PIONEERS IN CANADA pdf

PIONEERS IN CANADA By SIR HARRY JOHNSTON G.C.M.G., K.C.B. WITH EIGHT COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS BY E. WALLCOUSINS 1912 The Pioneer Library A standard series by Sir Harry Johnston. Tastefully bound. Pioneers in Australasia. Pioneers in Canada. Pioneers in South Africa. Pioneers in West Africa. Pioneers in Tropical America. Pioneers in India. PREFACE I have been asked to write a series of works which should deal with "real adventures", in parts of the world either wild and uncontrolled by any civilized government, or at any rate regions full of dangers, of wonderful discoveries; in which the daring and heroism of white men (and sometimes of white women) stood out clearly against backgrounds of unfamiliar landscapes, peopled with strange nations, savage tribes, dangerous beasts, or wonderful birds. These books would again and again illustrate the first coming of the white race into regions inhabited by people of a different type, with brown, black, or yellow skins; how the European was received, and how he treated these races of the soil which gradually came under his rule owing to his superior knowledge, weapons, wealth, or powers of persuasion. The books were to tell the plain truth, even if here and there they showed the white man to have behaved badly, or if they revealed the fact that the American Indian, the Negro, the Malay, the black Australian was sometimes cruel and treacherous. A request thus framed was almost equivalent to asking me to write stories of those pioneers who founded the British Empire; in any case, the first volumes of this series do relate the adventures of those who created the greater part of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, by their perilous explorations of unknown lands and waters. In many instances the travellers were all unconscious of their destinies, of the results which would arise from their actions. In some cases they would have bitterly railed at Fate had they known that the result of their splendid efforts was to be the enlargement of an empire under the British flag. Perhaps if they could know by now that we are striving under that flag to be just and generous to all types of men, and not to use our empire solely for the benefit of English-speaking men and women, the French who founded the Canadian nation, the Germans and Dutch who helped to create British Africa, Malaysia, and Australia, the Spaniards who preceded us in the West Indies, and the Portuguese in West, Central, and East Africa, in Newfoundland and Ceylon, might—if they have any consciousness or care for things in this world—be not so sorry after all that we are reaping where they sowed. It is (as you will see) impossible to tell the tale of these early days in the British Dominions beyond the Seas, without describing here and there the adventures of men of enterprise and daring who were not of our own nationality. The majority, nevertheless, were of British stock; that is to say, they were English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, perhaps here and there a Channel Islander and a Manxman; or Nova Scotians, Canadians, and New Englanders. The bulk of them were good fellows, a few were saints, a few were ruffians with redeeming features. Sometimes they were common men who blundered into great discoveries which will for ever preserve their names from perishing; occasionally they were men of Fate, predestined, one might say, to change the history of the world by their revelations of new peoples, new lands, new rivers, new lakes, snow mountains, and gold mines. Here and there is a martyr like Marquette, or Livingstone, or Gordon, dying for the cause of a race not his own. And others again are mere boys, whose adventures come to them because they are adventurous, and whose feats of arms, escapes, perils, and successes are quite as wonderful as those attributed to the juvenile heroes of Marryat, Stevenson, and the author of The Swiss Family Robinson. I have tried, in describing these adventures, to give my readers some idea of the scenery, animals, and vegetation of the new lands through which these pioneers passed on their great and small purposes; as well as of the people, native to the soil, with whom they came in contact. And in treating of these subjects I have thought it best to give the scientific names of the plant or animal which was of importance in my story, so that any of my readers who were really interested in natural history could at once ascertain for themselves the exact type alluded to, and, if they wished, look it up in a museum, a garden, or a natural history book. I hope this attempt at scientific accuracy will not frighten away readers young and old; and, if you can have patience with the author, you will, by reading this series of books on the great pioneers of British West Africa, Canada, Malaysia, West Indies, South Africa, and Australasia, get a clear idea of how the British Colonial Empire came to be founded. You will find that I have often tried to tell the story in the words of the pioneers, but in these quotations I have adopted the modern spelling, not only in my transcript of the English original or translation, but also in the place and tribal names, so as not to puzzle or delay the reader. Otherwise, if you were to look out some of the geographical names of the old writers, you might not be able to recognize them on the modern atlas. The pronunciation of this modern geographical spelling is very simple and clear: the vowels are pronounced a = ah, e = eh, i = ee, o = o, ô = oh, ō = aw, ö = u in 'hurt', and u = oo, as in German, Italian, or most other European languages; and the consonants as in English. H. H. JOHNSTON. CONTENTS Preface List of Illustrations List of the Chief Authorities I. THE WHITE MAN'S DISCOVERY OF NORTH AMERICA II. JACQUES CARTIER III. ELIZABETHAN PIONEERS IN NORTH AMERICA IV. CHAMPLAIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF CANADA V. AFTER CHAMPLAIN: FROM MONTREAL TO THE MISSISSIPPI VI. THE GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS OF THE CANADIAN DOMINION VII. THE AMERINDIANS AND ESKIMO: THE ABORIGINES OF BRITISH NORTH AMERICA VIII. THE HUDSON BAY EXPLORERS AND THE BRITISH CONQUEST OF ALL CANADA IX. THE PIONEERS FROM MONTREAL: ALEXANDER HENRY THE ELDER X. SAMUEL HEARNE XI. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE'S JOURNEYS XII. MACKENZIE'S SUCCESSORS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS COLOURED PLATES Type of Ship sailed in by the English or French Pioneers in the Sixteenth Century Frontispiece Icebergs and Polar Bears Indians hunting Bison Indians lying in wait for Moose Caribou swimming a River Great Auks, Gannets, Puffins, and Guillemots Scene on Canadian River: Wild Swans flying up, disturbed by Bear Big-horned Sheep of Rocky Mountains BLACK-AND-WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS Jacques Cartier Samuel de Champlain and Alexander Henry the Elder An Amerindian Type of British Columbia Lake Louise, the Rocky Mountains Samuel Hearne and Alexander Mackenzie The Upper Waters of the Fraser River The Kootenay or Head Stream of the Columbia River A Hunter's "Shack" in British Columbia: After a successful Shoot of Blue Grouse Map of Canada Map of Eastern Canada and Newfoundland Map of Part of the Coast Region of British Columbia List of the Chief Authorities FROM WHOM THE PRINCIPAL FACTS AND INCIDENTS OF THIS BOOK HAVE BEEN DERIVED, IN ADDITION TO THE AUTHOR'S OWN RESEARCHES AND EXPERIENCES, AND INFORMATION SUPPLIED BY PROFESSOR R. RAMSAY WRIGHT, OF TORONTO UNIVERSITY The Saint Lawrence Basin. By Dr. S.E. DAWSON. London. 1905. Lawrence & Bullen. Relation Originale du Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en 1534; Documents inédits, &c. Publiés par H. MICHELANT et A. RAME. Paris. Librairie Tross. 1867. Voyage de Jacques Cartier au Canada en 1534, &c. Par H. MICHELANT. Paris. 1865. Champlain's Voyages: The Publications of the Prince Society. Boston. 1878. Three volumes. Voyage of Verrazano, &c. By HENRY C. MURPHY. New York. 1875. (Also the Essay on the Journeys of Verrazano, by Alessandro Bacchiani, in the Bollettino della Societá Geografica Italiana. Rome. November, 1909.) Volume IX of the Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada. (For the History of Cape Breton and of the Beothiks of Newfoundland.) The Search for the Western Sea. By Lawrence J. Burpee. London. Alston Rivers. 1908. Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, &c. Edited by REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. Vol. LIX. Cleveland, U.S.A. Burrows Bros. 1900. Travels and Explorations in Canada and the Indian Territories between the years 1760 and 1776. By ALEXANDER HENRY, Esq. New York. 1809. Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Lawrence through the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans, in the years 1789 and 1793, &c. &c. By ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, Esq. London. 1801. A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean, &c. By SAMUEL HEARNE. London. 1795. Les Bourgeois de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest. By L.R. MASSON. Quebec. 1890. Two volumes. New Light on the Early History of the Greater North-West: The Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry, Jun., and of David Thompson. Edited by ELLIOTT COUES. Three Volumes. New York. Harper. 1897. Sport and Travel in the Northland of Canada. By DAVID T. HANBURY. London. Edward Arnold. 1904. Henry Hudson the Navigator, &c. By G.M. ASHER. London. Hakluyt Society, 1860. The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher. By Rear-Admiral RICHARD COLLINSON. London. Hakluyt Society. 1867. The Voyages and Works of John Davis the Navigator. By Admiral Sir ALBERT HASTINGS MARKHAM. London. Hakluyt Society. 1880. The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622. By Sir CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM. London. 1881. CHAPTER I The White Man's Discovery of North America So far as our knowledge goes, it is almost a matter of certainty that Man originated in the Old World—in Asia possibly. Long after this wonderful event in the Earth's history, when the human species was spread over a good deal of Asia, Europe, and Africa, migration to the American continents began in attempts to find new feeding grounds and unoccupied areas for hunting and fishing. How many thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago it was since the first men entered America we do not yet know, any more than we can determine the route by which they travelled from Asia. Curiously enough, the oldest traces of man as yet discovered in the New World are not only in South America, but in the south-eastern parts of South America. Although the most obvious recent land connection between the Old and New Worlds is the Aleutian chain of islands connecting Kamschatka with Alaska, the ethnologist is occasionally led to think by certain evidence that there may, both earlier and later, have existed another way of reaching western America from south-eastern Asia through Pacific archipelagoes and islets now sunk below the sea. In any case it seems quite probable that men of Mongolian or Polynesian type reached America on its western coasts long before the European came from the north-east and east, and that they were helped on this long journey by touching at islands since submerged by earthquake shocks or tidal waves. The aboriginal natives of North and South America seem to be of entirely Asiatic origin; and such resemblances as there are between the North-American Indians and the peoples of northern Europe do not arise (we believe) from any ancient colonization of America from western or northern Europe, but mainly from the fact that the North-American Indians and the Eskimo (two distinct types of people) are descended from the same human stocks as the ancient populations of the northern part of Europe and Asia. It was—we think—from the far north-west of Europe that America was first visited by the true White man, though there has been an ancient immigration of imperfect "White" men (Ainu) from Kamschatka. Three or four hundred years after the birth of Christ there were great race movements in northern and central Europe, due to an increase of population and insufficiency of food. Not only did these white barbarians (though they were not as barbarous as we were led to think by Greek and Roman literature) invade southern Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor, but from the fourth century of the Christian era onwards they began to cross over to England and Scotland. At the same time they took more complete possession of Scandinavia, driving north before their advance the more primitive peoples like the Lapps and Finns, who were allied to the stock from which arose both the Eskimo and the Amerindian.[1] All this time the Goths and Scandinavians were either learning ideas of navigation from the Romans of the Mediterranean or the Greeks of the Black Sea, or they were inventing for themselves better ways of constructing ships; and although they propelled them mainly by oars, they used masts and sails as well.[2] Having got over the fear of the sea sufficiently to reach the coasts of England and Scotland, the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands, they became still more venturesome in their voyages from Norway, until they discovered the Faroe Archipelago (which tradition says they found inhabited by wild sheep), and then the large island of Iceland, which had, however, already been reached and settled by the northern Irish. Iceland, though it lies so far to the north that it is partly within the Arctic Circle, is, like Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, affected by the Gulf Stream, so that considerable portions of it are quite habitable. It is not almost entirely covered with ice, as Greenland is; in fact, Iceland should be called Greenland (from the large extent of its grassy pastures), and Greenland should be called Iceland. Instead of this, however, the early Norwegian explorers called these countries by the names they still bear. The Norse rovers from Norway and the Hebrides colonized Iceland from the year 850; and about a hundred and thirty-six years afterwards, in their venturesome journeys in search of new lands, they reached the south-east and south-west coasts of Greenland. Owing to the glacial conditions and elevated character of this vast continental island (more than 500,000 sq. miles in area)—for the whole interior of Greenland rises abruptly from the sea-coast to altitudes of from 5000 to 11,000 ft.— this discovery was of small use to the early Norwegians or their Iceland colony. After it was governed by the kingdom of Norway in the thirteenth century, the Norse colonization of south-west Greenland faded away under the attacks of the Eskimo, until it ceased completely in the fifteenth century. When Denmark united herself with the kingdom of Norway in 1397, the Danish king became also the ruler of Iceland. In the eighteenth century the Norwegian and Danish settlements were re- established along the south-east and south-west coasts of Greenland, mainly on [...]... it might be the opening to the strait across the continent of which he was in search; but finding it was not, he continued northwards till he had almost rounded the Gaspé Peninsula, a course which would have led him straight away into the wonderful discovery of the St Lawrence River, but that, being forced by bad weather into Gaspé Bay, and perhaps hindered by fog, instead of entering the St Lawrence... day in the water They have long since been exterminated by the English and French seamen and settlers At last Cartier set sail for the south-west, intending to explore this wonderful river and to reach the kingdom of Canada According to his understanding of the Amerindian interpreters, the waters of the St Lawrence flowed through three great states: Saguenay, which was the mountainous Gaspé Peninsula... did not so much mind sharing it, along the line agreed upon in the Treaty of Tordesillas, with the Portuguese, but the ingress of the English and French infuriated them The Basque people of the north-east corner of Spain were a hardy seafaring folk, especially bold in the pursuit of whales in the Bay of Biscay, and eager to take a share in the salt-fish trade This desire took them in the fourteenth... intervals signs of disquiet and a longing to be rid of these mysterious white men, whose coming might involve the country in unknown misfortunes In January and February, also, Donnacona and these two interpreters and many of the Huron men had been absent hunting in the forests, so that there was no one among the Amerindians to whom the French could turn for information regarding this strange disease At last... officers, shuddering, made investigations, opening the corpse and examining the organs to try and find the cause of death This was on the afternoon of a day on which they had held a solemn service before a statue erected to the Virgin Mary on the shore opposite to the ships All who were fit to walk went in procession from the fort to the statue, singing penitential psalms and the Litany and celebrating Mass... Indians (i.e natives of India), and they are not the only Americans, since there are now about 110,000,000 white Americans of European origin and 24,000,000 negroes and negroids The total approximate "Amerindian" or aboriginal population of the New World at the present day is 16,000,000, of whom about 111,000 live in the Canadian Dominion, and 300,000 in the United States, the remainder in Central and South... the middle of April, 1536, his ships being shut in by the ice The experiences of the French during these five months were mostly unhappy At first Cartier gave himself up to the collecting of information He noticed for the first time the smoking of tobacco,[8] and collected information about the products and features of "Canada" The Indians told him of great lakes in the far west, one of which was so... men and animals, upright lines, &c), and these were worked neatly on string by employing different-coloured beads 8 "There groweth also a certain kind of herb whereof in summer they make a great provision for all the year, making great account of it, and only men use it; and first they cause it to be dried in the sun, then wear it about their necks wrapped in a little beast's skin made like a bag, together... of Bristol still no doubt continued to resort to the banks of Newfoundland for fishing, and that even the captains of these ships were occasionally elected admirals of the French, Basque, Portuguese, and English fishing fleets during the summer, the English, as a nation, took no part in claiming political dominion over North America after the voyage of Captain John Rut in 1527 This was the fault of... compared in excellence and taste to veal Passing through the Straits of Belle Isle, Cartier's ships entered the Gulf of St Lawrence They had previously visited the adjoining coast of Labrador, and there had encountered their first "natives", members of some Algonkin tribe from Canada, who had come north for seal fishing (Cartier is clever enough to notice and describe their birch-bark canoes) After examining . bound. Pioneers in Australasia. Pioneers in Canada. Pioneers in South Africa. Pioneers in West Africa. Pioneers in Tropical America. Pioneers in India sailed in by the English or French Pioneers in the Sixteenth Century Frontispiece Icebergs and Polar Bears Indians hunting Bison Indians lying in wait