Champlain's Dream – David Hackett Fischer, 2008 ★★

Bouquet for a New World Man

Say what you will of the human condition, but biographies are often more fun, and usually more readable, when written with an ax to grind.

David Hackett Fischer, a marvelous writer and a great historian, takes one of America’s most likable explorers and spends over 600 pages explaining just how magnificent Samuel de Champlain was. The result is sprawling, convincing, and dull.

Maybe I’m too cynical, but when a historian writes about someone the way Fischer does here, I feel a need to cleanse myself by reading Kitty Kelley or Albert Goldman. The way he goes on, you’d think he owed the 16^th-century Frenchman rent and was six months behind:

This recognition of common humanity in the people of America and Europe – and all the world – lay at the heart of Champlain’s dream. It was also the center of his vision of a new world. Part of it grew from the idea of a truly Catholic Church, in the best and most literal sense of catholic as reaching out to all humanity…

The above passage is useful not only in explaining the book’s enigmatic title, but also in communicating its effusively positive flavor.

A statue of Champlain outside Canada's Parliament in Ottawa depicts the explorer holding an astrolabe, a navigational instrument of his day. The thing is, notes Hackett, he's holding it upside-down: "One wonders if the artist was making a political statement." https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/capital-facts-the-one-oddity-about-the-samuel-de-champlain-statue/.

Champlain indeed was one of the most admirable figures of his day, endowed with a rare combination of bravery and humanity that made his explorations into the land later known as Canada highly unique. For the most part, white settlement of the Americas was exhibit A in Hobbes’ contention of life as nasty, brutish, and short. Canada, by contrast, presented an alternative where natives were treated with a measure of real respect, at least while Champlain called the shots.

Fischer stresses this point over and over: “His object was to live among the Indians and work with them to create a lasting basis for peace, and to enforce it by joint effort where necessary by quick, strong and decisive measures, followed by conciliation.”

A big problem with Champlain’s Dream is how little Fischer trusts you to remember the first 50 times he says this, rather than use his 600-odd pages to draw more on the facts of Champlain’s life. In fact, while Champlain wrote extensively about his travels, little is known about the man himself, including such things as his date of birth and how exactly this commoner came to hold such power in the courts of two different French kings.

He’s kind of a mystery figure, which apparently charms Fischer:

He wrote thousands of pages about what he did, but only a few words about who he was. His published works are extraordinary for an extreme reticence about his origins, inner thoughts, private life, and personal feelings. Rarely has an author written so much and revealed so little about himself. These were not casual omissions, but studied silences…

Champlain at center, discharging an arquebus in battle against the Iroquois in 1609, in what Fischer notes is his only self-portrait. Champlain's victory won the lasting respect of his Huron, Algonquin, and Montagnais allies. Image from https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=resources&s=char-dir&f=champlain.

The book begins with Fischer discoursing at length about an image Champlain drew of himself firing an arquebus in battle against Iroquois warriors, calling out the trace of a beard behind his weapon and how he appears “firmly in command of himself” despite being little more than a stick figure on the page. It’s the kind of thin gruel Fischer keeps spooning up.

By book’s end, Fischer is recounting a story told by an American Indian three centuries after Champlain’s death in 1535, regarding an ancestor and a dream of a white man Fischer guesses for no discernible reason must have been Champlain. He then circles back for some teleological pablum to connect it back to his sunny-Jim thesis: “In 1832 Black Hawk had it recorded on paper, in the hope that we might remember this story of Indian and European leaders who met in peace, and shared their dreams, and lived together.”

Fischer also spends time explaining how Champlain must have been the bastard son of France’s King Henri IV, how good a husband he was (even though his wife married him under duress and deserted him as he aged), and how beloved he was (despite some bitter fallings-out with comrades which Fischer doesn’t explain so much as brush off). For all its bulk, there’s much Fischer doesn’t nail down as much as assert as true because it must be so.

What does Fischer succeed at getting across? Mostly it is stuff people do want when they pick up a book to read about Champlain. Beyond being a nice guy, Champlain was singular in other ways.

Champlain is greeted in Quebec in 1608 by friendly Indians, whose welcome Champlain would earn. "He did not approve of their religion or their law, and probably he let them know that. But always he treated them with respect and they worked together to reconcile vital interests." A 1909 painting by George Agnew Reid from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_de_Dieu_(ship). 

He traversed the Atlantic over 20 times, but is best known for his explorations by land and river. He forged friendships with a number of Indian tribes. Most important, he had the vision to see New France through many hard, desperate winters and some initial failures regarding where to site his settlement:

He also struggled against the apathy of his superiors:

More than a few French leaders did not discover the importance of their American colony until the English tried to take it away from them.

That colony, Quebec, would be where Champlain made his name and where he is best known today, though his actual historical footprint extends eastward to Nova Scotia (nexus of an earlier Champlain-led colony, Acadia) and as far south as Maine.

A plan of Champlain's first North American colony, at Saint Croix Island, drawn by Champlain himself. Today it occupies the Maine side of the Canadian-U.S. border along the St. Lawrence River, and has national landmark status in both counties, though no visitors are allowed. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Croix_Island,_Maine.

While one might think of Champlain as a subject of French or Canadian history, Fischer makes a case for understanding him from an American perspective, too. His greatest battle against the Mohawk in 1609 took place, in Fischer’s telling, in Ticonderoga in New York. And by running things the way he did, with humanity and creativity, Champlain shone an unflattering mirror at the behavior of British, Dutch, and Spanish explorers farther south.

Do nice guys finish last? In the race to colonize the Americas, maybe so. France benefited from furs and fish collected in their colonization efforts, but they didn’t see either the immediate riches of the Spanish (who Fischer notes were particularly cruel in their handling of Native Americans) or the longer-term prosperity of the British.

How it went down elsewhere: The execution of Inca ruler Atahualpa by Spaniards in Ecuador. According to Fischer, Champlain employed a softer touch. An 1891 illustration by A. B. Greene from http://www.eonimages.com/media/8f85c2ea-3c6f-11e0-aed6-6dd480da5460-execution-of-atahualpa

Part of this came from what France occupied: the colder, northern part of North America, where agriculture was sharply confined to a handful of months and settlers had to make do eating eels – which as it turned out they rather liked, after being turned on to it by the friendly Montagnais.

Yes, Champlain enjoyed good relations with the Indians, no doubt helped by his nuanced approach to Christianity and respect for local ways. But New France in his day was barely settled, and Indians there did not find themselves as hemmed in as other nations further south. Would Champlain’s humane and respectful approach been as practical if tried in Jamestown?

There was much suffering and little settling for most of Champlain’s career. At tiny Saint Croix Island in 1604, site of Champlain’s first colony (and today an uninhabited corner of Maine), the settlers were all but wiped out as Champlain neglected their need for winter fuel. Later colonies struggled, too, even Quebec as Fischer notes: “Champlain had left sixty habitants in the late summer of 1624-25. In his absence, that number fell to fifty-two over the winter of 1624-25, and forty-three in 1625-26.”

In 1615 Champlain led another attack of his Indian allies against the Onondaga near present-day Syracuse, New York, this time employing a siege engine (at right) called a "cavalier." Champlain was himself wounded and his attack repulsed, but the Onondaga stopped their northern aggression for a while. Image drawn by Champlain from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_Iroquois_Fort.png.

Fischer does remind you at times that this is the same person who wrote Washington’s Crossing, the best example I know of a historian telling a riveting tale that at the same time plunges you into detailed scholarship. Mind, there are only flashes of that here, mostly about Champlain’s problems at home:

In the gardens of Fontainebleau, the honk of Canada geese made a mocking chorus on the fate of New France.

A little later:

It seemed that the only people in France who consistently made money out of America were the lawyers…

That Champlain’s expeditions to France were ultimately a success does put sardonic asides like these in the proper relief, showing how much the man overcame.

One reason Fischer may come off so strident is because he is pushing against what he calls the “iconoclasts” who make politically-correct hay about such details as Champlain going to war against the Mohawk, never minding he did so in support of Indian allies who suffered horribly from Mohawk attacks and whose friendship was vital to the success of  New France.

David Hackett Fischer in a recent portrait. He has made his name with a wide range of history books that blend two schools of historians, the academic and the popularizer. Image from https://www.welchforbes.com/perspectives/nehgs-fall-dinner-honoring-david-hackett-fischer/.

Fischer makes a lot of good points about the biases of Champlain’s detractors. But they don’t really add to an understanding of the man himself, and going on about them so reads like academic cattiness.

The book includes some beautiful illustrations as well as detailed appendices of everything from measures Champlain used to the significance of a forged portrait used for years to represent Champlain’s elusive likeness.

There is even a long section on French-Canadian folkways, showcasing Fischer’s protean skill as a sociologist but totally lacking in Champlain. Fischer’s knowledge and writing skill make this an edifying detour enjoyable in parts, but the hole in the doughnut is what you remember when it’s over.