The Fighting Governor | Page 4

obligations
towards his seigneur were not onerous. The man who lived in a log-hut
among the stumps and could hunt at will through the forest was not a
serf. Though the conditions of life kept him close to his home, Canada
meant for him a new freedom.
Freest of all were the coureurs de bois, those dare-devils of the
wilderness who fill such a large place in the history of the fur trade and
of exploration. The Frenchman in all ages has proved abundantly his
love of danger and adventure. Along the St Lawrence from Tadoussac
to the Sault St Louis seigneuries fringed the great river, as they fringed
the banks of its tributary, the Richelieu. This was the zone of
cultivation, in which log-houses yielded, after a time, to white-washed
cottages. But above the Sault St Louis all was wilderness, whether one
ascended the St Lawrence or turned at Ile Perrot into the Lake of Two
Mountains and the Ottawa. For young and daring souls the forest meant
the excitement of discovery, the licence of life among the Indians, and
the hope of making more than could be gained by the habitant from his
farm. Large profits meant large risks, and the coureur de bois took his
life in his hand. Even if he escaped the rapid and the tomahawk, there
was an even chance that he would become a reprobate.
But if his character were of tough fibre, there was also a chance that he
might render service to his king. At times of danger the government
was glad to call on him for aid. When Tracy or Denonville or Frontenac
led an expedition against the Iroquois, it was fortunate that Canada
could muster a cohort of men who knew woodcraft as well as the
Indians. In days of peace the coureur de bois was looked on with less
favour. The king liked to know where his subjects were at every hour
of the day and night. A Frenchman at Michilimackinac, [Footnote: The
most important of the French posts in the western portion of the Great
Lakes, situated on the strait which unites Lake Huron to Lake Michigan.
It was here that Saint-Lusson and Perrot took possession of the West in

the name of France (June 1671). See The Great Intendant, pp. 115-16.]
unless he were a missionary or a government agent, incurred severe
displeasure, and many were the edicts which sought to prevent the
colonists from taking to the woods. But, whatever the laws might say,
the coureur de bois could not be put down. From time to time he was
placed under restraint, but only for a moment. The intendant might
threaten and the priest might plead. It recked not to the coureur de bois
when once his knees felt the bottom of the canoe.
But of the seven thousand French who peopled Canada in 1672 it is
probable that not more than four hundred were scattered through the
forest. The greater part of the inhabitants occupied the seigneuries
along the St Lawrence and the Richelieu. Tadoussac was hardly more
than a trading-post. Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal were but
villages. In the main the life of the people was the life of the
seigneuries--an existence well calculated to bring out in relief the
ancestral heroism of the French race. The grant of seigneurial rights did
not imply that the recipient had been a noble in France. The earliest
seigneur, Louis Hebert, was a Parisian apothecary, and many of the
Canadian gentry were sprung from the middle class. There was nothing
to induce the dukes, the counts, or even the barons of France to settle
on the soil of Canada. The governor was a noble, but he lived at the
Chateau St Louis. The seigneur who desired to achieve success must
reside on the land he had received and see that his tenants cleared it of
the virgin forest. He could afford little luxury, for in almost all cases
his private means were small. But a seigneur who fulfilled the
conditions of his grant could look forward to occupying a relatively
greater position in Canada than he could have occupied in France, and
to making better provision for his children.
Both the seigneur and his tenant, the habitant, had a stake in Canada
and helped to maintain the colony in the face of grievous hardships.
The courage and tenacity of the French Canadian are attested by what
he endured throughout the years when he was fighting for his foothold.
And if he suffered, his wife suffered still more. The mother who
brought up a large family in the midst of stumps, bears, and Iroquois
knew what it was to be resourceful.

Obviously the Canada of 1672 lacked many things--among them the
stern resolve which animated the Puritans of