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Updated: June 20, 2025
"Allow me to present you, Monsieur de Catinat," said the Seigneur de Sainte Marie solemnly, "to my wife, Onega de la Noue de Sainte Marie, chatelaine by right of marriage to this seigneury, and also to the Chateau d'Andelys in Normandy, and to the estate of Varennes in Provence, while retaining in her own right the hereditary chieftainship on the distaff side of the nation of the Onondagas.
In France the seigneur insisted that the peasantry should bake their bread in the great oven of the seigneury, paying the customary toll for its use. But in Canada, as the intendant explained, this arrangement was utterly impracticable. Through the long months of winter some of the habitants would have to bring their dough a half-dozen miles, and it would be frozen on the way.
"Manette wanted it when the leaves first flourish and the birds come back," he said gaily; "and so she's not going to live with me at the Seigneury, you see. No, there it is, as fine a house, good enough for a prince, and I shall be there alone, unless " His eyes met hers, and he caught the light that was in them, before the eyelids drooped over them and she turned her head to the fire.
Tobacco was grown in the colony, and every habitant had a patch of it in his garden; and then as now this tabac canadien was fierce stuff with an odour that scented the whole seigneury. The art of smoking a pipe was one of the first lessons which the Frenchman acquired from his Indian friends, and this became the national solace through the long spells of idleness.
He knew he could torture the man before him, and he was determined to do so, if he did not get his way upon the matter of his visit. "You can teach me justice twice and be thanked once," he answered. "These things I ask for were much prized by my friend, the late Seigneur. I was led to expect that this Seigneury and all in it and on it should be mine. I know it was intended so.
This was only natural, for the great waterway formed the colony's carotid artery, supplying the life-blood of all New France so far as communications were concerned. From seigneury to seigneury men traversed it in canoes or bateaux in summer, and over its frozen surface they drove by carriole during the long winters.
He was also fond of honors, even minor ones, and plumed himself on the slightest recognition from official circles. Habitants who by years of hard labor had saved enough to buy some uncleared seigneury strutted about with the airs of genuine aristocrats while their wives, in the words of Governor Denonville, "essayed to play the fine lady."
Bands of marauding redskins would creep stealthily upon some outlying seigneury, butcher its people, burn everything in sight, and then decamp swiftly to their forest lairs. The colonial authorities, helpless to guard their entire frontiers and unable to foretell where the next blow would fall, endured the terrors of this situation for many years.
In recounting the services rendered to the colony by the new baron the patent mentioned that 'he has already erected at his own cost a fort supported by four strong towers of stone and masonry, with a guard-house, several large dwellings, a fine church bearing all the insignia of nobility, a spacious farmyard in which there is a barn, a stable, a sheep-pen, a dovecote, and other buildings, all of which are within the area of the said fort; next to which stands a banal mill, a fine brewery of masonry, together with a large retinue of servants, horses, and equipages, the cost of which buildings amount to sixty thousand livres; so much so that this seigneury is one of the most valuable in the whole country. The population of Longueuil, in the census returns of 1698, is placed at two hundred and twenty-three.
Having no other means of obtaining funds with which to equip an expedition, La Salle sold his seigneury and at once began his preparations. In July, 1669, he set off with a party of about twenty men, some of whom were missionaries sent by the Seminary of St. Sulpice to carry the tidings of the faith into the heart of the continent. Up the St.
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