Part 15

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, 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. When one comes into the house of a Canada peasant, or farmer, he gets up, takes his hat off to the stranger, desires him to sit down, puts his hat on and sits down again. The gentlemen and ladies, as well as the poorest peasants and their wives, are called Monsieur and Madame. The peasants, and especially their wives, wear shoes, which consist of a piece of wood hollowed out, and are made almost as slippers. Their boys, and the old peasants themselves, wear their hair behind in a cue; and most of them wear red woollen caps at home, and sometimes on their journies.

The farmers prepare most of their dishes of milk. Butter is but seldom seen, and what they have is made of sour cream, and therefore not so good as English butter. Many of the French are very fond of milk, which they eat chiefly on fasting days. However, they have not so many methods of preparing it as we have in Sweden. The common way was to boil it, and put bits of bread, and a good deal of sugar, into it. The French here eat near as much flesh as the English, on those days when their religion allows it. For excepting the soup, the sallads, and the desert, all their other dishes consist of flesh variously prepared.

At night we lay at a farm-house, near a river called Petite Riviere, which falls here into the river St. Lawrence. This place is reckoned sixteen French miles from Quebec, and ten from Trois Rivieres. The tide is still considerable here. Here is the last place where the hills, along the river, consist of black lime-slate; further on they are composed merely of earth.

Fire-flies flew about the woods at night, though not in great numbers; the French call them Mouches à feu.

The houses in this neighbourhood are all made of wood. The rooms are pretty large. The inner roof rests on two, three, or four, large thick spars, according to the size of the room. The chinks are filled with clay, instead of moss. The windows are made entirely of paper. The chimney is erected in the middle of the room; that part of the room which is opposite the fire, is the kitchen; that which is behind the chimney, serves the people to sleep, and receive strangers in. Sometimes there is an iron stove behind the chimney.

September the 13th. Near Champlain, which is a place about five French miles from Trois Rivieres, the steep hills near the river consist of a yellow, and sometimes ockre-coloured sandy earth, in which a number of small springs arise. The water in them is generally filled with yellow ockre, which is a sign, that these dry sandy fields contain a great quantity of the same iron ore, which is dug at Trois Rivieres. It is not conceivable from whence that number of small rivulets takes their rise, the ground above being flat, and exceeding dry in summer. The lands near the river are cultivated for about an English mile into the country; but behind them there are thick forests, and low grounds. The woods, which collect a quantity of moisture, and prevent the evaporation of the water, force it to make its way under ground to the river. The shores of the river are here covered with a great deal of black iron-sand.

Towards evening we arrived at Trois Rivieres, where we staid no longer, than was necessary to deliver the letters, which we brought with us from Quebec. After that we went a French mile higher up, before we took our night’s lodging.

This afternoon we saw three remarkable old people. One was an old Jesuit, called father Joseph Aubery, who had been a missionary to the converted Indians of St. François. This summer he ended the fiftieth year of his mission. He therefore returned to Quebec, to renew his vows there; and he seemed to be healthy, and in good spirits. The other two people were our landlord and his wife; he was above eighty years of age, and she was not much younger. They had now been fifty-one years married. The year before, at the end of the fiftieth year of their marriage, they went to church together, and offered up thanks to God Almighty for the great grace he gave them. They were yet quite well, content, merry, and talkative. The old man said, that he was at Quebec when the English besieged it, in the year 1690, and that the bishop went up and down the streets, dressed in his pontifical robes, and a sword in his hand, in order to recruit the spirits of the soldiers.

This old man said, that he thought the winters were formerly much colder than they are now. There fell likewise a greater quantity of snow, when he was young. He could remember the time when pumpions, cucumbers, &c. were killed by the frost about mid-summer, and he assured me, that the summers were warmer now than they used to be formerly. About thirty and some odd years ago, there was such a severe winter in Canada, that the frost killed many birds; but the old man could not remember the particular year. Every body allowed, that the summers in 1748, and 1749, had been warmer in Canada than they have been many years ago.

The soil is reckoned pretty fertile; and wheat yields nine or ten grains from one. But when this old man was a boy, and the country was new and rich every where, they could get twenty, or four-and-twenty, grains from one. They sow but little rye here; nor do they sow much barley, except for the use of cattle. They complain, however, that when they have a bad crop, they are obliged to bake bread of barley.

September the 14th. This morning we got up early, and pursued our journey. After we had gone about two French miles, we got into lake St. Pierre, which we crossed. Many plants, which are common in our Swedish lakes, swim at the top of this water. This lake is said to be covered every winter with such strong ice, that a hundred loaded horses could go over it together with safety.

A craw-fish, or river lobster, somewhat like a crab, but quite minute, about two geometrical lines long, and broad in proportion, was frequently drawn up by us with the aquatic weeds, its colour is a pale greenish white.

The cordated Pontederia [105] grows plentiful on the sides of a long and narrow canal of water, in the places frequented by our water-lilies [106]. A great number of hogs wade far into this kind of strait, and sometimes duck the greatest part of their bodies under water, in order to get at the roots, which they are very fond of.

As soon as we were got through lake St. Pierre, the face of the country was entirely changed, and became as agreeable as could be wished. The isles, and the land on both sides of us, looked like the prettiest pleasure-gardens; and this continued till near Montreal.

Near every farm on the river-side there are some boats, hollowed out of the trunks of single trees, but commonly neat and well made, having the proper shape of boats. In one single place I saw a boat made of the bark of trees.

September the 15th. We continued our journey early this morning. On account of the strength of the river, which came down against us, we were sometimes obliged to let the rowers go on shore, and draw the boat.

At four o’clock in the evening we arrived at Montreal; and our voyage was reckoned a happy one, because the violence of the river flowing against us all the way, and the changeableness of the winds, commonly protract it to two weeks.

September the 19th. Several people here in town have got the French vines, and planted them in their gardens. They have two kinds of grapes, one of a pale green, or almost white; the other, of a reddish brown colour. From the white ones they say, white wine is made; and from the red ones, red wine. The cold in winter obliges them to put dung round the roots of the vines, without which they would be killed by the frost. The grapes began to be ripe in these days; the white ones are a little sooner ripe than the red ones. They make no wine of them here, because it is not worth while; but they are served up at deserts. They say these grapes do not grow so big here as in France.

Water-melons [107] are cultivated in great plenty in the English and French American colonies; and there is hardly a peasant here, who has not a field planted with them. They are chiefly cultivated in the neighbourhood of towns; and they are very rare in the north part of Canada. The Indians plant great quantities of water-melons at present; but whether they have done it of old is not easily determined. For an old Onidoe Indian (of the six Iroquese nations) assured me, that the Indians did not know water-melons before the Europeans came into the country, and communicated them to the Indians. The French, on the other hand, have assured me, that the Illinois Indians have had abundance of this fruit, when the French first came to them; and that they declare, they had planted them since times immemorial. However, I do not remember having read that the Europeans, who first came to North-America, mention the water-melons, in speaking of the dishes of the Indians at that time. How great the summer heat is in those parts of America which I have passed through, can easily be conceived, when one considers, that in all those places, they never sow water-melons in hot-beds, but in the open fields in spring, without so much as covering them, and they ripen in time. Here are two species of them, viz. one with a red pulp, and one with a white one. The first is more common to the southward, with the Illinois, and in the English colonies; the last is more abundant in Canada. The seeds are sown in spring, after the cold is entirely gone off, in a good rich ground, at some distance from each other; because their stalks spread far, and require much room, if they shall be very fruitful. They were now ripe at Montreal; but in the English colonies they ripen in July and August. They commonly require less time to ripen in, than the common melons. Those in the English colonies are commonly sweeter, and more agreeable, than the Canada ones. Does the greater heat contribute any thing towards making them more palatable? Those in the province of New-York are, however, reckoned the best.

The water-melons are very juicy; and the juice is mixed with a cooling pulp, which is very good in the hot summer-season. Nobody in Canada, in Albany, and in other parts of New-York, could produce an example, that the eating of water-melons in great quantities had hurt any body; and there are examples even of sick persons eating them without any danger. Further to the south, the frequent use of them it is thought brings on intermitting fevers, and other bad distempers, especially in such people as are less used to them. Many Frenchmen assured me, that when people born in Canada came to the Illinois, and eat several times of the water-melons of that part, they immediately got a fever; and therefore the Illinois advise the French not to eat of a fruit so dangerous to them. They themselves are subject to be attacked by fevers, if they cool their stomachs too often with water-melons. In Canada they keep them in a room, which is a little heated; by which means they will keep fresh two months after they are ripe; but care must be taken, that the frost spoil them not. In the English plantations they likewise keep them fresh in dry cellars, during part of the winter. They assured me that they keep better when they are carefully broke off from the stalk, and afterwards burnt with a red-hot iron, in the place where the stalk was fastened. In this manner they may be eaten at Christmas, and after. In Pensylvania, where they have a dry sandy earth, they make a hole in the ground, put the water-melons carefully into it with their stalks, by which means they keep very fresh during a great part of winter. Few people, however, take this trouble with the water-melons; because they being very cooling, and the winter being very cold too, it seems to be less necessary to keep them for eating in that season, which is already very cold. They are of opinion in these parts, that cucumbers cool more than water-melons. The latter are very strongly diuretic. The Iroquese call them Onoheserakatee.

Gourds of several kinds, oblong, round, flat or compressed, crook-necked, small, &c. are planted in all the English and French colonies. In Canada, they fill the chief part of the farmers kitchen-gardens, though the onions came very near up with them. Each farmer in the English plantations, has a large field planted with gourds, and the Germans, Swedes, Dutch, and other Europeans, settled in their colonies, plant them. Gourds are a considerable part of the Indian food; however, they plant more squashes than common gourds. They declare, that they have had gourds long before the Europeans discovered America; which seems to be confirmed by the accounts of the first Europeans that came into these parts, who mentioned gourds as common food among the Indians. The French here call them citrouilles, and the English in the colonies, pumpkins. They are planted in spring, when they have nothing to fear from the frost, in an enclosed field, and a good rich soil. They are likewise frequently put into old hot-beds. In Canada, they ripen towards the beginning of September, but further southward they are ripe at the end of July. As soon as the cold weather commences, they take off all the pumpions that remain on the stalk, whether ripe or not, and spread them on the floor, in a part of the house, where the unripe ones grow perfectly ripe, if they are not laid one upon the other. This is done round Montreal in the middle of September; but in Pensylvania, I have seen some in the fields on the 19th of October. They keep fresh for several months, and even throughout the winter, if they be well secured in dry cellars (for in damp ones they rot very soon) where the cold cannot come in, or, which is still better, in dry rooms which are heated now and then, to prevent the cold from damaging the fruit.

Pumpions are prepared for eating in various ways. The Indians boil them whole, or roast them in ashes, and eat them then, or go to sell them thus prepared in the towns, and they have, indeed, a very fine flavour, when roasted. The French and English slice them, and put the slices before the fire to roast; when they are roasted, they generally put sugar on the pulp. Another way of roasting them, is to cut them through the middle, take out all the seeds, put the halves together again, and roast them in an oven. When they are quite roasted, some butter is put in, whilst they are warm, which being imbibed into the pulp, renders it very palatable. They often boil pumpions in water, and afterwards eat them, either alone or with flesh. Some make a thin kind of pottage of them, by boiling them in water, and afterwards macerating the pulp. This is again boiled with a little of the water, and a good deal of milk, and stirred about whilst it is boiling. Sometimes the pulp is stamped and kneaded into dough, with maize flour or other flour; of this they make cakes. Some make puddings and tarts of gourds. The Indians, in order to preserve the pumpions for a very long time, cut them in long slices, which they fasten or twist together, and dry them either by the sun, or by the fire in a room. When they are thus dried, they will keep for years together, and when boiled, they taste very well. The Indians prepare them thus at home and on their journies, and from them the Europeans have adopted this method. Sometimes they do not take the time to boil it, but eat it dry with hung beef, or other flesh; and I own they are eatable in that state, and very welcome to a hungry stomach. They sometimes preserve them in the following manner at Montreal: They cut a pumpion in four pieces, peal them, and take the seeds out of them. The pulp is put in a pot with boiling water, in which it must boil from four to six minutes. It is then put into a cullender, and left in it till the next day, that the water may run off. When it is mixed with cloves, cinnamon, and some lemon peel, preserved in syrup, and there must be an equal quantity of syrup and of the pulp. After which it is boiled together, till the syrup is entirely imbibed, and the white colour of the pulp is quite lost.

September the 20th. The corn of this year’s harvest in Canada, was reckoned the finest they had ever had. In the province of New-York, on the contrary, the crop was very poor. The autumn was very fine this year in Canada.

September the 22d. The French in Canada carry on a great trade with the Indians; and though it was formerly the only trade of this extensive country, yet its inhabitants were considerably enriched by it. At present, they have besides the Indian goods, several other articles which are exported from hence. The Indians in this neighbourhood, who go hunting in winter like the other Indians nations, commonly bring their furs and skins to sale in the neighbouring French towns; however this is not sufficient. The Indians who live at a greater distance, never come to Canada at all; and, lest they should bring their goods to the English, as the English go to them, the French are obliged to undertake journies, and purchase the Indian goods in the country of the Indians. This trade is chiefly carried on at Montreal, and a great number of young and old men every year, undertake long and troublesome voyages for that purpose, carrying with them such goods as they know the Indians like, and are in want of. It is not necessary to take money on such a journey, as the Indians do not value it; and indeed I think the French, who go on these journies, scarce ever take a sol or penny with them.

I will now enumerate the chief goods which the French carry with them for this trade, and which have a good run among the Indians.

Muskets, Powder, Shot, and Balls. The Europeans have taught the Indians in their neighbourhood the use of fire-arms, and they have laid aside their bows and arrows, which were formerly their only arms, and make use of muskets. If the Europeans should now refuse to supply the Indians with muskets, they would be starved to death; as almost all their food consists of the flesh of the animals, which they hunt; or they would be irritated to such a degree as to attack the Europeans. The Indians have hitherto never tried to make muskets or similar fire-arms; and their great indolence does not even allow them to mend those muskets which they have got. They leave this entirely to the Europeans. As the Europeans came into North-America, they were very careful not to give the Indians any fire-arms. But in the wars between the French and English, each party gave their Indian allies fire-arms, in order to weaken the force of the enemy. The French lay the blame upon the Dutch settlers in Albany, saying, that they began, in 1642, to give their Indians fire-arms, and taught them the use of them, in order to weaken the French. The inhabitants of Albany, on the contrary, assert, that the French first introduced this custom, as they would have been too weak to resist the combined force of the Dutch and English in the colonies. Be this as it will, it is certain that the Indians buy muskets from the Europeans, and know at present better how to make use of them, than some of their teachers. It is likewise certain, that the Europeans gain considerably by their trade in muskets and ammunition.

Pieces of white cloth, or of a coarse uncut cloth. The Indians constantly wear such pieces of cloth, wrapping them round their bodies. Sometimes they hang them over their shoulders; in warm weather, they fasten them round the middle; and in cold weather, they put them over the head. Both their men and women wear these pieces of cloth, which have commonly several blue or red stripes on the edge.

Blue or red cloth. Of this the Indian women make their petticoats, which reach only to their knees. They generally chuse the blue colour.

Shirts and shifts of linen. As soon as an Indian fellow, or one of their women, have put on a shirt, they never wash it, or strip it off, till it is entirely torn in pieces.

Pieces of cloth, which they wrap round their legs instead of stockings, like the Russians.

Hatchets, knives, scissars, needles, and a steel to strike fire with. These instruments are now common among the Indians. They all take these instruments from the Europeans, and reckon the hatchets and knives much better, than those which they formerly made of stones and bones. The stone hatchets of the ancient Indians are very rare in Canada.

Kettles of copper or brass, sometimes tinned in the inside. In these the Indians now boil all their meat, and they have a very great run with them. They formerly made use of earthen or wooden pots, into which they poured water, or whatever else they wanted to boil, and threw in red hot stones to make it boil. They do not want iron boilers, because they cannot be easily carried on their continual journies, and would not bear such falls and knocks as their kettles are subject to.

Ear-rings of different sizes, commonly of brass, and sometimes of tin. They are worn by both men and women, though the use of them is not general.

Vermillion. With this they paint their face, shirt, and several parts of the body. They formerly made use of a reddish earth, which is to be found in the country; but, as the Europeans brought them vermillion, they thought nothing was comparable to it in colour. Many persons have told me, that they had heard their fathers mention, that the first Frenchmen who came over here, got a great heap of furs from the Indians, for three times as much cinnabar as would ly on the tip of a knife.