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Title: Cadillac.
   Knight Errant of the Wilderness, Founder of Detroit,
   Governor of Louisiana from the Great Lakes to the Gulf.
Author: Laut, Agnes Christina (1871-1936)
Date of first publication: 1931
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1931
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 26 November 2013
Date last updated: 26 November 2013
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1132

This ebook was produced by Al Haines






[Illustration: Cover]




[Illustration: End papers - front]




[Frontispiece: Cadillac receiving concession of Detroit from Louis XIV.
_Courtesy, Common Council, Detroit_].





  CADILLAC

  _Knight Errant of the Wilderness
  Founder of Detroit
  Governor of Louisiana from the
  Great Lakes to the Gulf_


  by

  AGNES C. LAUT



  _ILLUSTRATED_



  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS -- INDIANAPOLIS




  COPYRIGHT, 1931
  BY AGNES C. LAUT


  FIRST EDITION



  Printed in the United States of America



  PRESS OF
  BRAUNWORTH & CO., INC.
  BOOK MANUFACTURERS
  BROOKLYN, N. Y.




  DEDICATED
  WITH
  DEEP APPRECIATION
  TO

  MR. WILLIAM B. A. TAYLOR

  LENOX LIBRARY
  NEW YORK CITY

  Whose aid on the early life
  of Cadillac in southern
  France and La Mothe's last
  days there revealed so much
  hitherto unknown.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

EXPLANATORY                                                        xv


PART ONE

THE FOUNDER OF DETROIT

I 1658-1689                                                        25

The Fight in Lower Town, Quebec, with "the Little Lieutenant"--Cadillac
Knocks a Young Gascon Officer Senseless with a Big
Candlestick--Card-Sharpers of Lower Town and Gay Life in Castle St.
Louis Drawing-Rooms--Preparing to Conquer All North America from the
Great Lakes to New Spain for Louis XIV.


II 1661-1689                                                       44

Who Was Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac?--A Gascon from Toulouse and
Garonne--A Trusted Colonel of His Regiment by His Twenty-Fourth
Year--His Youth in Orphanage, Poverty and Loneliness--Develops a
Peculiarly Independent, Strong Character--Laughed at but Liked in
Louis' Gay Court--Educated but Fearless as All Gascons--Bred in
Poverty, Careless of Luxury, Independent in Character--Just the Man for
the King's Work in the Intriguing Colonies.


III 1690-1699                                                      59

Sunlight amid the Shadows--Frontenac Back a Master in the
Saddle--Infirm but the Same Youthful Ardor--In Spite of His Nose,
Cadillac is No Don Quixote Tilting at Windmills--Life in the Chteau
Gay and Happy--The Morning Audience Conferences--The Gay Parades--the
Seigniors at Home, the Old Majordomo--The Happy Friars and Monks
Untroubled by Ambition--The Habitant Peasant the Happiest of All.


IV 1690-1699                                                       83

Frontenac and Cadillac Discuss the Policy of the King for New
France--Frontenac Meets Indian Delegates in Powwow and Despite Years
Whirls in Tom-Tom Dances--Terrible News on His Pause at Montreal
Hurries Him through the Autumn Rains to Quebec--Threatened with
Invasion by Land and Sea--All New England Has United with New York to
Attack the Lion in His Den--All New France Unites to Repel the Common
Foe--Bishops Forget Their Quarrels to Pray and Shoulder Muskets--Phips
Attacks with Thirty-Two Vessels and Suffers a Crushing Defeat--New
France Wild with Joy but the Old Warrior Is Summoned by Death.


V 1699-1701                                                       108

Cadillac Takes Another Trip to Mackinac, Then Sails for France--His
Plunge from Wilderness Wilds Back to Versailles--Pontchartrain and
Maurepas and Louis XIV Receive Him Well--Did La Mothe's Own Ambitions
Wane or Waver from Old World to Honors in New?--Tremendous Courage for
the Venture--Bad Masters Now in Ascendency Both in Versailles and
Quebec--His Predictions as to Failure of Missions at Mackinac Verified
and Fortify His Arguments with French Court.



PART TWO

DETROIT


VI 1700-1701                                                      125

Back to New France--Westward by the Ottawa to Detroit--Pause at
Mackinac--The Final Rounding Up of Human and Trade Dregs There--The
Locating and Building of the New Fort--Named after His Patron
Pontchartrain--Rhapsodies of Enthusiasm--The Happiest Days in
Cadillac's Life.


VII 1701-1704                                                     140

Building the New Fort at Detroit--Named Pontchartrain--Chapel to St.
Anne--Area of Enclosure and Farms--Madame Tonty and Madame
Cadillac--More People Come--Mills Go up for Grinding Corn--Indians
Rally to New Trade Center.


VIII 1701-1710                                                    158

Happy Days in Cadillac's Life--Free of Dominance from Quebec--Reports
More Enthusiastic Than Ever--How He Held the Indians in Check--Picked
Soldiers Loyal to Him--Why He Punished One Soldier with Such a Terrible
Sentence and Yet Seemed to Excuse a Guilty Huron-Ottawa Chief
Implicated in Murder of the Old Recollet Priest--Cadillac Furious to
Find His Old Enemy of Mackinac at the Same Underground
Tricks--Vaillant, the Jesuit, His Friend but Subject to Orders from
Quebec.


IX 1710-1712                                                      170

Cadillac Gets the Much Desired Decoration of St. Louis, but a
Marquisate Is Still Dangled before Him as a Rainbow to His Life's
End--He Prospers So Exceedingly His Income Mounts to What Would be
Twenty-five Thousand Dollars a Year in Our Money and Excites Furious
Envy of Weaker Rulers in Quebec Making Only Five Thousand Dollars a
Year--The Thunderbolt from the Blue Falls on Cadillac--He is Ordered to
Assume the Governorship of Louisiana, the King's Vastest Domain.


X 1710-1718                                                       183

Cadillac's Frantic Haste to Obtain Delay in Transfer to Louisiana
Proves Futile--The Quebec Clique Have Defeated Him Beforehand--Louis
XIV Dies in 1715 and Cadillac Has Proceeded to the Gulf of Mexico--What
Happened in Detroit within Three Years Left the Fort a Ruined Outpost.



PART THREE

LOUISIANA


XI 1712-1713                                                      199

Cadillac Sails to the New Sphere of Activity--On the Frigate Bearing
Him and His Family, He Learns Much of the Troubles Brewing in Louisiana
and the Inheritance of Confusion to Which He Has Been Assigned--De
Soto, La Salle, Iberville, Bienville, All Have Failed and Three out of
Four Perished on or near the Gulf.


XII 1713-1714                                                     214

What Cadillac Actually Found in Louisiana--Bienville Resentful and
Marking Time--The Indians Muttering Contempt for White Man Prowess--The
Colonists Wandering Off or Idle in Hot Season and Almost
Starving--Anthony Crozart, the Trader, Holds Monopoly and Has His Own
Plans for a Baronetcy--Bienville Prefers "the Mortification of
Celibacy" to Proffers of All Brides--The Clash Comes with
Cadillac--Bienville, Ordered Forthwith to an Impossible Task with the
Natchez, Accepts the Challenge--Charlevoix's Report Five Years Later.


XIII 1714-1716                                                    229

Bienville's Campaign of Strategy and Cunning--He Builds a Fort near
Natchez Stronghold and Invites Three Head Chiefs to His Quarters as
Guests--He Traps Them and Demands the Murderers--After Many Parleys, He
Captures Them and Shoots the Guilty Chief, Who Curses Him as He
Dies--The Curse a Legacy of Hate to All White Men for a Century.


XIV 1714-1717                                                     242

Love-Affairs Continue to Come Unwanted and Unwarranted to Bienville's
Feet--Cadillac and Crozart Both Openly Weary of an Impossible
Task--Young St. Denis the Only Successful Lover and Trader--He Opens
the Road to Mexico to be Followed by a Century of Caravan
Traffic--Bienville, Left as Governor of Louisiana, Lays Foundations of
Modern New Orleans--Immediate Effects of His Victory over Natchez.



PART FOUR

HOW LAW'S IRIDESCENT BUBBLE THREW CADILLAC IN PRISON


XV 1716-1720                                                      261

All France Goes Mad--Stock Gambling--John Law Establishes First Paper
Currency and Gives as Security State Land, Taxes, Trading Company
Revenues and Louisiana--Shares Rise from 120 to 15,000--People Go Mad
to Grow Rich Overnight--Why Work When You Can Make Your Living
Gambling?--Crozart and Cadillac Fight the Folly, and Cadillac Is Thrown
into the Bastile to Keep His Mouth Shut.



PART FIVE

SUNSET AND EVENING STAR


XVI 1717-1730                                                     273

Cadillac Returns to France--How Vast Was the Empire in America at Which
Versailles Grasped?--Why It Failed--The Lawsuit Drags on in
France--Cadillac Obtains an Old Governorship in South France but Does
Not Long Survive to Enjoy It--Madame Cadillac and Her Children.


INDEX                                                             289




ILLUSTRATIONS


Cadillac receiving concession of Detroit from
  Louis XIV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

One of the oldest drawings of Quebec

An early view of the city of Quebec

Cadillac's birthplace as it is to-day

The birth record of Cadillac

Hebert's statue of Frontenac in Quebec

Castle St. Louis and Lower Town

Habitant's cabin, from an old painting by Kreighoff

The Golden Dog, Quebec legend

Quebec old wall up which Frontenac was welcomed

The Frontenac coat of arms

Frontenac's home castle in France

Typical chteau in southern France showing the impossibility of
supporting such on meager salaries

Restored salon, Chteau de Ramezay, Montreal

Restored habitant room, Chteau de Ramezay, Montreal

Kreighoff painting of Chaudire Falls, Ottawa City

A view of early Mackinac

Kreighoff painting of canoe ascending Ottawa River

How Frontenac and Cadillac planned to save Louisiana

Detroit in 1701

Madame Cadillac arriving at Detroit

Bronze tablet in honor of Madame Cadillac

The best statue of Cadillac in niche of Detroit public building

Le Moyne D'Iberville

Bienville, Jr., of Louisiana

New Orleans in 1719

One of the first French forts at mouth of the Mississippi

Seal of fort to which Cadillac retired as governor

Plaque on Cadillac's birthplace

City hall in Cadillac's birthplace

Celebration in Cadillac's home town--south of France




{xv}

CADILLAC




EXPLANATORY

Cadillac is one of the few great early heroes in North American history
whose life has never been written.  This resulted from obvious reasons.
Contemporary records were so scrappy, so contradictory on dates,
places, names that it was almost impossible to follow his life
consecutively.  Yet he was the founder and father of Detroit and one of
the first direct governors of the vast empire known as Louisiana.  When
writers such as Charlevoix, Margry, the Jesuits, contradicted one
another flatly and left long gaps in his life, what could a Parkman do
but append frankly in a foot-note that he could not vouch for this,
that and the other section in his life because contradicted by a
Charlevoix?  Abb Tanguay, who compiled in late years from parish
records of Quebec and Louisiana the best genealogical dictionary of any
people on earth and whose data on numerous distinguished descendants of
the Cadillacs are in the main correct, flounders hopelessly on the
first great Cadillac.

Only in very recent years have the blind gaps in Cadillac's life been
filled.  For this we may thank first {xvi} and foremost, the careful
translations of Louis XIV documents by the Burton Collection of
Detroit.  Then translations of the Marine Department Papers in Paris
Archives by the Canadian Archives have come out in floods since the
1890's.  Add to these the equally indefatigable work of Quebec Province
Archivists, of Monsieur Guyon, a descendant of the Cadillac-Guyon
families, and you get a fairly composite portrayal of a man whose name
is commemorated in states, counties, streets, motor-cars, artistic
portrayals on canvas and in statues.  Yet one section still remained a
blank blind spot in the moving kaleidoscopic film of a great man's
life--his early years in the Garonne-Pyrenees section of France.
Monsieur Guyon spent the better part of four years investigating these
blind spots in the old sections of southern France.  It is rather
ludicrous to acknowledge that it was only in 1902-04 that the little
old cities of the Spanish section in southern France woke up to the
fact that a great man had gone as a Gascon cadet in the late sixteen
hundreds to found a new empire in North America.  A mayor of one town,
on the occasion of placing plaques on the birth home and final resting
crypt of the hero's bones, acknowledged proudly that the Cyrano of the
famous play must have drawn its inspiration from Cadillac.  The
playbills of _Cyrano de Bergerac_ name the period as the fourteenth
century; but the costumes {xvii} belie this.  The Gascon regiments came
to their glory in the days of Richelieu and Louis XIII and they became
foremost fighters of France in all her wars during the reign of Louis
XIV--the Grand Monarch--who came so nearly snatching all North America
from Spain and England, that only the decline of Old France through the
victories of Marlborough and the corruption of Versailles defeated
Louis XIV's aims.  There are many points of similarity in Cyrano and
Cadillac: the nose, the figure, the Gascon fencing, the fierce
fighting, the disregard for enmities created, the loyalty to friends.
Mr. Taylor, of the Lenox Library in New York, spent a summer touring
this Pyrenees section.  The library was fortunate enough to obtain old
historical papers of the various town societies covering this area back
to the days of the Crusades.

On the Louisiana section of Cadillac's life, one must mainly rely on
the contradictory reports sent to the French Court, some by friends,
some by enemies, some in secret cipher; and there you have to use your
own judgment and try to get a cross-section of the truth.  Gayarr, of
Louisiana, as early as the eighteen-fifties, was already digging into
these records of Old France.  In the main, his work was splendidly
done, but he was prejudiced against Cadillac in favor of the Le Moyne
brothers--Iberville and Bienville.  That {xviii} prejudice is in all
Louisiana records.  Gayarr never missed scoring a point against
Cadillac.  Such evidence must be corrected by writers near at hand at
the time, of whom Le Page du Pratz stands first.  He did not live at
New Orleans when Cadillac was there.  In fact, New Orleans proper was
not even founded when Du Pratz came.  Though Du Pratz took a claim
under Crozart, who held monopoly for all trade, the heat on the Gulf of
Mexico drove him within a year up the Mississippi to the higher bluffs
of Natchez or Fort Rosalie; so you find not a great deal on Cadillac in
Du Pratz.  He became the guide and source of information to Charlevoix
four years later.

The fight as described in Lower Town, Quebec, is given literally in
this volume, but I have left out some of the mighty oaths.

All the episodes in Cadillac's life given in this narrative are true.
There is just one record to be taken carefully.  It is where Cadillac
goes back to France and prepares a memorial of questions and answers
which will forefend against all enemy attacks.  He did this on the
advice of Frontenac, just before the old warrior died.  That we know.
Whether the questions and answers came just as set forth in his
memorial, we do not know; but some historical accounts quote them as
telling exactly what took place in the interview between Cadillac and
the Court officers.  Of this {xix} we can not be sure, but in any event
he had his evidence.

No contemporary portrait of Cadillac is known to exist.

There are two artistic statues of him, one at Mackinac, the other at
Detroit in a niche in the city hall.  The Detroit statue is infinitely
superior.  The statue at Mackinac might be that of a squatty half-breed
bushloper, with hair cut short, quite false to the vogue of the period.
The statue in the Detroit city hall presents the figure of a man in
middle life, dressed correctly as all commandants dressed; with the
determined expression in face and form that an officer of almost twenty
years must have acquired.

In the spelling of many names are numerous variations--Pontchartrain,
Radisson, the two Tontys, La Mothe's own name (now called La Mott),
Duluth, Joliet, the Duke de Lauzon, a dozen others.  To prevent
confusion the modern spelling is used.  This is not to say it is
correct.  Joliet is spelled to-day one way in Canada, another in the
United States.  Radisson's name is spelled three different ways in one
Public Records state document in London.  The variation in the spelling
of La Mothe's name is given in the main text.

Each chapter of the life of Cadillac would make a novel, but as he
wrote of himself--"my work is {xx} warrior not writer."  Or as
Frontenac wrote of him, begging Louis XIV to overlook the brevity of
Cadillac's secret reports, "this adroit officer is too busy to write
long full reports of his worthy services."  So he died pretty nearly
unknown till 1902-4.  More may come to light about his Crusader
ancestors which will explain much that is puzzling in his life--why,
for instance, educated in the very hotbed of Jesuit activities, he
always favored the gray gown friars and monks instead of the Jesuits.
Perhaps it was too frequent use of the birch and fasting on a
high-spirited lonely boy.  The Jesuits molded their pupils as clay in a
skilled potter's hand; and molded well.  But Cadillac would not mold to
any hand.  He would neither bend nor break, and kept his inner self
hidden as under an iron mask from all except his family, Louis XIV and
Frontenac.  In one of his last letters to Frontenac, he says, "What I
am, Sire, you have molded and made."

To recur to first authorities that must be consulted on Cadillac's
life--the Jesuit Relations are contemporaneous but highly colored
against Cadillac for reasons apparent as the story goes on.  These
reasons will be found fully in the secret reports to Louis XIV--the
Marine Papers now available in word for word reports in the Canadian
Archives of Ottawa, the Quebec Province Archives, the magnificent
Burton Collection {xxi} of the Public Library in Detroit.  Abb
Tanguay's _Genealogy_ is the best authority on all early Canadian and
Louisiana families but not reliable as to dates.  The late Benjamin
Sulte's contributions, still for the most part found only in obscure
French pamphlets, are almost critic-proof as to data, value of money,
family relationship, itinerary of voyages.  The Hudson's Bay Company
Papers in the Hudson's Bay Company vaults and in the Public Records,
London, give the amazing underhand game of diplomacy between England
and France, and later between Spain and France.  Margry, De Lery, the
royal engineer, the Spanish records of Lenarez's day in Mexico are all
fine side-lights.  So is Hennepin, so is La Harpe.  Fortier's
Louisiana, Andreas' Chicago, Blanchard's Chicago, George B. Catlin's
Detroit should all be consulted.  Mr. Catlin and Mr. Burton have all
but made shot-proof the various locations of old French activities in
Detroit, and plaques on public buildings now mark these ancient sites.
On not all points do these two authorities on the spot agree and this
for good reasons.  Each year now scraps or lost sheets in the old
records come to light and compel revision of data.  One of the most
surprising examples of this was the number of old French maps found in
Russia.  When the French Revolution broke out and the Bastile was
stormed, these maps and papers seem to have been {xxii} seized and
carried to Russia by Napoleon with perhaps the same dreams of world
conquest as Louis XIV had cherished.  Some of the maps are reproduced
in this volume and their accuracy and range are amazing.

To Mr. Taylor, of the Lenox Library, New York; Mr. Burton, of Detroit,
Doctor Quaife, Mr. Strohm, Miss Krum, Miss Hill, Mr. George Catlin; the
Chicago Historical Society, especially Miss Hazleton; Mr. Roy, of the
Archives of the City of Quebec; the Canadian National Art Gallery; Mr.
Guyon, Minister of Labor for Quebec, who is a descendant of the Guyon
family, Mr. Gibbons, of the Canadian Pacific Railway, especial
indebtedness is acknowledged and deep thanks expressed for assistance
both in locating old places and reproducing old maps.

A.C.L.




{23}

PART ONE

THE FOUNDER OF DETROIT



{25}

CADILLAC

CHAPTER I

1658-1689

The Fight in Lower Town, Quebec, with "the Little Lieutenant"--Cadillac
Knocks a Young Gascon Officer Senseless with a Big
Candlestick--Card-Sharpers of Lower Town and Gay Life in Castle St.
Louis Drawing-Rooms--Preparing to Conquer All North America from the
Great Lakes to New Spain for Louis XIV.


It is Lower Town in the City of Quebec the third of May, 1686.  Drifts
of dirty snow yet lie in the gashes of the shaded Laurentian Hills.  It
is evening but daylight lingers.  The broad basin of the St. Lawrence
lies a lake painted rose-red in the sunset.  From the south side of the
river, the lights of Point Levis begin to twinkle through the shadows
of a filtered blue nightfall.  Masts of frigates from Old France, of
fishing schooners from Belle Isle Straits, little sailing vessels that
are to go on up the river to Montreal, rock lazily to the wash of the
tide against the docks of Lower Town.  The St. Charles River on the
east darkens first, but the fort light of Upper Town flashes high
beneath the rocks of Cape Diamond and Castle St. Louis on the very
brink of the precipice below the high cape and above Lower Town begins
to shoot its many lights in reflection across the river.  From the {26}
flagpole above Cape Diamond and from the turrets of Castle St. Louis
floats the fleur-de-lis.  The air is soft and balmy, but the chill of
evening is driving loungers indoors from the water-front.

The Governor's officers riding to Upper Town find their horses sinking
and floundering in the undrained muddy streets.  No need at this hour
to keep in the slough of mid-street and escape the housewives tossing
slops from windows with the shrill cry "_Gardez l'eau_," so that riders
must crowd their horses rather close to the rough cobble pavement flush
with the stone fronts or get a douse on their heads.  It is a better
Lower Town than back a few years ago, when fire devoured every frame
and log building.  Stone is now replacing wood.  Lanterns of bear oil
and pitch pine fagots and tallow swing above the heavy doorways.
Shutters are closed across open windows, but sounds of merriment come
from the lighted rooms behind the open lattice.  There is the mouth
organ of some gay care-free voyageur.  There is the squeak of the
habitant's fiddle.  There are the soldier's cornet, flute, fife and
trombone.  Then there is no mistaking the _thud-thud-thud_ of
moccasined feet to the _tom-tom-tom_ of Indian drum made of tight skins
filled with pebbles.  Other sounds are not quite so innocent--the slap
of cards and coin on gamblers' table, the rattle of fencing swords cast
aside in scabbard to hang {27} by the hand-hold to the high post of the
home-made chairs.  Habitant farmers can be seen wending by ferry and
pontoon bridge homeward in their two-wheeled carts with little shaggy
ponies and themselves almost as shaggy in red blanket coats, coon caps,
leather leggings, asquat in their wagonettes.  The most of the gentry
from Upper Town has already gone up the steep narrow streets in their
two-wheeled calashes.

Lower Town resembles all water-fronts.  It is a mingling of the
respectable and the disreputable.  Humble shop-folk dwell next door to
noisy taverns, little lodging inns and the gambling dens of
card-sharpers.  Spring is the season for these scamps to garner their
gains.  Bushrangers and voyageurs are coming down from the Far Up
Country--called Pays d'Haut.  If successful from the winter, they now
have pelts or coin and with a drink or two all readily gamble away the
season's hunt in a single night; and there are a great many of these
card-sharpers in Lower Town.  The garrison has been increased by eight
hundred troopers in ten years.  To each company of fifty men is an
officer--a lieutenant or sub-lieutenant, usually on half-pay during the
winter.  Lower Town is crowded with human scum.  Brandy flows free
almost as the wash of the tides; but the pay for the brandy comes
across the gaming table.  Thither resort {28} after nightfall the
younger officers from Upper Town to make a living by their wits; and
those wits are very nimble.  Nearly all are younger members of old
aristocratic French families sent out to mend their fortunes.  They are
Gascon cadets, the best fencers and fighters in the world, but
roisterers, braggarts, bullies, lady-killers dressed in the pink of
fashion.  The hat is three-cornered with a drooping plume.  Their upper
coats are either soft satin or mouse-colored leather, belted tight at
the waist to display graceful slim figures.  The trousers are either of
the same tight texture or again the mouse-colored delicate leather; but
the high-boot leggings come to thigh with a flop-over of cinnamon
brown, silver spur at heel and hard brown sole for stirrup.  Gauntlets
come to the elbow and the hand inside is kept white and beringed as any
lady's.  Few have any title but Sieur, equivalent to our "Sir" or
modern minor knighthood.  To hold such cadets well in hand, their
captains are either older men of stronger fiber in character, or if yet
young, then steady of head, usually chevaliers hoping to win a
baronetcy in the colonies and return to France with wealth enough from
trade to establish themselves in castles and the inner circles of the
court clique during an era of the most extravagant and luxury-loving
generation Old France has ever known.

On this particular May evening the Chevalier de {29} la Mothe Cadillac,
now about thirty years of age, has slackened rein to let his horse
climb the steep streets at slower pace.  Perhaps, too, he has slackened
pace to think.  At this period the device of spiral climb for steep
ascent is not favored.  Steep, very narrow streets are deemed better as
defense against enemies.  Then these wooden stockades and batteries
must be replaced by stone.  This stonework calls for better heads than
the ordinary stone-mason.  It must be perfected by masons who are
really royal army engineers and can prevent any grafting on contracts
for the King; and this brings perhaps a tenderer mood to La Mothe
Cadillac; for the mason engineer in charge of this work is the father
of a Mademoiselle Guyon to whom the Chevalier is engaged and with whom
he is very deeply in love.  He knows well that the grand dames of Upper
Town and the frivolous grander ladies of Old Versailles may sneer at
her birth; but is she not as good as the best of them?  Is she not kin
of the Duke de Lauzon?  Later, he is to name his own favorite daughter
Marie Theresa after his beloved wife.

Well he knows why he has been sent out by Louis XIV.  It is to report
the real conditions of all the forts in New France.  Could Quebec be
made a second Paris, a fort to conquer, command and hold all North
America to the very borders of New Spain?  By natural position, it is
in all conscience strong enough to {30} dominate the New World and defy
conquest.  On the St. Lawrence side, cannon along the precipice-edge of
Upper Town could shatter any naval attack; but these stone batteries of
Lower Town must be strengthened to protect docks.  These three main
gates to Upper Town must have storage bastions and upper turrets to
render impossible ascent from Lower Town.  On three sides, Quebec is
impregnable; but the fourth side to the rear is a plain.  It is the
Plains of Abraham.  The wall around that side must be built higher.
The Court does complain that the wall has already cost so much it must
be built of gold instead of stone.  One battery alone has cost the King
forty thousand dollars and will cost the Colony fifty-six thousand
dollars before it is finished.  Two more large platforms must be built
at a cost of twenty thousand dollars a year to defend the dock front.
No wonder the King groans at costs.  Had not Governor De la Barre
stolen yearly over twelve thousand crowns from the King's treasury to
enrich himself?  Hadn't he used royal frigates and brigades of canoes
for his own fur trade?  But La Barre had been recalled.  Denonville,
his successor, had proved at least an honest governor; but Denonville
was too old to fight the Iroquois from New York.  His policy has been
on the defensive, instead of tigerishly aggressive to check the
Iroquois.  Just when hitting the Iroquois hardest, Governor Frontenac
had {31} been recalled in 1682; and here De la Barre and Denonville
have lost all he had gained; and Frontenac now in his seventies is
coming back for a second term to complete the work he had begun.
Denonville has been too much under the thumb of the missionary spirit,
ruminates Cadillac.  The Chevalier was not hostile to the
missionaries--far from it; but he thought they subordinated the making
of converts to the plans of the King--a strong aggressive policy--fear
first, obedience, then love.  Had the Iroquois been sincere once in all
their dealings with the Black Robes?  Never!  Show a gentle front and
the tigers of the Mohawk Trail would pounce on all New France.  But
then, "scratch a Gascon cadet," and wasn't he a pouncing tiger?  Were
they not the best fencers and fighters in all Europe?  La Mothe smiled
and was proud to be a Gascon from the Pyrenees.  Monseignior Vallier,
now the head of the Jesuits, had boasted that Denonville read nothing
but the Psalms and holy books.  Pah!  Better have kept his powder dry
for the Iroquois.

Just then La Mothe's somewhat caustic mental comments are interrupted
by the opening of a door in the stone wall of houses lining the
streets.  A pretty widow curtsies low.  She would be flattered if
M'sieur the Chevalier would deign to come in and sup with her.  The
French Canadians have a curious trick of {32} slurring their
enunciation of certain consonants and words.  It is very puzzling to a
Parisian Frenchman and explains many variations in the spelling of
words.  They do not say Monsieur but slur it to M'sieur.  They do not
distinguish "on" and "un" and "an."  You will find that distinction to
this day--incorrect, yes, but the vernacular of the habitant.  La Mothe
is glad to accept the pretty widow's invitation.  She is related to the
Guyons and has been reduced to keeping an inn by the death of her
husband in an Indian raid.  Her house is a great resort for
sub-lieutenants on half pay for the winter.  They can board there
cheaply and yet play the part of lady-killer amid the demoiselles of
Upper Town.

The widow is given the name Perellan or Perrilin.  If you look up the
Archives of the period, you will find there was a widow of this name of
good birth related to the Guyons, reduced to asking a gratuity from the
King's treasure box; but the King's treasure box was very empty and
there is no report granting the request.  For such widows who had lost
husbands in Indian raids, there was only one of two alternatives: to
remarry at once, or support themselves.  Lower Town offered the best
chance for an inn.  There boarders could always be obtained.  There
were the half-pay young officers from Upper Town.  There were the
voyageurs coming back from the Up Country all June, July and August.

{33}

Catching a glimpse inside of young officers from his own regiment of
Gascon cadets, La Mothe is nothing averse to the kind invitation.
Tossing bridle rein over the hitching post, he enters.  A quick glance
and the hawklike eyes have taken in every detail of the whole scene.
With barely a return salute to the cadets filling the room, he seats
himself at the candle-lighted supper table.  The candlestick is very
high and of shining brass.  The widow is a fine honest woman, but
to-night he does not like the company.  There are too many of the
roistering young officers from his own regiment.  They are too flushed
of cheek.  Their voices are too loud.  They are too pot-valiant and
boastful in their cups.  They are a deal too boldly familiar toward
himself.

Yet several of the young Le Moyne sons are in the room.

"Won't you give us the honor of your good company to Upper Town?" one
Jacques de Bleury Sabrevois asks.

"Nay--lad--I'd endanger your chances with the ladies," retorts Cadillac.

This Sabrevois is a mere boy.  He is barely twenty.

"A drink?  No?" proffers Sieur de Sabrevois, pushing a tankard toward
Cadillac.

Had the young cadet not been tipsy, Cadillac's look of contempt would
have withered the puppy underling.  Cadillac saw the cards in hand and
guessed the {34} motive of the urge to drink.  Cadillac was ever
thrifty and always had ready coin.

"Drink--with you?  No, card-sharper!  If you were in Upper Town, I'd
order you to your quarters for being in your present condition.  I have
half a mind to give you a good thrashing right now."

"Eh, my little friend," said Sabrevois, rising with his lily hand on
his sword hilt and a mocking challenge on his impertinent face.  Now
the Chevalier was not little and he was a terrific fencer--swift and
sure of every parry and every thrust.

"Little friend?" in cutting tones repeated Cadillac, now on his feet.

[Illustration: One of the oldest drawings of Quebec.  _Courtesy, Burton
Historical Collection, Detroit_.]

The other cadets had caught him back by his sword arm.

"Yes, little darling; yes, _garon_; and if you were in Upper Town, you
would not have the wit to stop me kissing your future wife."

"Hold your tongue, young scoundrel.  'S death!  I will not soil my
hands on a puppy but----"  Cadillac had seized the candlestick as he
rose, and the pretty lieutenant lay on the flat of his back knocked
senseless.

"I am a dead man," he muttered as he crumpled up.  That was the finish
of one particular little _garon_ with the ladies for some time.  He
had to nurse a cut head and blackened eye.

{35}

The Chevalier may or may not have resumed his supper.  The report to
the King does not say; but he mounted his mud-spattered horse and rode
leisurely on to Upper Town.  Disciplining unruly young officers had
become too usual with him for this episode to disturb him much.  It was
only the fellow's impudent reference to his idolized lady that had
ruffled his furious quick temper.

All the same, he must take this whole matter up with the Governor.
Better wait my Lord Frontenac's coming.  There were too many of these
idle penniless young scamps from the old aristocracy out in New France
to make a living by nimble wits as card-sharpers, cheats, illicit
barterers in brandy for furs from the Indians.  All very well to set up
a new feudalism of nobles, merchants, peasants in Quebec; but could it
be done unless this scum of disgraceful young blackguards was swept out
to give place to better men coming up the ranks to the top?

[Illustration: An early view of the city of Quebec.  _Courtesy,
Canadian Pacific Ry. Co._]

Cadillac had little sympathy and still less in common with the strict
rule of the Jesuit, Saint Vallier.  He revered both Bishop Laval and
Saint Vallier for their saintly irreproachable lives; but their
continuous interference with the King's secular affairs irritated the
Chevalier's irascible temper almost as much as it had annoyed Governor
Frontenac to fury during his first term.  Cadillac himself always
confessed to {36} the friars of the Recollets.  He would risk none of
his secret swift moves for the King being thwarted in the Jesuit
confessional stalls, as Governor Frontenac's had been.  Saint Vallier,
now the Bishop in succession to Laval, might be a saint; but he was too
much saint for Cadillac.  The Chevalier would keep these boys of his
regiment from the dens of Lower Town by giving them good private
theatricals in the drawing-rooms of Castle St. Louis; but Saint Vallier
had forbidden private theatricals, especially theatricals in which the
demoiselles took actress parts.  He refused sacraments to the
offenders.  It was an age when the younger girls wore ribboned ruffles
to their ears; but the Quebec ladies donned frontages of open
lace--beautiful lace woven by the habitant wives; and to these, too,
the Bishop refused sacraments.  Soldiers who sang rough secular
troubadour songs were not only denied sacraments but excluded from the
church.  They were denounced from the pulpit by name and sometimes
separated from their wives.  This drove them to the woods as
bushlopers, voyageurs, renegade runaways.  Too often they took Indian
wives.  To this Cadillac had no objection.  It cemented friendship with
Indian allies, but it scandalized the good Bishop.

Cadillac was impatient at the Bishop's interference.  Once when a
Jesuit, Etienne Carheil, arrayed {37} in all his canonicals had
remonstrated over such a policy, Cadillac told him his mission policy
"smelled of sedition a hundred yards off."  The infuriated priest bade
Cadillac not give himself airs and shook his fist under La Mothe's
nose.  Now, Cadillac's nose was a sensitive spot to him.  Whether from
his early poverty and the Scripture story of a prophet fed by ravens,
or from the resemblance of his hawklike Spanish nose to a raven, the
court clique back in Old France had called him "Raven."  "I could have
knocked his jaw out of joint," Cadillac secretly reported to the King;
but he restrained himself and pushed the offending and furious Jesuit
from the room.  He knew he was out on purely secular business for the
King, and he resented this interference from the very missions that had
to be protected from Indian raid by the Gascon cadets.

Could New France conquer all New England?  That was the question.
Cadillac thought it could.  Though New France had only some twelve
thousand people all told compared to New York's eighteen thousand, New
France had been held in a strong unity under the hand of Frontenac, and
Frontenac was coming out for a second term.  New York and Boston and
all New England could muster at most only eighteen thousand fighting
males; but the English colonies were a house divided--Dutch merchants
of {38} Manhattan ready enough to arm the Iroquois for raid on the
French but keen to save their own hides; Puritans of Massachusetts, who
hated the French Catholics and were hated by them; then in what are now
known as New Hampshire and Maine and Vermont, Englishmen of divided
allegiance, who wanted to trade with the French of Acadia (Nova Scotia)
and would seldom for long hold together to fight the French.

The whole situation was such a crisscross of entangled "intrigue"--as
Cadillac reported to his royal master--that it was almost impossible to
know on whom one could depend.  Firmly behind the Frontenac policy of
extending French power stood the old officers of La Salle.  There was
Alphonse Tonty, brother of Henry, now scouting west of the Great Lakes
to hold the trade from the New England colonies.  There was Duluth, now
on the Great Lakes to hold the trade from the English of Hudson Bay.
But where did the Le Moyne brothers rank?  That was the question
bothering Cadillac and it bothered him all his life.  They had gone
overland and captured every English fort on James Bay and they were now
preparing to do the same overland to the New England colonies.  They
seemed to side with the Jesuits against the Governor.  Why?  Did they
covet the governorship themselves?  Cadillac was puzzled.  If {39} so,
they would never get it.  He knew they would be kept at sea as naval
commanders for which they had been trained--especially Iberville and
Bienville.  It looked as if they were keen for a baronetcy.  Well,
Cadillac was equally keen himself.  He would keep that possibility in
the back of his head.  Perhaps some day they could combine forces.

These Le Moyne brothers were the most picturesque heroes of New France
and Louisiana for over eighty years.  The Le Moyne father had come out
to New France a bourgeois.  That is, he did not belong to the nobility;
nor did he class himself as a habitant, a peasant farmer; but he
cherished consuming ambitions for his nine sons.  When New France was
groaning from starvation for furs because the English on James and
Hudson Bay were drawing away all furs from the Lake tribes, his sons,
not yet twenty-five years old, led bands of bushlopers overland to
James Bay and captured and ravaged every English fort on the southern
shores of the great inland sea.  This gave them commissions in army and
navy and swift advancement as commanders of first rank by land and sea.
They became renowned as the most dauntless, victorious leaders of a
heroic age.  Every door--Court and social--was wide open to them.  They
were presently leading the ruthless forays overland to New Hampshire
and Massachusetts settlements, and when {40} one son, Bienville,
perished in these raids, a later Le Moyne baby was renamed Bienville to
carry the name on to glory.  We shall meet this younger Bienville
farther on in Cadillac's life.  By the 1690's the Le Moynes were
commanding the royal frigates that captured every English fort on the
west side of Hudson Bay.  There, they took so many English prisoners
that the frigates could not convey the captives back to the St.
Lawrence but drove them as bushlopers to the wild Indian tribes trading
on Hudson Bay.  Now their plans were to ravage every English settlement
from Newfoundland to the northern limits of Spanish Florida.  For
reasons of his own, Louis XIV, the Grand Monarch, was not yet quite
ready to break friendly relations with Spain by attacking Florida and
Mexico; but from the orders to his officers you can easily discern that
he was playing as double a game with Spain as with England, biding his
time under a mask of friendship to pounce and seize when the
opportunity came.  The Le Moyne brothers crisscrossed almost every step
of Cadillac's life.  Not one cared a sou for wealth; not one, as far as
we know, left a fortune to his heirs; but all who survived the wars
rose to enter the highest Court circles of Old France, and their
descendants became governors and commandants from the St. Lawrence to
the Gulf of Mexico.

Then there was the situation in Europe, more {41} tangled than ever.
Louis was friend of the English monarchs, Charles and James, and no
move in New France must offend them.  Yet not a concession was to be
made to that friendship.  "Trust me to get you out of this situation,"
Louis had written in a furious rebuke to De la Barre for setting free
English prisoners and ships from Hudson Bay; and he issued as firm
instructions though not so furious to Denonville.  The truth was that
while New France was triumphant in arms, Old France was not.  Louis'
reign, which had been such a blaze of glory, was closing in a sunset of
ominous storms.  Well, Cadillac would know what moves were wisest when
Governor Frontenac came; but was ever such a mess?  Denonville, though
good as gold as a man, had let Fort Frontenac (modern Kingston) go to
the dogs.  It was no longer a bar to Iroquois raid.  That meant loss of
trade on the Lakes.  True, Frontenac had broken Iroquois power and the
warriors were now down from five thousand to two thousand five hundred.
They no longer attacked Quebec, but they were an ambushed terror to
Montreal.  They were a hornet's nest disturbed with the angry hornets
at large to sting from sudden sortie.  What the sachems might pledge in
powwow was violated by the young bucks going out in little bands to
loot and massacre.

The matter of the brawl in the widow's house was {42} ordered taken up,
the very morning after the fight with little Sabrevois and for many
mornings after.  The paltry evidence filled pages of reports to the
King.  Its settlement seems to have been delayed till Frontenac came
for his second term.  Little Sabrevois had presented himself the sorry
figure of a hero.  He had that swollen head and a blackened eye.  He
was defended by the Jesuits.  Why?  To vent spleen against Cadillac.
Perhaps, too, to vent spleen against Frontenac.  If the good Bishop
could only have taken a joke; but he could not.  If only he had not
taken himself so seriously.  Once, years later, when Saint Vallier
offered Count Frontenac a hundred coins to prevent certain private
theatricals, the Governor took his note on the spot for the amount to
the amazement of the Bishop; and what is more, he cashed the note; but
he turned the money over to the nuns of the hospital.  It was a dry
ironical joke, which the Jesuits didn't relish.

The motives of the tavern brawl Frontenac understood promptly on his
arrival.  It was to discredit Cadillac's secret report to the King.
Pah!  Let the Bishop fume.  The case was lightly dismissed, and no
doubt provoked the same laughter in Versailles as it did in Castle St.
Louis.  But little Sabrevois never forgot nor forgave that humiliation
in Lower Town.  It cut his vanity to the quick; and a mean little man's
{43} vanity cut to the quick was likely to come back in a wasp
sting--or worse, in a rattlesnake's treacherous trick.  Yet Sabrevois
was a brave fighter.  Lightheadedness and addiction to gambling--those
were his weaknesses.  His resentment came tragically into Cadillac's
later life.

Of course, Frontenac had been welcomed back in 1689 with wild acclaim.
Cannon roared from Castle St. Louis.  Torchlight processions escorted
him up from the docks.  The Jesuits harangued him in a flowery
eloquence.  Again Cadillac's cynical report scouted the farce of a
peace between the Count and the Bishop.  It was only in expectation of
favors to come.  Yes, and it was also their desperate need of
protection for their missions from Mackinac on the Great Lakes to the
Ohio.  Cynical, caustic, ironical Cadillac may have been; but he tried
never to deceive himself and he served his royal master both honestly
and bravely.  He had been out in New France now since he was
twenty-three and had served briefly in Acadia, where the King had
granted him in 1688 vast concessions of a hundred thousand acres of
land near what is now Bar Harbor, Maine; but these concessions were not
valuable.  They were rocky forest-covered soil and in the shift of war
the grant was lost to the Cadillac family.  Besides, he had been
transferred from Acadia up to Quebec on more important work.




{44}

CHAPTER II

1661-1689

Who Was Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac?--A Gascon from Toulouse and
Garonne--A Trusted Colonel of His Regiment by His Twenty-Fourth
Year--His Youth in Orphanage, Poverty and Loneliness--Develops a
Peculiarly Independent, Strong Character--Laughed at but Liked in
Louis' Gay Court--Educated but Fearless as All Gascons--Bred in
Poverty, Careless of Luxury, Independent in Character--Just the Man for
the King's Work in the Intriguing Colonies.


Who was the Chevalier Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac?

He was a Gascon from Garonne.  He was born at St. Nicolas de la Grave
on March 5, 1658.  Here the old archives of St. Nicolas de la Grave,
Montauban and Castel-sarrarin in southern France reveal much about La
Mothe unknown till late years.  The La Muth Cadillacs were a well-known
family in the Pyrenees.  Antoine's father's name was Jean Laument.  He
had been a rich counselor at Toulouse.  Antoine was the fourth child.
There were some sisters; but an older brother seemed to have brought
deep disgrace and poverty to the rich Toulouse counselor; for when he
died, he left only five hundred dollars each to his children.  This
could scarcely educate the boy Antoine except for an army career, and
the old family mansion {45} gradually fell to ruins.  It is inferred
that the disgraced brother forged or misused funds which the rich
father made good.  This left the family in honorable poverty.

Antoine had so many Spanish characteristics, the laughing irony, the
quenchless ardor, the chivalry; he was so much the fierce fighter, the
devout Catholic yet independent of priestly control, that we suspect he
must have had Spanish blood of the Pyrenees from his mother's side of
the house.  We know now from the old parish records of the Garonne that
his family dated its origin from the Crusades against the Saracens.
Yes, Richard the Lion-Hearted had been guest in that early family home
and sometimes in ridicule of La Mothe's swarthy complexion, he was
jokingly called "the Black Prince."  "He gives himself such princely
airs," the boys said.

These Pyrenees towns were not farther apart than eight to twenty miles.
They were always built as a French bar to Spanish invasion; but the
fort walls, the old castle mansions, the architecture showed more of
the crenelated roof line of the Spanish than the pointed turrets of
northern France.  Moats, walls, drawbridges and gates rang with
traditions of Saracen days and on back in history as far as the Roman
wars.  A boy conning his Latin must have pictured the ancient wars and
the flag that waved the Crusaders on {46} to the Holy War in Palestine.
Such memories must have fired the spirit of any ambitious lad preparing
for an army career.

We know that La Mothe never lost his deep love for the land of his
ancestors.  His coat of arms and signet ring had the same Spanish
crenelated castle outline as the forts.  Laughing and sunny he always
was to his later bitter days in Louisiana.  He always loved clear
mountain streams and dancing rivers.  Barren brown uplands had no
terrors for him; but he always chose rich bottom lands and water-fronts
for frontier posts.  You see much too of Cadillac's Spanish
leanings--whether from heredity or environment--in his later career in
Louisiana.  He was for opening trade at once with New Spain.  Other
French commanders in Louisiana did not understand such policy.  He
could be hoaxed into searching for such mines as made New Spain rich;
and he was thrifty--a characteristic which any one knows in the true
northern Spaniard.  Beneath seeming lavish spending and no sparing of
gold and silver lace and pomp was the thrift of the strong iron box in
which were hoarded family coin and family jewels, which have come down
in Spanish American families to our own day.

[Illustration: Cadillac's birthplace as it is to-day.  _Courtesy, Lenox
Library, New York_.]

But a curious thing in La Mothe's training was that he seems to have
been educated by the gray-gowned friars rather than the Jesuits, and he
favored the {47} monks all his life.  Then he had a very pronounced
policy toward the Indians.  Father to them, yes; but equal with them,
never.  I have never known a Castilian Spaniard of modern days who
could forget that the Indians had been slaves.  Let the soldiers marry
them if they would; but the pure Castilian would never mix his blood
with slaves, however much his underling soldiers might give his name to
their half-caste offspring.  La Mothe could handle Indians with tact
but never could pretend even to them that he regarded them as equals.
He would never smoke a peace pipe with them and would not listen long
to their powwows.

[Illustration: The birth record of Cadillac.  _Courtesy, Lenox Library,
New York_.]

He received, as a matter of course, the good education due a boy of his
station--noble birth from a feudal seignior.  The Jesuits boasted that
if they had a boy to his seventh year they could mold his character for
life.  From the primary Jesuit schools, the boy as he entered his teens
passed on to junior cadet school for an army career.  These dotted
every section of France, and they were as with us to-day both public
and private.  From these, if he made good, he was passed on to the
senior cadet schools.  These were the doors to the army and were
supported directly by the King.  They, too, dotted every section in
France.  If the boy graduated high from these senior schools, he
entered the army as a junior sub-lieutenant and {48} could hope for
swift advancement to a captaincy by the time he was twenty-three.

The Roman wars became terribly vivid to a lad living where the iron
heel of the legionaries had tramped, marching to master the Gauls.
Cadillac must have studied military tactics here like a boy on the
spot.  Though he paced priestly corridors studying Latin, he was
thinking of moats and drawbridges and stone walls such as the Romans
built.  Of the old family castle not much remained but the tower
covered with ivy.  Here the boy seems to have made his home in the
lonely top tower.  It was encircled by flocks of ravens, rooks, hawks,
pigeons.  Neighbors called it the Rookery.  His love of birds stayed
with him--at Detroit his military reports burst out almost in
rhapsodies of enthusiasm.  From the tower, too, he must have acquired
his epithet of the Gascon "Hawk" or "Raven."  It may have been from his
Spanish nose or from the poverty-haunted tower.  Such reference always
put him in a rage.  He must have always loved music, for later on he
encouraged his habitant and soldier settlers to contentment by
serenades of army songs, old troubadour ditties, army bands, Indian
tom-toms.  Did he practise music, himself, up in his lonely tower?  We
don't know.  We know he must have had some faithful old servitor; for
his careful court garb could be kept in order only by such a trained
attendant.  {49} Periwig curls, plumed hat, silk hose, spotless linen,
satin breeches, satin doublet, silk cloak, spurred high boots--all
required the daily service of a valet.

A sad lonely figure in the childhood of an orphan.  A sadder lonelier
figure through a poverty-hampered boyhood life till he married the wife
whom he idolized.  Then a man happy in his home life but always a
little embittered in a cynical, laughing, care-free way toward the
world, which had schooled him in hard knocks.

By 1677, Antoine was a cadet in the French Army.  By 1683 he was out in
America on a secret message for the King; so he must have distinguished
himself to command such confidence.  He came to New France just about
the time the Le Moyne brothers were winning their first spurs of honor
by their overland raids on the English of Hudson Bay.  Though only
twenty-five, he was already a lieutenant-colonel; so he must have been
army-trained from his sixteenth year.  And he could not have bought his
promotions by influence or money, for he had neither.  Enemies averred
that Antoine had changed his name, La Muth, to La Mothe, because he was
the son who disgraced the family.  This, the father's will disproves.
He cut the disgraced son off without a sou, in fact with a curse.  To
the others of the family, including Antoine, he left all he had.  The
change from La Muth to La Mothe is easily {50} understood by people who
know the provincial's twist of consonants and vowels and the spelling
to conform with the pronunciation.

Anyway, here Cadillac came to Canada about 1683; and he gave such
offhand frank reports to his King that Louis knew he could trust him.
They were as different from the cringing oily whining reports of slimy
hypocrites out for self-aggrandizement as the clean wolfhound is from a
snake; but he retained the faults of a good Gascon to the very end.  He
had his frightful quick tempests of temper.  He had a tongue sharp as
his temper.  He had a vision clear as his Damascus blade.  He did not
mind making enemies because he knew he could master them.  Yet--true
Castilian--in love or war he had an eye for the main chance; and he
saved money no matter how meager his pay.  At no period in all his life
did La Mothe lack ready coin to take advantage of every opportunity
passing his way; and he never wasted money in vain display.

He was on good terms with the Court--such good terms that he was
personally known to all the ministers and the King; but he lacked the
fortune to keep the pace.  Over the long hawk nose, the French Court
ladies made merry, largely because he was too poor to excite
competition as a possible match for daughters.  Then he took that step
which must have provoked the {51} hilarious patronizing merriment of
King Louis' gay and haughty dames.  He married a spinster--a penniless
girl out in the colonies.  In that circle demoiselles over fourteen and
unmarried were old maids.  Girls who were thrifty and serious and
learned were--well--a joke; and such was the bride Cadillac chose for
himself.  But he made no mistake and his later life proved he did not
choose amiss.  Thrse Guyon's kinship with a Duke de Lauzon gave
Cadillac entry to the exclusive upper circles of Versailles and hope of
some day winning the coveted honor of a baronetcy or earldom and wealth
to sustain the honor.  The Duke was related to one of the ladies in
waiting at the King's Court.  Frontenac's wife was related to the
Queen, herself.  That may have been the bond of first friendship with
Frontenac, and it was to be important to Cadillac at a critical moment.
Though Frontenac's independent wife did not submit to his masterful
temper, she kept him well informed all his life of every secret move
against him and of Louis' abiding faith in him.

Cadillac seems to have met his bride first in Port Royal--Annapolis
Basin of Nova Scotia where her father was supervising the building of
stone-walled forts.  Port Royal had shifted its flag to every wind of
war from 1654.  This is simply explained.  The habitant settlers could
fish in summer for a living and hunt {52} the woods for pelts in
winter.  They were contented and did not care one fig what flag flew
over them; but one thing they had to have in order to prosper--trade
with Boston; and while Boston did not number as many fighting men as
New France and New York it did number folks of a stronger, more
patriotic fervor.  Port Royal was English in 1654.  It went back under
the fleur-de-lis by the Treaty of Ryswick.  It became Annapolis in the
Queen Anne's War and did pretty much as it liked as to trade.
Cadillac's bride was out at Port Royal in these intervals.  There were
fewer than ninety-five livable houses in all Port Royal including the
garrison.  And the town was always a little Huguenotic.  The betrothal
took place in Quebec City, and the marriage followed in Quebec City,
June 25, 1687.  They lived in ideal harmony.  In his absence, Madame
Cadillac was as keen a manager as her husband and had as sharp an eye
for the cheats, frauds, intriguing hypocrites.

In 1689 Cadillac was summoned to Paris to consult Louis XIV on the
conquest of all New England.  He reported on the forts of New France
and all the Atlantic colonies from 1689 to 1694.  In later years he had
to report in secret cipher.  Now let his secret reports to his King
declare his real character.  They are very caustic, terse,
clear-sighted; and Louis was guided by them.

{53}

He told the Jesuits their conduct "smelled of sedition a hundred years
old."  He did not purpose pausing "on his way for the noise of puppies
snapping and barking at heels."  He disliked the vain, idle, useless
young aristocrats who cluttered Castle St. Louis drawing-rooms and
lived by their wits.  He did not like "the sweet-smelling odor of
sanctity," but he had a hound's nose for sincerity and action and
results.  He regards the Hurons and Ottawas as mischievous brutes never
loyal even to their missions.  They "play the fox but never the lion."
He honors the heroism of the Jesuits but can't see that baptizing
infants as converts does any good.  Better let the missions set
themselves to educating the half-breed children.  As to brandy, how
else hold trade against New York rum and Hudson Bay liquor in barter?
But the trade must be controlled and not be free to these scamps of
young officers who employed bushrangers for the hard work.  He would
confiscate every barrel of liquor up at Mackinac and turn it over for
the King's trade, where it may be needed "to counteract bad hard diet
on fish" and help on cold midwinter trips and in drenching rains.  It
wasn't his policy the Jesuits fought.  It was taking control of liquor.
There were seven thousand Indians of mixed blood yearly gathered at
Mackinac Straits for the trade and white fish season; but there were
fewer than two hundred soldiers to maintain order and {54} only sixty
houses for missions or garrison, and much of the ammunition charged to
the King went for illegal trade.  When priests would "not remove their
hats" in the presence of a royal representative, why expect docility
from young officers, especially young rascals of dissolute lives beyond
reach of the law?  Montreal is playing the part of a dog in the manger.
It is not letting Indian trade go on down to Quebec and lawless trade
is turning Mackinac into the worst frontier post in all New France.
Duluth might lead fifty canoes of furs down from Mackinac one season
all right.  All might dribble off to the English the very next season,
and French trade lie dead for the next two years.

Another fort should be erected as a new garrison to cut out the
corruption from Montreal and the lawlessness at Mackinac.  Duluth is
scouting both outposts now but can do little, for the bushrangers have
scuttled to the wilds.  What is needed is a settlement somewhere on the
Lakes, of farmers and a strong garrison for protection.  Tonty, brother
of La Salle's man, is counteracting the English on the Ohio.  He would
curtail Jesuit power by Recollet friars, not so given to trade and
equally devout.  "One may as well knock one's head against a wall as
hope to convert the Indians in any way" but by gradually educating
their children.  Many of the Indian girls do live vicious lives, but
that "is because the teachers are too strict {55} with them and try to
make them nuns.  Much better let them marry our soldiers and then
educate their children."  There are at least four hundred barrels of
brandy concealed round Mackinac for illicit trade.  The English are
paying twice as much for furs as the French and use just as much
brandy.  The English threats on Quebec should be answered by cannon
mouth and not diplomacy.

It took two weeks to go from Quebec to Montreal and six weeks to go on
up to the Lakes.  What was the use of talk to protect these posts at
such a distance?  Better a new strong French fort between Mackinac and
the Ohio.  Why think you could license and keep in order bushrangers?
You had to catch your bushrunner first.  Sentence them to hang for
unlicensed trade if you like, but try to catch them?  As well try to
catch a sly fox or wild bird.  You would have to hang some governors
and half the scamp young lieutenants if you attempted to carry out that
sentence.  True, Governor Frontenac had crushed the Iroquois danger for
Quebec City, but their raids were so outrageous at Montreal that
farmers had to winter inside the town and only ventured to their fields
with muskets in hand.  The massacres had become a wild terror of
nightmare dreams.  They had strengthened Montreal with eight hundred
more troopers, but that didn't protect the settlement.

{56}

All of which seems to prove that Louis XIV had done a very wise thing
in picking a detached observer as informant.  Gain the West and gain it
now at all hazards--that was the gist of all Cadillac's reports.

There was just one sentence in all these reports that must have given
the King pause in his diplomacy and plans: "The world may revolve on
its axis to all eternity, but Canada will no more become a France than
a desert a garden."  In other words, Cadillac was beginning to doubt
that a New World domain could be ruled by dictation from headquarters,
three thousand miles away.  Perhaps that is why Louis, knowing that the
Stuarts were about to crash down in England, decided to change his
policy in New France and give this extraordinary young Gascon the
responsibility of building up a western New France with headquarters on
the Lakes and later transferred him to Louisiana; and Cadillac might
have succeeded if Old France had not crumpled up before Marlborough and
William of Orange.

At all events, he is revered and honored as father and founder of
Detroit.  And he is equally famous though not so popular as one of the
first governors of Louisiana.  Louisiana in his day meant pretty much
all territory from the Gulf of Mexico to the ridge of the Rockies.
With the exception of New Spain it was the vastest area for European
colonizing in the two {57} Americas; and both Old Spain and Old France
were grasping for it.  England, too, was not blind to its
possibilities; but the aims of Spain and France differed from those of
England.  England was ever, as Napoleon later called her in contempt,
"a nation of shopkeepers," whose wealth came from international trade.
Spain sought wealth in gold and silver mines.  So did France, but she
financed expansion of empire by the fur trade.  Both thought it
possible to do what proved impossible--dictate every move on the
checker-board of dishonest diplomacy from headquarters in home lands.
England on the other hand more and more left expansion to her Atlantic
Colonies; and these colonies were, even in the era from 1660 to 1700,
encroaching yearly on the Middle West.  The Ohio was the pathway
westward from the South Atlantic settlements.  The Mohawk Trail through
Iroquois territory was the path from the North Atlantic frontier; and
it may as well be acknowledged frankly that both English and French
traded firearms to the Indians for raids on all movements by whites to
the Middle West.  The Iroquois were incited by the Dutch of Manhattan
to raid and harass the French going west by the St. Lawrence and Great
Lakes.  Kingston and Niagara were the portage points where the Iroquois
barred French progress.  The French on their part armed the Lake tribes
to {58} raid the settlements of New England and even as far south as
the Ohio.  Both paid a terrible price in human life for this folly.
Such criminal tactics dyed the advance-line settlement in the deep red
of the Bloody Ground.

And as we have seen, Cadillac was entrusted before he was twenty-five
to scout the advance ground and report privately to his royal master
the wisest policy for all moves.  Such eminence at twenty-five was
almost as amazing as the swift promotions thrust on the Le Moyne
sons--Iberville and Bienville--before they were twenty-four.




{59}

CHAPTER III

1690-1699

Sunlight amid the Shadows--Frontenac Back a Master in the
Saddle--Infirm but the Same Youthful Ardor--In Spite of His Nose,
Cadillac is No Don Quixote Tilting at Windmills--Life in the Chteau
Gay and Happy--The Morning Audience Conferences--The Gay Parades--the
Seigniors at Home, the Old Majordomo--The Happy Friars and Monks
Untroubled by Ambition--The Habitant Peasant the Happiest of All.


Awaiting Frontenac's return, on his second term as governor, Cadillac,
patient as one of his impatient temperament could be, had drilled his
half-pay young Gascon cadets for the summer campaign of aggression.  It
was the only way to keep them out of mischief.  He loved their fighting
spirit, their quick response for action, their almost perfect fencing
prowess.  He was probably not unsympathetic toward their numerous
love-affairs, when a Gascon like a sailor had an adored one in every
port of call; but this quick drawing of swords to slash a civilian off
the curb in mud, this picking of fights to display prowess, this
gambling in low dens--well, this must be curbed and stopped; so he kept
his boys busy.

Cadillac, however, was plainly troubled his first year in Quebec.  The
King of France had given him oral instructions, but these seemed so
directly {60} contradictory to the orders from Louis to the intendants
that Cadillac did not know which set of royal instructions should guide
his own course; however, Frontenac would arrive on the first frigate
out, and from Frontenac he could gather what was to be the real
imperial policy in New France.  Now came Frontenac.

[Illustration: Hebert's statue of Frontenac in Quebec.  _Courtesy,
Canadian Pacific Ry. Co._]

Though infirm and often carried in his armchair to Indian powwows,
Governor Frontenac was back--"Master in the Saddle."  Instead of his
frail health increasing his sharp temper as in lesser minds, it seemed
to give him a more urbane, philosophic, poised outlook on life.  Where
opposition formerly threw him in frenzies of fury, he could now joke.
Age did not cloud his mind nor his ardor.  He stands the supremely
greatest figure in New France.  Young Cadillac was his right-hand man.
The royal circle might call him Hawk or Raven from the Pyrenees, but
they never mistook him for a Don Quixote tilting at windmills.  His
closest modern type is the Cyrano of the famous Gascon play, and the
modern mayor of Cadillac's native St. Nicolas de la Grave refers to him
as the Cyrano of the Pyrenees.

Though Indian raid, intrigue, quarrels between Bishop and Governor,
jealousy between Jesuits and Recollets, seemed to disturb the surface
of colonial life, it was not an unhappy era to the noblesse, nor to the
simple peasant farmer.  There was the sunny {61} side to the moving
kaleidoscope picture of colonial days.  The happy temperament shed its
laughing light over many a dark tragedy.  Tragedy did not leave the
tight-lipped suppressed emotions so common to races which can not
bubble over in effervescent feelings.  Amazing to realize, the
habitants exposed to daily peril seemed really the merriest of all the
three estates: noblesse, bourgeois, peasant.

[Illustration: Castle St. Louis and Lower Town.  _Courtesy, Canadian
Pacific Ry. Co._]

The reverberating thunder of a great cannon set the echoes rolling
below Cape Diamond.  One must keep in mind--as apparent from the
pictures of the period--there were three distinct levels, if one can
call high rocks levels, to Quebec City.  There was Lower Town, the
level of the docks.  There was Upper Town, where the convents, the
monasteries, the Bishop's palace, the fortifications, the Chteau or
Castle St. Louis clustered.  Above all was Cape Diamond, where later
great fortifications rose.  In Cadillac's day, Cape Diamond displayed
little of its later greatness, except the high harbor signal and the
flag.  This signal was not a harbor light.  That came from Upper Town.
It was rather a semaphore for friendly vessels and a cipher in its
blinks warning dangers.  Though only oil from grease and tallow, its
lights could be seen by all navigators up and down the St. Lawrence.
The famous modern terrace was the vanity parade board walk in
Frontenac's era.

{62}

The Castle St. Louis was the Chteau Frontenac of to-day.  All were
awakened to the duties of a new day.  The fleur-de-lis banner ran up on
the flag-pole of garrison and Castle St. Louis.  In Quebec, this was
followed by the chimes of cathedral bells calling to prayer or high
mass.  In outlying settlements, the same tolling of bells reminded the
humbler folk a day's duties had begun, and every soul mumbled his
prayers and doffed cap, while housewives bowed their heads for a moment
and invoked favorite saint for blessing on this, that, the other simple
task to be performed.  The chimes of Quebec are to-day part of its
charm to tourists.

Bugle and fife called the soldiers to drill and the Gascon cadets to
rub the sleep from eyes heavy-lidded with the previous night's
dissipations.  The mounted drill is described as in dress of blue coats
with profusion of gold and silver foppery, white trousers, spurred high
boots.  After drill and breakfast came the vanity parade in the gray
leather so dear to every vain young lieutenant and so attractive to the
demoiselles returning from cathedral prayers.  Such a chance those
early prayers gave the girls to pass the cathedral square and go home
by the great board walk above the St. Lawrence, where the senior
officers and Governor's staff could be seen in the gallery on the outer
side of the castle.  The old dowagers might {63} clack in a very crows'
conference of afternoon gossip and the strictest chaperon trot along
her long line of girls from the convent; but who that had not eyes on
all sides of her head could watch a line of gay maidens in their early
teens taking the air above the river?  The Gascon cadets strutted in
glory.

Cadillac would never tolerate a man in his company not dressed spick
and span as a naval man in spotless white.  He, himself, set the
example in costume faultless from hat to high boots.

Usually about eleven of the clock, all officers were summoned to the
great audience chamber of the Governor, in the Castle.  It was not so
luxurious as the same great audience room of the King in Versailles,
but it was as close an imitation as the colony could afford.  A long
narrow table ran down the center.  High-backed chairs flanked the
table.  Frontenac's seat was on a raised dais at one end.  The carpets
were red.  The flags were draped overhead.  The room was wainscoted
half-way up and paneled above the wainscot with carvings in deep oak.
Snuff was the vogue at these solemn conferences--snuff from little
luxury boxes with paintings of gay pagan deities on the lid.  Even back
in the Pyrenees home chteaux of the Gascon lieutenants, the
drawing-rooms were in an extravagant imitation of all the Versailles
grandeur.  Portraits on porcelain and canvas of ancestors traced back
to the {64} Crusades, hung on walls draped with tapestries worked by
ancient nuns, or woven in the Netherlands, or purloined from the Turk.
Gilt-framed chairs stood stiffly at ends of onyx and ebony tables.
Vases of rarest glass were on tables, in wall alcoves, on carved
stands.  Oriental rugs decorated the rough stone floors.  Portires
draped all doors, and the humblest chteau had its racing stable.
Frontenac had at this time in France such an estate to keep up and at
no time did it yield him more than five thousand livres a year, and in
no year did New France give him income of more than two thousand five
hundred crowns.  The result was, of course, that income went for
display and debts accumulated for necessities.

On each side of the Governor's chair in Quebec stood the priests in
rank,--the black-robed Jesuits with tonsured crowns keeping pretty much
to one side, the gray-robed friars and monks of St. Francis to the
other.  If a bishop were present, he was seated at the table; but he
was expected to rise as the Governor, representing the King, entered.
Over this insistence by Frontenac there were many scowls, but the Count
was inexorable.  They could neither bend nor break him.  Then the
notary with his long quill pen was commanded to read the latest
dispatches of instructions from the King.  These dispatches were filled
with details that seem to us ridiculous.  They encompassed {65} every
possible subject in scope from the brandy at frontier posts to the
policy to be followed with tribes differing from one another in needs
as a Mediterranean country from a suburb of Paris.  Rebuke to this,
that and the other officer was not glozed in gentle phrase, but read
aloud and provoked many a flush of resentment over its frankness, its
unfairness, its betrayal that some one was tittle-tattling lies back to
the King's Court.  Then the intendant would read his financial report
and his authority was independent of the Governor's.  There was often a
violent though repressed clash at this point.  Then the fur-company
monopoly holders would report; and as their reports were too frequently
a tissue of deceptions to conceal peculation, frowns began to explode
in disputes.  But the Governor was always addressed as "Excellency."
The formality of courtesy was maintained, but that did not prevent many
a scowl replacing what had entered as a smile.  The audience had not
yet blown up in a volcano, but it did often explode in a firecracker of
little enmities.

The midday meal called to His Excellency's table the officers whom he
felt he could trust; seigniors from outlying settlements; merchants who
did not lie and steal; army commandants who could advise on the
policies to be adopted at each frontier post.  There were more
heartburnings over these informal {66} functions than the banquets and
charades and carnivals given to the gentry of all society.  Woe betide
the governor who favored Jesuits and excluded Franciscans, or omitted
the Black Robes and invited the Recollets to such frank midday
discussions.  A perfect deluge of complaints would go back to the King
by the next boat to evoke another batch of rebuke, sharp words, more
detailed instructions in the next season's boats.  The Royal Master
spared no one in his dispatches.  Frontenac was growing more urbane in
his old age, Louis more exasperated; for his plans were going all awry
in Europe.

But the old majordomo did his duty in the cook's kitchen.  If good
wines and good food could lubricate tempers, he did his best.  His
chicken pies were a foot deep.  His venison had been steeped in cider
vinegar to leave it tender.  His trout and salmon were of the freshest.
His wines came from rare old Spanish and French cellars, where they had
ripened from sour heady flavor to mild pure distilled taste, less
liable to intoxicate and served from huge tankards and carafes but in
tiny Venetian glasses; for gentlemen were supposed to practise
moderation, while the Gascons drank pottle deep and gloried in wild
carousals from tavern to tavern.

Then came the vesper chimes of evening.  Every hat was doffed, every
head bowed for a moment in prayer.  {67} It was a scene of great joy
and quietude to the Bishop's heart.  Then at sundown, the cannon shot
again, signaled flags lowered and high harbor lights up on Cape
Diamond, and the day's duties were over.  The Governor's regimental
band on certain nights in spring and summer and early autumn might play
from the Castle gallery overlooking the river.  Gascon officers old and
young lounged on the board walk.  Demoiselles did the same with fair
faces framed in fur scarfs.  Dowagers emerged from afternoon siesta to
join the gay throngs.  The moon rose in a golden shield above the broad
basin of the St. Lawrence.  A ferry might ply last passengers across to
the twinkling lights of Point Levis, at that time known as Lauzon
seigniory but small profit to its holder, whether owned by Madame
Cadillac's kin or some other Lauzon.  It was too exposed to raid and
too far from Montreal for Upper Lake trade.  With darkness fell the
active high tide of colonial life.  Dowagers withdrew for an evening at
cards and harp, charades, astrologic predictions, perhaps a little
gaming for money.  A light might be seen in some towers where Jesuit
scholars were peering their eyes out over some old Latin tome.  Nuns in
blue garb and gray cloak paced in walled garden for gentle exercise,
while sisters in the Ursuline convents prostrated themselves in
all-night devotions before the statue of saint.  Saints and angels
seemed very near to these devotees.  {68} Their need for protection was
so desperate to the whole colony.  A meteor, a comet, an eclipse were
portents of warning and fear; for had not all preceded the worst Indian
raids, the great fire, the great earthquake?  Only the very learned,
the skeptic, the scoffer disregarded such signs as direct from Heaven.
Venus in the ascendent as evening star was no goddess of love here as
at Versailles.  She was the Star of Marie, and a little prayer would go
up involuntarily for protection.  The wild carousals of Lower Town
began after dark in visit after visit from tavern to gamblers' den.

Out at the seigniorial mansions, the pace set by the Castle was
followed as closely as purse could permit.  Chivalry was as elaborate
as any poor, old, half-cracked Don Quixote could have practised.  The
most of the mansions were oblong stone structures with strong deep
walls to defy Indian raid and fire.  The turrets loopholed did not
belong to the type of architecture affected, but were necessary in the
colonies for gun-fire from roof level to repel attack.  Of course, both
in winter and the chill of summer nights, these high-ceilinged rooms
with broad stairway acting as a flue for cold hallway airs, were
ghastly uncomfortable.  Furs were used both summer and winter, by
ladies to drape shoulders, by gentlemen to toss a robe over rheumatic
gouty old knees.  Cards, the harp, the guitar, an affectation of
astrology, dancing, {69} charades--were as in Quebec the indoor
amusements.  When life became too dull from isolation, the ladies and
their lords went down to Quebec for a season, where the dowagers picked
up enough gossip to keep them going for a year, the demoiselles picked
up a lover or a husband, the young sons sought commissions in army or
navy.  Unswerving devotion to Church, King, Country--was a cult.

Out among the humble people, little frame houses with dormer-windows in
slope roofs were replacing the first rough log cabins.  The big
living-room was the center of family and all social life.  Rose culture
from France, seedlings from old-home orchards had now grown in many
gardens.  Orchards now famed for the best fruits in America were
beginning to yield.  Roses of every color began to climb the trellis of
wall and porch.  The dinner might not boast the rare wines of the
Castle, but it did serve cider and home-brew from berries and grapes
quite as appetizing as the seignior's or the Governor's.  As for the
food, it might not be served elaborately as in the grand houses, but it
was as abundant.  Musket and fishing-line provided food unless Indian
raid had cooped the peasants up in forts.

The habitants lived a much more independent and self-sufficient
existence than the so-called classes.  They could make their own canoes
of birch-bark and {70} cedar.  They wove their own linens and wools of
such fine strong texture that bolts of this cloth are to-day the prize
of every tourist.  They made their own moccasins for winter use and
cobbled their own shoes from home-cured leather.  And the copper toes
have given us the modern slang expression, "cop" for officer of the
law.  The clamp of coppered toes in cobbled streets was the signal for
scamps to scamper.  Buckskin was the garb for wood-runners, blanket
coats for home life; and their blankets of gray and white with stripe
round the shirt and sleeve cuff were much the same as to-day, with the
peaked chapeau hanging down behind to be drawn up over head in front or
used as capacious pocket in mild weather.  The red cap could be drawn
down over ears in wind, or worn close fit as a hood in ordinary
weather, but it kept hunters from mistaking a man's head for a bear's
in the bush.  A red handkerchief bought at the nearest trading store
completed the picturesque costume, which is portrayed in the beautiful
early paintings of Kreighoff with moving figures following dog sleds
across the snowy surface of iced rivers.  They might not boast the
two-wheeled calashes that carried the portly dowagers up and down the
steep cobbled streets of Quebec, but they were now using the
two-wheeled carts with heavy horses from Normandy and Brittany
harnessed in ropes or home-cured leather.

{71}

Few habitants could read and fewer write; but what was a notary for
with his inkhorn in pocket and goose-quill pen behind his ear but to
draw wills and write family parish records and stretch his legs under
tables groaning with good food while he swelled out under belt and
puffed with the self-importance of a strutting fat pigeon?  He was the
news-gatherer and news-carrier in every neighborhood; but he was not a
vicious news-carrier, for he had to depend for a living on his patrons.
He knew who were to be married and the dower of each.  He recorded the
marriage of each for the parish record, and the children born.  His
records comprise the completest parish genealogies in all America.  He
might get his dates mixed by a "6" with such a flourish it was recopied
for a "9"; and sometimes perhaps that home-brew confused his quill; but
on the whole, he did his work well.  The free meal or a little porker
paid his fee, and the habitant was happy.  Of coin, he fingered little
and that chiefly from the market sales in Lower Town; and it went
chiefly not in the family teapot, but in a box that could be buried in
Indian raid or New England invasion.

He and his good wife loved chaffering over a bargain as they do to-day.
I have tested this out on many a market day both in Montreal and
Quebec.  Go early to market.  Agree on the price set at first by the
housewife squatting behind her display of fresh {72} vegetables, fruit,
capons, little fat porkers.  Comes a chatter in patois French with her
neighbors and she at once raises her price.  She isn't going to miss
the fun of a day on the market by selling everything in a few hours.
She knows as well as you do that fresh food will not be quite so
appetizing after exposure for half a day as that bought before eight in
the morning and at once carried off to the cook; so next time if you
are wise, you, too, will chaffer.

The center hub of this wheel of parish life was the cur.  He was more
than priest; he was friend.  He was more than shepherd to his flock; he
was adviser on every subject from marriage to apportionment of shares
to heirs.  He knew every secret of every family and seldom, indeed,
betrayed confidences from political motives as his superiors in Quebec
too often did.  He might not be learned as were the bishops, but he
could hear confessions, teach the church catechism and wherever he
espied a boy or girl of uncommon ability send them on for higher
education than he could give.  He hated drunkenness and fought it; but
he never eschewed wines and cider of home-brew.  He hated flippant
light conduct but was himself jolly of the jolliest, and permitted
Sunday afternoon dances because he knew if he did not his flock would
stray off where he could not control merriment to innocent vent.

{73}

Much has been charged in rancor toward the church's tithes of a tenth
and the seignior's exactions of as much and the noblesse's demands of
forced free labor for the King.  Why moderns ask--why was the church
always a magnificent building in the poorest parish, the priest's house
of the best and largest, the nun's schools a close second to the boy's
monastic schools?  This is a misapprehension of the whole ancient
rgime.  The Fathers were paid in produce, not coin--one-tenth.
Compare that to our rents and taxes.  The seignior's share at that time
did not exceed a twenty-sixth.  It seems a discrepancy to describe
tithes or tenths as a twenty-sixth; but Professor Wrong's account of
seigniorial mansions makes clear that such was the actual rental often
paid.  Compare that to our taxes on net income.  The church was a
magnificent building because it was the result of a continuous income
and beautified for centuries.  The parish priest to this day seldom
draws a salary exceeding five hundred dollars a year but he lives at no
expense, and it is only in the rarest cases that his estate is willed
away to relatives.  It goes back to his parish community life.  Forced
labor or the corve did become a terrible curse just prior to the fall
of Quebec under a corrupt ring; but to 1730, the forced labor was the
peasants' contribution to state taxes.  There were some thirty or forty
holy days besides Sundays.  This left about {74} three hundred
work-days.  Of these days, the habitant was expected to give from
twenty to twenty-six for public good.  Who can say in our days of
high-gear and self-lashed labor for material gain, that eighty days of
more or less relaxation were a bad thing?  Infant mortality ran high,
but that was more from the universal ignorance of the age and from
large families than from general ill health.  Families ran from ten to
twenty.  Children were exposed to contagious youthful diseases in order
to put them past the danger while yet young.  Smallpox, chicken-pox,
measles left their mark in every family; but those who survived lived
to a great age.  The frail and weak died early as they did in higher
life.  I know of a case in my own day when a poor habitant's family had
increased to the twenty-sixth.  He felt the growing family more than he
could support from his sparse farm now divided and subdivided amid
descendants.  He and the good wife took counsel together.  They at once
carried the twenty-sixth addition to their family to his reverence, the
priest.  Whether the priest accepted the gift, I do not know.  I know
he and the nuns did accept some of the more promising boys and girls
for a higher education and reluctantly saw them go as emigrants to the
mill towns of the bordering United States.  Perhaps we get the best
cross-current of Court, seigniorial and {75} habitant life, by relics
and legends in modern Quebec.

[Illustration: Habitant's cabin, from an old painting by Kreighoff.
_Courtesy, National Gallery of Canada_]

The Jesuits have been accused of painting the picture in too dark color
because their severe monastic lives rendered them unfit for the rough
and tumble of Indian camp and wilderness fare.  They have also been
accused of exaggerating the hardships in their reports to the King in
order to maintain a yearly contribution of help from the royal
treasury.  In like manner, the official reports of governors and
intendants and colonists are charged with prejudice to excuse their own
failures or peculations.  Yet the Latin temperament of sunshine
breaking through the blackest clouds sheds a laughing gay light over
many a stormy year.  These legends of olden days can not be set down
chronologically, for no one knows their origin.  Some have been
embodied in poems, some in fiction, some in rude carvings now preserved
above the door of public buildings.  All are told and retold yarns of
French and English barracks round the world.

[Illustration: The Golden Dog, Quebec legend.  _Courtesy, Canadian
Pacific Ry. Co._] Quebec old wall up which Frontenac was welcomed.
_Courtesy, Canadian Pacific Ry. Co._]

One of the first Quebec streets traversed by the visitor runs up
Mountain Hill.  The ground here is a mine of legends.  The post-office
now marks the site of a famous old rendezvous.  Set in the gray stone
of its walls is a rare relic of tradition.  It is the Chien d' Or, the
Golden Dog, which for a hundred years and more has been gnawing its
bone and growling defiance.  {76} Beneath the gilded figure of a sulky
ill-favored cur is carved the puzzling threat:

  "I am a dog that gnaws his bone,
  I couch and gnaw it all alone.
  A time will come, which is not yet,
  When I'll bite him by whom I'm bit."


Explanations without end have been given of this threat.  The
proprietor of an old place on this street quarreled with an infamous
rascal intendant.  There was no redress in New France for any one
incurring the despot's displeasure.  The incensed owner, according to
legend, put up this enigmatical tablet of spite.  The quarrel did not
end with the defiant sign.  Stories are told of the assassination of
the indignant burgher.  Many romances have been woven out of the old
legend.  When the antiquated buildings gave way to new structures, the
gilded tablet with its sculptured dog and snarling inscription was
placed in the northern faade of the post-office.  There are those who
interpreted prophecy and not romance from the old rhyme.  The people of
New France were groaning under injustice and extortion.  The golden dog
uttered prophetic warning to the unheeding ears of imperial France.

Nor were all escapades of the younger officers confined to carousals in
Lower Town.  Before and after the conquest, the people of the old
capital led {77} a gay life.  When not busy fighting, or getting in and
out of love, the young blades of Quebec sought diversion in mad pranks.
The habitant as firmly believed in a visible devil of terrifying form
as he did in his own existence.  This belief was strengthened by the
sudden appearance on wintry nights in villages and churchyards of a
monster whose eyes shone red as blood, whose mouth emitted smoke, whose
hoof was cloven and who bore the infallible sign of the dragon's tail.
At times, a strange conveyance would be driven wildly through the
stillness of the streets, and some unfortunate wight within reach would
be snatched up, whisked off and dropped limp with fright on a
snow-drift miles away.  Is it not a matter of history that the lurid
shadow of the devil, himself, stepping out, prancing and dancing and
switching his tail, once appeared on the walls of St. John's Gate and
paced up and down with the sentry, stopping when he stopped, running
when he ran, and almost frightened that poor soldier out of his five
wits?  After these terrifying sights, who could disprove the nightly
visitations of the evil one?  But the rascally young officers of the
garrison explained never a word.  Woe to the night-watch carrying his
lantern when the fun-loving rollicking bands came on him!  The good
watchman on first sound of a roving gang took to his heels and a wild
sprinting match between the guardian of {78} the peace and tormentors
resulted from any chance encounter.  A grudge against comrade or
brother officer was sometimes paid off by an anonymous advertisement
which brought cart-loads of cats or little porkers or more offensive
guests to the quarters of the officer.

One escapade has not been chronicled by historians, but there is every
prospect of it being laughed down to posterity.  Drastic reforms were
always being announced in the commissariat department.  A regiment
sometimes opposes too drastic reforms.  Sometimes the best bookkeeper's
accounts won't balance.  Sometimes little petty graft, like tobacco,
can't be tucked into itemized columns.  The dignity of royal engineers
was not to be compromised by a vulgar dickering over small items.  When
an increase of pay tempted a royal engineer to take charge of auditing
such items, the disdain of the others may be imagined.  Undaunted, the
new man entered on his new duties with a new broom and at once made a
most minute examination of all items.  All was satisfactory till the
new man's eye fell on the item "cats' meat."

"What's that?  Cats' meat, raw meat is not good for cats.  A penny a
day for cats' meat?"  Stammered exclamations failed to pacify the new
man's zeal.

"Parade that cat immediately."  The poor offender didn't know what to
do.  There was not a cat that could {79} be borrowed within a quarter
of a mile from the office.  One day's grace would have enabled him to
rummage for a stray cat; but without a moment's notice to conjure up
either excuses or cats, confusion was the poor fellow's portion.  The
item was struck off, the underling severely reprimanded and a
crestfallen face emerged from the first interview with the new chief.
For an engineer to accept a position which comrades regarded as infra
dig was bad enough, but to split hairs over a little camouflage graft
for tobacco was a crime against the social code.  Soldiers and other
officers decided it was necessary to curb the new man's zeal.  Stealing
some official, commissariat order sheets, a young officer sent a list
of the commissariat's requirements to the beadles of surrounding
parishes to be posted on church and post-office doors.  A tempting
price was offered for all cats delivered in the commissariat office for
the destruction of rats and mice.  This innocent sheet was dispatched
to a score of parishes.  The habitant boys took stock of their own and
their neighbors' cats.  There were some roving gangs of bad boys amid
even habitants.  Early Monday morning there was quite a procession of
all roads leading to the commissary office.  There was also some
suspicion of a mewing orchestra from the air, but it wasn't music.  Cat
instalments began to arrive thick and fast and caterwauling bags were
deposited on {80} the commissariat floor.  Other bags began to open at
the neck; and one, two, three, four, out they hopped, somewhat scarred
from the fray, en route.  Desks were upset, stools overturned and the
whole place overrun in a bedlam of cats that morning.  For years, it
was as much as a man's life was worth to mention cats to that
commissariat officer.

St. Anne was the patron Saint of all voyageurs.  The first church to
her honor stands to-day very much as it did when Cadillac's boats
ascended the St. Lawrence from Montreal.  The church is close to the
bank of the St. Lawrence.  Sailors nearing port or leaving the harbor,
on coming in view of the spire above Bonsecours church crossed
themselves, breathed a prayer for safe return or besought a prosperous
voyage.  This was the first church built of stone on the Island of
Montreal.  The foundations were laid in 1658 contemporaneous with
Cadillac's birth.  A precious statue of the Virgin, reputed to be very
old and to possess powers for aiding sailors, had been presented to St.
Anne church.  The old gray church is a fine type of the habitant place
of worship.  Simple people untouched by modern influence, toil-worn old
folk, aged tottering women, ruddy apple-cheek youngsters and stalwart
sailormen slip in little Bonsecours at all hours of the day, drop on
their knees between the narrow benches, say their prayers, and all the
time stare at {81} intruding visitors as at some wild animal escaped
from a circus tent.  You will see old voyageurs whose toothless cheeks
and bent forms indicate the century mark.  Everywhere on the dark walls
are inscribed simple appeals of a simple-hearted people.  "Children of
the Blessed Virgin Mary, don't leave this Holy Church without making an
offering."  The face of the great Maisonneuve, father of Montreal, has
been painted in bold outline on the darkened walls at the back of the
church.  The interior is in a dull monochrome which gives to the
candles on the front altar almost unnatural brightness.  Piles of
crutches commemorate the healing of cripples.  An inscription states
that in a chapel above the roof of the church is the "facsimile of the
poor and most august home of the Holy Family at Nazareth."  The
stairway leading up to the airy chapel has other kinds of inscriptions,
the thumb-marks of vandals, visitors' scribbling, the inane names of
inane autographs.  The "Little Heaven" perched in mid-air far above
noisy city and busy river is found to consist of a tiny round chapel
bright with colored lights and tinted windows.  The calm of the chapel
is in striking contrast to the movement and life on the river below.
In winter the ice may be black with skaters, in summer the river may be
a panorama of harbor life.  These Old-World habitants in a New-World
turmoil are a unique people.  {82} Until very recently, they possessed
little and were content with little.  They clung tenaciously to the old
order of things and desired neither luxury nor wealth.

But even by the seventeen hundreds, there were distant mutterings of
the storm to come before 1759.  The intendant or finance minister,
independent of governor and bishop and too often in league with the
corrupt fur ring and card-sharpers, was running counter to His
Excellency, Count Frontenac.

However, it needed only the common danger of war to unify all classes
as one kin; and that touch-off to an explosion of patriotism came in
the blundering, clumsy, ill-advised and more ill-equipped invasion by
the Bostonians under poor Phips.




{83}

CHAPTER IV

1690-1699

Frontenac and Cadillac Discuss the Policy of the King for New
France--Frontenac Meets Indian Delegates in Powwow and Despite Years
Whirls in Tom-Tom Dances--Terrible News on His Pause at Montreal
Hurries Him through the Autumn Rains to Quebec--Threatened with
Invasion by Land and Sea--All New England Has United with New York to
Attack the Lion in His Den--All New France Unites to Repel the Common
Foe--Bishops Forget Their Quarrels to Pray and Shoulder Muskets--Phips
Attacks with Thirty-Two Vessels and Suffers a Crushing Defeat--New
France Wild with Joy but the Old Warrior Is Summoned by Death.


Chillier the autumn evenings, shorter the days, fewer the gay throngs
in the vanity parades before the Castle St. Louis.  The forests
cloaking the Laurentian Mountains began to change their deep greens to
the gorgeous frost-tinted hues of orange and gold and reds deep as
blood.  They were not unlike an old warrior wrapping himself for the
inevitable end in a magnificent mantle of many colors and must have
reminded my Lord Frontenac that he, too, was nearing the place where he
must prepare to lay off mortality.  True, he had crushed the Iroquois
in their own encampments and put the fear of God and French power in
their hearts.  Carried in an armchair to an Indian conference, his
fiery spirit flamed up so he, too, joined {84} their powwow dances to
the _thump-thump-thump_ of their tom-toms from a slow circling of
moccasined feet to a dizzy dervish whirl, when he had lifted and hurled
the war hatchet down as buried for ever between French and Iroquois,
Algonquins and Hurons.  The Iroquois realized they had met their
master.  The Algonquins plucked up courage to come down as far as
Montreal and Three Rivers in flotillas of five hundred canoes laden
with pelts to the water-line.  New France was saved from bankruptcy and
the King's ships had sailed away with such cargoes as they had not
carried for ten years.  Fear first--love afterward.  The old man's
policy had justified itself in results.  He had nothing to fear from
the King.  His peace had been a victory.

But the watchful old eagle eye was no less sharp inside the windows
from his castle above the St. Lawrence, than out on the open gallery.
From countless secret reports to Louis XIV, one can reconstruct the
picture of the fateful years.  With a fur robe thrown over the
stiffening rheumatic old knees and his cloak lined with silk and edged
with ermine tossed over the still erect military figure, he watched the
very last frigate unmoor, hoist anchor, rattle out sails and with the
receding tide float away down the river behind Isle Orleans.  With
spy-glass, he could see the last tip of the creaking masts till not a
ship lay at the docks of Lower Town.

{85}

"Well, _bonhomme_, thank _le bon Dieu_ the Indians have all dispersed
for a year at least.  We must have messengers out to watch for the
ships coming with His Majesty's gold to pay the troops," he says to
Cadillac.  "In fact, La Mothe, I am going to send you to France on
these fur frigates to report to His Majesty our plans to conquer all
New England.  The time is ripe.  Strike the enemy before he can strike
you!  You can easily reach France in time to come back on the treasure
ships by November.  Then if rumors are true, you can direct the
treasure ships where to hide coming up the St. Lawrence.  I am inclined
to think the rumors are true.  There may be raids on Montreal."

"We'll send some of these idle scamps up to Montreal to protect from
raid by these treacherous Iroquois tigers.  They may change their
mind----"

"Not in winter, La Mothe!"

"Yes, Your Excellency--I say in winter.  Over sixteen hundred troopers
on half-pay are too many here.  They get in mischief.  One officer for
every fifty men--too many useless martinets for the good of Quebec
every six months.  They won't run off to the woods in winter--trust
them not to freeze their lily finger-tips.  They can't send brandy
casks up to Mackinac when frost closes the canoe path."

"How many would you send up to Montreal--La Mothe?"

{86}

"I'd pack at least eight hundred of them off up to Montreal.  It would
lessen intrigue here."

"I wonder," says Frontenac, "if my services to His Majesty will not be
considered worth a gratuity of two thousand crowns?  I'll suggest that
the next time my notary comes for a letter.  My days are closing round
me, fast, my dear fellow.  Two thousand crowns would assure my not
dying in debt and poverty in my old age."

To that La Mothe has no answer.  He knows King Louis' proverbial
ingratitude to the faithful and bribes to the faithless.  He realizes
my Lord Frontenac is much more likely to die in his fighting boots than
in a lingering bed of old age.  Also, he has a plan in the back of his
head which will not cost Louis XIV one sou and will avert poverty in
old age.

So eight hundred troopers were packed off up to Montreal by canoe.

"But how about Montreal--La Mothe?"

"Naked to danger as a new-born child.  Farmers still timorous.  A good
many Algonquins and Hurons hanging round for the winter to add to the
poverty of stores and people."

"But we can arm them with muskets and pistols----"

"And see both shoot off good balls in mid-air or waste on one skulking
Iroquois to broil him in their {87} pot stews!--Pah!"  Cadillac scoffs
at such defenders for New France.

"Then, we, ourselves, shall go up to Montreal before the weather breaks
in fierce autumn rains and see what we can do to strengthen those weak
spines.  You will go to France, I to Montreal."

One would give a great deal to know the exact nature of the oral
conferences which Cadillac held in France with Louis XIV and
Pontchartrain.  Louis never compromised himself in any twist and turn
of his devious policy toward England and Spain, friendship on the
surface but never a move missed on the checker-board diplomacy to
betray that he was planning and mapping all North America as a French
possession and only waiting his chance to strike both and snatch their
strategic forts--Boston and Manhattan on the Atlantic, Pensacola on the
Mexican Gulf.  The maps of this period from 1672 to 1700 carefully
compiled prove that.  As events almost immediate on the heels of the
oral conferences show, the King would have the Le Moynes--Iberville and
Bienville--strike first by sea from Hudson Bay and Newfoundland to
Mexico; and raiders under other Le Moyne brothers strike over land.
Cadillac was to transmit instructions by word of mouth only to
Frontenac.  La Mothe, himself, was to act both as secret reporter of
the conditions at all ports--English and {88} French--to the King and
as a post commander at Mackinac.  That he did not act as a permanent
all-the-year round commander at Mackinac, we also know; for he was down
to Quebec half of each year and dwelling with his wife in Montreal and
Quebec.  Perhaps the position he really held resembled the modern
King's messenger.  Such an office is neither a spy nor a scout.  He may
employ both and they are subject to his orders independent of any local
governor.  He is usually disliked by the local authorities; for his
reports go back orally or in cipher.  Anyway we know he went to France
in 1689 and came back on the King's treasure frigate in 1690.  While
Cadillac was in France, Governor Frontenac went up the St. Lawrence to
Montreal "to strengthen those weak spines."

All Montreal remembered that powwow dance when the war hatchet had been
buried for ever and two oxen and two barrels of wine graced the final
feast of an Indian peace; but how would New England regard that peace?
It would cut off its trade.  Frontenac had Indian scouts to watch every
movement overland north and, not trusting them overmuch, had white
scouts behind this line of reconnoiter.  First came one of those
curious telegrams by moccasin or whiff of report from hunter to hunter
of a great movement astir in all New England by land to conquer
Montreal, by sea to assault Quebec now that the King's {89} frigates
had gone with cargoes and more frigates were expected with gold.  The
two movements were to be simultaneous to take New France by surprise;
but Frontenac was ready.  Separated, each movement could be repelled by
him.  Combined, they might invest all New France and conquer by
starvation.  The movement by land never got through by Lake George and
Champlain.  It fell to pieces from its own lack of unity, but quite the
reverse was the attack by sea.

It was the tenth of October, 1690.  Cadillac was on the way back from
France.  Frontenac had been out all morning studying how Montreal
should be fortified and had come in at three, when a messenger arrived
in great haste from the major at Quebec.  Moccasin reports were only
too true.  The Indians of the Lower St. Lawrence had seen a great fleet
of New Englanders coming up the Gulf.  There was not a dependable
vessel in all the harbor of Montreal.  Frontenac set out by canoe that
very night, to be paddled day and night for Quebec.  He ordered two
hundred troopers to follow him down the river at once.  Next day he met
a canoe bearing him more news.  The New England fleet had already
passed the great heights of the Saguenay and was sailing slowly up the
St. Lawrence as the tide favored and had passed Mal Bay--modern Murray
Bay--without seeing the settlement in behind the stony flats.

{90}

Would the New England fleet have paused and gone in behind the
dangerous tide rip if it had known the treasure ships lay there and on
those treasure ships was Cadillac?  Cadillac's ship had a pilot who
knew every danger of the St. Lawrence.  He must have smiled in his dry
ironical fashion as he saw the invading fleet brave such perils without
pilot or canoe man, who were as familiar with sand-reefs, tide, flooded
currents seaward as with the path to their own cabins.

Meanwhile Frontenac sent word back up the St. Lawrence for Montreal to
rush down every trooper to Quebec and as many Indian sharpshooters as
could be spared.

Autumn rains do not fall in Quebec as in gentler climes.  They plunge
down in terrific squalls.  They drenched Frontenac to his skin but the
warrior grimly smiled.  He knew such northeast gusts whipping his face
might help the sails of the advancing invaders but with tidal rush and
wind up-stream and the floods of the St. Lawrence down-stream, they
would also create a smashing tumult of waters eighteen feet high.  The
New Englanders had no pilot on board who knew where to scud for holes
of protection in the rocky walls.  The King's frigates coming with gold
always had such pilots.  Besides La Mothe was on board coming out.

In four days, Frontenac was at Quebec.  Lower {91} Town lay solitary.
Furniture, supplies, arms, ammunition, coin trunks had been trundled to
Upper Town and buried under the pavement or pitched helter-skelter in
convent and monastery gardens.  Women and children found shelter in
hospitals, grand houses, religious retreats.  Men and boys were under
drill or posted on batteries in order to snipe off all approach.

How the aged Frontenac was welcomed with cheers that made the welkin
ring!  His cynical old heart must have felt the underlying trusting
sincerity of children, who needed a spanking at times, but after all
were his children to be defended at all hazards however the church
might shepherd their souls heavenward.  Hats went in air as he slowly
rode up Mountain Street that evening and the thunder of cannon had not
summoned to morning duties before the old man was galloping out to
inspect all batteries, all bastions, all walls.  The bishops might hate
him at times, but their hats came off and they blessed him as he passed
leading the swiftest riders to follow at terrible pace.  "Behold," they
said, "God has renewed his youth like the eagle's."

His commands went out with the snap of pistol-shots: Every ferry and
pontoon to be taken off the St. Charles River to the east.  Indians in
hiding under trusty Gascon captains to snipe off any enemy landing to
wade the ford.  Logs to be piled in barricades across {92} the gates
leading from Lower Town.  Arms and cannon and ball to be in the bastion
stone turrets to each side of the gates.  To the two batteries on Lower
Town below the Castle, three small cannon with scattering balls for
welcome here.  To rear in the circular wall, yes, that must be
strengthened.  Bags of earth behind the palisade to snipe off approach
and Indians out in hiding to pick off New Englanders attempting to
climb to the plain we now name Abraham.

[Illustration: The Frontenac coat of arms.  _Courtesy, Quebec Province
Archives, 1929._]

Twenty-seven hundred defenders were in their place in two days with the
good housewives cooking food to be rushed out day and night, rain or no
rain; and the work was swift.  There was not a man in Quebec who did
not know they must defeat or be defeated in a month; for there were
food provisions in Quebec for only one month.  Fortunate for Quebec,
Phips, the New England commander of the assaulting fleet, did not know
that.

It was on the evening of the fifteenth of October that telescopes
descried the lights of slowly moving vessels drifting past Isle
Orleans.  Did Quebec sleep?  It did not.  Nuns lay prostrate before
their favorite saints praying for victory, or else flew on feet that
were wings of a wind from cook-house to trundle-cart waiting to gallop
with steaming hot stews to the Gascons on guard.  Dowagers forgot
dignity, churchmen enmity, cadets vanity; all were one army for defense.

{93}

By daybreak, over thirty vessels were gliding into the broad basin of
the harbor.  Four were armed brigs, the rest, fishing craft, big and
little, and all so crowded with men that the decks were black.  When
shots began to come up from the enemy aimed at the cathedral spires,
they fell short of range and one good nun, if pride had not been a sin
before God, would have felt proud that one ball shot her apron off as
it fell inside the convent garden.  Heads went a little higher in a
religious ecstasy when twenty-five balls fell harmless inside the
sacred gardens.  But we are anticipating the story.

[Illustration: Frontenac's home castle in France.  _Courtesy, Quebec
Province Archives, 1929._]

Frontenac waited silent that morning of the sixteenth.  His cannon
might have been dead.  He wanted Phips to show his hand first; and poor
bewildered Phips did so in a bluster that was laughable against this
tried fighter from Louis XIV's European campaign.

Under a white flag, a little jolly-boat came toward the foot of
Mountain Street with a message for His Excellency, Count Frontenac.
French canoes met it and conducted the New Englander ashore.  There
they blindfolded him and led him up Mountain Street.  Now Mountain
Street is slippery enough after rains on the cobblestones.  It was
probably still more slippery from frost.  Over the barricades of logs
the poor fellow was led till he felt like a clown in blind-man's {94}
buff.  Then his heavy boots crunched on the board walk, ascended stone
steps to the Castle, entered a long hall of thick heavy velvet carpet,
and the bandage was removed from his eyes.

It was the Audience Chamber of Governor Frontenac.  The Governor rose
majestically from the great oak chair.  Behind stood in gold lace
uniform all the officers of Court and Army backed by the Jesuits in
black robes, the Recollets in gray gowns.  Was the rough fellow
bewildered?  If so, he had the presence of mind, as he handed across
Phips' demand for surrender, to express regret for the abrupt tenor of
the message that called for instant surrender of the fort to the forces
of King William and Queen Mary and answer before eleven of the clock,
or the bombardment would begin.  It was then ten o'clock.  The New
Englander pulled out his clumsy watch to wait.

Frontenac would not deign to answer in writing.  He bade the messenger
tell his master that His Majesty, King Louis, did not recognize King
William and Queen Mary as anything but usurpers of the Stuart throne.
He would not delay his answer one hour.  He would answer by the mouth
of his cannon; and the fellow was led back the way he had come
blindfolded to the jolly-boat, whence he scrabbled up the rope ladder
to the astounded Phips.

And Phips was astounded.  Not thus had he been {95} misled by the easy
surrender of Port Royal to expect reception in Quebec.  Both sides lay
silent that day.  It was portentous.  It was horrible.  Just at
nightfall, a great shout, a roll of drums, a screech of fifes, tore the
welkin above Upper Town.

"My faith, gentlemen," exclaimed a prisoner Phips had picked up, "you
have lost the game.  Pack up and go home!  All the troops have arrived
from Montreal----"

"Then how have they got past us and in?"

"By the back road--St. Louis Street."

Still both sides lay silent for that night.

Now let us take the New Englander's side of the story.

Phips was far from a fool.  He was about ten years older than Cadillac
at the time of the invasion.  He was one of twenty-six children and had
done every form of manual work to his eighteenth year, when he learned
to read and write.  He was of most powerful physical frame and had hard
common sense in abundance.  Hard knocks had been his school.  He,
perhaps, did not hate the Roman Catholics of Quebec with the ferocity
of a Cotton Mather, as the bishops of Quebec hated the heretics of New
England; but that did not leave him any less a brave good commander.
There was much alike in Frontenac and Phips; but Phips lacked two
essentials to success which Frontenac {96} possessed.  He had not been
trained in war, and over the forces under him he had not the autocratic
control of the French Governor.  His second in command was a good chap
but a civilian.  The assembling of fishing vessels from all New England
delayed action till late mid-summer.  The easy victories in Nova Scotia
gave him a false assurance of another capitulation at Quebec.  His
schooner masters fooled away time in conferences that must have
maddened his impatience.  His forces were so independent in spirit he
had to consult each master and get a unanimous vote before he could
feel sure they would not scuttle and abandon the project.

Tadoussac gave him the first ugly shock.  There and then he must have
realized that his guns had too low range to hit a fort on the top of
such slopes.  Of Quebec he had little real detail to guide him.  All he
knew was what he gathered from French travelers whom he had picked up
ascending the St. Lawrence.  Among these was Madame Joliet, wife of the
Mississippi hero.  He treated them well and they paid him back in kind
by telling him the truth about Quebec.  Instead of this hastening his
subordinate leaders with speed to beat the season and zeal to beat
fate, the facts seemed only to result in hesitancy and divided counsel,
though Phips knew full well if this policy resulted in disaster he
alone would bear the {97} odium.  He had no pilot and every harbor
light on the St. Lawrence had been extinguished.  Mal Bay--how well
named!--in low tide, flats on which vessels grounded; in high tide, a
smash of colliding currents.  Here in hiding on the treasure ships was
Cadillac.

The minute Phips saw Quebec, he realized how inadequate was his
equipment.  Frontenac's scornful answer knocked the very under-pins of
confidence from subordinates.  However, Massachusetts men had tough
fiber and they resolved to make a desperate attempt; but you must get
up to a fort before you can capture it; so a party of thirteen hundred
landed to try ascent from the St. Charles.  They were to circle round
to the rear and attack Quebec from its only vulnerable side.  Of
course, hidden sharpshooters under one of the Le Moynes sniped them
off.  Rains drenched the ammunition and the men in sodden camps easily
contracted both dysentery and smallpox.  Now frantic, Phips anchored
right before and below Castle St. Louis.

Then Quebec roused from its portentous silence.  Cannon-balls rained
with fury fast as the gunners could reload and the cannonading
reverberated in echo that gave the effect of thrice as many guns as the
French commanded.  Frontenac's big guns could hit down.  Phips could
not hit up.  A second day's cannonading took the very heart out of
Phips.  It took {98} off his rigging.  It pierced the cabins.  It
punctured his hulls; and away went his flag-staff, which Quebec
canoemen captured to a serenade of shouts and fifes from the Citadel.

Phips cut both his mooring cables and anchor chains and let the
receding tide drift him out of range behind Isle Orleans.  Right there
and then, he knew he had been defeated in awful disaster.  Behind Isle
Orleans, he had to pause and mend ships to reach New England at all.

Even Laval, who had come out on one of those King's treasure ships on
which Cadillac returned, had to acknowledge God had blessed New France
through the Governor.  The priests unbent enough to acknowledge in
their own quaint guarded language "that Indian wars and long voyages
were seldom attended with a large crop of divine grace."

Did Frontenac rest on his laurels and let the mad jubilation of the
fickle populace in ringing of bells, torchlight processions, adulation
from churchmen and civilians turn his wise old head?  Not he!  He had
scouts down the river to warn those treasure ships to hide in the
Saguenay or at Murray Bay till the New Englanders had passed out of the
St. Lawrence.

Men and women danced round bonfires in honor of Frontenac.  Poor New
England regarded the defeat as a frown of Almighty God.

{99}

Though the war hatchet had been buried by the Iroquois, of course, it
came out again.  It was in one of these raids a Le Moyne Bienville was
shot; so another brother took the name and became the founder of
Louisiana's New Orleans.

The years slipped past--seven of them.

La Mothe had completed his surveys of all French outposts and all New
England forts and reported to King Louis.  He was then close to his
fortieth year.  No time to lose.  The aging Governor was slipping down
the still waters of death fast as the years.

Again the two conferred in Castle St. Louis.

"It is not the conquest of New England that matters, Your Excellency.
It is the capture of all the West.  The Le Moynes have ravaged Hudson
Bay from the English.  They are now at the mouth of the Mississippi.
Is for us to capture the trade between.  It is more in area than all
Europe.--Yes, it is more than the best of Asia."

"And my days are numbered, _bonhomme_!  And the spirit of dissension is
again at work.  Should a weakling succeed to my place, all gains will
be lost as under De la Barre and Denonville.  We humbled the Iroquois
again last year, though I, myself, had to play warrior in an armchair."
He smiled at his own growing infirmity.  "What is your plan, La Mothe?"

No doubt they drew the maps across the lynx-skin {100} counterpane on
Frontenac's bed.  It was cold.  It was November.  The last frigate had
sailed, and Frontenac knew he would never live to see another ship
arrive from France.

"Nothing here," says Cadillac, pointing his finger at Mackinac.  "The
soldiers all run off to the woods to trade.  I'll wager there are two
hundred to four hundred kegs of brandy hidden there for unlicensed
trade.  They buy that brandy at three dollars a pot in Montreal and
sell it at twenty-five dollars in Mackinac.  Nothing here"--he points
to Fort Frontenac (Kingston) and Niagara.--"Traded clean as a bare bone
and furs caught at Mackinac.  Worse here"--his finger is on the
Ohio.--"It is the new fighting-ground of all tribes and New England is
supplying firearms--Tonty and Duluth confirm my reports, Your
Excellency.  And thus here"--the finger points to the site of modern
Chicago.--"This is called the Portage of the Skunk--Chicago--the wild
onion--it is a point across to the Mississippi and all the Illinois and
prairie tribes have had a trading-post there since 1685; but it isn't
as short as down the Lake of the Hurons toward the Lake of the Eries.
We could catch all tribes of the Lakes and Mississippi at the straits
between Hurons and Eries.  That post at Chicago is not a fort.  It is
only a clutter of cabins used when the Indians from the plains assemble
and dare {101} not come on to the Lakes for fear of the Lake tribes.  I
can keep all these hostiles from flying at one another's throats if I
have control of arms and ammunitions; and my plan----"

Frontenac has no time to beat round the bush.  His strength is ebbing
too fast.

"Come, out with it, Chevalier!"

"Here"--his finger comes down on the site of Detroit--"we can command
all the trade north, south, west.  We can do without Quebec in a year.
We can be self-sufficient.  There are six thousand Indians here every
year.  Have I not watched all posts now since 1682 and crossed the
Atlantic twice to report to His Majesty?  Here at the Straits are
tribes from the prairies, Mascoutens of the Sioux, Hurons, Ottawas; and
the land has immense fertile meadows."

Frontenac is not so optimistic in his declining days.  He has seen too
many high hopes blasted in the King's colonies.  He thinks carefully.
"Aye, aye," he says, "but when a spiteful neighbor wishes to hurt a
watchdog, he says the dog is mad.--My dear fellow, you forget the
King's treasury could not afford more than fifty soldiers for any new
garrison, and how could you prevent them from running off as bushlopers
like all the others?"

"By taking common soldiers on half-pay for the winters and giving them
farms along the {102} waterfront to raise food and letting them marry
Indian wives----"

"And the Black Robes would fight you like tigers over that----"

"Not so bitterly as ten years ago!  They know their converts have
failed them.  They know they have to educate now and hold the children.
Besides, we'd take along Recollets and let them fight each other
instead of us----"

"But the licensed companies would fight your trade----"

"Nay, Your Excellency, let them have their fourth for themselves, their
fourth for the King's treasury, their fourth for the merchants, another
fourth for the colony----"

"And where would your profits come in?"

"Excellency, we are now importing flour and pork for food--two hundred
tons of flour and twenty-four tons of bacon a year for the troops
alone."

"Idle scoundrels," grits Frontenac.  "If they'd attend to their farms,
we'd have plenty."

"They'll attend to their farms if I get them away from fear of raid and
from illicit trade.  Give me freedom from Quebec contracts for ten
years."

"You want a concession of land at these straits called Detroit?"

"Yes, and a very small concession."

{103}

"And how do you purpose living?  Who will supply you with goods?"

"As seignior, my mill gets a tenth of the flour.  From renters, I get a
tenth of pork, poultry, grain.  I trade this to any of the licensed
companies for arms, ammunition, goods.  They cost me nothing.  Who then
commands the Indians?"

"My thrifty Gascon," smiles Frontenac.

"And it will not cost His Majesty one single sou."

"That will appeal to the King."  Perhaps these words were a little
bitter; for the most Frontenac had received for his honest faithful
services was a gift of two thousand crowns; but what did it matter to a
dying warrior?  "Dear fellow, here is what I advise you!  You realize
the moment your request is known, lies, false charges, thieves' devices
will pour in on His Majesty to defeat your project.  Write a series of
questions such as your enemies in Montreal and Mackinac may put in
accusations.  Write such answers as you could give if the scoundrels
would meet you face to face.  Commit it to memory!  What His Majesty
will probably do is first refer your request to Pontchartrain.  He will
question you.  You will be ready.  He will ask you to put your memorial
in writing.  Hand it to him.  He will pass it to the King.  With it,
His Majesty will check all the lies already sent ahead of you.  I shall
write endorsing all you say."

{104}

"Thanks, Your Excellency.  I am molded by your hand.  What I am, you
have made me."

This Cadillac did--and did it at once with Frontenac's help.  The
memorial so written exists to this day in the Colonial records.  It may
not contain the actual questions which the Minister of the Marine asked
him; but it went to the King and forefended all that his enemies could
trump up of lies and false accusations.  Frontenac's last letter
accompanied it.  "It is impossible to be more pleased than I am with
the vigilance, good conduct and adroit management of The Chevalier La
Mothe Cadillac," he wrote.

The aged Governor in the Castle above the St. Lawrence dictated his
will of a sparse estate to the notary on November twenty-second.  The
Recollets administered last consolation to him on the twenty-eighth,
and he slipped peacefully away on the still waters in full
consciousness, seventy-eight years of age.

Cadillac's experiences at Mackinac from 1694 to 1698 are so terse as to
be almost a blank.  As he wrote, "I am warrior, not writer."  The few
reports he did send were either in cipher or carried by Napoleon to
Russia and there lost.  The maps compiled on all Louisiana are amazing
in accuracy.  We can not be sure whether Cadillac prepared them himself
or whether the engineer De Lery drew them under Cadillac's {105}
direction.  They are reproduced in this volume.  On the other hand,
Carheil's reports to the head of the Jesuits and to the King on
Mackinac are an epistle of lamentations.  Where Cadillac was open and
frank in his enmity, Carheil, the Jesuit at Mackinac, was indirect in
his charges against Cadillac.  Why did Cadillac not hinder the Indians
going north to the English on James and Hudson Bay?  Cadillac answered
frankly because he could not.  The English paid more for the
beaver-skins.  It was easier for the Indians of what is now modern
Manitoba and Minnesota to float down rivers in spring flood to the
forts in the two English bays and then paddle up the rivers in the fall
hunting as they ascended and meeting en route their families who would
cure the skins and meat, than it was to thwart the boisterous waters of
Lake Superior amid ice in spring.

It was hard for Carheil to acknowledge that Jesuit plans at Mackinac
had failed as on Georgian Bay.  And yet when they burned their beloved
mission at St. Ignace (Mackinac), it was to prevent the stores from
falling into the hands of the very tribes they had come to save.  Like
Bishop Laval and Saint Vallier at Quebec, Carheil tried to throw the
odium of blame on the secular authorities.  Carheil was as devout and
admirable in his way as Bishop Laval and Saint Vallier.  He comes down
in missionary annals as one of the {106} heroic figures--a martyr to
his own mistakes in dealing with wild savages.  He did not perish by
fagot at the torture stake as many Jesuits did; but he did retire to
Quebec almost blind from snow-glare and the smoke of Indian teepee to
die an invalid from health broken by years of exposure.  But this is
anticipating the story.  We shall meet Carheil again at Detroit.

Let us try also to grasp the Jesuit's point of view here.  They saw Old
France going to the dogs from vice.  Had not the Missions founded both
Quebec and Montreal?  Why not preserve New France as a sort of sacred
theocracy free of vice and governed by the Holy Church?  That was the
real motive behind their fanaticism.  Cromwell had attempted the same
in England and failed; but the Jesuits ascribed that failure to
Cromwell being a heretic--too liberal and tolerant of all schisms.  The
Recollets had been first on the ground in New France, but they had
found the task too big for them and so they had invited the Jesuits to
come and help them.  Then the Jesuits began to attempt pushing the
Recollets out.--Why?  First, because they believed themselves
infallible.  Second, because they believed all schisms deadly sins.  We
now know they were mistaken and their policy ended in their expulsion
from half the kingdoms of Europe; but they had not learned that bitter
lesson in Cadillac's day.  They had not learned that schism even in
{107} church affairs may play the same part as pruning in a great
forest--where the threshing of conflicting winds, the war of branches
for room to reach up to the sunlight throws dead and diseased branches
off, blows the rotten tree trunks down, tests the sound from the false
and leaves only the fittest to survive.  It was a hard lesson and we
have not entirely learned it to this day.  What is true, sane,
wholesome survives.  What is false, unsound, devious, secret and
self-deceived goes down in every conflicting crash.

Perhaps here should be taken up the value of money in modern terms.
The livre in this volume is given as equal to a dollar.  Parkman puts
it at nineteen cents.  Sulte, the great authority on this, gives its
value in weight of silver at nearer one dollar than sixty-nine cents.
The pistole is more puzzling.  It was a Spanish coin and fluctuated in
value from three dollars and ninety cents to four dollars.  The crown
was an English coin again in silver value nearer one dollar than sixty
cents.  The purchasing power compared to the modern coin, neither
Parkman nor Sulte gives.  To use the modern dollar term is not, as it
may seem, a mixing of ancient and modern coinage.  The dollar was a
value known in Scotland two hundred years before Shakespeare wrote
_Macbeth_.  It is, indeed, quoted in all the earlier folios of
Shakespeare's _Macbeth_.




{108}

CHAPTER V

1699-1701

Cadillac Takes Another Trip to Mackinac, Then Sails for France--His
Plunge from Wilderness Wilds Back to Versailles--Pontchartrain and
Maurepas and Louis XIV Receive Him Well--Did La Mothe's Own Ambitions
Wane or Waver from Old World to Honors in New?--Tremendous Courage for
the Venture--Bad Masters Now in Ascendency Both in Versailles and
Quebec--His Predictions as to Failure of Missions at Mackinac Verified
and Fortify His Arguments with French Court.


When one penetrates the diplomatic mask of this period, it is to laugh
or to weep at the essential base dishonesty of what was a royal game of
card-sharpers over the destiny of a New-World empire.  No wonder that
Radisson, the first discoverer of the Mississippi, who had now gone
over for good to the English of the Hudson's Bay Company, describes it
as "a greasing of fat chops" for the benefit of scoundrels, while the
real workers on the field of action were cheated of reward.  What would
the saintly Marquette have said if he had lived to find that his own
St. Ignace of Mackinac had to be burned and abandoned because his
copper-skinned flock of Indians had either been scattered by foes or
debauched by the liquor of unlicensed traders?  Take just one example
of the diplomacy in vogue.  France claimed all the English {109}
Colonies from Maine to Spanish Florida, not because she had any right
to such claim, but because she hoped by this claim to force England to
give back Nova Scotia, lost in war and ceded by treaty, and the rest of
the continent westward of the Alleghanies.  "It is certain," runs the
comment, "that the fear of having to do with so powerful a foe will
bring the English to our terms.  Then France by taking a haughty tone
can make good her claims by force of arms."  Card-sharpers have
plainer, more honest designation for such tactics.  It is
four-flushing, then back off when the bluff is called for a show-down.

Louis XIV's plans were quite as insincere with his ally at the
time--Spain.  The Grand Monarch was pretending to be the friend of the
English monarchs, Charles and James, yet he was plotting to drive the
English from the New World.  Likewise he was affecting an international
pact with Spain, yet with astonishing precision he was mapping all
North America from the Arctic to the Rio Grande for France.  Pensacola
might be placed a bit nearer Mobile than it is but the location was
near enough for attack by sea.  That Spain guessed his designs we shall
find as the life of Cadillac moves down to Louisiana.

On coming back to Quebec in November, either in obedience to Louis'
secret orders or to fortify his arguments for a new fort at Detroit,
Cadillac took a flying {110} trip up to Mackinac to gather facts.  He
would have ample time to do this in the spring and be back in Quebec
before the frigates could come out in July and depart in August or
September of 1700.  On none of his trips to Mackinac did he take his
wife.  She remained with friends in Montreal and Quebec and seems to
have used her sharp eyes to keep watch on the secret moves of her
husband's enemies.  Did he, as enemies in Montreal afterward averred,
go to Mackinac to conceal his own unlicensed trade, or Frontenac's
illicit trade?  Frontenac's private income from his French estates was
only about five thousand dollars yearly in our money.  Reward for his
services in Quebec never exceeded two thousand crowns--about two
thousand five hundred dollars in modern money.  What that would do to
keep up his royal pomp in New France and the most expensive racing
stables in Old France, any schoolchild can figure in modern money.
Why, then, did he continually live beyond his means?  Because display
of power was necessary in Quebec to impress both red and white foes and
friends.  Because wild lavish spendings were demanded in Versailles to
keep a mere toe-hold on the Court cliques.

Anyway, Cadillac took that quick trip up to Mackinac.  He found four
hundred barrels of "unlicensed brandy" bought at three dollars a pot
and sold at {111} twenty to twenty-five dollars to Indians, and when he
came back to seize it in 1701, he found left only one hundred and
ninety-eight pots; so one may infer it was not his brandy.  He found
worse signs than brandy of demoralized trade on the Upper Lakes.  The
Hurons and Crees were now trading with the English on Hudson Bay.  They
had dispersed largely to the north side of Lake Superior and to the
woods.  The Assiniboines had scattered north of what is now the
boundary.  The Algonquins had receded up Green Bay and across
Wisconsin.  Mackinac was simply a haunt of uncontrolled crime.  Ottawas
had become mongrels with the tribes of Michigan.  It was no longer a
good point for trade.  Except for the white fish season, the Indians
did not gather there.  I don't suppose any one in Old France would have
believed Cadillac had he told them the truth--that Old France would
only be a patch on the face of these Western States.  The welkin would
have rung with hilarious gales of laughter had he predicted that in two
centuries one city in this area would have a million people and another
more than two million.  Why?  Paris and all its suburbs in this era did
not much exceed four hundred thousand people, half of whom lived in
direst poverty and squalor, a quarter in the most extravagant luxury,
the other quarter--the bourgeois--ground to a pulp between the former
two.  {112} It was really an era of the turning-point in world history,
which culminated in the French Revolution.  The aristocrats were
toppling of their own fat soft dead weight.  The bourgeois were
seething with dangerous discontent; and the under layer of the social
structure was about to heave in an earthquake.  We know Cadillac right
now seems to have desired rather a free-of-foot new start in a new
world, than a foothold in an insecure old land.  The triangle of
noblesse-bourgeois-peasant seemed to be standing on its head ready for
a good tumble.  Taxation, misery, ruin, vice were gnawing like rats all
the base of the under structure.

[Illustration: Typical chteau in southern France showing the
impossibility of supporting such on meager salaries.  _Courtesy, Lenox
Library, New York._]

From wilderness wilds to artificial Court life, a more violent
transition could scarcely have confronted a man than now faced
Cadillac.  Radisson had experienced the same twenty years before, and
Radisson had lost his head in the whirl and married an English grand
dame whom he was accused of "duping" and who led him a devil's dance
all her life; but La Mothe was older than Radisson.  He was just
turning his fortieth year.  He had no time to lose.  He knew it would
require ten years of hard, tireless work to build a seigniory up to a
paying basis.  King Louis XIV could not live many years longer.
Cadillac could not after that hope for friends at Court.  He had,
indeed, before he sailed a hot debate with the intriguing {113} circles
of Quebec and Montreal, jealous as fighting Indians over any diversion
of trade.  Frontenac was no longer present to quell disputes and the
bandying of angry words replaced the old polite ceremonies in the
Audience Chamber of Castle St. Louis.

[Illustration: Restored salon, Chteau de Ramezay, Montreal.  Restored
habitant room, Chteau de Ramezay, Montreal.  _Courtesy, Canadian
Pacific Ry. Co._]

The opposition was, of course, bitterest at Montreal.  From this point,
the most of the unlicensed lawless liquor trade spread up to Mackinac.
As usual, Cadillac did not conceal his plans and rode over his enemies
roughshod.  Only two buildings now in Montreal stand very much as they
existed in Cadillac's day--the little St. Anne Bonsecours church and
the Chteau de Ramezay.  Neither De Ramezay nor Vaudreuil was yet the
power they became in a few years in New France; but we can guess the
angry confabs, which made the great ceiling beams ring in the Chteau.
It was completed in 1705 but its construction began a few years prior.
The Chteau has been restored to conform in furnishings with those
early days.  We can picture Cadillac in his high Gascon boots with legs
spread to the open fireplace, sitting in one of the big home-made
wicker seat chairs, listening to the threats, the arguments, the
slightly concealed deep rancor toward himself.

"Why oppose?" he probably asked with that ironical smile so
provocative.  "You have the licensed right to trade at Mackinac just
the same--with a {114} fourth to the King, a fourth to the Colony, a
fourth to your outfitters, a fourth profit to yourselves."

"Aye--but a new fort at Detroit would draw the trade from Mackinac."

"You are losing it anyway--it is dribbling off to the English on Hudson
Bay and to the bushlopers who have no license."

Knowing Cadillac's tactless disregard for personal safety and his
renown as a Gascon fighter, we can further guess from that long nose of
his that he may have pressed the question--why such ample liquor
cellars below the Chteau?  Who owned the brandy?  Where was it going?
Why so many big unlicensed canoes lying in the river front ready to
ascend the Ottawa with Indians returning to the Upper Lakes?  Besides,
he told them, with that bluntness which made so many enemies, "the
winter climate would ever be against Mackinac as a permanent
settlement."  It lacked the background of good farm land where
colonists would prosper.  "Farm land!"  What did the Montreal gang of
lawless traders in furs and brandy care for farms?  What were the
humble habitant toilers to these lily-fingered officers who employed
bushlopers to do the real work?  They no more wanted farmers on land
than the Hudson's Bay Company later did.  The Montreal grandees must
have sped their parting guest with deeper curse than blessing.

{115}

Anyway, we know that Cadillac sailed for France in the autumn of 1699.
Past Mal Bay of bad repute too close ashore, past Tadoussac with its
frowning heights, on past Anticosti and Isle Perce, the rendezvous of
the fishing fleets homing like wild birds for the winter.  What
superstitious terrors enveloped both points to the fishing-folk!  I was
off both points once in this autumn season, and I confess if I stayed
too long, the depression of both scenes would engulf me as it did these
fisher-folk.  I was on a small government mail boat up on an errand of
mercy to people starving in Labrador.  We had what can be described
only as a white squall.  The wind from the northeast came thundering in
with a crashing tide.  We had not been unwarned.  The porpoises had
floundered about us all morning and an old mate had pointed to them
saying "bad sign."  "You old fool," said the purser, "there is nothing
to that."  Wasn't there?  By afternoon, we were scudding for shelter to
a hole in the wall and with two anchors out and all steam up were
tossed off our anchorage by much more than a mile.  By nightfall, the
moon came out from the storm clouds.  It was white and cold as very
death.  To keep from freezing, I chose the shadowed side of the deck
where for hours the scuppers had gushed with the overwash.  There, I
danced the old-fashioned rush polka to warm benumbed feet.  That night
as I slept in my boots on {116} the berth sofa of my stateroom, I found
myself on a scoot under the opposite berth feet foremost; and as I
laughed at the predicament all the contents of a case of lemons in the
upper berth came down on my head; for the next toss of the waves rolled
me out.  This was becoming interesting; so the stewardess and I who
were the only women aboard, climbed up the dizzy stairs on deck to take
a midnight look.  All the ghost fingers of the North Atlantic's dead
seemed to be reaching up from the foaming seas.  It was a weird watery
waste peopled with wraiths.  Few lives were lost because the
fisher-folk had sense to scud ashore when they felt the squalls coming.
Cadillac must have seen all this on his way across.  He may have met
old friends here.  La Salle and Joliet, all in turn had held fishing
concessions or licenses here.

We know Cadillac reached France and at once presented himself at
Versailles.  Count Pontchartrain was really all-powerful as adviser on
the colonies.  Yes, "I am the State" and "my trade is a King," Louis
might asseverate.  All the same, he depended on Pontchartrain for wise
advice.  Pontchartrain was a deeply religious man, an enigma in such an
era.  As soon as Court duties permitted, he retired almost a hermit to
religious devotions and such mystic beliefs as could be held in an age
when Church and Court claimed the right not only to supervise secular
life but a {117} spiritual deviation from a hair line.  He was, indeed,
to Louis XIV what Richelieu had been to Louis XIII--a man wise to the
world, but devout to religion.  Maurepas, his grandson, could not be
described as devout, but he was ironically and cynically versed in the
Court's ways, where etiquette played puppet to pomp.

What that is not an oft-told tale, can be described of Versailles?  Its
glamour is a mirage of glory to this day.  It had cost so much that the
King had destroyed all accounts to conceal the extravagance from a
hungry tax-ridden populace.  It was the center of the worst and the
best in Europe--beauty that was good and beauty that was bad; wit,
science, literature, learning, cheek by jowl with intolerance,
superstition, rotten evil living, tyranny that forbade the results of
scholarships being diffused among the lower classes to raise them.  In
the midst of this, the King was a god in a temple of pagans, who
professed themselves Christians and passed existence in riotous living
surpassing the worst days of Greece and Rome.  It required the services
of seven squires--not mere valets--to put the King's morning shirt on
His Majesty's sacred back.  The main palace covered an area a quarter
of a mile long.  There were garden terraces, whose plan we copy to this
day.  There were lagoons in the midst of the gardens.  There were woods
with {118} trees from every clime--Turkey to Spain.  There were
fountains throwing up iridescent sprays in the sun.  There were
tapestries, paintings, sculptured figures, from every great artist in
the world.  There were mosaics of color to create curiously beautiful
effects outside and inside; and up and down these embowered walks the
ladies of the Court were expected to parade in all the beauty of pagan
goddesses.  From contemporary accounts, they filled all the
expectations very well.  Did Solomon in all his glory surpass
Versailles?  It is doubtful.  Nineveh and Babylon may, but no great
Western city; and the comparison to these ancient cities is not inept.
It was the next Louis who coined the famous phrase--"After me the
deluge."

In the midst of all this show, Louis nightly held his famous
drawing-rooms.  He was arrayed--one scarcely knows how to describe it.
A Puritan would probably say like an old fool, a wax figure to conceal
age.  A Cavalier would likely see in all the pomp and show the symbol
of a power that aimed to become a world force.  Let us examine this
portrait of the King.  Then call him what you please.  He ruled the
longest of any monarch in France, from 1643 to 1715, and if his aim was
to be Grand Monarch, he succeeded.  His becurled periwig came a foot
below his shoulders; and when it took seven noblemen to get his royal
shirt on, one does not like to guess the number of {119} barbers to
keep those wigs in order.  Like the gentlemen of the period, he was
clean-shaved and until late in life showed few wrinkles and a skin
pink-white as a child's.  His brows were obviously trimmed, brushed and
penciled.  The eyes were terribly sharp and direct in glance, and the
lids did not droop till late in life; but he did not live a long life.
He worked too hard.  He outlived his son and his grandson.  In later
life, the lines of care and exasperation over details, which he would
not relegate to subordinates, scored the mouth.  His hands were
delicate as a girl's.  White ruffs set off face and hands; silken hose
above knees, his graceful limbs.  Golden garters below knee were
another adornment, and his well-heeled shoes according to the function.
As furs are the most beautiful adornment as background for any figure,
his ermine cloak was a magnificent thing trailing many yards to rear.
Now each little ermine has only one black tip to its tail.  I have
tried again and again to count how many little ermine lives must have
been sacrificed to this vanity.  It is useless.  The consolation to an
animal lover is that the ermine himself is a little assassin.  However
cruel Louis may have been to heretics, he was never an assassin.

Into this Court, then, came Cadillac from the wilds in the spring of
1700.  He had been preceded by Frontenac's reports and recommendation
by almost ten {120} years.  His services were well known.  Frontenac
refers in letters of 1695 to La Mothe's leadership among the Hurons,
later reported by Cadillac in person to Pontchartrain.  He is called
sage, prudent, penetrating, among other officers, whom Frontenac has
had to return to France for outrageously bad conduct.  He seems to have
been at Mackinac almost half of every year from 1694 to 1698 and to
have distinguished himself with "vigilance and good conduct."  In his
last letter, October 10, 1698, Frontenac bespeaks for him "some
recompense."

Fortified with Frontenac's letters, his own memorial, Madame
Frontenac's friendship with the Queen, Madame Cadillac's relation with
the Duke de Lauzon, he gained immediate entrance to the inner governing
clique.  It must have cost the thrifty Gascon a pretty penny to outfit
himself for such a palace.  Louis seems to have turned him over to
Pontchartrain so that all reports for and against Cadillac could be
examined and weighed.  The evidence seemed to leave the Gascon's record
pretty clean; for Pontchartrain reported in favor of the new fort at
the Straits known as Detroit.  Pontchartrain was ever against this
embroiling of Indian tribes in raids and counter-raids.  The licensed
companies must, of course, have their share of trade for the King's
treasure box; but Cadillac could have a clear five thousand dollars a
year of trade {121} to his own accounts, as salary, especially as he
asked for only fifty soldiers and would himself pick out fifty farmers
and one hundred artizans and bear the expense of transporting them and
settling them on the land.  On whom would he depend to hold the
Illinois?  On Alphonse Tonty, the brother of La Salle's Tonty.  On whom
for the Upper Lakes?  Duluth.  On whom for trusted lieutenants?  On
two--Dugue and Chacornacle.  And it was not to cost the King a sou?
Not one.  Chicago he would use to reach the Mississippi but not build
up the enmity of plains tribes to the Lakes.

Good!  The King would grant the concession; but he did not lightly
grant seigniories.  He had granted so many that only came back in a
pester of requests for financial help.  He would grant favors only with
the condescending generosity and pomp of a Grand Monarch; so the Court
was duly assembled to witness the presentation of the commission at a
morning audience.  Cadillac had to kiss His Majesty's hand and back
away as from the presence of a god.  Many paintings old and modern
picture this interview and in detail they are correct.

Did he come away a little appalled by the responsibility he had taken
on his shoulders?  We know he came away dauntless as ever.  The venture
required tremendous courage.  He would be assailed and {122} maligned
by jealous rivals at Montreal.  Indians might even be inspired and
armed by New England to attack his new fort.  He had to attract and
hold in friendship countless new tribes of whom the French knew little
except that they were ever like wildcats at one another's throats and
must be induced to bury the war hatchet and live in peace.  Well, he
could control the supply of firearms going to them; and this required a
wild wood diplomacy of which he had proved himself a past master.  Like
Louis, Cadillac believed in the pressure of force first, then obedience
and love and favor to red-skinned foes only as their behavior
warranted.  Alphonse Tonty could speak Illinois dialects.  The priests
could act as interpreters for the northern tribes.  As for the fiercer
plains tribes toward the Mississippi, he would cross that bridge when
he came to it.




{123}

PART TWO

DETROIT



{125}

CHAPTER VI

1700-1701

Back to New France--Westward by the Ottawa to Detroit--Pause at
Mackinac--The Final Rounding Up of Human and Trade Dregs There--The
Locating and Building of the New Fort--Named after His Patron
Pontchartrain--Rhapsodies of Enthusiasm--The Happiest Days in
Cadillac's Life.


Cadillac left France on the first of the King's frigates to sail.
These usually departed in June.  They carried about as odd an
assortment of human and freight cargo as could be gathered.  First,
were the King's treasure boxes with coin to pay troops, repair forts,
help all religious houses and dispense gratuities to subjects who had
distinguished themselves the previous year in His Majesty's service.
In the treasure boxes also went the bags of royal dispatches to be
thrown overboard or destroyed if the ship were captured by the pirate
freebooters scouring the seas.  Articles for fur-trade barter--old
muskets and pistols from European wars, iron scraps to be hammered in
knives, hatchets, spear and harpoon points, tin looking-glasses, beads,
shot, calicoes, stroud for blankets, brandy, cannon-ball, perhaps some
low squat mortars for some new fort, boxes of vanity garments for the
colonial Court, that flour and bacon which ought {126} to have been
produced in New France, all crowded the cargo space in the French
frigates.

The French frigates did not sit so high above their water-line as the
Spanish caravels; they did not possess such swift speed as many a
fishing schooner; but they were seaworthy and when attacked capable of
terrible defense.  Cannon poked their long snouts fore and aft above
deck, and lesser guns came from the ship sides.  You read about few of
these guns breaking loose in storm and rolling from side to side in
damage as in many a Hudson's Bay Company brig borrowed from the Royal
Navy.  They carried a great cloud of rattling, groaning sail that kept
them laboring ahead in the wind to the creak of oak-timbered hull and
keel.  Crossing the Atlantic, few suffered from storm or pirate attack;
for all were commanded by such navy-trained men as the young Le Moynes,
who had become the sea heroes of the age.

The passengers aboard ranged from bishops and changing intendants
(financial ministers) to good nuns fetching marriageable girls for
colonists' wives, and cadets sent out to shift in a new field of
fortune.  The shift of cadets back and forward had now become an almost
comic shuttle.  Every year, Frontenac had bundled home a pack of young
scamps who had disgraced themselves; and every year, King Louis sent
out a fresh batch to try the soul and patience of the {127} Governor.
Some, let us give them the credit, did live to reform their ways.
After a pretty wild youth, indeed, and a middle age none too blameless,
even Sabrevois, the doubtful hero of the tavern brawl, lived to leave
descendants who distinguished themselves in the great final war of 1759.

Did a young Radisson come back with Cadillac to Quebec?  Pierre
Radisson was the first French discoverer of the Mississippi, but
double-dealing between Louis XIV and Charles II had driven him
permanently back to the services of the Hudson's Bay Company.  Now with
the Le Moynes ravaging Hudson Bay by sea and land, Radisson himself was
spending most of his time in London; but his elder children must have
been somewhere along in their twenties and may have transferred back to
New France.  We find a Radisson with Cadillac in Detroit, acting as
clerk in the licensed traders' stores, yet always loyal to Cadillac.
Radisson descendants number among the best families of Quebec to-day
and not one is now known in England.

All the Radisson family in New France--Chouart, Pierre Radisson's
brother-in-law, Jean, his nephew--were very bitter over the
double-dealing of the Kings of France and England toward themselves.
They were equally bitter toward the Jesuits, who had never given them
credit as discoverers.  They and their backers at Three Rivers had been
ruined by the plotters and {128} grafters of New France.  What more
natural than a young Radisson compelled by necessity to take employment
under licensed traders yet holding loyal to such a free-lance as
Cadillac, who defied all enemies secret and open?

The danger to the King's frigates was neither pirate nor weather.  It
was on approach to the St. Lawrence waters where such ships encountered
the great ice floes coming rocking south each spring.  If the Arctic
spring had been especially late, the churning icebergs came drifting
down breaking as they drifted.  Once safely up the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, the way was easy.  River pilots, who knew the currents like
water ducks, came aboard.  The frigate had docked at Lower Town by
July, unloaded in a clatter of babbling tongues, and reloaded with furs
ready to drop down with the tide by August and September.

[Illustration: Kreighoff painting of Chaudire Falls, Ottawa City.
_Courtesy, National Gallery of Canada._]

Cadillac, no doubt, in his usual detached fashion, sat at the ship's
table somewhere below the royal admirals, the governors and the
bishops.  He could easily sense that the churchmen were not so hostile
to him as they had been fifteen years before.  Court favor explained
some of this.  The logic of fact explained more.  The crushing of
Iroquois power by force of arms had done more to extend their mission
than the tortures suffered by mission martyrs.  Cadillac had been right
about so-called converts among grown {129} Indians.  Of this Mackinac
was a melancholy example.  Few converts among the adults understood the
new faith.  It was the children who began to show results.  More could
be done by gradual education in missions than ranging the wilds to
baptize wandering tribes, who didn't know what baptism meant; and so
had died out of the Jesuit policy that opposition to permitting white
bushrangers and voyageurs to marry in Indian tribes and leave their
children to be educated in the missions; but this did not diminish in
the slightest degree the Jesuit determination to dominate all secular
power in frontier posts.  Their attitude was one of jealous, zealous
watchfulness; and if their watch-dogs at any post scented too much
independence of their advice, woe betide that officer in charge.  You
recall the prelate Carheil, the Jesuit whose "jaw" Cadillac had longed
"to knock off" up at Mackinac?  He was to give Cadillac trouble enough
before our story ends.  Let us acknowledge, too, that the Jesuits were
just as conscientious as Cadillac.  Their mistakes and Cadillac's were
just the same.  They would not acknowledge that the middle of the road
is the safest, wisest course on obscure dangerous trails.

[Illustration: A view of early Mackinac.]

The Jesuits, too, were slipping in their power with Louis XIV's Court.
This was partly because of the growth of dissolute living in
Versailles.  The tumble downward in morals and manners becomes more
{130} apparent as the story of Cadillac moves on to the next reign, and
one must acknowledge a deeper sympathy with the Jesuits' fierce desire
and fanatical efforts to keep New France free from the devil's dance at
the royal Court.  When prelates there rose to power through intrigue
with shameless courtezans, when royal minions excused themselves from
attending to state affairs because they had been drunk or gambling all
night, when highest affairs were awarded through bribe, or gifts of
jewels to some base woman, it was natural that the Jesuits, out always
"for the greater glory of God," should be both jealous and zealous to
keep New France free from a poison leading on to the Great Revolution.

Now, armed with the King's commission, La Mothe wasted no time in
Quebec.  He hastened to Montreal and there joined the Algonquin, Huron
and Ottawa brigades of canoes going up to Mackinac.

At Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal he had picked fifty good tried
soldiers.  He had some difficulty in inducing farmers and mechanics to
come.  No woman was in the first party; but of men, who could handle
anything from a frying-pan to a plow or carpenter's plane, there were
fifty.  The one hundred white men left Montreal on June 5, 1701, in
twenty-five large canoes of birch and cedar.  Alphonse Tonty went along
as second in command, the two young {131} cadet Lieutenants Dugue and
Chacornacle as next, and the two priests, one a Jesuit, Vaillant, one a
Recollet, Constantine, to care for the souls of the little flock.  The
trouble with Vaillant and Constantine was that, however peaceful and
friendly they might feel toward each other, each was under a religious
order very jealous of the other and was pledged to implicit obedience
to his own order.

Somewhere between Lachine and the Mattawa, some of the soldiers and
farmers, in regret over having enlisted, evinced a mutinous spirit to
rise and slay their commander, seize the goods and run off as
bushlopers.  This defection had been incited by traders from Lachine
seizing and trying to search his canoes for brandy.  They sent
whisperers among his crews of dangers ahead and failure for the whole
venture.  Cadillac's hat was knocked off in the dispute.  He drew his
sword and bade them come on.  No one accepted that challenge.  He was a
past master in fencing.

Amazing as it is to credit, Cadillac in the five years he had been at
Mackinac, had often ascended the whole way in midwinter by snow-shoe to
be on time for Lake tribes and bring down furs by June.  No wonder
Governor Frontenac had dictated dispatches to the Grand Monarch
apologizing for Cadillac not sending a more detailed report because
"this worthy officer {132} had not had time."  Once ensconced safely in
the deep canoes, boat travel must have seemed to La Mothe child's play.
Every foot of the way, every landmark, every dangerous reef amid stream
must have been an old story to him.

Here the Lachine Rapids, so named because all discoverers for a century
hoped to reach China by ascending the River of the Meadows--the Ottawa.
Here on the left, high above the east was the little chapel of St.
Anne, patron saint of the voyageur, to whom every paddler made his
final prayer.  Then the labyrinth of islands and channels abreast the
modern great agricultural college buildings.  Nought of life there in
those days, but water-fowl or Indian brigade.  If the wind favored,
blanket or canvas would be hoisted on paddle and the light craft go
forward as on bird's wings.  If the air were dead calm, paddles dipped
in rhythmic unison--three flips one side, then three the other, and the
cedar and birch canoes shot ahead in a silent glide over calm water, a
gallop over wild.

Twenty miles a day was fast pace in bad weather, forty fast up-stream
in good water and wind.  Good water meant deep channels.  It was
shallow water created danger amid rocks and had sunk both Radisson's
notes of his voyages in the sixteen sixties and Joliet's of the sixteen
seventies, when they were almost in sight of home.  There was no need
in Cadillac's {133} time to camp without fire at night for fear of
Iroquois raids.  The Iroquois were begging to intermarry with their
ancient Algonquin and Huron foes and to act as boatmen in the French
brigades.  You will find Iroquois as far west as the Pacific Coast
acting as canoemen down to the nineteenth century.

The Chaudire Falls of modern Ottawa were one of the great landmarks on
the way west.  Their approach was an enchanting view as it is to-day.
They passed the Rideau River Falls on the west, which were really a
wind blown curtain of spray.  Beyond came the emptying Gatineau River
to the right.  To the left there lifted the precipice on which now
stands the high Gothic-towered Parliament Buildings.  Receding to
sky-line rolled the blue Laurentian Mountains.  Here was the longest
portage on the Ottawa.  It is now the street-car line from Hull to
Aylmer.  Rapids called the Chats--from the howling of lynx in the
woods, and again all boats were out on the current of the Ottawa.  To
the left came the amber waters of the Mattawa to mingle with the purple
deep of the Ottawa.  Up the Mattawa, the west-bound canoes penetrated.
The Mattawa was not a difficult current to ascend.  It ran through the
great copper and nickel deposits, only in recent years developed to a
value far exceeding the dreams of Spanish for gold, and here were the
French going right over ground equally {134} rich in gold, silver,
copper--and they did not know it.  Nor would the knowledge have availed
much.  Modern explosives and chemical reduction of ores to metal had
not been invented to blow the tops off iron-capped rocks and extract
precious metals from crude ores.

Then came Nipissing Lake so called by the Indians because they could
seldom see across it from island to island for the morning mists; but
its islands were wonderfully refreshing rest-spots to hunt and fish
before the west-bound brigades descended French River, the River of the
Sorcerers, to Georgian Bay.  French River was "mean water," what the
French called "mal," "mauvais," if not worse, allied with the little
devils.  Its pot holes in the rocky water bed marked the drop of some
hard stone to be whirled in endless boiling till it created its own
prison and could not bounce out; but as depths of water shallowed,
these pot holes with reefs played the mischief scraping canoe bottoms
and in gales wrecked many a canoe till French River became ill-omened
as the Sorcerers.  If ever you pass along the river by modern rail, you
will note one stretch where eleven crosses mark as many deaths of
voyageurs in wrecked canoes.

Out from the French River came the speeding brigades of canoes like
flocks of gulls on one of the most beautiful sheets of inland water in
the world--Georgian {135} Bay and Lake Huron.  Lake Huron is the palm
of a three-hundred-mile-long hand.  Georgian Bay is its thumb, Mackinac
its little finger, Detroit its wrist and the pulse to a greater system
of arteries.  The waters of Georgian Bay and Lake Huron are as blue as
a June sky.  The islands across the bay lie gray and pink granite, in
size from a mere cupful of waves to Great Manitoulin on the north, more
than a hundred miles from end to end, whither so many Hurons had
dispersed.

Amid the Georgian Bay Islands, the majority of the Indians paused to
rest, to fish, to play, to await their families scudding from island to
island to meet them.  How on a bay, where the islands are so numerous
it has been called "The Lake of the Thirty Thousand Islands," could the
families appoint and find a rendezvous?  By a device so simple you have
only to look to see it yet.  Many of these islands are pine-grown.  For
a few feet from the top of a pine, the main trunk would be stripped of
branches.  This bare spot was regarded as a lob-stick and below on
blazed bark or rock would be left the clan or family or totem mark for
the Indian voyageur to find his family.  From Georgian Bay to the Rocky
Mountains, these lonely lob-sticks mark the watery trail of tribes
plying east and west for centuries.  Where are the lone wayfarers
to-day?  We trust where they hoped and prayed to {136} go--up the Milky
Way to the Stars by a New Moon canoe.

[Illustration: Kreighoff painting of canoe ascending Ottawa River.
_Courtesy, National Gallery of Canada._]

Cadillac could not afford a pause to let his twenty-five canoes rest on
the pink islands of Georgian Bay.  He must have his fort stockades up
and cabins roofed at Detroit by autumn.  Why did he seem to waste time
by going across to Mackinac instead of directly south to Detroit?  This
divergence brought an avalanche of insinuations and malicious charges
later.  They even spattered Madame Cadillac's good name.  A skunk
pursued is apt to be indiscriminating.  Cadillac had been back and
forward to Mackinac for almost six years.  Undoubtedly he now crossed
over to pick up garrison equipment, small cannon, muskets, ammunition
left in the King's stores, as well as to confiscate all articles of
unlicensed trade.  Among the latter were the one hundred and
ninety-eight pots of brandy from four hundred kegs which he knew had
been hidden, when he left for France in 1699.  Such a rabble garrison,
too, he found--only two hundred soldiers in sixty log cabins tumbling
about their ears, with the mission of St. Ignace in as bad repair.
Indians had not yet gathered for fishing.  Many had already gone down
the Ottawa with the season's furs and others were out "in the crazy
oat" (wild rice) marshes, harvesting the most delicious wild grain
nature grows.

{137}

There were two ways canoe brigades went south from Mackinac: hugging
the west shore, the Indian way; dodging into Saginaw Bay--a great
tribal rendezvous--then out round the south Point aux Barques down to
the wrist of the Lake's hand.  July was a calm weather month; so
Cadillac doubtless avoided the great detour up Saginaw Bay and went on
direct with his equipment from Mackinac.  Why did he not establish his
new fort at Gratiot or the Huron-Sarnia Straits, where Duluth had
rallied tribes?  Because it did not lead across by portage trail to the
more distant tribes of the Illinois and the Mississippi and Upper
Wisconsin; and that by the same token was what created Detroit as a
great freight and manufacturing entrept.

[Illustration: How Frontenac and Cadillac planned to save Louisiana.]

"If you would see a beautiful peninsula, look about you," say Michigan
people of this garden area.  "If you would see a lovely fruit garden,
here it is," say Ontario people on the other side of the river.
Cadillac came nearer to rhapsodies than he ever did in his reports to
the King.  It seems to have been the happiest period in all his life.
I doubt if ever again he could have contented himself in the
strait-jacket existence of a Versailles or Toulouse.  Listen to this
from an officer noted for his laconic reports: "The meadows need only
the plowshare to grow anything; ... the climate was much more
salubrious and milder than at {138} Quebec; there were no cold
northeast winds; ... the grape-vine has not strength to support the
weight of its fruit and it has not yet wept under the knife of the vine
dresser; ... the shy stag, the timid deer, the wild turkey hens, the
strutting woodcocks, the quail, the partridge all are in greater
numbers than in a private French park and as unafraid of man....  As
for trees, there is every tree except the tropical which French parks
are importing from all the world.  The wild fowl are countless in
flocks and kind--geese, ducks, teal, bittern, heron, loon, wood-pigeon
and song-birds"--Cadillac's quill pen goes quite wild.  You see the
love of a boy breaking out in the heart of a man--woodpeckers,
cardinals, tanagers, bluebirds, robins, warblers, thrushes, all are
noted by this nature-lover, bursting reticence in the exuberance of a
child.  Here he would set him up a fort to be named after the great
Pontchartrain and a seigniory to be named after himself, and turn his
back on Court cliques and Court clack for ever.

He had left Lachine on the fifth of June.  He reached the site of
future Detroit on July twenty-third.  Camp was made for the night in
Grosse Isle sixteen miles below the site chosen on the twenty-fourth.
It was on a high bluff with the little Savoyard River behind and to one
side, and the dancing blue water of the river below.  The little stream
has long since been filled in, {139} though you can trace its slight
depression in the city streets.  The blue river within a stone-toss
from the fort has been filled in with the bluff torn down till modern
docks are several squares distant from the ancient water-front.  A more
beautiful site for a city or fort does not exist in the world.  The
river was blue as the Mediterranean.  The straits were dotted with
islands, where grew magnificent maples and oaks and birches, which
stand to this day in what is known as a city park.  The straits flowed
just swift enough to riffle the water in dancing waves; and behind the
bluff lay land arable and black--the modern garden orchards that have
made Michigan famous.  By a curious coincidence it was the same month
he was to reach Louisiana ten years or more later.  In an age when
astrology played a large part, June and July were deemed very
auspicious months.  June and May were the months of Marie, the Mother
with the Child.  July and August were supposed to be blessed by
Judah--the Lion.  Only where astrologic predictions worked out in
Detroit for Cadillac, they did not work out for his successor.  Much
less did they work out for Cadillac, himself, in Louisiana.  Had he
known Shakespeare, he might have conned the famous poet--not in our
stars but in ourselves the fault lies.




{140}

CHAPTER VII

1701-1704

Building the New Fort at Detroit--Named Pontchartrain--Chapel to St.
Anne--Area of Enclosure and Farms--Madame Tonty and Madame
Cadillac--More People Come--Mills Go up for Grinding Corn--Indians
Rally to New Trade Center.


The stockades of the new fort at Detroit enclosed sixty square yards.
The post lay about forty steps back from the water-front.  Such was the
germ of a city that in little more than two centuries was to number
with its suburbs nearly a million and a half in population.

Where to-day the wheels whir that go in motors to every part of the
world, in August of 1701 the chopper's ax rang, the cross-cut saw
hummed, the adz and knife sliced slabs from logs, and carpenters
dovetailed logs to be chinked later with clay and moss, and roofed with
slabs and bark and mud.  The wall pickets were twelve feet above ground
and are supposed to have run about where Shelby Street and Jefferson do
to-day, with Griswold and Wayne Streets as the ends.

The chapel to St. Anne was begun by Father Constantine and some
friendly Pottawattomies on July twenty-sixth.  It stood at the Griswold
Street end of the oblong.  Mass was of course celebrated at dawn {141}
as ground was broken for fort and church.  The name St. Anne was given
the church because it was St. Anne's day and because this saint was a
patron lady of the voyage.

I shall not try to place the fort's location as to the compass
directions; for here the Detroit and Savoyard Rivers run more or less
diagonally to directions.  Cadillac had picked the narrowest place in
the straits so his cannon could shoot across the river.  Plaques will
be found to-day on great banks marking the church site, the inner fort,
the Commandant's house, and in an older section of the city--the
Descharme lawn--will be found an ancient pear tree high almost as an
elm, which is the last tree known to exist of Cadillac's planting.  It
is regarded as one of the sights of Detroit.  Lest it should die of the
vine now cumbering it, seedlings of it are to be planted in the public
parks.  Mr. George Catlin and Mr. Burton are the great authorities on
all these old sites.  The timbers cut for stockades driven in the
ground--in fact they must have been placed in dug post-holes--were
twenty feet in length, with about four feet in the ground.  As always
at first, logs were set vertically.  The logs used were much sturdier
than in the most of frontier posts.  They were at least three
hand-spans in circumference.  Several of them have been preserved and
are in the museum of the public library.

{142}

Where the Michigan Central now comes over its rails were river flats in
those days.  It is said, "partridge drummed, ducks quacked, herds of
buffalo grazed, elks polished the velvet off their horns along the
Savoyard River."  Savoy, like all the place names of Cadillac's life,
was in the Latin-Italian area of Old France.  In the old map of the
period, Cadillac's first cattle are pictured with heads almost the size
of the fort.  Probably if we had transported those precious cattle by
raft from Quebec, we would regard them as entitled to big heads.  They
lie back-deep in pasture.  Birds, too, are not forgotten on the trees
dotting the crude landscape; but we must not forget these first maps
must have been sketched with rough carpenter pencil.  They are like the
first rough sketch maps of Marquette and Joliet, where buffalo tails
are long as a small tree and moose horns like a scoop snow-shovel.
Cadillac named the new fort after his patron, Pontchartrain.  He had
wheat planted by October.

At first there were neither horses nor oxen at Detroit, and the raw
resinous logs had to be hoisted or dragged to place by human shoulders.
Very soon, indeed, from half to three-quarters of an acre was stepped
off for each soldier, about three acres for each settler.  Cabins were
begun for each of the hundred newcomers.  Farms, as ever with the
French Canadian, ran back in narrow strips from the water-front and
{143} were outside the fort limits.  The Commandant's house was inside
the pickets.  It was not long before fifty cabins were up awaiting
fifty wives to be welcomed in coming year by year.  The windows were
parchment, later strengthened by hinged slabs against wind and frost.
The roof was again of slabs chinked by clay and moss and this overlaid
rain-proof with bark and mud.  Moss did what our cement chinking can
not do yet with fresh resin-oozing logs.  It absorbed winter damp and,
swelling, kept out the rains.  It shrank in summer heat again,
absorbing all oil from the logs till, caked, it became as hard and
tight a fit as flint.  Cadillac notes in one of his enthusiastic bursts
that there was none of the vegetable and tree parasites which cost so
much loss in older lands.  This was probably true.  Birds waged war on
all parasites.  It was only on destruction of bird life, that parasites
gained the upper hand.  For the first few years, till horses and oxen
came by scows up Lake Ontario and Erie, men had to be harnessed to
plows to break the soft meadow soil.  Two centuries later, when Russian
peasants were seen doing the same thing in Canada and the United
States, a great howl went up to High Heaven about the outrage of
admitting such classes as settlers.  Yet of such stuff were the
founders of Detroit composed.

The church was like the cabins, of logs and bark {144} with the bright
tin steeple spire topping the belled turret, where the Cross pointed
its symbol to Heaven.  All were blessed and dedicated by the Jesuit and
Recollet.  Had their superior officers left them alone, the Black Robes
and Gray Gowns could have worked in peaceful harmony.  Cadillac's care
to details had not neglected even the bells for matins and vespers,
silver chalices for the mass, the pyx, vestures to garb the officiating
priest; for we find all these in the final valuation of his personal
outlay on the Detroit fort.

Warehouses flanked the walls.  The flour mill was the type of Old
France--a windmill clattering its wooden wings against the sky-line.
The bastions stood at diagonal corners to flank two walls
simultaneously, loop-holed in the upper story for gun-fire and filled
below with ball and old muzzle-loaders.  Where--Cadillac's envious
enemies of Montreal later asked--had Cadillac got the money to provide
such munitions?  No doubt in part from the abandoned garrisons of
Mackinac; for so had his King's commissioner authorized him to do,
though he did not, in his terse reports to Louis, "pause to explain to
the puppies barking at heels."  To defend Detroit still further from
Indian attack, Cadillac had a moat or perhaps it should be called a
deep ditch, running outside the palisades parallel with each wall.
There were two gates to the water side, the ordinary small wicket for
one man's {145} admission at a time, the large gate for cargoes from
incoming brigades.  Then there were two smaller gates to the rear.
These were not drop wooden latches with the leather thong outside; they
had strong barndoor iron hinges and iron latch.  The nails like our
rail spikes had a twist at the end to prevent thieves pulling them out
at night.  So keen were the Indians for scraps of iron, that they would
apply their teeth to a loose nail head to draw it out.

Then Cadillac was prepared for what must have been the happiest period
of his life.  He had arrived on July twenty-fourth.  On September
tenth, came Madame Cadillac and five of their children with Madame
Tonty.

There is some discrepancy in dates here.  It is said in some old
records that Madame Cadillac wintered at Frontenac Fort--Kingston--or
at the portage of Niagara.  Both points were too exposed to Iroquois
raids.  They had been abandoned as wintering havens.  All we definitely
know is that she came in a month from Montreal.  Vaillant, the Jesuit,
departed for Quebec in two months from his arrival with Cadillac--which
would be the end of August.  This would place his meeting with her in
September, which would leave the inference that she reached Detroit the
same month.  Vaillant expressed sympathy with the brave lady going to
such a dangerous port.  "Don't waste pity on {146} us," she retorted;
"when a woman loves her husband, no place where he is can be
dangerous."  Madame Cadillac had set out in August and arrived in three
weeks.

[Illustration: Detroit in 1701]

Where did Vaillant, hurrying to Quebec two months after reaching
Detroit, meet Madame Cadillac?  That point is the sole ground for the
dates on Madame Cadillac's arrival being wrong in all early records by
two years.  In the first place, she could not go to Detroit up the
Ottawa and Mattawa with scows.  These could be used only on deep calm
water.  In the next place, she could not have paused at Fort
Frontenac--modern Kingston.  That fort had gone to the dogs.  Third,
the portage at Niagara was made by the south shore--the short overland
route for boats of all sorts; but that portage was held by the
Iroquois, who--as Vaillant reported--kissed the white ladies
rapturously.  The Iroquois admired courage above all qualities.  From
Niagara, the next famous stopping-place to rest and recuperate was at
the mouth of Grand River, on the north shore of Lake Erie.  This leaves
the inference that the meeting of the Jesuit and Madame Cadillac was
either at Grand River, or near Niagara.  Anyway, the family had come as
La Salle had come twenty years ago, by the Lower Lakes.  Two young
girls had been left at the Ursulines.  It was a peculiarly happy augury
that the two wives of the head commanders were fast {147} and
harmonious friends.  They were the two first white women in Detroit and
little Theresa Tonty was the first white child born west of the Great
Lakes.

Again, modern art has portrayed the joyous meeting of husband and wife;
and the picture could scarcely be overdrawn.  The soldiers with Madame
Cadillac wore blue coats with white lacings.  Both Cadillac and Tonty
knew that pomp and power impressed the Indians, and we can believe that
the Commanders were garbed in all the gold lace of their office, with
sword at heel and soldiers drawn up to fire a fusillade of royal
welcome.  Madame Cadillac also knew the effect of dress on the Indians
and it requires no over-drawing of the artist's imagination to see all
the happy children garbed in white ruffles to their ears and clad in
the mouse-colored soft leather and satins to knee, where bright silk or
wool socks well garnitured in colored garters ran down to sturdy little
shoes in bright leather.  Cadillac was a terribly strict disciplinarian
as to salutes, doffing hats to superiors, standing at stiff attention,
chivalry to women; so the artist pictures of little sons with heads
bared and little girls curtsying with bended knee are probably true to
life.

[Illustration: Madame Cadillac arriving at Detroit.  _Courtesy, Burton
Historical Collection, Detroit._]

Not to be outdone in show, the Indians came in fine white and brown
buckskin and doeskin decorated in stained porcupine quills, and joined
the soldiers in hilarious yells of welcome, accompanied by shots in
{148} mid-air.  We can visualize Cadillac showing the proud wives all
he and his sturdy subjects of a new seigniory had accomplished in two
months.  We can guess the pride thrilling their spouses as they saw the
blue waters of the river afloat below the fleur-de-lis, and the creamy
birch canoes lying on the sands or gliding before the docks, little
squaws and future warriors paddling over sides with naked hands.
Madame Cadillac's party had come by way of Niagara in large deep cedar
boats and canoes, with more servants, voyageurs of mixed blood,
bushlopers to hunt, and, some accounts say, with live stock of hogs and
cattle; but this for 1701 was not true.

Such holidays were always followed by barbecues of whole deer, venison,
bear, with huge black iron kettles for Indian savory stew, and presents
of glass beads and gewgaws of ribbons and knives and tin mirrors as
gifts.  With a commander who always described Indian peace-pipes as "a
filthy contraption" and would never smoke them to curry favor, we can
also guess that the night festivities after vesper bells would have
little of easy familiarity in the prancing dances of old Frontenac, but
a great deal of the habitants' innocent serenades--tooting of fifes,
blowing of horns, roll of garrison drums, _tum-tum-tum_ of the Indians'
hollow tom-toms and click of the savage castanets.  Any intermingling
of whites and reds in {149} the dancing circles would be between the
humbler folk, whom even the priests were now encouraging to marry dusky
belles.  Then a great rumble of cannon, a bugle call.  The flag came
down.  The holy fathers blessed their flocks, and the little copper
skins scampered with the prizes given for best performance, to have the
bright vermilion paint washed from cheeks and heads.  Gates were
closed.  Sentries paraded behind the wicket opening.  Torch flares
guttered out.  Indian camp-fires were banked in ashes, and Detroit
closed its eyes in sleep on its first happy auspicious birthday.

Did the ladies regret their rejection of Court clique and clack for
this new rude crude life at the very outpost of French Empire?  Hardly!
How could they?  Life at its best in Quebec or Versailles was a
prisoned, caged existence compared to this new freedom in a seigniory
that seemed to promise all the advantages of the old and none of the
terrible perils on the St. Lawrence.

In the next few years, it is very difficult to follow the definite
progress.  Cadillac's enemies averred he exaggerated the growth of the
new settlement.  Official accounts seem to prove that he did not.
Perhaps one should set down the figures pretty tentatively.  There were
thirty families the second year and at least two hundred more settlers,
soldiers and craftsmen of bush {150} and carpenter tools.  There were
eighty houses up by 1704.  The settlers were outside the stockades.
There were substantial earthworks, banks of mud topped by little
bastions commanding all approach.  Two infantry companies of seventy
Canadians had been trained for defense.  There were cows and oxen and
hogs.  Cadillac had thirty-one cattle of the best blood now
multiplying.  His cellars were filled with home-brewed wines and barley
malts.  "Stolen from the King's stores," said his enemies.  "Nay," said
Cadillac, "home grown."  Grain was growing and Cadillac was trading his
tenth of rents for pelts; and the pelts brought him more munitions.  As
he had promised, Fort Pontchartrain had "not cost His Majesty one sou,"
except for the pay of the soldiers.  We shall presently see that
Cadillac was succeeding too fast for his own good.  It excited envious
slanders among enemies and suggested to Louis XIV that here was a
commander too good and too big for a small post.  Why not send him to a
vaster, more difficult area, now pestering the King's patience to the
limit, for instance, to Louisiana?  That such seed of shift for
Cadillac had been sown as one of the devil's tares in a field of good
wheat, we now know.  The envious are ever ready to harvest the crop of
the thrifty.

While he and Tonty kept a hand over the Indians as far west as Chicago,
Madame Cadillac attended {151} personally to the trading.  "So he could
steal under an alibi," charged his rivals in Montreal.  These
reflections on wife or family always threw Cadillac into such a frenzy
of fury as used to disturb poor Frontenac.  Madame Cadillac did not
seem to lose her poise.  Though bringing more of her thirteen children
into the world, she, too, did not pause in the upbuilding of Detroit to
kick the cur dogs snapping at heel.

Shaggy ponies bought from the Indians' Spanish raids, peach and apple
orchards, rose vines on trellises now began to be seen round Detroit's
colony.  Peasants, we may call the settlers; but they possessed sturdy
good morals and were as happy as kings, much happier than the Grand
Monarch in all his luxury and wealth and failing health.  Cadillac
supported from his own purse a "_chirurgeon_," at three hundred dollars
a year, to counteract the ignorant and often vicious Indian
medicine-man.  He had a hospital for Indians as well as white people.
He had applied to Quebec for hospital nuns.  In this policy toward the
Indians, he was a hundred years ahead of his times.  Of education, as
we know it, there was very little.  Lurid pictures of a fiery hell and
tailed devil nailed on cabin walls were print enough for the most of
the settlers and eloquent refutation of the medicine-man's claim to
fees for offerings to pacify the devils.  Holy days were many:
Christmas, with its happy songs for the {152} Christ Child, New Year's
for the house-to-house serenade, Easter for the joyous rebirth of
spring and hope, maple wood sugarings-off, when the sap flowed, then
the muster of canoe brigades to carry furs down to Quebec.

How did the Indians regard this perfectly amazing transformation going
on under their eyes?  Not enviously, nor resentfully.  There were for
ten years none of the storm clouds that were to burst in such horror in
the Pontiac Conspiracy and the Tecumseh War, for both of which the
English and French had themselves largely to blame.  The Indian tribes
built wigwam villages outside beyond the fort moat.  It is a fairly
good index as to how peaceful they felt toward other tribes, that their
circular roofed bark wigwams were also arranged inside rude stockades.
They were not all nomadic tribes; but all were eager to barter pelts
for munitions to murder other tribes; so they were not at peace in a
hunters' earthly paradise before the advent of white men.  This is one
of the fictions which facts compel us to relinquish.  The
Pottawattomies and Sacs and Fox River tribes were the most powerful.
Intermingled with them, were the Menominees from the crazy-oat
marshlands of Upper Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.  These did not
speak the same dialects.  Later when the Atlantic push of settlers down
the Ohio forced the Shawnees {153} north-westward, Shawnees and
Muskogees or marsh tribes did amalgamate in a loose confederacy of many
tongues.  Crees from the north came to Detroit as traders' boats became
fewer at Mackinac; but yearly, the English of Hudson Bay were drawing
away more and more Crees.  Down to 1710 it was not unusual for as many
as seven thousand Indians to come to Detroit to trade.  This provided
ample trade for the five thousand dollars yearly permitted Cadillac on
his own account and a vast over-plus to the licensed Quebec and
Montreal Company; but Cadillac garnered a bigger profit because his
supplies cost him nothing.  That infuriated his rivals, who had to
remit a fourth to the King's treasury, a fourth to the Quebec governor,
a fourth to their outfitters and could keep only a fourth for
themselves.  Amid all these tribes were another people, who can
scarcely be called a tribe--the Saulteurs or Indians of the leaping
waters at Mackinac.  The traders called them a plainer name more
descriptive of their mean disposition.  It was Pillagers--thieves, a
class that aimed to keep East and West separate so they could act as
perpetual middlemen.  That division has not yet been eliminated from
modern conditions.

But the tribes most feared by all these Lake and woodland Indians were
the fierce prairie peoples spread from the Missouri and Ohio to the
Great Lakes {154} and Saskatchewan.  These were horse Indians.  Their
horses came from thousand-mile raids on Spanish settlements far to the
southwest.  Though at nominal peace with Spain, Louis XIV did not
discourage his little new pet fort at Detroit from supplying such
raiders with firearms; but the woodland tribes hated these prairie
tribes.  They were ruthless as the Iroquois.  They had closely knit
confederacies: the Sioux as we know them, the Crows, the Omahas, the
Pawnees, the Illinois, and they could all talk a common sign language
as they can to-day.  They knocked old captives on the head.  They took
scalps as trophies.  They adopted only husky children to swell their
tribes.  Women too old or too defiant for pliant brides, they tortured
or killed outright.  Then they retreated in a whirlwind, too swift for
pursuit, pitched battle, exchange of prisoners.  Unlike the Iroquois,
they made war by night and they made war by day.  They struck like
rattlesnakes--with scarcely a warning; but they did not ordinarily
devour prisoners as Algonquins and Hurons and Pacific Coast tribes did.
They were perhaps the nearest to white-man standard of all North
American Indians.  Remember that this was the era in Europe and America
when poor old doddering half-cracked women were dragged out by Church
and State to be tortured and burned as witches; when both sides to
wicked wanton wars of aggression prayed to the {155} same Divine Prince
of Peace for blessing on their slaughter; when disease was rampant as
the will of a God of Healing.  White man and red were slow and blind in
the climb from lower levels to higher.

How many Indians dwelt in all the bounds of what we now call the United
States and Canada?  Never at any time many over a million.  Why?
Because their own wars kept the number down.  But this figure must be
kept strictly to the area north of Mexico.  Below the Rio Grande, there
are to this day at least nine million pure-blood Indians of as great
diversity in tribes and languages as in the North.  The why of this
does not concern Cadillac's life.  It can be briefly enough
explained--utter separation by mountain ranges and zones of temperature
from lowlands to cold temperate upper areas, and origins from three
main ancestral descents--Atlantic Coast, the Midland, the Pacific.

Yet if one set out to prove a million Indian population in primitive
days, one could do it and know the figures lied.  There were from
fifty-nine to sixty-two different confederacies speaking different
languages in North America.  Granted that each confederacy had from
five thousand to seven thousand warriors.  Many had more.  Tag on to
each warrior two old relations, half a dozen wives, bevies of
children--and each confederacy would represent fifty thousand to {156}
one hundred thousand, numbers which we know no confederacy ever
equaled, not the Iroquois in their palmiest days, much less the
wide-spread Sioux tribes; so the figures become mere study-chair
fancies.  Though Indians suffered hideously from white-man firearms,
liquor and disease; though they lost primitive hunting-grounds and were
herded to limited reserves, even on those limited reserves with
inter-tribal wars stopped, they again multiplied and number to-day
almost as many as our estimates from old narrators give them.

The same story could be told of animal and bird life.  Nature preserves
a cruel balance wheel in natural life.  Let one type of animal
multiply, let the males wander undisturbed and protected from the
hunter, and the destruction of female life and the young rapidly
depletes that very species.

Male wolves not only devour their mates but devour the unborn young.
So do the ermine and mink species.  There are certain caribou and deer
species so hostile to their female mates during the birth season that
the females migrate far afield to barren islands to bring forth their
young and do not rejoin the herd till the calves are on grass and able
to fend for themselves.  Australia is the best example of this in the
world.  There, the pest of rabbits is so destructive to crops that
every device has been tried to destroy {157} them.  At first, it was
thought that if the males were destroyed, the rabbit pest would lessen.
Quite the opposite resulted.  Unmolested by males, the females brought
forth their young and the pest multiplied.  Then the device of letting
the males multiply was tried.  What resulted?  The females began to
decrease--partly from parasite disease, partly from destruction of
female life.  There is not a naturalist in the world who does not know
that.  Fortunately, the males destroyed one another in pugnacity.  The
mothers and young multiplied.  It is not a pleasant picture; but it is
nature's cruel balance-wheel by tooth and claw to perpetuate each
species.

Over such a realm of wilderness wild life, Cadillac now came to reduce
and hold his subjects to order by the power of mind helped by the
spiritual holy fathers.  He was only one cog in the great cosmic wheel
rolling life from slime to star; but he was one of the essential cogs
in a great era of transition.

High mountains seem greater as we recede from them.  It is not because
they are higher.  It is because we see them unobstructed by lesser
foot-hills.  So it is with the lives of the truly great.




{158}

CHAPTER VIII

1701-1710

Happy Days in Cadillac's Life--Free of Dominance from Quebec--Reports
More Enthusiastic Than Ever--How He Held the Indians in Check--Picked
Soldiers Loyal to Him--Why He Punished One Soldier with Such a Terrible
Sentence and Yet Seemed to Excuse a Guilty Huron-Ottawa Chief
Implicated in Murder of the Old Recollet Priest--Cadillac Furious to
Find His Old Enemy of Mackinac at the Same Underground
Tricks--Vaillant, the Jesuit, His Friend but Subject to Orders from
Quebec.


While Cadillac's predictions for Detroit had been so enthusiastic in
his memorials, his yearly reports to the King now took on the
exuberance of a boy, which must have delighted the hearts of
Pontchartrain and Maurepas.  Surely at last they had found the remedy
for the complaints pestering them from Quebec.  Cadillac had been
granted full governing powers free of Quebec.

"The white wood from Bois Blanc Isle" would yield all building
material.  "The Hurons, the Ottawas, the Pottawattomies were gathering
in strong villages round his fort and he could train them for defense
against the English and the prairie tribes," whose trade he desired,
but whose treachery kept him ever watchful.  Brandy--yes--they all
demanded it, but they would get it only a few drinks at a time, never
{159} enough to become intoxicated.  He could trade only fifteen
thousand skins a year for himself and not for the present beaver,
because beaver happened to be a glut on the market.  Good!  He didn't
want what was a glut on the market.  Let the English have it for
firearms traded to the Indians and he would get those firearms from the
Indians for beads, trinkets, tin mirrors.  He could use tallow,
buckskins, flour, grain to better advantage.  He had arrived only in
July.  He had fall wheat sown by October.  He was a whirlwind of work
for the first years.  Was he to use the King's gifts to hold the
loyalty of the two thousand Indians?  His Majesty did not object
provided he kept peace, "avoided quarrels with the Jesuits ... didn't
waste energy on enemies ... regarded them in fact as 'gnats.'"  Well,
he would, of course, if they left him alone; but could he?  Here was
Vaillant faithful to him but hurrying back to Quebec in September,
meeting Madame Cadillac on Lake Ontario and reporting her a brave lady
to essay the wilderness perils, but not so loyal to Cadillac on his
return to Detroit.  Here, too, was Carheil, the Jesuit of Mackinac,
pausing at Detroit and bothering Vaillant.  Well, he would send one of
his lieutenants, Chacornacle, back in October to see what was up with
Franois Vaillant who had gone so hurriedly to Quebec two months after
reaching Detroit.  Had he tried to induce some of the {160} soldiers to
run off with him?  He could not.  These soldiers were hand-picked by
Cadillac and when half-pay time came in winter had their own cabins and
in many cases their new Indian brides to keep clothes in order.
Besides, Vaillant before going to Quebec had pronounced La Mothe's
scheme "wonderful."  Though Cadillac had been granted fifteen thousand
dollars to construct the fort, it did not come from the King.  It came
from the traders licensed to trade in the West, and we can realize how
they squirmed at that figure in a year when beaver was a glut on
European markets.  It nearly ruined them; and Radisson saw they paid
it; for he was loyal to Cadillac, who seemed to possess that rare
quality of a good commander, ability to hold the loyalty of close
associates.

It bespoke Cadillac's care for his people that not a death occurred at
the fort for a year except Madame Tonty's infant son, when weaned; for
there was no milk at the fort.  "The portrait of the country is worthy
of a better pen than mine," wrote Cadillac that first year.  "Seas of
sweet water glide gently past our doors.  The banks are lovely meadows
of deep green fringed with fruit trees.  The vines are a roof
embowering the trees in an embrace.  The shy stag, the timid fawn, the
bounding bucks, the turkey hen with bulging crop and numerous broods,
the golden pheasant, the quail, the partridge, the woodcock, the {161}
turtle dove--all sweeten the melancholy of these solitudes.  The
merciless scythe has never shorn these juicy grasses amid parks of
walnut, oak, ash, pines straight as arrows, free of knots and all the
leaves looking up at the sun.  The spring grass is so high a man can
not be seen in it....  Twenty varieties of plums, cherries, hazel-nuts,
walnuts, chestnuts," more than man could gather.  "You could shoot
thirty turkeys in an afternoon for food.  Beside the game birds, were
tanagers, cardinals, cranes, blue birds, threshers, black birds,
robins....  The fish lave in sparkling waters.  The swans are like
great lilies.  The ducks are so thick they hardly move to let canoes
pass amid their flocks."  What a tranquil land!  Happy Cadillac!  One
suspects he was a bit of a poet beneath his iron mask.  "As long as I
have for my protection Justice and Merit, I shall float on the waves
like a king of fishes."  Did Versailles smile?  I suspect it did at
"our good Gascon."

What were his enemies saying about his "earthly paradise" in these
first years?  Their underground reports were so ridiculous that they
defeated their aim.  The lies were not only self-evident, they were
transparent.  Vaudreuil, who became Governor at Quebec from 1703 to
1725, had so fallen under the influence of Cadillac's foes, that he was
foolish enough to transmit these reports to the King right up to 1708.

{162}

"Cadillac was training companies of Indians to serve in royal
regiments."  Of course he was, and they sang the gay troubadour songs
of Old France with his soldiers.

"He is detested by the troops, settlers, savages for a selfish man."
Yet he held all loyal.

"He grants licenses to bushlopers.  He tries to make as much money as
he can.  It may be he does not let the savages have enough liquor at a
time to get drunk, but the price he charges is ruining them....

"He spoke against the Jesuits....

"He sells goods cheaper than at Montreal....

"He compels his blacksmith to shoe his own horses free."  Cadillac had
only one horse at the time of this complaint.

"He will give his soldiers only one-twenty-fourth of a pot of liquor at
a time....

"The meadows are sheer sand.  The prairies are a waste marsh....

"Wheat is bringing Cadillac a large revenue.  The soil is so soft he
can cultivate it with a mattock.  His pigs are killed by savages for
food.  No fruit will grow here.  What does, is too detestable to be
eaten.  The cider is bitter poison gall.  Locusts eat the crops.
Detroit will ruin Canada."

And still La Mothe went on happy as a lord, {163} unconscious as a
mastiff of "the puppies barking at his heels."

The clash seemed to come in two ugly episodes.  Some bushloping soldier
on a drunken spree with trader brandy seems to have killed a comrade
and, with hostile Indians, broiled the victim and eaten him.  Cadillac
had the fellow captured and sentenced him to have "his head broken" and
his body buried in unconsecrated ground.  When the sentence was carried
out, it provided fine arguments for the charge that Cadillac was a
tyrannical master.  Burial in unconsecrated ground meant a terror even
to a felon, which we can scarcely realize.  All classes were
superstitious in that age.  Unconsecrated graves were haunted by demons
to torture souls, and denial of last sacraments entailed torture to
eternity.  Felons to be so buried went quaking to their death, with a
horror that can not be painted.  They usually crumpled in the
executioners' hands and perished screaming at phantoms conjured up by
their own guilty consciences.

The next clash was much more serious.  It ended in the murder or hired
assassination of the good Recollet, Constantine.  Was it murder or
hired assassination?  Cadillac was furious but he probed the matter to
the bottom and whatever his mental conclusions, kept them to himself
under his mocking ironical smile.

Always the prairie tribes--Illinois, Sioux--were {164} at deadly enmity
with the Lake Indians.  In vain the Jesuit and the Recollet had tried
to reconcile these enemies; so Cadillac tried his hand at burying the
war hatchet between the two alien peoples.  When an Illinois buck tried
to set fire to the fort barn, failed and was shot by another so he
could not tell if he had been bribed, Cadillac had the killer--an
impudent Illinois--seized and given "a good whipping with birch rods,"
for attacking any Indian under protection of the fort.  When Sacs and
Menominees of Wisconsin chanced to come to the fort begging gifts to be
at peace, Cadillac assembled friends and enemies and addressed them
boldly, as Frontenac might have, in their own picturesque figures of
speech: "While I was sleeping peacefully and dreaming only of good to
all my children, a wicked bear climbed to the top of a tree and let an
ax drop on my friends and me.  I will tear down this tree and tear up
its roots and burn it to ashes," and he hurled the war hatchet down and
gave gifts of friendship.  The assembled tribes grunted applause and
knew the meaning of the symbols.  Bear was the clan sign of a Huron
chief, Pesant or Pezant.

While the report of the powwow went to France only in 1707, the
document undoubtedly referred to the tragedy when Constantine had been
shot in the back by Huron bucks.  All the Indians were camped {165}
round Detroit trading their furs.  The Miamis and Illinois of the Ohio
were particularly offensive and impudent.  This, the Lake tribes
resented.  Were they not encamped under the French flag?  Some young
Huron bucks acknowledging Pezant as chief had fired at the hostile
bucks from the southwest.  They had killed thirty Miamis.  Constantine
went out to remonstrate.  He carried the Cross and implored both sides
of the fight to cease firing and meet next day in powwow to reconcile
the quarrel.  Some of the Hurons, realizing the danger in such a
rabble, gave the priest a push back toward the fort gate.  Did he trip?
If so, the Hurons mistook it for a fatal shot from the prairie enemies,
and let blaze their guns.  A shot from Pezant and his bucks hit Father
Constantine in the back and killed him.  Both the Miamis and Hurons
with French flags on their bayonet-points scampered in guilty terror.
Cadillac sent soldiers in pursuit to travel night and day and get the
murderers at any cost.  They captured and held Pezant and three
hostages as guarantee of good conduct and lodged them in the
guard-room.  Then when Pezant escaped to take refuge afar on Manitoulin
Island in Lake Huron, Cadillac made no attempt to recapture the rascal
and punish him severely.

To say that Constantine's death must have plunged the Cadillac family
in grief, is putting it mildly.  He {166} had baptized their children
and was the loved and honored friend.  Why, then, had Cadillac not
punished the murderers?  Was this the way "to wipe out a blood-stain
with a brown skin?" his enemies asked.  Had he not intentionally
permitted Pezant to escape?

To which Cadillac might have truthfully answered that he was not sure
Pezant had not been bribed by Montreal traders at Mackinac to commit
the crime.  He came from Mackinac.  Cadillac had to hold the friendship
of the Lake Indians to defend Detroit from the plains tribes.  He was
glad enough to have the scamp Pezant far enough away not to create more
trouble.

[Illustration: Bronze tablet in honor of Madame Cadillac.  _Courtesy,
Burton Historical Collection, Detroit._]

Now go back prior to both the soldier's crime and the death of Father
Constantine.  Perhaps Cadillac let his suspicions run away with his
good judgment.  He knew the Jesuits at Mackinac had been compelled to
abandon their loved mission of St. Ignace in 1706; but he personally
liked and had trusted the Jesuit Vaillant up to that hurried trip of
the Black Robe back to Quebec in the fall of 1701.  From the next year
on to 1704, Vaillant had never been the same frank friend.  He seemed
constrained by two opposing motives: his own friendly one and then a
guarded attitude at all conferences, where he sat silent.

There had been a powwow with the Indians one lovely November day.  All
the woods were painted in {167} the glory of autumn frost tints--a
mosaic lovelier than any tapestry in Versailles; and in anticipation of
the good things going on the camp table the soldiers, spick and span as
Cadillac always exacted from rank and file, were humming the gay
troubadour ditties.  They were happy.  They were contented.  They were
loyal.  Some soldiers and officers sat in a tent at the midday dinner.
The soldiers' loose tongues may have lied, but they had told Cadillac
that Vaillant had lost faith in Detroit ever succeeding.  He had
advised them to escape or get transferred back to Quebec.  Vaillant was
present at the dinner.  He had asked the blessing, and the meal of
venison and fish and a sip of good home-brew had begun.  Cadillac did
not believe Vaillant could lie; and he didn't.  With his usual
directness, he began to ask Vaillant before the soldiers why the priest
thought Detroit would not succeed as a King's colony.  With the
soldiers present, that was an embarrassing question.  Detroit was a
King's colony, independent of Quebec and therefore must not be
maligned.  Vaillant may have conscientiously believed Cadillac's
enemies were too strong for La Mothe; but he could not very well say so
in public.  The priest ran from the table and begged to be excused: the
food had caused a sudden acute indigestion.

[Illustration: The best statue of Cadillac in niche of Detroit public
building.  _Courtesy, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit._]

As the priest retreated with speed for his own house {168} in the fort,
the rough soldiers uttered shouts of loud laughter.  "What have you put
in Father Vaillant's food?" they asked.  "He seems to be in a great
hurry."

Cadillac let blaze his furious temper.  It was just as unwise as the
Jesuit's undignified retreat under fire of frank questions.  "If I were
in France, I'd clap him in the Bastile for this."  To the royal
ministers in France, he reported: "I had as lief see a clown emperor of
the moon" as such men masters of Detroit.  To this, the imperial answer
was "to keep peace with the Jesuits."  The royal masters were learning
reluctantly that they could not rule an empire in the New World from
the distance of Paris and Versailles.

Over Cadillac's dreams as over the Grand Monarch's were rising ominous
clouds.  Though both acknowledged in prayer a Divine Master, neither
yet acknowledged that he might be a tool in the hands of a Divine
Destiny.

Though France came so nearly grasping all North America above the Rio
Grande, the collapse of the Stuarts in England, the successes of
Marlborough on the Continent, the defeats even of the stubborn William
of Orange were losing all in Europe which Louis was gaining in America.
This was reflected in the loss of Port Royal by treaty and the
restoration of all Hudson Bay forts after the Queen Anne's War.
Instead of the troubadour songs we now find Canadian {169} boatmen and
soldiers trolling off the endless ditty of _Marlborough Going to the
Wars_ and "commanders being carried home dead to my lady weeping in the
tower" and then the singer "going to his bed because there was nothing
more to be said."  That old song is trolled off to this day to the
stamp of feet keeping time and the music of fiddle and concertinas and
mouthorgan.  I have heard it on the Upper Ottawa roared out by habitant
lumbermen.

The only thing that threw Cadillac off his poise was any slur cast at
Madame Cadillac's reputation.  When enemies could not prove she had
come to Detroit by Mackinac, the charge was shifted that one of her
boatmen engaged to go on up to Mackinac had taken part in unlicensed
trade.  Again the evidence for and against is flatly contradicted.  He
probably did; and the Cadillacs could retort: How could that be
hindered in a region where even garrison officers turned bushlopers and
keepers of brandy shops?  On the spot, the Jesuits could not hinder it
and if they seized illicit liquor found themselves accused of
unlicensed trade.

Cadillac was censured for permitting the Indians to build a wigwam fort
so close to his own walls, but he did this to protect himself from
attack by plains Indians.




{170}

CHAPTER IX

1710-1712

Cadillac Gets the Much Desired Decoration of St. Louis, but a
Marquisate Is Still Dangled before Him as a Rainbow to His Life's
End--He Prospers So Exceedingly His Income Mounts to What Would be
Twenty-five Thousand Dollars a Year in Our Money and Excites Furious
Envy of Weaker Rulers in Quebec Making Only Five Thousand Dollars a
Year--The Thunderbolt from the Blue Falls on Cadillac--He Is Ordered to
Assume the Governorship of Louisiana, the King's Vastest Domain.


The sunlight of prosperity still seemed to shine on Cadillac.  His
rents mounted to one thousand five hundred dollars a year.  On the
licensed traders going bankrupt in Detroit, he was given their
privileges subject to the usual tax for the King, but with his Gascon
thrift and careful weeding out of all unlicensed bushloper trade, these
profits began to mount to twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and his
army salary had been advanced to two thousand crowns a year.  Of this
total profit, as later events proved, having completed his fort,
Cadillac now began to save for the strong box of real coin, which has
ever been the secret of French thrift.  He had not yet been granted a
baronetcy, but was decorated with a higher knighthood--the Order of St.
Louis.  The marquisate for which he was keen was dangling before him--a
rainbow of {171} yearly hopes.  For his eldest son now shooting up to
man size, he petitioned the full rank of ensign cadet.  This, too,
while not denied, was compromised by a junior cadetship carrying a
small salary.  To the youthful La Mothe Junior, and to his eldest
daughter, he granted seigniories across the river in what is now
Ontario.

Nor did he live meanly as at first in a log cabin chinked with moss and
clay.  By labor in payment for rents, boards sawed from the rough
timbers were used inside the best houses as walls.  Over these Cadillac
had tapestries and fur robes.  Over the rough hewn planks of the floor,
there might not lie the deep red carpets of the Chteau St. Louis; but
furs as soft as velvet made up this deficiency.  If you look up what
Cadillac's boats, now coming from Quebec each summer by way of Niagara,
were fetching, you will see what was beginning to go in the furnishings
of the best houses at Detroit: stoves, mattresses, Venetian drinking
glasses, rare old family silver, and chandeliers which may have been
for the Church of St. Anne or for the Commandant's home.  Sheets,
dishes for the table, damask dining linens, good table silver knives,
the equipment dear to a fine housekeeper's heart--all were in the
annual inventory.  Full medicine chests, gold lace galore for presents
to Indian chiefs, arms of the very best caliber picked by himself {172}
in his autumn flying visits to Quebec, tobacco in plenty for Indians
and soldiers came in the yearly flotilla of six boat-loads.  In one
report to the King in 1705, he says: "I will not take a slovenly
dressed man among my soldiers."  In the report of 1706, he numbers his
perfectly equipped soldiers at two hundred, and his Indian auxiliaries
at four hundred.  His friends called him "wonder-worker."  His enemies
said "graft."  To which Cadillac retorted, "Send a good man here
secretly and incog. to investigate and I shall abide by the result," a
challenge which his enemies for obvious reasons could not accept.  It
would have disclosed what was the cause of opposite conditions in other
frontier posts.

When trade was in full swing at Detroit, during June and July, there
were seven thousand Indians camped about the fort.  When the Indians
went off to hunt for the winter, the encampment dwindled to two
thousand permanent red-skin dwellers.  The summer presented a great
opportunity to the missionaries, of which they were fully conscious.
Cattle and hogs and poultry were increasing fast.  Horses came slower.
Perhaps La Mothe hoped to get horses by trade with plains tribes from
the far Spanish settlements to the south.  The man seemed as far
visioned as an eagle from his own native Pyrenees, and crafty as a
serpent in his silent wisdom to let results speak for {173} themselves;
but his prosperity excited furious envy.  Why, this income was more
than the combined salaries of governor and intendant at Quebec.  No
wonder they fumed!  But by open enmity they could not dislodge
Cadillac.  He was too deeply entrenched in royal favor--too deeply for
his own good.  He seemed too big for his place.  His foes no longer
assailed his record.  They seemed rather to suggest he might be of
larger service to the King in a wider sphere of action.  These
suggestions from Montreal and Quebec ran along from 1706 to 1710.  They
were chiefly voiced by Governor Vaudreuil and endorsed by De Ramezay,
acting as a deputy in Montreal.

"We can now do without Canadian favors forever," Cadillac penned; but
sometimes when he read the suggestions and charges against him, the old
ironical strain broke out in his letters to France.  "O Saint
Frontenac, pray for me," he wrote in a medley of the Latin prayer and
his own amusement at the tactics of enemies.  The real cause of anxiety
to him was that it took two years for him to send a letter to the King
and receive instructions; and he was now sure from the tenor of letters
coming back that his dispatches in the royal mail were being opened at
Quebec and read and accompanied with counter-charges to get in fresh
accusations, which he could not answer for another two years.

{174}

By way of placating the missionaries he now agreed to pay each five
hundred dollars a year--one hundred dollars from his own pocket, the
rest from bushlopers and voyageurs to whom he granted licenses.

Considering that it required Cadillac two months each autumn to go to
and from Quebec, Madame Cadillac must have been an exceedingly vigilant
"watch-dog" for him; and young Radisson, left as clerk by Quebec
traders, must have been an honest fellow to hold loyal to La Mothe
against the Quebec clique.

Why Radisson, though employed by Cadillac's enemies, kept faithful to
La Mothe, may be easily understood.  Radisson's father, his Uncle
Chouart, his Cousin Jean, all of Three Rivers, had twenty years earlier
been ruined by the same cliques in Montreal and Quebec.

Yet these were happy years to Cadillac.  His boys were educated to
their twelfth year in the monasteries of Quebec, the girls in the
Ursuline convents, when both would return with their father to Detroit.
They loved the free happy life, with all the culture and comfort of a
St. Lawrence seigniory, but with none of the extravagant spending which
kept all the seigniories in New France on the ragged edge of
poverty--display and an empty purse to sustain a general farce.  There
was the trip back over silvered lakes, the {175} great portage past the
beauties and grandeurs of Niagara, the advance up Lake Erie usually
calm enough before September equinox gales, when the children, versed
in the old troubadour songs of the phantom huntsman's horn, must have
heard as they nightly camped the deep baying of the moose calling
mates, the shrill scream of the wildcats in the heavy forests, and the
lonely eagle cry at dawn.  One of the most frequented camps on Lake
Erie was at the mouth of Grand River, where I, myself, have often tried
to recall the scene amid woods a flare of gold and red mosaics
beggaring in beauty any painted tapestry.  Grand River was not a very
grand river in the low water of autumn; but nothing could dim the
age-long beauties of the frost-tinted woods.  This, too, was a great
camp for the Indians with birch and ram's-horns to imitate and lure to
death the moose.

Then on westward and up the narrow straits to the happy welcome home.
Bells rang.  Guns fired.  Feasts on barbecued oxen and venison made
glad the hearts of soldiers and Indians.  Troubadour songs, Indian
dances, mouth-organs, concertinas, habitant fiddles, army fifes,
trombone wails, the _tum-tum-tum_ of tom-toms, white- and red-man
drums--dispelled depression from isolation in solitudes of danger on
all sides.

The long lonely winters might have brewed {176} discontent for idle
hands; but there was too much to be done for any hands to be idle.  The
year's returns must be checked up.  The supplies for hunters must be
arranged.  Gifts were distributed to hold loyalty--in some years
running up to six thousand dollars, and there was no grafting on those
gifts.  They went direct to the Indians, from tiniest papoose in a
moss-bag cradle to the most aged chief decked with gold lace coat,
beplumed hat, sword and the best gun Cadillac could give him.  Then
came Christmas with its holy chants and New Year's with a whole week of
gaiety, and, before the fort realized, the year had swung into the
Indian season, when the sap mounted the maple and all families were out
for the spring harvest of sugar.  Followed swiftly still busier
periods: putting in crops by the farm settlers, preparing trade for the
returning Indian hunters.  Creamy birch canoes came gliding in over the
waters of Lake Huron laden with pelts to the dead-line.  Indians from
the Illinois and Miami and Mississippi came with their dogs as
burden-bearers in shafts called "travois" on which were strapped furs,
children too big for the moss-bags on squaws' shoulders, old folk too
feeble for march on foot, dumped in rope and deer-thong hammocks.  Then
the tents went up in thousands round Detroit, buckskin for plains
tribes, canvas for traders; and campfires twinkled from dark to early
dawn, and camp {177} smoke scented the summer air, and fort gates were
clapped shut and trading done either through a little wicket gate or
out on the fields.  Cadillac took care that all chiefs admitted in the
fort should see sentinels on parade behind the main gates to the water
side and cannon loaded for quick fire both behind the big gates and
poking snouts from the upper port-holes of the bastions.

The Commandant seemed to overlook no precaution.  He seemed to forefend
against any attack from any side; and for that, the Indians respected
and obeyed him.  He was their master and they knew it.  Yet in the
midst of this almost fool-proof security came the bolt from the blue--a
thunderclap from a clear cloudless sky.  It staggered Cadillac.  It
left him momentarily stunned as by stroke of lightning, which did not
kill but left a shock of horror that Old France should have, could have
been so blind to the real situation.  It came in the dispatches of
September 13, 1710, transmitted through Quebec: "Having appointed you
to the governorship of Louisiana with Monsieur Dubuisson as La Forest's
second command till Monsieur La Forest can arrive, it is the will of
His Majesty that you should go at once to Louisiana overland.  Do not
put any obstacles in the way.  Have these officers recognized.  It is
too great a chance for you not to congratulate you in the choice which
His {178} Majesty has just made of you for the governorship of
Louisiana.  My compliments to Madeline and Madame Cadillac.  This is
for the welfare of the service." Signed "Vaudreuil."

Cadillac was no fool.  He knew he was being promoted to have his head
metaphorically "cut off."  There were three chances to avert ruin: to
get His Majesty's ear before Louis could die; to depend on La Forest,
who was his friend and trusted lieutenant on the Ohio; to depend on
Dubuisson, who didn't want the office.

Now, La Forest was no longer young.  He was in too wretched a condition
of health from years of exposure in the wilds to assume any
governorship.  He was engaged, if he was not already married, to the
rich Juchereau widow.  There was, it happens, a Juchereau in Madame
Cadillac's family.  He, too, up in Hudson Bay in the elder Radisson's
day had suffered losses from the Le Moyne raids and witnessed the
results of the dishonest diplomacy between France and England.  He had
been a most loyal officer to France.  He had refused naturalization
papers to England and toiled all his life for the extension of French
empire on the Western World only to find himself a poor man dependent
on his wife's wealth to rescue him from the poverty that had engulfed
all his associates.  La Forest would not risk his wife's money.  Nor
had he {179} personally the money to take over La Mothe's private
property.  There could be honest delay on that score.

Dubuisson didn't want the job.  He was honestly afraid of it as he
afterward acknowledged and demonstrated.  Dubuisson proved himself a
good officer later in European wars but he was unfit for a frontier
post commander.

Whom, then, had Cadillac's enemies secretly slated to succeed him under
the camouflage of bluff to the King?

We can let out the secret which the reader has probably guessed.  None
other than little Jacques de Bleury Sabrevois, now over forty years of
age, the sorry hero of the fight which Cadillac had no doubt forgotten
with the mental attic junk of many a fight before and after the brawl
in Lower Town.  For twelve years now Sabrevois had proved his mettle as
a fighting Gascon for the King.  For twelve years by open petition and
secret intrigue, he had plagued the Governor of New France and the
royal ear in Versailles for promotion to the governorship of some
frontier post--Mackinac, Detroit, the Ohio; but he was not yet
appointed to Detroit.  His Majesty may have had a long memory, or he
may have miscalculated on the real "welfare of the service."  Louisiana
was troubling him sorely.  Cadillac had proved his worth at Quebec, in
Mackinac, in the upbuilding of Detroit.  Why not {180} transfer him
with full independent power as governor to Louisiana?  Louis, though
aware his own vitality was ebbing, had preserved his mental clarity to
his seventieth year; Cadillac was now only fifty-two.

"It will be impossible for these new officers to arrive at once, but
lodge them conveniently as you can," the King's contradictory dispatch
had run on.  "Make a full census of all property in Detroit, a proper
valuation of royal property and your own, and refer the same to M. de
Pontchartrain....  On no account sell the animals you possess.  Hand
over all as well as powder and shot to the new commandant.  Advise the
Indians to hunt together in peace."  "Humph!" comments Cadillac.  "To
hunt in peace?  As well tell wolf packs to run in peace....  Does
Vaudreuil think at the crack of a whip he can order these tribes at
Detroit?"  "I exhort you to live in peace."  "Hypocrite," comments La
Mothe.

Cadillac's first move was to play for delay.  It would give him at
least time to know where he was in this deplorable double crisscross of
Quebec intrigue and Versailles perplexity on the part of a King who
trusted him and of ministers who confided directly in him.  Such delay
was not procrastination; it was caution about jumping from the
frying-pan into the fire.  And such cautious policy did not hinder
quick action.  No doubt he and his wife sat deep in the night {181}
conferring on the course of wisdom.  The wise policy seemed to be for
Cadillac to leave at once for Quebec.  The dates give one the
impression that he set out within twenty-four hours, leaving Madame
Cadillac at the pilot wheel in Detroit.  It needs no proof that she was
a very brave woman, indeed, to remain on in a frontier post, where
spies might have stirred up such deviltries as led to Constantine's
death.  That very summer, Cadillac expected a thousand from the prairie
tribes to come to Detroit for trade.  Cadillac could rely on his
garrison.  For the present he could rely also on his Indian troops.
The uncertain factors--the prairie tribes and bushlopers at large--had
dispersed for the winter; so, however many days elapsed, he was off at
lightning speed for Quebec, penning as he traveled dispatches to the
royal Court for Quebec frigates to convey that year.  These dispatches
demanded to know exactly the meaning of the contradictory orders.  He
was to forbid "the miller to pay over charges, the settlers to pay
rents, the families to sell cattle till his successor came."  He was to
depart "at once," but see that his successors "were received
courteously, acknowledged and properly lodged," and his successors
could not arrive for a year.

"They have overshot the mark," thought Cadillac.  That might be, but
the order finally to be obeyed might ruin Cadillac.  The courts of
Canada had no {182} jurisdiction over Detroit.  If lawsuits for
property were filed and won, there was no way to enforce collections,
even if his successors had a sou to meet the overwhelming losses.

"They think they have me tied up in their snarl," commented Cadillac;
and as after events proved, they had.  "O Saint Frontenac, pray for
me," groaned La Mothe.




{183}

CHAPTER X

1710-1718

Cadillac's Frantic Haste to Obtain Delay in Transfer to Louisiana
Proves Futile--The Quebec Clique Have Defeated Him Beforehand--Louis
XIV Dies in 1715 and Cadillac Has Proceeded to the Gulf of Mexico--What
Happened in Detroit within Three Years Left the Fort a Ruined Outpost


Cadillac found at Quebec what he expected.  The card-sharpers had
stacked the decks against him.  Governor Vaudreuil may not have been in
the fur-trade cliques; but his wife's relations were, and allied with
them were the intendants.  Cadillac proved one point that gave him hope
of averting ruin.  La Forest, his friend, was faithful to him and
paralyzed with surprise at the royal order to take over Detroit.  On
the plea of failing health, which carried him to his grave in two
years, he tried to excuse himself from going; but this was in vain.
Vaudreuil overruled him and bade him prepare to take over La Mothe's
property and the King's fort.  This insistent wrong-headedness on the
part of Vaudreuil gives the impression that while the Governor may not,
himself, have been in the looting rings, he was influenced by them
through his wife's relations, who were the center of the ring to enrich
themselves by breaking the law.  Ring by ring, the {184} corruption
that was spreading in Versailles, was now widening in New France.
Fortunately for Cadillac, when La Forest tried to obtain credit to buy
Detroit holdings, not a bank in Quebec would extend credit, not a fur
company help him to finance.  La Forest was rapidly nearing the end of
his life-span; but Dubuisson was ordered to proceed to Detroit.  It was
now too late for Cadillac to go overland to Louisiana; so he had gained
a year's leeway for plans.

In this year, he made up his careful valuation of all property--an
inventory of his own and the King's totaled one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars, of which eighteen thousand dollars to twenty-seven
thousand dollars belonged to the King.  In other words, Cadillac's
accounts credited to the King all the fort equipment, and the variation
in two sets of amounts filed in the courts was the variation in the
value of coinage at the time, of which more anon, very much more when
you come to the story of what John Law's Mississippi Bubble did to the
value of French coin.  The amount, one hundred thousand dollars, owing
to himself, allowing for the deflation of currency in France and the
adulteration of silver, Cadillac calculated on his own personal
property for which he had advanced every sou from his own earnings as
seignior.  This inventory went forward to Pontchartrain and was later
affirmed as correct.

{185}

In the year's delay, Cadillac went back to Detroit and brought Madame
Cadillac and his family to Quebec to await the dispatches by the next
royal frigate in the autumn.  Dubuisson went reluctantly to Detroit.
We may as well finish with Dubuisson's rgime at Detroit and leave
Cadillac with his suit filed, preparing for the shift to Louisiana.

Now comes the darkest page in all Detroit's history, blacker far than a
hundred years later in the War of 1812.  By November, 1711, Dubuisson
reports "all the tribes in a flame of conflagration....  By what
miracle had Cadillac controlled them? ... War was on among all the
hostile tribes....  Detroit was all in a commotion of constant alarm.
There was no obedience inside the fort, nor out."  The Indians knew
Cadillac's successors were beaten and simply defied them.

Dubuisson's first mistake seems to have been from sheer fear.  To
protect the royal property and keep it intact from Cadillac's
possessions, he cut the fort in half.  This withdrew the garrison
inside, foreshortened areas and turned Cadillac's possessions outside
armed protection, as well as the church, the missions, the priests'
residences, the hospital, the warehouse supplies.  "It is terrible,"
wrote a Franciscan friar.  "It would affright you to see what is going
on under the change."  Cellars, stores, live stock, {186} church
ornaments in silver, furnishings, holy vessels, bells, candles, tools,
medicines, harness, wheat, flour, were within a year all exposed to
promiscuous theft.  The priest's inventory of loss by depredation
tallied amazingly with the notary's list of destruction filed in
Cadillac's affidavit.

Writes Dubuisson to Vaudreuil in 1712: "the Mascouten Sioux are coming
one thousand strong, three hundred warriors, to slaughter us.  So are
the Miamis and Illinois.  They camp contrary to my orders within fifty
paces from the fort and we have only thirty French soldiers who remain
loyal to us.  They kill my stock and I dare not say one word.  They
tried to steal a settler's daughter.  They tried to set fire to our
fort houses.  [This was the usual device of shooting flaming arrows.]
They meant to burn me in my fort.  I have sent messengers to the
Ottawas and Hurons to rush help to us; but the winds and weather delay
them reaching us."

In the meantime Dubuisson had the buildings outside the fort--church,
houses, Cadillac's residence--all burned to avoid giving lodgment to
enemies.  The French were toiling in the desperate fright of men in a
panic.  As one of the French engineers later wrote, all these tribes
were really rallying to Cadillac's call for them to assemble in trade
during May of 1712.  The hosts gathering had brought their wives and
{187} children.  To be sure, there were three hundred warriors; but
raiders did not permit families to accompany them.  That ought to have
quieted poor Dubuisson's fears; but the man was in a fright panic, when
he literally drew what he dreaded.

Why not?  The Indians at once recognized that the French Commandant was
a weakling and as ever rushed at one another's throats.  Dubuisson had
to cut all his corn and wheat before ripened to save it from trampling
and theft.  "We are thanking the Lord a thousand times that we are not
destroyed but for whose help we are irretrievably lost.  We have had to
scamper to get new stockades up and our bastions strengthened, which I
have pigeonholed for guns and where I have placed two swivel cannon.
Eight French have come up from the Ohio to help us.  I hardly know
which way to turn....  I hardly know on which saint to call."  These
were the frightened whimperings of a weak and terrified man.

Came enough Indians all that spring of 1712.  Foxes and Mascoutens and
Illinois in league against six hundred Hurons and Pottawattomies
friendly enough with the French as long as they could obtain arms to
murder enemies.  Dubuisson seems to have iron-sheeted his fort gates as
a precaution against fire, and he kept all his gates shut and almost
sealed; for these plundering tribes of the south--Illinois, {188}
Missouris, Osages, armed by the English traders--boded no peace, but
the Hurons and Ottawas welcomed their advance and flourished French
flags and from their own wigwam forts outside Cadillac's old moat
prepared to show Dubuisson how to make war.  The Lake tribes' wigwam
fort outside Cadillac's moat flaunted French flags and the chiefs,
under an old Ottawa named Saginaw, demanded entrance to Dubuisson's
stockades and poured in to the number of six hundred, when every
warrior could see for himself that the French were at the mercy of any
demands each chief cared to make.  Not thus would Cadillac have
conceded to impudent demands.  He would have been out burying the war
hatchet and refusing arms till all tribes complied with his orders.

The fight seems to have begun on May thirteenth, over a rumor that
Mascoutens had captured three women of the Lake tribes, and one was the
wife of Saginaw.  Whether these women were to be tortured, broiled and
eaten seems doubtful.  The plains tribes did not eat enemies; but the
rumor was enough to set war-drums beating in "a frightful din ... shots
flying in a hail, war-dances going on all night and such shouts the
earth trembled."  Again the sheer fright of exaggerated terror.

Dubuisson gave his allies, the Lake people, all the powder and shot and
lead they asked.  "Hah," {189} capered an old Huron chief, "now our
enemies are all dead men."

From the respective positions of the enemies from the south, it looked
as if they were.  Then came panting to the fort a Huron with the
welcome word that more Ottawas and Hurons were on the way south to help
the French.  Cadillac would have been outside his palisades to bury the
war hatchet and avert the impending doom.  Dubuisson cowered in terror.
All the warriors were now stripped naked but for the arrow quivers
slung over shoulders and French guns now uncased.  Cadillac would have
known what these signs boded and stopped instantly such war
preparations of two lawless, bloodthirsty mobs.  "Yes," the Lake chiefs
harangued, "they were ready to perish for their white father," but they
want "more food, tobacco, powder, bullets," and they got it free from a
commandant who played the fool.

The siege went on for nineteen days.  The Mascoutens dug themselves in
trenches five feet deep.  When Detroit streets were being excavated for
sewer pipes, the bones of these dead plains tribesmen were found in
heaps.  They were gathered up, placed in a large box and reburied where
they had perished.  In the plains tribes there is a confusion of old
Indian names, which may as well be cleared up here.  Long before white
men came, a branch of the Wisconsin {190} Foxes seems to have broken
off from the family tribe and joined the Miamis of the Ohio and the
Mascoutens of the prairies.  Like all family quarrels, the enmity was
very bitter; and the Foxes from the south were ever ready to leap at
the throats of the Lake Foxes.  The Foxes of the south had English
firearms.  Those of the north had French muskets.  Both types of musket
were terribly clumsy old "match-light" guns.  When visiting Whitehall,
London, which has the best collection of old armor in the world, I
asked the curator in charge of the old armor to explain to me very
carefully the working of all "match lighters" and "triggers" from the
invention of gunpowder.  The triggers looked like hammers.  They were
and came down like mallets.  Below was the cap.  The cap was composed
of resin and punk and inflammable stuff which a blow would ignite.
These were "the matches."  "Match lighted" was a term of honor to
defeated foes.  If surrender were honorable or brave, the defeated foe
was allowed to march out, gun over shoulder and "match lighter" in the
cap--perhaps to be handed over later, but it was acknowledgment that he
had been a brave and honorable foeman.

The Hurons and French erected platforms twenty feet high and poured
such a rain of flaming arrows and bullets down on the entrenched that
the Mascoutens could not reach drinking water.  Over five {191} hundred
Indians blocked escape that way and prisoners trying to run off were
caught and tortured and burned during the night.  Cadillac would have
let them escape.  Still defiant, the Mascoutens hung out red flags with
painted symbols that they would dye the land with the blood of whites
for this work.  It was said that these flags were English blankets to
show the French that the southern tribes had English firearms.

At last one evening came an aged Mascouten with a flag of truce to the
fort.

"We are, indeed, dead men," he said.

The three women were given up.  The exact words with which they were
surrendered are a true index to the terrible character of these tribal
wars.  "The morsels of flesh which you ask for, we give you.  We did
not devour them."  This may have been a delicate sarcasm that while the
Lake tribes did eat enemies, the plains people did not.

If Dubuisson had thought that such surrender would give pause to the
slaughter, he mistook the character of these old feuds.  Though the
aged Mascouten offered gifts to appease the Saginaw people for the
insult in capturing three squaws, now returned unharmed by as much as a
hair, did that glut the blood-lust of the frenzied jubilant Lake
warriors?  It did not.  Dubuisson did not stop the fight now because he
could not.  He reported that he spoke both to the {192} peacemaker and
the Saginaws "sternly."  "Go back to your trenches.  We are going to
fire at you again," said Dubuisson, and all that night the battle raged.

Lake tribes fired again as fast and furious as ever.  Fire arrows came
from the cooped Mascoutens setting the straw roofs of Huron wigwams and
the brush covering of fort houses in a flame.  While the French put out
the fires by tearing off roofs and rushing for water, the prairie
people, deserted by their other allies, now attempted a desperate
retreat toward the river.  The French desisted from pursuit.  Dubuisson
was now in utter terror.  His fort had been stripped of all food
supplies by the rabble mob of Indians.  When short of food, the Indian
stops fighting.  If the Lake tribes now ran off, the prairie people
could have turned on the French and massacred them to a man.  One could
fill pages here with the harangues of the chiefs screamed back and
forward from trenches and scaffolding.  "Do you think to terrify us
with red blankets?" yelled the Lake warriors.  "If the earth is dyed
red, it will be your blood."  Dubuisson tried now to stop the useless
fighting; but the brief pause only gave chance for the prairie people
to scamper for water and cross-firing broke the powwow.  Dubuisson
slewed his swivel guns round over the entrenched prairie people, of
whom hundreds were women and children.  For four days, all had fought
on their feet {193} twenty-four hours a day.  Song and shout from the
Lake people tore the air to tatters.  Over eighty women and children of
the prairie people had perished.  In vain Dubuisson would have bought
their lives by presents to the victors.  The Lake warriors were deaf to
all appeals for mercy.  Dubuisson had to abandon the vanquished to
their fate.  He now attempted to hold the Lake warriors by taunting
them with cowardice.

In the dark toward the end of the siege, the Mascoutens fled or tried
to flee and succeeded in reaching Hog Island, where for four more days
the unequal fight went on.  Some one hundred and fifty men escaped by
plunging in the river.  Of the captives, only a few of the youngest
children and women were spared.  The others were shot, bludgeoned,
tortured each day.  It is estimated that the French and Lake people
lost sixty to seventy warriors, the enemy over one thousand.  From that
fatal battle, May thirteenth to June first, the Mascoutens and the
Kickapoos were enemies to the French for a hundred years.

Dubuisson retired and at high mass offered thanks to God.  One wonders
for what?  "I am, indeed, deadly tired of Detroit," he wrote Vaudreuil.
"You may guess what my finances and hopes are--a poor devil to be
thrown on charity."  He had failed as commandant in a brief year.  At
last came La Forest with fifty more French soldiers; but La Forest died
within {194} two years of assuming office; and in his place came
Jacques Charles M. de Bleury Sabrevois.

From 1716, Sabrevois was to have a monopoly of all trade, a favor
Cadillac had never asked nor wanted, and within a year Vaudreuil had to
acknowledge that "he is an agreeable man, but not liked by the
savages."  Yet he had to take a crack at Cadillac's claims: "His
possessions ought not to hold good because the savages have compelled
all the settlers to flee.  Nor should his grants to his children hold
good."

By 1717, Sabrevois was recalled.  The Indians complained, "He dealt
badly with us, ... He treated us harshly.  He refuses to give us suck
[liquor]."  So Tonty, Cadillac's first scout, was sent to Detroit.

Before he was recalled, Sabrevois was imploring to be relieved.
Sabrevois may have been an intriguer and hoped to profit by cheating
the royal revenues; but he was no timid fool.  In a burst of disgust,
he had written to Cadillac: "The common opinion is that Detroit will be
abandoned.  Tonty is driving all trade to the devil.  The people with
titles to land beg you to protect them.  I did not know you had gone to
Paris.  Detroit is plain hell.  Never was there such disorder."

It is one thing for an inferior commander to undermine and dislodge a
good commander.  It is another thing for the underling to fill the good
man's place.  Sabrevois, now close on his fiftieth year, was man {195}
enough to acknowledge his mistake.  He probably wrote this letter to
excuse himself for his own failures; for he knew Cadillac was now in
France.  Though Louis XIV had died, Cadillac was pressing his claims
for losses, and Sabrevois' evidence would not only help Cadillac's
lawsuit but excuse Sabrevois' own record for failure.  Vaudreuil's
report against Sabrevois was: "He made no repairs.  He left the
stockade down.  He gave few presents to the Indians.  He had no
capacity to hold Indians.  He was ever a very grasping fellow."

But we have gone far ahead of Cadillac's story to pursue the story of
Detroit.  Years were to elapse before he found himself in Paris to
receive Sabrevois' letter.  Meanwhile, how had he fared?  He had, you
recall, withdrawn Madame Cadillac from Detroit before Dubuisson came.
He had dashed to Quebec to press his lawsuit and intentionally or
unintentionally delayed departure from Quebec for Louisiana.  When he
did go, he went not "overland" as ordered, but later on a King's
frigate.  By the time Sabrevois' letters reached Cadillac in Paris, La
Mothe had retired from Louisiana and for full ten years spent his time
shuttling back and forward between Paris and Quebec pressing his
lawsuit for losses.




{197}

PART THREE

LOUISIANA



{199}

CHAPTER XI

1712-1713

Cadillac Sails to the New Sphere of Activity--On the Frigate Bearing
Him and His Family, He Learns Much of the Troubles Brewing in Louisiana
and the Inheritance of Confusion to Which He Has Been Assigned--De
Soto, La Salle, Iberville, Bienville, All Have Failed and Three out of
Four Perished on or near the Gulf.


To Louisiana, then, Cadillac had sailed on the royal frigate to hold
another guardian gateway to Louis' vast Western Empire.

He could not have sailed the year he arrived in the Gulf of Mexico; for
the royal frigate could not have reached Quebec early enough for it to
be in the Gulf of Mexico waters by May.  It must have paused at West
Indian Island possessions of the French and possibly at Pensacola, then
Spanish, redolent with traditions of Spanish adventures almost two
centuries prior.  There is one secret stairway there yet under the moat
of the old fort right out to sea.  It dates back to Alvarado and had
been built to give the garrison, when besieged, secret retreat out to
their ships at anchor.  There is a comical legend about that
underground passage, current to our own day; and few, who know the
inside facts, deny it.  In the Gulf, the three great dangers of attack
were always from such {200} sea-rovers as Drake, from pirates such as
Kidd or Morgan, from Indians.  The secret subterranean passage of
escape was guarded by a great gate at the head of the stairway.  Down
the stone steps, slippery with moss and sea damp and the tramp of
iron-shod warrior heels, the stairs led to the tide.  When the tide was
out, the sands lay level as a floor.  When the tide came in, the waves
washed up the stone stairs.  Spanish commanders kept their gold in
great waterproof iron trunks, which would sink, not float out; but they
took good care to chain those boxes from each iron handle to great
rings clamped in the wall.  Legend has it that, when Pensacola became
an American possession, young army officers there got wind of a great
treasure box sunk in the sands.  Of this they did not tell their
commanders.  They dug for it and found it; but at daylight, they had to
hide it, planning to have a gig or jolly-boat and get away with the
treasure under cover of the next night's darkness.  Unfortunately, they
forgot or neglected to chain it against the inrush of the tides, but in
their haste they did not fill in the quicksand hollows from which it
had been dragged.  The next night as the tide receded, they came by
water for their treasure trove.  Alas and alas!  The tide had been
driven in that night by a terrible wind.  The roaring billows had
splashed right up to the top of the stairs.  The sink hole in the great
quicksands was then a {201} boiling maelstrom.  Gone was the treasure
trunk, rolled and trundled out to sea.  Had one of the officers played
false with his fellows?  Had the superior officers known all along what
"the boys" were doing and taken the treasure for themselves?  The fate
of the treasure is not known to this day.  This is not one of the old
yarns yearly trotted out to tourists.  It is seldom told and came to me
from the widow of a former officer, who vouched for its truth; but it
was not a truth that went in army reports.

Cadillac knew the hopeless mess in which affairs had fallen in
Louisiana.  Four of the famous Le Moyne sons had tried their hands
there and two had perished, Iberville, the eldest, in his forty-fifth
year, and Sauvolle.  On Iberville's death, the younger Bienville, then
in his twenties, had assumed the governorship, but he was too young for
the office and Cadillac had come to succeed him.  That was itself a
delicate situation, requiring tact.  Cadillac was evidently to be the
King's watch-dog, a trying part for any man.

Cadillac knew the entire record of Louisiana.  It had broken physically
and financially every man from the Spaniard De Soto to Le Moyne
d'Iberville.  As always, the intendants had been independent of the
governor.  The trade had been held in monopoly by companies independent
of governor and intendant.  The curs had been torn between loyalty to
the heads {202} in power and their Indian missions.  By virtue of
Radisson's discoveries on the Mississippi, 1659-60, Marquette's on the
Middle Mississippi, 1673-75, La Salle's on the Gulf, 1683-85, France
claimed from one end of the Great Forked River to the other; but there
were Spanish claims on the Gulf preceding all French claims by almost
two hundred years.  Spain must be blocked from grasping the gateway
entrance.  English colonies must be blocked from any foothold anywhere.

Cadillac looked over the appalling record of the past almost two
hundred years.

[Illustration: Le Moyne D'Iberville.]

Le Moyne d'Iberville had come in March of 1699 to plant a colony named
after Louis XIV.  He was accompanied by a priest who had been in La
Salle's voyage down the river.  He came with two frigates and visited
in passing Pensacola where the Spanish Commander bade him anchor out to
sea; for the Spanish were busy strengthening their walls and moats
here.  As has been previously remarked, Spain and France were still in
friendly alliance; but from the maps carefully compiled under Count
Pontchartrain, it can be seen that Louis XIV was only awaiting his
chance to grasp from Spain all that she claimed in North America.
These maps were carried by Napoleon to Moscow for careful study of the
entire Louisiana problem.  You can see that Louis was plotting to wrest
from Spain all her holdings and had drawn a dead line {203} south only
where the Pope's Edict of two centuries previously had assigned to
Portugal the area vaguely known as the East South Seas; to Spain, "the
closed sea" of the Pacific.  Florida and half of Mexico were coveted by
Louis.  It is a curious commentary on destiny that a nation not yet
born should fall heir to all that Louis grasped and fall heir not
through grasping but by purchase and voluntary union.

[Illustration: Bienville, Jr., of Louisiana.]

Iberville had coasted along toward the Mississippi meeting Biloxi
Indians, and in March he found a passage through the endless bayous and
swamps and heard the mighty roar of a great river coming through the
watery wastes of "a chaos without a sail, without a sign of life."  The
dreary wail of the winds, the roar of the great bull alligators with
jaws torn by many a fight, the stench of stagnant waters so different
from the dancing silver and white rapids of New France, the snaky coils
amid the mournful cypress, the bearded Spanish moss hanging in dreary
drapery from canes to rushes, the watery wilderness of screaming sea
birds--all seemed to throw Iberville back to the very dawn of time,
when the whole earth lay under seas.  The flooded currents of the river
seemed to thunder warning.  It was the nearest to depression that
Iberville ever betrayed in any report to his royal master.  Anchoring
the frigate, he sent Bienville up the river with five men in two
canoes.  Climbing a solitary tree {204} above the lapping bayous,
Iberville could not see a sign of life.  Only the lapping of lazy
waters washed the swampy shores.  On one of his exploratory trips
Bienville met an English brig of sixteen guns with Huguenots seeking a
suitable area for a colony, and he frightened Captain Bank or Bar out
of the river by telling him the French already claimed all this
territory and had forts up, "a fib," as one of his friends confessed;
but he himself could have been captured by that English brig.

In January of 1701, Iberville was back from France with instructions
from the King to build a fort at Biloxi and go up the river at least as
far as modern Natchez among the sun-worshiping tribes.  Young
Bienville--he was only twenty-four and a devout Catholic--went up the
river to visit the Natchez and witnessed a scene that left him their
ruthless enemy all his life.  A thunder-storm had struck the Sun Temple
and burned it.  He came on the catastrophe just in time to see frenzied
mothers flinging new-born infants in the flaming thatch roof to appease
the Lightning (Stinging Serpent) devils.  He could never rid himself of
that awful first impression, though, as a reader of his Bible, he must
have known the Jews made the same sacrifice to the great god Moloch.

Bienville found among the swamp Indians a letter left by Henry Tonty
years before in the La Salle {205} voyages; so this seemed to confirm
French claim to the Mississippi except for Spanish prior rights from
1539 to 1541, when one thousand Spanish infantry clad in mail and fifty
cavalrymen had come in the awful heat to swamp marshes, and seven
hundred had perished of heat or by Indian attack, and De Soto's body
had been sunk in the great floods of the river.  La Salle's disastrous
last voyage came next to the Gulf.  Murdered by his French companions,
his body, too, found an unknown grave in or near the great "Father of
Waters."  This seemed the tragedy of tragedies in French efforts on the
Mississippi.  La Salle, coming for the second time by sea in 1684 with
two hundred and eighty men, had missed the entrance to the Great River
and landed at Matagorda Bay.  Whether he was abandoned by the commander
of the French frigates, whether he reached back eastward as far as
Trinity Bay, whether he was tyrannical and high-handed with his men,
whether the soldiers were in a panic of terror from lack of food, or
exhaustion from summer heat--we do not know.  Surviving mutineers do
not usually tell the truth.  There are disputes in all contemporary
records.  We do know that La Salle now attempted to reach the
Mississippi by a march overland along Texas and then to go back up the
Great River, chancing a meeting with voyageurs on its waters, or
looking to his muskets for food.  Both ammunition and food were {206}
daily less.  Heat, fury, fear, exhaustion may have maddened his
followers.  Much nearer the Great River than he guessed, wading in deep
swale, he fell face downward with a bullet shot from behind.  "There
thou liest, Great Bashaw!  There thou liest, Great Bashaw," the
assassins taunted in crazed derision, and they left his body to be
eaten by wolves or tossed out in the swale to river and tides.

Whether they meant Bashaw, a Turkish grandee, or Bashi-bazouk, a
light-headed Turkish fool inflated with self-importance, doesn't matter
much.  They had killed this hated commander, whom they regarded as a
tyrant.

One of the bayous Iberville had named Pontchartrain; the other,
Maurepas.  Bayou was simply an Indian term for a bay-like lake of the
sea.  The first settlement planned was Biloxi, four acres for the fort
with four bastions and twelve great guns.  This was to block Spanish
advance from Florida westward.  In Iberville's absence, Sauvolle was to
be governor of all Louisiana, Bienville a very young
lieutenant-governor, Boisbrant, a cousin of the Le Moynes, commander at
Biloxi.  Bienville was to build a second fort on the west side of
Mobile River.  The delay to all Iberville's plans was that as naval
commander he had to go to sea, or report back to France; and in the
very month that Cadillac had begun to build Detroit {207} in 1701,
Sauvolle died of the heat "fever."  Iberville returned from the war
with Spain in 1704 with two frigates, a brig, and colonists.
Contemporary records describe the majority of these colonists as
"rogues, scamps, riffraff," sent out from the scum of Paris.  One
episode has gone down to history as "the first petticoat insurrection"
in America.  Determined to make his colony respectable and to anchor
the settlers down with families, the King had sent twenty young
"females veiled, pious and virtuous" to be housed at Mobile by the
young Governor Bienville, till suitable husbands could be chosen.
Every girl probably had her eyes on the young Commander as a possible
husband.  Jeers, laughter, sneers greeted the new policy.  The good
lady acting as chaperon tried her arts on Bienville for herself, and on
the distracted young Commandant remaining cold under these fires and
arts and darts of a capricious Cupid from a woman years older than
himself, she reported him "utterly deficient in the qualifications for
a good commander."  Henceforth the King and Iberville sent brides out
under five priests in 1705 with two charity nuns as chaperons, but the
girls were just as obdurate in 1706 as in 1705.  They would "not eat
corn mush."  This rebellion no doubt resulted as much from the heat,
for corn is a very heating food, as from chagrin at the "jeers, sneers
and laughter."  It didn't simplify {208} matters nor smother fury among
the brides to learn that when Boisbrant, the Commander at Biloxi, had
fallen in love with one of the girls, Iberville vetoed the match as
"beneath the family dignity of the Le Moynes."

Of course, the intendants as usual were sending back the accusations of
"every sort of malfeasance" by the Le Moynes, "who pilfer His Majesty's
goods;" but all these charges were disproved as a smoke screen to cover
illegal acts of the intendants themselves.  The Le Moynes, like
Cadillac in Detroit, demanded a secret agent sent out incog. to
investigate; and the investigation cleared them of every charge.

An index to Bienville's policy toward the Indians is his proposal to
seize so many Indians a year, transport them to the West Indies for
slaves, and barter three reds for two blacks.  This scheme Louis XIV
had the wisdom to forbid at once.  It would have destroyed the French
traders on the Mississippi and exposed them to assassination.

Another tragedy of tragedies fell on Louisiana in 1706, when Iberville,
back from raids by land and sea, came to pick up one thousand men from
other French vessels at San Domingo and Havana and proceed to
Louisiana.  He was full of hope for his colony.  It had grown to one
hundred and eighty men, twenty-seven families, eighty thatch houses,
fourteen cows, nine {209} oxen, one hundred hogs.  These were spread
from Mobile and Biloxi to a clutter of huts just at the mouth of the
Mississippi below what is now New Orleans.

Some of the legends of the tragedy may be ascribed to fiction; but in
the main, they are true.  Gayarr, who is one of the best chroniclers
of early Louisiana and who dug deepest in the Archives of Paris, in his
lectures gave the legends, but in his formal history corrected the
legends and qualified them.  This is one of the legends that he did not
so qualify.

There had been much feasting among visiting officers of the different
frigates at San Domingo.  This was a dangerous thing in a hot malarial
climate, doubly dangerous when yellow fever was raging a pestilence;
but medical science did not know what it knows to-day.  Iberville was
ever very abstemious.  He had to be.  He was in his forty-sixth year.
He had also to keep his head among tipsy underlings.  Leaving the
wassailing officers guzzling and drinking on board his ship, he
withdrew to the upper deck of the frigate.  Versed in astrology, which
was the affected vogue of the period, he stood leaning over the railing
to study the stars in a pansy blue tropic sky and their silver
reflection in the calm, almost glassy, phosphorescent sea.  There was a
tap on his shoulder and a gentle hand-clasp on his arm.  He turned to
see a monk, who had slipped up in silent sandals.

{210}

"My son, on what dost thou brood?  What dost thou see in the stars for
thee?"

"Oh, Father, I was just dreaming in an aimless reverie."

"Poor stranger!  Poor son!  Thou hast not seen a thing?  I have and I
will tell thee.  Fly hence!  Wait not a moment!  Flee from these false
seas deceptive.  I have seen and I will tell thee what I see.  Death is
here!  It flies through the very air, an invisible phantom.  It knocks
on every door, and no door can bar its entrance.  None can shut his
ears to its lightest rapping.  Seest thou the deep, deep blue afar in
the heavens, which grow darker as they penetrate the black outer
spaces?  There, Death holds sway.  It is Death's realm.  This velvet
touch which caresses thy cheek is Death's breath.  The stars seem to go
out in the black depths of yon darkness.  They tremble with fright.
Haste thee away with all speed, O my son!  This is the Pestilence
coming out dark-winged to overshadow us.  I see it stalking toward
thee!  It is now among your revelers.  It is marking with crosses each
forehead with its bony fingers.  Mock not my warning, son!  The scourge
is yellow fever.  Keep out of its deadly path; or--prepare now to face
thy God!"

The ghostly monk vanished in the star-twinkling dark.  Had Iberville
dreamed it all?  He scarcely knew.  It left him chilled.  He may have
fallen asleep.

{211}

At dawn, the frigate was under way for Havana with creaking sails and
bending masts.  Iberville and the officers sat in the commanders' room
with maps on the table planning what to do in Louisiana.  Suddenly,
Iberville sprang from his place with a rush of blood to his head and
haggard eyes.  He had been seized with terrible pains in his spine and
cramps in his stomach.

"Poison?  Poison?" whispered the terrified officers.

"No, friends, not poison!  It is the pestilence--fly from me, comrades.
The old monk spoke the truth last night.  O God, Thy will be done.  To
Thee I commit by immortal soul----"  And he fell in a delirium.  He
died within five hours and was buried in Havana harbor.

This was a blow from which Louisiana did not recover in thirty years.
The colony lost its father just when his wisdom was needed most.
Biloxi, Mobile, and that cluster of huts south of modern New Orleans
were as yet the only evidence of possession in Louisiana, and each was
as vulnerable as a child's card-board box to the kick of a ruffian if
attacked by foe, red man or white.  Only Biloxi and Mobile could be
called forts.  What later became Natchez, was not yet begun.  In many
of the dispatches from Louisiana it is impossible to tell from which of
the shifting headquarters letters were written.  Possibly many were
dictated on {212} the frigates rocking at anchor.  Comfortable
quarters, if any, were yet only at Biloxi.

The Indians were muttering ominously, "Why don't you send out real
warriors to defend your people?"  Nor were the Indians blind to the
fact that many of the so-called soldiers were "felons" and the surgeon
a drunken sot.  Who got the money from the prosperous "brandy shops and
slops"?  The intendants said the Le Moynes did.  The Le Moynes said the
intendants, themselves, got it.

"Faugh," scoffed Cadillac, "a nice mess to clean up for His Majesty."
The French Court must think him a scavenger broom, like these black
ravens darkening the dusky hot summer sky to dive and feast on the dead
rotting alligators.  Well!  He would demand his reward--a baronetcy or
an earldom.  Meanwhile, he must be careful not to wound the vanity of
young Bienville, whom he was displacing.  There might be a match there
for one of his daughters now blooming into beautiful maidens with their
dreams of hero lovers.  He must be watchful and courteous.  We must not
prejudge him as utterly self-seeking in such matrimonial alliances
contemplated for his girls.  All marriages were at that period
prearranged by French parents.

Meanwhile, young Bienville had already run the gauntlet and escaped the
design of one match--the {213} chaperon's.  Boisbrant, his cousin, had
been vetoed in another contemplated match.  Cupid had not yet exhausted
his bag of tricks on the Mississippi.  The little love-god has three
more arrows in his mischief-causing quiver.  All made trouble for early
Louisiana.  Le Page du Pratz was in Louisiana during all of Cadillac's
rgime.  Why he gives so little space to Lower Louisiana is plain from
his own narrative.  He at first joined that cluster of "planters" on
the lower river.  There, he could not endure the heat; so he moved up
to the Natchez Colony and his narrative is splendid, full and most
illuminating.  He is loyal to Bienville and to Crozart, who held the
trade monopoly for all Louisiana during Cadillac's regime, but does not
conceal the terrible tragedies and injustices of this period to the
Natchez people.  Du Pratz lived among them unmolested and got from them
their side of the whole tragic story.  He was their friend but his
health never fully recovered from the first trying year at the mouth of
the river.




{214}

CHAPTER XII

1713-1714

What Cadillac Actually Found in Louisiana--Bienville Resentful and
Marking Time--The Indians Muttering Contempt for White Man Prowess--The
Colonists Wandering Off or Idle in Hot Season and Almost
Starving--Anthony Crozart, the Trader, Holds Monopoly and Has His Own
Plans for a Baronetcy--Bienville Prefers "the Mortification of
Celibacy" to Proffers of All Brides--The Clash Comes with
Cadillac--Bienville, Ordered Forthwith to an Impossible Task with the
Natchez, Accepts the Challenge--Charlevoix's Report Five Years Later.


Consciously or unconsciously, we tinge with our moods our first
impressions of all places we go.

Cadillac's first impressions of Louisiana were unutterably dreary and
depressing.  He had not wanted the transfer to Louisiana for "the
welfare of the service"; but his hope had never died.  He realized
that, if we only have clear enough vision to see, opportunity is in the
ever-present _Now_.  His ambitions and hopes were never quenched.
Before he sailed he must have known of Dubuisson's utter failure at
Detroit and the ruin it entailed on himself; but the thrifty Gascon had
saved while in Detroit, and when he left Louisiana he had still enough
of those savings to buy himself a good governorship in one of the
southern departments of Pyrenees France.

{215}

Perhaps the depression resulted from the hot season in which he
arrived.  The contrasts of dank swamps with Canada's laughing, cool,
silver waters overwhelmed him.  Then he must have brooded on the wreck
of hopes blasted in Detroit.  To depression must have been added
resentment and anxiety--what the Indians call bad medicine for a man
over fifty, when the functions of the body are apt to slow down and
depend more and more on the power of mind and spirit to compensate for
diminishing physical vim.  The beginnings of settlement in a Western
Empire that now numbers more than sixty million people seemed miserable
weak army posts with rotting stockades and dilapidated huts exposed to
the contempt of warlike Indians, who had begun to murder French traders
coming south from the Ohio.  Cadillac did not condemn Louisiana when he
said that "you might as well try to bite a slice out of the moon" as
make a prosperous colony there.  What he was trying to convey to his
royal master without saying it was that the Old Order would never
prosper in the New World.

These oaks were gnarled and knotted compared with Detroit's.  The delta
had rich soil but from it grew only the funereal cypress, where snakes
lay coiled on the twisted trunks.  Whoever was bartering out "brandy
slops from the brandy shops," the reaction was deadly on the colonists
in a hot clime.  They {216} drank in the hot season, and when the cool
weather came round, instead of fishing and working as they should have,
they lived idly on acorns or foisted themselves on the Indians.  This,
the Indians did not resent.  The Indian is a socialist and shares what
he has as long as it lasts; but it did generate a contempt for the
white man.  "This terrestrial paradise," penned Cadillac, "boasts of
twenty fig trees, three pears, three apples.  Its wealth is a tissue of
fables and lies.  The wretched country is good for nothing."  By
January of 1714, his pen dipped in the gall of a bitterer ink.  "The
people are no better than the country.  They are scum, refuse,
ruffians, who cheat the gibbet.  They are vagabonds steeped in vice.
The colony is not worth a straw, but I shall make something of it if
God grants me health"; but health to a man past fifty suddenly
transferred to a hot malarial clime is pretty chancy at its best.
"Duels are daily," goes on Cadillac, and then he paints the loose
character of many women "in this Garden of Eden."  His contempt for the
Indians' attitude of superiority was boundless and he determined to
reduce their pride by some such smashing defeat as Frontenac had given
the Iroquois on the St. Lawrence.  When they came to smoke their
peace-pipes with him in endless powwow, he bade them "smoke their own
filthy contraptions."  He would have none of it.  They wanted only
gifts; beggars, he would {217} teach them their place.  Unfortunately,
he had only seventy-five soldiers to uphold this show of authority and
these were scattered round four weak outposts.  When he boasted of his
own high lineage, of ancestors who had entertained the Black Prince, it
needed only a malicious whisper of that old boyhood name, the Black
Prince, to set the jeers, sneers and laughter coming in his direction;
and Cadillac could never tolerate the same sharp criticism he dealt out
so unsparingly to his enemies.  The soldiers began calling the new
Governor "the Black Prince."

Yet where Cadillac saw naught but a dark future for Louisiana,
Charlevoix, the priest historian coming five years later, predicted "a
granary for an empire."  Anything could be produced from such soil.
Melons, corn, fruit, rice, sugar-cane, nuts, roots, vegetables would
grow with slight toil.  Timber, rosin, cordage, fish--all promised
reward to industry.  Yet Charlevoix had to acknowledge that more than
thirty Frenchmen had been slain by Indians on the river.  It was an
empire not yet won.  It had to be won.

Where Cadillac had seen only wretched trees of no worth to commerce,
Charlevoix saw cypress for shade, green laurels, tulip trees,
magnolias, beautiful flowers embowering all scenes.  The alligators
Charlevoix hiked less than had Cadillac.  They were a danger to man and
beast.  The whirlpools of the mighty waters {218} were terrifying to
the boldest and most intrepid voyageur.  The spring floods were
terrible, almost like an earthquake.  The adobe huts he did not despise
as Cadillac had.  With mats and rough-cast surface walls whitewashed,
they could be made warm in winter, cool in summer, much superior to
many a thatch-roof wigwam, or rain-sodden tent where missionaries had
housed and died for the faith from Mackinac to the Gulf of Mexico.

He did not like the Natchez, he confessed.  The horrors of their Sun
Temple sacrifices, the despotic tyranny of their chiefs, from whose
presence slaves had to creep backward while the tribes prostrated
themselves flat on the earth, were bad omen for French prestige, with
only seventy-five soldiers amid four thousand warriors.  "Go rid me of
these dogs," he had heard the chiefs order Natchez raiders about to set
out against some other tribe.  When a chief died, the calumet smoke
might rise as incense to the Sun God, but his servants would be killed
to be burned with him, and all relatives, but the one designated as
heir, were strangled.  Horrible; and yet, as with the Aztecs, the
victims were fed and fattened before death as a fit offering to the
devil gods.  A woman unfaithful or displeasing to her husband was
forthwith killed.  All harvests were held in common ownership.  There
was little cruelty to captives.  The Natchez liked to add to {219}
their warriors.  Yet all warriors drank a native beverage--possibly a
cactus pulque drugged with a concoction to give immunity from
pain--that drove them in a frenzy of fury toward enemies.  In the
councils, the woman vote seemed to count one to five men.  The
disparity arose from infants and unmarried girls not being counted as
voters.  These parishes--Charlevoix predicted--"would become a rich
colony."  To add to the confusion of authority among the white rulers,
all church parishes were under the Bishop of Quebec City.  The first
cur was a De la Vert.  Between Cadillac's arrival and Charlevoix's
visit, the parishes had increased in population by army and colonists
to seven hundred people.

On all the early days of Louisiana, the best authority is Le Page du
Pratz.  He came to the Gulf with Crozart the trader, from Rochelle, and
remained to the arrival of Charlevoix to whom he gave the results of
all his years of observation.  There were three frigates in Du Pratz's
company.  On his way to the Gulf, he had paused at San Domingo and
Havana and Pensacola, and his sharp eyes did not miss much evident
there.  The Spanish were building a strong fort.  Pensacola had a
harbor "good and safe" from all anchorage.  A ship with fifty guns
could go in and not grate bottom.  France and Spain would not long be
at peace.  (In fact, the friendship ruptured in 1719, and Pensacola was
{220} captured by the French.)  He, too, noted the sandy shores, the
dank forests of cypress, cedars, oaks, pines, the rich delta lands
forty miles up from the Gulf.  The area here alone was vaster far than
Old France or Spain.  He chose for his first plantation the rich delta
lands, because where from the black land oaks, walnuts, tulip trees,
rice sugar would grow, he thought he could build up a prosperous
plantation.

[Illustration: New Orleans in 1719.  _Courtesy, Lenox Library, New
York_.  One of the first French forts at mouth of the Mississippi.]

Le Page lodged in a cabin for himself with another for his slaves right
in the delta.  But the terrible heat drove Le Page higher up the river
to the bluffs of Natchez.  It sent him farther inland a physical wreck;
but he had lost his fear of the great roaring bull alligators.  An old
Indian acting as servant had shown him how really harmless the
alligator was if one knew how to attack him.  A blow on the snout with
a strong gaff, and the big lumbering brute scrabbled over the sands to
roll floundering in the sea.  Mobile was the first settlement by the
French west of the Florida Spaniards.

Then came Biloxi; but "the colony was languishing."  Bienville was
already marking out the fort later to become New Orleans, but
Cadillac's advent on the scene delayed this.

By way of putting some self-respect in his soldiers and enforcing some
degree of deference from the Indians, Cadillac's first step was to
clothe ragged {221} soldiery in decent garb.  The soldiers were given
red coats with abundance of silver buttons, silk-lined capes, silk hose
or wool for winter, strong shoes, trousers of white or gray wool.  They
were drilled under young Bienville, now acting as lieutenant-governor
and commandant.  They were put under strict discipline and had the
semblance of back-bone where formerly they had a noisy jaw-bone.  Both
Cadillac and Bienville now began to feel that they had dependable
fighters, who would not flinch however great the odds against them; but
what were seventy-five soldiers against eight hundred warriors centered
at Natchez and four thousand warriors in all at large?  And these
seventy-five whites were scattered from Biloxi to Mobile and New
Orleans.  At the fort below what later became New Orleans, there were
seldom more than forty-five.

[Illustration: Seal of fort to which Cadillac retired as governor.
Note the Moorish type of architecture, different from the Gothic of
France.  _Courtesy, Lenox Library, New York_.  Plaque on Cadillac's
birthplace.  _Courtesy, Lenox Library, New York_.]

Anthony Crozart was no shifty, dishonest trader.  He sprang from tough
peasant stock, from the very class being hag-ridden by taxes to support
all the luxuries of Versailles.  He broke from the soil, began as a
merchant, came to Paris a rich banker.  We do not know the steps by
which he climbed.  Legend has it--and the legend seems to be true--that
he fell deeply in love with a lady of the Court.  Because of his
peasant origin, he was rejected.  He did not pine away from rejected
love.  The rejection only spurred him to {222} greater effort.  He took
an oath that he would yet win wealth to command a position superior to
the lady's family.  He grew to be money-lender to the extravagant crew
at Versailles and may have forced or bribed his appointment as sole
licensed trader for Louisiana.  There is a suspicion that the contract
"was sold to the highest bidder."  In any event, Louis XIV before his
death had chosen in Crozart a dependable strong man with the same
consuming ambition as Cadillac--to win a baronetcy entitling him to a
place at Court.

The very first year he was out, Crozart brought two shiploads of
colonists and he continued to do so for at least eight years.  The King
allowed him as his share of expenses for colonists and soldiers ten
thousand dollars a year.  If Crozart had bought his monopoly, the
purchase price must come back to him in the excess, if any, of the
yearly grant above his expenses.

When Crozart and Cadillac came in 1713-14, there was a clean sweep of
all former officials except Bienville and his cousin, Boisbrant of
Biloxi.  Both new men began with a full set of new officers and a free
hand.  There was no clash between Cadillac, the Governor, and Crozart,
the trader, for some time.

Promptly after his rejection by the disdainful lady Crozart had married
and when his wife died centered all his baffled affection on a
daughter, Marie Anne, whom he brought with him as "the apple of his
eye" {223} to Louisiana.  She is known in old French records as Marie
Anne--the combined name of the Jesuit's saint or the voyageur's.  In
Spanish annals, she is called Marie Anyana, sometimes Annette.

Were Crozart's and Cadillac's daughters friends?  They could scarcely
help being very intimate in the circumscribed life of the Gulf of
Mexico.  They may have drawn apart in their secret love for one man.

Old crones may have spun the romances from Court gossip; but they said
Crozart both before coming to America and after leaving Louisiana knew
that his daughter had a great passion for the son of a nobleman.  It
was reciprocated.  On the death of the courtier, Crozart generously
tore up the dead Count's debts to himself and hoped to see the mother
of the boy receive Marie Anne in the proud family, but the family
boasted royal blood and they too could not stand for peasant stock.
Again his ambitions were thwarted and he carried Marie Anne off with
him to Louisiana.  Here, we must tread carefully; for there is not a
contemporary record of the time in which the official papers do not
flatly contradict one another; and they are in volumes.  Bienville's
reports, Cadillac's, Le Page du Pratz's, Crozart's--all bristle with
petty enmities, personal squabbles, the irritations of divided
authority and inordinate jealousies over a little fort where each chief
regarded with resentment encroachment on his own powers.

{224}

Crozart was honest to a sou, so was Cadillac.  When liars threatened to
send such reports to the home authorities as had troubled and ruined
him at Detroit, he retorted he "would hang the signers."  Still, he
couldn't and didn't hang the elderly chaperon for sending lies back to
the King because Bienville wouldn't marry her.  Even a watch-dog for
the King has sometimes to turn a blind eye toward small enemies.  Then
came Cupid's third love arrow in the comedy of Louisiana's intrigue.
When Cadillac broached to Bienville the subject of marriage to his own
daughter and young Bienville still "preferred the mortification of
celibacy" to even this rich match, Cadillac's fury knew no bounds.

The more Cadillac brooded, the more furious he became.  His affection
for his daughter was wounded.  His pride in his origin was touched.
Couldn't his wealth as dower give as much to the groom as the groom's
position in the Navy could give to the bride?

Anger is bad medicine in a hot climate.  It is very bad medicine to
Spanish blood.  Both Cadillac and Bienville lacked tact; Bienville
concealed the defect under suave grace.

The refusal of the elderly chaperon, Bienville regarded as a joke, but
to reject as bride a young girl almost his own age, whom he must have
seen daily in the close contact of official life, must have wounded
{225} him.  Beneath his great family pride and indifference to wealth,
Bienville had a kind heart.  He was chivalrous but he was not romantic.
He loved Louisiana as Cadillac had loved Detroit.  Its failure
ultimately broke his heart.  Poor young Bienville!  He must have longed
to go to sea.

The Natchez had been acting badly--very badly.  Some French traders and
some priests had been murdered on the river.  Priests, trader, Governor
agree the Natchez must be given a lesson.  There could be no division
on that decision.  They must be taught that French power stretched a
strong hand from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes.  Bienville as
commandant of the troops was summoned by Cadillac as to the presence of
royalty.  The dark angry brooding face must have forewarned him of a
storm on the horizon.  Cadillac's was a challenging face.  The
missionaries were determined, but careful not to embroil themselves in
a stormy scene.  Crozart, the trader, was watchful.  He himself had a
daughter just blooming into beauty.

Bienville gracefully removed his three-cornered broad-brimmed hat,
saluted His Excellency and--waited for the burst of the storm.  The
calm exterior did not deceive him.

"There have been more French murdered on the river by the Natchez,"
began Cadillac.  "We must {226} teach these fellows a lesson they will
never forget.  You must go up to their Natchez village and punish them
for the crime.  You must demand the murderers at any cost.  You must
build a fort there to check them.  Take thirty-four men, fifteen
soldiers, the others able-bodied colonists to help you in the building."

"What?  Fifteen soldiers to meet eight hundred warriors and protect
nineteen stockade workers, Your Excellency?"

"Certainly, why not?  You are such a wonderful fellow, nothing is
impossible to a Le Moyne," went on Cadillac.  "I myself controlled six
thousand Indians at Detroit with fewer troops."

Bienville must have presented arguments to prove the perils of such a
course.

Cadillac exploded: "A truce to your objections!  These are my orders.
Go!  Go now!  Prepare at once!  Monsieur Crozart will deal you out all
the supplies of arms and ammunition and food needed."

Bienville was staggered.  He was thunderstruck.  He had evidently not
been consulted by Cadillac nor by Crozart in the council usually taken
before such momentous decisions.  That the Natchez had to be punished,
all had agreed; but fifteen soldiers against eight hundred warriors
entrenched in their own rude camp!  This order was really a challenge.
He had to {227} obey the Governor or be accused of insubordination.
Bienville was now as furious as Cadillac.  Though inflamed with the hot
blood of youth and seemingly cornered by the triangle of authority, he
had the quick wit to conceal his fury and bide his own revenge.

"Say no more, Your Excellency!  I accept the order."  He meant "the
challenge."  He drew on his long military gauntlets, saluted, turned on
his heel and marched out head high.

It would be a tough and terrible campaign--worse than the old Le Moyne
raids on James Bay and Massachusetts villages; but when had a Le Moyne
ever failed?  If he had not the force he needed, he must use strategy
and cunning.  That strategy and cunning cost the French and English a
terrible penalty for a century and came down as a curse to American
frontiers for another half-century.  It really leagued all tribes
against whites down to the middle of the nineteenth century.

Not thus had Cadillac met similar situations on the Great Lakes.
There, he had forged the tribes in alliance friendly to the whites.
There he, like Frontenac, had buried the war hatchet.  Bienville knew
all these things.  He knew also that Cadillac's chief backer, Louis
XIV, was verging on death.

Did Cadillac contemplate the murder of Bienville at the hands of the
Natchez?  The thought is scarcely {228} conceivable.  The failure of
Bienville to crush the Natchez would have reacted on Cadillac's own
record as governor of Louisiana.  Besides, even in his resentments
Cadillac was to his very death direct, blunt, outspoken, tactless,
utterly indifferent to the immediate hornet's nest he might stir up.
You will find, as the story of his life proceeds back to France, that
his fearlessness in exposing himself to stronger enemies than Natchez
or Le Moyne brothers sent him to the Bastile for the greater part of a
year, where he might have been secretly poisoned.  Yet in the power of
such strong enemies in France, he would no more bate his furious
outspoken resentment than he did at Mackinac, when he called all foes
"dogs barking at his heels," or on the way to Mackinac and Detroit,
when only his strong fencing arm hindered mutinous assassination.  His
mistakes seem to have resulted from two errors.  He mistook the
character of the Natchez.  They were as strong as the Iroquois and had
not had their self-confidence broken as Frontenac had crushed the
fighting spirit of the Iroquois.  Then a Le Moyne could no more dance
the wild whirligig of a peace powwow to bury a war hatchet than a
majestic king could play the part of a circus clown.




{229}

CHAPTER XIII

1714-1716

Bienville's Campaign of Strategy and Cunning--He Builds a Fort near
Natchez Stronghold and Invites Three Head Chiefs to His Quarters as
Guests--He Traps Them and Demands the Murderers--After Many Parleys, He
Captures Them and Shoots the Guilty Chief, Who Curses Him as He
Dies--The Curse a Legacy of Hate to All White Men for a Century.


How Cadillac would have handled the situation with the Natchez is mere
guesswork.  As he had answered bruskly to young Bienville, he had at
Detroit mastered just as many Indians through diplomacy as the Natchez
eight thousand warriors.  There was, however, a vital difference.
Since 1660, Crees and Assiniboines of the north had known white men and
the power of white men's firearms.  Lake tribes had known white men for
almost a hundred years.  All northern tribes wanted firearms.  All
northern tribes were barterers for firearms and insane for liquor.  The
Natchez did not want firearms, nor did they care for liquor.  They
lived a very easy life and could gain their living from the river and a
bountiful soil.

It is very doubtful, indeed, whether the Natchez realized in the least
the significance of murdering any strangers passing their cantonment on
the river.  One {230} has but to recall Marquette's reception by all
river tribes thirty years previously.  Bows were strung, arrows pointed
and war-whoops sounded from both shores of the Mississippi south of the
Ohio.  Even as guest under a head chief's tent roof, feasts of mush and
all-night dances were all that restrained the Arkansas warriors from
invading the sanctuary of a host's protection and murdering the priest.
Nor were the early white invaders of their realm any too careful about
murdering first to protect themselves.  Recall De Soto's setting hounds
on Indians, which tore them to pieces.  The Indian's primeval code,
like the Oriental's, was to regard all strangers as enemies and slay
them.  This is not passing judgment on the code of right or wrong.  It
is simply setting down facts.  Fear and greed were as in the most of
wars at the bottom of the code.

Cadillac's orders to Bienville must have been given in 1715 or 1716;
for Bienville was not on the scene of action before April, 1716.
Cadillac was obviously very unfair to him.  Not thus, back at Detroit,
had Cadillac placated Pezant, the murderous Huron.  He had captured the
old rascal and given him a good scare.

Anyway, Bienville took his time to make thorough preparations for what
he knew would leave him either disgraced in Louisiana or its sole
defender; and no Le Moyne had ever yet failed the King of whose death
{231} Bienville did not yet know.  He forefended against attack on his
record by sending a private dispatch on the King's frigate.  "I assure
Your Excellency that the cause of Cadillac's enmity to me is my having
refused to marry his daughter."  He had great difficulty getting
sufficient provisions and ammunitions from Crozart, the trader, for the
expedition and this from two very valid reasons.  Crozart had not been
out two years before he realized that he could not make any profit out
of his Louisiana monopoly.  In fact from 1717, he was asking to be
relieved of the monopoly and recalled.  He was required to fetch out so
many colonists a year.  It was difficult to hire a good class of
thrifty workers for Louisiana.  The thriftless fell back a useless and
a heavy load in Crozart's lap.  In the next place, if Bienville's
expedition failed, who would make up the loss to Crozart?

Bienville's fifteen soldiers were hand-picked.  Not one flinched in the
campaign.  His colonist helpers were as good fighters as builders.
They must have been young and tough.  His ammunition and firearms when
at last they were secured, were of the best and in plenty.  So were
provisions.

To ascend the Mississippi in flood waters of April now means nothing to
us.  In the seventeen hundreds, it was a terrific task.  It meant using
dugouts or cedar canoes.  Oars had to be of the strongest.  Light flip
{232} paddling could not be used.  Neither could sails.  At this time
of the year, there was no dead calm water amid the swamps.  The
Mississippi came south in thundering floods that tore mud-banks from
shores, covered sand islands, hurled great snags of uprooted trees in
the sticky sand and left scarcely a camp space for night dry enough to
hold tent pegs.  Tent ropes had to be tied to willows swaying in the
wash.  Sleep had to be snatched in the canoes.  Progress forward called
for tireless work on the punt pole pried from the stern and the paddles
from each side; and where neither punt nor paddle availed, the men had
to strip, jump out and on the tump-line haul ahead off sandbank or snag
of trees.  There was many a delay for repairs to canoes.  However
impetuous he was in a quarrel, Bienville knew all this water voyaging
from his boyhood in Quebec.  To avoid arousing suspicions, he seems to
have slipped past the main cantonment of eight hundred Natchez at night
and gone on up the river beyond fifty-four miles.  This was his first
stroke of strategy and wise.  If French traders came down the river in
the spring as they always did, he could stop them and employ them as
auxiliaries.

Late in April and early in May, he had a stockaded fort up on high land
to avoid the floods, with good quarters for the men, rain-proof to
protect the ammunition from damp, and food in store to avoid being
{233} starved out in a siege.  This fort he named Rosalie after Count
Pontchartrain's wife.  Gayarr and Du Pratz say that Fort Rosalie was
eighteen leagues from the main Natchez camp.  He had three good log
houses for his men.  He also had a windowless strong prison-room with
bullet-proof doors.  The Natchez must have learned what he was doing,
but they seemed not to care.  Bienville, then, sent word to them that
he was there to open a trader's factory.  This pleased the Natchez.
Why not?  They would obtain firearms and plunder.  With four thousand
warriors in all and eight hundred right at Natchez, were they not
all-powerful?  Were not other river tribes in league with them?

Nevertheless, they came cautiously.  Three scouts arrived to spy out
what was doing and asked for a powwow inside the fort.  Bienville
refused to smoke the peace-pipe with them.  He affected great
displeasure.  He probably hated them from that early first impression
of babies tossed in flames to devil gods.  It is easy to hate those on
whom you are about to practise double-dealing or treachery.  This was
on the twenty-seventh of April.  The Natchez saw to their amazement the
fort being made stronger and stronger, and it must have roused their
resentment and determination to fathom what the French were doing.  The
Natchez still felt defiant enough to defeat all enemies.

{234}

More envoys came to be received in the same cold manner; but they were
feasted, received in the fort and well treated.  Bienville then sent a
scout up the river to bid all traders drifting south to come in to him
secretly at night, or by a detour to the rear of the fort.  In this he
was successful.  Without a suspicion on the part of the Indians, his
defenders now numbered seventy-five men.  The Indian scouts had seen
only fifteen armed red coats.  They had murdered and plundered more
than thirty French in a few years.  Bienville had carefully concealed
his real strength.  He even had some men back in the bush to shoot any
spy.

Now, thoroughly free from all fear of only fifteen white men, by ten
A.M. on the eighth of May the eight great chiefs of the Natchez came in
state with four dugouts of envoys preceding them.  Bienville's men
assisted the Indians to land, and eight chiefs in all were received in
his tent.  The chiefs entered the tent singing and dancing a welcome to
the white traders.  Bienville bade them be seated.  They squatted about
in a circle under awnings and again presented their peace-pipe to open
the powwow with incense to the Sun God and loud harangue of eloquence,
which an Illinois slave was to interpret.

Again, Bienville refused to smoke the peace-pipe with them.  He cut all
eloquence short and came bluntly to the point.  In quiet but terrible
tones, he {235} demanded the delivery of the Natchez who had murdered
five Frenchmen the previous year.  One of the Natchez chiefs measured
almost seven feet.  He was a giant in courage as in size; but when all
rose in fury, they found their elbows pinioned behind by a rush of
unseen white men.  In a trice, wrists were handcuffed, necks in stocks
of a trap that could have strangled them, and feet in fetters with ball
and chain, which threw them to earth and dragged them powerless of
defense to be chained to the prison wall for the night.  All that night
they chanted their death wail of defiance.  The Indian scouts were
permitted to return to Natchez with word of the tragedy.

Bienville told the scouts that no harm would befall the hostages.  They
would be fed and treated well; but he would henceforth parley only with
the three great rulers of the Natchez, Great Sun, Little Sun, Singing
(or Stinging) Serpent.  Now thoroughly alarmed, almost panic-stricken,
the Natchez took counsel.  It was doubtful if they could hold their
allies in allegiance with eight chiefs kept helpless captives.  Great
Sun, Little Sun and the Serpent had to come; and Bienville knew it.

"Your lives are safe," he assured them, again receiving them in his
tent; "but I demand the heads of the murderers.  A tooth for a tooth!
An eye for an eye!  A life for a life!  That is your law.  It is also
{236} ours."  He clapped the three great chiefs in prison with the
others.  When, next morning, Little Sun said that only he could get the
murderers, Bienville bade him go free and get them; but on the
slightest sign of treachery or attack, the hostages would pay with
their lives.  Powerless to save the chiefs by any other device, Little
Sun set out speedily for the murderers and he came back on the
fifteenth of May with three heads.  These he cast at Bienville's feet.
When the French traders were called in to identify the faces, they
found it easy to recognize that the heads were the heads only of three
slaves.

"These are not the right heads," said Bienville.  "We will accept no
substitutes.  I must have the very heads.  If you refuse, woe to your
tribe.  If I raise my little finger against you and give one single
war-whoop, the Father of Rivers will hear and will carry it up- and
down-stream to all his tributaries.  The woods will pick up their leafy
ears and, from the big salt lake south to the fresh waters of the lake
at the north, raise their mighty voice in hurricane, summon the
children of the forest who will crush you with their whelming powers.
You know I do not boast.  Those red men are your enemies.  My wrath is
kindled.  Blood for blood.  Measure for measure."

Again Little Sun went back, but he returned crestfallen.  This time, he
spoke the truth.  He could not {237} find the real murderers for the
simple reason that Bienville already held the two real murderers in his
prison--one that seven-foot giant.  Bienville hadn't finished with his
lesson to the Natchez.  He demanded all the goods of the murdered
French traders.  No gift would be accepted to pay for the loss and wipe
out the blood vengeance.

Little Sun again took counsel back at the Natchez cantonment.  He
brought back a few of the warriors who had taken part in the attack and
as much of the plundered goods as he could find.  It speaks volumes for
his courage; for he must have known he could no longer trust the French
Commandant's word.  Still, he would save his royal house if he could.
The prison no longer wailed with the death chant.  All the captured
chiefs were strangely silent.  The river now began to flow in
thunderous floods.  The sun mounted hotter and hotter with that
terrible ominous calm preceding such lightning storms as had struck the
Sun Temple when Bienville had first seen it.  This was a bad omen to
the Indians.  The Natchez were afraid but not cowed.  They would bide
both their time and their vengeance; and the priests were invoking the
Sun God to hurl down such curses on the French as only he could hurl.

Bienville then met all captives in his tent for final treaty.  He
refused to smoke any peace-pipe with them, {238} but he would sign a
treaty with the Natchez and spare the three great chiefs only if the
treaty were forthwith signed and carried out.  The terms were by way of
paying for the lost goods.  The Natchez should cut, haul and deliver
two thousand five hundred cords of acacia wood.  Then to impress on
them for ever the futility of opposing the French, he pointed out the
real murderers, whom he had held from the first.  He ordered them
brought out and bound hand and foot to stakes.  Then he demanded if
they had any reason to offer why they should not pay with their lives
for the crime.

It must have been a terrible scene in the heavy hot day dawn.  The
French were lined up to fore with their guns over their shoulders.  The
Indians cowered back to each side.  Bienville bade the two guilty
chiefs speak.

The giant chief answered in a scream of defiance.  "Five Frenchmen have
I killed.  My regret is my death will prevent me killing more!  Slay
all these French dogs who come prowling and stealing over the beautiful
land of our free country!  They are squaws!  They are coward hearts!
We will be avenged!  I am the last of my race and I go to revel with my
brave ancestors, who will welcome me.

"Let there be joy in the heart of the Natchez," each defiant verse of
the death chant rang.  "Fight where {239} and with whom you please.
Give way to the whites as you would to death and their black beards
with your blood will be red.  Wrapped up in their pale skins, these
whites wear shrouds of the dead.  Avenge injury with the sweet blood of
a white foe.  Paint their black beards red with blood.  This wise chief
is going to meet his Natchez forefathers.  O burning shame!  He was
betrayed by his brother chiefs!  You should have slain all these French
dogs.  I am the last of my race.  O Natchez!  O Natchez!  Remember my
prophet voice.  I go to revel with my ancestors but you----"  The
screaming defiance was probably hurled to provoke a quick death.  It
was usual on the part of Indians about to be tortured.

Bienville signaled the captain.  The captain uttered the sharp word,
"Fire!"  The shots rang out.  The two chiefs sagged forward; and the
other Natchez returned to their cantonment with news of the worst
disaster that had ever befallen their tribe.

It was the end of August before the Natchez had finished carrying out
their part of the treaty.  It was October before Bienville reached
Mobile, where the frigates for the season had arrived, and he had first
news of the events from previous frigates.  The King was dead.  A new
order had come in power at Versailles.  Cadillac's chief backer was
gone and he was to be recalled.  Bienville was to be appointed {240}
governor; but a great deal had happened in Louisiana during his absence.

Cadillac had sent dispatches to France just as Bienville had guessed.
"This colony is a monster without head or tail.  The government is a
shameless absurdity.  My conscience forbids me to deceive His majesty.
What can I do with a force of forty soldiers of whom five or six are
always disabled from illness?  A fine army this is to defend myself
from foes!  All are badly fed, badly paid, badly clothed, without
discipline.  As to officers, they are not much better.  There is not in
the universe such another confusion of authority."

To prevent mutiny and duels, Cadillac ordered that no civilians should
carry swords.  The civilians by way of petty spite called him "the
Golden Calf," "the Black Prince," "the Hook Nose," "the Rook," "the
Raven."  Louisiana forts became little hotbeds of petty spites.
Crozart, the trader, was distraught, not knowing which party would be
loyal to him for a single day.  Cadillac waxed more and more furious
and longed to be recalled.  Bienville seems to have been the only one
who kept his head under a suave grace as cold as his own sword.

Up at the Natchez fort, Du Pratz in all this turmoil had lived securely
and safely.  He had cleared six acres for tobacco and held four hundred
more acres.  A Natchez poultice of herbs had cured his sciatica.  Great
{241} Sun, Little Sun and the Serpent chiefs used to come to him for
advice, and he acknowledges he scarcely knew how to excuse the French.
Once a drunken soldier at Fort Rosalie had shot an old Natchez.  He was
not punished.

"We know not what to think of the French," said the Serpent.  "They
grant a peace, then come and shoot us.  Why did the French come to our
country?  We did not seek them.  We told them to take land wherever
they pleased.  The same good sun would lighten us both.  We would walk
as friends in the same path."  Du Pratz does not give us his answer to
that protest.

Bienville's cruelty to the Natchez horrifies us; but if you read
Evelyn's _Diary_ of the same period in England and France, you will
find worse cruelty.  It does not extenuate Bienville's code, but it
explains the spirit of the period.  Men were roped to the wheel to be
crushed to death either as punishment for petty theft or greater
felonies.  Confessions were exhorted from criminals by slow burning
above a fire, or by stretching between two wheels, then turning a cog
and waiting for the enforced victim to get relief from agonizing
torture.




{242}

CHAPTER XIV

1714-1717

Love-Affairs Continue to Come Unwanted and Unwarranted to Bienville's
Feet--Cadillac and Crozart Both Openly Weary of an Impossible
Task--Young St. Denis the Only Successful Lover and Trader--He Opens
the Road to Mexico to be Followed by a Century of Caravan
Traffic--Bienville, Left as Governor of Louisiana, Lays Foundations of
Modern New Orleans--Immediate Effects of His Victory over Natchez.


The immediate effects of Bienville's treacherous victory over the
Natchez do not concern Cadillac's life; but in passing, they may be set
down in only one horrible example.  Chickasaws, Taensas, allies of the
Natchez, and Arkansas within a few years captured six French women and
four men and burned them alive to their Sun God.  As Bienville had gone
south to the Gulf, the Natchez at their great camp had danced a slow
circle above the departing French boats in the river.  It seemed a
friendly gesture of good will, but the low chant accompanying the dance
was really a pledge of vengeance.  This, Bienville, scorning close
contact with all Indians, could not know.  For a hundred years, the
heritage of blood vengeance and hate exposed every river trader to
attack, from which neither the French forts on the Ohio nor those at
Natchez could protect passing canoes.  Firearms for the {243}
ambuscaded assaults were obtained in barter from forts both French and
English.  Exactly where was the new Natchez?  As closely as can be
located very near what is now the old American cemetery.  This was not
the natives' old cantonment.  Built of thatch straw and grass roofs
with light branching for walls, the old Indian cantonment may have
shifted its site; but in Bienville's day, it was below modern Natchez.

Bienville reached Biloxi in October, 1716, but the date of Cadillac's
recall was 1717.  Bienville may have known from Crozart, the trader,
that Cadillac was not in favor with the new rgime at Versailles.
Crozart and Bienville seem to have drawn closer together, in quarrel
with Cadillac.  Crozart's reports to the King this year were not
favorable to Cadillac.  The grizzled old merchant trader must have
foreseen that La Mothe's policy to the Indians would react badly on
trade.  Or Cadillac and Crozart may have been jealous over the matches
planned by both fathers for their favorite daughters.  In manner,
Cadillac and Crozart were direct and blunt.  They came to their
objectives abruptly and unconcealed.  Where Bienville was all suavity
and grace, the velvet glove over the iron hand, Cadillac was as great a
stickler for formality and pomp as Frontenac, and Crozart was sharp,
almost rough, and as frank as a child.

There was another reason for Crozart's drawing {244} toward Bienville.
He now came out openly on the subject of a match between his fair
daughter and the young Le Moyne.  Crozart had ample wealth to sustain
an ambitious union.  Bienville must have prayed the saints, as Cadillac
used to invoke the spirit of Frontenac, to be delivered from fair
demoiselles.  Here was the third proposal in almost as many years; and
from Bienville's gracious character, it is easy to infer that such
proposals may have come quite as much from love as from design.

"Let us come to the point," we can hear Crozart suggesting to
Bienville, the young Commandant.  "You have triumphed against
overwhelming odds at Natchez.  It will rank in the Court records as
equal to any exploit of the brave Le Moyne brothers on Hudson Bay or in
New England.  Why not cement family fortunes in a marriage?"  Then
would follow the attractive bait of the dower for the bride, her
careful education for a higher position in life than the merchant class.

Bienville must have squirmed under his gracious tranquil manner.  He
disliked giving pain.  He was kind at heart and fair in dealings to all
but Indian foes and English heretics.  He was devout.  He was clean.
He was upright.  Cruel as he had been to Natchez, it must be kept in
mind that he was living in a ruthless age; and had he wished, he could
have shot {245} on the spot each of the three Sun chiefs.  Again he
answered that he "preferred the mortification of celibacy to the
felicitous happiness of matrimony."

Crozart was now in his late sixties.  He was weary of his job.  Why
not?  Though he had brought Louisiana's population up to seven hundred
people--some accounts say eleven hundred people, but this included
soldiers and traders--and though he held royal monopoly for all trade
in Louisiana, he was each year losing money.  The monopoly was a
grinding burden on the colonists under which they could not prosper.
They could not leave the colony.  They were arrested and treated as
felons if they attempted to run away.  Punishment was conviction to be
exchanged in the West Indies as slaves for blacks from Africa.  All
goods had to be bought at Crozart's warehouses, at Crozart's prices,
which were very high.  All produce had to be sold at Crozart's stores
at very low prices.  Also under such conditions, the character of many
of the colonists was not improving.  Sailors carried back news of the
hardships in Louisiana.  No more came willing brides under
self-important fussy chaperons.  Drabs, slatterns from the streets of
Paris, girls from houses of correction, felons to escape punishment in
France for some crime came too often for the welfare of Louisiana.
Why, then, did Crozart, sharp as a corkscrew's point on business,
pursue such a {246} self-destructive policy?  Because he had to bring
out so many colonists a year to fill his contract; and that cost
devoured his profits.

From the time of Bienville's chilling rejection of all marriage
proposals, Cadillac and Crozart again, as at first, drew together.
They did not openly accuse Bienville of "malfeasance in office," of
being a profiteer from brandy; but they did not contradict such
charges, which they knew were false, nor threaten "to hang to the
yard-arm" such falsifiers in petitions to His Majesty.  Perhaps each
was provoking and invoking his own recall.  Cadillac's came in a brutal
dispatch of 1717 with the wording "he has proved himself unfit for the
functions with which His Majesty has entrusted him."

But before we leave Louisiana we have yet to finish with the course of
love-affairs there.  Crozart's monopoly was for trade in Louisiana.
Cadillac had always been more or less favorable to trade with New
Spain.  Crozart realized the danger of that--the possible losses on the
first trade ventures, the very likely displeasure of the royal Court
playing the usual cardsharper's game of a double-cross, friendship on
the surface, cunning plots below the international table, for a shuffle
of all North America to France, for the break now open with England,
for war open and defiant to all opposition; and Marlborough was giving
{247} France all the trouble she richly earned in Europe.

Cadillac, who had come from the Spanish section of the Pyrenees, knew
that the Indians of the Middle West raided Spanish colonies a thousand
miles south for horses, for saddlery, for silver ornaments, for the
most beautiful leather bridles ever tooled out then or now.  Cadillac
had had his eye, from the first, on that trade possibility.  He also
knew that somewhere in the bounds of what are now New Mexico and
Arizona, lay rich mines.  He would take the risk which Crozart's royal
charter did not seem to encourage.  Among the younger men brought by
Cadillac in 1714 was a Juchereau St. Denis.

Cadillac had dispatched him from Louisiana up Red River through what
are now Arkansas and Oklahoma.  On this trip, there are many and varied
narratives.  Du Pratz, who was on the spot, and Gayarr, who dug
deepest in the Marine Reports, are our safest guides.  Just keep in
mind that the break between France and Spain was now leading on to the
capture of Pensacola by the French.

This capture is itself worth recording as part of the amazing
adventures of Louisiana under the Louis of France.  Lenarez, the
Spanish Viceroy in Mexico City, had been sent out to block French
aggression.  The French from San Domingo and the Mississippi were as
usual short of soldiers for attack; so Bienville {248} adopted
strategy.  The Spanish had a few soldiers on guard and when the French
landed from their jolly-boats at four in the afternoon, they waited and
under cover of darkness found the majority of the Spanish guard on a
frolic in the guard outpost of the port.  Either by means of wine or
some other device, they got inside the Spanish guard-house, disarmed
the Spanish of their huge clumsy arquebuses and locked up all the
amazed prisoners.  Then they scouted the main fort and discovered that
except for the outer guard-house no Spaniard was prepared for attack.
Hastily returning to the Spanish guard-house, the French exchanged
their cloaks for the metal armor--head-piece, breast-plate, thigh
greaves, clanging boots--of the Spanish.  Thus accoutered, with the
great keys to the inner fort, the French captured Pensacola with
scarcely a blow.  Pensacola shifted back and forward from French to
Spanish and Spanish to French possession for ten years.  As always the
Le Moyne brothers were the victorious leaders on the Gulf of Mexico.
As always the diplomatic card-sharpers were the gamesters back in
Europe, who trumped their partner's ace out in the colonies and lost
all Bienville and his brothers captured for Louisiana.

In France St. Denis had been trained in the same military schools as
several of the Spanish commanders then out in Mexico.  He could speak
the Spanish {249} language.  A fitter emissary to open trade with New
Spain could not have been chosen.  He was a born knight-errant out for
glory.  He was very tall and handsome, a fearless fencer but so lovable
that to the end of his life he drew even the affection and loyalty of
all Indians.  He was accompanied by twelve soldiers and an eccentric
surgeon, who was skilled when sober, which was not often.  St. Denis
and his soldiers had to depend for food chiefly on their prowess as
hunters.  Though attacked again and again by the Comanches, the
soldiers found the surgeon's skill in healing Indian wounds magical,
and it proved a source of wonder to the Indian raiders shooting
poisoned arrows.  When hunting deer amid the ocean-like prairies, the
soldiers threw off the metal shirts.  When raided by warriors, they
donned the Spanish metal armor, against which arrows fell powerless.
His black fleet horse, St. Denis protected with thick bull hide and
armor across the soft flank.

Again there is great variation in the records of the exact course
followed by St. Denis.  He, himself, describes a circuit of one hundred
and fifty leagues from Fort Rosalie at Natchez to the Spanish fort of
St. John the Baptist on the Rio del Norte, or Rio Grande.  There he
found an old Spanish don in charge.  Gayarr names him Pedro de
Villescar.  Du Pratz gives the name as Don Diego Raimond.  The father
may have {250} been Don Pedro, the old uncle, Don Diego.  There was a
daughter at this frontier of the beyond--"_ayon_," the Mexican peon
would call it with a wave of his hand toward the horizon "away over
there."  Of course in a desert of loneliness, the handsome young
Frenchman was welcomed.

"It is all yours, Seignior."  The host would bow with hearty welcome to
the newcomer; and the guest became a member of the family.  Young St.
Denis accepted the welcome very literally--too literally for his own
peace of mind.  He at once fell violently head over heels in love with
the Commandant's beautiful, gentle young daughter; and his love was
reciprocated with all the passionate ardor of the Spanish race.

Don Pedro could make no commercial arrangement for trade without
permission from his superior next in authority at Taos; but at Taos was
an old rascal somewhat infamous for grafting on all traders.  Legend
has it that this fellow wanted the pretty Seorita for his own bride.
Anyway, this older Don Juan was named Gaspardo Anaya, and his
messengers came with orders from the Duke Lenarez of Mexico City to
seize all French invaders of Spanish territory and convey them with a
guard of twenty-five men to Taos.  No immediate danger befell the
Seorita and St. Denis; but St. Denis was too high-minded to involve
the adored lady in a tangled alliance.  He returned to {251} Louisiana
vowing to visit Mexico the next year.  We can imagine how he painted to
Cadillac the profits from free trade with New Spain.  He was as
eloquent as Cadillac had been over Detroit.  He went back again the
next year with plenty of goods for trade and a convoy armed well to
escort a bride home safely over arid desert amid Indian raid; but
Lenarez had died and the Spanish Governor in Mexico City until the new
man could arrive had wind of the French invasion by traders.

This was really the beginning of the vast caravan trade carried on
legally and illegally with New Spain for over a hundred years.  Cupid,
not the beaver, for once had opened a trade trail.

On his second trip, St. Denis had to run the gauntlet of Indian raid
stirred up by Bienville's treachery at Natchez.  He lost some men and
was plundered of some goods.  When he reached his former friend, the
Spanish officer had orders to seize him and send him to the dungeons of
Mexico City.  Did his lady accompany him across the torrid zone to
Mexico City?  If so, St. Denis could not regret his double captivity by
troopers and Cupid.  The Seorita was a favorite in the little Court of
Mexico City; and the diplomatic viceroys were out to encourage trade
but block aggression.  From his Franciscan friends, Cadillac no doubt
was fully aware of the safety as to trade expansion but the {252} risk
of armed expansion.  Back over the sage-brush, cactus, mesquite lands
of Northern Mexico, the cavalcade must have ridden and seen what every
modern traveler now glimpses from train or motor window.  The little
lady would be given a pannier behind her father's saddle, or a place in
a caravan wagon.  Do you know the scent of that Mexican zone?  It is
drugged with the pungent sweetness of mesquite bloom in gold,
sage-brush in purple, violet, and cactus from blood-red to palest rose.
Its dawn is a glorious light, its sundown a flaming fire, and its
nights are a cool curtain of fathomless pansy-blue with stars like
lanterns hanging low to conceal yet reveal lovers singing troubadour
ditties of Old France and Old Spain; and both St. Denis and the little
Seorita were of Latin blood.  Then after a month's travel came the dip
down to Mexico City amid opal snowy peaks with gardens like glens of a
paradise.  Canals were lined with flowers.  Lagoons were floating
gardens.  Punts poked in and out with awning to shade from the midday
sun.  But as far as trade was concerned, St. Denis' venture ended in
bad disaster.

Lenarez had died in Mexico City.  Before his successor came out from
Old Spain, a deputy had charge, and this deputy was in league with all
the grafters of New Spain to levy blackmail on all traders.  St. Denis
was thrown in one of the worst dungeons of all {253} Mexico.  Two such
terrible dungeons there were in New Spain, one at Mexico City and one
on the Island of St. John Ulloa off Vera Cruz.  The Mexico City dungeon
disappeared years ago, but the one off Vera Cruz I saw myself.  It is
scarcely possible to believe human beings of white blood could be so
cruel even to felons.  Prisoners were chained by neck and feet to the
wall within touching distance of one another.  Bread and a water pot
were placed on the damp stone floor within reach.  At high tide, the
sea would wash over the port-hole window embrasures shut against the
water.  At low tide, the windows, not much larger than cannon barrels,
were opened; and through them cold breezes blew on the naked prisoners
shackled to the walls.  The window embrasures were from ten to eighteen
feet deep in the wall.  The dead each morning were pitched out to the
sharks.  It is said that the cleaning of these holes in the recent
Mexican Revolution almost literally took the stomach out of the
soldiers put on the work.

There are many tales told of how St. Denis escaped.  "He was," says
Gayarr, "chained to the wall like a malefactor.  His body became
emaciated.  His long hair became matted.  His beard grew shaggy."  From
outside could be heard "the heavy trampling of horses.  The noise
approached.  The doors of his cell turned slowly on rusty hinges.  The
jailer ushered in {254} an officer escorted by a file of soldiers.  The
officer had orders to examine the prisoners and report to the new
Viceroy."  "Who is this?" demanded the officer.  "I, Juchereau de St.
Denis, gentleman, prisoner by oppression, and I demand justice from the
Court of Spain."

Not thus answered the ordinary poor felons awaiting the firing squad.

"Bring him out so I can see him."

Blinded by the sunlight, St. Denis emerged still every inch the hero
and gentleman.

The officer drew aside the tangled hair and uttered a loud invocation
to the saints.

"By heavens, jailer, off with those accursed chains!  We have made some
horrible mistake.  Set those noble limbs free.  This gentleman is an
old comrade of mine in the schools of France."

The two friends of cadet days in Europe fell in each other's arms with
the emotional explosion of true Latins.  The Spaniard took St. Denis to
his own house and clothed him again in the vesture of a gentleman.
That very night he dined in the halls of Montezuma and drank to the
healths of their Majesties in Spain and France.  Amid the ladies at the
table of the new Viceroy sat his little Seorita in those shawls of
beautiful snowy Chinese silk worked in the colored tints of the Orient.
St. Denis was lodged in the royal {255} palace, and it is said that in
the brief interval of his two-months sojourn in Mexico City he saved
the life of the new Governor from an attempted assassination.  Every
bribe that could be offered to induce him to change his flag to Spain's
was made--yes, even the bribe of the Seorita as a bride, but St. Denis
pointed out that a man who could be bribed was not worth the price.
And while he loved the Seorita, he loved honor more.

"God bless you then," said the new governor.  "I shall hope that the
little Seorita may persuade you to change your mind.  You will meet
her and her worthy father at the fort on the Rio del Norte.  Give them
my regards and bid them detain you with the gentler chains of love."
It may be guessed that the Viceroy smiled as he gave this farewell and
surmised that the Seorita and St. Denis had made some arrangements on
their own initiative.  She had already departed with her father for St.
John the Baptist Fort.  But St. Denis and his comrades ran the gauntlet
of terrible perils from Indian raid on the way back to the Fort.

He found his old friend Don Pedro literally in a belted siege; and the
good Don was only too glad to permit an old padre to unite St. Denis
and his little lady in the bands of Hymen.  Banners floated over the
Spanish fort.  Muskets fired a volley.  Bells rang.  {256} Barbecues of
buffalo and sheep were served with peppers and hot tomales and the
other Spanish condiments that burn a northern tongue till it is ready
like a pup dog's to hang out and cool off.  St. Denis and his bride
reached Mobile; but the trading venture had been a total loss.

St. Denis found that Cadillac had been dismissed as governor.  Crozart
had resigned.  Bienville had succeeded as governor with the decoration
of the cross of St. Louis.

Crozart had left with a sigh of relief.  He returned to France and did
receive a marquisate as title before old age.  He is reported to have
died with a broken heart over the death of his daughter.
Broken-hearted and saddened by life, he must have been aged about
eighty-three.  He had realized his ambitions for wealth and found them
puff-balls of dust, apples of Sodom.  His daughter died, as far as we
can trace, in her thirtieth year.  That she may have been frustrated of
youthful hopes and hurried to a premature grave, may also be true.

Neither Crozart nor his disillusioned daughter could possibly have
taken any place in the dissipated Court of Louis XIV's weak and
reckless successor, where the Pompadour was the ruling spirit.

To the humiliation of that early love-affair in France and the
rejection of a match with Bienville {257} had come a third frustration
that must have broken any proud woman's spirit.  Though her father now
had a marquisate, the relatives of her old lover still refused to
accept her in their family.  She did marry a nobleman but not a man of
her own choice; and she died soon after the union.

As for St. Denis, he became commandant at Natchez.

Once more a royal governor came after Cadillac; but he was a
figurehead.  His name may be ignored.  Then Bienville came back in the
saddle as governor and true founder of New Orleans.  He had three new
companies of soldiers and sixty-nine new colonists and set to work at
the upbuilding of Louisiana.  All charges against him had been
disproved as malice, and he was given a free hand.  As for trade, there
burst over Louisiana the most iridescent bubble ever known to bankers
of Europe.  It was known as the Mississippi Bubble under that Scotch
adventurer, John Law.  It still stands in history as the wildest of
crazy speculative bubbles.

Briefly, death and taxes have to be paid.  Versailles had to pay for
all the extravagant gay graceful era of Louis XIV.  Under the
Pompadour, gambling became the quick easy way to new idle wealth.  If
seigniories in France yielded such revenues, why not seigniories in
Louisiana?




{259}

PART FOUR

HOW LAW'S IRIDESCENT BUBBLE THREW CADILLAC IN PRISON



{261}

CHAPTER XV

1716-1720

All France Goes Mad--Stock Gambling--John Law Establishes First Paper
Currency and Gives as Security State Land, Taxes, Trading Company
Revenues and Louisiana--Shares Rise from 120 to 15,000--People Go Mad
to Grow Rich Overnight--Why Work When You Can Make Your Living
Gambling?--Crozart and Cadillac Fight the Folly, and Cadillac Is Thrown
into the Bastile to Keep His Mouth Shut.


Stormy petrel Cadillac had been all his life.  Was he weary of the
stress and storm as age came on and he gradually learned the hard
lesson that none are so blind as those who refuse to see, none so deaf
as those who plug their ears to facts, none so stupid as those who will
not learn till knocked senseless by the blows of life's hard hammer?
As we shall presently realize, he was undoubtedly weary of stress and
storm; but like the stormy petrel, though he would have preferred to
avoid tornadoes, the wheel of Fate drew him from the outer edge of the
circling hurricane to the very vortex of its center where he came out
fortunate to escape with his life--yes, to escape strangling or poison.
His life had whirled him in every storm of France from his lonely early
days in the Pyrenees till he returned from active service to those same
peaceful southern uplands.

{262}

Now back in France from Louisiana, he found his fate impinged on the
crazy schemes of the Mississippi Bubble conceived by the brain of the
most astute gambler the world has ever known.  John Law was about
thirteen years younger than Cadillac.  He was the son of a rich
goldsmith and capitalist of Scotland.  He came of good and noble
parentage--the Argyles, the Gordons, the Lornes; but he did not like
his family's business.  He detested slow mental processes.  His own
mind worked in lightning jumps.  He was handsome, attractive, amiable,
educated, polished, and seemed to have a magnetism fatal to his peace
for drawing the passion and adoration of women older than himself.
Unlike Bienville, he was not cold and passionless.  He was always
successful in gambling during that gambling age.  He had left Scotland
and was in London when in some game of cards he heard a remark of an
insulting nature by an obscene old man against a lady of the Court.  A
duel followed in Bloomsbury Square, when Law killed the old rou.  He
calmly awaited arrest by the police and was sentenced to death for
murder.  All that saved him from a felon's fate was the scandal that
would have reflected on the royal Court, where the lady was a favorite
with the King.  He was allowed--in fact, helped--to escape from the
Tower of London, put on a ship bound for Belgium and became a wanderer
from European capital to capital.

{263}

At the university of Edinburgh, he had excelled in mathematics and now
with his clear head and calculating mind and polished manners became
known in every fashion resort.  Before he was thirty, he had amassed
from the gaming table what would be a million and a quarter of our
money.  But he had done much more than gamble.  Through his friendship
with women, he had ingratiated himself in the exclusive money and
banking circles; and in these circles, he had tried to study out on
what was the money power based?  Was it credit, which the bankers
controlled--or coinage in silver and gold, which they also controlled?
That same question has split every political party down to our own era.

Whether correct or not, John Law had sincerely come to the conclusion
that credit--not coin--should be the basis of all money value.  Money
enough should be created by the State to cover all needs.  If there was
not enough coin to go round, stamp paper with the guarantee of the
State on notes and bonds, pledge everything the State owned behind the
paper currency and abolish the use of coin.  He did not spring his idea
all at once full grown from his brain.  It came gradually as events
forced his hand.  He first issued the paper.  Then when he found many
banks would not accept it he forced them to do so by law.  When he
found the bankers were issuing the paper to the public but were
themselves taking the public's coin for the {264} paper, he forbade the
use of coin.  When he discovered the banks were hiding coin or shipping
it out of the country secretly, he ordered the possession of coin
forbidden and its use a felony as "counterfeiting."  Houses could be
searched for gold, silver, even gold and silver hammered into jewels.

It was into this strange gambling that Cadillac and Crozart returned
from Louisiana.

Law had wandered about Europe trying to induce some country to adopt
his fiat money scheme.

"Madness," his own family had warned him.  "Double madness, the
delirium tremens of a maniac," the bankers had told him.  "Why?" Law
had asked.  "Because the day would come when the people who exchanged
coin for stamped paper, might want to exchange the paper back for coin."

This, Law did not believe.  He thought if there were no currency but
paper, the people would not want coinage.  He thought the bankers were
afraid of lessening their own power as lenders, which was true.

Casting his eye over all European capitals, he was quick to see that
France was ripe for the new scheme.  Wars and extravagance had
destroyed her credit.  Taxes were terrible.  Factories were closed.
The Court gang now under a regent, the Duke of Orleans during the
childhood of Louis XV, was desperate for revenues.  The State debts
were colossal, and the taxes to {265} pay interest on the State bonds
were so great that the public could not pay them.  There were not
enough assets in all France to cover the capital debt.  Law presented
himself at the French Court.  It took much social climbing to reach the
inner circle of the Finance Department; and in that circle he found the
regent as ignorant of finance as a drowning child catching at straws.

So John Law had risen in four years to become Director of the State
Bank, collector of all State revenues, head of all the great foreign
trading companies, the West Indies and Louisiana trading ventures, the
China South Seas.  England, which had outlawed him as a murderer, now
reprieved his sentence.  Everybody of learning in France honored him
with membership.  The success of his new paper currency began to
frighten Law.  Why was it so successful?  At first, for the simple
reason that every debtor in France from Versailles gambler to street
fishwife could pay debts due in coin with paper money.  All eagerly
bought shares in the State Bank.  It had guaranteed to pay fifty per
cent. dividends on every five hundred livres of shares bought.
Naturally it could--in paper.  The shares rose in value to one
thousand, five thousand, twelve thousand, fifteen thousand.  Law knew
the Bank could never pay fifty per cent., no, not six per cent. on
those values.

{266}

As Crozart had resigned because the colonizing of Louisiana was beyond
the strength of any one individual, Law now took over the Mississippi
Company as part of his great bubble of security behind paper money.  It
was to be a vast, imperial, feudal seigniory of royal revenues to pay
the debts of Old France.  You could buy either shares in the parent
State Bank or any of its subsidiaries.  Louisiana from its imperial
size caught the public imagination.  Press and pamphlets poured out
reams on "Louisiana as the Garden of Eden."  The climate was spring all
the year round.  The soil needed only a scratch to produce crops.
Poultry and wild game would fill the hungry stomachs of the peasants
starving in France, where the flavor of meat was unknown.  Indian
slaves would do all the work.  All the people needed to do was to go to
Louisiana, sit down under a shade tree, and the milk and honey and
fruit from that tree would drop in their mouths.

Cardinals, bishops, princes, cooks, maids, footmen bought shares in the
Mississippi Bubble.  Mobs jostled and tore one another's coats off in
Paris to get their subscriptions recorded.  Law may have believed in
it, himself, for he took an enormous grant on the Arkansas.  Shares
changed hands at a profit of one hundred and twenty per cent.
overnight.  Law's house in Paris became surrounded by mobs of men and
women {267} in Court livery fighting for shares, more shares.  The
delirious populace camped on his steps, in garrets, in kitchens, under
stable roofs.  The wary, however, took cognizance of storm signals and
began selling while the selling was good and secretly sent the proceeds
to England and Belgium in gold for safe-keeping.

Law now became terrified by the pace of the machine which he had set
going.  He had bought fourteen landed estates to secure himself when
the crash came.  Tradesmen closed their shops, mechanics dropped their
tools, clergymen forgot their sermons to peddle "Mississippi" by
bawling out so many shares in the crowded streets.  Law's terror became
a nightmare.  He could not sleep.  Instead of industry expanding with
currency, it had stopped to gamble.  What would happen when shares
would no longer go up?  Everybody would rush to sell and the market
would be swamped.  Law ordered the bank-notes "pegged" at five thousand
to six thousand value.  A howl of madness went up.  Every one rushed to
sell.

It was just at this interval that Crozart and Cadillac stepped from the
whirling circle of the tornado into the vortex.  Both furiously opposed
the folly.  Crozart held a rope of debt round the necks of so many
courtiers that he was doubtless anxious to be paid in coin.  Crozart,
Law could not touch.  If Law angered Crozart, {268} the merchant banker
could blazon some ugly truths about Louisiana that would turn the whole
Court's vengeance on Law.  But Cadillac was more exposed.  Blunt,
tactless, fearless, he began to draw attention to the fact that no
royal revenues, no dividends, no profits could come from Louisiana
trade for many years.  He would accept no paper currency based on
Mississippi values.  Coin and coin only would he use; and as coin was
counterfeit, La Mothe found himself clapped in the Bastile as a
counterfeiter.  There if the wheel of Fate had not turned in a dizzy
whirl, he might have been poisoned or strangled.  The gangster of 1720
was as busy wreaking vengeance on those who stopped his game of easy
money as he is to-day.  Crime and lawlessness ran rampant.

But the wheel of Fate did stop with a terrific crash.  Colonists
returning confirmed the rumor that ran a flame of fire, Louisiana could
yield no dividends for years to come.  What--no dividends?  Then what
was a fifteen thousand share worth?  Cold shivers followed by fevered
maniacal fury ran through the streets of Paris.  A fishwife, who had
bought at top price, dashed to the nearest branch bank to exchange her
note for dividends or coin.  She could obtain neither.  With a screech
she rushed out, tore the note in her hand, spat on it and stamped it in
the gutter.

Law escaped lynching only by flying to the Regent's {269} Palace and
riding in the royal chariot across the border to Brussels.  Little
availed him his fourteen landed estates in France.  They were seized.
He lost all his fortune and at the age of fifty-eight died in poor
lodgings in London, where he had been sparsely supported by his son in
the army.

Meanwhile what had happened to Cadillac?  He was set free from the
Bastile at once.  He was forgotten in the frenzy of the collapse and
free to pursue his own private life--very weary of a mad world and
longing for the peace of his native Pyrenees.

Bienville, too, finally found himself crushed in the wheel of
Louisiana's adverse fate.  Long after, when both Cadillac and Crozart
lay in their graves and Bienville had retired in his eightieth year to
a quiet villa in France, the temporary makeshifts of European diplomacy
compelled the shift of all then known as Louisiana to Spain.  Bienville
saw his life-work going in a disgraceful treaty.  He came from his
retreat and on bended knees, with tears streaming from his eyes, begged
the Minister of the Colonies to save the vast inland empire for France.
The Minister, too, wept, wept tears of sincere regret, but told the
aged Le Moyne hero that France was powerless and must sign the
ignominious treaty.  This treaty preceded by only a few years "the shot
heard round the world," which marked the birth of a new nation, the
United {270} States, to inherit all the labors of Cadillac, of Crozart,
of Bienville, of poor John Law, the most pathetic of all.  De Soto,
Radisson, Marquette, La Salle, Iberville, Bienville, Cadillac, Crozart,
Law--which had not been crushed on the wheel of Fate down that mighty
river that seemed to engulf all hopes?  Bienville's death was really
the drop-curtain on the great Louisiana Epic; and if you care to pursue
the metaphor further, when Lewis and Clark finally explored Louisiana
limits for the American Republic, Lewis's tragic death, whether from
suicide or insanity, opened a new era with tragedy.




{271}

PART FIVE

SUNSET AND EVENING STAR



{273}

CHAPTER XVI

1717-1730

Cadillac Returns to France--How Vast Was the Empire in America at Which
Versailles Grasped?--Why It Failed--The Lawsuit Drags on in
France--Cadillac Obtains an Old Governorship in South France but Does
Not Long Survive to Enjoy It--Madame Cadillac and Her Children.


Cadillac was now over sixty years old.  He had toiled for the extension
of French empire for thirty-four years.  He had little to show for all
these years of toil but thrifty savings and clean record.  He had seen
every plan made by him frustrated by knaves, fools, incompetents.  Yet
he had also seen French empire in the New World jump far beyond the
Great Lakes and the Mississippi toward the Missouri and New Spain.
Even in the year of his recall, plans were before the French Court for
discovery toward the Western Sea.

A Count Toulouse was now a power in the French Court.  Toulouse was the
old town where Cadillac's father had held high office.  La Mothe was
not without friends in France.  Missionaries were encouraged to press
westward from the Great River.  That was why Count Toulouse had sent
Charlevoix, the Jesuit, to report on all parts from Mackinac to New
Orleans.  There, Dubuisson's awful mistakes of antagonizing {274}
prairie tribes had reacted in enmities.  At least five Jesuits had
fallen victims to this heirloom of hate along the Great River.  One was
found murdered before his holy altar.  Others were killed in raids.
The very year Cadillac had threshed Sabrevois in Lower Town, was born
La Verendrye, who with his sons in twenty years carried the French flag
as far as what is now Pierre, South Dakota.  Could France have held
what she gained, the Le Moyne brothers had flung her flag from Hudson
Bay to the Gulf of Mexico.  England held only the narrow strip from
Maine to Georgia; and as Frontenac and Cadillac had predicted in many
dispatches to Louis XIV, the very independent spirit of those colonies
would presently throw off English control--when would come France's
supreme chance to grasp and hold all North America.

Why not?

On the surface the reason was self-apparent.  Rot--the dry-rot of the
old feudal system--was making it crumble.  People would not for ever be
ridden to support on their backs a few favored classes.  But below were
deeper causes--the fungus of a wet sodden under-rot as different from
dry-rot as mushrooms from poisonous toadstools.  Under Louis XIV, the
leaders were men of far vision, wisdom, wide-scope policy.  Under his
successors, the dominant leaders were corrupt weaklings caring for
nothing but {275} pleasure, luxury, self-indulgence--the softer vices
that may differ from brutal strength but are far more insidious as a
disease.  But deeper reasons yet lay below the failure of Louis XIV's
policies.  France had not yet learned the true secret of colonial
expansion and colonial loyalty.  Individual initiative, individual
success, individual profit for the man who set himself to overcome all
obstacles, beat down all obstructions, bide his time to garner the
harvest from "thrifty husbandry of many years"--these were the secrets
France had to learn in the terrible Revolution.  Old France quenched
all personal freedom.  So, unfortunately, at that time did the Church.
When demoiselles were denied all sacraments because they wore lace
insert neck frontages, when soldiers were consigned to flaming hells or
dim purgatory for singing rough secular songs, many young people took
chances on the future by grasping transient happiness in the present.
When Old France thought to dictate all prices from beaver bought to
calico sold, she invited the very same rebellion which confronted the
defeated England over a tea tax in Boston.  It was France's failure
that taught England the true secret of colonial expansion and loyalty.
That secret was in a word--freedom, freedom from bureaucracy, freedom
from interference in local self-government, freedom from self-appointed
fanatical minorities.

{276}

One has only to glance back over Cadillac's secret reports to the Court
to realize that he had learned all this in his dealing with Indian
tribes, bushlopers, voyageurs, traders.  He doubted from the very first
that an Old France could ever be set up in the New World.  If he had
been permitted, he would have set up a new order in Detroit and
remained there for ever.

As they departed from Louisiana by royal frigate, did Cadillac and
Crozart talk over all these things?  Cadillac seems to have proceeded
to Quebec to register his affidavits on his lawsuit for property
confiscated at Detroit.  In Quebec, his very insistence that Detroit
should be independent of Quebec rule, now gave his enemies chance
against him.  If Detroit were independent, why should Quebec be held
responsible?  Especially why should Quebec be held responsible when it
was King Louis XIV had ordered him to Louisiana?  There, they had him
snarled in a tangle.  Cadillac might have answered, because both De
Ramezay's report from Montreal and Vaudreuil's from Quebec had advised
that his independence from Quebec should not hold good.  His claims to
the site of Detroit had been annulled by failure and his right to grant
large tracts outside Detroit to his heirs had not been in his first
concession.  Both De Ramezay and Vaudreuil were good men.  The sinister
figure was the {277} intendant, Raudot.  He was related to Madame
Vaudreuil and was ever the underground wire back to the corrupt clique.

Cadillac now did in Quebec what each reader must interpret for himself.
He indentured or boarded for life with the Ursulines a daughter--five
thousand dollars for an annuity to her while she lived, a fund to go to
the Ursuline funds when she left or died, one thousand dollars for what
must have been luxurious quarters to her in the bare convent cells.
She was to be as free as she pleased to come and go always.  She was
never under any circumstances to be expelled.  She was to be safely
housed and cared for during her lifetime.  The motive of this cast-iron
contract, one can only guess.  It may have been from a blasted
love-affair.  It may have been that the daughter had passed the age at
which the majority of young girls married.  She may have, like
Bienville, "preferred the mortification of a celibate life"; or she may
have had some mental or physical ailment rendering her unfit for active
life outside convent walls.  Whatever the motive, it is more a subject
for fiction than history.

Cadillac then moved with his family to France and found himself, as we
have seen, in the vortex of the Mississippi Bubble and presently for
exposing the fraud in the Bastile.  When the fraud exploded and
Cadillac was released, he had as always friends at {278} Court--quite
as many as under Louis XIV; but he could buy place and power under
Louis XV, which he could not under the Grand Monarch.  His heart turned
back to the sunny warm scenes of his boyhood, that land of his
ancestors in their heyday and glory back to the Crusades against the
Saracens.  At this time, the governorships of departments in southern
France were "farmed out," or sold to the highest bidder.  One was for
sale.  Cadillac bid for it at sixteen thousand five hundred livres.
Parkman gives a livre in value as about a quarter of our dollar; but
Sulte, the greatest authority on all matters colonial in that era,
rightly points out that the old livre in silver weight was much nearer
our modern dollar than nineteen or even sixty cents.  So was the French
crown.  The Spanish pistole was worth almost four dollars.  You can
compute the price of that governorship at any of these values you like.
Any value proves that the careful Cadillac and his wife had saved money
and banked it in France or Belgium safe from the crash that came in the
Mississippi Bubble to all French Banks.  It is suggested in one life of
John Law that both Crozart and Cadillac on coming back to France bought
shares in the Bubble at low value and sold at high and so recouped
themselves for their losses in Louisiana; but there is no proof of
this; and Cadillac's term in the Bastile for exposing the fraud seems
to disprove the suggestion.

{279}

The governorship he bought was at what we now call Castel-sarrarin.  It
was known in his day as Castel-sazzarin.  It was then and had been
formerly much more important than it is to-day.  The deeply moated,
thick-walled old tower had ever been regarded as one of the strongholds
against Spanish aggression north of the Pyrenees.  The cobbled streets
still rang to warrior's iron heel, to cavalrymen's shod horses, to
cannon trundled from castle to loopholed walls.  Drawbridges forefended
entrance by the guarded gates.  Military pomp displayed all its
fripperies below the fleur-de-lis.  The governor had to be a commander
as well as a civic ruler.  The office carried a salary of from twelve
hundred to two thousand crowns, which again you can figure at either
the French or the Spanish values.  The governor was expected to
maintain in his living the degree of dignity and good taste of an
ancient chteau.  Look at it carefully.  You can see that no salary
even of two thousand dollars could sustain such a standard.  The
architecture resembled Old Spain, rather than northern France.  There
were none of the Gothic turrets, the steep slope roofs, the deep
embrasured windows of Frontenac's home.  The windows were slits.  The
roof-line was a crenelated tower behind which defenders could conceal
themselves and shoot down all assailants.  The royal seal of the tower
had the same type of castle stamped on one side.

Castel-sarrarin lay within easy distance from {280} St. Nicolas de la
Grave, Cadillac's native place.  He must have looked forward to a
peaceful sunset for his stormy checkered life.  To any modern traveler
motoring through this section to-day the region must appeal strongly.
Living is still ridiculously cheap.  Highways are excellent.  The
scenery is beautiful.  The very atmosphere is fragrant as old roses of
a glory past but heroic.  Great figures from Crusade leaders to such
noble moderns as Archbishop Tach of Manitoba had come from these old
towns.  You can still see the convents, the monasteries, the schools
with their arched corridors where students and young prelates and old
scholars, pacing back and forward in the cool shade, dreamed their high
dreams as they studied.

[Illustration: City hall in Cadillac's birthplace.  _Courtesy, Lenox
Library, New York_.]

I can not say Cadillac's hopes were again blasted; for I don't know.
The system of government was changed within two years from royal
governors to majors or mayors.  The new office carried a salary of only
one hundred and twenty livres.  This may have been from the deflation
of the currency after Law's experiment with paper bills; or the salary
may have been cut down.  Cadillac's son, who had been ensign back in
Detroit, now assumed the office his father had held.  His age is given
as twenty-three or twenty-five.  This must have been the boy, aged
twelve or thirteen, acting as ensign, for whom La Mothe had requested a
cadetship.

{281}

Where did La Mothe retire for the next six years of his life?  We do
not know.  We know from his will only that he lived as the gentlemen of
the period were expected to live--in good estate.  His will enumerates
beautiful furnishings in his final home, rare Dutch tapestries,
carriages, fine horses, solid silver, grand bedsteads and bureaus in
five guest chambers.  We can infer that he left his family near his son
and pressed his futile lawsuit in Paris and Quebec.  Then the candle of
life flickers suddenly and the light goes out.  He died at midnight
October 15, 1730.  Again we may infer--but it may not be correct--that
he died of the plague, now known as "influenza"; for he was buried
within twenty-four hours in the Carmelite vaults on October sixteenth
at Castel-sarrarin.  Burial within twenty-four hours, unless death had
resulted from what was called "the plague," was unusual for public
characters.

[Illustration: Celebration in Cadillac's home town--south of France.
_Courtesy, Lenox Library, New York_.]

You can not read into Cadillac's life the hidden psychology of the
man--what you or I would have done under similar circumstances.  You
can not because the real man wore such an impenetrable mask to all but
the King, Frontenac, his wife.  To those, he was loyal to the core of
his being.  To all others, he was Cyrano to the end--blunt, fearless,
heedless of enemies.  He was as honest as the day.  Otherwise, by
keeping quiet when he came back to France and with {282} the coin cash
he possessed, by buying Mississippi Bubble shares low and selling high,
he could have made a fortune.  Instead, he spoke out and went to the
Bastile for holding "counterfeit coin."  As Frontenac had long before
forewarned him, when plunderers wish to kill a good watch-dog, they
call it mad.  We do definitely know that he saw every life-hope
frustrated by fools, incompetents, scoundrels.  Even Dubuisson, who
made such a mess at Detroit as a poltroon commander, retrieved his army
record by good work in European wars; but when the Mississippi Bubble
came on, he joined the worst of the rascal crew and allied himself to
the very Court rings that lured the public to ruin.  We know La Mothe
could have bought and bought cheap the best estates anywhere in Old
France after the crash.  Instead, he chose the sunny peaceful uplands
of his youth as far from the corrupt Court as he could go.  Therefore,
we may infer that he was tired of storm and stress.  He may even have
read the ominous sign of his times, that the Old Order would have to
give place to the New.  He had raised his ruined family from disgrace
and poverty to security.  Except for his bitterness in Louisiana, there
is little to criticize in his record; and that change in a man over
fifty is both physical and mental.  No one used to a cool climate can
go to a torrid zone and not lose in physical vigor, in the sweats which
enervate, in the depression from {283} which so many seek relief, in
stimulants which have to be doubled, tripled, quadrupled.  The descent
to deterioration then becomes a dip to the avernus of a ruined
character.

Cadillac never evinced the slightest sign of that deeper deterioration
of the whole man.  He did not even have to arrest a descent to
deterioration.  He was unfair to Bienville; but at Detroit he had
handled worse situations with fewer men than Bienville commanded.  It
was his furious temper that tripped him there; perhaps, too, his
inordinate ambition.  This ambition seems to have quenched when he saw
the real condition of Old France.  What did a marquisate mean when
cooks, footmen, courtezans were awarded highest title, while the true
patriots were sent to a Bastile?  He seems like Bacon to have become a
philosopher in the days of his retreat.  One would give a great deal to
know his final philosophy of life; but we haven't it; and he is too
hidden a character for any one to try to imagine it.  We have to let
his life record and results speak.  His life record seemed to go down
in defeat.  But did it?  Isn't the development of modern Detroit, of
Chicago, of the Middle West, of all the Greater Louisiana,
justification of his judgment?  Didn't he live a hundred years before
his times?  Only Jefferson of modern life grasped what the Greater
Louisiana meant, and he had hard work {284} getting two thousand five
hundred dollars to set Lewis and Clark to explore.

Anyway, far as we know, there the man's life record stands.

We next find in Court records requests down to 1733 from Madame
Cadillac and members of her family to go to Detroit and Quebec.  These
efforts to press restitution for losses proved quite futile.  The
Cadillac family lost all but their savings from every sou invested in
Detroit.  Later when the Revolutionary War for ever broke all rulership
of British Colonies from Maine to Florida, we find descendants of
Madame Cadillac pressing for some recognition of the vast holdings
deeded to La Mothe round what is now Bar Harbor.  This restitution was
recommended but never, as far as I can find, endorsed in any
substantial form.  Her descendants may be found in every section of
North America and southern France.

Where does Cadillac rank in American and Canadian history?

In all development from savage wilderness, there were three stages.  We
may dispute over the ethics, but we can not differ as to the facts.

There was first the discoverer, financed by beaver in the case of
France, by silver- and gold-mine in the case of Spain.

Then followed the explorer, again financed by fur {285} or precious
metal.  In every case except Lewis and Clark, this was true; and it is
almost pathetic of our parsimony, to have set down that, where royalty
good or bad in France and Spain was eager to take a gamble of advancing
fifteen thousand crowns for expenses to discover and explore, the
United States advanced Lewis and Clark only two thousand five hundred
dollars.  It is pathetic almost to the point of bathos to have to add
that France finally relinquished all Louisiana for fifteen million
dollars.  There is scarcely a patch of farm lands, oil wells, mines
which does not repay that first cost in a single year.

After the discoverer and explorer, but just as essential as both, comes
the upbuilder.  That by the same token was what made Detroit what it is
to-day.  There the upbuilder has done far more than the discoverer and
explorer.  Who does not see this in modern developments?  Need one name
the great motor industrial leaders there to-day?  Had they not to fight
the same barrage of opposition, insidious attacks, enmities, financial
skulduddery and even financial "thuggery"?  And much of their success
may be ascribed to the same qualities that made Cadillac great.
Cadillac belongs to the upbuilder class.  It can not be said that his
life was less adventurous, less romantic, less daring.  It had more of
each quality than we know of all his forerunners.  This is {286}
consciously or unconsciously recognized in the name commemorated from
towns and cities to beautiful art portrayals on canvas and in marble.

Time plays as curious tricks on fame as distance does on mountain
peaks.  Go too close to a mountain peak!  You can't always see it for
the foot-hills.  You often see muddy water rushing in torrents from the
swollen streams of snows thawing on the far unseen opal peaks.  Recede
from the peaks!  You see snowy austere opalescent domes of grandeur and
majesty, hard and cold perhaps, but clean and clear, lengthening their
shadows as you recede or as the sun sets.

So it is with great characters in history.  I do not pursue the
comparison with Cadillac.  Let his name stand and take its place as
time goes on.




THE END




  {289}

  INDEX


  Acadia, 38, 43
  Africa, 245
  Algonquins, 84, 86, 111, 130, 133, 154
  Alleghanies, 109
  Alvarado, 199
  America, 49, 69, 71, 207, 223
  Anaya, Gaspardo, 250
  Andreas, xxi
  Annapolis, 52
  Anticosti, 115
  Archives of City of Quebec, xxii
  Archives of Paris, 209
  Arctic, 109, 128
  Argyles, the, 262
  Arizona, 247
  Arkansas, 230, 242, 247
  Asia, 99
  Assiniboines, 111, 229
  Atlantic, 87, 101, 116, 126
  Australia, 156
  Aylmer, 133
  Aztecs, 218


  Babylon, 118
  Bacon, 283
  Bar Harbor, 43, 284
  Bastile, xxi, 228, 268, 269, 278, 282, 283
  Belgium, 262, 267, 278
  Belle Isle Straits, 25
  Bienville, xvii, 39, 58, 87, 201, 203, 204, 220, 221, 223,
      229, 262, 277, 283
    and the Natchez, 225-28, 233-43
    appointed lieutenant-governor, 206
    death of first Bienville, 40, 99
    establishes Fort Rosalie, 232-33
    founder of New Orleans, 99, 257
    last years and death of, 269-70
    policy toward Indians, 208
    rejects marriage designs, 207, 212-13, 223-25, 231, 243-45
  Biloxi, 203, 204, 206, 208, 209, 211, 212, 220, 221, 222, 243
  Black Robes, 31, 66, 102, 144, 166
  Blanchard, xxi
  Bloomsbury Square, 262
  Bois Blanc Isle, 158
  Boisbrant, 206, 208, 213, 222
  Boston, 37, 52, 87, 275
  Brittany, 70
  Brussels, 269
  Burton Collection, xvi, xx
  Burton, Mr., xxii, 141


  Cadillac, Chevalier Antoine de la Mothe
    and governorship of Louisiana, 178-84
    and Mississippi Bubble, 262, 267-68, 277, 278
    at Versailles, 119-22
    attitude toward missionaries, 31
    birthplace of, 44
    challenges Sabrevois, 34
    characteristics of, 45, 46, 50
    confers with Frontenac, 99-104
    death of, 281
    describes Louisiana, 214-17
    education of, 46-48
    establishes fort at Detroit, 140-57
    founder of Detroit, 56
    gathers facts at Mackinac, 110-14, 136
    governor of Louisiana, 56
    imprisoned as counterfeiter, 268, 282
    marriage of, 52
    offers daughter in marriage, 224-25
    position in history, xv, 284-86
    reports to Louis, 52-58, 88
    returns with family to France, 277
    similarity to Bergerac, xvii, 60
  Cadillac, Madame, 136, 145, 146, 150, 151, 159, 169,
      174, 178, 181, 185, 195, 284
  Canada, 50, 56, 143, 155, 162, 181
  Canadian Archives, xx
  Canadian National Art Gallery, xxii
  Cape Diamond, 25, 26, 61, 67
  Carheil, Etienne, 36, 105, 106, 129, 159
  Castel-sarrarin, 44, 279, 280, 281
  Castle St. Louis, 25, 26, 36, 42, 43, 53, 61, 62, 83, 97, 99, 113
  Catlin, George B., xxi, xxii, 141
  Chacornacle, 121, 131, 159
  Champlain, 89
  Charles II, 127
  Charlevoix, xv, xviii, 217, 219, 273
  Chteau de Ramezay, 113
  Chteau Frontenac, 62
  Chteau St. Louis, 171
  Chats, the, 133
  Chaudire Falls, 133
  Chicago, 100, 121, 283
  Chicago Historical Society, xxii
  Chickasaws, 242
  Chien d'Or, 75
  China, 132
  China South Seas, 265
  Chouart, 127, 174
  Clark, 270, 284, 285
  Comanches, 249
  Constantine, 131, 140, 162, 164, 165, 166, 181
  Crees, 111, 153, 229
  Cromwell, 106
  Crows, 154
  Crozart, Anthony, xviii, 213, 219, 226, 231, 240, 264,
      267, 269, 270, 276
    and Louisiana policy, 245-246
    and Marie Anne, 222-24, 244, 256-57
    characteristics of, 221-22, 243
    resignation of, 256, 266
  Crusades, 45, 64, 278
  _Cyrano de Bergerac_, xvi


  De la Barre, Governor, 30, 31, 41, 99
  De la Vert, 219
  De Lery, xxi, 104
  Denonville, 30, 31, 41, 99
  De Ramezay, 173, 276
  De Soto, 201, 205, 230, 270
  Detroit, xvi, xix, xxi, xxii, 48, 101, 102, 106, 109, 114,
      120, 127, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142,
      143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 151, 153, 154, 158, 159,
      162, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 174,
      176, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 189, 193, 194,
      195, 206, 208, 214, 215, 224, 225, 226, 228, 229,
      230, 251, 276, 280, 282, 283, 284, 285
  Detroit River, 141
  Drake, 200
  Dubuisson, 177, 178, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 191, 192,
      193, 195, 273, 282
  Dugue, 121, 131
  Duluth, xix, 38, 54, 100, 121, 137
  Du Pratz, Le Page, xviii, 213, 219, 220, 223, 233, 240, 241, 247


  Edinburgh, 263
  England, xvii, xxi, 40, 56, 57, 87, 106, 109, 127, 168, 178,
      241, 246, 265, 267, 274, 275
  Europe, 31, 40, 66, 99, 106, 117, 168, 246, 248, 254, 257, 264
  Evelyn
    _Diary_, 241


  Florida, 40, 109, 203, 206, 284
  Fort Frontenac, 41, 100, 145, 146
  Fortier, xxi
  Fort Pontchartrain, 150
  Fort Rosalie, xviii, 233, 241, 249
  Foxes, 187, 190
  France, xvi, xvii, xviii, xxi, 45, 47, 56, 59, 64, 85, 87, 89,
      109, 115, 116, 118, 127, 136, 164, 168, 173, 178,
      184, 195, 202, 204, 206, 219, 228, 240, 241, 245,
      246, 247, 248, 254, 256, 257, 261, 264, 265, 266,
      269, 273, 274, 275, 278, 279, 281, 284, 285
    _See also_ Old France and New France
  French Revolution, xxi, 112, 275
  French River, 134
  Frontenac, Count, xx, 30, 35, 36, 37, 41, 42, 43, 55, 59,
      60, 61, 63, 64, 66, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93,
      94, 95, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 110, 113,
      119, 120, 126, 131, 148, 151, 164, 216, 227, 228,
      244, 274, 281, 282
  Frontenac, Madame, 120


  Garonne, 44
  Gascons, 31, 44, 50, 59, 62, 63, 92, 120, 179, 214
  Gatineau River, 133
  Gayarr, xvii, xviii, 209, 233, 247, 249
  Georgia, 274
  Georgian Bay, 105, 134, 135, 136
  Georgian Bay Islands, 135
  Gibbons, Mr., xxii
  Gordons, the, 262
  Grand River, 146, 175
  Gratiot, 137
  Gray Gowns, 144
  Great Forked River, 202
  Great Lakes, 38, 43, 57, 147, 153, 225, 227, 273
  Great Manitoulin, 135
  Great Sun, 235
  Greece, 117
  Green Bay, 111
  Griswold Street, 140
  Grosse Isle, 138
  Gulf of Mexico, xviii, 40, 56, 199, 218, 223, 225, 248, 274
  Gulf of St. Lawrence, 128
  Guyon, Mademoiselle, 29
  Guyon, Monsieur, xvi, xxii
  Guyon, Thrse, 51


  Havana, 208, 211, 219
  Hazleton, Miss, xxii
  Hennepin, xxi
  Hill, Miss, xxii
  Hog Island, 193
  Holy War, 46
  Hudson Bay, 38, 39, 40, 41, 49, 53, 87, 99, 105, 111, 114,
      127, 153, 168, 178, 244, 274
  Hudson's Bay Company 108, 114, 126, 127
  Hudson's Bay Company Papers, xxi
  Huguenots, 204
  Hull, 133
  Huron River, 137
  Hurons, 53, 84, 86, 101, 111, 120, 130, 133, 135, 154,
      158, 165, 186, 187, 189, 190


  Iberville, xvii, 39, 58, 87, 201, 208
    death of, 209-11
    plants colonies along Mississippi, 202-7
  Illinois, 121, 122, 154, 163, 164, 165, 186, 187
  Illinois River, 137, 176
  Iroquois, 30, 31, 38, 41, 57, 83, 84, 85, 86, 99, 128, 133,
      146, 154, 156, 216, 228
  Isle Orleans, 84, 92, 98
  Isle Perce, 115


  James Bay, 38, 39, 105, 227
  Jefferson, 283
  Jefferson Street, 140
  Jesuits, xv, xx, 31, 42, 43, 47, 53, 54, 60, 64, 66, 75, 94,
      105, 106, 127, 129, 144, 159, 162, 164, 166, 169, 274
  Joliet, xix, 116, 132, 142
  Joliet, Madame, 96


  Kickapoos, 193
  Kidd, 200
  Kingston
    _See_ Fort Frontenac
  Kreighoff, 70
  Krum, Miss, xxii


  Labrador, 115
  Lachine, 131, 138
  Lachine Rapids, 132
  La Forest, 177, 178, 183, 184, 193
  La Harpe, xxi
  Lake Erie, 100, 143, 146, 175
  Lake George, 89
  Lake Huron, 100, 135, 165, 176
  Lake Ontario, 143, 159
  Lake Superior, 105, 111
  La Salle, 38, 116, 121, 146, 202, 205, 270
  Laument, Jean, 44
  Laurentian Mountains, 83, 133
  Lauzon, Duke de, 29, 51, 120
  Laval, Bishop, 35, 98, 105
  La Verendrye, 274
  Law, John, 184, 257, 278
    and "Mississippi" stock, 266-67
    and paper currency, 265
    characteristics of, 262-63
  Le Moyne
    _See_ Bienville, Iberville and Sauvolle
  Lenarez, xxi, 247, 250, 251, 252
  Lenox Library, xvii, xxii
  Lewis, 284, 285, 270
  Little Sun, 235, 236, 237, 238
  London, 127, 190, 262, 269
  Lornes, the, 262
  Louis XIII, xvii, 117
  Louis XIV, xvi, xvii, xx, xxii, 29, 40, 41, 52, 56, 66, 84,
      86, 87, 93, 94, 109, 112, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120,
      122, 126, 127, 129, 144, 150, 154, 168, 178, 195,
      199, 202, 203, 208, 222, 227, 256, 257, 274, 276, 278
  Louis XV, 264, 278
  Louisiana, xv, xvii, xviii, xxi, 39, 46, 56, 104, 109, 139,
      150, 177, 178, 179, 180, 184, 185, 195, 201, 202,
      206, 208, 209, 211, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219,
      222, 223, 225, 228, 230, 231, 240, 245, 246, 247,
      248, 251, 257, 264, 265, 266, 268, 276, 282, 285
  Lower Town, xviii, 25, 26, 27, 30, 36, 42, 61, 68, 71, 76,
      84, 90, 92, 128, 179, 274


  Mackinac, xix, 43, 53, 54, 55, 85, 88, 100, 103, 104, 105,
      108, 110, 111, 113, 114, 120, 129, 130, 131, 135,
      136, 137, 144, 153, 159, 166, 169, 179, 218, 228, 273
  Mackinac Straits, 53
  Maine, 38, 43, 109, 274, 284
  Mal Bay, 89, 97, 98, 115
  Manhattan, 38, 57, 87
  Manitoba, 105, 280
  Manitoulin Island, 165
  Margry, xxi, xv
  Marine Papers, xvi, xx, 247
  Marlborough, xvii, 56, 168, 246
  Marquette, 108, 142, 202, 230, 270
  Mary, Queen, 94
  Mascoutens, 101, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193
  Massachusetts, 38, 39, 97, 227
  Matagorda Bay, 205
  Mather, Cotton, 95
  Mattawa, 131, 133, 146
  Maurepas, 117, 158
  Mediterranean, 139
  Menominees, 152, 164
  Mexican Revolution, 253
  Mexico, xxi, 40, 87, 155, 203, 248, 251, 252, 253
  Mexico City, 247, 250, 251, 252, 253, 255
  Miami River, 176
  Miamis, 165, 186, 190
  Michigan, 111, 137, 139, 152
  Minnesota, 105, 152
  Mississippi Bubble, 184, 257, 262, 266, 277, 278, 282
  Mississippi Company, 266
  Mississippi River, xviii, 99, 100, 108, 121, 122, 137, 176,
      202, 203, 205, 208, 209, 213, 230, 231, 232, 247, 273
  Missouri River, 153, 273
  Missouris, 188
  Mobile, 109, 207, 209, 211, 220, 221
  Mobile River, 206
  Mohawk Trail, 57
  Montauban, 44
  Montezuma, 254
  Montreal, 25, 41, 54, 55, 67, 71, 80, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88,
      89, 90, 95, 100, 103, 106, 110, 113, 114, 122, 130,
      144, 145, 151, 162, 166, 173, 174, 276
  Montreal Company, 153
  Morgan, 200
  Moscow, 202
  Mountain Hill, 75
  Mountain Street, 93
  Murray Bay
    _See_ Mal Bay
  Muskogees, 153


  Napoleon, xxii, 57, 104, 202
  Natchez, xviii, 204, 211, 218, 220, 221, 225, 228, 229,
      232, 233, 234, 235, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242, 243,
      244, 249, 251, 257
  Netherlands, 64
  New England, 37, 52, 58, 85, 88, 90, 92, 95, 96, 99, 100, 122, 244
  Newfoundland, 40, 87
  New France, 29, 31, 35, 37, 39, 41, 43, 52, 54, 56, 60, 64,
      76, 84, 87, 89, 98, 106, 110, 113, 126, 127, 128,
      130, 174, 179, 184, 203
  New Hampshire, 38, 39
  New Mexico, 247
  New Orleans, xviii, 99, 209, 211, 220, 221, 257, 273
  New Spain, 29, 46, 56, 246, 249, 251, 252, 253, 273
  New World, 109, 168, 215, 273, 276
  New York, xvii, xxii, 30, 37, 52, 53
  Niagara, 100, 145, 146, 171, 175
  Nineveh, 118
  Nipissing Lake, 134
  Normandy, 70
  North America, xvi, xvii, 29, 87, 109, 155, 168, 202,
      246, 274, 284
  Nova Scotia, 51, 96, 109


  Ohio River, 43, 54, 55, 57, 58, 100, 152, 153, 165, 178,
      179, 187, 190, 215, 230, 242
  Oklahoma, 247
  Old France, xvii, 25, 28, 37, 40, 41, 56, 57, 106, 110, 111,
      142, 144, 162, 177, 252, 266, 275, 276, 282, 283
  Old Spain, 57, 252, 279
  Old Versailles, 29
  Omahas, 154
  Ontario, 137, 171
  Orient, 254
  Orleans, Duke of, 264
  Osages, 188
  Ottawa, xx, 133
  Ottawa River, 132, 133, 136, 146, 169
  Ottawas, 53, 101, 111, 130, 158, 186, 188, 189


  Pacific, 203
  Palestine, 46
  Paris, 29, 52, 65, 111, 168, 194, 195, 221, 245, 266, 268, 281
  Paris Archives, xvi
  Parkman, xv, 107, 278
  Pawnees, 154
  Pensacola, 87, 109, 199, 200, 202, 219
  Perellan, 32
  Pezant, 164, 165, 166, 230, 247, 248
  Phips, 82, 92, 93, 94
    characteristics of, 95-96
    defeated at Quebec, 97-98
  Pierre, 274
  Plains of Abraham, 30
  Point aux Barques, 137
  Point Levis, 25, 67
  Pontchartrain, Count, xix, 87, 103, 116, 120, 138, 158, 180, 202, 233
  Pontiac Conspiracy, 152
  Port Royal, 51, 52, 95
  Portugal, 203
  Pottawattomies, 140, 152, 158, 184, 187
  Puritans, 38
  Pyrenees, xvi, xvii, 31, 44, 45, 60, 63, 172, 214, 247, 261, 269, 279


  Quaife, Doctor, xxii
  Quebec, xv, xviii, 25, 29, 30, 35, 36, 41, 43, 54, 55, 59,
      62, 64, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 77, 85, 88, 89, 90, 92,
      95, 96, 97, 101, 102, 105, 106, 109, 110, 113, 127,
      130, 138, 142, 145, 146, 149, 151, 152, 158, 159,
      160, 161, 166, 167, 171, 172, 173, 174, 177, 179,
      180, 181, 183, 184, 185, 195, 199, 232, 276, 277, 281, 284
  Quebec City, 55, 61, 219
  Quebec Company, 153
  Quebec Province Archives, xx
  Quebec Province Archivists, xvi
  Queen Anne's War, 52, 168


  Radisson, Pierre, 108, 112, 127, 132, 160, 174, 202, 270
  Raimond, Don Diego, 249
  Raudot, 277
  Recollets, 36, 54, 60, 66, 94, 102, 104, 106, 144, 163, 164
  Red River, 247
  Revolutionary War, 284
  Richard, the Lion-Hearted, 45
  Richelieu, xvii, 117
  Rideau River Falls, 133
  Rio del Norte
    _See_ Rio Grande
  Rio Grande, 109, 155, 249, 255
  Rochelle, 219
  Rocky Mountains, 135
  Rome, 117
  Roy, Mr., xxii
  Russia, xxi, xxii, 104


  Sabrevois, Jacques de Bleury, 33, 34, 42, 43, 127, 194, 195, 274
  Sacs, 152, 164
  Saginaw Bay, 137
  Saginaws, 192
  Saguenay, 89, 98
  San Domingo, 208, 209, 219, 247
  Saracens, 45, 278
  Sarnia Straits, 137
  Saskatchewan, 154
  Saulteurs, 153
  Sauvolle, 201, 206, 207
  Savoy, 142
  Savoyard River, 138, 141, 142
  Scotland, 107, 262
  Shakespeare, 107, 139
    _Macbeth_, 107
  Shawnees, 152
  Shelby Street, 140
  Singing Serpent, 235
  Sioux, 101, 154, 156, 163, 186
  Solomon, 118
  South Dakota, 274
  Spain, xvii, xxi, 40, 87, 109, 118, 154, 202, 203, 207,
      219, 247, 254, 269, 284, 285
    _See also_ Old Spain and New Spain
  St. Anne Bonsecours church, 80, 113, 132, 140, 141
  St. Charles River, 25, 91, 97
  St. Denis, Juchereau de, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 254, 255, 256, 257
  St. Ignace, 105, 108, 136, 166
  St. John the Baptist Fort, 249, 255
  St. John Ulloa, 253
  St. Lawrence River, 25, 30, 40, 57, 61, 62, 67, 80, 84, 85,
      88, 89, 90, 96, 97, 98, 104, 128, 149, 216
  St. Louis Street, 95
  St. Nicolas de la Grave, 44, 60, 280
  Strohm, Mr., xxii
  Sulte, Benjamin, xxi, 107


  Tach, Archbishop, 280
  Tadoussac, 96, 115
  Taensas, 242
  Tanguay, Abb, xv, xxi
    _Genealogy_, xxi
  Taos, 250
  Taylor, Mr., xvii, xxii
  Tecumseh War, 152
  Texas, 205
  Theresa Tonty, 147
  Three Rivers, 84, 127, 130, 174
  Tonty, Alphonse, 38, 121, 122, 130, 147, 150
  Tonty, Henry, 38, 204
  Tonty, Madame, 145, 160
  Toulouse, 44, 137, 273
  Toulouse, Count, 273
  Tower of London, 262
  Treaty of Ryswick, 52
  Trinity Bay, 205
  Turkey, 118


  United States, 74, 143, 155, 270, 285
  Upper Town, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 61, 91, 95


  Vaillant, Franois, 131, 145, 146, 159, 160, 166
  Vallier, Monseignior, 31, 35, 36, 42, 105
  Vaudreuil, Governor, 113, 161, 173, 178, 180, 183, 186,
      193, 194, 195, 276
  Vaudreuil, Madame, 277
  Vera Cruz, 253
  Vermont, 38
  Versailles, xvii, 42, 51, 63, 68, 110, 116, 117, 118, 129,
      137, 149, 161, 167, 168, 179, 180, 184, 221, 222,
      239, 243, 257, 265
  Villescar, Pedro de
    _See_ Raimond, Don Diego


  War of 1812, 185
  Wayne Street, 140
  West Indies, 208, 245, 265
  Whitehall, 190
  William, King, 94
  William of Orange, 56, 168
  Wisconsin, 111, 137, 152, 164
  Wrong, Professor, 73




  [Illustration: End papers - back]






[End of Cadillac, by Agnes C. Laut]
