The Missions of New
Exploration of Canada — Religious motive of Cartier and of the French — Voyages, 1534-1543 — Colonization suspended for sixty years — Henry IV, expedition of 1603 — Dissensions over religion—Champlain, ideals as colonizer—Lescarbot; Abbe Fleche — Baptizing uninstructed Indians — Opposition to Jesuits as missionaries for Acadia — Madame de Guercheville—Fathers Biard and Masse — Obstacles to their embarking for New France — de Guercheville comes to their aid — Friction with Biencourt — The new colony at Saint Sauveur — Argall, abductor of Pocahontas, pirates Acadia — Ill-treatment of missionaries — Return to France — Why missions often seem failures.
Only men of hardy fibre would venture overseas in those days to lands where life was far more difficult and beset with peril than it is in Alaska to-day. Prior to the year 1608 none but fishermen and fur-dealers, Breton, Norman and Basque, would go there more or less regularly for their profitable wares, and they only to the coast line, always during milder seasons, and never to remain. A stronger and more disinterested motive was needed to allure men to penetrate a wilderness inhabited by uncivilized peoples, and dwell there during the fierce winters with no thought of returning to the country which was then at the summit of civilization. Such a motive it was that had animated certain French explorers, during the reign dealer continued going as before on their very profitable excursions. Frenchmen, however, were poor colonizers. There was too much at home to attract them. Moreover, conditions in France during the last half of the sixteenth century did not favor expeditions to other lands.
Henry IV was strongly in favor of re-colonizing New France, but his minister Sully opposed him. Among others, Henry had commissioned the Marquis de La Roche, a Catholic, and Chauvin, a Protestant trader, to establish in Canada Christianity and New France. It was a strange combination of mixed religions and trade, and the crew that sailed with them was made up of convicts who had been condemned to death. Fortunately neither they nor their descendants remained in Canada.
With this expedition was the Huguenot, de Monts. In 1603 Aymar de Chastes organized a company for the purpose of colonizing the new territory, but he died during the voyage. When Champlain urged a determined policy for the colonization of Canada, the king commissioned de Monts to go there in his name, as successor to Commander de Chastes. In return for trading privileges, he was to do all in his power to bring the Indians to a knowledge of the Christian Faith. Champlain narrates how the crew, a mixture of Catholics and Huguenots, were in constant conflict over religion, even priest and minister taking part in it. The quarrels did not cease on their arrival at Acadia.
There the Indians also took part. When priest and minister died, almost at the same hour, and were buried in one grave, the obsequies did not put an end to the angry disputes among mourners on both sides. Whereupon Champlain remarks that two opposing religions will never do much for the glory of God among infidels they would wish to convert.(14)
De Monts took with him Champlain, a priest Nicholas Aubry, a Protestant minister, and Pont-grave, Baron de Poutrincourt. To obtain money to develop the colony, de Monts organized a company of merchants. To protect their monopoly he took every means to cut off the independent traders, who had hitherto controlled the commodities of New France. Like Cartier, Champlain excelled all this motley company, not only by his experience as navigator and ability as commander, but also by his high and disinterested motives. He had sailed over the central and southern Atlantic, looking for the passage around the globe which all the navigators of his time were seeking. He proposed over three hundred years ago that the passage be made somewhat as has been done in our time by the Panama Canal. He was seeking not to amass wealth or personal advancement, but to transplant to a new world the civilization of his mother country, and the establishment there of the Christian religion. The independent traders whom de Monts had excluded from the colony could oppose his monopoly, and they did this so successfully as to have him recalled. They could not oppose Champlain with success, as their motives were so far below his. De Monts, without due authorization it would seem, had turned over his rights to Poutrincourt, who was then back in France. Accompanied by Marc Lescarbot, a lawyer who desired to take part in the new colony, Poutrincourt returned to Port Royal, and began at once to put the place in a prosperous condition. Everything was provided for, except the ministry of religion. There was no priest. Lescarbot undertook to act as preacher and catechist. He has often been called Huguenot, but, as Goyau points out, in the preface of his translation of Baronius' "Discourse on the Reunion of the Churches of Russia and Alexandria to the Holy Catholic Church", he speaks in a manner that leaves no doubt of his Catholicity.(16) He had the missionary spirit, but he was not an admirer of Jesuits; he did his best to keep them from New France. The widow of Henry IV, Marie de Medicis, was bent on carrying out the king's counsel to Poutrincourt to have Jesuit missionaries, telling him: "I design the structure; my son will build it". At the king's request two Jesuits, Pierre Biard and Enemond Masse, had been instructed to proceed to Port Royal in 1608.
Poutrincourt did not want them. He had become prejudiced against Jesuits by hearing the charges made against them by the Reformers. He would not provide for their journey to Acadia. While they were waiting for a vessel, he sent a priest from Langres, Abbe Fleche, to Port Royal, with directions to his son Biencourt who was there to hasten the instruction of the Indians, so that some of them might be baptized as soon as possible. It was done. In a few months twenty-one were baptized. Whilst Biencourt was returning to France with the good news, and hoping incidentally to show that the mission could get on without Jesuits, Henry IV was assassinated by Ravaillac. The widowed queen was consoled by Biencourt's report, but she saw in it all the more reason for the Jesuits' hastening to their mission. Biencourt, seeing that he could not prevent them from going, sought to procure passage for them, but then arose' another difficulty.
The two priests had been generously provided with three thousand livres, by the queen, and with a chapel, complete outfit and every provision for the voyage by Madame de Guercheville and other noble women. This generosity to the missions of New France was to be characteristic of the French, especially of the women, as long as the missions lasted. The owners of the cargo on the vessel, which was to carry the Jesuits to their mission, were Calvinists. They would not consent to taking the Jesuits aboard. Madame de Guercheville started a subscription, obtained enough, four thousand livres, to buy out the owners of the cargo, gave it over to the missionaries, and still received contributions enough to establish a fund which would yield a mission revenue every year. Nothing better in a good enterprise than unreasonable opposition!
It is a matter of surprise to many that missionary effort is often ineffective, or at least slow to produce results. They do not appreciate the difficulties inherent in the missionaries' work, and the obstacles which are too commonly put in their path. The privations, hardships, dangers they must encounter are not by any means their most trying experience. Imagine Biard leaving his chair of theology at Lyons, and Masse giving up his place as assistant to Father Coton at the French Court, to dwell among the Souriquois at Port Royal and the Etchemin Indians across French Bay, and attempt to civilize and teach them Christianity without knowing a word of their language. Here is the first barrier to their great message. Masse goes into the woods to live with the roving bands, and pick up now and then a word of their speech. Biard remains with the few who stay at the settlement, bribing them with food and sweets for the word he needed. After a year they were able to compose a catechism, and begin their lessons to the natives. It was no easy task. These Indians were nomadic, living by fishery and the chase. They were fairly honest, intelligent and docile. The men had several wives and they were not content with that. They were given to drunkenness and sorcery. The Etchemins, about five thousand in number, were averse to Christianity. The Souriquois, less than four thousand, were gentle and more favorable, but they lacked the religious sense. To add to their indisposition, they had got the impression from Biencourt's twenty-one hasty converts and the hundred or more who followed them, that to be baptized meant to become like a Frenchman, without, however, giving up any excess, whether in the number of their wives or of their vices.
The attitude which Biard and Masse had to take toward these ill-instructed converts was a constant source of irritation for Biencourt. Aware of his prejudices against them, they had done everything in their power to conciliate him, but they could not yield on this point. Sensitive about his jurisdiction, now that his father had gone back to France, he resented their insistence on having the Indians who wished to be considered Christian, know and practise their religion. Here was another impediment to the success of the missionaries, from a source whence it should have been least expected.(17)
Meanwhile Biencourt's father was in France, seeking financial aid for the colony. When all others failed him, he had recourse to Madame de Guercheville. She offered to freight a vessel, on the condition of sharing the profits and the lands also, which the king had granted him. He would agree to her receiving part of the profits on the cargo, but no share in the land. Discovering that de Monts still really owned the lands, she obtained title to them and the king confirmed her title to all the land, which at that time was claimed as Acadia, from Florida to the St. Lawrence; Port Royal was excepted. No sooner in possession than she fitted out an expedition, which reached Port Royal late in January with provisions for the colonists, who had all, missionaries included, been living for two months on a week's ration of eleven ounces of bread, a half-pound of lard, three measures of beans, and one of prunes. There was rejoicing, but there was also dishonesty on the part of the leader of the expedition, Simon Imbert, who, when detected, blamed the missionaries. Biencourt at first sides with him. They without difficulty prove Imbert is the culprit. This strains their relations with Biencourt. Madame de Guercheville quickly decides that religion cannot prosper under the control of men who have in view trade and its profits only. She equips liberally a new expedition to establish a colony where the missionaries can have a free hand. Two more Jesuit priests and a lay-brother were among the thirty men led by Saussaye, who arrived at Port Royal March 12, 1613. Biencourt directed them to Mt. Desert, where among the Etchemins the missionaries could labor unhampered, and evangelize also the Abenakis.
The trials of Biard and Masse appeared to be at an end. "It is now our autumn, our harvest time", wrote Biard. Saussaye devoted his energy to planting and sowing, little dreaming that forts would be even more needed than food. Just then in the Virginia colony to the south, the captain of a merchant vessel, Samuel Argall, had brutally abducted Pocahontas and demanded ransom from her father, the Indian chief Powhatan. The father declared war. Argall embarked on his vessel with fourteen cannon and sixty men. Storms drove him up the coast. Friendly Indians, believing he was one of the French, told him of the new colony at Saint Sauveur, now Penobscot. Short of provisions, his men discontented, intending at first to buy what he needed, but finding the place so open to attack, he opens fire, kills Brother Du Thet, wounds two others, seizes three missionaries, pillages the settlement, sets adrift fifteen of the colonists, among them Masse, without chart or compass, and sails back for Virginia with Biard and Quentin aboard. Thomas Dale was then the colony's governor. He was a beneficiary of Henry IV.18 For that reason alone, one might have looked to him for civility, at least, to his venerable prisoners. At first he spoke of destroying them. Then, on the advice of his council, he determined to commission Argall to seize Acadia, and to use the missionaries as guides for the expedition. For refusing to do so, Biard was treated ignominiously. Argall decided to take them back with Quentin to Virginia, to be tried and executed like traitors. Argall's three vessels were separated by a storm. His own reached Virginia; a second was lost; the third, with Biard and Quentin aboard, after a rough voyage of several weeks reached the Azores. Rather than get the captain into trouble with the Portuguese, the two missionaries remained stowaways in the hold for the three weeks the vessel remained at Fayal. On arriving in England, he in return had them well-received, and sent back to France. There they found that calumniators had preceded them, blaming them for the destruction of the colony. That was their reward. They had little difficulty in clearing themselves, and they went back to work, preaching and teaching, waiting quietly for an opportunity to go through the same ordeal again. Is there reasonable ground for surprise at anything that can happen to the missionary? That this apparent failure is really only momentary loss or defeat in the ultimate move to victory is evident constantly in these pages.
Biard and Masse were not satisfied with waiting for an opportunity to return to their mission. Masse retired to La Fleche, where he met a number of ardent young Jesuits whom he inspired with his own zeal, Le Jeune, Ragueneau, Vimont and Charles Lalemant, uncle of the martyr of that name. Biard, at Lyons, writes his account of the mission at Port Royal in such a manner as to disprove the calumnies of the anonymous author of a book on the differences between Biencourt and its exiled missionaries,19 and also to arouse the national interest in New France. Although this document was not originally one of the series of the "Jesuit Relations", which will be described in a later chapter, it is always classed with them. Biard seized on every opportunity for recommending the mission there. He died as chaplain of the king's troops, in 1622. Three years later, his companion Masse was to return to New France. The piracy of Argall had interrupted for a time the colonization of Acadia. In God's Providence it was to be resumed, and to flourish abundantly.