The Founder of New France : A Chronicle of ChamplainColby, Charles W. (Charles William)
History
The Founder of New France : A Chronicle of Champlain
Colby, Charles W. (Charles William)
Canada -- History -- To 1763 (New France); Champlain, Samuel de, 1574-1635
The survivors of the horrible winter at St Croix were not freed from
anxiety until June 15, 1605, when Pontgrave, six weeks late, arrived
with fresh stores. Had De Monts been faint-hearted, he doubtless would
have seized this opportunity to return to France. As it was, he set out
in search of a place more suitable than St Croix for the establishment
of his colony, On June 18, with a party which included twenty sailors
and several gentlemen, he and Champlain began a fresh voyage to the
south-west. Their destination was the country of the Armouchiquois, an
Algonquin tribe who then inhabited Massachusetts.
Champlain's story of his first voyage from Acadia to Cape Cod is given
with considerable fulness. The topography of the seaboard and its
natural history, the habits of the Indians and his adventures with them,
were all new subjects at the time, and he treats them so that they keep
their freshness. He is at no pains to conceal his low opinion of the
coast savages. Concerning the Acadian Micmacs he says little, but what
he does say is chiefly a comment upon the wretchedness of their life
during the winter. As he went farther south he found an improvement in
the food supply. At the mouth of the Saco he and De Monts saw well-kept
patches of Indian corn three feet high, although it was not yet
midsummer. Growing with the corn were beans, pumpkins, and squashes,
all in flower; and the cultivation of tobacco is also noted. Here the
savages formed a permanent settlement and lived within a palisade. Still
farther south, in the neighbourhood of Cape Cod, Champlain found maize
five and a half feet high, a considerable variety of squashes, tobacco,
and edible roots which tasted like artichokes.
But whether the coast Indians were Micmacs or Armouchiquois, whether
they were starving or well fed, Champlain tells us little in their
praise. Of the Armouchiquois he says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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