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Updated: June 6, 2025
The darkest hour of his adversity in that grim winter at Stadacona found him still undismayed. He came to these coasts to find a pathway to the empire of the East. He found instead a country vast and beautiful beyond his dreams. The enthusiasm of it entered into his soul. Asia was forgotten before the reality of Canada.
They seem for some time to have mingled freely with the Indians of the Stadacona settlement, especially during the month which yet remained before the rigour of winter locked their ships in snow and ice. Cartier, being of an observing and accurate turn of mind, has left in his narrative some interesting notes upon the life and ideas of the savages. They had, he said, no belief in a true God.
And vpon that day about noone, there came a great number of the people of Stadacona, men, women and children, who told vs that their Lord Donnacona, Taignoagny, and Domagaia were comming, whereof we were very glad, hoping to retaine them.
The old-fashioned dwellings, with steep lofty roofs, accumulated in narrow alleys, seemed to date back to an age long anterior to Montcalm's final struggle with Wolfe on the heights; even back, perchance, to the brave enthusiast Champlain's first settlement under the superb headland, replacing the Indian village of Stadacona.
Then Donnacona prayed our Captaine to tell these women that hee should come againe after ten or twelue moneths, and bring Donnacona to Canada with him: this hee sayd only to appease them, which our Captaine did: wherefore the women, as well by words as signes, seemed to be very glad, giuing our Captaine thanks, and told him, if he came againe, and brought Donnacona with him, they would giue him many things: in signe whereof, each one gaue our Captaine a chaine of Esurgny, and then passed to the other side of the riuer againe, where stood all the people of Stadacona, who taking all leaue of their Lord, went home againe.
Fifty men, divided into watches, were kept on guard all night, and, at every change of the watch, the Indians, across the river in their lodges of the Stadacona settlement, could hear the loud sounds of the trumpets break the clear silence of the winter night. We have no record of the life of Cartier and his followers during the winter of their isolation among the snows and the savages of Quebec.
It was pitiful to see them droop and droop like caged birds, and finally die one by one. Poor old Donnacona! I expect we shall find his spirit back on the heights of Stadacona if we ever cross the ocean again." "That was a mistake," replied Cartier, "but one never knows just what will be the results of an action. I did it for the best.
He finally anchored off Stadacona, where Quebec now stands, and on the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin in the next month, the Holy Sacrifice was for the first time offered on the Canadian shores. Cartier next visited the Indian settlement of Hochelaga, situated on an island formed by the St. Lawrence and a branch of the Ottawa.
Cartier brought back with him two sons of the Indian chief of a tribe he saw at Gaspé, who seem to have belonged to the Huron-Iroquois nation he met at Stadacona, now Quebec, when he made the second voyage which I have to describe.
On Cartier's return to Stadacona he found that his officers had become suspicious of the intentions of the Indians and had raised a rude fort near the junction of the river of St. Croix and the little stream called the Lairet. Here the French passed a long and dreary winter, doubtful of the friendship of the Indians, and suffering from the intense cold to which they were unaccustomed.
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