Part 6 (1/2)
”I sent you, my Lord, the census of their domain, which has been made by Father Simon, the Recollet, who is missionary on the same river, in which you may have every confidence, he being a very honest man. It is very unfortunate, my lord, that any one should have informed you that they lead a licentious life with the savages for I have reliable testimony that their conduct is very good. It seems as if all who live in that locality are in a state of discord; the inhabitants make great complaints against the Sieurs de Villebon and des Goutins. Some who have come to Quebec say they are constantly so harra.s.sed and oppressed that if things are not put upon a better footing they will be compelled to abandon the country.”
That the inhabitants living on the river were turning their attention to agriculture is shown by a communication to Frontenac or Champigny in 1696, in which the writer, probably Villieu, says: ”I informed you last year, Monsieur, by the memo that I did myself the honor to send you, that the inhabitants of this river begin to cultivate their lands. I have since learned that they have raised some grain. M. de Chouffours, who had sown so considerably last year, has not received anything in return, the worms having eaten the seed in the ground; M.
de Freneuse, his brother, has harvested about 15 hogsheads of wheat and M. de Clignancourt very little; M. Bellefontaine, about 5 hogsheads; the Sieur Martel very little, as he has only begun to cultivate his land during the last two years; the other inhabitants nothing at all, unless it is a little Indian corn. The Sieurs d'Amours, except the Sieur Clignancourt, have sown this year pretty considerably of wheat and the Sieur Bellefontaine also, the Sieur Martel some rye and wheat and much peas. The other inhabitants have sown some Indian corn, which would have turned out well only they have sown too late on account of their land being inundated.”
Baron la Hontan visited Fort Nashouac about 1694. He describes the St.
John as ”a very pleasant river, adorned with fields that are very fertile in grain.” He says that two gentlemen of the name of d'Amours have a settlement there for beaver hunting.
The census made in 1695 by Simon, the French missionary, shows that there were then ten families, numbering forty-nine persons, on the St.
John river, besides the garrison at Fort Nachouac. Their live stock included 38 cattle and 116 swine; there were 166 acres of land under cultivation and 73 in pasture; the crop of that year included 130 bushels of wheat, 370 of corn, 30 of oats, 170 of peas.
The testimony of John Gyles, who spent three years in the family of Louis d'Amours at the Jemseg, conclusively disproves Villebon's a.s.sertion that the d'Amours tilled no land and kept no cattle. He speaks of a fine wheat field owned by his master, in which the blackbirds created great havoc and describes a curious attempt made by a friar to exorcise the birds. A procession was formed, headed by the friar, in his white robe with a young lad as his attendant and some thirty people following. Gyles asked some of the prisoners, who had lately been taken by privateers and brought to the Jemseg, whether they would go back with him to witness the ceremony, but they emphatically refused to witness it and when Gyles expressed his determination to go, one of them, named Woodbury, said he was ”as bad as a papist and a d--d fool.” The procession pa.s.sed and re-pa.s.sed from end to end of the field with solemn words of exorcism accompanied by the tinkling of a little bell, the blackbirds constantly rising before them only to light behind them. ”At their return,” says Gyles, ”I told a French lad that the friar had done no service and recommended them to shoot the birds. The lad left me, as I thought, to see what the friar would say to my observation, which turned out to be the case, for he told the lad that the sins of the people were so great that he could not prevail against those birds.”
A story a.n.a.logous to this is related in Dr. Samuel Peters' history of Connecticut, of the celebrated George Whitefield, the New England Independent minister and revivalist: ”Time not having destroyed the wall of the fort at Saybrooke, Whitefield, in 1740, attempted to bring down the wall as Joshua did those of Jericho, hoping thereby to convince the mult.i.tude of his divine mission. He walked seven times around the fort with prayer and ram's horn blowing, he called on the angel of Joshua to do as he had done at the walls of Jericho; but the angel was deaf to his call and the wall remained. Thereupon George cried aloud: 'This town is accursed and the wall shall stand as a monument of a sinful people!'”
Mathieu d'Amours, Sieur de Freneuse, seems to have thought seriously of leaving the St. John river on account of the difficulties and discouragements of his situation, for on the 6th August, 1696, he made out to one Michel Chartier, of Schoodic, in Acadia, a lease of his seignioral manor of Freneuse, consisting of 30 arpents (acres) of arable land under the plough, meadow, forest and undergrowth, with houses, barns and stables thereon, a cart and plough rigged ready for work; also all the oxen, cows, bullocks, goats, pigs, poultry, furniture and household utensils that might remain from the sale which he proposed to make. Chartier was to enjoy the right of trade with the Indians through the whole extent of the manor except where lands had been granted by the Sieur de Freneuse to private individuals. The lease was to be for a term of five years beginning with the first day of May following, and the lessee was to pay the Sieur de Freneuse 600 livres annually, half in money and half in small furs, such as beaver, otter and martins.
It is not likely that this transaction was ever consummated, for less than three months after the lease was arranged and six months before Chartier was to take possession, all the buildings of the Sieur de Freneuse were burned, his cattle destroyed and his fields laid waste by Hawthorne's expedition returning from their unsuccessful seige of Fort Nachouac. The original lease, a very interesting doc.u.ment, is now in possession of Dr. W. F. Ganong and a fac-simile of the signature of the Sieur de Freneuse is here given.[11]
[11] A copy of the original lease of the Seigniory of Freneuse, with translation, and remarks by Dr. Ganong, will be found in Vol.
I., p. 121, of Acadiensis, printed at St. John by D. R. Jack, to whose kindness and that of Dr. Ganong I am indebted for the signature given above.--W. O. R.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Signature of Sieur de Freneuse]
The seigniory included both sides of the St. John river in Sunbury county, and the most fertile portions of the parishes of Maugerville, Sheffield, Burton and Lincoln. The name Freneuse is found in most of the maps of that region down to the time of the American Revolution.
The residence of the Sieur de Freneuse stood on the east bank of the St. John opposite the mouth of the Oromocto river.
Mathieu d'Amours, as already stated, died in consequence of exposure at the siege of Fort Nachouac. Sixty years later the lands he had cleared and tilled and the site of his residence were transferred to the hands of the first English settlers on the river, the Maugerville colony of 1763. His widow, Madame Louise Guyon, went to Port Royal, where her indiscretion created a sensation that resulted in voluminous correspondence on the part of the authorities and finally led to her removal to Quebec.
Rene d'Amours, during his sojourn on the River St. John, was much engrossed in trade with the natives. He made periodical visits to their villages and was well known at Medoctec, where Gyles lived as a captive, and it is not unlikely the Frenchmen living at that village were his retainers. He seems to have made little or no attempt to fulfil the conditions necessary to retain possession of his seignioral manor, for to his mind the charms of hunting and trading surpa.s.sed those of farming. His visits to Medoctec to purchase furs and skins when the Indians had returned from their winter hunts were of doubtful advantage to the poor savages, for Gyles tells us that ”when they came in from hunting they would be drunk and fight for several days and nights together, till they had spent most of their skins in wine and brandy, which was brought to the village by a Frenchman called Monsieur Sigenioncor” (Clignancourt).
The latter portion of the narrative of John Gyles throws light on the course of events on the St. John during Villebon's regime, and supplies us with a particularly interesting glimpse of domestic life in the home of Louis d'Amours on the banks of the Jemseg, where Gyles spent the happiest years of his captivity. The wife of the Sieur de Chauffours, Marguerite Guyon[12], appears in an especially amiable light. Her lonely situation and rude surroundings, the perils of the wilderness and of savage war, amidst which her little children were born, evoke our sympathy. Her goodness of heart is seen in her motherly kindness to Gyles, the young stranger of an alien race--the ”little English,” as she calls him. But with all her amiability and gentleness she possessed other and stronger qualities, and it was her woman's wit and readiness of resource that saved her husband's fortunes in a grave emergency. The story shall be told in Gyles' own words.
[12] Louis d'Amours married Marguerite Guyon in 1686, about the time he settled on the St. John river. They had three children.
”When about six years of my doleful captivity had pa.s.sed, my second Indian master died, whose squaw and my first Indian disputed whose slave I should be. Some malicious persons advised them to end the quarrel by putting a period to my life; but honest father Simon, the priest of the river, told them that it would be a heinous crime and advised them to sell me to the French.”
The suggestion of father Simon was adopted and Gyles, now in his sixteenth year, went with the missionary and the Indians to the mouth of the river, the occasion of their journey being the arrival of a French man-of-war at Menagoueche with supplies for the garrison and presents for the Indians.
”My master asked me,” continues Gyles, ”whether I chose to be sold aboard the man-of-war or to the inhabitants? I replied with tears, I should be glad if you would sell me to the English from whom you took me, but if I must be sold to the French, I chose to be sold to the lowest on the river, or nearest inhabitant to the sea, about 25 leagues from the mouth of the river; for I thought that if I were sold to the gentlemen aboard the man-of-war I should never return to the English. * * My master presently went on sh.o.r.e and a few days after all the Indians went up the river. When we came to a house which I had spoken to my master about, he went on sh.o.r.e with me and tarried all night. The master of the house (Louis d'Amours) spoke kindly to me in Indian, for I could not then speak one word of French. Madam also looked pleasant on me and gave me some bread. The next day I was sent six leagues further up the river to another French house. My master and the friar tarried with Monsieur De Chauffours, the gentleman who had entertained us the night before. Not long after father Simon came and said, 'Now you are one of us, for you are sold to that gentleman by whom you were entertained the other night.'
”I replied, 'Sold!--to a Frenchman!' I could say no more, but went into the woods alone and wept till I could scarce see or stand. The word 'sold,' and that to a people of that persuasion which my dear mother so much detested and in her last words manifested so great fears of my falling into; the thought almost broke my heart.
”When I had thus given vent to my grief I wiped my eyes, endeavoring to conceal its effects, but father Simon perceiving my eyes swollen, rolled me aside bidding me not to grieve, for the gentleman he said to whom I was sold was of a good humor; that he had formerly bought two captives of the Indians who both went home to Boston. This in some measure revived me; but he added he did not suppose that I would ever incline to go to the English for the French way of wors.h.i.+p was much to be preferred. He said also he would pa.s.s that way in about ten days, and if I did not like to live with the French better than the Indians he would buy me again.
”On the day following, father Simon and my Indian master went up the river six and thirty leagues to their chief village and I went down the river six leagues with two Frenchmen to my new master. He kindly received me, and in a few days Madam made me an osnaburg s.h.i.+rt and French cap and a coat out of one of my master's old coats. Then I threw away my greasy blanket and Indian flap; and I never more saw the old friar, the Indian village or my Indian master till about fourteen years after when I saw my old Indian master at Port Royal, and again about twenty-four years since he came from St. John to Fort George to see me where I made him very welcome.
”My French master had a great trade with the Indians, which suited me very well, I being thorough in the language of the tribes at Cape Sable[13] and St. John. I had not lived long with this gentleman before he committed to me the keys of his store, etc., and my whole employment was trading and hunting, in which I acted faithfully for my master and never knowingly wronged him to the value of one farthing. They spoke to me so much in Indian that it was some time before I was perfect in the French tongue.”
[13] The Micmacs, as distinguished from the St. John river Indians or Maliseets.
It was in the summer of the year 1695 that John Gyles was purchased of the Indians by Louis d'Amours, having been nearly six years in captivity at the Medoctec village. The strong prejudice against the French instilled into his mind by his mother, who was a devout puritan, was soon overcome by the kindness of Marguerite d'Amours.