ON THE ETHNOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 709 



APPENDIX II. 



Ciistoms mid Habits of Earliest Settlers of Canada, 

 By Benjamin Sulte. 



It is intended in this paper to explain the mode of living of the 

 explorers, and afterwards of the first settlers on the shores of the 

 St. Lawrence, as well as the modifications they introduced in their customs, 

 habits, (fcc, in order to conform themselves to the requirements of the new 

 country. There are two phases to be examined in connection with this : 

 from 153.5 to 1631, and from 1632 to 1660 or thereabout. 



Let us follow, first, the explorers of Eastern Canada, and see who 

 they were, how they acted in regard to climate, dress, and food. The men 

 •of Cartier and Roberval (1-535-44) were all Bretons and unaccustomed 

 to residence elsewhere than at home in Brittany. The result was that 

 most of them perished by the effect of cold, bad nourishment, disease, and 

 despair, whilst the present French Canadian would not experience any 

 hardship were he to find himself in the same situation. 



When Champlain (1604-30) describes the miseries of life in Acadia 

 and the lower St. Lawrence, he merely states for our information that his 

 men and himself had acquired very little knowledge in that sense above 

 that of previous explorers. They still persisted in depending upon the 

 provisions brought from France — salt pork, beans, flour, mostly affected 

 by the influence of weather, time, &c., and not always abundant enough 

 to cover the period at the end of which a fresh supply would be sent. It 

 was considered good fortune when one or two of the men could handle a 

 gun and shoot some game. As for the art of fishing, nobody seems to 

 have known anything of it, and these people starved alongside of a world 

 of plenty, since they had the rivers, and lakes, and the forests lying all 

 around their miserable camps. 



The only superiority of the Champlain men over the crew of Cartier 

 consisted in the building of a house or two, but even at this they showed 

 a rather poor conception of comfort. Chauvin, in 1599, went to Tadoussac 

 and left there sixteen of his followers to winter, without the elementary 

 precautions of providing them with eatables and warm quarters. In the 

 spring of 1600 the place was found empty, and none of the men are men- 

 tioned afterwards. The Indians had always been friendly to them, but 

 could not take such inexperienced folks to the woods. The same thing 

 happened to De Monts (1604-5) in Acadia, when nearly all his party died 

 of scorbutic disease and want of food during the rough season. Champ- 

 lain, who knew these facts recorded from the years of Cartier, did not 

 succeed any better in 1608, when he lost twenty men out of twenty-eight. 

 This was repeated yearly afterwards, but in smaller proportions. 



Even as late as 1627 the 'winter residents ' of Quebec were ignorant 

 of the advantage of cutting trees during the summer in order to prepare 

 dry fuel for the October- April season. It was Pontgrave who advised 

 them to do so, and no doubt they recognised it was a great forethought. 

 They used to pick up whatever the wind would blow down of branches in 

 the forest, and if that material proved insufficient on extremely cold days, 

 then they tried their hands at felling some trees near by and supplying 

 them in blocks to the steward's room. No wonder that the writings of 

 the period in question so often complained of the evil of smoke and the 

 small quantity of heat produced by the burning of such green wood. 

 Stoves being unknown to the hivernants in Canada, a caboose supplied 



