Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada (Three Rivers)
1882-84 - Three Rivers

Three Rivers dates far back in the history of French colonization in Canada. On one of the islands at the mouth of the noble tributary which here enters the St. Lawrence. Cartier, in 1534, planted a cross in the name of the King of France. In 1599 Pontgrave gave it the name of Riviere des Trois Rivieres, from the appearance which two of the islands give it of being three separate streams; Cartier had christened it Riviere de Foie, from the Breton family of that name. Champlain and Pontgrave ascended it as far as the first rapids, and a little later Champlain made the mouth of the stream a rendezvous for the Hurons who joined him in his expedition against the Iroquois, the river being the highway of the tribes who came from the interior to barter furs with the French traders, having been driven away from the St. Lawrence by the Iroquois. Traces of an old Algonquin stockade that stood where the upper town is now, and was destroyed before Champlain's time, were found when the boulevard facing the St. Lawrence was made.

One of the Recollet fathers who came with Champlain in 1615, celebrated the first mass. Colonists came two years later, and a mission was founded. In 1634 a regular trailing depot was established, as Montgrave had proposed to do long before, when Tadoussac was preferred by his superior Chauvin. For a long lime this was the extreme outpost of the French, and was held only by exceeding vigilance and bravery, which more than once saved Quebec from imminent danger. In 1624 Champlain's diplomacy brought together here one of the greatest assemblages of Indians ever known upon the Continent, and secured a treaty of peace between Hurons, Algonquins, Iroquois, and French. The Mohawks could not long resist the desire to use their newly-acquired fire-arms furnished by the Dutch and English, and then followed the bloody scenes which ended only with the arrival of the long prayed-for troops from France in 1665. The Hurons and Algonquins were almost exterminated, and the French were sore pressed. This was the heroic age of the colony so vigorously described by Parkman. The fur-traders of Three Rivers bore their part in it well, and when there was no more fighting to do their venturesome spirits found outlet in
the existing work of exploration, for with the establishment of Montreal the importance of Three Rivers as a trading-post had begun to decline, and the necessity of being farther afield, to say nothing of the half-wild nature of the coureurs de bois, led them on. The missionaries whose outpost, in the crusade against Satan and his Indian allies, Three Kivers also was, had set them an example. Jean
Nicolet lived and died here, and the old Chateau of the Governors, in which La Verendraye lived, still stands.

Not far from the Chateau is the original parish church, the oldest in Canada except the one at Tadoussac. It has the oldest records, for those of Quehec were burned in 1640. They begin on February 6th, 1635, in Pere Le Jeune's handwriting, with the statement that M. de la Violette, sent by Champlain to found a habitation, landed at Three Rivers on July 4th, 1634, with a party of French, mostly artizans, and commenced the work; that the Jesuits Le Jeune and Buteux came on the 8th of September, to be with them for the salvation of their souls, and that several of them died of scurvy during the winter. The chapel of the Jesuit mission severed till 1664, when a wooden church, with presbytery, cemetery and garden, was built..

Picturesque Canada: The Country as it was and is Lucius Richard O'Brien, Publisher - J. Clarke, 1882

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