The White and the Gold (34 page)

But in Montreal, the French spearhead, there was no perceptible lull. The town at the meeting of the two rivers had been growing, but the mere fact of growth had added to its vulnerability. On his last trip to France, Maisonneuve had returned with 114 men, some of them artisans and some soldiers, and this had increased the population to well over the two hundred mark. It is recorded that there were 160 ablebodied men altogether. A third of them were married and inevitably were raising families. This had created a need for more houses. It was no longer possible to build behind the walls which surrounded the fort, and so the town had moved out into the open. Between forty and fifty houses had been built on a road to which was given the name of Rue St. Paul and which ran almost due east and west, first following the bank of the St. Lawrence and then bending to the course of the St. Pierre, passing the Hôtel-Dieu and the well-palisaded frame structure of three stories which served the double purpose of a home for Maisonneuve and an administrative center. At right angles to this road was a narrow and muddy passage which cut between these two main buildings and ran north to
what would become the Place d’Armes and then to St. Martin’s Brook. To this road was given the name of Rue St. Joseph. In 1657 a small chapel had been erected in the open at the extreme east end of the Rue St. Paul, and this had been given the name of Bonsecours.

The governor’s greatest problem had been to devise some measure of defense for the straggling line of small houses, and he had solved it as well as he could by erecting forts and redoubts at intervals. At the extreme eastern point, above the Bonsecours chapel, he had constructed a strong stone fort which was called the citadel. At the other extreme, south and west of the original fort, there was a windmill which was well loopholed and capable of resisting attacks. In addition there was a series of log redoubts behind which the little houses clustered. These had been named by the devout Maisonneuve, and so we find the
Redoubt of the Infant Jesus, St. Gabriel, and Ste. Marie
.

The houses, necessarily, were small and of frame construction, but they followed the architectural ideas which were to be more fully developed later, the habitant type; the roof always peaked to the shape of a witch’s hat to prevent the accumulation of snow in winter; the framework an industrious white, relieved by doors of bright colors, red or blue or even purple (but never yellow, for that shade had come to denote a traitor or a deceived husband), according to individual tastes; the oven outside, constructed of wickerwork, plastered inside and out with clay or mortar and raised four feet from the ground. Some of the houses had palisades of their own for defense purposes.

The men who built the houses were far different from the dregs and spews who had been brought out to Canada in the early days. They were showing the first signs of becoming a new race, the French-Canadian. They were straighter and much stronger, their shoulders and arms hard from the unceasing swing of ax and dip of paddle. Even their voices were starting to change, the soft note of the French provinces giving place to a higher and clearer note which carried over long stretches of water and through the forests, and with a musical ring to it, particularly when they sang to the heave of the busy axes such songs as
Rossignolet Sauvage, La Norrice du Roi
, and
Dame Lombarde
. Their eyes were clear and alert, as indeed they had to be with peril all about them; but there was nothing timorous, nothing furtive. They seemed capable of looking far into the distance,
of seeing beyond the encircling forest the open plains of the far West and the icebound waters of the North.

The qualities found in these industrious workmen would become accentuated as time went on. They would animate the men who would soon be starting out for all parts of the continent: down the Mississippi to the Gulf, north to Hudson’s Bay, west to the great prairies where the buffalo roamed.

As environment had changed them physically, it had led also to distinctive ways of dressing. The men of Montreal wore long-skirted coats tied at the waist with worsted scarves. In Quebec the scarves were red and in Three Rivers white. Their legs were covered in winter with
chaussettes
of wool, their heads well protected in warm woolen coverings called
bonnets rouges
. The custom had already developed of wearing a birch-bark case around the neck containing the wearer’s knife for eating, it being a habit to set out only a fork and spoon for guests.

The character of the town was changing. In the hearts of the devout Maisonneuve and the resolute Jeanne Mance the flame of dedication still burned brightly, but there was no denying the destiny of a settlement with such a situation as this. Montreal had been intended from the first by the forces which control such matters to be a great trading center. It could not be bypassed by the canoes from the north and west which brought the winter’s catch down to the market. More and more traders were starting in business and doing well for themselves. The region lying between the Rue St. Paul and the muddy
Commune
bordering the course of the St. Lawrence was filling up with mercantile establishments, stores, trading posts, warehouses. A census taken in 1665, just five years beyond the point in time which this narrative has reached, would show a jump in population to 525. Two years later it would be 766. This growth, which seems infinitesimal in the light of modern statistics, was quite fabulous when compared to the slow increase in the first twenty years. The fur trade was to be thanked for what was happening at the junction of the rivers.

Men were becoming wealthy, and the life of the seigneurial class and the better-established merchants was taking on some of the refinements and the opulence of the leisure classes in France. The freight received from France was no longer made up of sheer necessities. There were bales of rich materials for clothes and the
niceties of attire which Paris created for the world; for the ladies,
considérations
, which were panniers to be worn over skirts, headdresses of
étamine, contouches
with bows of red ribbon down the front, lacy robes of
gorge-de-pigeon
, skirt stiffeners called
criardes
; for the men,
tapabord
hats, which had turned-up brims and silk linings, and
claques
, which were three-cornered and very handsome indeed,
bretelles
(a primitive form of suspenders), and knee-length
capots
. The finest furniture was being sent out as well: walnut commodes with marble tops, serpentine tables,
armoires
of sassafras wood, and fine crystal chandeliers. The best of wines were available in the stores and very much in demand.

This increase in trade was not an unmixed blessing. The fur merchants had discovered that one commodity was irresistible to the Indian, that he could be parted easily from his furs for brandy. The liquor traffic was beginning to split the colony wide open. The clerical heads fought it bitterly but, in the long run, unsuccessfully. Already in 1660 Montreal had witnessed Algonquin hunters, stark-naked and roaring drunk, staggering down the Rue St. Paul.

There was no real security for a community as exposed as this. The Iroquois studied the straggling rows of houses from the depths of the forest or the opposite bank of the river; their small black eyes intent, their cunning minds at work. When the time came for the big effort, this wide-open town could be carried by assault. They were sure of this, although they knew it would be a costly matter. In the meanwhile they carried on a policy of attrition, lurking in the woods and attacking any whites who ventured too far from the town.

They became progressively bolder and even hid themselves among the houses. The people of the town learned to their sorrow that a lurking shadow was likely to be a Mohawk and that a sound outside the house had to be investigated warily, for it might mean an Onondagan concealed in the woodpile. Sometimes the daring redskins hid themselves in the gardens of the Hôtel-Dieu, prepared to kill any nun who ventured out.

Fighting might occur at any time in the neighboring woods or in the town itself. The shrill
“Cassee kouee!”
of the Iroquois became as familiar to the harried whites as the cawing of crows in the spring. The nuns at the Hôtel-Dieu sounded the tocsin whenever they heard it, summoning all the men of Montreal to the scene of the trouble. The wily Iroquois did not expect they could capture the town by
such casual attacks. They were content to wear the garrison down, to keep nerves taut and fears high.

Ville Marie de Montréal had lost two of its first pioneers. Pierre des Puiseaux had grown so old that he had returned to Quebec and had gone from there to France to spend his last years in peace. After eighteen months in Montreal, Madame de la Peltrie had been summoned back to Quebec by the heads of the Ursulines, a step precipitated, no doubt, by the increasing tension between the two towns. She had gone with great reluctance. It was not that she had lost interest in the original venture. She still loved the solemn little charges of the seminary and held the staff in affectionate esteem; but distant frontiers and the adventurous life still beckoned her, and she had not recovered from her disappointment at being barred from the Huron missions.

It is unfortunate that so little is known of this unpredictable lady. A closer acquaintance would reveal complexities of character and, no doubt, contradictions as well. The physical promise of her youth had been more than fulfilled and she had become a woman of considerable beauty. A contemporary describes her as follows: “Her whole person presents a type of attractiveness and gentleness. Her face, a wonderful oval, is remarkable for the harmony of its lines. A slightly aquiline nose, a clear-cut and always smiling mouth, a limpid look veiled by long lashes …” She must have possessed a rare degree of charm, and it is easy to conceive of her as out of place in a land where austerity governed life and people existed always in the shadow of death.

She obeyed the summons and built herself a tiny house, barely large enough for two people, next to the stone seminary of the Ursulines. Here she would spend the rest of her life, working long and faithfully. She had never become a member of the order and so could not wear their uniform. Her instinct for the dramatic, however, made it necessary for her to be different from the rather drab housewives. She planned a gray uniform for herself and never thereafter wore anything else. It lacked any individual touches, and as the years rolled by and her resources became more scanty she appeared in a threadbare and much-patched version of it.

The time has come to introduce an important and colorful member of the Montreal community, a young Norman named Charles le Moyne, the son of an innkeeper of Dieppe. He had accompanied the first company to the town at the age of seventeen and had made himself felt almost from the start. The first mention of him is found in the
Relations
when he was serving as an interpreter with the Huron missions. He became known soon after as a guide and a fearless Indian fighter. His name figures in all the exciting stories of conflict with the Indians around Montreal. He played such a bold part, in fact, that the Iroquois began to fear him, and to the white settlers he became a legend. In later years a favorite story was told about him which always began this way:

For years the old women of the Long House had been gathering wood to burn Charles le Moyne at the stake. Akouesson, they called him …

The story goes on to explain that this valiant Frenchman was captured finally on the Richelieu River. They could hardly wait to take him back to the old women and their fagots. They dipped their paddles in the water with triumph in the ripple of their muscles.

But after a time they were much less sure about the wisdom of what they were doing. Charles le Moyne was talking to them. He was familiar with the Iroquois tongue and he knew how to play on their feelings. He began to tell them of the disasters which would befall the people of the Long House if they killed him. His people would come in canoes which were higher than the highest trees of the forest and with guns so big that they would silence the thunder. He kept repeating this over and over again until finally some of the cocksureness went out of the arms of the Iroquois.

They stopped and held a council among themselves, whispering and glancing at him over their shoulders. The outcome was that they paddled back in haste to where they had captured him, and there they turned him over to some friendly Indians.

When he came of age he was granted a tract of land on the opposite bank of the St. Lawrence, and he named his little seigneury Longueuil. It had a frontage on the river of fifty arpents and was double that distance in depth. It was located in a dangerous spot, for it was through this neck of land that the Iroquois passed on their
way from the Richelieu. This did not frighten the bold young Le Moyne. He began to develop his land and built a house there, although after his marriage in 1654 he occupied a small home on the Rue St. Joseph in Montreal. His bride was Catherine Primot, who proved a most faithful and devoted helpmeet. She presented him with eleven sons, ten of whom lived to maturity, and two daughters, and it is chiefly because of the remarkable exploits of these unusual sons that the name of Le Moyne is stamped indelibly on the pages of Canadian history.

On the occasion of his marriage Charles le Moyne received an additional grant of ninety arpents of river frontage. His fortune began to mount rapidly at this point. With his brother-in-law, Jean le Ber, he entered the fur trade, and between them they had shops and warehouses running south of the Rue St. Joseph to
La Commune
.

Two years later the first of the valiant sons arrived and was named Charles. He was destined to succeed his father and become not only the head of the family but the financial genius who would supply the sinews of war for the remarkable schemes of expansion which they carried out. He developed Longueuil into one of the most important of the seigneuries of Canada and built an unusual structure which was fort and château in one, and which will be described fully on later pages as the saga of the Le Moynes develops. After his father’s death, Charles was created Baron of Longueuil and acted for a short period as governor of the colony.