Donnacona Discovers Europe: Rereading Jacques Carrier's Voyages
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Donnacona Discovers Europe: Rereading Jacques Carrier's Voyages During the year or so that I lived in that country, I took such care in observing all of them, great and small, that even now it seems to me that I have them before my eyes, and I will forever have the idea and image of them in my mind. But their gestures and expressions are so completely different from ours, that it is difficult, I confess, to represent them well by writing or by pictures. To have the pleasure of it, then, you will have to go see and visit them in their own country. 'Yes/ you will say, 'but the plank is very long.7 That is true, and so if you do not have a sure foot and a steady eye, and are afraid of stumbling, do not venture down the path. Jean de Lery, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Otherwise Called America (1578) There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification. Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian. And he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me. i Corinthians 14: 10-11 I Jacques Carrier's Voyages is the most informative and reliable French description of the northern coast and the St Lawrence re- gion of North America written in the sixteenth century. The report that the Florentine navigator Giovanni Verrazzano composed for the French king, Francis I, describing the 1524 voyage along the coast from the Carolinas to Cape Breton, captures both the chang- ing topography and the different groups of people who lived on the Atlantic seaboard. But it lacks detail and depth. Andre Thevet, x Introduction cosmographer to Francis i, wrote two works about Trance antar- tique' during the second half of the century - though he may never have travelled to the St Lawrence area. His works, Les Singularitez de la France antartique (1556) and La Cosmographie universelle (1575), relied heavily on Cartier, with whom he was acquainted. He provides some fascinating details not found elsewhere - his description of the snowshoe for example - but his reliability is problematic. If Verrazzano approximated Montaigne's 'plain sim- ple fellow' who did not 'construct false theories,' then Thevet exemplified the 'men of intelligence' who could not 'refrain from altering the facts a little' in order to substantiate their interpre- tation.1 Cartier's observations are frequently detailed and include an im- pressive range of information about the geography, natural his- tory, and ethnography from Funk Island to the Amerindian settlement at Hochelaga at the foot of the mountain he named Mount Royal. The Voyages, for over 450 years, have provided al- most the only documentation for the beginning of European con- tact with this region. They reveal a man with both the virtues of an honest observer and the assumptions and preoccupations of a shrewd Breton navigator. Since he interpreted what he saw, he 'never presents things just as they are' and, especially in his dis- cussion of his relations with the people who lived along the St Lawrence, he 'could twist and disguise [facts] to conform to [his] point of view.' Like all historical documents, Cartier's Voyages can be both informative and misleading.2 II The Voyages present three immediate problems: their authentic- ity, their authorship, and the paucity of information about Cartier himself. First the question of authenticity. No original manuscript exists 1 Laurence C. Wroth, The Voyages of Giovanni de Verrazzano, 1524-25 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1970); Roger Schlesinger and Arthur P. Stabler, eds., Andre Thevet's North America: A Sixteenth- Century View (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1986). See also Frank Lestringant, Le Huguenot et le Sauvage (Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres 1990). 2 The Montaigne quotations are from 'On Cannibals7 in Michel Montaigne, Essays (London: Penguin Books 1958), 108. Donnacona Discovers Europe xi - or at least none has been found - for the texts of any of the three Voyages. The report of the first expedition was initially published in Italian in 1565, in English fifteen years later, and finally in French in 1598. A French manuscript discovered in 1865 is thought to be either the original or a copy of it. The original of the second Voyage also appears to be lost, though some scholars believe that at least one of the three extant manuscript versions is Carrier's own. To complicate matters, the second Voyage, which was the first to be published and appeared as an anonymous book in French in 1545, differs in some respects from each of the three known manuscript editions. Finally, there is the third Voyage: it exists only in English in a version compiled by the famous English pub- licist of overseas expansion, Richard Hakluyt, in 1600. It is in- complete, and no French version has ever been discovered. How much certainty about early Canadian history can such a fragile tripod support? The issue of authorship, though somewhat less significant, is also tangled. The absence of original manuscripts makes stylistic analysis difficult, though the first two Voyages seem to reveal a common author. Both are probably based on a ship's log - now lost - kept during the voyages most likely by the captain, Cartier, himself. Whether he alone or with the aid of an amanuensis or literary editor (the claim once made that Rabelais played this role seems unsustainable) produced the published versions is impos- sible to ascertain. Since the second, and most important, of the three accounts appeared during Cartier's lifetime, it seems likely that he at least approved it. His nephew - Cartier apparently had no children - Jacques Noel may have approved publication of the third Voyage, though the puzzle about the primacy of the Italian edition of the first and the English-only version of the third re- mains unsolved and probably always will. 3 The problem is really Cartier himself. Biographical information - apart from what can be gleaned from the Voyages - is extremely sparse. Born in St Malo, Brittany, in the year before Columbus encountered America, Cartier probably went to sea at an early age. There is evidence in the Voyages that 3 On the status and authorship of the Voyages the most authoritative state- ment is found in the excellent Jacques Cartier Relations, edition critique par Michel Bideaux (Montreal: Les Presses de I'Universite de Montreal 1986) 9-72. xii Introduction he had visited both Brazil and Newfoundland before 1534. When and under what auspices cannot be established. It is a safe spec- ulation that growing up in St Malo, a seaport town that was early engaged in the north Atlantic fishery and in overseas trade, Cartier was familiar with news from the New World. He may, for ex- ample, have been aware that in 1508 a sea captain, Thomas Aubert, brought seven Amerindians for display in Rouen, an event suffi- ciently important to receive extended notice in Eusebe's Chroni- con published in Paris in 1512.4 In 1528 Catherine des Granches, who had become Carrier's wife in 1520, acted as godmother for 'Catherine de Brezil/ likely a Brazilian aboriginal brought to St Malo by a returning trading expedition. 5 Obviously, then, when Cartier sailed out of St Malo as a full-fledged navigator and captain in 1534 in his quest for riches and a route to Asia, he was quite aware that 'America' and 'Americans' had already been 'discov- ered.' Not much else is known about the first European to navigate and chart the St Lawrence River and attempt the first French set- tlement in the area. His career as a navigator apparently ended after his unsuccessful third trip to North America. Subsequently, he probably devoted his time to trade as a business partner and to the supervision of his estate, 'Limoilou/ That he was a faithful Roman Catholic and an active citizen of St Malo is evident from some scattered references in surviving documents. He had married well and established himself as a successful bourgeois. He died on i September 1557, having lived to the age of sixty-six, a long life for the time.6 Though there are several portraits of the sea captain of St Malo, including the thoughtful romantic who appears in Francois Riis's 1839 painting, only the two-inch figure of a man in conversation with a few soldiers on Pierre Descellier's faded 4 Gilbert Chinard, L'exotisme americain dans la litterature fran$aise au XVIe siecle (Geneve [1941], Stalker Reprints 1970), 6 5 F. Joiion de Longrais, Jacques Cartier: Documents nouveaux (Paris 1888), 15-16. Jody Green, 'New Historicism and Its New World Discoveries/ Yale Journal of Criticism 4, 2 (spring 1991): 182. This excellent article has much to say about Amerindians in France and about the active role of Amerindians in the contact period, as does Olive Patricia Dickason, 'The Brazilian Connection: A Look at the Origins of French Techniques for Trading with Amerindians/ Revue franc, aise d'histoire d'outre-mer 71 (1985): 129-46. 6 Marcel Trudel, 'Jacques Cartier/ Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCS), I (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1966), 170 Donnacona Discovers Europe xiii 1546 map is contemporary.7 The Jacques Cartier who 'discovered' Canada, or at least the St Lawrence, has to be coaxed or conjured out of the pages of the Voyages. The glimpses that can be captured of Cartier suggest a prosper- ous French renaissance figure. His overseas adventures typified an important aspect of that period, as did his curiosity about the unfamiliar surroundings and people he came upon during his trav- els.