THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC QUARTERLY REVIEW. Vol. IV.-OCTOBER, 1879.-No. 16. THE CANADIAN ELEMENT IN THE UNITED Les Canadiens del Ouest. Par Joseph Tassé. Deuxième edition. Montreal, Imprimerie Canadienne, 1878. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. xxxix., 364, 423. Notre Dame des Canadiens, et les Canadiens aux Etats Unis. Par l'Abbé T. A. Chandonnet. Montreal, Desbarats, 1872. 8vo. 171 pp. Historical Sketches of the Catholic Church in Oregon, during the past Forty Years. Most Rev. F. N. Blanchet, D.D. Portland, Oregon, 1878. 12mo. 186 pp. A MONG the various elements that have combined to explore, occupy, and develop the vast stretch of the continent over which our flag floats is one singularly overlooked in general estimates, or simply confounded with the direct emigration from the mother country in Europe. This is the Canadian French, which really blends with our history for at least two centuries, and possesses a record to which any race might point with honest pride. It has at last found an historian who combines extensive and accurate research with constructive ability and eloquence of description. In the path of exploration led by Champlain and the Religious who followed the rule of the Saint of Assisi or of the grotto of Manresa, the successive generations of native-born Canadians threaded the continent in every direction, bravely bearing their part in all the enterprises called forth by discovery, trade, or war, to develop, strengthen, and defend their native colony. Under their impulse Canada or New France extended not only on French VOL. IV. 38 maps, but, by military posts, missions, and agricultural settlements, as well as by the influence acquired over the Indian tribes, over most of Maine and Western New York, Western Pennsylvania, and all beyond it towards the setting sun, embracing the whole Valley of the Mississippi. Canadians traversed this inner America "in every direction while it was yet but an immense solitude, still in its wild and primitive beauty." They were the first to cross the Rocky Mountains, and borne on by their adventurous spirit the first to thread their way from the banks of the St. Lawrence to the city of the Montezumas. Outnumbered and lost as this pioneer element is apparently in the other elements, not even the coarse Anglo-Saxon names have been able to banish from our maps the appellations bestowed by the first Canadian explorers on river and lake, on mountain and bluff, on the desert expanse and the plunging rapid. Vermont cannot disown the sponsors who gave her the name she bears and who christened the streams that flow into the lake, or the island she claims there. New York drew her names of Chateauguay, Ausable, St. Regis, Raquette, Rouse's Point, and Chazy, from no settlers of English stock. Presque Isle, Detroit, Lake Superior, the Upper Lake from Sault Sainte Marie to Fond du Lac, Terre Haute, Des Moines, and Terre Coupée, Mauvaises Terres, with names of saints from the calendar, recall these Canadians, and even generic terms like prairie and portage and voyageur, that we have adopted into our language, do the same, as well as Indian names that in their spelling still show the source from which we derived them, like Erie, Ohio, Illinois, Iroquois, Michigan, Arkansas, Manitou, and Huron.1 The patron saint of the Canadian, we know not how or why, is Saint John the Baptist, and in view of the part he has played in traversing the untrod pathways of the land, the choice is not an unhappy one, for the Church in her Itinerary adopts the Precursor as the especial patron of the traveller, introducing the canticle of Zachary, taking from its last echo the antiphon and praying that "by following the exhortations of the Blessed Forerunner John we may come safe to Him whom he preached, Jesus Christ." Not without an appropriate fitness does the land of the voyageurs honor the birthday of this great saint as its patronal feast, and 1 These names sometimes undergo strange changes. Colonel Meline tells how on his march to New Mexico he reached a stream which his guide called Picket Wire. He knew what pickets were, military and otherwise, and had some idea of the nature of wire, but he could see nothing in the country around to suggest either picket or wire. On inquiry he found that the Canadians styled this stream Purgatoire, out of which the American trapper had made Picket Wire. Jean Baptiste designates the Canadian as Patrick does the child of Erin. "To what point of the wilderness," exclaims Father De Smet, "have not the Canadians penetrated?" and Mr. Tassé has wisely taken the words for the motto of his book. Joliet, Canadian born, threaded the course of the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas, accompanied by Father Marquette; Le Moyne d'Iberville reached the mouth of the river by sea to occupy it and plant the colony of Louisiana, which acquired strength under the guidance of his brother Bienville. Canadians accompanied La Salle to Texas; Juchereau de St. Denys founded Natchitoches, and struck through the wilderness to Spanish posts and reached the city of Mexico, The Canadian Jesuit Baudoin won over the Creeks, among whom he long preached the Gospel. Bissot de Vincennes, born on the St. Lawrence, founded the post that still bears his name, and Varenne de la Verendrye explored the Upper Missouri and the region of the Rocky Mountains to the Valley of the Saskatchewan. Forts were founded at Mackinac and Niagara by the Canadian Marquis de Vaudreuil. Around Oswego, Niagara, Fort Duquesne, clustered more than a century ago a Canadian population. Detroit was an important settlement of Canadians before English colonization crossed the Alleghanies. Niagara, Fort St. Joseph, Kaskaskia, Mackinac, Fort Chartres, Cahokia, Carondelet, St. Genevieve, St. Philippe, Prairie du Rocher, Vincennes, Sault St. Marie, St. Louis, were all purely Canadian towns, with a regular organization, recognized in official acts, with churches, civil officers, notaries, their hardy population cultivating the soil, carrying on trade, and bravely bearing their part in the various military operations of that long and well-contested war which proved disastrous to France only because France and her profligate king were false to Canada. The most brilliant victory which in that war redeemed the glory of the French name was that won by the Canadian Chevalier de Beaujeu on the Monongahela, the dying moments of that truly Christian hero consoled by the assurance that he had nobly served his native land and that of his ancestors, by the total overthrow of the most finely appointed English army that had yet sought to wrest from France the realm acquired by her Canadian sons. The Canadian element in Louisiana was large. The first white child born in Louisiana was that of Claude Jausset, a Canadian. Numbers reached it by the way of the Mississippi, and a considerable body of those Acadians whom England tore from their happy homes on the Bay of Fundy as "popish recusants convict" reached Louisiana by way of St. Domingo, and their descendants still form a recognized community on the Teche. Down to 1763 the part embraced by these French settlements was recognized as Canada and Louisiana, the Illinois country and all south of it being officially part of the latter colony, though really all on the Upper Mississippi was purely Canadian. It was not merely French claim, but English admission. Documents of the last century, in Pennsylvania archives, speak of Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburg, as being in Canada. The Canadian population thus primitively settled in the West has not vanished or become extinct. As French posts fell during the war many of the people settled near them withdrew, generally to Illinois and Detroit, and when the final overthrow came and the white flag of France was lowered at Fort Chartres by the Canadian St. Ange de Bellerive, more than half the population of Illinois, supposing that the territory west of the Mississippi was still to remain a French colony, crossed the river and founded the first settlements in Missouri, while others descended to Louisiana, but they remained within our present territory. Some discovering their error drifted back, and Illinois remained for years essentially Canadian. So little indeed did the British officers or the settlers on the coast know of the country beyond the Alleghany Mountains, where every stream and trail was familiar to Canadians, that the English force intended to occupy Fort Chartres was in the utmost perplexity how to reach its destination. To march across the unknown country between the coast and the Mississippi was utterly out of the question. Then Major Loftus with four hundred regulars attempted to reach it by way of New Orleans, but was driven back by Indians ambushed on the banks of the Mississippi. Captain Pitman tried to penetrate to it in disguise, but he lost heart and retired. Nor was Lieutenant Fraser more successful, and had to swallow as best he could the malicious condolence of French and Spanish officers at New Orleans, who heartily enjoyed the discomfiture of these English militaires seeking to lower the last French flag. It was not indeed till October, 1765, that Captain Stirling, with a hundred of the Forty-second Highlanders, after a laborious and cautious march from Fort Pitt at the head of the Ohio reached Fort Chartres, which was surrendered to him by St. Ange de Bellerive. Guaranteed in their religious rights by the English Government, the Canadians of the Northwest resumed their peaceful avocations and became the great reliance of the English officers and trading companies in exploring further, negotiating with and managing the Indian tribes, and in developing the resources of the country. This tended to scatter them over the whole Western territory. During our Revolutionary War this Canadian element was arrayed on different sides. The mission of the Carrolls, Franklin, and Chase to Canada attracted many to the American cause who had never given their hearty submission to England. Volunteers enough joined the American army to form regiments, and these, after rendering good service during the contest, received, at its close, grants of land in Northern New York, where their descendants are still to be found, the nucleus of the present population of Canadian origin. The Rev. Mr. La Valiniere was so outspoken in his preferences for the Americans that he was expelled from Canada and came to New York. Detroit was held firmly by the English, who had learned a lesson in Pontiac's War. As far as the power of British arms extended Canadian settlers and Indian tribes were employed on the side of the mother country. In Illinois and Indiana, however, the Canadians welcomed Clark, and under the lead of Rev. Mr. Gibault and Colonel Vigo threw their fortunes into the scale on the side of the Colonies and secured the Northwest to the United States. The debt the country owes these Canadians is by no means a slight one and has never been properly appreciated. In the subsequent operations a Canadian force, taking the field against the common enemy, was almost entirely annihilated. After Spain declared war against England the Canadian colonists in Missouri had in turn to meet the hostility of the English, and the repulse of the savage foe who attempted to massacre the inhabitants of the little town of Corpus Christi is one of the most striking events in the history of the Revolutionary War. Ducharme, the leader in this movement against an almost purely Canadian town, was himself a Canadian, and Mr. Tassé sketches his career in one of his volumes. In this way this Canadian element in the West, which had lost. its nationality as French, was scattered among the three contesting nations,—Americans, English, and Spanish,—and as it comprised a host of bold, active men, thoroughly accustomed to Indian and frontier life, this group of French Canadians contributed many who distinguished themselves in the operations of each nation, and not unfrequently Canadian was matched against Canadian. During our second war with Great Britain there was, to some extent, a repetition of this anomalous state. Canadians on either side of the line took part in the military operations under the flag of England or of the United States, and not a few in the latter country, adhering to old associations and early allegiance, were active in British interests. The ordinary histories of the United States ignore more or less these Canadian services to our cause, but they are none the less real and important--relatively great at the time and great in their consequences. When peace was restored an emigration began from Canada, |