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Champlain's Journal: Hunger strikes Indians By Joel Banner Baird, Free Press Staff Writer • February 17, 2009 Careful planning and stockpiling allowed Samuel de Champlain and most of his fellow explorers to survive the winter of 1608–09 in a small fort along the St. Lawrence River that would later become the city of Quebec.
Dysentery and scurvy posed the greatest threats to the Frenchmen — but the native Montagnais Indians suffered far worse: Game had been scarce during their late fall and early winter hunts, and the hunter-gatherers couldn’t fall back on agricultural stores.
In his journal, Champlain documents a chilling, mid-February incident: “On the 20th, some Indians appeared on the other side of the river, calling to us to go to their assistance, which was beyond our power, on account of the large amount of ice drifting in the river. Hunger pressed upon these poor wretches so severely that, in not knowing what to do, they resolved, men, women and children, to cross the river or die, hoping that I should assist them in their extreme want.”
The Indians’ canoes broke up in the ice. Many managed to throw themselves up onto a large ice floe, “crying out so that it excited intense pity, as before them there seemed nothing but death.”
Miraculously, the current brought the refugees to safety.
“They proceeded to our abode, so thin and haggard that they seemed like mere skeletons, most of them not being able to hold themselves up. I was astonished to see them, and observe the manner in which they had crossed, in view of their being so feeble and weak. I ordered some bread and beans to be given them. So great was their impatience to eat them that they could not wait to have them cooked.”
Champlain’s journal entries, published in 1613 as “The Voyages of Samuel de Champlain,” were translated by Charles Pomeroy Otis and published in Boston in 1878. Otis’ translation is in the public domain, and can be found online at www.gutenberg.org. Next week: A diet borne of desperation.
Contact Joel Banner Baird at 660-1843 or
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. http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20090217/NEWS02/90216041 (VCNAA Webmaster's Note):
Voyages of Samuel De Champlain — Volume 01, 02, and 03
Available for viewing online or download from the links below:
Voyages of Samuel De Champlain — Volume 01 (English) (as Translator)
Voyages of Samuel De Champlain — Volume 02 (English) (as Translator)
Voyages of Samuel De Champlain — Volume 03 (English) (as Translator)
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