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{etext creator's note: The original text has many footnotes, which have
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PIONEERS OF FRANCE IN THE NEW WORLD

By Francis Parkman

INTRODUCTION.

The springs of American civilization, unlike those of the elder world,
lie revealed in the clear light of History. In appearance they are
feeble; in reality, copious and full of force. Acting at the sources of
life, instruments otherwise weak become mighty for good and evil, and
men, lost elsewhere in the crowd, stand forth as agents of Destiny. In
their toils, their sufferings, their conflicts, momentous questions were
at stake, and issues vital to the future world,--the prevalence of
races, the triumph of principles, health or disease, a blessing or a
curse. On the obscure strife where men died by tens or by scores hung
questions of as deep import for posterity as on those mighty contests of
national adolescence where carnage is reckoned by thousands.

The subject to which the proposed series will be devoted is that of
"France in the New World,"--the attempt of Feudalism, Monarchy, and
Rome to master a continent where, at this hour, half a million of
bayonets are vindicating the ascendency of a regulated freedom;--
Feudalism still strong in life, though enveloped and overborne by
new-born Centralization; Monarchy in the flush of triumphant power;
Rome, nerved by disaster, springing with renewed vitality from ashes and
corruption, and ranging the earth to reconquer abroad what she had lost
at home. These banded powers, pushing into the wilderness their
indomitable soldiers and devoted priests, unveiled the secrets of the
barbarous continent, pierced the forests, traced and mapped out the
streams, planted their emblems, built their forts, and claimed all as
their own. New France was all head. Under king, noble, and Jesuit, the
lank, lean body would not thrive. Even commerce wore the sword, decked
itself with badges of nobility, aspired to forest seigniories and hordes
of savage retainers.

Along the borders of the sea an adverse power was strengthening and
widening, with slow but steadfast growth, full of blood and muscle,--a
body without a head. Each had its strength, each its weakness, each its
own modes of vigorous life: but the one was fruitful, the other barren;
the one instinct with hope, the other darkening with shadows of despair.

By name, local position, and character, one of these communities of
freemen stands forth as the most conspicuous representative of this
antagonism,--Liberty and Absolutism, New England and New France. The
one was the offspring of a triumphant government; the other, of an
oppressed and fugitive people: the one, an unflinching champion of the
Roman Catholic reaction; the other, a vanguard of the Reform. Each
followed its natural laws of growth, and each came to its natural
result. Vitalized by the principles of its foundation, the Puritan
commonwealth grew apace. New England was preeminently the land of
material progress. Here the prize was within every man's reach: patient
industry need never doubt its reward; nay, in defiance of the four
Gospels, assiduity in pursuit of gain was promoted to the rank of a
duty, and thrift and godliness were linked in equivocal wedlock.
Politically she was free; socially she suffered from that subtle and
searching oppression which the dominant opinion of a free community may
exercise over the members who compose it. As a whole, she grew upon the
gaze of the world, a signal example of expansive energy; but she has not
been fruitful in those salient and striking forms of character which
often give a dramatic life to the annals of nations far less prosperous.

We turn to New France, and all is reversed. Here was a bold attempt to
crush under the exactions of a grasping hierarchy, to stifle under the
curbs and trappings of a feudal monarchy, a people compassed by
influences of the wildest freedom,--whose schools were the forest and
the sea, whose trade was an armed barter with savages, and whose daily
life a lesson of lawless independence. But this fierce spirit had its
vent. The story of New France is from the first a story of war: of war
--for so her founders believed--with the adversary of mankind
himself; war with savage tribes and potent forest commonwealths; war
with the encroaching powers of Heresy and of England. Her brave,
unthinking people were stamped with the soldier's virtues and the
soldier's faults; and in their leaders were displayed, on a grand and
novel stage, the energies, aspirations, and passions which belong to
hopes vast and vague, ill-restricted powers, and stations of command.

The growth of New England was a result of the aggregate efforts of a
busy multitude, each in his narrow circle toiling for himself, to gather
competence or wealth. The expansion of New France was the achievement of
a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain
attempt. Long and valiantly her chiefs upheld their cause, leading to
battle a vassal population, warlike as themselves. Borne down by numbers
from without, wasted by corruption from within, New France fell at last;
and out of her fall grew revolutions whose influence to this hour is
felt through every nation of the civilized world.

The French dominion is a memory of the past; and when we evoke its
departed shades, they rise upon us from their graves in strange,
romantic guise. Again their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, and the
fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest,
mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on
the same stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us; an untamed
continent; vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval
sleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling with
the sky. Such was the domain which France conquered for Civilization.
Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests, priestly vestments
in its dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique
learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent the
noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with a mild,
parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men
of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry,
here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of
toil.

This memorable but half-forgotten chapter in the book of human life can
be rightly read only by lights numerous and widely scattered. The
earlier period of New France was prolific in a class of publications
which are often of much historic value, but of which many are
exceedingly rare. The writer, however, has at length gained access to
them all. Of the unpublished records of the colonies, the archives of
France are of course the grand deposit; but many documents of important
bearing on the subject are to be found scattered in public and private
libraries, chiefly in France and Canada. The task of collection has
proved abundantly irksome and laborious. It has, however, been greatly
lightened by the action of the governments of New York, Massachusetts,
and Canada, in collecting from Europe copies of documents having more or
less relation to their own history. It has been greatly lightened, too,
by a most kind co-operation, for which the writer owes obligations too
many for recognition at present, but of which he trusts to make fitting
acknowledgment hereafter. Yet he cannot forbear to mention the name of
Mr. John Gilmary Shea of New York, to whose labors this department of
American history has been so deeply indebted, and that of the Hon. Henry
Black of Quebec. Nor can he refrain from expressing his obligation to
the skilful and friendly criticism of Mr. Charles Folsom.

In this, and still more must it be the case in succeeding volumes, the
amount of reading applied to their composition is far greater than the
citations represent, much of it being of a collateral and illustrative
nature. This was essential to a plan whose aim it was, while
scrupulously and rigorously adhering to the truth of facts, to animate
them with the life of the past, and, so far as might be, clothe the
skeleton with flesh. If, at times, it may seem that range has been
allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest
details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or on
personal observation.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research,
however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be
detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as
a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue
himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in
their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of
those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or
a spectator of the action he describes.

With respect to that special research which, if inadequate, is still in
the most emphatic sense indispensable, it has been the writer's aim to
exhaust the existing material of every subject treated. While it would
be folly to claim success in such an attempt, he has reason to hope
that, so far at least as relates to the present volume, nothing of much
importance has escaped him. With respect to the general preparation just
alluded to, he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any means
within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true.

To those who have aided him with information and documents, the extreme
slowness in the progress of the work will naturally have caused
surprise. This slowness was unavoidable. During the past eighteen years,
the state of his health has exacted throughout an extreme caution in
regard to mental application, reducing it at best within narrow and
precarious limits, and often precluding it. Indeed, for two periods,
each of several years, any attempt at bookish occupation would have been
merely suicidal. A condition of sight arising from kindred sources has
also retarded the work, since it has never permitted reading or writing
continuously for much more than five minutes, and often has not
permitted them at all. A previous work, "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," was
written in similar circumstances.

The writer means, if possible, to carry the present design to its
completion. Such a completion, however, will by no means be essential as
regards the individual volumes of the series, since each will form a
separate and independent work. The present work, it will be seen,
contains two distinct and completed narratives. Some progress has been
made in others.

Boston. January 1,1865.

Part One

HUGOENOTS IN FLORIDA

PREFATORY NOTE TO THE

HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA.

The story of New France opens with a tragedy. The political and
religious enmities which were soon to bathe Europe in blood broke out
with an intense and concentrated fury in the distant wilds of Florida.
It was under equivocal auspices that Coligny and his partisans essayed
to build up a Calvinist France in America, and the attempt was met by
all the forces of national rivalry, personal interest, and religious
hate.

This striking passage of our early history is remarkable for the
fullness and precision of the authorities that illustrate it. The
incidents of the Huguenot occupation of Florida are recorded by eight
eye-witnesses. Their evidence is marked by an unusual accord in respect
to essential facts, as well as by a minuteness of statement which
vividly pictures the events described. The following are the principal
authorities consulted for the main body of the narrative.

Ribauld, 'The Whole and True Discovery of Terra Florida,' This is
Captain Jean Ribaut's account of his voyage to Florida in 1562. It was
"prynted at London," "newly set forthe in Englishe," in 1563, and
reprinted by Hakluyt in 1582 in his black-letter tract entitled 'Divers
Voyages.' It is not known to exist in the original French.

'L'Histoire Notable de la Floride, mise en lumiere par M. Basanier'
(Paris, 1586). The most valuable portion of this work consists of the
letters of Rene de Laudonniere, the French commandant in Florida in
1564-65. They are interesting, and, with necessary allowance for the
position and prejudices of the writer, trustworthy.

Challeux, Discours de l'Histoire de la Floride (Dieppe, 1566). Challeux
was a carpenter, who went to Florida in 1565. He was above sixty years
of age, a zealous Huguenot, and a philosopher in his way. His story is
affecting from its simplicity. Various editions of it appeared under
various titles.

Le Moyne, Brevis Narratio eorum qucs in Florida Americce Provincia
Gallis acciderunt. Le Moyne was Laudonniere's artist. His narrative
forms the Second Part of the Grands Voyages of De Bry (Frankfort, 1591).
It is illustrated by numerous drawings made by the writer from memory,
and accompanied with descriptive letter-press.

Coppie d'une Lettre venant de la Floride (Paris, 1565). This is a letter
from one of the adventurers under Laudonniere. It is reprinted in the
Recueil de Pieces sur la Floride of Ternaux.-Compans. Ternaux also
prints in the same volume a narrative called Histoire memorable du
dernier Voyage faict par le Capitaine Jean Ribaut. It is of no original
value, being compiled from Laudonniere and Challeux.

Une Bequete au Roy, faite en forme de Complainte (1566). This is a
petition for redress to Charles the Ninth from the relatives of the
French massacred in Florida by the Spaniards. It recounts many incidents
of that tragedy.

La Reprinse de la Floride par le Cappitaine Gourgue. This is a
manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale, printed in the Recueil of
Ternaux-Compans. It contains a detailed account of the remarkable
expedition of Dominique de Gourgues against the Spaniards in Florida in
1567-68.

Charlevoix, in his Histoire de la Nouvelle France, speaks of another
narrative of this expedition in manuscript, preserved in the Gourgues
family. A copy of it, made in 1831 by the Vicomte de Gourgues, has been
placed at the writer's disposal.

Popeliniere, De Thou, Wytfleit, D'Aubigne De Laet, Brantome, Lescarbot,
Champlain, and other writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
have told or touched upon the story of the Huguenots in Florida; but
they all draw their information from one or more of the sources named
above.

Lettres et Papiers d' Estat du Sieur de Forguevaulx (Bibliotheque
Nationale). These include the correspondence of the French and Spanish
courts concerning the massacre of the Huguenots. They are printed by
Gaffarel in his Histoire de le Floride Francaise.

The Spanish authorities are the following--Barcia (Cardenas y Cano),
Ensayo Cronologico para la Historia General de la Florida (Madrid,
1723). This annalist had access to original documents of great interest.
Some of them are used as material for his narrative, others are copied
entire. Of these, the most remarkable is that of Solis de las Meras,
Memorial de todas las Jornadas de la Conquista de la Florida.

Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, Relacion de la Jornada de Pedro
Menendez de Aviles en la Florida (Documentos Ineditos del Archivo de
Indias, III. 441). A French translation of this journal will be found in
the Recueil de Pieces sur let Floride of Ternaux-Compans. Mendoza was
chaplain of the expedition commanded by Menendez de Aviles, and, like
Solfs, he was an eye-witness of the events which he relates.

Pedro Menendez de Aviles, Siete Cartas escritas al Rey, Anos de 1565 y
1566, MSS. These are the despatches of the Adelantado Menendez to Philip
the Second. They were procured for the writer, together with other
documents, from the archives of Seville, and their contents are now for
the first time made public. They consist of seventy-two closely written
foolscap pages, and are of the highest interest and value as regards the
present subject, confirming and amplifying the statements of Solis and
Mendoza, and giving new and curious information with respect to the
designs of Spain upon the continent of North America.

It is unnecessary to specify the authorities for the introductory and
subordinate portions of the narrative.

The writer is indebted to Mr. Buckingham Smith, for procuring copies of
documents from the archives of Spain; to Mr. Bancroft, the historian of
the United States, for the use of the Vicomte de Gourgues's copy of the
journal describing the expedition of his ancestor against the Spaniards;
and to Mr. Charles Russell Lowell, of the Boston Athenaeum, and Mr. John
Langdon Sibley, Librarian of Harvard College, for obliging aid in
consulting books and papers.

HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA.

CHAPTER I.

1512-1561.

EARLY SPANISH ADVENTURE.

Towards the close of the fifteenth century, Spain achieved her final
triumph over the infidels of Granada, and made her name glorious through
all generations by the discovery of America. The religious zeal and
romantic daring which a long course of Moorish wars had called forth
were now exalted to redoubled fervor. Every ship from the New World came
freighted with marvels which put the fictions of chivalry to shame; and
to the Spaniard of that day America was a region of wonder and mystery,
of vague and magnificent promise. Thither adventurers hastened,
thirsting for glory and for gold, and often mingling the enthusiasm of
the crusader and the valor of the knight-errant with the bigotry of
inquisitors and the rapacity of pirates. They roamed over land and sea;
they climbed unknown mountains, surveyed unknown oceans, pierced the
sultry intricacies of tropical forests; while from year to year and from
day to day new wonders were unfolded, new islands and archipelagoes, new
regions of gold and pearl, and barbaric empires of more than Oriental
wealth. The extravagance of hope and the fever of adventure knew no
bounds. Nor is it surprising that amid such waking marvels the
imagination should run wild in romantic dreams; that between the
possible and the impossible the line of distinction should be but
faintly drawn, and that men should be found ready to stake life and
honor in pursuit of the most insane fantasies.

Such a man was the veteran cavalier Juan Ponce de Leon. Greedy of honors
and of riches, he embarked at Porto Rico with three brigantines, bent on
schemes of discovery. But that which gave the chief stimulus to his
enterprise was a story, current among the Indians of Cuba and
Hispaniola, that on the island of Bimini, said to be one of the Bahamas,
there was a fountain of such virtue, that, bathing in its waters, old
men resumed their youth.[FN#1] It was said, moreover, that on a
neighboring shore might be found a river gifted with the same beneficent
property, and believed by some to be no other than the Jordan.[FN#2]
Ponce de Leon found the island of Bimini, but not the fountain. Farther
westward, in the latitude of thirty degrees and eight minutes, he
approached an unknown land, which he named Florida, and, steering
southward, explored its coast as far as the extreme point of the
peninsula, when, after some farther explorations, he retraced his course
to Porto Rico.

Ponce de Leon had not regained his youth, but his active spirit was
unsubdued.

Nine years later he attempted to plant a colony in Florida; the Indians
attacked him fiercely; he was mortally wounded, and died soon afterwards
in Cuba. [FN#3]

The voyages of Garay and Vasquez de Ayllon threw new light on the
discoveries of Ponce, and the general outline of the coasts of Florida
became known to the Spaniards.[FN#4] Meanwhile, Cortes had conquered
Mexico, and the fame of that iniquitous but magnificent exploit rang
through all Spain. Many an impatient cavalier burned to achieve a
kindred fortune. To the excited fancy of the Spaniards the unknown land
of Florida seemed the seat of surpassing wealth, and Pamphilo de Narvaez
essayed to possess himself of its fancied treasures. Landing on its
shores, and proclaiming destruction to the Indians unless they
acknowledged the sovereignty of the Pope and the Emperor, he advanced
into the forests with three hundred men. Nothing could exceed their
sufferings. Nowhere could they find the gold they came to seek. The
village of Appalache, where they hoped to gain a rich booty, offered
nothing but a few mean wigwams. The horses gave out, and the famished
soldiers fed upon their flesh. The men sickened, and the Indians
unceasingly harassed their march. At length, after two hundred and
eighty leagues [FN#5] of wandering, they found themselves on the
northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico, and desperately put to sea in such
crazy boats as their skill and means could construct. Cold, disease,
famine, thirst, and the fury of the waves, melted them away. Narvaez
himself perished, and of his wretched followers no more than four
escaped, reaching by land, after years of vicissitude, the Christian
settlements of New Spain. [FN#6]

The interior of the vast country then comprehended under the name of
Florida still remained unexplored. The Spanish voyager, as his caravel
ploughed the adjacent seas, might give full scope to his imagination,
and dream that beyond the long, low margin of forest which bounded his
horizon lay hid a rich harvest for some future conqueror; perhaps a
second Mexico with its royal palace and sacred pyramids, or another
Cuzco with its temple of the Sun, encircled with a frieze of gold.
Haunted by such visions, the ocean chivalry of Spain could not long
stand idle.

Hernando de Soto was the companion of Pizarro in the conquest of Peru.
He had come to America a needy adventurer, with no other fortune than
his sword and target. But his exploits had given him fame and fortune,
and he appeared at court with the retinue of a nobleman.[FN#7] Still,
his active energies could not endure repose, and his avarice and
ambition goaded him to fresh enterprises. He asked and obtained
permission to conquer Florida. While this design was in agitation,
Cabeca de Vaca, one of those who had survived the expedition of Narvaez,
appeared in Spain, and for purposes of his own spread abroad the
mischievous falsehood, that Florida was the richest country yet
discovered. De Soto's plans were embraced with enthusiasm. Nobles and
gentlemen contended for the privilege of joining his standard; and,
setting sail with an ample armament, he landed at the bay of Espiritu
Santo, now Tampa Bay, in Florida, with six hundred and twenty chosen
men, a band as gallant and well appointed, as eager in purpose and
audacious in hope, as ever trod the shores of the New World. The clangor
of trumpets, the neighing of horses, the fluttering of pennons, the
glittering of helmet and lance, startled the ancient forest with
unwonted greeting. Amid this pomp of chivalry, religion was not
forgotten. The sacred vessels and vestments with bread and wine for the
Eucharist were carefully provided; and De Soto himself declared that the
enterprise was undertaken for God alone, and seemed to be the object of
His especial care. These devout marauders could not neglect the
spiritual welfare of the Indians whom they had come to plunder; and
besides fetters to bind, and bloodhounds to hunt them, they brought
priests and monks for the saving of their souls.

The adventurers began their march. Their story has been often told. For
month after month and year after year, the procession of priests and
cavaliers, crossbowmen, arquebusiers, and Indian captives laden with the
baggage, still wandered on through wild and boundless wastes, lured
hither and thither by the ignis fatuus of their hopes. They traversed
great portions of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, everywhere
inflicting and enduring misery, but never approaching their phantom El
Dorado. At length, in the third year of their journeying, they reached
the banks of the Mississippi, a hundred and thirty-two years before its
second discovery by Marquette. One of their number describes the great
river as almost half a league wide, deep, rapid, and constantly rolling
down trees and drift-wood on its turbid current.

The Spaniards crossed over at a point above the mouth of the Arkansas.
They advanced westward, but found no treasures,--nothing indeed but
hardships, and an Indian enemy, furious, writes one of their officers,
"as mad dogs." They heard of a country towards the north where maize
could not be cultivated because the vast herds of wild cattle devoured
it. They penetrated so far that they entered the range of the roving
prairie tribes; for, one day, as they pushed their way with difficulty
across great plains covered with tall, rank grass, they met a band of
savages who dwelt in lodges of skins sewed together, subsisting on game
alone, and wandering perpetually from place to place. Finding neither
gold nor the South Sea, for both of which they had hoped, they returned
to the banks of the Mississippi.

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