Champlain's journal: Leaving the New World

By Joel Banner Baird, Free Press Staff Writer • August 11, 2009

Did the days of August 1609 fly by for Samuel de Champlain?

He names a lake after himself, but otherwise records very little in his journal in the weeks after the skirmish with the Iroquois that solidified a trading alliance between northern tribes and the French.

He describes a victory celebration at Tadoussac, which began before the Montagnais had beached their canoes:

“On approaching the shore, they each took a stick, to the end of which they hung the heads of their enemies, who had been killed, together with some beads, all of them singing.

“When they were through with this, the women undressed themselves, so as to be in a state of entire nudity, when they jumped into the water, and swam to the prows of the canoes to take the heads of their enemies, which were on the ends of long poles before their boats: then they hung them around their necks, as if it had been some costly chain, singing and dancing meanwhile.”

A few days later, Champlain politely accepted a decomposing head — ostensibly a gift for the French king.

He documents little else in his journal until early September, when he sets sail back for France.

In mid-October, at the Fontainebleau palace, he was granted an audience with King Henry IV. “Here I reported to him in detail all that had transpired in regard to the winter quarters and our new explorations, and my hopes for the future in view of the promises of the savages called Ochatequins (Huron), who are good Iroquois.

“I at once waited upon His Majesty, and gave him an account of my voyage, which afforded him pleasure and satisfaction. I had a girdle made of porcupine quills, very well worked, after the manner of the country where it was made, and which His Majesty thought very pretty.

“I had also two little birds, of the size of blackbirds and of a carnation color (probably the scarlet tanager); also, the head of a fish caught in the great lake of the Iroquois, having a very long snout and two or three rows of very sharp teeth.”

If Champlain presented Henry with a month-old head, he made no mention of it in his journal.

Never one to dawdle, Champlain traveled to Paris, then began planning for a return trip to Quebec. He had his sights set on the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay, the western territories — and a northwest passage to Asia.

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