranges from the Mississippi valley and from the inland plains, the Virginians and the New Englanders made their home. 'The New England man,' writes Parkman, 'had very little forest experience.

His geographical position cut him off completely from the great wilderness of the interior. The sea was his field of action.'[5]

[Footnote 5: _The Old Regime in Canada_, chap. xxi, p. 399 (14th ed., 1885).]

[Sidenote: _The Hudson river and Lake Champlain._]

But there is one direct route, with nearly continuous waterways, from the Atlantic seaboard to the St. Lawrence. It runs due north up the Hudson river, is continued by Lakes George and Champlain between the Adirondack mountains on the west, and on the east the Green mountains of Vermont; and from the northern end of Lake Champlain it follows the outlet of that lake, the Richelieu river, for seventy to eighty miles into the St. Lawrence. The head waters of the Hudson are hard by Lake George, but at the present day navigation ceases at Troy, 151 miles from the sea, where is the confluence of the Mohawk river, and from whence the Champlain ca.n.a.l runs direct to Lake Champlain. The distance from Troy to Lake George is in straight line about fifty miles. This route was all-important for attack and defence in the wars between England and France, and it was well for Great Britain that, at a comparatively early stage in the colonization of America, she took over the Dutch settlements in the valley of the Hudson, gaining control of that river and linking New England to the southern colonies.

[Sidenote: _The St. Lawrence._]

From the mouth of the Hudson at New York to where the Richelieu joins the St. Lawrence, a straight line drawn on {50} the map from south to north measures rather under 400 miles. It is much the same distance, on a very rough estimate, from the confluence of the Richelieu and the St. Lawrence to the point where the St. Lawrence opens into the sea. This point is generally taken to be the Point de Monts, which is on the northern bank of the river, in north lat.i.tude 49 degrees 15 minutes, and west longitude 67 degrees 30 minutes, though the Gaspe peninsula, on the southern side of the estuary, extends much further to the east. Thus the centre of the St. Lawrence basin is equidistant from the mouth of that river and from the mouth of the Hudson,[6] and between these two points, before the days of railways, there was no easily accessible route from the sea to Montreal.

[Footnote 6: Hennepin in _A New Discovery of a vast Country in America_ (English ed., London, 1698, pt. 2, p. 129), speaking of the St. Lawrence, says: 'The middle of the river is nearer to New York than to Quebec, the capital town of Canada.' This is of course incorrect, but it shows appreciation of the directness of the route to the St. Lawrence by the Hudson river.]

Following up the St. Lawrence from the Point de Monts, at about a distance of 140 miles, the mouth of the Saguenay is reached on the northern side. There stood and stands Tadoussac, in old days a great centre of the fur trade, and the earliest foothold of the French in Canada. From the mouth of the Saguenay to Quebec is about 120 miles, and from Quebec to Montreal is rather over 160. Nearly halfway between Quebec and Montreal, over seventy miles from the former and over ninety from the latter, is the town of Three Rivers, situated on the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, at its confluence with the St.

Maurice river, one of the oldest and one of the most important French settlements in Canada. Here is the limit of the tideway, and above this point the St. Lawrence expands for some thirty miles into Lake St. Peter. At the upper end of this lake or expanse of river, on the southern side, the Richelieu joins the St. Lawrence, with the town of Sorel at {51} its mouth, and forty-five miles higher up is Montreal.

From Montreal to Kingston, where the St. Lawrence issues from Lake Ontario, is a distance of 180 to 190 miles by river, past rapids well known to readers and to tourists, and past the Thousand islands. Thus the total length of the St. Lawrence, from the lakes to the opening into the gulf, is rather over 600 miles.

[Sidenote: _The great lakes._]

The great lakes of the St. Lawrence basin cover a surface of nearly 100,000 square miles--an area larger than that of Great Britain.

Lakes Ontario and Erie, connected by the Niagara river, continue the direct line of the St. Lawrence, Lake Erie more especially lying due south-west and north-east; but from the extreme end of this last-named lake the channel of communication takes a sharp curve to the north in the Detroit river, Lake St. Clair, and the St. Clair river, which link together Lakes Erie and Huron. Lake Huron, the centre of the whole group, stretches back towards the east and south-east in Georgian Bay, while on the north-west it is connected with Lake Michigan by the straits of Michillimackinac or Mackinac, and with Lake Superior by St. Mary's straits and rapids, the Sault St. Marie. The rivers which feed Lake Superior are the head waters of the St. Lawrence, and one of them, the St. Louis, which enters the lake at its extreme western end, has its source hard by the source of the Mississippi. The total length of lake and river on the line of the St. Lawrence is over 2,000 miles.

[Sidenote: _The route of the Ottawa river._]

It has been said that Lakes Ontario and Erie continue the main course of the St. Lawrence in its south-westerly and north-easterly direction, that the channel which feeds Lake Erie at its western end comes down from the north, and that the central lake which is then reached--Lake Huron--breaks back towards the east. Thus the direct line from Montreal to the centre of the lake system is not up the St.

Lawrence, but along one of its largest tributaries, which enters the main river at Montreal. This tributary is the Ottawa, flowing {52} from the north-west in a course broken by falls and rapids. One hundred and thirty miles from its confluence with the St. Lawrence, just below the Chaudiere falls, now stands the city of Ottawa, the capital of the Canadian Dominion, connected with Lake Ontario by the Rideau ca.n.a.l; and rather under 200 miles above Ottawa, where the Mattawa river enters from the west, there is nearly continuous water communication in a due westerly direction with Lake Nip.i.s.sing, which lake is in turn connected by the French river with the great inlet of Lake Huron known as Georgian Bay. Champlain early explored this route--the direct route to the west, and along it as far as Lake Nip.i.s.sing now runs the Canadian Pacific Railway. French river flows into the northern end of Georgian Bay. At its south-easternmost end, that bay runs into the land in the direction of Lake Ontario; and in the middle of the broad isthmus between the two lakes lies Lake Simcoe.

[Sidenote: _Canada a geographical federation._]

Such in rough outline is the basin of the St. Lawrence. It is a network of lakes and rivers which finds no parallel, unless it be in Central Africa. The present Dominion of Canada is not merely a political federation; it is a federation of regions which are geographically separate from each other. There is the eastern seaboard, the old Acadia; there is the basin of the St. Lawrence; there are the plains of the North-West and the regions of the Hudson Bay; and there are the lands of the Pacific coast. Only one of these four regions, the basin of the St. Lawrence, was the main scene of early Canadian history. Acadia comes into the story, it is true, but until the eighteenth century only indirectly, in connexion with the English colonies on the Atlantic coast rather than with the French in Canada. English and French collided on the sh.o.r.es of Hudson Bay; they collided also in Newfoundland; but Hudson Bay and Newfoundland alike were outside the sphere of Canada. The great prairies of the North-West were a possibility of the distant future; but not {53} till the days of railways did the western half of the present Dominion come within the range of practical politics. Along the St.

Lawrence and its tributaries the drama of Canadian history was played; the furthest horizon was the Mississippi and the whole line of the lakes; a nearer view was bounded by the Ohio valley; while the immediate foreground was formed by the St. Lawrence from Quebec to Lake Ontario, the centremost point being the confluence of the Richelieu with the main river.

Movement, constant movement, these waterways suggested; exploration, adventure, and ultimately conquest; pressing onward by strength or skill through a boundless area, with something unknown always beyond; making portages round impossible rapids, forcing paths through interminable forests, dealing with half-hidden foes. The land was one for the traveller, the explorer, the missionary, the soldier, the hunter, the fur-trader, but not so much for the settler and the agriculturist. Thus it was that the age of adventurers was perpetuated along the St. Lawrence, while the English colonists between the Alleghanies and the sea were living steady lives attached to the soil.

[Sidenote: _The main object of North American exploration was a route to the East._]

The great motive force of modern adventure was, as has been seen, the search for a direct route to the East. Engaged in this search Henry Hudson, in 1609, piloted the Dutch into the Hudson river.[7]

Champlain's first expedition up the Ottawa was due to a lying tale that along that river had been found a way to the sea. La Salle, the explorer of the Mississippi, had his mind ever set on the East, and his Seigniory above Montreal was named La Chine; for, 'like {54} Champlain and all the early explorers, he dreamed of a pa.s.sage to the south sea, and a new road for commerce to the riches of China and j.a.pan.'[8] Many long years pa.s.sed before the geography of North America was known with any accuracy, and in the meantime the recesses of the continent, from which the rivers flowed, seemed to hide the secret of a thoroughfare by the West to the East. Similarly, from the time when Columbus sought for and thought he had found the Indies in the New World, down to our own day, the natives of America have been known as Indians.

[Footnote 7: Hudson in 1609 sought for a North-West Pa.s.sage about the fortieth degree of lat.i.tude. 'This idea had been suggested to Hudson by some letters and maps which his friend Captain Smith had sent him from Virginia, and by which he informed him that there was a sea leading into the western ocean by the north of Virginia.' See _A Bibliographical and Historical Essay on the Dutch Books and Pamphlets relating to New Netherland_, by G. M. Asher, LL.D. (Amsterdam, Frederick Muller, 1868), Introd. pp. xxv, xxvi.]

[Footnote 8: Parkman's _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_ (1885 ed.), p. 8.]

[Sidenote: _The Indians of North America._]

[Sidenote: _The Algonquins._]

The two native races, with which the history of Canada is mainly concerned, are the Algonquins and the Huron Iroquois. The former were far the more numerous of the two, and were spread over a much larger area. They included under different names the Indians of the lower St. Lawrence, of Acadia, New England, and the Atlantic states as far as the Carolinas--the Montagnais, the Abenakis, the Micmacs, the Narragansetts, the Pequods, and others. The Delawares, too, were members of the race, and Algonquin tribes were to be found on the Ottawa, at Lake Nip.i.s.sing, on the further sh.o.r.es of the great lakes, in Michigan and Illinois. From the day when Champlain joined forces with them against their hereditary foes the Iroquois, they ranged themselves for the most part on the side of the French.

[Sidenote: _The Huron Iroquois._]

The Hurons or Wyandots and the Iroquois were distinct from the Algonquins and akin to each other. When Cartier visited the St.

Lawrence, the native towns which he found on the sites of Quebec and Montreal seem to have been inhabited by Indians of this race; but by Champlain's time the towns had disappeared, and those who dwelt in them had sought other strongholds. Though related in blood and speech, these two groups of tribes were deadly foes of each other.

The Hurons, like the Algonquins, were allied to the {55} French; the Iroquois, guided partly by policy and partly by antipathy to the European intruders into Canada and their Indian friends, were as a rule to be found in amity with the English. The region of the upper St. Lawrence and of Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario, was the home of the Huron Iroquois race. The Huron country lay between Georgian Bay of Lake Huron and Lake Simcoe. South of the Hurons, the northern sh.o.r.e of Lake Erie and both sides of the Niagara river were held by the Neutral Nation, neutral as between the Iroquois and the Hurons, and akin to both. The Eries on the southern side of Lake Erie, and the Andastes on the lower Susquehanna, were also of Huron Iroquois stock; but the foremost group of the race, the strongest by far, though not the most numerous, of all the North American Indians, were the Iroquois themselves, the celebrated Five Nations of Canadian story.

[Sidenote: _The country of the Five Nations._]

The Erie ca.n.a.l, which, in its 352 miles of length, connects Lake Erie at Buffalo with the Hudson river at West Troy and Albany, runs through the country of the Five Nations. That country extended along the southern side of Lake Ontario from the Genesee river on the west to the Hudson on the east, while due north of the Hudson, the outlet of Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence, the Richelieu river, was in old days known as the river of the Iroquois. The Mohawk river, along which the Erie ca.n.a.l is now carried, was, on the Atlantic side, the highway to the land of the Iroquois, and it bore the name of the best known of the Five Nations, the whole confederacy being sometimes spoken or written of as Mohawks.[9] The route up the river provided nearly continuous communication by water between the Hudson and Lake Ontario. From its confluence with the Hudson the Mohawk was followed to the head of its navigation, whence there was a short portage of about four miles {56} to Wood Creek, a stream running into the Oneida lake, and the Oneida lake was linked to Lake Ontario by the Oswego river. All this line was under Iroquois control; and the westernmost of the Five Nations, the Senecas, commanded also the trade route to Lake Erie.

[Footnote 9: The Mohawks, however, were not the strongest of the five in number. They were outnumbered by the Senecas.]

[Sidenote: _The Five Nations._]

The name 'Iroquois' is said to be of French origin: the true t.i.tle of the Five Nations was an Indian word,[10] signifying 'people of the long house.' Their dwellings were oblong in form, often of great length; and, as were their dwellings, so also was their dwelling-place. Side by side the Five Nations stretched in line from west to east, as may be told by lakes and rivers in New York State, which to this day bear their names. Farthest to the west were the Senecas; next came the Cayugas, the people of the marsh. The third in line, the central people of the league, within whose borders was the federal Council house, were the Onondagas, the mountaineers; the Oneidas followed; and easternmost of all were the Mohawks.[11]

[Footnote 10: Hodenosaunee.]

[Footnote 11: In a report of a committee of the Council held at New York, Nov. 6, 1724, on the subject of a pet.i.tion of the London merchants against the Act of 1720, given in Colden's _History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada_ (3rd ed., London, 1755), p. 226, the Five Nations are placed as follows: the Mohawks but 40 miles due west of Albany, and within the English settlements; the Oneidas about 100 miles west of Albany, and near the head of the Mohawk river; the Onondagas about 130 miles west of Albany; the Cayugas 160; and the Senecas 240.]

[Sidenote: _Small numbers of the Iroquois._]

[Sidenote: _Their geographical position. They held the border line between French and English._]

In all the history of European colonization no group of savages, perhaps, ever played so prominent a part as the Iroquois; none were so courted and feared; none made themselves felt so heavily for a long period of years together. This fact was not due to their numbers, for they were comparatively few, and Parkman estimates that 'In the days of their greatest triumphs their united cantons could not have mustered four thousand warriors.'[12] Yet they attacked and {57} blotted out other Indian races equal to or outnumbering themselves. They nearly destroyed the French settlements in Canada; and all through the contest between Great Britain and France in America, they were a force to be reckoned with by either side. Their alliance was sought, their enmity was dreaded. Their strength was due to the geographical position which they held, and to their national characteristics; while their policy was influenced by the differing conditions of the white people with whom they had to deal. Their home has been described. It was the southern frontier of central Canada, the borderland between the French and English spheres of trade and settlement. Here they lived, in a position where a weak race would have been ground in pieces between opposing forces, but where a strong race, conscious of its advantages and able to use them, could more than hold its own. 'Nothing,' wrote Charlevoix, 'has contributed more to render them formidable than the advantage of their situation, which they soon discovered, and know very well how to take advantage of it. Placed between us and the English, they soon conceived that both nations would be obliged to court them; and it is certain that the princ.i.p.al attention of both colonies, since their settlement, has been to gain them or at least to engage them to remain neuter.'[13]

[Footnote 12: _Conspiracy of Pontiac_ (1885 ed.), vol. i, chap. i, p.

21. Charlevoix says: 'All their forces joined together have never amounted to more than 5,000 or 6,000 fighting men' (_Letters to the d.u.c.h.ess of Lesdiguieres_, Engl. tr., London, 1763, p. 185). On the other hand, in _A Concise Account of North America_, by Major Robert Rogers (London, 1765), p. 206, it is stated that 'when the English first settled in America they (the Iroquois) could raise 15,000 fighting men.']

[Footnote 13: Charlevoix, as above, pp. 184-5.]

[Sidenote: _Their strength of character and policy._]

A strong race the Iroquois were. In cruelty and endurance, in bold conception and swift execution, they had few, if any, rivals among the natives of North America, and in their grasp of something like state policy they had no equals. As savages, pure and simple, they reached the highest level; they might indeed have had a greater and more lasting future, if their level had not been so high. The Kaffir races of South Africa in our own time have produced good {58} fighting material; some of their leaders have shown skilful generals.h.i.+p and no small statecraft; but they have been loosely knit together, little bound as a whole by the ties of country or of kin; and from this very weakness has come their salvation, in that they could and can be recast in a new mould. It was not so with the North American Indians, least of all with the Iroquois. They were stereotyped in savagery, and, when the white men came among them, it was too late for them to change; but, as savages of the most ferocious type, as ruthless murdering hunters of men, they developed an organization which was evidence at once of intellectual and physical strength, and of a wild kind of moral discipline.