CHAPTER V REMOVAL OF FORT AND MISSION TO OLD A T SOME time between the arrival of the Griffin in the Straits of Mackinac and the coming of Durantaye in 1683, a small French garrison was placed at Michilimackinac.1 It was not long before the accompanying traffic in brandy was well under way. It is charged that "the Commandant, his officers, his soldiers and his employees had become traders with the Indians; the principal article of their traffic was eau de vie, dealt in at first sub rosa, but later on openly and in cabarets." 2 The missionaries protested in vain to Governor Frontenac but were successful at the French Court. The traffic was in a measure suppressed. But this did not please the Indians, who became in consequence alienated from the Jesuits. In the years following the incumbency of Durantaye the strain between the missionaries on the one hand and the Indians, traders and commandants on the other, increased rapidly to the breaking point. In 1694 there was sent by Frontenac to the garrison at Michilimackinac Antoine de la Mothe-Cadillac, a man, "amply gifted," says Parkman, "with the kind of intelli 3 1 Jesuit Relations, LV, 319. The Burrows Brothers Company, Cleveland, O. 2 Richard R. Elliot, "The Jesuits of L'Ancien Régime who labored on Michigan Soil-Their Detractors," in the American Catholic Quarterly Review, January, 1903, p. 104. * Parkman, A Half Century of Conflict, I, 19 (Little, Brown & Co., Boston); for a sketch of Cadillac's life, see C. M. Burton's Cadillac. gence that consists in quick observation, sharpened by an inveterate spirit of sarcasm, energetic, enterprising, well instructed, and a bold and sometimes a visionary schemer, with a restless spirit, a nimble and biting wit, a Gascon impetuosity of temperament, and as much devotion as an officer of the King was forced to possess, coupled with small love of priests and an aversion to Jesuits." Cadillac advised Frontenac of the attitude of the Indians, and of the danger that if brandy were not supplied to them by the French they would seek it from the English. Says Justin Winsor: "Cadillac, in his fort at Mackinac,-it had a garrison of two hundred men, was in every way situated to know the conditions of the problem. His was an active mind, and it mattered little to him whether he had the mischievous Huron or the ungodly bushranger to control. He liked most to thwart the Jesuits, and his purposes were all that Frontenac could wish in this respect." 4 5 The point of view of the Jesuits at this time is clearly set forth in a letter by Father Stephen de Carheil, “himself of noble blood, a veteran of the Iroquoian missions, and one of the holiest of the Jesuit priests," who at the time of this letter to de Callières, Governor-General of New France, was Superior of the Ottawa missions. The letter was written from Michilimackinac in 1702. He had been there sixteen years, and was well informed of the conditions and needs of the missions. The missions "are reduced to such an extremity," he writes, "that we can no longer maintain them against an infinite multitude of evil acts,—acts of 4 Winsor, Cartier to Frontenac, p. 357. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. 5 For a sketch of the life of Father Carheil, see Jesuit Relations, I, 325. The Burrows Brothers Company, Cleveland, O. brutality and violence; of injustice and impiety; of lewd and shameless conduct; of contempt and insults. To such acts the infamous and baleful trade in brandy gives rise everywhere, among all the nations up here,-where it is carried on by going from village to village, and by roving over the lakes with a prodigious quantity of brandy in barrels, without any restraint. . . . .. In our despair, there is no other step to take than to leave our missions and abandon them to the brandy traders, so that they may establish therein the domain of their trade, of drunkenness, and of immorality." The permission to sell brandy was obtained from the King "only by means of a pretext apparently reasonable, but known to be false." With bad examples before the Indians, the influence of the missionaries is nullified. The soldiers do no real service for the King, "For, in reality, the commandants come here solely for the purpose of trading, in concert with their soldiers, without troubling themselves about anything else." He says they have no intercourse with the missionaries, except to further their own selfish ends; that they make no complaint of the traders, "because they engage nearly all of them to assist them in their trade." The policy of giving presents to the Indians had resulted in making the Indians unwilling to do anything without presents, and "to make use of an infinite number of ruses, of stratagems, and intrigues among themselves" to force the commandants to give them presents. At great length he urges that the garrisons be discontinued, and begs for "justice against the calumnies and violence of Monsieur de la Motte." "It is not a grateful task to assail the memory of M. de La Mothe Cadillac, the intrepid founder of Detroit in 1701," says Mr. Richard R. Elliott." "The memory of his experience at Michilimackinac rankled in the soul of Cadillac. When appointed commandant at Detroit he conceived the design of depopulating Michilimackinac, by inducing the Ottawas and Hurons to leave their homes on the littorals of the islands and mainlands of the upper waters, and come down and build new homes in the vicinity of Detroit. This plan was suggested to the Court of France as the method of centralizing and organizing the Indian tribes of the West, to be controlled by France at Detroit as a barrier to the inroads of the Iroquoian Confederacy. But the animus of Cadillac may be inferred by his averment that he would not leave Father de Carheil a member of his flock to bury him. Such, indeed, became the result of the exodus of the Ottawas and Hurons to settle at Detroit. Together with other Indian nations, the centralization at Detroit became considerable. Several thousand Indians came there and located their cantons in the vicinity; while Michilimackinac, erstwhile an Indian missionary centre, became as such, a dreary reminder of the past. "In time the saintly Father de Carheil in despair decided to burn his missionary chapels and to return to Quebec. Thus was the labour of many years of Christian work at Michilimackinac, by devoted priests, temporarily sus 7 Elliott, op. cit., pp. 112-113. For correspondence of Cadillac bearing on this controversy, see Sheldon's Early History of Michigan, pp. 101 ff, 133 ff, and the Cadillac Papers in Mich. Pion. and Hist. Colls., XXXIII, 36 ff. See also Ibid., VIII, 422 ff, for discussion. The burning of the building is placed by Charlevoix in 1705. Dr. Shea places this event in 1706; see "Romance and Reality of the Death of Father Marquette," in Catholic World for March, 1877, p. 273. According to Thwaites, Father de Carheil had returned to Quebec in 1703, from which time until 1768 he laboured at Montreal and vicinity. Jesuit Relations, I, 326. The Burrows Brothers Company, Cleveland, O. |