Champlain's Dream

 

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    Distinguished historian David Hackett Fischer, tells us how Champlain, a pragmatic, thoughtful French explorer of the early 1600’s, who experienced the cultures of the North American Indians whom he encountered differently from other Europeans who were "exploring"* at the same time.  Champlain had emerged from the bloody violence of France’s religious wars with a surprisingly open mind. He made it his life’s work to induce people of diverse backgrounds to cooperate for the common good of all people. His belief in humankind, whatever their national origin or religion, allowed him to approach the Indigenous American Sauvage with an attitude of respect and understanding unusual for a 17th Century European.

    A dream - so ephemeral a thing! Here is one that Champlain experienced 400 + years ago in the forests north of the lake in what is today upstate New York which is now named for him. 

    With a war party of sixty Indians, Champlain and two other Frenchmen traveled into the forbidden and dangerous territory of the warlike Iroquois, with whom the Wendat and most of the other Algonquin speaking tribes were eternally at war.  

    The punitive force traveled at night. Every morning, as they drew closer to their enemies--those "Guardians of The Eastern Gate," the Mohawk--the Wendat warriors asked Champlain “if he had dreamed about their enemies.” For many days, “no” was his answer.  

    Then, one morning, about 11 a.m. he awoke and called the Indians to him. At last, as they’d seemed to expect, he’d dreamed!

    “I dreamed I saw men in the lake near a mountain. Our enemies, the Iroquois (were) drowning before our eyes. I wanted to rescue them, but you, my allies, told me that we should let them all die, for they were worth nothing.”

    After recounting this, Hackett Fischer adds: “The Indians recognized the place in Champlain’s dream as a site that lay just ahead, and they were much relieved…To Champlain’s Indian allies, dreams not only revealed the future. They controlled it.”

    A few days later, the Mohawk encountered European firearms in battle for the first time. Surprised by a man in armor and two sharpshooters with long-distance, deadly weapons stationed amid the enemy’s ranks, they were speedily defeated. Champlain’s dream, seen as a prophecy, had come true with a resounding victory. 

    To me it appears that Champlain, surrounded by an enormous, primeval forest and living and traveling among the people who had long inhabited it, had moved into another kind of consciousness, one which transcended his European world-view of linear time.  The chiefs were optimistic after he shared his dream with them, pleased that their new ally from Over-The-Water had dreamed so positively. Champlain, privately, may have been amazed by the effect this had had on these battle-hard warriors. 

    He must have been even more amazed by the astonishing success of the battle, which happened just a few days later. Montagnais, Huron and Algonquin, and a few Frenchmen armed with guns, met and defeated the Mohawk near the site of Fort Ticonderoga.

~~Juliet Waldron

* "Exploring" Champlain was exploring, but certainly the Wendat, Montagnais, Huron, Iroquois, Abenaki and Passamaquody etc. already knew the shape of this land. Language shapes POV.