No More Learning

Their government is even too good for
them. Parliament passed "an act [in 1825] to provide for the
extinction of feudal and seigniorial rights and burdens on lands in
Lower Canada, and for the gradual conversion of those tenures into the
tenure of free and common socage," etc. But as late as 1831, at least,
the design of the act was likely to be frustrated, owing to the
reluctance of the seigniors and peasants. It has been observed by
another that the French Canadians do not extend nor perpetuate their
influence. The British, Irish, and other immigrants, who have settled
the townships, are found to have imitated the American settlers and
not the French. They reminded me in this of the Indians, whom they
were slow to displace, and to whose habits of life they themselves more
readily conformed than the Indians to theirs. The Governor-General
Denouville remarked, in 1685, that some had long thought that it was
necessary to bring the Indians near them in order to Frenchify
(_franciser_) them, but that they had every reason to think themselves
in an error; for those who had come near them and were even collected
in villages in the midst of the colony had not become French, but the
French who had haunted them had become savages. Kalm said, "Though
many nations imitate the French customs, yet I observed, on the
contrary, that the French in Canada, in many respects, follow the
customs of the Indians, with whom they converse every day. They make
use of the tobacco-pipes, shoes, garters, and girdles of the Indians.
They follow the Indian way of making war with exactness; they mix the
same things with tobacco [he might have said that both French and
English learned the use itself of this weed of the Indian]; they make
use of the Indian bark-boats, and row them in the Indian way; they
wrap square pieces of cloth round their feet instead of stockings; and
have adopted many other Indian fashions. " Thus, while the descendants
of the Pilgrims are teaching the English to make pegged boots, the
descendants of the French in Canada are wearing the Indian moccasin
still. The French, to their credit be it said, to a certain extent
respected the Indians as a separate and independent people, and spoke
of them and contrasted themselves with them as the English have never
done. They not only went to war with them as allies, but they lived at
home with them as neighbors. In 1627 the French king declared "that
the descendants" of the French, settled in New France, "and the
savages who should be brought to the knowledge of the faith, and
should make profession of it, should be counted and reputed French
born (_Naturels Francois_); and as such could emigrate to France, when
it seemed good to them, and there acquire, will, inherit, etc. , etc.
,
without obtaining letters of naturalization. " When the English had
possession of Quebec, in 1630, the Indians, attempting to practice the
same familiarity with them that they had with the French, were driven
out of their houses with blows; which accident taught them a
difference between the two races, and attached them yet more to the
French. The impression made on me was that the French Canadians were
even sharing the fate of the Indians, or at least gradually
disappearing in what is called the Saxon current.

The English did not come to America from a mere love of adventure,
nor to truck with or convert the savages, nor to hold offices under
the crown, as the French to a great extent did, but to live in earnest
and with freedom. The latter overran a great extent of country,
selling strong water, and collecting its furs, and converting its
inhabitants,--or at least baptizing its dying infants (_enfans
moribonds_),--without _improving_ it. First went the _coureur de bois_
with the _eau de vie_; then followed, if he did not precede, the
heroic missionary with the _eau d'immortalite_. It was freedom to
hunt, and fish, and convert, not to work, that they sought. Hontan
says that the _coureurs de bois_ lived like sailors ashore. In no part
of the Seventeenth Century could the French be said to have had a
foothold in Canada; they held only by the fur of the wild animals
which they were exterminating. To enable the poor seigneurs to get
their living, it was permitted by a decree passed in the reign of
Louis the Fourteenth, in 1685, "to all nobles and gentlemen settled in
Canada, to engage in commerce, without being called to account or
reputed to have done anything derogatory. " The reader can infer to
what extent they had engaged in agriculture, and how their farms must
have shone by this time. The New England youth, on the other hand,
were never _coureurs de bois_ nor _voyageurs_, but backwoodsmen and
sailors rather. Of all nations the English undoubtedly have proved
hitherto that they had the most business here.

Yet I am not sure but I have most sympathy with that spirit of adventure
which distinguished the French and Spaniards of those days, and made
them especially the explorers of the American Continent,--which so
early carried the former to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi on the
north, and the latter to the same river on the south. It was long
before our frontiers reached their settlements in the West. So far as
inland discovery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English
was that of sailors who land but for a day, and their enterprise the
enterprise of traders.