Fort La Présentation and Its Time
Leszek Missala
A Thesis
in
The Department
of
Art History
Presented in PhaiFulhllment of The Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada
O Leszek hfissala, 2000 National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1*1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibiiographic Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. iue Wellington OttawaON K1A ON4 OaawaON K1AW Canada Canada
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Fort La Présentation and Its The
Leszek Missala
The history of Fort La Présentaaon is presented interivoven with the 18th century struggle benveen France and Great Britain. At stake was the domination of world
[rade and the political and military influence pro tecting it.
The double vocation - reQous and rnilitary - of the fort-mission comples is investigated and its influence on the planning, construction and the selection of its location is discussed.
The evolution of the prinaple of the separation of nvo communities -
European and autochthon - living inside quasi-independent fortified compounds, locared side by side, is investigated.
The conclusion reached is that the politico-military aspect of the fort-mission comples of La Présentation was the main one and that its relgious role, no matter how successhl it was, semed only as a cover-up.
III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to express my thanks to the supen-isor of this thesis, Dr. Jean Belisle, who suggested Fort La Présentation as its subject, among many others we discussed. His suggestions were very helphl and his interest in my work very encouraging-
1 would Like to thank Dr. André Charbonneau, a scientist of Park Canada, for the documentation he provided me &th.
1 also acknowledge with many thanks the willingness of Dr. Oliver Asselin and
Dr. Anne Dunlop to serve on the Esamiring Cornmittee, and for their constructive comrnents.
1 am very gratefüi to iMrs. Persis Boyesen - historian of the city of
Ogdensburg, N.Y. - within whose LLnits the fort was situated. She generously opened to me her research €des providing me Mth information which was the starting point of my fûrther research.
1 am gratehl to the Rer. Roland Litalien, priest of the Congregation of St-
Sulpice, director of the Congregation's archives, for his willingness to provide me with r-ery helphl intorrnation about the role the Congregation played in Nouvelle
France.
1 wish to espess my thanlrs to the members of Concordia University
Interlibrary Loans Department, who spent a lot of time and effort to hlfl my requests to borrow works published nearly a cenniry ago and often long forgotten.
Findy, 1 wis h to e'rpress my gratitude and thanks to my wife, Krystyna. She \vas rhc grcatcst support 1 could possibly Iiarr had. 1 ha1-e also to cspress rny admiration for her patience and self-control \rith which she tolerared, for long weeks, the reference books on every seat in our living room as weli as the quasi-permanent use of our dining room table, my farourite w-orliplace. This thesis is dedicated ro her. TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures ...... VI1
Introduction ...... -1
Engtis h and French Populations of Amerka ...... 4
The Smgg1e in 18th Century Europe ...... 8
The Struggle in North America ...... 12
Abbé Franqois Picquet and the French Colonial Policy in the 18th Cen tuq...... 27 . . .. The ReLgious hhssions of Canada ...... 46
Fort La Présentation and the Defence System of Canada...... 60
Fort La Présentation During the War of 1756-1760 ...... 77
Conclusion ...... 1OS
10 . End-Notes...... 116 .. 11 . BibLograp hy ...... 124
12 . Appendk ...... 127
13 . Figures ...... 133 LIST OF FIGURES
Figures included in this thesis are identified by:
i. number of reference from which they were taken, their number/page on which they are located; ü. sources from which they were obtained; ... ui. where available, original captions are ated.
Reference 6; hors teste - Carte pour sen+ à i'histoire du Canada de 1750 à 1760.
Reference 13; page 175 - Declared French and English Spheres of Interesc hfter the Treaty of Utrecht, 171 3.
Chan 48 - La région d'Ohio au dix-huitième siècle (Céloron's Espedition route added by L.M.); TRUDEL, François, ed. - Atlas Historique du Canada, La Presse de l'université Lavai 1961.
Reference 12; p. 167 - Plan of St. Ignace.
Reference 12; p. 166 - Ground Plan of Building Na26 (see Eïg. 4).
Chart 29 @art of) - La Nouvde France d'après Lescarbot en 1109; included in Atlas Historique du Canada, TRUDEL, François - editor: La Presse de l'université Laval, 1961.
Re ference 17; hors texte - Plan and Reconstruction drawing of Ste- Marie 1.
Reference 16; hors teste map 8 - Plan of the eacavaaons (Ste-Marie I), s howing anangement of buildings and other features.
Reference 34; fi. 9 - Plan de la ;Mission du Sault-Saint-Louis vers 1720.
Reference 32; - Plan de la 1Wssion de la Montagne - Vachon de Belmont author, 1694.
Mission de la Montagne; south-east tower of the foc photo by L.1M 12. Plan of the sire of the Mission Sault-au-Récollet. Onginal presen-ed in the archives of the Congregation of St-Sulpice in Paris, France (courtesy of Dr. Jean Belisle).
13. Reference 31 - Fort de la Nouvelle-Lorette (Sault-au-Récollet); hand-written note bv the author of the reference indicates that this figure is similar to the draning of 1701 of Plan of Montreal of Oct. 15, 1702 (archires St-Suipice).
14. Reference 27; page 8, £ïg. 3 - Plan de la Mission du Lac des Deus- Montagnes (Oka).
15. Reference 27; page 9, Fig. 4 - Plan d'un forr pour être construit au bord du Lac des Deus Montagnes à la côte du Nord 1722.
16. Reference 34; fïg- 10 - Plan de la hfission du Lac des Deus Montagnes 1743.
17. Parks Canada - Patrimoine Canadien, ID: 4186498225 - Plan de la Mission du Lac des Deus Montagnes 1758.
18. Reference 20; pages 392 - 393, - Escedition of the Chev. Chaussegros de Léry against Fort Bull, 1756.
19. Reference 14; page 168 - English colonial border defences (outline added by L.M.).
20. Reference 14, page 195 - Plan of Oswego.
21- Re ference 25; page 346 - The Siege of Fort William-Henq, 1757.
22. Reference 14; page 306 - Bataille de Cdon, 1758.
23. APC H3/1250/Fort Lévis [176û] - h plan of the attack upon Fon Lévis (courtesy of Dr. André Charbonneau - Parks Canada).
24. Reference 13; page 180 - Northeastern North Amenca 1755 on the eve of the Seven Years War.
25. APC 0 - 1250 - (La) Présentation/1749 C-103578, Plan de l'établissement d'une nouvelle mission située à la côte du fleuve St- Laurent; authoc Léry (courtesy of Dr. André Charbonneau - Parks Canada).
26. Reference 9; page 17 - Ogdensburg and the Fort in 1813, as reconsmcted from fieldwork in 1860. 27. Referencc 9; page 28 - The escawtions of rhe 1787 and 1988 seasons.
28. Reference 3; page 5 - Vie 1838 arrist's concepaon of Fon de la Présentation in 1749.
29. -WC Ph/1-50 La Présentation - 1759, neg: Cl6239 author: Paul La Brosse; (courtesy of Dr. André Charbonneau - Parb Canada).
30. &WCPh/1250 - La Présentation - 1752; neg: Cl6287 - Plan du Fort de la Présentation sur la rivière Katarakony; anonj7me; (courtesy of Dr. André Charbonneau - Parks Canada).
31. Reference 4; opposite p. 33 - Plan du fort de St-Jean-sur-Richelieu.
31. Reference 33, page 9, Gg. 3 - Approslriate location of the French fort (S c-Jean) s howing the traces unearthed during the arc heological escavations. 1. INTRODUCTION
It mouid br very ciifficuit, if not impossible, to discuss seriousiy an architecd object
Mthout considering its historicd background. Each building, whatever irs proposed
use and importance, is designed and built for a r-ery specific purpose, rarely
reproduced elsewhere.
This is the reason why this thesis uicludes an analysis of 18th cenmry events
which took place on both the Ewopean and herican continents. They were
interconnected and the result of this interaction influenced the history of Fort La
Présentation and the action of its founder, Abbé François Picquet, a Sulpiuan priest.
The 18th century was a century of nearly continuous warfare in Europe, during
which France and Great Bitah were on opposite sides most of the hme. The
smggle in America \vas considered a "sideshow" of what was happening on the Old
Continent, where both counvies competed for predominance in the political and
economic domains. Ali the deasions about herica depended on what was
happening in Europe. Clauses concemlig North Amerïca included in the treaties at
the end of European wan are the proof of that.
This situation changed in the second half of the 18th century when in 1758
William Pitt became Prime Minister of Great Britain. He was the man who
understood the importance of the Amencan colonies for both France and England
and directed aii British militq might to defend them against French attacks and the policies of Nouvelle France. In France, authorities believed that the victory in Europe \vould bring fa\-orable solutions for French inrerests in North ;\mrnca. One of the few persons on the French side who understood the importance of the North
,irnerican colpnies for the French Crown \vas the Go\-emor of Canada and Adrniral of the French Na\-)., le Marquis de La Galissonière (1747-49). He artached much importance to his coun~simplementation of nvo basic goals concernlig Canada.
Bot11 of them were in direct opposition to the English plans. The €kt one was the de Eence of the direct overland communication route benveen Canada in the nonh and
Louisiana in the south. This could only be achieved by preventing English colonization of the territories of the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers Valleps, located west of the Appalachian Mountains. The second one was the domination of a very lucraave fur trade comted by both nations. Since most of the trapping was done in the territories located north of the Great Lakes, English espansion in that direction had to be prevented at ail costs. This second goal could only be reached by control of the native populations.
This concrol of and good relationship with the naaves was sought by bodi sides. It was pracased by the muniaüy benefuai commercial contacts and work of the missionaries who were uying to convert hemto Chrisaanity.
One of the most successhl French missionaries of that era \vas Abbé François
Picquer, a Sulpiaan pnest. The main tool and center of his activity was the Mission and Fort La Présentation, built on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, roughly half way between Montreal and Lake Ontario, at the head of the St. Lawrence Rapids and the mouth of the Oswegatchie River, where the modem city of Ogdensburg, Sew 1-ork, is located. Neither the mission aor the fort esists any longer.
During the archeological in\-estigation bv saenasts from the State College of
.bs and Sciences in Potsdam, N.Y. of the presumed fort site no restiges of it mere discovered. The only artifact found was a large comerstone with the date of the
founding and the name of F. Picquet This is the only material proof of the fort's esistence. Ic is presendy displayed in Ogdensburg's modem city hd. Thedore, ou research about the fort irseif had to rely on graphic and written documents.
The maps of the 18th cenmry are unreliable. Much of the information supplied by them is based on the hearsay of autochthons and of the coureurs de bois, or on very primitive sun-eys. Fig. 1 shows a modem map (ca 1913) of the territories on which the suuggle between the French and English colonies took place.
Geographical features are correctly represented and the sites and town locaaons are identified with their 18th century nzmes gken in English or French versions. Where it is not possible to do so, the modem narnes are used.
The names "Indians" and ccsaur~ages"used in 18th centuly by the white settlers to define members of the First Nations of North America are considered prejudicial.
They are superseded in this thesis by the terms ccautochthon"or "native". The only esception is made for citations of the original 18th and 19th centuries tests.
At the end of diis introduction, we wish to point out that this thesis is not 18th century Canadian history. It concerns itself only with the facts of the de François
Picquet and Fort La Présentation played during a short period of tïme extending €rom
1749 to 1760, and to the generai argument of this thesis. 2. ENGLISH AND FRENCH POPULATIONS OF AMERICA
Before an analysis of the struggle between the French and English colonies is anempted, a short analysis of theV social structures should be made.
The English occupied a relatk-el? small part of the continent, located between rhe shores of the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian ~Mountauis,where a population of more than one million lïved. France laid claim to much larger territories, estending wesr of the English possessions and Limited in the West by the Roc$ Mountains.
This immense territory was occupied by a white population escimated at only 55,000 people. This included both Canada - the land around the St. Lawrence River - and
1 LoWsiana, located on the shores of the Guif of Mexico.
The British possessions had been seded by a predorninantly English-speakuig
3 population, mostly of Puritan stock- These possessions were organized into thirteen independent colonies, each one govemed by a govemor, either appointed by the
British Crown or elecred by local legislative bodies. Virginia, located south of the territories today caiied New England, was governed by the suons of aristocratie
British families. They broughr with them their sense of social stratification, which they wied to maintain in the New World. Ail these colonies were mry loyal to the
Briash Crown, but at the same time very jealous of their local prerogatives and resentful of any outside intemention. They governed themselves according to the British Comrnon Law, supplementrd by local laws.
The New Englanders were very industious and enterprising people, alway s looliing for new oudets for their cornmerual and induscrial activities. AU of them
(escept for Virginia) organized a public schooling system that resulted in a \-eV hgh degree of Liteq in theh soueaes. Very often they disagreed among themselves on man? issues, but wvere unanimous in their request for British military protection from
French expansion.
The population of Nouvelle France was composed of peasants who came to
Canada in order to escape the miserable conditions in Europe, constantly in a state of war, always 1-ery damaging to the peasantry. Also some of the soldiers of disbanded regirnents (often of peasant stock themselves) chose to stay in Canada, a decision most cenainly welcomed by the colony's government.
18th century France was a predominantly Catholic and rather intolerant country. The esplsion of the Huguenots, resulting from the revocation in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes (1598) which granted relqgous iiberties, forced them to ernigrate to Protestant counties, mostly Gerrnany and Swiaerland, Mth some choosing
English Anerica. The dominant French Roman Catholic clergy prevented their setdement in Canada since they wanted only Catholic settlers, an element easy for them to conuol. This amtude deprived Canada of badly needed cultured and educated people and of the qualified tradesmen who would help in the development
3 of the colony.
This problem of the underpopulation of Canada had started to worry French authoriucs alrc- ad^ at tlic end of the 17th century. Hou-evcr, continuous wars meakrnrd France and resulted in a considerable loss of its population. The ernigration of Huguenots alone cost France at least 20,000 people. Several possible ways to remedv this situation were proposed. One of the men who understood the danger of the erer-growing English-speaking population was a great military engineer and builder of French fortifications, Maréchal Vauban. He suggested several solutions to the hlinister of the Colonies and of the Nary. Some were unerly absurd.
4 None of them was accepted by die Minister, who could not propose any of his own.
Such an attitude shows how linle attennon was given by the French government to the problems of the colony. It did cost money, drained manpower needed in Europe and was considered in general a nuisance rather than an asset. Its political and econornic long range importance was not well understood by an incompetent King and his court No wonder that during in most critical years of existence, Nouveiie France was left alone and finaily losr, in spite of those who believed in its importance to the mother country. This result uras dso hastened by the incompetent and corrupt colonial administration.
The dynamic society of New England had the 6.111 support of Great Rritain in its endeavours. This was most evident when Wiam Pitt becarne Prime Wnister in
1758. Being of modest origin, close to the espanding middle class of merchants and manufacnirers, he understood the potentiai of the North American colonies Lam the economic and political points of Mew.
When the Seven Years War expanded in 1756 to the American continent, Pitt used al1 the al-dabk mcans of the United Kingdom to achievc his goal, the conquesr of Xoul-elle France. France did not have enough strength to support its North
American colony. Ai cds for help were left without adequate answer. The French goremment believed that once European confict would be brought to the
satisfactorv (victorious) end, so d be the con£iictin North hmerica- The 18th century in Europe tvas cenniry of \vars. Thev changed not O+ the borders but also resulted in the emergence of new powers on the European scene. Ahances changed nearly overnight and the allies of roday became enemies a few years later.
The main reasons for them were the dynastic and political interests of the dng classes. Some of the partiapants had a broader outioolc for they were building colonial empires overseas. Hoiland, Spain, Englmd and France were the main actors on this world scene.
France and Great Britain were always on the opposite sides of any conficrs, for their national or dynastic interests opposed each other. Their victories and defears on the European continent influenced, more ofien than not, victories and defeats on the n-orld scene. The best illustration of this is the 18th century swggle benveen tl~emon the North American continent.
Hereunder is the list of the major European conficts that spilled over the
North American continent:
1. The war of King William III of England against Louis XTV, King of France
(1689 -1697), known as the War of the League of Augsbuig; ended by the
Treaty of Ryswick (1697) berneen France, England, Holland and Spain.
The North-American colony of Massachusetts failed to conquer Quebec.
Also the fortress of Louisbourg, capnired by Engiish in 1690, was retumed to France.
3. The Spanish Succession War (1701-1713); ended by the Treat-y of Utrecht
(1713). It was the war benveen France and Spain against Austria and
England. .An agreement between France and England about rheir
possessions in Nonh America delineated the "zones of influence" without
establishing exact borders betu-een them. This was one of the main reasons
for the continuous struggle benveen Nouvelle France and the English
colonies.
France ceded Newfoundland, Acadia and the Hudson Bay tedos. to 6 Britain. The Louisiana territory \vas not included in this treaty and
remained French. Fig. 2 shows the rnap of North Arnerica indicating the
agreed "zones of influence" and the territories in dispute.
3. The War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748); ended by the Treaty of
Ais-la-Chapelle (1 748). This war was fought benveen France, allied to
Spain, Bavaria, Szsony and Prussia, against Austria suppowd by England.
Resulung from this Treaty, considered in France as very harmhil to her
interests, wvere many territorial changes in Europe but none in hmerica.
The problem of borders was not solved. Both France and England claimed
rights of properry to the same territories (Nova Scotia, the Ohio Valley and
Chero kee country). Aix-la-Chapeiie appoin ted an international commission
to solve the problem of borders but it could not reach any agreement 7 satis factory to both counties.
In the meantirne, New England's pressure on the Ohio Valley continued to increase. The Ohio Valley Cornpanv \vas fomed to promote setdements in
this temtoq-, and obtained Srom the British Crown a gant of half a million
acres in the Upper Ohio River Valley claliied by France.
;\fier the Treaty of Ak-la-Chapelie in 1748, the situation in North Amerka
entered a state of continuous struggle carried on by both sides by political
and rnilitary means. This condition - very damaging to private citizens and
the colonial interests of both antagonists - never really changed.
Sometimes it even took the form of an undeclared war, in which both the
French and English colonial governments were involved.
4. Agam in 1756 another major conflict erupted in Europe. It is hown in
history as the Seven Years War which was tehated by the Treaty of Paris
in 1763 and oftiùdy ended the esistence of French Canada- French
Louisima, or whatever was left of it, survived for a few more years and was
sold to the hmerican Republic (USA) by Napoleon 1, the French Emperor.
As a result of this treaty, France renounced daims to all temitories in North
America, a-ith the esception of the smali islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon
situated offshore olNewfoundland and of the Island of Orleans in the Gulf
of Mesico. France also had to cede to Spain ail the Louisiana territory
situated West of the ~WssissippiRiver, but got it back in 1800 by the Treaty
of San Ildefonso in exchange for the territorial gains in Parma, Italy. The
Antilles - Martinique, Guadeloupe, Mazie Galante, Belle Île and Ste-Lucia,
Britain retumed to France . France and Britain \\-ere tighting not odv in Europe but also in India and on all the oceans of the world. The evencs which happened in othrr locations intluenced decisions concerning Canada The disastrous Treaty of Utrecht signed at the insistence of an inrpt King Louis XV and his mistress, Madame Pompadour, continued to poison English-French relations in North herica und the bitter end of the existence of Nouvelle France.
In spite of the fact that there were rnany nations at \var and that alliances arnong hem were dictated by temporq local interests, sometLnes O+ the interests of the ruling families, France and Englmd were always on opposite sides. This was a suuggle for world domination, of which Canada mas only one of many theatres. For
Britain it was always a rery important one, even if ody as a convenient place to dispose of the undesired population such as puritans. France, on the other hand, did not wish to send ber people away. hlready in the 17th century Louis XW said to his
8 Prime Minister, Colbert, that he couid not depopulate France to populate a colony. 4. THE STRUGGLE IN NORTH AMERICA
The Treaty of A&x-la-ChapeUein 1718 ended the War of Austnan Succession but did not solve anv problems in North hmerica left by the Treaty of Uuecht of 1713.
France needed this peace to recuperate the losses of population and to rebuild its worldaide commercial interests lveakened by u-m. England was in an espansiontst mood and considered the peace detrimental to its interests. Its growing rniddle class of merchants wanted the restart of hosalities. It beiieved that after a total defeat France would be eliminated as a dangerous cornpetitor on the world
9 market.
The same mood prevailed in the North herican colonies. Planters and land speculators in Virginia and Pennsylvania believed that mry large profits could be especred Çrom the colonization of the rich and underdeveloped lands, located west of the r\ppalachian Mountain watershed, dong the Ohio and Mïssissippi Rivers. Land derelopment companies, organized and financed by the colonial govemments, planned to settle these lands with settlers recnùted among their fast growing
10 populaaons.
These projects were considered hhly detrimental to the interests of the
French Crown. The French considered these temtones as their own, for they had esplored thsm in the 17th century, and they did no t want any foreign settlement there, hoping to colonize them aith French-speaking people. hlso, considered it very important to maintain a direct overland communication route benveen Canada and
Louisiana an absolute requirement for the sunir-al of French .imerica.
The English occupied a narrow band of land between the Atlanuc Ocean and
the Appalachian ~Mountains. They had easy and safe communication with th&
mother country in Europe, protected by a strong Naiy, more powerful than the
French one (fig. 2). But, if the French were aüowed to maintain control of the Ohio
and hfississippi Rivers Vaiieys and build their forts at straregic points, they could use
hem not ody to protect their communication in the southem direction, but also as
bases of anack by their garrïsons and autochthon war parties against the Enghsh
settlernents.
The center of French possessions in North America was the valley of the St.
Lawrence River u-here most of the French sedements were located. It was a very good defensiw position for most of its southem borders were protected by
unesplored forests, almost totdy irnpenetrable to the morements of regular amies.
There were only three possible routes of invasion by future conquerors. Al three of
them were relatively easy to defend if adequate forces were available.
The most direct one was from the South dong the Richelieu River - the Lake
Champlain Valley. It was a nearly direct access route with only one portage from
Aibany and New York thiough the Hudson River.
The western access through Lake Ontario and the Sc. Lawrence Vdey was defended by man-made fortifications at the St. Lawrence outlet from the lake and long and dangerous rapids, which could be rendered difficult to pass by relatively srnail hrccs pro\idcd \vit11 dey.
The rhird access corning frorn the East across the Gulf of Sr. Lawrence was defended, after the loss of Acadia and of the Louisbourg fortress, by the well located and s trongly fortified City of Quebec.
However, in spite of d the advantages described above, Canada was r-ery wlnerable. It hdvenT difficult and unsecured communications with Europe because of rhe dominant British Na1-y which patroiled the Gulf of Sr. Lawrence and could cur ir O ff from France ver). easily at any tirne.
The Engiish colonies, with their large populaaon of over one million, were able to muster much larger military forces than the French. Also, Canada depended in large measure on food supplies from France, since its own production was not suffiuent. In retum, it could conmbute to the economy of the rnother country only with the benefits of the fur trade and esport of thber suitable for ship building.
Most of the finanual espenses of its defence had to be supported by France, which needed chat money for its own use in Europe. It is no wonder that it looked ar
Canada more as a liability than as an asset. This was, in our opinion, one of the reasons for the scarcity of help sent over to North America, in spite of many requests and wamings that such help was essential for the suNid of NouveUe France.
There is much proof that the govenuiient of the Colony informed Louis XV and his court about this situation using ail possible, and not only official, channels of
11 communication. AU these efforts did not influence the French metropolitan authorities enough to change th& amtude and most of the requests were rejected as 13 too costly.
The i\hrquis de La Gaiissonière, an able French nad commander and the interim goremor of Canada (1717-49), understood the threat represented by the wesnvard espansion of British possessions, not only to the lines of communication with Louisiana but also to the sunlval of French Canada Once the Ohio River
(cded by the French "La Belle Ririère") \-dey was lost, the connecuon wirh
Iauisianî ~ouldbe sa-ered and both French possessions definitely separated. To prewnt this La Galissonière proposed to the &finister of the Marine the construction of a series of forts dong it, garrisoned by smd regular army detachments. This would not only check the English traders' infltration but also would bring local
13 autochthon tribes under French control.
Such an initiative would force the British to introduce counter measures in the form of a strong presence of the armed forces in North America, required to gi-r support to local ineffective rnilitias. Since these forces were needed in Europe,
Canada would play the role of a foruess tying down large enemy forces and relieving source pressure from France in the European war theatre.
In order to investigate the importance of British infiltration West of the
Appalachian Mountains and to show the flag on the disputed territories in 1749, La
Galissonière sent a fact- finding and flag-s howing espedition under the comrnand of an esperienced Canadian-bom officer, Pierre-Joseph de Céloron de Blainville. The espedition, hlly supported by the lMinistry of the Marine, was composed of fourteen
French officers and cadets, one hundred and eighty Canadians and a band of
15 14 autochthons. Irs composition indicated hou- mucli importance La Galissionière attached ro the problem bemg faced.
Anong the members of the es~editionwas Father Joseph-Pierre Bonnecamps,
S.J., professor of hÿdrography at the Jesuit Coilege in Quebec. He wrore an independent report on rhe expedition, giring the description of flora, fauna and
1s generai geographv of the land. His notes u-ere an excellent complement to the political report of Céloron.
Also among the members of the espedition was an officer of &ed blood (his lather was French, his mother was Seneca), Philippe Chaben de Joncaire, who spoke his matemal tongue fluentiy, which was an important factor in dealing with the
16 natives.
The objectives of Céloron's espedition were twofold. First, he had to show the flag to the autochthons and English alike and restore the prestige of France among the Fisc Nations. Secondly, he had to persuade the former to stop deaiing with English traders and to chase out those traders who established themselves in
17 these territories. Also, he had to advise the Governor of the colony about the esishng situation and propose counterrneasures against English inhltration, and to indicate a wvay of seckgsafe communication between the nvo French possessions.
Céloron included in his luggage lead plates engraved in French with a
18 statement proclaiming King Louis XV the lord of the region. These plates were to be buried in the ground dong his route, under the trees marked by iron sheets with prcsence of local aurochthon chefs and the population. There were sis such
ceremonies, each one duly noted by a notarial act, recorded for the occasion by a
19 notqatrached to the espedition.
The first one nias held at the junction of the Rivière aus Boeufs with the
-iileghany River. The skth one was buried where the Miami Ri\-er joins the Ohio
The route of the espedition is shown on fig- 3. It shows ody the most
important part of ir between Lake Ontario (Fort Niagara) and Fort Detroit. The
retum of the espedition \as made through Lakes Erie and Ontario and down the St.
Lawrence River to Monueal. It started on June 15, 1749, and ended on November
7th of the same year and covered - according to Father Bonnecamps - 1,200 miles.
On his return, Céloron reported that the native population of the Ohio country was generally dl-disposed towards the French for they were influenced by the
31 English traders who had inîïltrated the temtory.
It was understandable rhat the autochthons had their own policy with which
33 they protected th& own interests and th& ownership of the land.- Since they were completely ignored in the disputes and dealings arnong whites, they were always on the side of the stronger and winning pany. They did not have any reason to feel unfkiendly towards the traders corning from the East across the Appalachian
-33 Mountains. Their traders O ffered wares of better quality and asked fewer pelts for rhcm than the Frencl~dicl. :!lso, the aurochthons u-cre reluctant to act violend\-
againsr rhe traders fearïng strong repris& from English authorilles compelled to
protect rheir own. .Ali this \vas veq- well known to the French side and had been
reporred a long &e ago to the Minister of the Colonies by the Marquis de
23 Beauharnais, tlie Govemor of Canada (1 726-a).
Céloron avoided the use of violence in espelling the Englishmen he met. He
treated rhem well and sent them home with ail the pelts they had traded. He very
o Ften gave them letters addressed to theu governors, esqxessing his astonishment that
they aliowed their own Qtizens to esercise such dlegal activities as the fur trade on
lands belonging to the French King, Louis ILX.~~
The British were aware of the rasons for the Céloron expedition and of the danger it represented to their trade with the natives and to the eventual colonization of these territories. Governor Clinton of New York, in his letter to the Lords of
Trade dated October 17, 1749, informed their Lordships in London about the expedition and other French initiatives for interrupting British commercial activities in the testories which lay west of the Appalachian Mountains and south of Lake
Ontario. He warned his governent about the French intention of building a fort on the south side of Lake Ontario in order to intercept the trade of Oswego (a fort and trading post built in 1727 on the south shore of the lake, the main rnilitary and commercial British base in the Great Lakes region).
CLin ton clairned that such an action on the part of the French would be iliegal since ir wodd be built "on lands belonging to the Five Nations, who by the Treaty of
18 Urrcchr 11-cre declared subjects of Grear Bntin and wbo for hnher securitv have in
35 solemn manner yielded and sold them to the King." Clinton ended his message
with n warning that if such were the plans of the French, he would not be able to
prerent their implementation.
Gowrnor Clinton's letter (one of many writîngs on the subject eschanged
between the colonies and the governent in London) is ve. significant for nvo
reasons. First, it cites the Treaty of Utrecht as the base of British claïms, and second,
it mentions that the Iroquis (Fice Nations) the "solemn manner" yielded th&
Despite this, French authonties knew that British inf3iluation into the Ohio
River Valley represented a serious danger, not ody to the esisrence of Canada but of
Louisiana as well. The): approved colonial initiaaves to eliminate Englis h influence arnong the autochthon nations of this region and to prevent the reoccurrence of it in
26 the hture.
However, they waited und 1752 to take action to eliminate the English trading center at Pickawiilany on the Miami River by an espedition composed mostly of
Ottawa natives. This \vas the nation of the mother of Canadian officer Charles iMouet de Langlade, who led the espedition. This was a serious blow to the British vade
27 organizauon in this area.
The damage to French interests caused by Pichwillany was obvious to
Céloron in 1743, when he visited it in the final days of his expedition. He tried, n-ithout ;my succcss, to persuade the local natives to ignore English traders and to force them to leare. It was sirnp1)- not in the interest of the natives to do so, for they could there obtain the wares they needed and sell rhe results of their trapping. French traders were absent in this area and their English counterparts had a completely free
28 hand.
The nest problem the French authorities had to solve was the problem of the
Future peneuaaon "en force" of English settlers. This could only be stopped, or at least slowed down considerably, by securing the fork of the Alleghany and the
Monongahela Rivers where they unite and flow down to join the missi is sip pi, under the name of the Ohio River (fig. 3). Once this point was secured, it could effectively
29 block the access routes from Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland.
The French reaction to the English encroachment in the Ohio Valley came at a time when Anglo-Americans were already well established there and difficult to dislodge. To prevent further English infiltration, or at least to make it more difficult,
Governor Duquesne sent an espediaon in 1753 with orders to build Fort ~res~u'fle on the shores of Lake Erie and Fort le Boeuf near the source of the RivGre aus
Boeufs, and a few months Iater Fort Machault at the fork of the Rivicre aus Boeufs and the Meghany River (see fig. 1). Since it was late in the season, the construction of the fort at the fork of the AUeghany and Monongahela Rivers (k.3) was
30 postponed until 1754.
The Governor of Virginia, Dinwiddie, did not like what was happening on land n-liich, accorciing to hm,brlonged to the British Crown. He sent one of iiis officers,
George Washington~rhen Il cevs old, wirh a letter to the cornmanding officer of
3 1 Fort le Boeuf, asking hirn and his men to leave irnmediately. As could be es~ected by di concerned, the French not ody did not obey the summons but increased their garrison there. Funhermore, in 1754 chey sent a considerable force under esperienced officers, l'&de-Major Phand Captain de Contrecoeur, ro the Ohio lralley. On the way to his destinaaon Contrecoeur destroyed a sotalled Fort of
"Captain" Trent, an English hrtrader. This "fort", located on the Rivière aus Boeufs,
3 2 thip miles from the point where it joins the Meghany River, was protected by a
3 3 palisaded enclosure armed with four dery pieces and manned by fifty men. A few days later, when Contrecoeur arrived at the junction of the Alleghany and
Monongahela Rivers he smed the construction of a fort, iater cailed Fort Duquesne
(where City of Pittsburgh is presently situated). Contrecoeur was aware of the strategic importance of this point and intended to secure it for the King of France.
So did the British. In May 1754, an English officer with colonial troops descended to the Monongahela River and reported seeing the French already building their fort. In his report he induded the foilowing starement about French dominariori of the Ohio River Valley: "In my opinion, France would gain more by conquering it,
34 rhan by conquering the whole of Flanders."
Governor Dinwiddie considered the action of Contrecoeur provocative and again sent Washington to prevent the construction of the fort. However, the French u-cre there Eirst. 50 Washington, or rîrher the avant-garde of his detachment, could onlv establish a smail fortification down die Ohio River from Fort Duquesne. It \vas demolished by Contrecoeur's men in a rery short he, without too much
35. opposition. Nevertheless, Washington and his expeditionary force continued theif advance. On iearning about this, Captain de Contrecoeur sent Lieutenant Coulon de
Jumonlille rowards the advancing English, with a smaii escort of thirq4our men
(French and Canadians) to meet Washington and to request that he leave the territory a-here, according to the French, he had no right to be without the authonzation of the
King of France or his representatix-e. Unfortunately, the French were detected by the hostile autochthons and on iMay 18, 1754 their camp was surrounded by the r7irginians and their allied natives. Jumondie and nine of his cornpanions were Med and most of his pary taken prisoner. Only a few men escaped. It is hard to understand what happened. Whether the Virginian militia, of which mosc of
Washington's troops were composed, opened tire fïrst without any justification, or whether the surprised French started to shoot fint, is nor known. The French made rn~~urnpropaganda out of this incident, while the English vied to jushg
This inadent ended the polite eschange of notes and summons beoveen governments and the shooting war started in r\merica, two fuii years before the
37 officiai declaration of war in Europe by Great Bntain in May 1756.
Washington, resigning himself to the impossibility of fortifying the site where [tort Duquesne n-as siruated, reueated south tow-ardds \'irginia and builr Fort Neceasity
3 8 (Ci. l), n-aitingthere for the appropriate moment to resume 1Gs march up norrh.
The British colonies, recognizing the gravity of Jumond.le's death, called a meeting at Orange (Aibany) to discuss the problems of organization of a comrnon front against the French offensive. They knew thac most autochthons, nodyallied to rhem, would change degiance and support the French. This \vas che result of the usual native attitude to join the winning side.
To counter this, the Governor of New York invïted the Chiefs of the Five
Nations (Iroquois) to the meeting. They were presented there with the description of the Jumondle incident as a great English victory and invited to rejoin the English cause. After offering them many inponant gifts, he assured them they would have a free hand as far as their traditional way of rnaliing war was concerned.
The Chiefs appeared to accept the English proposais and kept th& gifts, but irnmediately after the meeting went to the French staung chat they did not want to be
3 9 at war with France or to join the English side. This statement of neutraiity, an outright rejection of the Orange meeting promises, was probably influenced by the news of what happened at Fort Necessity to which Washington had retreated from
Fort Duquesne. On June 28, 1754 a military expedition sent by Captain de
Countrecoeur, Commander of Fort Duquesne, conquered this fort and forced
40 Washington to surrender. This was achieved without any unnecessary cmelty. In this way the area West of the Appalachian Mountains was cleared of any English rmlitmrv prescnce.
These eariy French rnilitaq- iictories orer the English colonial miliaa may be attributed to the fact that every French detachment was commanded by French professional officers and included several French regulars or Canadians uained by them. On the English side the colonial rnilitias, consisting of part-time soldiers led by officers of the sarne calibre, were the backbone of Briash rniiitarv Mght in North
America.
Great Britain, seeing what was happening and worried about the secuns of ics possessions, deaded to act by sending a professional soldier, General Braddock, wïth two battalions of 500 men each. The); sailed in Novernber 1754 against the mild and polite protests of the French govemment, asswing the British King chat such action was not called for since the British possessions were not in any danger of being
41 anacked and chat it was never France's intention to do so.
Maybe so! How-ever, it u7as a fact that English wesnvard espansion was momentarilv stopped and the British decided to react It musr be noted that by the end of 1754 Britain and France were stiii at peace in Europe and that consequentiy
Braddock's force was not considered an myby the British, but rather a colonial self- defence force against autochthon attacks.
Braddock's kst rask was the reconquest of Fort Duquesne. In July 1755, at the head of 2,200 men, composed of British regulars and colonial rnilitias, he advanced towards the fort. The situation on the French side became serious and
Picquet, using his presage among natives friendly to Nouvelle France, invited them to 42 join the Frcnch. The. obeved and came in great numbers.
Braddock never had a chance to reach Duquesne. Inesperienced as he and his men were in frontier tactics, they were ambushed about ten miles from the fort by 200
French and Canadian soldiers supported by 600 autochthons and were destroyed as a fighting force. Braddock himself was killed. This banle is calied the Bade of
3fonongahela from the name of the rkrbanlis on which it took place.
Large amounts of rnilitary equipment changed hands. The French captured 15 regimental flags, 20 guns, large quantities of other weapons and ammunition and, most importantly, Braddock's papers. Among hem was the plan of the conquest of
Canada conceived in London. It was the first the that the intentions of direct concrol of the colonial \var by the British governent had been reveaied. It consisted of a three-pronged attack from the West (taking Fort Frontenac and Niagara), south
(through the Champlain-Richelieu route) and from the east mhere naxd forces would bring a field amy strong enough to conquer Quebec.
I t was a plan of total war against Canada with the ultirnate goal of the complete ehnation of.the French colonies from the North Amencan continent.
The French \+tory of Monongahela clearly showed the value of French troops composed in a large part of Canadians accustomed to the forest and accomplished hunters, i-e. escelient sharpshooters. These were the qualiaes that won the battle. neterriljing autochton war yells most ceitainly helped win the victory for they were strange to the newly disembarked European soldiers.
In response to the reinforcement (Braddock) sent by Britain to hmerica, in .\priI 1733 the Frcncli scnt to rhc colony SLK army battalions - 3,150 men in total.
Braring the British naval blockade of the French metropolitan ports and of the St.
Lawrence Gulf, most af them reached Canada and considerably uicreased its
43 defensive POtential.
When in 1756 Great Britain officidy declared a-ar on France, the conflict in
.imerica became officidy part of the worldwïde struggle benveen rhese nvo rising
super powers of the 18th century. This period of confict is called by French
historians "The War of Conquest" and wd.I be discussed later in this thesis.
During the &sr nvo pars it was very favourable for the French. The
American-English colonies were not able to present a unified front to Nouvelle
France which, bemg an authontaria. country govemed by a govemor appointed by
the King, ciid not have to argue about funds and manpower mobilization with the
local utizeq. Its troops, commanded by able and qualified French officers (some of
[hem bom in Canada), were more than a match for the New England miiitias.
Further, each British colony had mostly its own interests in mind and cared very iide
about its neigbours. It took William Pitt to change this.
He weil understood the importance of the North hmerican struggle and was
able to impose a unifed strategy on the colonies, which were quarreiiing and competing with each other. In his opinion, North hmerica was not the secondary but
the primary theatre of war and consequently he redirected the main effort to u overseas. 5. ABBÉ FRANÇOIS PICQUET AND THE FRENCH COLONIAL POLICY IN THE 18TH CENTURY
Dunng this period of contlict 1748-55, which in reality was undedared war disguised
in a series of border incidents ofien fought by the intermediq of autochthon
warriors, both sides were mxious not to provoke all-out war. To direct such gueda
activîties, a leader who had the total unconditional confidence of the nanx-e
population was needrd. Canada was fortunate to have such a man in the person of
Abbé Picquet.
As explained in the previous chapters, it was of uunost importance for the
colonies to maintain good relations Mtb the natives. Without them there was no way
they could control the territories claimed by the European powers. The British tried
to achieve ths by maintaining good commercial relations with them. Since the traders were left most of the time without any military protection, it was essentid for their
sunlr-al that they did not antagonize their native partners. Otherwise they &ked not only losing their goods but their Lves as well. Occasional demonstrations of rnilicary rnight were intended to irnpress the locais with the power of foreign hngs and to conrince tliem chat it would be dangerous to oppose it. In this way a fragde mo&-
z.ir.endi benveen the whites and the nati~eswas established and maintained.
The French had the same problems, even to a Iarger degree because of their weaker numerical presence on the continent. They also traded pelts Mth the autochthons and treated them, generaily speaking, well. But they had another veiy effective - at least they beliel-ed so - way to attach the natives to their cause, namely rheir conversion to Chrisuanity.
The best definition of this policy and of its goals \vas aven by the French hfinister of the Naxy, Antoine-huis Rodé, Comte de Jouy, in his letter of March 4,
1749, addressed to the govemor, hlarquis de la Jonquière (1 719-1752). He wrote:
"Un grand nombre d'Iroquois ayant déclaré qu'ils désiraient embrasser le c~stianisme,on a proposé d'établir une mission près du fort Frontenac, afin d'y attirer le plus grand nombre de ces sauvages. On a confié cette négociation à Abbé Picquet, un missionaire zélé, qui semble être bien de ces 45 nations".
Further, in the sanie letter, he stared that if the establishment of a new mission
(La Présentabon) near Frontenac were successÇu1,
".. . il ne serait pas alors difficile de faire comprendre à ces saumges que, pour mettre terme au-u prétentions des Anglais sur eus et leur territoire, il faudrait détruire Chouaguen (Omego) et leur enlever un poste établi principalement dans le but de le contrôler".
But Rouillé, knowing chat England and France were at peace, suggested the utmost caution in dealings a-ith the autochthons and the English in order to avoid any major incident. The esistence of Oswego, the main English trading post on Lake
Ontario, was very important to the autochthons. They could obtain there the wares they needed, often at a bener price and of much better quaiity than what they could ger from the French. Such a situation was obviously deMnenta1 to French interests and to their dealings with the natives in the very lucrative htrade.
Mnister Rouilié also knew that the converted natives would be looked on in a \-en uniricndlv wav. bv- rheir pagan brothers, faithful to their uadiuonal beliefs, and therefore in great need of French protection. In other words, he suggested in his letter the impiementauon of an old principle of the Roman Empire: "divide and de", used for many centuries with great success.
Efforts to chnsüanize the natives were made Lpm the veq beginning of the
French presence in Canada. FLst the Jesuits in the 17th century and later the
Sulpicians applied thernselws to ii. At die beginning, the Jesuits hed with the local populauon in their idiages. This, howerer, proved to be a dangerous arrangement.
Several of them perished together Mth their natire cornmunities dukg tribal wars whch were frequent du~gthe 17th and 18th centuries. The best esample of such a
46 tragedy is the death of Jean de Brébeuf, S.J., a rnissionary to the Huron nation.
To prerent a similar disaster, it became customary for rnissionaries from the middle of 17th century to iive not in the villages bur in the fomfied settlements built nest to the autochthon senlements. These settlements, fortihd according to the
European metbods, were too strong to be conquered by autochthons armed Mth bows and arrows. The problem of building the fortified missions will be discussed Li
Chaptrr 6 of this thesis. One of these missions was the Mission La Présentation. Its founder, Abbé François Picquet, was one of the most successful rnissionaries and politicai agents working in the 18th cenqCanada.
Abbé Fançois Picquet was bom on December 6, 1708, in Bourg-en-Bresse,
Burgundy, in the diocese of Lyon, France. Early in his life he discovered his vocation to become a piest. He studied theology in Paris and soon after his graduation he joincci the Congregation of Sr. Sutpice, an organizaaon founded in France in 1611, and grouping secular pnesrs. The main task of the Congregation was the schooling of new priesa, which they did also in Canada. In addition, ics members, enjoying a great degree of liberty, busied themselves nidi missionary worlc arnong the natives.
In 1731, Abbé François Picquet, known to superiors for his energy, went at
47 their suggestion to Canada where he semed as a pnest arnong the natives.
After a stay of Gve years in Montreal, at the headquarters of the Congregaaon, he was sent in 1739 to the iWssion of Deus montagnes (present day Oka), located near the lake of the same narne, a few miles west of Montreal. Its location was esceilenc since it was situated very close to the main route the autochthons Living west of the city had to take in order to reach montrea al. These autochthons - Hurons,
Algonquins and Nipissings - were frequent ~isitorsto the aty where they traded the pelts for French goods.
*Abbé Picquet stayed at Deus Montagnes for ten years (1 739-49). His ability as organizer and his devotion to his work were npidly recognized by the authorities of
Nouveile France, both relgious and civic.
Under his leadership the mission became rery active, not only in
Christianization. Picquet tried to introduce (as he later did at La Présentation) agronomy to the natives, wishing to irnprove their existence and to convince them of the superiority of the sedentary way of life over their old nomadic ways.
In order to better communkate with his converts, Abbé Picquet leamed one of their languages - Iroquois. Aiways aware of possible assaults on his mission by unfriendli- nati1-es, he built a stone fort on the mission grounds and fortifieci four
autochchon 1-iiIages simated nearby, each one settled by a differenr tribe.
The above description of his actirïties shows how dose his reiqpous mission
and his poliucdy motivated acüvities were to each other and how ciifficuit ir is to
rstabGsh whar his priorities were. Later in this chapter we shall discuss this duality of
his actions, qing to elucidate this apparent riddle.
The European War of Austrian Succession mas nor going very weil for
Metropolitan France. However, in the spxing of 1747, it was decided to send some
help to Canada in the hope that it would succeed to cross the Briash naval blockade.
On board of one of the ships was the lMarquis de la Jonquière, Governor-Designate of Canada. Unfortunately, the French squadron was intercepted near Cap Finisterre and nearly completely desmyed. Jonquière aras taken prisoner and was re placed in
the interi.b y Marquis de La Galissonière, pre~louslymen aoned.
The situation of Nouvelle France was no better than that of her mother country. Acadia was invaded and the invasion of Quebec was greatly Çeared. The loÿalry of the Iroquois became a problem of utmost importance. Abbé François
Picquet was weil aware of it and conscious of the volatility of autochthon sentiments.
In order to prevent any surprises he visited Quebec in the summer of 1747, bringtng with him sivty Iroquois warriors to be presented to the new governor. They were very much impressed by the reception they received and assured the govemor of
48 their "eternal" tidelity to France.
Aside from his political work, Picquet was very faithhil to his rnissionary \-ocauon and spenr a lot of Iiis umc ming co make good Chfiscians of his charges.
Considering borh Picquet's religious and political work rery important, La
Galissonière requested in a letter to the Mïnister of the Colonies that a pension of 600
49 to 800 livres per year be accorded to Abbé Picquet.
The new gomrnor quicldily reaiized that the main weahess of the colony was its r-eq smd French population. He continuously reguesred that at least 10,000 colonisrs be sent in order to occupp the lands claimed by both French and English
30 but not settied by either of them. In this situation a good relationship with the native population was very important and had to be established and maintalied by aii possible means.
Therefore, La Galissonière accepted without any hesitation the offer of the
Sulpicians to organize a new mission locared between hfontreal and Lake Ontario, at the point where the smd river flowing from the south, cded Souegatsi by the natives, lacer bown as the Oswegatchie, joins the St. Lawrence. This navigable
Stream gave good access to the territories south of the St. Lawrence occupied by the
Iroquois, but considered by the British as their own on the basis of an agreement
-pppppp-pppp-p------included in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713.
The site was esplored by Picquet on November 21, 1748, and its strategic value recognized. Aside from being a nice place to settie at the head of the St.
Lawrence capids, it could dso be an esceilent point for gathering information about the acti~ltiesof both the English and the Iroquois. The knowledge about events occurring was vital for the French for through this temtory ran the shortest route With strong support from the governor, and after obtlliing the approral of
his relgious supenors, Picquer organized an eqedition consisting of wenty-five
Frenchmen (soldiers and tradesmen) and four autochthons. He departed hm
Montreal in the spring O f 1 749. In his escellen t report to Governor La Galissionière
he demonscrated his intelligence, pracucal spint and undersranding of the importance
of the St. Lawrence Ri-,-er as the route towards the interior of the colony. He
proposed the constmction of proper portages (and in one case even of a canal)
around the most dangerous parts of the rapids. He described each of them in detail,
suggesang the most appropriate solutions. He even proposed a way of finanung
these irnprox-ements by imposing tous on the users of these improved passages. He
believed that the money raised in this way would cover di the costs of the invesunent
5 1 and that in the end it would cost nothing to the colonial treasury.
Picquet returned on May 30, 1749 to the site of the future mission with a group of men, which included one arpenter and one mason. He started constniction of the fon, cutting trees to make a place for it and for the fields in which, he hoped, the future converts w-ould sede and plant corn and raise cade, both meant not only as a means to provide food but also as a way to convince them to abandon their nomadic esistence. He named his new mission "La Présentation" in
honour of Novernber 21, which is the day of the presentation of Virgin Maq at the
Temple. It is also the day on which the priests of St. Sulpice solemnly renew their
52 vows every year. From rhr beginning Picquer made clev to the nacives wishing ro ioin rhc mission the conditions he required of them: the\- had to renounce the tnde and abuse of alco ho1 and to live only with their legitimate wi\-es. He warned them he would not tolerate chat these conditions be disregarded. To pro\-e this, he sent away several converts-ro-be who did not obsen-e the rules he tried to impose. In spite ofPicquetts severity, he bebeved that his mission mould be the most successful of ali missions in the country and would attract many autochthons. In the letrer of August 1, 1743 mentioned above he eespressed his method of treating his con\-ens which may be summed up as foiiows: patience and great hesscombined with utmost kindness.
He beiieved that this was the only way to convert and to atvact them to the mission
5 3 and to induce hem to a sedentary esistence.
In choosing the location of his estabiishment, Picquet had to consider its safery during \var with the English colonies, which he believed [O be inevitable. He wrore in his letter addressed to La Galissonière that he did not espect any attack coming dong the Oswegacchie River (called by hirn River of La Présentation) for he believed the "English do not have anp real Iinowledge of it". But he added that if such an attack came, it would completely isolate Frontenac and 1,ake Ontario from
54 the rest of Canada.
However, Picquet estimated that the English war raiders coming from Lake
Ontario or from the south could be prevented Gom penetrating into Canada by arming La Présentaâon Mth a few guns which could easily protect these passages.
Further down in his report, Picquet discussed the me& of his site from
34 relgious and political points of rie\\-. In his opinion, cher were: (i) La Présentation, located far enough from irlontreal, Fort Fronrenac and Oswego, would protect the autochthons lix-ing at the mission lrom bad influences comlig from these places; @ï it would be at easy access for the natives which may inuease the number of their conversions; (iiii abundance of food supplies (hunting and Gshing) would contribute - - 33 to making the mission anracax-e to the natives.
rUso, aiways with an eye to the econornic development of Canada, Picquet suggested a reform for navigation dong the St Lawrence, making La Présentation a point of uansfer of merchandise from the small boats passing the rapids into targer lake-going ones or vice versa. This, according to h,would considerably reduce the cost and ensuse a secure lodging for the sailors, who somethnes were unable to return to rheir homes before the minter.
Picquet also underlined the possibility of ship building, taking advanrage of an ample supply of oak &ber produced by the sawd Listalled, Mth the royal consent
56 of 1751, on the rapids of the Oswegatchie River.
The promontory on which the fort and the native dage were to be located
Formed an escellent harbour, weil protected from the violent current and having sufficient depth to allow the heavily-loaded boats to corne close to the river bank,
(£ïg. 25) and permimng easy handhng of merchandise and boarding or landing of
57 people.
At the end of his letter Abbé Picquet insisted on the importance of La
35 Présentation as the support point For the n-esrem forts of Frontenac and Kiagara, as
as on ics possible role as the base for hmre operations againsr prosperous
Oswego, destruction of which should be, in his opinion, one of the main goals of the
French colonid administration.
The actirity of the mission had corne to die attention of the English from the beginning of irs esistence. Colonel Sir William Johnson, the Commissioner for
Indian ;\Çks and one of the leading rnilitq men in the British colonies, wrote the following about the mission in a letter addressed to Go\-ernor Chton of New York, daced .\ugus t 18, 1750:
"The nest rhing of consequence he (an Indian Sachem) told me was, that he had heard fiom several Indians that the Govemor had given orders to the Pnest who is now settled below Cadaraqui to use d means possible to induce the five Nations to settle there, for which end they have a large magazine of all kinds of clothing fitted for Indians as also hmis, hmnunition 5 8 Provision & which they distribute 1-ery liberdy."
Evidentlr the author rehrs in his letter to the govemor of Canada, La Jonquière and to the priesr Picquet.
Ir is obvious from the abore letter that the English regarded Picquet's initiative as a very dangerous one for their interests. Guessing correctly that it was motivated more by the politico-rnilitaiy considerations than by the reLgious ones, they decided to act. And they did so, for the recentiy built fort was burned down by Iroquois,
59 incited by some "unknown" instigators. The only part that was not destroyed was
GO the Little Stone building in which Abbé Picquet was lodged. The SC~~OUS~~SSof the danger La Présentation created For English intercsts
rnay be also judged by the fact that when a meeting of the Congress of
Representatives from the English colonies was cailed to Albany (Orange) in Juce
1754 to discuss common defence against the French expansionist movements, the
6 1 problem of La Présentation was included on the agenda.
As the news about the success of the mission spread throughout Nom-eue
France, the Bishop of Quebec, Monseigneur de Pontbriand, decided to see it himself and visited ic in May 1752. He and his followers spent five days there, preachmg and
62 celebrating mariages and administering the O ther sacraments. He remmed to
Quebec City very satisfied nrith what he saw, for at the time of this visit the mission had already spread over several prosperous settlements numbering about 3,000 natives, located nearby and depending on La Présentation for their support and
In June 1751, conside~gthat La Présentation was in good health, Picquet decided to esplore Lake Ontario in search of prospective converts willing to settle at his mission. After leaving detailed instructions concerning the operation of the fort, he departed, accompanied by five Canadians and five autochthons. This espedition lasted Çrorn June 11 to July 21. He described it in the report prepared for his
64 superiors as weil as for the colonial authorities. From this document one may conclude that he considered diis expedition as the extension of his activiaes at La
Présentation, defined by the instructions obtained €mm Govemor La Galissonière and .\finister Rouillé, i.e. control of autochthons by mcans of th& conversion to
C bris tianin- and b y their sedement in French-conuoiied towns and dlages. Picquet believed that if he succeeded wvith the Iroquois, he might weil achier-e the same result with the nations king around Lake Ontario, and distract them from the influence of the Oswego traders.
He srarted his voyage along the nordiern shore of the Lake und he reached
Fort Niagara. The remrn trip along the southern shore brought him to the site of
Oswego, which he obsenyed without landmg (k.1).
As usual, he commented not only on autochthon affain but also reported his findings about the land he visited, its accessibility and suitability for settiements, beliel-ing most probably that some conuol over native trappers could be esercised by the establishment of missions similar to La Présentation.
The &st post he visited was Fort Frontenac, located close to the out flaw of the St. Lawrence River frorn Lake Ontario. He found it empg of autochthons, who preferred to trade their pelts at Oswego. This was due, in his opinion, to the outrageously high prices asked by the French for their trading goods. As an esample of such practices, Picquet noted that the French asked ten beaver pelts for a siiver bracelet, whde a sLnilar one, often of better quahty, could be purchased from the
English for only two pelts. No wonder that the natives and ofien even Canadian trappers preferred to deal "illegally"with Oswego than Mth Frontenac.
Howemr, Picquet had to admit that he preferred French "eau-de-vie" to
English bandy. The only place that he beiieved could compete with Oswego was I;orr Rouillé, builr in 1748 at the site of the modem ci? of Toronto. It had a weU-appointed warehouse &il of good \vares. However, Picquet did not mention the prices charged for them.
He \vas very weil received by the authorities of this establishment and treated ro an esceilent feast. He reported on the occasion that the bread and wine were of an
"esceilent qualitytt compared co Frontenac's, where all he was offered was poor bread and lard.
It becarne obvious to him long before the end of his trip that Rouillé's policy did not work in "Upper Canada". The construction of forts on the portages as it was made on Niagara River in order to prevent the natives from reaching Oswego, was
6 5 no t an efficient way to implement it . Therefore, he esamined emry site he stopped at (he was forced to stop often as he was prevented Çrom advancing by bad weather, very dangerous for his teeback ernbarkations) from the following points of view:
(1) were they easp to defend; (hi were they able to provide the natives hing there Wth a sufficient arnounr of food in the tom of garne, fish and eventudy fmproducts
(corn, poultry, etc.); (ï] would it be easy for an enemy to isolate them from the rest of Canada in case of war. Picquet even suggested, as he did in his report about his esploratory travels from Montreal to the La Présentation site, some improvements which should be made to wharf facilities in some places (he strongly crîticized wharfing instaiiations at Niagara).
He even visited sites of failed missions, as he did with the Sulpiaan mission at
Bay of Quiuté, which hr qualified as a "chamiing site" but "bad land" (most probably nor good for farming). .-Uong chc u-av he tried tu mect che local mu\-es and to
convince them abour the adnntages of moving co the La Présentaaon cornples.
Manr of them promised to foliow him later but others joined him right away. Picquet
did not mention thei. number but they must hare been numerous enough to aia.rrn
the English of Osmego. Understandably, they were uoubled by this action for it
undercut rheir pelt supply line and the fur trade which was a mry important, if not the
only, reason for being there.
Picquet's voyage was an implementaaon of French colonial poiicy towards the
autochthons, i.e. to bnng them to the French side. The English saw it that way and
deuded ro act. When his party (and there were many more of them than in the two
embarkations he started with) bivouacked at the mouth of the Gaskouchagou River
discharging into Lake Ontario nventy-five leagues from Niagara (Gg. l), the English
of Oswego sent a canoe full of Liquor and offered it free of charge to the autochthons
of his party. When he returned ro the camp from his one-day esploraaon, he found
di of them drunk and rebeihous. As a result of this English "sabotage" many of the
recruits refused to foilow hLn any further on the way to his mission. Picquet adrnitted that he was very upset by this.
As he passed near Oswego, he exarnined its fortifications. He noted that the
fort was dominated on two sides by plateaux suitable for the installation of adery pieces. Once these positions were occupied by enernies, the fort could be easily desuoyed. He eshated that two batteries of three nvelve-pound guns would be
su fficient to achieve this. It is inrercsung to note rhat .-Ibbé Picquec did nor land at Oss-ego in order to please natives accompanving him, who insisted thac he not do so. He does not give an. explanation for this attitude in his report. Most probably they fied that the recep tion would no t be too friendly, to put it mildly.
On his way home he visited Frontenac again and was very well received there by the French authoncies and by "his" Algonquin and Nipissing nations who came from their settiements expressly to meet hirn. He wvas rery touched by this gesmre.
It showed how successfül his work was to win the& friendship.
On Picquet's arrival at La Présentation on July 21st, the autochthons living rhere welcomed hïm back as if he were th& father, long losr and recovered.
He ended his ex~editionreport with an enumeration of the me& of his own actions and discussions of the importance of the fort he had built. This, in Our opinion, \vas done in order co de fend his ideas and the correctness of the selecuon of rhe site for his mission, against critiusm of many badly-advised and jealous people from the colonial administration. Ic is worth noting at chis moment, that while the construction cost of his mission was estimated at benveen 30,000 and 40,000 pounds,
66 he built it for 3,485 pounds. This enomous discrepancy is a very clear indication of the poor state of the colonial administration. On one side, an honest and idealistic man, an excellent organizer and leader of men showed what can be done with little money and hard work On the odier hand, this discrepancy showed how greedy and dishonest were the people in the coloniai govemment in Quebec City. In 1760, the
Intendant Bigot and several of his cronies were anested after their remto France iudgçli and man\- condemned to rems in pison or 1-ery hea\~fines for tlieir
6 7 dishones-. No wonder that with such an administration Nouvelle France was always in deficît at the royal treasuq.
From the abore it cm be seen chat Picquet's way of implementing French colonial policies was weli received by both the French and some natives, their allies.
But how it was perceived by the people "on the other side of the hill", using
Wellington's famous words, is worth noÜng.
Many English and American hstorians are fidi of admiration for Abbé Picquet
6 8 for his waps of spreading Christianity and promoting the interests of his King.
They also laud his courage as a soldier, demonstrated many &es by following "his"
G9 natives on their raids against English setdements and rnitirary installations. But his influence on the autochthons was very much feared by his English contemporaries
For it counteracted their own attempts to convince the natives ro join their side. The expression of these fears is shown by the letter of Colonel Johnson to the Board of
Trade dated August 28, 1756:
"The Onnondagas and Oneidas are in the neighbourhood of Swegatchie a French senlement on the River St. Lawrence, whither members of those nvo Nations have of late years been debnuched and gone to he. Tho' our Indians do not now resort to those places as frequently as they forrnerly did, yet some among them do occasionaliy visit therie, when the French and the Indians in their interest poison the minds of ours with stories not only to the disadvantage of our good intentions towards them, but endeavour to frighten them &th pompous accounts of the superior prowess 70 and martial abilities O t the French." The Marquis Fran~ois-Pierrede T'audreuil, Goremor of Canada, in his letter
to the Minister of Marine, François-Marie de Moras, dated February 16, 1756, argued
that France could not sunive without "La Beiie Rivière" (French narne for the Ohio
River) for it was a direct naturd route between Canada and Louisiana. The smallest
concession granted by the King of France to the British in Ohio would actuailv cut
this direct route between the tn;o colonies which could not survire mithout the
mutual suppon Without it, Canada would be in a permanent state of hostilities even
when there was an officiai state olpeace between the French and the English, as was
the case since the last wax of 1744-48. Since then, Canada was constantly opposed to
7 1 the espansionist ambitions of the English colonies.
The English point of view and intentions were defined by Colonel Johnson in
a letter dated September 18, 1755, written to Captain Robert Orme, Aide-de-camp of
the British General Braddock. Johnson stated that if the military land campaign were well synchronized with the British navy operaaons and progressed dong the St.
Lawrence River, he was certain that Canada could be conquered within one year,
72 dowing the Englis h to cake over the esrremely pro fitable hrcommerce.
The political aspect of the upcorning conflict was expressed in the "New York
Gazette" issue of December 29, 1755, which argued that if the French were satisfied with the development of the land situated north of the St. Lawrence River, they would never be opposed by New Engiand, which rather would obseme these efforts with sympathy. But if the French extended their ambitions to the land south of Lake Ontario, the EngLish colonics would consider it a thrcat CO theu securin- and tvould
-* 13 have CO defend themselres, creaang a permanent state of hostilities.
Whiie the contlict benveen France and Britain \vas grow-ing, Abbé Picquet faced a new challenge. His problem was a side effect of the presence of the rnilitq personnel of the mission on the natives living around it. The coesistence of the narives and the French garrisons in the smd communiaes of the forts and missions surrounded bv autochthon dages was not working very weU. iMany of these comrnunities were separated from the outside world and Lived their own iives. Abbé
Picquet was alarmed by the demoralizing influence of the soldiers on the natives.
The. introduced them to di the vices of prison life, such as drunkenness and promiscuity and often ndiculed the religion, which Abbé Picquet tried to encourage rhe natives to accept. In his reports to the government on this subject, Picquet even proposed to demilitarite his mission, arguing that the English would not attack such a dedtarized establishment, for they were aware that autochthons were not very easy to surprise and would remember an attack for a very long tirne. This shows how flexible and pragrnatic was his approach to his missionary work. However, his suggestions of dernilitarimtion was rejected by the colonial authorities. This decision underlines the dtaryimportance attached to La Présentation by the government-
Another problem arising from dus cohabitation was the nearly permanent contlict between the military and the rnissionaries about who was in command. Some of the military men incited the natives to disobey the orders of the superîor rnilitary
74 authorities in order to blame later the clergy for it. One such conflict happened ar 1.a I'rCscntauon and ntluly desuoycd the mission. This attirude by the milit- \\-as partlr provoked by jealousy on their part For they obsen~edmanr thes that while the. could not incite the autochthons by any means to stay neutial or not to 6ght aginst the- one word on the part of a missionary could deof them ardent
75 allies.
Howerer, the abore does not mean chat the autochthons always foiiowed these indicaaons. They were watchful for their own interests, which required them to be on the winning side of any conflict which was not theirs. In the Gst stages of the war of conquest when the French had the upper band, they also had natires' enchusiastic support. But when with tirne that changed, so did their loyalties. They were not outrightly hostile, with some esceptions, but maintained a greater neuttality.
Findy, in the last month of the war in 1760 French Canada stood alone against
76 British assaults supponed by its former allies. 6. THE RELIGIOUS MISSIONS OF CANADA
The process of Christianization of Amencan autochthons started at the very
beginning of the 17th century before the founding of Montreal in 1642, when French
Canada consisted of only rwo settlements - Quebec and Trois-Rivières, and
numbered less than three hundred white habirants of French origin. The t&tones
situated West of these tmo setclements, which had grown quicidy into the present
Eas tern Townships, were vigorously esplored by the espeditions commissioned by
governon of the colony, "coureurs de bois" and tradesmen, motivated by rapid and
great benefits from the hir vade with local natives.
Soon it =-as discovered that the lands north of Lake Ontario and east of
Georgian Bay on Lake Huron were populated by a sedentary native people - the
Hurons. Champlain, who visited this territory in 1616, found it "very fine and
77 78 fertile and estimated the Huron population at 30,000 people. Their occupaaons
were baver trapping, fishing, agriculture and trading.
Jesuits were not very hr behind the esplorers. They came to Huronia under
the leadership of Father Jean de Brébeuf S.J. with the goal of introducing Christianity
to this quiet and labonous people. They hoped to capitalize on the Huron sedentary way of life and on the apparent lack of leadership, and to transform them into a
French-speakiog native community which could evenmaily become a part of the
79 French-Canadian society. The missionaries settled at the beginnuig arnong the local population in thcir vwvn CO\\-nships,considering ths to be the most efficient a*ay to carn. on their work.
Ho--ever, when Father Jerôme Lalemant S.J. took over the leadership of Jesuit missionaq- ac tirities in Huronïa in 1639, he realized the need for a centrai residence.
1t was to be used as the base from which the missionaries would travel to the naave nllages for a few davs' stay. .ifter preaching God's message, they would be able to retreat there ro medirate, read, and pray, co prepare themselves for another period of their missionary work
The idea of a suong central residence also had another important hnction: it
\sas supposed to be the place where white persons Living among autochthons
(including missionaries) could seek protection during frequent local wm.
Unfortunately, not all of the priests took advantage of this opportunity; they decided to stay, whatever might happen, arnong their flocks and paid with their lives for dedication to their pnestly duties. Some of them were surpnsed by the suddenfiess of assaults, as was the case of Fathers Jean de Brébeuf and Jerôme
Lalemant who penshed in 1649 during the Iroquois-Huron war in the diage known presently as St. Ignace, located on the bend of the Swgeon River, a tibutary of
80 Georgian Bay.
Archeological digs carried out in 1946 reveded the existence of an Lnponant fortified Huron village weii protected by the river bend and paiisade (tig. 4). The vesuges of a building with charactenstics of European design were discovered there arnong typicd Huron longhouses. The building is identified by No. 26 on the village plan. Fig. 5 shows its forrn defincd by the post moulds, still risible in the sod. Its dimensions 30 by 18 m. preclude the possibility of standard barre1 roofing, typical for the autochthon dwebngs, ~hichhad a maùmurn width of m-enty feet. It was most probably provided with a peaked roof supported by three rom of posrs diding its interior ïnto four equal parts. Additionai partitions, separating four small rooms, were idenafied at its southern end. There were several entrantes into it, ail located on the side walls. The building was surmunded by a picket fence 1 feet distant from the wds. Judging by the smd diameter of moulds (maximum four and a half inches), it was concluded rhat it could not be a defensive palisade, but oidy a simple endosure proliding some pn~a~yto the building's occupants. The small diameters of d post moulds indicate mat the building was built with the use of native technology based on
Stone tools, but according to a European layout.
81 Archeologists argue chat the building was a combined church-residence. The pnests and their white helpers needed to have some privacy to resr and pray and co be close ro their convens at the same time. When compared with the accommodation the missionaries had in other Huron sectlements, building No. 26 of St. Ignace was a real improvement, for others usually consisted of some separate niches inside autochthon longhouses, separated from the rest by some hsypartitions.
The fence around building No. 26 may be considered an intermediaq step towards the hill separation of two cornmunities living at the mission - a pdple observed by d later missionary establishments of Noudle France. This evolution was really a rapid one, for already in 1649 the Jesuit missions of Huronia were providrd u-ith a central, s trongly fortifid rcsidence calied Ste-Marie 1. 1t \vas locared
on the shores of a navigable suearn todq called the Wye River, a tribut- of
Georgian Bay, about one mile distant Gom the mission.
The builders of Ste-Marie 1 realized that in case of an ail-out Iroquois-Huron
conflict they would be in the middle of it, Mthout any hope of outside help from the
closest French settlements, Quebec and Trois-Rivières, situated 450 miles away as the
crow fies. This may esplain why the mission became a real fortress protected by
strong palisaded curtain walls and bastions, bdt according to European principles of
forti ficaaon building.
One of the basic rules of planning, developed then and applied since, was the
separaaon of local populations from the white missionaries to be as complete as
possible. Each compound was supposed to Live its own life Mth separate fadues for
worship, meeting hds, cemeteries and dwehgs. The European compounds were
usudy Çortified with paiisaded or stone straight-line enclosures reinforced by bastions
of combined stone and wood construction. Native settlements were most of the time protected by enclosures built according to their traditional methods and with tools
thep had at their disposal. Fig. G shows such a fomfied village.
Fig. 7 shows the plan and hypothetical reconstmcuon of Ste-Marie I based on the finding of modem archeological investigations. Fig. 8 shows the vestiges of the north-east part of the Ste-Marie's European cornpound. As each square of the grid represents a 5 by 5 ft area, the building may be used to dehe the dimensions of the whole senlement shown on fig. 7. The originalin. of the plan adopted bv builders of the mission is indicated by the double palisade around the autochthon compound. This most certainly enhanced its dehnsive due, but also ailowed the separation of con\-erts Liring inside the compound from pagan risitors lodged in the longhouses located between wo palisades. From fig. 7 it can be seen that the European compound was built with a
European tvpe of dwekg, while the autochthons lived in their maditional bark- covered longhouses.
It is obvious chat arnong the Jesuits were men aware of military engineering who used this knowledge, when they drew the masterplans and built the mission .
The powerhl fortifications of Ste-Marie 1, not repeated in any other mission known to us, were dictated by the complete isolation of the mission, as well as by the feroaty of the tribal wars rvhich ended in the nearly complete estermination of the Huron nation there.
In 1649 the suniving Hurons abandoned their fields and townships and reueated to the comparative safety of the Christian Island located in Georgian Bay, eight desfrom the nearest shore. The rnissionaries, reaiizing that their work at Ste-
Myie 1 had ended due to lack of people to convert, bumed their residence and followed what was left of their Rock to the island, where they started another mission cailed Ste- marie II. Because of crop failure and impossibility of maintaining cornmunity life for both Europeans and autochthons, Ste-Marie II was abandoned in
1650 and both communities dispersed. That was the end of the Jesuics' mission in
82 Huronia wtiich itself ceased to exist. .\s nord before, rhc pnnciplrs guiding the orpriization of Ste-hlarir I sun-il-ed und the fdl of Nouvelle France and were applied to ail other missions. .is an esample, the Jesuit mission of St. Louis nt Kahnawake may be uted. Fig. 9, dated
1720, shows clearly that the principle of nvo separate communities was malitained.
However, the fortifications pro tecting the European compound were not as elabonte as those of Sre-Marie 1, built nearly one century earlier in an isolated location. It \vas considered unnecessary to repeat at Kahnawake what was done at the Ste-Marie I because of rhe relative secunty the new mission enjoyed.
In 1657, in order to reduce Jesuit influence in Canada, the French metropolitan governrnent started to support Messieurs of St. Suipice of Paris, who
83 were granted seigniorial rights over the Island of iMontreal in 1663. When the
Sulpicians started to organite th& own missions they used Jesuit experïences. They rnaintained the prinuple of separated communities and the necessity OFprotection of the European compound by the fordied enclosures, around which they allowed establishment of one or several compounds (one per nation) for the native cont-erts or converts to be. In what Foiiows we shd discuss Sulpician missions located in the ricinity of Vile-Marie (also called Montreal) and how the estimated degree of danger in fluenced the dcsign of th& de fences.
The first mission to be built was that of La Montagne, located on the southem dopes of the mountain, on the site of the present day Grand Seminaire of St-Sulpice and of the Collège de Montréal. It was built and fomfied a fear years after the grant of seigniorial rights over Montreal Island to the congregauon. FortunarcIr, thc plan of it, dated 1634 and known as rhe plan of Francois lvachon de Belmont - superior of the congregation - has sun-ived to our own tirne
(Gg. 10). Two stone towers protecting the southern curtain wds have also sun-ïx-ed.
One of thrm is shown on fïg. il.
The Belmont plan clearly shows the autoch thon dhge located immediately nest to the fon and protected by some kind of enclosure, mosr probably inferior to
the stone wdprotecting the European compound. The mission had hvo churches
(another inherïtance of Ste-Marie 1). When compared to the Jesuit fon of Huronia, the defences of the Fort de La Montagne are less elaborate and much weaker, reflecung the relative security of the location. The round towers located at each corner of the perimeter were rather unusual feanires for the late 17th cenniry
fortifications, for they created areas that could not be covered by the flanking gun fie.
The plan shows the autochthon compound and the flre which destroyed it in
1694 and gave the congregaaon an escuse to move the naave populaaon of the mission to the other side of the mountain, farilier from the demoralizing influences of the growing Ville-Marie, located on the south shores of the island. That new location, presendy known as Sault-au-Recoilet, was situated close to the Rivière des
Prairies rapids.
The new mission was protected by a Fort de La NouveUe-Lorette, enclosing the European compound. The uansfer of natives, started in 1636, was completed in
1705. l'lit protection of converts from the bad influcncc of the Europcan \vays of
Life \vas a constant n-or? ro the missionaries. Anilability of alcohol \vas one of the grearest dangers threatening natires from both health and moral points of view. Apart from fi,rhis \vas the othrr reason for the displacement of the mission.
Fig. 13shows the 18th-century map, presen-ed in the archives of St. Suipice in
Paris. The document also shows dsbuilt ca 1725 on the dam across the Rivière des Prairies ben\-een rhe islands of hfontreai and La \'isitation- This dows us to establish that it was prepared when the mission of La Nouvelle-Lorette did not esist any longer. In 1722 its native population was already transferred to the mission of
Deus Montagnes. Therefore ەg. 12 shows only the fort.
Fig. 13, representing the recoastrucuon of the mission's European compound, is based on the document of fig. 12. Here again the pPnciple of separate cornrnunities is maintained. The European compound, the only one shown by the plan, is divided into nvo parts: one for the monks and another for the nuns of the
Congregation of Notre-Dame. From the above Ggures it is very difficult, if not impossible, ro know whether the fortifications of La Nouvelle-Lorette were s tronger or not than those of La Montagne, as it might be expected because of greater esposure to the possible attacks by raicimg native parties moving unchecked dong the river.
Contrary to the Grst fort of La Montagne, no vestiges of the fort of La
Noul-eue-Lorette were found. Fortunately, other sources of information about it sunived, in the form of construction contracts signed by Vachon de Belmont himscl f.
The details of the fort are @\-en by the descripaon of works included in these formal contracrs benveen the Congregation and the builder kdto do the work.
Transcripts of chese documents presen-ed in the Archives of the Seminq- of Sc.
Sulpice and in the National Archives of Quebec are presented in the Appendk.
There are nvo separate contracts signed aithin a fen- days in 1691 - one for the construction of the fort itself, the second for the transport and prepantion of building materïals. The third one, for the construction of the chapel, was issued nine years later, in 1700. These documents give an escellent insight into the method of construction, dimensions of the fort and of the church as weli as the quality and quantity of the material to be used. ALI three of them were signed in the presence of a notq of ViUe-Marie (Montreal).
From these documents we know the dimensions of the fort (100 feet square) and of the chapel (60 feet by 22 feet). We aiso how that the piles for palisade had to be 17 fee t long and squared to 14 inches. From the to ta1 length O f timber to be suppiied (7,000 Linear feet) it cm be estimated that the total number of piles would be orer 400, allowing the consmcaon of a palisade 480 fi. long, suffiuent to enclose the s tipulated surface of the compound.
The contract for the chapel indicates that it was to be provided with three windows of a size to be deterrnined in the field and with the steeple Like "...celui des
Dames relgièuses hôspitalières de cette ville (Vilie-Marie)".
The mode of payment is also defined: partiy in cash and partiy in foodstuffs (corn and tlour).
1t is u-orth no ting the discrepancs benveen the stipulation of the contracts and
the plan of the fort shown on tig. 12, drawn after 1725, which indicates a much larger ins tailation then the one required by the conuact signed in 16%.
The degree of securin- enjoyed by both the mission of La Montagne and of La
Kou\-elle-Lorette due to their location on the island of Monueal was not the sarne in the case of the mission of Deus Montagnes (Oka), which ~xiïi-aslocated on the shore of a lake formed by the junction of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. It was established on the path taken by natives coming from the territories located northwest of Montreal, on their way to the uty. Ir could be espected that sooner or later it would be attacked by the hostile autochthon parties.
From the esisting documents we may study the evolution of the concept of the new mission and the considerations that influenced its Gnal form. These documenrs are plans prepared by different persons, with different ideas and priorities.
The oldest arnong them is the plan dated 1718 (fg.14), authorized by Vachon de Belmont, superior of the mission of La montagne. Its authorship is obvious when compared wich the plan of La Montagne dated 1694, shown on 6g 10. The sunilarity behveen them cannot be missed. Beimont adopted the same generai iayout, placing both European and autochthon compounds side by side. The Eutopean compound had a form of a square fort with four round towers, idenacal to the ones protec~g
Fon de La Montagne. It included a large church, a school for children, the cound
84 haii for autochthons and missionaries' lodgings. The plan also shows that the unprotrctcd narire cornpounds Jid not have any scparate place of u-orship, anci it ma?
be assumed that the natives n-ere dowed access inside the fort during sen-ices. as \\-eu
as that ther were ailowed to use the meeting hd adjacent to the church. The
rconomy of the design is underilied by the facr that one of the curtain wds of the
fort sen-ed as a wall of the church. It is not known whether it included windows as it
\vas the case of the church of La Noureile-Lorette.
the same tirne, in 1719, coIonial authorities commissioned Lieutenant
Chassegros de Léry, a rnilitary engineer, to propose an alternative project (fg.15).
From the militq point of view Léry's plan is a great irnprorement. The square
Iayout and inclusion of the church inside the fort is maintained. The round towers
are replaced by 18th cenrury bastions and the autochthon compound is Çortified. The compounds of "habitants", i.e. white settlers, not taken into account by Belmont's plan (see fig. 14), are located on both sides of the fort and open to\vards the lake, but are separated from autochthons by a wd. The comparative sophistication of Léry's project is Çurrher underlined by the introduction of machicolations in the smd towers protecting the curtain wds of the naare compound.
Both projects, prepared within a year of each other, emphasize the difference of approach between the relgious and politicai authorities of Canada. Belmont considered only the defence of lives and of the monastic property, leaving out al1 other aspects of the problem. Léry's project considered the defensive aspect of the whole community composed of religious, native and Euopean secular compounds.
It is worthy of note that for the first tirne the European secular compounds were included in rhc planning of thc mission. ;VI thrce comrnunities u-erc protccrcd by fortifications? of \\-hich the fort mas a central and most pan-erful element. The obvious w-eakness of the proposal nias a complete lack of any defence on the
Iakeshore side, learing the "inhabitants' " compound completely open to sudden attacks. In &es of \var they were espected to seek protection inside the autochthon compound south of the fort (fig. 15).
This project \vas considered coo costly by rhe Sulpiuans and they refused to proceed with its construction, direatening ro resign th& seigniod rights over the site, if forced to do so. The colonial goremment backed down and asked for their
85 own proposal.
Fig. 16, dated 1743 - the original of which is kept in the French archives - shows the plans of the fors built according to 18th-century rules and prescriptions of rnilitaq architecture. According to A. Chagny (ref. 6),it was forcified by the palisaded curtain wds surrounded by moats. Four masoq basaons perrnitted the flanking musket tire dong eveq pan of ia perinieter. Most probably, the plan was prepared by Robert de la Morandière who also supenised the construcaon, esecuted rnostiy by
86 volunteers.
It is worth mentionkg that the fort was budt in the period when Abbé Picquet directed the mission of Deux Montagnes. Therefore both men - Picquet et
Morandière - who had a decisive influence on the project were also involved in the construction of the Fort La Présentation a few years iater. This may esplain the sirnilarity of the plans and the esecution of these two forts. The cost of the
57 consrnicuon of the 1:ort of Deus-hlontagcs \vas col-rred br the French go\-ernrnenc.
This and the fact that a rnilirq engineer \vas charged with the preparauon of the plan and with the construction rnay be proof that the mission of Deus-Montagnes was also considered by the colonial authoriaes the most prone to atrack of all relgious institutions located around Montreai. Fig. 16 shows dages of different native nations located around the fort - another esample of the applicaaon of an old Jesuit principle of the sepanaon of European and native communiaes.
Mosc probably not everyone was satisfied with the degree of security provided by the Fort of 1743, which left the autochthon viliages completely unprotected against surprise attacks. In 1758 a new plan (Gg. 17) giving some protection to natives as weu as to "habitants' " possessives cornrnuniaes were prepared.
According to this, the fort of 1743 was incorporated into the new proposed installation, protected by the curtain wds with towers at each corner. In addition, nvo artiilery towers were Çoreseen on the northern approaches ro the fort. Inside chis rery large and cosdy enceinte an additional bastioned enclosure was proposed. This was mosr probabiy meant to protect the European senlement aiready foreseen by the proposal of Léry (fig. 19,discussed previously.
The author of this plan is not hown and most probably it was never followed.
As in the 1758 the dtaqsituation of Canada deteriorated rapidly. Colony's iimited resources would not permit the realization of such a grandiose project.
The policy of Sulpician fort-building started at the island of Montreai was followed when the mission of La Présentation was built. Located in an isolated place, ir \vas protccted by strong defcnces built bv an experienced miliraq enginrer
according to the rules of the art. It was able to beat off e'ipected autochthon assaults.
Its design is another esample of how necessic). influenced human actions. La
Présentation \vas adapted to the role it had to play during its ten short years of esistence in the Anglo-French stntggle in Nordi America
rUI establishments discussed in this chapter - with the esception of Ste-Marie 1
- w-ere located ar the hem of the colony and cannor be considered part of Canada's
tirst line fomfication system, protecting colony's borders. They played a ver). smd role in the global defensive battles of Canada. Ste-Marie 1 was too far away ar.d too
far out of the way to be of importance dunng the brewing Franco-English conflict.
La Présentation, aside from its reiqgous vocation, was an important part of the defence system of Canada Its role will be discussed in more detail in the foilowing chapter of this thesis. 7. FORT LA PRÉSENTATION AND THE DEFENCE SYSTEM OF CANADA
The 17th cenniq French militq engineer, Maréchal de Vauban, builder of French fortifications in Europe, \vas of the opinion that fronaer defences should be designed as a system delaying the progress of invadmg enernies long enough to dow the field armies of rhe inraded country to concenuate and to attack the invaders weakened by losses sustained during the siege.
To achieve this he imagined the prinuple of the "grand carré". It consisted of a system of fortifications located at smtegic points around the protected territory, defending the most wlnerable points rhrough which any espected hture inraders could penetrate. The colonial authorities responsible for the defence of Canada applied the sarne principle.
As mas esqhined before, there were only three routes for a possible invasion to penetrare the hem of Nouvelle France, i-e. the St. Lawrence River Valiey benveen
Quebec City and the Great Lalies region. As can be seen from fi. 24, aii of them were headp fomfied.
The 18th century fortifications of Canada were, with only a tew esceptions of fortified cities such as Quebec, Louisbourg and Montreal, of the field type, i.e. built of earth, sod and timber Mth minimal use of stone and brick masonry. Such fortifications were in constant need of care. If abandoned without maintenance even for a short penod of the, they deteriorated quickly under the influence of harsh
North Amencan weather conditions. Thc Lirst fine iorrs were Jesiped to nithstand some adcn Fie and u-ere prorecred br earth ramparts, ditches and glacis. The. were supported by the second
Line of posts. used as fortified warehouses for military supplies, as hospital faciliaes, as the support points for rhe uoops passing through and for the prorection of the weak points in lines of communication, such as portages and rapids. These second line installations were designed ro gke protection only against the smd raidmg parties
Lghtlv armed, without arEUery. When threatened by larger forces armed with cannons, they were usually bumed doan by the defenders together with the supplies they contained, and abandoned. They were usuaiiy not protected by earchw-orks but by simple palisades or Stone wds, proxlding adequate protection only against musket buliets.
Both types described above were budt to enable defence with tlanlring musket fire. To do this, rheir builders used the system of bastions, i.e. of covered buildings or enclosures whch protruded from the curtain wail lines (palisades or ramparts) and were designed to dow garrison soldiers to shoot in directions parallel to them, as well as to protect other bastions by direct fire. Usudy, smd forts in Canada were bu& on square or rectangular plans and had bastions at each corner. Fort La Présentation
(fig. 30) and Fort St-Jean (fig. 3 1) are good examples of such fortifications. Since the range of an average musket shot in the 18th century was esclnated at 120 toises, i.e. about 700 feet, this distance was the masimum used for the distance benveen bastions.
Noumile France always had to cope with a scarcity of resources and manpou-cr. It could nor afiord to maintain large garnsons el-en-n-hcrc al1 the umc.
The governor and his milit- adnsers had to dot them ro the points which, in their iudgrnenr, were most esposed. As an esample of tks practice let us cite the Fort La
Présentation, wl-hose garrison nried benveen three in 1749 and one hundred and £if'
87 in 1759. The same may be said about maintenance work on the Fons. Fort Niagara, one of the main defence posts in the West, rnay be cited as an esample. In lis report to Counc d1.irgenson, hfliister of the Naq, dated October 5, 1755, Adjutant Malmic, a French O fficicer, wrote that it was "in an advanced stage of disrepair", adding that the
Béarn regiment could do something about it, instead of building "a useless fomfied camp nest to it". In the same letter hfalartic was eren more criacal of Fort
Frontenac, the main French nad base on Lake Ontario. It was, according to him, supposed to be the strongest in the country, but the terreplains of its rarnparts were built of planlis and masonry which were so inadequate that "when one of the guns on it discharges, the whole fort shakes". He did not blame this sad state of defence on the generals but on the govemors of the colony who had neglected the forts for such
88 a long time.
Two years after the f'of Oswego, Chevalier Le Mercier, an deryofficer, espressed a sirnilar opinion about Frontenac in a letter to Vaudreuil, dated October
30,1757, but added that the English would not be able to attack it as long as they did
89 no t reoccupy Oswego.
In the same report he menaoned that Fort Duquesne was not strong enough
62 ro susrain a siegc and that the King should ordcr the construction of a stronger one, if he reaiir n-ishes ro secure the possession of the Ohio \'aile)-.
He dso noted that Montreal was entüely nithout guns and that its
Çortifications were good only against "coup de main" by small parties. However, he added that Niagara defences were in good shape and well prox-ided with dery.
This is not surptising because Captain Pouchot, a rnilitary engineer and its commander, \vas sent in 1755-66 to rebuild the fort and ic &-as most probably the new
90 one that Le mercier esamined.
The fort-making poiicy described above was, in ouf opinion, a direct consequence of instructions received from the French govemment to buiid the defences at the lowest possible cosr. Whether such a policy was correct is doubthl.
Another element that most probably influenced the type of construction adopted in
Canada was an acute shortage of qualfied crafnmen. French stonemasons had enough work at home and were not eager to accept work in a country which was considered by most Frenchrnen to have an unusudy harsh climate. A supplementaq cffect could have been the corruption of the colonial administration, which overestimated costs of anything charged to the govemment in order ro increase the profits of the members of the mling oligarchy. The case of Fort La Présentation, discussed earlier in this thesis, is the best esample of it.
Fig. 24 shows the defence system of Canada budt to protect the centrai part of the colony, Le. the St. Lawrence Vailey, its access to the ocean and the overland route to Louisiana. The east approaches were defended by two heavily fortified aties, I.ouisbourg on Cape Breton Island and Quebec Cin-.
The Richelieu-Champlain \'dey in the south \vas fortifieci with the front-line forts of Cdonand Sr. Frédéric, replaced later by île aux Nok at the Richelieu River outflaw From Lake Champlain. The? were supported by Fort Sc-Jean and Fon
C hambly pro tecting the communication sou te from Montreai.
The western approaches were defended by Forts Niagara and Frontenac, both on the shores of Lake Ontario. Fort La Présentation Wed the logistic suppomng role for both, and other western forts. In addition, the small Fort Du Portage near the fdls accompanied Fort Niagara on the Niagara Ri\-er (Gg. 1).
Funher out, Fort Duquesne pmtected the Ohio \'dey, supported by secondq forts at Presqu'île, Le Boeuf and Machault. Fons Rouillé (Toronto - Lake
Ontario), Detroit (Lake Erie) and Fort Michhckinac guarding the suait berneen
Lake Huron and Lake hfichigan, completed the List of the colony dehnce installations
(6g. 1.).
In 1759 when both Niagara and Frontenac were conquesed by the English,
Fort La Présentation became the first line de fence installation. However, not having been buiit for thar purpose, it \vas quickly dismantled and replaced by Fort Lélis, bdton a smali island located in the middle of St. Lawrence, calied presently Cbey
Island, about 6 miles from the mouth of the Osw-egatchie ber(fïg. 23).
Ail the above-mentioned forts, whatever th& role and type of construction, had one ching in comrnon: they were all of the bastioned type. This system of defence constnicüon was €kt used in Italy in the 16th century and became standard 9 1 fortification design in Europe and, in its slnplitïed ion\vas also used in .imerica.
It \ras yen- weil suited for colonial conditions since ir \vas designed especidy to be
dehnded by musketry. The fort arriiiery was used mos- for counter-battery Cie,
trying to eliminate the enemy's cannons against which there \vas no effective
protection. One of the reasons for such tactics was that deryconsumed large
quantities of powder, a rare commodin. in an)- besieged fort.
Fort La Présentation, aside from being a rnissionary establishment, w-as an
important tool of French policy toa-ards the autochthons Living south of the St.
Lawrence River.
The fort was bdt at the mouth of the Oswegatchie River flowing [rom the
south into the St. Lawrence River. Oswegatchie was the shortest route south towards
Iroquois country and through it to Aibany, an important trading post located on the
Hudson River and operated by Dutch settiers (see fïg. 1). It will be discussed further in this chapter that there are some indications that even the naaves Living at La
Présentation were in contact with hem, in spite of ail Picquet's efforts to prel-ent
such an occurrence.
Fort La Présentation does not exist an! longer. Its location is ho=-n only
from the old maps. Due to the fact that its hypothetical site was used for many years as the dumping ground for the escavated material from other sites, neither the present land elevation nor the shore iine of the promontos. are the sarne as they used to be in 1749 - the year when the fort was built. We know its physical aspect from the esisting plans and from the descriptions by ~lsitingtraveiien. AU these documents, nor ah-nrs reiiable, alleu- us tu cstablish only the hrpothetical characterisacs of its
construction and its location.
The oldest esisting map, dating from 1749 and drawn by Chaussegros de Léry,
passing through La Présentation on his u-ay to Detroit, is shown on fig. 25. It shows
the 18th-centuq form of the promontory, the position of the fort and the depth of
the n-ater in the mouth of the Osn-egatchie - very important informaaon for the 18th century, whicli relied on waterways for the vanspoa ofgoods and people. The map based on data from 1813 shows the aiieged position of the fort with ref'rence to the city of Ogdensburg (ca 186û) - (fig. 26).
Ir is worthp of note that Léry's map (1749) does not show autochton compounds nest to the fort as is shown on the later rnap of £ig. 28 (ca 1751) and fi.
29 (1752). The rasons for this omission may be ~ofold:O the autochthon compound did not east pt in 1749 or (iii as Léry's map was drawn for strictiy drary purposes, the native village was not considered important. The second evenruality would conhthat in the view of the colonial authorities, La Présencation was to be primady a military establishment while appearing to be a religious mission.
Professor Cook of the State Coilege of hrcs and Science, Potsdam, N.Y., Li his
92 work on La Présentation, hypothetically established its location (fig. 27). He based hs considerations on the available documentary evidence in the form of rnaps, two of which were prepared by 18th century cartographers (de Léry [1749] - Gg. 25, and Paul
La Brosse [1752] - fig. 29). Together with the 1860 map published in Lessing's 1868
"The Pictorial Fieldbook of the War of 181 2" (6g. 261, drawn by the author with the help of local informants, tlieçe sources are considercd bv Cook co be the most reliable.
-ifter the fdof Nouvelle France in 1760, the British army used the vestiges of
La Prisentation to build its own fort for the same purpose - with the exception of evangelization of the natives - as the French did: as the base for gathering information about both ma\-es and white settlers. The new fort, cailed Oswegatchie, was abandoned by the British in 1796 and was taken over by the early sertlers at the site, who founded a new senlement which became in time the present-day uty of
Ogdensburg. So it is entirely possible that in 1860 there were some people who could remernber the ruins of the old British fort.
AU anilable documents indicate that the fort was located very close to the riverbank, at a distance of 18 to 30 feet (an estimate made by Cook on the basis of the non specified ax-ailable documentaaon). The problem was chat the modem riverbank is formed by an estensive fiil totvards the east, made to build the 19th cenqport faciliues able to accommodate huge modern lakegoing ships. A cornparison benveen the modem New York Department of Transport map of 1975 and the older maps, showing the land configuration before the fül was made, permitted the establishment of the location of the 18th century riverbank During the 1988 digs carried out by
Cook, three test holes-were dug, ail situated on the east side of the imaginary extension of Commerce Street (6g. 27). One of them revealed the inciined black earth strata, identified as 18th-century land surface descending to the level of the river and interpreted as 18th-cenniiy riverbank. This permitted the establishment of a hypocheucal location for die fort's cast curtain. ,-\nothcr indication of the fort location \vas the cornerstone found in 1831 among the ruïns of the former shipyard,
9 3 which esisted, in the 19th cennrr). on this site.
Since it could be assumed that the comerstone was placed on the surface of the northeastem bastion w-hich sen-ed both as the chape1 and the lodging of the founder of the mission, this discorery permicced the establislunent of the location of the northeast corner of che fort. Knowing from the documents thac the fort was square and had sides 150 fi. long (fig. 29), it was relatively easy to establish a hypothe ticai area within which the fort was built. This area is 200-ft. square as shown on Gg. 27 and the archeological investigations were carried on within its Ilnits.
From the beginning this work was harnpered by the conditions of the site.
Old sewage contamination and the 19th- and 20th-century rocliull, often 3 to 8 feet thck, rendeied fieldwork estremely difficult Furdier, the requests of the site owner
94 co limit the damage to the landscaping of his property had to be respected.
During the digs it was established that the promontory subsoii, on which the fort mas built, is composed of glacial dl overlaid by a layer of dark brown soil, one to three feet thick, formed by decomposed glacial clay rnived with some other elements brought by flooding, wind, decomposing vegetation, etc. The upper part of rhis stratum was disnirbed by plowing, suggesting the existence of 18thsentury agriculture. In some of the excavated locations chis stratum contained 18th- and
19th-cennuy artifacts, mixed at random in its lower parts with unspecified rernains of
9000 B.C. This Iayer, caüed "black horizon" owing to its widespread presence, was
68 Nmr rhe ou-nerls house, standing near the northeastem corner of the hypotheucal location of the fort, the "black horizon1' layer is covered w-ith approsimately a 3- foot thick layer of 19th- and 20th-century ەli (fig. 27). This fil was easy to date for it was hil of pottery debns, botdes, and many other objects of
1-arious provenance, such as nails, pieces of constniction wood, etc.
The escavations esecuted during field in\-estigations are shom-n on fig. 27.
They are composed of two long trenches and of several test pits. No archeologicai remains of the fort were discovered during this work. This is interpreted as being the result of heax.y disturbance of the land by the work and escavaaon to which the promontory was subjected over a period of n+ 200 years, and to the restrictions imposed by the time limits and requests of the landowners. Cook believed that if it were possible to increase the estension of these escal-ations, there would be a good chance of revealing some fort vestiges other than the comerstone menaoned above.
The artifacts discovered were of the usual kind found on 18th-century North
;\merïcan sites: militq buttons, shards of pottery and glassware, broken pipes, musket flints and builets, discarded leather goods, etc. Two kinds of artifacts attracted Our attention: clay pipes, of which over 300 fragments were found, and musket bullets of heedifferent calibers.
The clay pipes were identified as being of the type produced in England by
R. Tippet Co. They could be smoked by the autochthons even during the French regime and could be obtained by them oniy from the Dutch traders in Albany (Orange), Ken- l'ork. If such a supposition is trur, it means that Picquct's autochrhons n-ere deaimg, direcdy or indirectly, with the New England colonies, an activitv Abbé Picquet wanted to prevent. It shows once more that the natives had th& own policy, which they followed aU the the, no matter what their alliances of the moment were. It is diffdt, in our opinion, to believe that Picquet was ignorant of it. lVe suspect that he sirnply pretended to be so, knoMng rery weil that some of the pelis were going the English way. Most probably that kind of commerce estended to goods other than the clay pipes coveted by the autochthons and unobtainable from the French.
The second intnguing artifacts discovered were musket builets of three different calibers. According to Cook, the 18thsenniry English army used 68 to 69 caliber builets, while the French were equipped with weapons using 59 to 63 caliber.
The smallest caliber, 53 to 57, 5tted light rnuskets called by Cook "Indian uade guns".
Considenng that the range of a musket decreases with its caliber, one rnay conclude that the native braves armed with smaii caliber muskets were no match for the regular troops, both French and English. A question arising from the above, for which we do not have any ansu-er at the present the, is what was the reason for proding the autochthons with less dangerous arms. Maybe it was the question of powder economy (smaller guns used less of it), or a precaution due to the lack of confidence in these native allies.
The archeobgical field campaigns did not reveal any clues about the physical aspects of the construction of the fort. In order to reconstruct its hypothetical appcarmce n-c hm-e ro invcstigate rsisting docurncnts and to compare ir with other betrer known insrallaaons oc the same type and era.
The &sr sun-king description of the fort is the one included in the report from the tral-els of Pierre Céloron, who, accornpanied by Facher Bonnecarnps, SJ., passed through La Présentation on June 25, 1749, when the construction of the fort was jusr beginning. Thev both kept a journal on the espedition. Each one mentioned rhe srav at La Présentation. Father Bonnecarnps inforrns us in his report dated
October 17, 1750, that the fort. of Abbé Picquet had a square pian of 70 by 70 ft. and
\vas built at the base of a littie promontory, low and swarnpy. Bonnecamps did not share Picquet's opinion that the land on which he had set his establishment was really as good as he thought it was. According to hLn the native "dlage" consisted of nvo
95 men who joined the espedition.
Bonnecamps' report does not give any description of the physicd aspect of the fort, nor how advanced its construction was. Céloron, the commanding O fficer of the espedition, is more espliàt on the subject. His notes OC June 25 indicate that the fort was located on 60 acres of cleared land, but that
"His (Picquec's) stone fort eight feet high was not as yet much advanced. The abbé Picquet lodged in a bark cabin in the Indian fashion, and had lumber and 96 other materials prepared for his lodging."
On their way back home Father Bonnecamps wrote, under November 7,1749, that the fort was burned down
"...par des Iroquois, envoyés dit-on, pour cet effet, par des .\nglois. .-1 un angle du Son il (Picquet) a tait consmire une petite redoute dans le gout de celle du 97 Fort St-Jean. L'incendie l'arait épargné." opinion, this menaon of the resemblance to Fort Sr-Jean on the
Richelieu is important. It gives a basis of comparison of La Présentation with a better
lcnown sdar installation, which di be used in the discussion of the hypothetical
construction of Abbé Picquet's fort.
.-\fter the destruction of lis first foq described above, Picquet sought and
obrained permission hmthe governor to build a permanent one, with the help of
98 Robert de la ~Morandièrewho drew up the plans and supe~sedits construction.
The most elaborate description of the fort was gïven by Louis-Antoine de
Bougainville, Aide-de-camp to Montcalm, in his journal covering his voyages of 17%.
On July 26, passing through La Présentation, he described it as being a:
"...... fort of squared posts, flanked by four strong bastions, palisaded from without and Mth a water- fAed ditch. Beside the fort is a village of a hundred 99 tires, each that of an Iroquois chief, al1 warriors".
On the sarne occasion he mentioned that the:
"King had forbidden any French post being built above the Long Sault . .. .. Abbé Picquet had to obtain a s~ecialnvelve ment concession above la 100' Galette".
Adjutant Malartic, passing through La Présentation with his regiment on the way kom Montreal to Frontenac, also described the fortification of La Présentation "This torr consists of four buildings in the form of a bascion, rhe cumins whereof are palisades. There is a gYrison of 30 men. The four buildings are occupied the hrst by the commander, the second bv the ga-rrison, the third by the missionary and the chape/ 101 the fourth by the store and the guard."
rV1 the above descriptions of the fort wvere made by quaiified people, some of wbom were trained military men. They differ from each other in some details but they agree on the essentials, Le. that the fort was built as a palisaded enclosure with
Four basaons. This is in complete agreement with all other visual documentation, such as maps and plans. Its size and forrn may be the subject of discussion.
Bonnecamps said that the fort was 70 by 70 ft. This does not conform to the
102 assessrnent of Cook, based on Paul La Brosse's plan (fïg. 29), of 150 by 150 ft. A possible esplanation of this riddle may be the foliowing:
Father Bonnecamps saw the fort for the hrst cLne on June 25, 1749, on his wap out with the Céloron espedition. On November 7, on bis way back, he saw ir destroyed. Considering the approach of Mnter, it seems reasonable to assume that the construction of the new one started in the spring of 1750, or later. The plan signed by Paul La Brosse, dated 1752, as well as the fort's plan (unsïgned) also dated
1752 (fig. 30) show Fort La Présentation rebuilt possibly by Robert de la Morandière, demolished by Lévis' order in 1759. iMorandière most probably considered the 70 by
70 Ft. dimensions of the bumed out fort too smd and increased them to 150 by 150 ft.. In other words, Picquet's fort of 1749 and ~Morandière'sone are rwo different constructions. 'l'hc renclcnng O f thc most probable appearance of the rastern side O[ the fort is shon-n on hg. 29. The nvo bastions shown: (based on cornparison with fy. 30) are the basaon in which resided the commander of the rnilitq force and the one used as the chape1 and priesr's lodging. Both are nvo storey with the rnusket embrassures on the upper lerel and the larger openings on the ground tloor, most probably adapted to the positioning of lighr artiilery pieces.
The plan shown on fig. 28, also by an unknown author, is incorrect from the forrnal point of vieiew. Neither is the St. Lawrence River presented correcdy nor is the form of the bastions shown as in the La Brosse rendering. However, it fumishes some very important information. It conftmis that the place was fortïfied with the pahsade curtains and had four bastions located at the corners. It shows, in confomllty with other sources, that the main fort entrance was located in the eastem curtain palisade facing the Owegatchie River. What is important, is that the drawing shows a swampy area on the northern side of the enclosure, separared from it by a uench dich has the appearance of a drainage ditch. This provides confirmation of written documents mentioning the water-laden promontory on which the fort was located. This ditch and escavated earth could be taken by some observers as the ramparts protecting the fort. Fig. 28 also shows rhe location of the autochthon village adjacent to the southem side of the fort and protected by a palisade from the land side. It also indicates the location of the saw mil1 outside the dage on the
Oswegatchie rapids. This pro\-es that the rendering was made in 1751 or later, since permission for the construction of the miii was granted to Abbé Picquet only in 1750. l'hç promonton is shou-n frec of trees. This supports the information from fig- -5,
in whch Léq also shows the promonton- free of trees.
Both figures 18 and 29 show the native dlage located outside the fort's
perimeter. This indicates that the principle of separate compounds for whites and
natives, introduced to Canada by the Jesuits in the 17th centuq and used by the
Sulpicians afienvards, was also respected ar La Présentation.
;\t the same tirne, in 1748, another fort of a similar type and of the same
vocation was built by Chaussegros de Léry ar Sc-Jean, defending the rapids on the
Richelieu River (fig 31). This foa is better known than La Présentation since during
the 1980's sorne of its vesuges were discovered by the archeologists of Parlis
1O; Canada. Fig- 32 shows the location of die fort and the vesuges of it unearthed during escavaaons. When comparing both instaiiations, one can easily note many
sidarities becween them. They were both in a square plan ofsimilar dimensions (St-
Jean 30 toises, equivalent to 180 ft., La Présentation 150 ft.). Both had paiisaded curtains reinforced by corner bastions. They were both located very close to the fiver with the main gate on the side of the river. Both were built on swampy ground and provided drainage for the ground and surface (An) waters (fig. 28 and fig 31). Roth had the similar function of support for the kst iine frontier installations. But neither of them was built to resist a massive assault by a regular army with dery. In case of such an assault their rote was Ilnited, at the mosc, to delaying the advances of unfriendly field armies for a few days only.
The archeological discoveries confirmed wntten information about certain particularitiçs which ma\- or ma. not have been used in La Pr6sentacion. One of St-
Jean's particularities \vas the double-rom-ed paiisade on the riverside. This information, da~gfrom 1719, was partiy confimed by the disco^-ery of a palisade trench 90 cm wide, evidently sufficient for the nvo rows of stakes but, unfortunately, no molds of these stakes were found.
LVhen figs. 19 and 31 are cornpared, it cm be seen chat the St-Jean's bastions are bigger, having three levels instead of two as at La Présentation.
There is one difference bebveen the nvo forts which is hown from lirerature.
While ali four La Présentation bastions were also used as different kinds of dwelluigs
(lodging, chapel, store rooms, etc.), only nuo of them at St-Jean combined such a nvofold role. Two others were oniy palisades dowïng the flanking fie dong the curtains, leavïng room for Çree-standing buildings used for practical purposes such as quarters, or storage rooms for food, weapons, or commercial goods used for the autochthon uade. 8. FORT LA PRÉSENTATION DURING THE WAR OF 1756-1760
With the declaration of war on France by Great Britain on ~May17, 1756, the perîod of latent hoscilities in Norrh America, generally disguised as frontier incidents without consequence, ended. The importance of regular, mell-trained armed forces led by qualtfied officers increased considerably- The role of guerda action was reduced to scouting and harassrnent of sertiers, forcing their deparmre from lands claimed by the adversary. This was a cruel war in which peacehi, innocent people were hurt or Med and their properties desuoyed. It was fought Mth the help of autochthon allies, loosely conrrolied bg the colonial authorities, aiways afraid that they mïght switch sides or sirnply stay home. For that reason their (autochthon) traditional foms of warfare had CO be tolerated. Scalping, torture and murder of prisoners were cornmon occurrences.
These raids, often accompanied by the Sulpician hlnself, were carried out by srnall bands of up to 75 warriors. They had a double goal: to bring back information about Engiish military intentions and troop moVements and to discourage and terrorize the local dite population. They succeeded in those two rndravours. The
English side, annoyed by this war of terror and knowing the name of the insagator of
~heseactions, put a pkon Picquet's head. This act on the part of his enemies showed how effective his actions were.
Lalande, Abbé Picquet's contemporary biographer, reported that when the autochthons brought the English officer who made such a proposal to him and asked to be alleu-ed to put this man to Jcath, he rcfusrd rheir requesr and Libcrated the man.
One cannot Lrep thinking chat he was rather flanered by this incident. He should have been so for nvo rasons: it demonstrated the efficaq of his actions against the
English and the effect of his work among the naaves, which gained him their
10-4 friendship and lo yalty.
The vaiour of an autochthon warrior and the respect he commanded from his people was cornmensurate with the number of scalps he brought with him returning home. Sometirnes chis custom, disgusting in itself for Europeans, took macabre
Fonns. hfter the Rctorious siege of Fort William-Henry in 1757, native allies of
French discovered graTes of English settlers and soldiers victims of smailpos, a disease brought to America by the white man. Looking for scalps, they escarated the
IO5 corpses and created an epidemic against which they were helpless. Smdpos was a comrnon occurrence in those days. The poor sanitary conditions of ordinaq colonists, disasuous in the autochthon senlernents, favoured the spread of epidemics.
One such epidemic occurred in 1755 in La Présentation, forcing absent Abbé Picquet to corne back and to use aU his energy to fight it. The nctims were mostly the elderly, women and ciddren. The natives did noc understand what was happening to the-
106 were petrified by the fever and refused to treat their si&
However, no matter how successful these autochthon gue& were in annoying their adversanes, it was not the way to win the war. As was mentioned above, the English Oswego settlement on Lake Ontario was hamihl to the interest of Nouvelle I;rmcc and had ro br destroyed. -Abbé Picquet had dra\vn attenûon ro ths problem manr &es in the pasr, but metropolitan France as weil as the colonial authoriûes were not very eager to provoke an all-out war with Great Britain which would without any doubt ha\-e resdted Gom such an action. It \-as a different matter
to destrov some fronaer dtaqposts than to anack and desuoy a major (and very profitable) enemy establishment. But in 1756, when die war \vas 0f6cia.U~on, these objections did not matter any longer. The destruction of Oswego \-as approved by
the Gorernor of Canada, Vaudreuil, and was co be carried out by Generai Montcalm, commanding the regular French army and colonial troops, supponed by native ausiliaries. The assault was planned and esecuted in 1756 - cded by many historians the "Year of Oswego".
It was obvious that an enterprise such as the conquest or the defence of
Oswego would need a 10 t of preparation and the mobilization of considerable forces. l'audreuil and William Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts, understood this. Both considered themseloes the cornmanders-in-chief of their milirary forces. However,
\'audreuil had an advantage over his opponent for he did not have to deal with the public opinion of different colonies as his adversaq did.
The best esample of this may be given by the reaction to the deusion of the
Conference of New York, held December 12-13, 1755, caiied to plan the 1756 campaign against Nouvelle France. Govemor Shirley estimated that he would need at least 16,000 men from all the colonies. Pennsylvania and Virginia simply refbsed to participate in such an enterprise and were wilhg to LLNt themselves to the defence of rlieir o\m tcrrirories. Onl!. dit. promise bv the British Parliament to compensatc thcm
107 parcidr for their espenses changed their posiaon.
Both Vaudreuil and Shirley espected to be relieved of their military duaes by
professional soldiers sent to North America from the capitals: Frenchmen by Generai
Montcalm, the British by General Eari John Campbell Loudon. Howerer, both men,
tahng advantage of che time they had left, planned the campaign for 1756. Vaudreuil
manted to elirninate the English presence in the Lake Ontario area. ShLleyts intenaon
mas the conquest of forts Rouillé (Toronto), Niagara, and Frontenac in order to
108 eliminate French presence in the same territory.
Knowing that the main military encounters in 1756 would take place in the
remtones south of the Lakes region, each side vied to assure neutrality of
autochthons living there. Vaudreuil asked Abbé Picquet to send emissaries, selected
among the most msnvorthy residents of La Présentation, to persuade th& friends to
remain neutral. Colonel Sir William Johnson uaveiled to Onondaga, the capital of the
Iroquois Confederacy located on the Chouaguen River, south of Oswego (k.l), to
IO0 win those natires to the British cause. He obtained the results he was hoping for
after lengthy consultations and war councils. He had a hard tirne doing so, for the
French victory over Braddock at Monongahela in July 1755 was still fresh in the
memory of di and as usual the autochthons were very reluctant to join the losing side.
Johnson's mission was rendered more difficdt by the fact that Pennsylvania and New Jersey wanted to declare an open war against the Delaware and Chaouanons nations; liow-cl-er! this \vas postponcd for a \ihilc, in order ro give IiLn a chance to
110 solve these local contlicts (anacks on the settiers) by peacehl means.
r\s cm be seen from fig. 1, Osvego had excellent communications nith
r\lbany (Orange) through the Chouaguen, Mohawk, and Hudson Rivers. The 0x11s
short portage (ùenveen the Mohawk and Chouaguen) was protected by nvo forts,
Fort BuLi on its northern end and Fort Williams to the south. Shirley understood the
importance and fragility of this line of communication and bdt almg the Mohawk
River a series of foas and fortifieci warehouses protec~git at ail sensitive points,
such as waterfds, bends, etc. These installations were also designed to sen7e as
support points for the hnire momment of Five Nations warriors towards O=-ego, where Shirley wanted to use them in his planned assaults against Niagara and
11 1 Frontenac.
It was equaliy important for the English to keep this line open as it was for the
French to cut it off in order to prevent the flow of supplies and men towards
Oswego. In order to achieve this, Vaudreuil organized and sent Erom La Présentation a riding party under the command of Lieutenant de Léry with the mission of
Il2 des tro ying the Englis h Forts Bull and Williams.
Lieutenant de Léry was a Canadian-bom officer. Montcalm, generally very
113 critical of Canadian military men, classified him as "bon". He was a very tough outdoorsman, competent cartographer and excellent leader. W these qualities were necessary to carry out his mission successfully. .\ccording to the in formation receiw-cd by 1-audreuil tiom the autoch thon scouts, a conanuous £low of supplies was moving up ro Oswego through the portage benveen Forts Buii and Williams. Based on this information, it was judgcd \-eV urgent to mount an espedition and to cur off this Line of supply. Eveq da17 of its operation increased the power of Oswego, reputed ro be a wvell-built, weii-supplied and well-manned and cornmanded place.
Lé+ espedition, composed of 15 officers, 83 soldiers, 166 Canadians and IO3 natives, departed kom La Présentation on ~March7, 1756. The road they had to travel before reaching Fort BuLi passed through unchmed land. They were forced to rely on local guides.
From Léryfs journal, which included a topopphical sketch (k.18) of his march, we know the road he and his cornpanions took Progress was very difficult
Men moved on foot carrying or pulluig behind them ail their supplies on some sort of toboggans. The espedition moved ahead completely undetected, one of the conditions of its success. Only sis Onoyouts encountered accidencally in the forest provided some information which could be usefbl for the atrack
On March 25, rhe mass was celebrated in the open. The narne of the celebrant is not hown. No narne of a pnest is listed on the roll of Léry's detachment.
However, it is possible that Abbé Piquet joined the expedition during its passage through La Présentation.
On hkch 26, the espedition carnped dong the vail of the portage without any fires, in the open and under heavy snowfd. Thar night was one more proof of the endurance o i bo th u-hites and nntiws. The- su ffered terribly but sunivrd.
On hIarch 27, a column of heavilj- Ioaded wagons was obsen-ed and attacked
br aurochthons in rheir masterly way. The surprise was complete. AU the wagon
drk-ers and soldiers of the rscort were taken prisoners. According to them, Fort
Williams was much stronger than Fort Bull, as it was arrned with four guns and
bwrisoned br 150 men; 100 more were staying in the fomfied camp on an island on
the hfohan-k River down the stream from the fort.
Fort Buil, according to the prisoners, was in redit). a rnilitary fomfied
n-arehouse, guarded by 5fiy soldiers commanded by a captain. It uTas a more
tempang object to subdue than the other stronger fort, since it was - according to the
prisoners - fùll of supplies, munitions, food, clothes, all the things Léry's detachment
needed very badly. So it was decided to amck it at ktLight in the moming.
The attackers were spotted only at a very short distance frorn the fort The
English commander ol the fort answered Léry's summons to surrender by a musket
shot. Finally, the attackers reached the palisades and through the embrasures srarted
ro fie inside the fort. When the main gate was forced, they penetrated to the interior.
Seeing this, the fort commander ordered his men to surrender, but it was too late for
that. Al the garrison, mith the exception of three men hidden and discovered after
the battle, were Med. However, before dying someone set fke to a building nest to
the powder magazine. The resulting explosion destroyed all the merchandise in the warehouse, induchg food and munitions. The explosion also alarmed the Fort
Williams garrison and the effect of surprise was lost. Since Léry did not think his pmro bc strong rnough to atrack a \veU fortifieci and garrisoned place, he ordered a retreat in the direction of Niaouré Bav on the southern shore of Lake Ontario where they embarked on the waiting boats, and were brought back home to Frontenac and
La Présentation (Gg. 18).
Léry's partv, even if it failed to conquer Fort Williams, achieved important results. Ir destroyed a supply depot sefi-ïng Oswego and delayed an espected English offensive against the Niagara and Frontenac Forts, giring the French more the to prepare their own assaulr against Oswego.
In the meanrime, the long espected reinforcements from France findy arrived. They were commanded by Captain Rigaud, brother of the governor. This
114 was a very w-elcome event.
In order to keep an ep on the actions of the English, Vaudreuil sent a detachment under Captain Louis Codon de Villiers with orders to establish an
115 observation post at Niaouré Bay. While there, this detachment surprised an
English floda consisting of one conTene and eight smd boats saillig dong the lakeshore near the Île au Galop. The French opened fire on it and when some of boats tned to Save thernselves by running away, they were punued by native canoes.
One of the boats was carrying supplies and its crew were taken prisoner. Othen reached the protection of the corvette's guns. It is quite possible that Abbé Picquet too k part in dis banle since the autochthons of La Présentation were part of Vfier's detachment and manned the canoes. Directly aker this incident, he and "his" natives remmed home to the mission. .-ibbb Picquet, after his rcmrn to La Pri!sentaüon, did not remain inactive. He organized and led autochthon raiding parties to pressure English setdeers ro abandon
theïr properties and to retreat to safer ground behind the defence hes of
Pennsylrania and hiassachusens (fig. 19). La Présentation became a major base supporthg this guerrilla war. Ir served as rhe supply depot, hospital and transfer point of prisoners taken by the warriors. In order to decrease the horrors of this war,
Picquet took care of small white children and the elderly persons whom the autochthons did nor put to death, offering hem to him as "gifts" instead. In other words, in spite of his ferocious reputaaon among the English adversaries, he did what
he could ro reduce the atrocities of war, which inevitably touched most those who a-ere not combatants, the very young and the very old.
Shordy after the naval bade of Île au Galop, Abbé Picquet accompanied by nvenry autochthons and mo English prisonen, went to iMontreal to discuss the situation with the authorities of Nouvelie France (Vaudreuil had moved his residence from Quebec City to Montreal in order to be closer to the "batde front"). He found
Montreal changed, looking more Wie an amied camp chat a a~~ancity. It was Full of rmlitary personnel training, helping to build and repair city fortifications, or simply passing through on their way to the frontier where they were needed.
After a short visit, Picquet retumed to La Présentation. Since he was so busy with matters of war, he relied on his nvo assistants, Messieurs iMagon de Terlaye and
116 Delagard - both Sulpicians - for the religious duaes.
Having depaned from Brest, France on Apd 3, 1756, the long expected commander of the mr, the itlarquis Je hlonrcalm, tindy arrïïcd in Canada, bringing with him Brigadier Chedier de Lé\is, Colonel de Bourlamaque, Captain de
Il7 Bougainde and cn-O military engineers, Desandrouins and Combles.
The situation Montcalm faced was not very satisfactory Gom the miiitary point of vie\.:. He was surprised and annoyed by Vaudreuil's initiatives, not rdy by what he had done, but because those actions were taken without consultlig hm. From the beginning this put his relationship with the gorernor on the wrong foot. Howewr, recognizing the basic correctness of Vaudreuil's decisions, he did nor revoke any one of them. These war preparations can be described as follows: (i)speeding up the construction of Fort Carillon, located at the southem end of Lake Champlain; (L] establishment of the military camp at Niaouré Bay, Lake Ontario, in the viciniry of
Oswego; (iiii establishment of observation posts on the Mohawk River to intercept dl outgoing or incoming cornmunications to Oswego; (iv) the issue of invitations to the Chiefs of the Five Nations to iMontreal in order to keep them there as warrants of
Il8 the neutrality of rheir nations. (See fig. 1 for these locations).
In 1755 the morale of the colony was low because of the French defeat at the southern border of the Champlain area, where General Dieskau was wounded and raken prisoner in the battle of Fort George (William Henry). Nso, the supply situation of Nourelle France was difficult Warehouses were empty and the food shortage acute. The aff&s of the colony were mismanaged, commemal activities at a standstill. hccording to A. Doreil - the colony commissq for the coordination of war affaLs - the population was very dissatisfied by the conditions irnposed on them bv the u-ar. 'l'lie armr u-as also in very bad shapc and in need of supplies, Lvcapon?, munitions and clothing. Goremor i'audreuil and the intendant of the colony, Bigot, were u-orried. It \vas the general belief that the attack against Ornego had to be postponed und the nest year. Many French officers did nor tMc that such an important operation could be made "à la Canadienne", i.e. without good planning and
119 adequate supplies.
The only document about this strategic plan which has survived is a letter from Picquet, dated July 1756, addressed to Colonel Bourlamaque, esplaining the main lines of the proposal obtained from Montcalm himself. They were as foliows: to simulate the preparation of an attack aginst Lake George; the movement of troops in
130 the direcaon of Oswego and the siege of the fonress. This was a difficult operation, requiring speed, discipline, secrecy and decision - ail the trademarks of hfontcdm's character and generalship. In the same letter, Picquet estïmated the
131 Onvego gacrison as 900 to 1,000 men.
This direct eschange of letters benveen Abbé Picquet and leading military men of the colony clearly indicated how high the presage was of the missionary among the upper s trata of Canada's government.
Montcalm's plan insisted on the effect of surprise and for that reason he tried to convince Vaudreuil that it was necessary to esecute it in 1756 instead of waiting und the nest year as the hesitating govemor wanted to do.
In the meanthe, the preparations for the Oswego campaign progressed. Fort I;rontenac, planned ro be the main suppiy base for the attachng forces and an evennial fd-back point in case of defeat, needed to be prepared to hlf3l its role. 1ts iod3cations, weak and neglected, were repaïred and reinforced by the rnilitq engineer Desandrouins, brought Lom France by M~ntcalm.'~His task was liampered by lack of construction tools, materials and qualified workers. No wonder rhat progress was ver)- slow. Frontenac did not have an de? park (a fadty to store, maintain and repair artiilery pieces). Food was scarce and of bad quality (bread and salted meat). The problem of sufficient means of vansportation becween
Frontenac and the approaches to Oswego had to be solved. In orher words, the necessary preparations needed more time than expected.
Aside from running the continuous and effective native raids campaign and the operation of his mission, Picquet found the time to write to Montcalm and
Vaudreuil suggesting a plan of assault on Oswego which would, Li his opinion, save the lires of the attackers. He based his opinions on the observaaons he had made fiw years earlier during a trip around the ~ake.'~However, he most probably was ignorant that the land elevations dominating Oswego, on which he suggested in 1751 the installation of gun batteries, were presently fortified by the Engiish. In writing, he espressed his opinion about the moral of the Oswego gamson. He believed it to be very low. 12-1
In spite of al1 the difficulaes, the conditions for a successhl surprise assault on
Oswego were achieved. It was isolated from its main base in Albany. The native population was not very eager to help the Engiish and the battle of île au Galop indicarcd ro thc Frcnch rhat thc Erylisli nad dominaaon of Lake Ontario mghc bc
1-icrorïously cliallenged. The concentraaon of French forces ar Frontenac \\-as also completed with the ah-al of one battalion of La Sarre under the comrnand of
Colonel de Bourlamaque on July 1 st."
Considering there were enough supplies available at Frontenac (food and ammunition), hIontcalm decided ro irnplernent his plan for the campaign. On June
17, 1756, he left Montreal for Fort Cdonon the Richelieu-Champlain border. He was accompanied by Brigadier Chevalier de Lévis and one battalion of the Royal
Roussillon regiment newly &d from France. This move was made to give the impression chat he intended to attack in the southem direction leading directly to the heart of the New England colonies.
.\fter a few weeks spent there, he quiedy returned to montrea al leaving
Chenlier de Léris in cornmand. After a short stay in Montreal, accompanied by his
.Aide-de-camp Capritain de Bougainville, he left for the Lake region. Passing through
La Présentation, he conferred with Abbé Picquet and encouraged "his" natives to join him and his espedition. He arrived at Frontenac on July 23, 1756.'~
The iast preparations completed, Montcalm had under his comrnand 2,700 men, including 1,500 regular French soldiers. The rest of the contingent consisted of autochthons and Canadian miiitia. To assure the transport of men and of the required supplies, the French had a £Ioda of 150 boats.'" Aside frorn the above forces, Montcairn also had a troop of 600 comrnanded by Chevalier de Rigaud who relieved buis Codon de Villiers, stationed at the camp near Niaouré ~ay.'~ Osa-ego a-as composcd of three srparate forts (tlg. ?O), about 500 yards distant
frorn each O thrr.'" The most eastern of them, Fort Ontario, n-as located on the right bank of the Chouaguen River, on a large platlonn ovedooking the estuaq and the central fort cded Old Oswego. Ir was constmcted in a star-shaped plan and protected by a palisaded cumin wds, escellent protection against muskets and &\-el gun fxe, but completely ineffective against heavy guns.
The central Old Oswego fort (Fort Peppereil) was designed to repel an attack coming from the West It was fomfied wîdi earthworks and med with cannons.
But it was completely defenceless €rom the east, for it was supposed to be protected from that direction by Fon Ontario. When at the beginningof the siege Fort Ontario was abandoned, the defenders of Old Oswego Lnpronsed protection against enemy keby installing ramparts made of pork barrels, three deep and three high.
Further to the east was Fort New Owego, a useless, unfinished palisaded work sening in peacerime as a cade pen. This defensix-e comples was gdmsoned bp over 1,000 men, wealcened by disease and disheartened. Aside from some regular soldiers, they were raw recruits, sailors, boamen and labourers.
They were under constant pressure for more than a month from the French detachment at Niaouré Bay and from autochthon raids. Their own scou~garound the fort \vas next to non-existent and they were completely unaware of the French presence unta they discovered them installed and ready to attack in a smd cove one and a half miles east of Oswego. Learning dis, and completely cut off from his bases in the fort commander, Lieutenant Colonel James Mercer, realized chat the assaulc on his forr u-as imminent. Knon-ing rhe u-eakness of Forr Ontario and karing
nor odv rhe loss of this position but also the loss of its garrison, he ordered its
eracuauon, a manoeune esecuted at night under the noses of the French, who did
nor derect it. Soon after, seeing what had happened, diey instalied heavy gun batteries
on the abandoned site ready to open fire on Old ~swe~o.'~~
;\t rhe same &ne Rigaud crossed the Chouaguen River with 500 men and
posiùoned lUmself around Fort New Oswego. Immediately, Colonel Mercer started
ro organize a counter attack on these new French positions. Unfortunately, he was
killed by gunfire before he could achieve this task. Hïs sudden death hrther
underrnined the confidence of the garrison. ~Mercer's second-in-command,
Lieutenant Colonel Litdehales, judging the situation as hopeless, surrendered the
fortress a few hours after the commander's death. The real siege of this important
English installation lasted no more that three days. The French forces took 1,600
prisoners. They were ail well treated as prisoners of war and protected from being
rnassacred by the natives. 13'
The quanaties of the capnired material are difficulr to estimate for different
authors gave different numbers. Parkman estirnated them as foilows: above one
hundred pieces of dery- mostiy swivels and hght guns - large quantities of powder, bullets and ~hells.'~~Frégault adds to the list of spoils large quantities of food and other provisions.1Y Chagny mentions also Gve flags, seren waiships, two hundred barges and srnd arm~.'~'In contrast with these huge war spoils, losses in human Life were astonishingly low. The Engiish lost 152 wounded and dead, the French only 32 1-?6 of the same. Wirh the fidl of Oswego an important barde \vas won, but nor the
\var.
As obsen-ed before, Engiish intelligence was inefficient, lealkg the commander in the dark about the whereabouts and intenaons of the enemy. But the same musc be said about French information gathering. How othenvise can one esplain the last minute hesitation and wondering of ~MontcaLnwhich he had about rhe feaeasibility of the action against 0mego.'" Only thanlis to the urging of his staff did he decide to rake with him his powerhl artillery, without which he most probably would not have been able to win. Originaily he planned to ieave it behind, with the escepaon of a few field guns, fearing its loss in case of an unsuccesshl siege of the
British fortre~s.'~
Once in the field, M~ntcaLnproved bself to be a rery competent commander. He made sure that no help Çrom Albany or €rom anywhere else could reach the besieged. He did not use naures there wbere they would be exposed to artiliery fie, which they n7ere not used to. Instead, at their own demand, he asked them to scout for him and to desure that not even a single messenger would corne to, or get out of the fortre~s.'~'
Since the French did not have any intention of pemanently occupying the site and operating by themselves, they departed taking everythîng they needed and burned the rest, including buildings and ships. Abbé Picquet who was part of the expedition, blessed a cross erected on the ruins of Fort Ontario site before lea~kqg.'~*
The victory at Oswego marked the end of English domination of Lake Ontario. This happened mosr probabl! to the geat dissatisfaction of the
aurocl~thons\\-ho losr in Oswego a 1-ery good business pmer and a center of supply
OF the goods chey needed. nie French were not able ro satisfy their needs either in
Niagara or in Frontenac, for both had rather a militaq- than commercial character.
In the meantime, on the southem front in the Richelieu-Champlain Vaiiey a
nem danger arose, indicating the offensive intentions of the British colonies towards
Canada: the construction of Fort William Henry (Fort George) at the sourhem end of
Lake George. This fort (fîg. 21) was conceived as a base for an eventual ana& on the
Sr. Lawrence Vailey from the south, one of the operations included in the master plan derised with the final goal of the elhination of Canada.
The fort was provided with naval construction facilities, an arsenal, warehouses for munitions, food and all the other supplies which a field army may need. It \vas defended by strong ramparts, armed Mth several artiIlery pieces and garrisoned with 2,400 men cornmanded by Colonel ~onro."'
Forr William Henry presented a direct threat to the French Fort Carillon defending access to Lake Champlain and had to be ehnated.
An army of 8,000 men provided with dery and ample supplies of ammunition and food, suffiuent for a 6 month long campaign, left Montreal at the beginning of July 1757 in the direction of Lake George. The importance attached to this espedition by Canada may be judged by the fact that both leading French comrnanders of that era, Montcalm and Lévis, were at its head. The composition of the espeditionq force was rather unusual for the North Arnerican continent, since it includrd - asidc hmthe strong replar French army and militia unirs - 1,800 native
\varriors. Such a large number of them worried Abbé Picquet, who was innted by
Governor \'audreuil to accornpany the army, most probably to help conuol those native &es. 14'
Picquet \-as worried for good reason. M the autochthon nations allied with
France u-ere inrited to participate in this carnpaign and sent their braves to take part in it. The invitation was also issued to La Présentation but only three of its residents showed up. Picquet believed that the natives should be dowed to accompany any army only in relatively srnall numbers and only under the guidance of white officers
@orh French and Canadian), for scouting duties and arnbushes.
His worries were intensified when he learned that most of natives were not
Christians, u-hom he believed to be more cidized. The reality was even worse than he had foreseen in his worst suspicions. Accordmg to the chronicler accompanying the army, Picquet witnessed scenes of cannibalism and useless Wngs. The natives found a way to obtain some mm and often mhen dmnk became uncontrolable.
The wors t happened when Colonel ~Monro,losing hope of help coming from
Fort Edw-ard (Lydius) on the RiGm de Fer (fig. l), surrendered the fort on August
9th and \vas granted free passage for ali military and cidian personnel. These conditions were submitted to the autochthon elders and approved by them.
However, when the march towarci Lydius started, the English columns were attacked by a number of dmnken natives. They had found mm in the abandoned military backpacks, went out of convol and massacred many of the marches, especidy the 143 u-orncn, clddren and elderlv. This incident shocked both the French and the
English, and is remembered in histon. as the Fort William Henry massacre. -Abbé
Picquet u-as disgusted and mortified by Lhis incident.
In July 1758, an attempc was made by the English to break through the southem Canadian defences dong the Lake Champlain-Richelieu River Vaiiey. Ir was prorected br Fort Cdonsituated at the sourhern end of the lalie (fige2) mhlch was supporred bv Fort Frédéric ar Crow-n Point on the lalieshore and by forts St-Jean and
Charnbly on the rapids of the Richelieu Rirer (fig. 24). The British Commander,
Major General James Abercromby, commanding a corps of 7,000 English and
Colonial troops was opposed by 3,500 French and Canadian forces commanded by
Generai hf~ntcatn.'~
;\ccording to Frégault, author of "Histoire de Nouvelle France" (ref. 14), the
Battle of Carillon was a battle between nvo mediocre generals. Maybe so, but hfontcaim was the luchy one. He took the position south of the fort on a srnail elel-ated platform, easy to defend against the frontal attack bur at the sarne Bme wry easy to outflanli. Abercromby chose a frontal attack and suffered heaq- losses in killed and wounded, eshated at 500 and over 1,100 respectively. French Iosses were much ligh ter and are eshated at 100 and 266 respectively.
The Batde of Canllon may be considered as one of the bloodiest encounters benveen French and Engiish forces ever fought on the North Anencan continent. It was the last important French llctory over the British. But since then, the French military power started to weaken, whde that of Engtish Amerka ïncreased. The British na\-\. Jomnarcd the .-\tlanuc and made the arnval of hrther help from France veq problematic.
The Seven Years War was not going very weil for France and in spite of several urgent requests for help, Canada was left alone. The emissaries sent by
Vaudreuil to the metropolis renimed empty-handed. The resulang weakness of the straregic and poiitical positions of the colony was growing. Corruption becarne a way of life of the upper echelons of the admliistration and the dominant oligarchy. They were dhgboth the colonial treasury and private businesses for th& own profits.
The autochthons, cheated by the local commanders of the srnd rnilitary post and dishonest Fur traders, were less and less fnendly towards France. Vaudreuil saw it but was too weak to prevent it. His personal honesty was beyond doubt, but he was one of a few exceptions.
This situation was dramatically worsened by a rery poor harvest in 1757.
Canada always had problerns with food production and relied heady on supplies from the mother countq. When diis help was stopped by the British naval blockade and domestic production failed, the situation became tragic. There was nor enough food either for the population or for the mywhich was forced, because of that, to reduce its effectives, already too smd for defence of French possessions.
Victories at Oswego (1756), Fort Wiiliam-Heq (1757) and Fort Carillon
(1 758) did no t change the situation. The three-pronged assaults, foreseen already years ago became a reality. Ail that Nouvelle France could do as a counter measuie was the gueda activit. by smaii raiding parties composed of Canadians and natives. Dur rhis \vas not cnough bccausc it could not damage the power base of British colonies. Ir \vas no longer a question of pushing back unwanted settiers and Forcing chem ro renirn to where they came from. Now, when the total eluninanon of French possession from the Amencan continent was deuded upon, ir becme the problem of
Gghang off the regular army led by professional officers, and provided with unlimited supplies. This type of warfare could be opposed only by another well trained regular arrny .
In a few years the situation changed drasticaliy. In his attack on Fort
Duquesne, General Braddock relied on the regular army and lost the battle of hfonongahela (1755), when attacked by French forces compnsed of irregular
Canadian dtia and the autochthons, both farmliar with guerrilla and forest batde tacucs. Such forces could be used in 1757, and later on, only for scoutuig and to create a pro tecuve s hield for the reguiar army, while it prepared itself for either assault or defence. In spite of all the miseries and privations, the French army of Canada
143 rnaintained its battleworrhiness. They were disciplined and their morale was htgh.
It was obrious that they sddid not lose faith in the arriva1 of substantial help from
Europe and in a final victory.
English determination to finish, once and for di, with the "French menace" was growing for they were sure of the support comïng from the old country. The new Prime ~Minister,William Pitt, who took power in 1758 (it was his second terrn in office), understood that the Nonh American possessions are the comerstone of
British worldwide power. He realtzed that sending money to the colonies, to aiiow them to ralse more locd duas, a-as not sufficicnt. Mat\\-as really neecicci therr
\vas a proteesional rrgular ami. led br professional officers. Such an amiy would have the quahies the dtiamen did not: endurance and above all, dwplne.
In order to enhance the combative spirit of the New- Englanders, mostly of
Puritan stock, Pin rnaintained that the war in North ,Gnerica is a war against the
1-46 "papists", inuoducing a relgious \var elemenr to this struggle.
The English colonies prepared themselves very serïously for the upcommg barde not underesnmaang their adversaries. They knew €rom thek unpleasant esperiences of the past, that they were facing a very tough opponent. The original master plan of the three-pronged attack on the center of French possessions, the St.
Lawrence Vdey, was mauicained. The forces at the disposal of the Commander-in-
Chef of the British forces in Amerka, James Abercromby, who replaced in 1758
Generd Earl Loudon, were considerable. The Fust to be attacked were the border forts wirh the foliowing forces: (i) Louisbourg (Isle Royal) - was to be attacked by the navy bringing with it an army of 16,000 men; @)Cardon (on Lake Champlain) - to be subdued by a corps of 10,000 men of the militia levied by New York, New Jersey and the New England States; (iü) Fort Duquesne (Ohio Valley) - to be conquered by a
147 mixed corps of 5,000 Virginians assisted 2,000 regular soidiers.
AU that French Canada could muster against such power was 10,000 men
1411 including 4,000 regular French troops. Ir was obvious to everyone that with such smd forces, espeudy in the face of the progressive desertion by the militia men and b!- rhe nutochthons, rhe Jefencc of such a long prnmeter passing through
Louisbourg, Carillon, Duquesne and Detroit could not be success hl. -4 ne\\- plan had to be devised. The main task of ths new defensive suategy was the defence of
Québec City and of the St. Lawrence Vaiiey which, it was believed, could be achieved
1 JY only with the help of the reinforcements comlig from the home country.
Therefore all andable forces other than rhe gyrisons of the frontier fons started to be concentnted there. Even Fon ile aux Nois (fg. 1) had to be abandoned after
1XI carrying on only a delaying battie.
When the English assault began in 1758, the advanced posts started to fall or were evacuated. Louisbourg was the hst co go after a 7-week siege on July 26, 17%;
Frontenac was the second one on August 27 of the same year, Fort Duquesne, left without supplies, was evacuated without bade in winrer on December 14, 1758. Its garrison consisting of 200 soldiers and rnilitia men supported by 150 autochthons retreated to Fort Machault, where they spenc rhe winter (fig. 1). They took with them aii the& der)., munitions and their sick.
Retreat on the southern front (Richelieu Vailey) started by Colonel
Bourlamaque's forces on July 26, 1759, with the abandonment of Carillon and of Sr.
FrCdéric on July 31. These retreating forces reached Île aus Noix later in the year, where strong fortifications had been prepared since May 1759. Afier the loss of
Carillon, Île aux Nok became the main position defending access to the St. Lawrence
Trailey from the southem direction.
The loss of Niagara in July 1759 isolated western Canadian forts from the vallcr of the Sr. Lawrence. ?'lie forces grouped in Fort Detroit tried to organite help in order CO reconquer rhis important position but chey were beaten off. They retreated to their point of departure, taking with rhem the garrisons and buming all
French forts they encountered in their retreat, i.e. Fom Machault, Rivière aus Bouefs
15 1 and Illinois. In this way all of the vdey of the Upper Ohio was lost.
In Seprember of 1759 the aty of Quebec had surrendered to the amiy of
General Wolfe, after the battle of the Plains of -Abraham. In this battie, both Wolfe and ~Montcalmlost their lives.
The new French rnilitary commander, Lieutenant General Chevalier de Lé~ls,
\vas in a desperate situation. The defensive system in the east was lost. The British army in the east was separated from Montreal by only a few hundred miles and controkd the St. Lawrence River, an esceîlent communication route, able to handie sea-going ships cornïng from England.
In the South the French commander, Colonel Bourlamaque, wrote in his report that with his force of 3,000 men he could not defend effectively its position at
Île aux Nok against the assaults of English forces. All he could do was only to delay their progress.
In the West, after the loss of Forts Frontenac and Niagara, the only obstacie to the British advance towards ;Montreal were the St Lawrence rapids.
Fort La Présentation was not designed to resist an assault by regular forces.
Since he knew this, Picquet found it advisable to move the autochthon villages situated on the promontory around the fort to Grand Isle (later cded Isle Picquet) 133 O sn-egatchie River (fi-1 , in sert).
The w-eakness of La Présentation was alreadj- signalied by Adjutanr Malmic, a
French officer, in a letter written on September 8, 1755, co Count d'Argenson,
hfinister of War. He gave a short description of the site and said that the fort ". ..is
153 good against natives, but would be quite unrenable against Regulars".
Generai Léris vîsited the rapids and, agreeing with rhar opinion, ordered the
construction of a new fort on the smd island located in the middle of the
St. Lawrence, 6 miles dow-n the river from Oswegatchie, presendy cded "Chirnney
Island" (fig. 1 insert). The work started on August 30, 1759, under the direction of a
mtlitar). engmeer, Jean-Nicolas Desandrouins, one of the French officers who came to
154 Canada with Montcalm. By order of Vaudreuil the Fort \vas cded Fon Lévis, in
recognition of Geneneral Lévis' escellent services to the colonr. It was consmcted in
part from the material taken from the dismantled Fort La Présentation and anned with 12 guns Lé~lsbrought from the ruins of Fort Frontenac destroyed and
155 abandoned by the Engiish.
Lévis did not believe that the new fort could stop the Engksh adrance. He even feared that the new fort could be bypassed bp them. This would render it completely useless, for its main role was to delay the arriva1 in Monrreal of Amherst's
Forces at the sarne the as the forces of General Havdand, progressing dong the
Richelieu Valley, and of those of General Murray, who took command of the assault from the cast after the dearli of <;encrai \%'olfc. If they were d arrking at different
urnes, it would permit the French forces gathered around Montreal to deal with each
156 one of them separately.
On hfarch 17, 1760, Captain Pierre Pouchot, former commander of Forr
Xiagara, replaced Desandrouins as officer in charge of Fort Lévis. He was assisted by
.Abbé Picquet, helping him to control the autochthons of La Présentation, who
showed lcss and less willingness to support the French cause.
On lus depamire from ~MonuealPouchot was promised a force of 1,200 men
157 for his new cornmand. He was most sceptical about it. At the moment of the
assault he commanded only 300 men, a mixture of militia and sailors manning four
158 con-ettes supporting the fort.
Irnmediately afier his -amival Pouchot, an engineer as was the man he replaced, conunued the construction of the fort. His guns were directed up the river and protecred by a solid rampart made of tree mnks and earth dredged from the river bed. The uees were dropped into the water in front of the rarnparts in order to
150 prevent barges carrying anacking soldiers from approaching the island. Fig. 23
shows the plan of the fort as well as its location in the middle of the river.
On July 16 Pouchot received From montrea al a vansport of food for the garrison, but not in the quantity he espected. Because of that he was forced to de a very hard decision to send sixty autochthon chddren, women and old people back to Montreal. There sïmply was not enough food amilable to feed them. :\bb& Picquet, hon-ing the situation in hlontred and the ciifficulues thçse
helpless people could suffer there, lefi wvith thrm, hoping to help them to be accepted
ar another Sulpician mission he hew weii - the Mission of Deus Montagnes (Oka).
He nerer saw his beloved mission of La Présentation again. He left it for he was
faithfül to hs missionuy vocation and believed that he hdto cake care of hts people
Ibo ro che 1-ery end.
In the meancime, the English assault proceeded accordlig to Amherst's
Urnetable. Tne French lost initiative and could only react. On August 10, his army
mol-ed its camp at Oswego and melve days later started the bornbardment of Fort
Lévis on .iugust 23. Three days later Captain Pouchot raised the white flag and
surrendered his command for the second cime (the fint was at Niagara over a year
161 %O). The English and autochthon au,diaries wanted to organize th& usual massacre of prisoners but were prevented from doing so by Colonel William Johnson, an old adversq of Abbé Picquet. Feeling cheated, three-fourths of them took
163 offence and went home.
In the South the situation mas also criticai. Colonel Boupndle, commander of the Fort île au- Nok, had under his orders slightly over 1,000 men, but Linle ammunition, could not practicaüy shoot back. To make the situation even worse, the fort did not give much protection to his men against the adery, since there were no shelters which could resist the heaiy cannon fw.
General Hallland, the English commander, reached the fort on August 14, counung on the French to \vithdrm\-. I-Io\vever, Bougainville resisted for a \vcek, in spite of the lack of supplies and the poor qua@ of the dtia he had under his command, then he retreated to St-Jean and later, after buming the fort, to
163 Montreal.
The goal whch the British Prime hGmster, Pin, and his Commander-in-Chief
General ;hhersr, established for thernseh-es was acheved. Ai three British field amiies were ar the sarne the concentrated around ~Monueai,the last great center of
French Canada. Govemor Vaudreuil did nor see any point in resisting any longer and, under the protest of General Chevevaiier de Lévis, surrendered the üty and
164 Canada on September 10,1760, to the British generai, commander of 20,000 men.
The surrender was complete and included al1 the French posts in the West.
Vaudreuil issued orders to that effect on September 13, and these were carried to their destination bv Brirïsh officers.
-+€ter the surrender, the natives, faithful to their own customs, started their usual pos t-battle activities. Many acts of violence agains t the population were codtted on the Island of Montreal and elsewhere. Some of the houses in ~Monued
165 were plundered before the new rnilitq commander could establish order.
As an ultimate protest against Amherst's refusal to grant the French garfison
"war honours", General Lévis went to St. Helen's Island where he ceremoniously
166 bumed all the French anny standards.
The army personnel was evacuated by the British fleet to their home counvy by Septcmbrr 13, l76O. Thrir number is cstimated as being about 1,700 officers and men. 3 certain number of others preferred to sray in Amerka for persona1
167 rasons.
.\bbé Picquet \vas present in montrea al during the last trag~cdays of Nouveiie
France. He was charged by lraudreuil with the negotiations with the autochthons to keep them from desertïng the French cause, but to no arail. Howex-er, faithhil to his vom ro never Wear fideLi- to the King O t England, he deuded ro leam the colony, ro the grear regret of the EngLish who hated him as an adversary, but at the same tune respected his abiliq to deal with the natives. General Amherst, enquiring about lus whereabouts, espressed the opinion thac he was sure that Abbé Picquet could be convinced to render great services to the Bnash crown. Picquet thought
On Seprember Bth, he left ;Montreai and Canada foremr and started his retreat to Louisiana. Before his departue, he made sure that the people from lus mission of
La Présentation, who had corne with him to Montreal were admitted to the mission of Deus Montagnes, and obtained permission for his deparnue from his ecclesiastical
169 authorities.
Therefore, any accusations of desertion of his duaes would be untruthhi and damaging ro his reputation. The autochthons themselves did not consider his depamire a treason. They were rery weil aware of the new situation which resulted from the conquest, and were detennined to make the best of it. Possibly they tliemsel\-es considerd thar .ibbC Picquet had outlt~edhis usrfulness to thrir cause
and that it would be good co deal in future nith somebody else.
They provïded hLn with an escort usually composed of two parts. One was
used as bodyguard, the other, preceding hun, advïsed the dages lying ahead about
his arrivai. Ac rhe borders of the temtories belonging to other nations, they
transferred hirn ro the protection of th& neighbours. These relays lasted und he
reached the French controlled terriroi). of Louisiana. During ths voyage he \vas
17U received eveqwhere with great respect and obtained aU the help he needed.
The above shows that while Picquec could nor gain autochthons' loyalty "à
tout épreuve" to the King of France, he most certainly won deep respect and
friendship for hirnself persondy. The road which he and his party took is unclear.
However, Erom what is known it may be deduced that he avoided the Upper Ohio
Vallev, dorninated by the British. He possibly preferred to foliow the route north of
Lake Ontario, &en through Lakes Huron and Michigan to the ~MississippiRiver whch took him to his destination. Along his route, he encountered several French posts which were not yet aware of what had happened in Xontreal on September
10th. One of them, the Michillimackinac, situated in the sbtbetween Lakes Huron and Michigan (fi. l), was ordered by its commander to evacuate immediately for
171 Louisiana.
It is noc known where Abbé Picquet and his Party spent the Mnter of
1760/61. We know that early in the spring of 1761 he started his descent on the hfississippi and arrived at his destination in July 1761. He spent 18 months there and
106 b!- rhc cnd of Apnl 1763 11e lefi for France, u-here he lived und lus dcath in 1781 in
\le jon, at clle age of 73. He n7as buned there. 9. CONCLUSION
In ths thesis we have discussed the et-ents of 174&2760, the iast of the
existence of Nouveile France. They were the years of suuggle for sumival. Two
political entities confronted each other in this battie, an integral part of the morldwide
fight benveen the mother counuies, Great Bricain and France.
Theïr possessions on the North American continent were of unequal suength.
Great Brïtain's colonies, modest in land surface but strong in population, estimated at over one don,opposed French-daimed lands populated by only Gf+five rhousand
French people, prerending to control d the territories becareen the Rocliies in the
West and the Appalachian Mountains in the East. Thmugh these rast temtories ran, along the Ohio and ~MississippiRivers, an overland communication route beoveen the nvo parts of Nouvelle France - Louisiana and Canada. This immense land was coveted by the English, crowded dong the seashore and in need of space for espansion.
Most of Canada's smali population was grouped along the St Lawrence Valley benveen Quebec City and Lake Ontario, an area with a harsh climatt: and a short growing season, hampering food production. The English enjoyed a much more moderate climate. They were also assured of unlirnited access across the ocean, protected by the powerhil Royal Naiy, to their mother country. Canada, on the other hand, could be easily isolated from France and in its last years was.
The amtudes of the respective got-ents located in Europe were also difirent. England, in Iicr scnigglc with France, considered el-enrs in North .\merka
as an integral and important part of its kht with its French cornpetitor for w-orld
domination. The French goremment considered Canada as a "side show" of the
main battle foughc in Europe. The French believed that their victory on the Old
Continent wd also mean \%tory in North America.
Due to rhe weakness resulting from the aboi-e-menaoned conditions,
KouveUe France \-as constandy on the defensix-e. Its actions were dtctated by what
rhe English did or by what it anticipated they would do. The French heaidy fomfied
ail chree possible invasion routes to the heart of the colony, locating the defence
points as far away from the St. Lawrence Vallev as they could. They u-ere coun~gon
them eidier to delay the adrances of the enemy's field arrnies, long enough Cor their own forces to concentrate, then, taking advantage of the possibly mornentary numencal superiority, to defeat each one sepmtely, whde the other ones were sd too faaway to be of any help. Nouveiie France never planned an' offensive action into the heart ofenemy's territory leading to the destruction or at lest to the serious weakening O Ç their offensive capaci~.The %tories of Monongahela (1 755), Oswego
(1 756), Fort George (William-Henry) (1757) and Cdon (1758), all discussed in this thesis, were of secondaq importance for they in no way undermined the power core of the English colonies. The rasons for such a passive attitude could be twofold: the weakness of the human resources of Nouvelle France and the general attitude of the
French meuopolitan gomrnment considering such actions unnecessary due to the small (in th& view) importance to the Canadian "front".
1 OC) U'Cbrticre thar France nci-er inrended rlir complete eluninauon of Enghsh
possessi~nsfrom the North Amencan continent. AU France wanted to achieve was
some equdibrium of forces uiarranting the securïty of the colony. This goal, in our opinion, was in the domain of possibility at the begining of the 1718 conflict It must be remembered that the governor of Canada could muster, in spite of the weakness of the colonr's human resources, a considerable force composed of French regulars helped by local düaand autochthon warrïors without seeking the approral of the population. Such a force could be commanded by quaiified French officers, either sent from France or Canadian-born and trained by them. It seems to us that such a force, even numerically smd, could be more than a match for any militia force raised by one or more of British colonies, with others often Iooking the other may. Only a fter 1758, when the new Prime rMinister of Great Britain, William Pitt, imposed unity of action on di of them, did such French offensive actions become out of the question.
Englis h intentions towards the French colonies were differen t. A fter the banle of hfonongahela, when Braddoclr's papers were found, it was known that
England was planning the total elimination of Nouvelle France. The concept of a three-pronged synchronized attack \vas revealed and, when it began to be implemented in 1759, the foliowing events ended in the conquesc of Nouvelle Fiance.
The loss of Louisbourg in 1758 was a defeat of the utmost smtegic importance. The loss of Quebec Cig in 1759 left Canada's eastem approaches Mde open. It was definitively isolated from France and no help in any fom could reach it. The united English colonies, supporred by impocanc rcgular rmlitary contingents from Europe commanded b-professional experienced generals, attacked and won.
During the period discussed, Nouvelle France did what di a-eak countries al\vavs did, and saii do: it fought back with guemila war, even when both rnother counuies were at peace in Europe. In chis kind of war, Abbé Picquet and his autochthon fnends were very useful, espeaally when the encroachments on
French-clairned territoies had to be checked. In this period, the French policy of
fbendly persuasion cowards the natives, prachsed by Picquet, paid off. The harassment raids against commerad establishments and famis forced the English to take measures m-hich dmerted their resources from the main goal of the u-ar, the elunination of Nouvelle France. In order to protect the English borders they built a
Line of small forts and blockhouses each mamed by a gamson of ntenty to thvty men. These fortified posts estended dong the English territories' border from New
York ro Virginia (fig. 19).
Canada being protected bÿ nad "fomfications", such as Çorests, impenemble for regular armies could concentrate on the defence of three possible inx-asion routes discussed in this thesis. However, due to the fuiancial restrictions imposed by the French government, the lack of a qualified labour force and the dishonest administration, it could not do it well.
The French forts, protected by palisades or ramparts, had one great weakness - they could not protect either the garrkon or any vital installation such as powder and supplies magazines €rom the enemy's dery fm. They were designed and bdt to resizr cnermes armrd u-ith muskrts and Lght suive1 guns, \\-l-hoaould have to conquer
rliem with a direct assauit, as \vas the case of English Fort Bull taken bj7 the Léry
espedition in 1756. Not one of the French defence establishments, large or smali,
had de.-resistant casemates able to protect men and stores. No wvonder that Fort
La Présentation was abandoned in 1759 and replaced by the much more powerîül
(but stdl without casemates) Fort Léx-is situated on a srnall island in the middle of the
ver. Hon-erer, even chis fort had to surrender after only three da$ siege, for it was
rery rulnerable to the fue of British guns posiaoned on both banks of the river. This
is the reason why the fort failed in its task of slowing down the progress of General
.Gnherstls corps in their march to Montreal.
In general, forüfied relgious missions did not contribute very much to the
defence of Canada. They were not siniated at strategically important points, but
where they were needed for their religious vocaaon.
The La Présentation mission was an exception ro this mle for it was estabiished for the political purpose of implementation of French colonial policy
towards the native populations. Its military role did not lie in the capacity to resist a siege, but as an intelligence-gathering point and as the base of guerilla wu. Its religious activity was used as the cover-up for its real main vocation. In both of these roles the fon was very successful and served at the same the the native community and the colony.
In the final analysis of the last smiggie of Nouvelle France, one has to reach the conclusion that the French defence establishment failed to save the colony. For rcasons discusscd above, the i~dïcauonsa-ere not up to the fur power of 18th centun- arden~,whch rendered them useless afrer a few days of siege.
Much more effective was the guerilla war leà by Abbé Picquet who with his
activiry - dtwand reltgious - could not Save Canada, but he could and did raise the cosr of its conquest. However dirt)- war, as all gueriUa wars are, did not prevent him
from shoming his humanin' and sensirity to humm suffering, both dtqand cirihan. Some of his actions described in this thesis prove chat. He could not elimnate ail cruelty generated by war, but at least he tned to deviate it as much as possible.
His great failure, in Our opinion, was the failure to win the loyalty of the autochthon nations for France in the time of need. Instead, he won theu loyalty and respect rowards h~sperson, which they showed to the rery end of his stay in Nonh
.\merka. But they did not trust either the French or the English, and acted accordingly. They had the& own poliucs of dealing with them, which they pursued u-irh unchanging consequence ail the time. Those consisted of always joining the minning side, no matter what their pretlous cornmitrnenrs had been. At the beginning of the Franco-English conflict they supported France who was on the winning side, whereas at the end of the conflict, when France needed their support the mosr, they remained neutral or outright hostile. They understood very weU that with the French gone, they would have to live and deal wich the English. rMaybe they were "sauvages", but they were not fools. They understood that Picquet's usefulness for their cause ended with the fall of ~Monueal. They bid him a very Eriendly fateweil and cscorted hm out of the country.
Picquet's \i-ork \vas highlr praised bv the French and hated and feared, n-ith equal force, by the British, who gave him the strongest possible proof of their
sentiments towards hm by pumng a price on his head. It seems proper to end these conclusions with the opinions of two govemors of Canada about the person and acax-ities of ths Sulpician missionm.
Gorernor hfarquis de La Galissonière in his lerter to the Mnister of the Nal~, i-\ntoine-Louis Rouillé, dated October 18, 1747, wrote:
"Cet ecclésiastique est parfaitement désintéressé et il emploie une partie de son
171. re\*enu pour l'esécution de son projet."
Governor Duquesne was even more esplicit in his prise of Picquet's work.
He wrote in 1783, tsvo yeûrs after Picquet's death:
"II a seni la réligion et l'État avec un succès incroyable, pendant près de trente années; et il s'est acquis une grande réputation par les beau ~tablisscmcnts qu'il a fonnEs pour lc roi au 173 Canada". Duquesne's statement underlines the dual role - religious and military - Fort La
Présentation played in the history of Nouvelle France. In our opinion, the establishment of Abbé Picquet was hstly a military installation using its reltgious vocation as a cover. AU consulted iïterature emphasizes the important role it had in the military operations of the era. Its genesis itself was, in our opinion, politicdy motivated. The eagerness with whtch the colonial govemment approved the
Sulpician project is the proof of rhat. Conrran to other purch- reiigious establishments ciiscussed in this thesis, no
detded plans of autochthon compounds around the fort were found. The O-ones
that could be consulted are shown on Ggures 28 and 29. They do not proride much
information about either their interna1 orffanitation or abour their defences. Léry's
map (k15) ignores them completely. However, we knom from the documentary
e~idencechat the reiigious actii-ïües of La Présentaaon were aiso rery successhl. In
Our opinion, this \-as due to rhe esmordin- energy of Abbé Picquet and his devotion to the prïesthood. In spite of his militafy and politicai actk-ities described in
this rhesis, he could find enough cime to take care of what he considered "his
Indians". They knew that and repaid hirn with their respect and devoaon.
This dual role of La Présentaaon malies it unique arnong all other Sulpician establishments in Canada and has merïted its inmstgation. 10. END-NOTES
Ref. 14, p. 62
Ref. 25, p. 31
Ditto, p. 31
Ref. 30, pages 23 - 30. In the letter dated January 7, 1699 Vauban suggested to the LLinister of the Colonies and of the Naxy that the law- should be introduced forcing all single women aged berneen 15 and 18, and men bem-een 18 and 20 to mury and to have large families. In the same letter, he also suggested that six to seven batalions of French army were sent to Canada and the soldiers mcouraged ru IIYXN md liave clddren tlirre. The hlhister Maurepas answered (Jan. 31, 1699) that it would be preferable that the soldiers have their children in France.
.AU tusrofid dates and information, unless specified othem-ise, are taken fiom re ference 1 9 - En~ycIjoperliaoJ lVoror(d Hi~cor)~.
The Island Cape Breton remained French (see 6g. 2).
Ref. 75: p. 98.
Ref. 1, p. 24.
Ref. 13, p. 174
1 1. Rc f. 21, p. 260. In rks pcrsonal Icttcr, datcd Nov. 20, 1753, writtcn to thc cs-king of Poland, Duke of Lorraine and father-in-law of Louis XV, le Chevalier de Lévis implored him to convince his son-in-law about the need of help for Canada without which the colony nill be Iost.
12. Ref. 30, pages 30 - 36. In thîs letter, dated Jan. 7, 1699, the ~MinisterMaurepas discusses Vauban's proposais and explains why his suggestions cannot be follow-ed (elewted costs).
13. Ref. 13, p. 176.
11. Ref. 25, p. 42.
15. Ref. 5, p.89, end note 69. 18. Ref. 5, p. 30. The following statement was engraved on the plate:
"In the year 1719, in the reigo of Louis the XV, King of France, we, Celeron, commander of the detachment sent by LM. de la Galissonière, Govemor-General of New France, to reestablish peace in some MUages of these Cantons, have busied ths plate at the confluence of the Ohio and the Kanaaiagon, the 29th of July, for a monument of the renewal of possession which we have taken of the said river Ohio, and of aU those which fi into it, and of ali the territories on both sides as far as the source of the said river, as the preceding Kings of France have possessed or shodd possess them, and as they are maintained therein by arms and by treaties, and especially by those of Riswick, Utrecht and of Aiu la Chapeile; have moreover afhed to a trec the arms of the King. In testimony whereof, we have drmn up and signed the present uizitten record. Made at the enttance of the Beautifui River, the 29th of July, 1749. AU the officers signed".
19. Ref. 25, p. 45.
20. Ref. 5, p. 58.
21. Ditto, p. 15.
22 Ditto, p. 46.
23. Ref. 5, p. 2.
24. Ditto, p. 38.
25. Ditto, p. 11.
26. Ditto, p. 19.
27. Ditto.
28. Ref. 25, pages 50 - 51.
23. Ref. 5, p. 19.
30. Ditto. 3 Rcf. 25, p. 104.
33. Ref. 6, p. 713.
33. Ditto.
34. Ref. 14, p. 107.
35. Ref. G, p. 214.
36. Ditto, p. 315.
37. Ditto, p. 74.
38. Ditto, p. 216.
39. Ditto, p. 216 (footnote 3).
?O. Ditto, p. 218.
31. Dirto, p. 221.
42. Diao, p. 327.
13. Ditto, p. 223.
44. Ref. 13, p. 174.
15. Ref. 28, p. 11.
4.Ref. 12, p. 78.
47. Ref. 15, p. 5.
18. Ditto, p. 8.
9.Ditto, p. 9.
50. Ditto, p. 10.
SI. Ditto, p. 12.
52. Ref. 3, p. 4.
53. Ref. 15, p. 14.
54. Ditto, p. 15. 57. Ditto, p. 11. This report reached Quebec afier the depamire of Marquis de La Galissonière from Canada. He necer read it.
58. Ref. 23,p. 427.
59. Ref. 5, p. 79.
GO. Ref. 5, p. 79.
G1. ReE IG, p. 33.
62. Ref. 15, p. 17.
63. Ditto, p. 18.
64. Ref. 26, handm-ritten cranscript of Picquet's Journal, dated 1751, 10 Juin, pages 329 - 258.
66. Ref. 15, p. 17.
67. Ref. 25, p. 616.
68. Ref. 28, p. 15.
69. Ditto, p. lG.
70. Ref. 23, p. 427.
71. Ref. 14, p. 157.
73. Dxtto, p. 156.
73. Ditto.
74. Ref. 38, p. 21.
75. Ditto, p. 22.
76. Ref. 14, p. 353.
77. Ref. 17, p. 11. 78. Ditro, p. 15.
79. Ditro.
80. Ditro, p. 18.
81. Ref. 12, p. 126.
82 Ref. 18, p- 13.
83. Ref. 31, p. 51.
84 Ref. 37, p. 8.
85. Ditro, p. 9
86. Ref. 6, p. 31.
87. Ref. 10, pages 52 - 53.
88. Ref. 24, p. 319.
89. Ditro, p. 656.
90. Ditro.
91. Ref. 11, p. 19.
73. Ref. 3, p. 4 (insert).
71. Ref. 9, pages 22 - 30. Information about the results of the archeological investigations is based, unless othenvise speafied, on the work by Pro t Cook 75. Ref. 29,p. 154.
96. Ref. 5, p. 22.
97. Ref. 29, p. 194
98. Ref. 2, p. 2
99. Ref. 1, p. 16.
100. Ditto.
101. Ref. 2, p. 3. 103. Ref. 33; all data concerrhg Fort St-Jean, unless othem-ise noted, are caken from ths reference.
105. Ditto, p. 390.
106. Ditto, p. 337.
107. Ref. 25, p. 272.
108. Dino.
109. Ditro, p. 278
110. Ditto, p. 279
111. ReE 29, p. 279.
112. Ref. 14, p. Iûû.
12 3. Ditto, p. 94.
114. Ref. 6, p. 754 (footnote 1).
116. Ref. 6, p. 259.
117. Dino, p. 261.
11 8. Ditto, p. 263.
119. Dino, p. 264.
220. Ditto, p. 264.
121. Ditto, p. 265.
122. Ditto, p. 266.
123. Ditto, p. 267.
124. Ditto, p. 268. 126. llitro, p. 274.
127. Ditto, p. 275.
128. Dirto.
129. Ref. 25, p. 3%.
130. ReE 13, p. 184.
131. Ditto.
132. Ditto, p. 185.
133. Ref. 25, p. 293.
133. Ref. 14, p- 186.
135. Ref. G, p. 384.
136. Ditto.
137. Ref. 14, p. 183.
138. Ditto.
139. Ref. 6, p. 276.
120. Dino, p. 288.
141. Ditto, p. 341.
142. Ditro, p. 318.
143. Ditto, p. 364.
144. Ref. 14, p. 305.
145. Ref. 6, p. 407.
146. Ditto, p. 408.
147. Diao, p. 409.
148. Ditto, p. 410.
149. Ref. 7, p. 16. 150. Dtto, p. 20.
151. Ref. 6, p. 506.
152. Ditto, p. 507.
153. Ref. 24 p. 349.
154. Ref. 6, p. 519.
155. Ref. 22, p. 197.
156. Ref. 25, p. 606.
157. Ref. 6, p. 539.
158. Dino, p. 540.
157. Ditto, p. 541.
160. Ditto, p. 550.
161. Ref. 25, p. 606.
163. Ditto.
163. Ref.14, p. 388.
164. Ref. 6, p. 577. Gened Amherst replaced General Abercromby as the Commander-in-chie f in Jan. 1759.
166. Ditto.
167. Ditto, p. 582
168. Ref.6, p. 585.
169. Ditto, p. 586.
170. Ditto, p. 587.
171. Ditto, p. 588.
172. Ref. 15, p. 3.
173. Ditto. 11 BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. BOUGAINlrILLE de, Louis Antoine, 1'he Amentan JoI~~cf Lourj Antoine de Bou,aimdi!e 1 776 - 1760; Adventure in the Wildemess, Hamilton P. Edward Ed., u&-ersity of Oldahorna Press, Norman Oklahoma, 1961.
2. BOYESEN, Persis E., Ogdne-butg f-or? Hi~foty; typewritten manuscript (unpublished), cranscript of a communication, undared, (received from the author Aug. 12, 1WB), 9 pages.
3. B OYES EN, Persis E. I '%eFienrh and ln&n Sett/ernenf of 0gden~bur-gThe Quarterly, St Lawrence County Historical Association, vol. JOCXV, No. 1, Canton N.Y. 1990, pages 4 - 20.
4. CASTONGUAY, Jacques, Le jorî St-jean; Les Éditions du Lévrier, Montréal, 1965.
5. CÉLORON,Pierre Joseph, ThCéhtr E-ipedition to the Ohio Camp 1 749; Gdup Andrew Editor, Heritage Book Inc., Bowie ~Maryland,1997.
6. CHAGNY, André, hanpis Picquet "Le Cunadien"; doctoral thesis, University of Dijon; Librairie E. Vim, Lyon, 191 3.
7. CHARBONNEAU, André. ThFo~~ficationof~k-~ux-h~o~:Parks Canada 1994.
8. COOK, Garrett, Whaf Reae Hqtpened to the Forî ond in Sife; The Quarterly, St. Lawrence County Historical Association, Vol. MLXV, No. 1, Canton, N.Y. 1990, pages 16 - 21.
9. COOK, Garrett, The Dig ojz Lghf/!u.rePoi,tr, The Quarterly, St. Lawrence County Historical Association, Vol. XXXV, No.1, Canton, N.Y. 1990, pages 22 - 30.
10. FMBAULT-BEAUREGARD, Marthe, Lo fJophtionlirs foortfhancaii Ghén'qup, Tome 1, Éditions Bergeron, Monueai 1982.
11. FAUCHÈRRE, Nicolas, PhsFom: Rempart, Paris 1986.
12. FOX, William Sherwood, JURY, Wilfried, Saint IQnoe Canc1diun AhofM~dm; McClelland & Stewart Ltd., Toronto 1949.
13. FMCIS, Douglas R., SIMITH, Donald B., kadings in Cam& Hizfo~, PR-Conjrlwatioion; Harcourt Brace and Co., Fourth Ediaon, Toronto 1994- 15. GOSSELIN, Auguste, LPJundl/~~rde L11 Preientnfian (Ogdenj-b~q);f'nbbé Pil-pet; hlemoires de la Société Royale du Canada, section 1, 1894, pages 3 - 28.
17. JURY, Wilfried, hkLE,ID, Elsie, S'arniehiarie Among .IbH~mns;Osford University Press, Toronto 1956.
18. ICIDD. Kenneth E.. The E~ï~tariom-~fSru'nte--Mmzè I; uni ver si^ of Toronto Press. Toronto 1971 (1943).
19. LANGER, William L. Editor, An kncychpedia of Worfd His/ov; Houghton, iMiffin Co., Boston 1963
20. LÉRY,Joseph-Gaspard Chaussegros de, LPsjoumau,~de 'ampagne; Rapport de l'.irchinste de la Pro~lncede Québec pour 1926 - 1927, pages 372 - 395, Imprimeur de sa Majesté le Roi. 1927.
21. LÉVIS, François-Gaston, Lettm du Chder k i21.i~concernant hguem rLr Chah (1 756 - 7 760); CC). Beauchemin et Fils, Montreai 1 889.
22. LEVIS, Franqois-Gas ton, /oz,rnn/ h Cnmpngne~rr'u Chez nker de Léris en Cnnndn du I 7% - 7 760, C.O. Beauchemin et Fils, Montreal 1889.
23. 0'C14LLiGH.AN,E. B., Ed., The Documentaty Histop ofthe J'tde of New York; Vol. 1, Weed Parson and Co., iübanv 1849.
24. O'CIULAGHAN, E. B.' Ed., Cohnd Hi~ton- of the xlafe 4 New York; Vol. 10. Weed Parsons and Co., Albany 1858.
35. PhRKLW, Francis, Montcoln and Woge; The Ryerson Press, Toronto 1964 (1 884).
26. PICQUET (l'abbé). François. Fut? de La P~sentufion; un reut de voyage concernant le 10 juh 1751 (around the Lake Ontario), handwritten uanscript, Archi\-es of the Messieurs de St-Sulpice, Montreal, pages 229 - 258.
27. PORTER, John R., TRUDEL, Jean, Lr tlriak d'Oh; Gaiérie Nationale du Canada, Ottawa 1974.
28. TASSÉ, Joseph, L'abbé Picpet; Rewe Canadienne Tome VII, 1870, Sénécd, Montreal, pages 5 - 23 and 102 - 118. 39. TI-P.%'.-\I'I'ES, Keu ben Gold Ed, -1 3r ltwkf Krhiion rlnn Akid Uo~~menf.~-;l'rave1 s and Esplorauons of the Jesuit hfissionaries in New France, 1610 - 1791, \'ol. LXLY (1710 - 1756), agent Books Co., N.Y. 1959.
30. VAUBAN de, Sebasaen, La ~vm~onhnce.& ieauban nhtite au Chnaab; Louise Dec hêne Ed., blinistère des Affaires Culturelles, 1968.
31. Fort Lontte; Srnit-au-Ré~diét, Direcüon Régionale Montréal, Dépôt des Documents, Unité 04û10, No. 3720-06-073-
32. ET-HNOSCOP (Soc.), Le domaine de5 hies~ieeurslie Jainc;leu&i~-e(BikY-6). synthèse et orientation en matière d'archéologie, Gouvernement du Québec, Ministère de la Culture et des Cornminucations, Direction Régionale de Montréal, décembre 1993.
33. PIÉD.~~,Gisèle, Fod St-Jem,Researçh Bulletin No. 207, Parks Canada, Quebec 1983. 31. -0s Inc., Intemenaons archéologiques, Boulevard Gouin, Sault-au-Récoueh Montreal (1 994), Projet C.S.E.V.M. 852, novembre 1995. 12. APPENDIX
RECIIERCIIES POUR SERVIR A L'MSTOIRE DU CMAX
(93 1 27 janvier 1691 - Miwché pour faire un fort entre monsieur de Belmont et Paillard et Lscroix. Charpentiers.
Par devant nous etc., , furent pzlésents Messire Rançois Rochon de Belmont pre'tre. et missiorPlaire de la mission des sauvages de la mon- tame.., et Iémard Riillard et Jean de la Croix chrpentiers demeurant au dit Ville Marie d 'autre part.. . promettent... de fa- un fort A la riviére des pmiries et - des habitations des hoirs de défunt ,.. Mcug dit la Pleur et A l'endroit oh le dit Sieur de Behont leur indiquera en environ de la dite conces-
sion ou sur icelle, lequel fort sera construit de cent pieds sur toutes
'les quatre faces, de poteaux de 17 pieds de long de 14 pouces en carré
sur chacune des 4 faces, desquels poteau deux cent seront en terre dcs -? deux cotés dc trois pouces de lareeur sur quatre de profondeur lesquels
poteaux seront distanciés autour du dit fort de 20 pieds en 20 pieds
avec urk garniturc par dedans.
Savoir: une semelle de 10-pouces en q-f~- de seize pieds dc'
lon~au bout de la quelle il; y aura un poteau de 10 pieds de lo~gde
même grosseur et un entre toise qui sera par dessus le poteau tenon
. . état. Tout le tour du dit fort seront armés de pi&ces sm pièces en
tenon dans les dits poteaux qui seront chevillés de deux chevilles par
chaque bout.
Toutes lesquelles piéces auront- 10 pouces depaisseur sur leu
hauteur jusqu'a la concurrence de 15 pieds de haut et outre la sabliere
seraboisée par dessus les poteaux bien chevillée, tous les poteaux se-
ront de frene ou chene -et le surplus sera de bon bois comme fdne , pru- che , chene ,-pin, épkiette, plaine, par dessus laquell; sablibre mettront un chaperon, 8 savoir, de 5 pieds en 5 pieds tout au tour du dit fort
cowerte de 5 planches, et le dit Sieur Belmont ne fourni= que le clou.
Plus feront les dits entrepreneum une porte ou dit fort de 3 pieds 3
de large et 5 pieds 3 de haut de bons madriers de chene de trois gouces dépaisseur doubles joints a deux avec une croix de St-André qui sera attachée au ~or;ndinnoulequel sera attaché dans le lintot de la porte / en telle façon quelle ne pouma se défaire.
. Plus s'oblQ-t les dits entrepreneurs de faire au dit fort deux guérittes de 2 pieds en carré chacune dass leurs un a chacvn dans b' leurs coings sépds'qui seront suppor$és par 5 livres- qui seront emman- thés A tenon et mortaise aux poteaux du dit fort pour soutenir les gue- t+-* rites par dehors et par dedans il y au deux poteaux trainout avec .p c&- " bon l'un par dessous, sur lequel s'établiront les quatre sablc dessus lesquelles seront établis des poteaux de 5 pieds de hauteur et neuf pouces en carré qui -partiront de lesqwls seront &ami8 de pins de bon bout ou isdrlera- de chene, frene ou pzuchs avec le comble qu'ils couvrknt de-plancha mttant 8 petit8 ciavona et ïa asablibre ue 4. , -
.Y. - 0.. .. -' guéritte sera mise quatre livres a chacune de sorte que toutes les sa-
bliéres et poteaux seront bien liés et .que chaque poteau de guerite au- GC-. cluu?, ra deux livres, métant au futage de la ditte pritte deux li-s une
chaque bout. -
Lequel bout ils s'obligent d'écurmr et généralement faire tout ce qui sera nécessaire pour rendre le dit ouvrage parfait,. . pour et moyennant le prix et sonmiie de mille livns argent de ce pays et qua-
tre minots de bled dvinde...savoir 250 livres lorsque le bois se= 6-
carré et 250 livres quand tous les nécessaires sont prets pour le fort.' -
250 livres restant A la fin de tous les dits ouvrages et les quatre mi-
nots bled d Thde deux au connaencement de leur travail e t les deux mi- nots quand tous les dits bois seront trainés sur la dite place oh sera fait le fort.. .. Fait et passé au-dit villemarie en une des salles du Séminaire
de la dite viïle l'an 1691, .le 22 janvier, après midi en présence des
Sieurs Pierre Cabazie et Jean L'cry et-de Sieur Belmont et Paillard et
abel el lion , autre notaire ) Ad.he5a.r
P.S. A La fin de cette transcription il y a me qui'ttznce pour un pm-.
mier paierrient et ceci a lieu le 11 mars 1691 devant Adhémare Greffe d'Antoine Adhémar, 10 fév. 1691 Marché pour -ber des pieux de bois pour faire un fort à la riviere des Prziries entre Paillard et Chamin
Par devant les notaiks de l'Isle de Montdal résident a
Villemarie sowsigné furent présent en sa personne, Pie- Chatmln
demeurant en cette ville, lequel de gré a promis et s'est obligé de
traisner pour =onard Paillard, charpentier faisant tant pour 1~
pue pour Jean de Iacroix B ce présent et acceptant tout le bois de
charpente et pieux escarris que le dit sieur Faillard et hacroix
sont oblige's de fournir pour le fort que M. de Belmont fait faire
A la Riviére des Prsiries au nombre d'environ sept mil pieds de
bois; desquels le dit Chsuvin promet et s'oblige de traisner in-
cessamment délivrer aussitat escarris jusqu18& l'endroit oh le
dit fort sera dressé,que ledit Chauvin a dit bien scavoir et de
rendre tout ledit bois Q pied dloewre aupaxavant la fonte des nei-
ges, A peine de tous dépens dommages et iatélets, Ce marcIn? fait et moyennant le prix et somme de deux cents Livres argent et monmye cours de ce pays, sur et tant moins de Laquelle so-y le dit
Paillard baillera au dit Chauvin six mots de bled dtinde et un minot de farlne de bled froment, et de plus fera le dit Paillard tnisnera et fera ebrdocher les chemins pour aller quérir les dites
pieces de bois. Ie dit bled dlinde et bled froment le dit Paillard
baillera de jour en jour et le surplus a parfaire la ditte. somme
quand le dit bois sera Livrer.
Car ainsy etc. fait et passé au dit ville marie en 1 'étude du dit notaire Adhe'mar le dixneufvieme jour de fevrier mil six cent quatre vingt onze après midi le dit Chauvin sousi& avec le dit notaire, le dit PailLard a déc- ne scavoir ecrire ny siee de ce interpellé suivant lrordonnance.
Pierre Chauvin
R Pottier P. 531-532 Papiers Paillon (1 67) 1 er fevrier 1700 - kché de charpenterie par Monsieur Gay pfitre b 1Syssureau et Dasny pour la chapelle Notre-Dame de Lorctte. Rncnt présent.. . Robert Gay.. . missionnaFzr de la mission dea sauvages A Notndlame de I;ore tte .. . Anthoine !I!yssureau et Jean Da- charpentiers demeurant la rivi&re Sah+-Pierre etc... Pour faire une
..hapelle de 60 pieds de long et 27 pieds de large de dehors en dehors, le carré de 13 pieds de hauteur.. .. Item les dits entrepreneurs feront aux deux longs pans de la dite chapelle six fenêtres trois de chaque coté de la grandeur qu'on leur marquera, lesquelles fenetres etc. Cornme aussi.. . de faire un clocher. .. comme est celui des Dames religieuses hospitali&resde cette -ville. Couvrir la dite chapelle et le clocher de planches, garnir le3 p-ons de planches.
Et outre moyennant la somme de 850 Uv~sargent CO- du paya.
fig. 1
- (a,)
fig. 10 fig. l 1
- Fort de la Kouvclle-loiette, au Gault-~u-Rt5collet, oil les sauvirges cle la inontngne furent _ . trat~sftWseii 1636.
Église de Rotre-I~iiriiede Lorette. - I) ikf~isoiides niissior~tiaires.- C Muisoii da lrs de la Congrégritioii de xotrc-Dame. - L, Maison des fermiers. -E hstfort Eii t r& du fort. fig. 14 Gaspard Chaussegros de Lep ( 1682 - 1755) PCan d'un fort pour erre consrruir au bord du Luc des deur monragnes alacôredunord 1732 Duplicata d'un plan envoyé en France le 14 novembre 17 19 Archives publiques du Canada. Ottawa fig. 17 5 Bunittt fieid 6 Palatin 7 Fort Hunter 8 Chutta 9 Rapide8 IO Illes aux Chevreuils 11 Presqu'île de Nit8turt 12 La Gaime 13 La -de Isle 14 Toniata. 15 ILS Mide Islu 16 Istu Coehou 17 Idcl Laforest 18 Isiu aux Ci- 19 Ide de 1'Enfar.t mu 20 Les 3 ides au Gaiop 21 Isle au Renard longue de de lieue 22 Pays du 5 atioar 23 Chuttt 24 Côte de Torocto 25 Baye de Quint& 26 1ales de Quht6 27 R. de Quint& 28 Lat Ontvio O Endroits oh a cou&& te dCtachemtnt.
fig. 18 Prplicafionr. 1. 1. 3 reprCsentent dea blockhaus construltr psr tr prorface de New-York et contenant envlron 10 hommes chicon; 4. S. 6. 1. L 9. du blockhrur eonrtruitr Par h mro- vince du New-Jersey. contenant chaeim 20 b 30 ho~mts:'~~.11. 11. 14. 15. l?. 18 et 20. d'autre8 blockhaus. Les numCros If. 10. 19. 21. 22. 13. 24 sont toua des forts eoastrults par 18 Pennsyl- yaale. - 13 est appel& le fort Alîtn: la. le fort Wener: lm. le fort kbinon; 21. Cornfort Cutle; 22, le fort brrnvltle: 23. le fort Shltk?. 24. le fort L~tUllon.2S est un pcLlt fort 4rlgd pu le M8ryfuid. 26 est le fort Cvmberlind. Le gouvernement rlrglnltn 8 conrtrult 27. 18. 28. 30, 31: 27 s'appelle le fort Lewlr et 31. Ie fort Dtnrlddle. 32. 33. 34, 3s ront der forts bttls par lo lirbltmnts de 18 VlrglnIe. La plupart UV blockhaur rbrlteat 20 h 30 homme8 et les fort& 10 h 70 hommes. Erplicafion der eRf//rer 8ppW0QSaiit sur la ricidre Yohoiok. 37 est un fort trld Dar b Ner-York dans 1e erncoa des Amle en 175s. - 38, 3s. 40. 61. 42, 13. 44 ont 4U conrtrultr lWé dernlcr mr Ie gen4raI Shlrky: 3 et 1 aont L chique bout du portage aheii1U par une ehÿk de 18 rir1Cre: 40 est un tntre< Cottlfli: 41 et U -nt h chaque extrCmiU du Enad portage qul rs de k Mo!mrL ru Wood Crnk. 43 mt b fort Ontario et 44. le fort Oswgo. 4s. 46. 47 et U ront des for- dont Ir corutnietton u km le pristemm ptoch.Ln m nad'amen- ter k a&urlU de l8 route d'0mago. :
t 50 FLC7 ON A Si DL, LiES WlTHiN THIS 200 fMT SQUIRE
37 u.tuim, < I 1 -0 -
/
I The ezcavations of the 1987 and 1988 seasons are here &d to the map prepared by the aulhor to sumnarize documentaq research implkatiotls for the archaeological project.
../ .. :! -6 , I ? -._- - " /- --. s- = .+ .+ ;&.& b; .4* - ...-.,-ZI' ..pc che .el? - - &+, /-
Pkn- du fort comslruit _par'de- iéry. Ce plon tst consemi au - Dé61 des Fortifications âes Colonies, A tnérique septentrionale, 504 C.