Murder of Edward Howe—What Parkman says of it—He accuses Le Loutre—His partiality and his ruses—"Les Memoires sur le Canada”—Pichon—What he was.

Cornwallis’s proclamation had revived iu the French the hope of regaining the sympathy of the Acadians, which the events of the last war had severely shaken. De la Galissonniere, the new governor of Canada, hoped it would now be easy to decide them to emigrate. For this purpose he needed a man active, determined, known to the Acadians and able to exert influence over them. He was not slow to understand how serviceable would be Le Loutre, who was already heading a movement in this direction. Thenceforth until the fall of Beausdjour, four years later, Le Loutre, owing to his high standing with the governor, shared with the local authorities the conduct oi affairs in this part of the country. He seems to have inspired all the operations directed against the English in the peninsula.

Surmising that the English would soon occupy Beaubassin and build a fort there, the French vigorously pushed on the works at Fort Beaus<5joui\ They had to make haste and lay waste the English side of the frontier. Having hitherto failed to make the Acadians emigrate voluntarily, Le Loutre, in order to gain his point and to leave the English in a wilderness, decided, as ;i last resort, to fire the dwellings of the Acadians. On the approach of the English, commanded by Lawrence, the Indians, doubtless obeying Le Loutre’s orders, set about their incendiary work and destroyed most of the Acadian houses. The pretty village of Beaubassin, which contained over one hundred buildings,' was reduced to ashes, the church with the rest. The inhabitants, left without shelter, were obliged to take refuge on the French side of the frontier. Lawrence, finding nothing but ruins, and having too small a force to resist if attacked, re-embarked with his troops and withdrew. In September, he returned with seventeen small vessels and seven hundred men. After a slight skirmish with the French outposts, he established himself on. the site of the village of Beaubassin and built a fort there, which he called Fort Lawrence, less than two miles from Fort Beaus6jour, and a few hundred yards from the little river Messagouetohe, which the French looked upon as the frontier between the two countries.

Lawrence was succeeded the following year by Captain Scott, and it was shortly after the arrival of the latter, in October, 1751, that occurred the murder of Edward Howe, which made such a noise at the time and threw a shroud of sadness and stupor over both camps. Howe had been for many years judge of the Court of Admiralty and commissary of the English forces in Acadia. He had been first counsellor to Governor Mascarene, and. when Cornwallis became governor, he sat in the council next to Mascarene. As commissary of the forces, he had had long and continued intercourse with the Acadians, and, as he spoke French fluently, he was Mascarene’s principal adviser and go-between in the efforts made to keep them faithful to the Government. His influence with the Acadians rivalled that of Mascarene, and he was distinctly the man for all difficult missions. He was acknowledged on all hands to be a man of great worth, of tried and trusted bravery and devotion.

The mission confided to him by Cornwallis at Fort Lawrence seems to have been to negotiate the return of the Acadian refugees, to conclude a treaty with the Indians and to withdraw from their hands the prisoners made by them two years before at Grand Pre.

Lawrence and his successor, on the plea that Mascarene “had sold out and was worn out and that Howe, not being a military man, was unlit.” Possibly, Cornwallis’s objection to Howe might not have been accepted, for Lawrence was not appointed his successor. Howe is almost invariably designated under the title of Captain - the reason probably was that he was commissary of the forces and had often been harged with military operations: thus, when Yunapolis was first attacked by Duvivier, he was ordered by Mascarene to dislodge the enemy and to raize the houses that protected them. The battle of Grand Pre. Howe fell grievously wounded beside Colonel Noble. As he was fast bleeding to death from a wound he had received in the left arm, ho asked a French officer to have the wound dressed by their surgeon: but the latter was busy with M. Coulon de Viliiers, also badly wounded; then Howe begged the French officer to transmit his request to the English surgeon. This led to overtures of surrender, and Howe, weakened though he was, acted as interpreter during the negotiations. Ho was allowed to withdraw to Annapolis on parole, and afterwards he was exchanged for M. Lacroix and all the Canadian prisoners then at Boston.

Murdoch says of him: “He left several children. The esteem he won while living, the general usefulness of his conduct under of our colony, and the cruel circumstances of his death commend his memory to us who enjoy a happy, peaceful and prosperous home; for the security and comfort of which we are bound to be grateful to those who pioneered the way in the earliest periods under many and serious circumstances.”

Edward Howe is one of my ancestors. His descendants are numerous in the Districts of Three Rivers and Montreal. Conspicuous among them are Theodore Doucet, Esq., N. P.; his sisters Lady Medleton and the Comtesse de Bligni; Edmond Barnard Esq., Q. C.; Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes, Chief of Police in Montreal: Odilon Doucet of the Post Office Department in Ottawa: Antonio Prince, M.P.P.; Auguste Richard, ViceConsul of France in Winnipeg: Canons Jean and Joel Prince.

Listen to Parkman relating in his own way the circumstances of his death:

“Among the English officers was Captain Edward Howe, an intelligent and agreeable person who spoke French fluently, and had been long stationed in the Province. Le Loutre detested him; dreading his influence over the Acadians, by many of whom he was known and liked. One morning, at about eight o’clock, the inmates of Fort Lawrence saw what seemed an officer from Beausejour. carrying a flag, and followed by several men in uniform, wading through the sea of grass that stretched beyond the Bissagouetche. When the tide was out, this river was but an ugly trench of reddish mud gashed across the face of the marsh, with a thread of half fluid slime lazily crawling along the bottom ; but it high tide it was filled to the brim with an opaque torrent that would have overflowed, but for the dikes thrown up to confine it. Behind the dike on the farther bank stood the seeming officer, waving his flag in sign that he desired a parley. He was in reality no officer, but one of Le Loutre’s Indians in disguise, Etienne leeatard, or, as others say, the great chief Jean Baptiste Cope. Howe, carrying a white flag, and accompanied by a few officers and men, went towards the river to hear what he had to say. As they drew near, his look and language excited their suspicion. But it was too late; for a number of Indians, who had hidden behind the dike during the night, fired upon Howe across the stream, and mortally wounded him. They continued their fire on his companions, but could not prevent them from carrying the dying man to the fort. The French officers, indignant at this villainy, did not hesitate to charge it upon Le Loutre: for, says one of them: "What is not a wicked priest capable of doing?”

The very special interest I have taken in trying to get at the facts in this mournful tragedy will easily be credited on the score of my descent; yet, the true state of the case still seems to me very doubtful. I should never dream, in putting any version of the story before the public, of being as dogmatical as Parkman is. I believe I have seen all the documents he lias seen himself; at any rate, 1 have seen all those he quotes ; however, he gives new details, which I have reason to think have been evolved by his imagination alone. The story is based on three or four different accounts, all more or less contradictory; he has adopted the one which seems to me the least probable, the least honorable. The authority he relies on is so questionable that serious writers light shy of it, or, if they refer to it, they are candid enough to warn the reader and let him know their reasons for distrusting that authority.

Some idea may be formed of Parkman’s calibre as an historian by the fact that this rejected authority, and another almost as questionable, supply much of the material for the two chapters which he devotes to the history of Acadia in his “Montcalm and Wolfe.” These two chapters, one entitled “Conflict for Acadia,” and the other, “The Removal of the Acadians,” contain ninety pages. He skims lightly over the events of the first forty years in ten pages, in order to get quickly to Abbe Le Loutre and to devote to him the greater part of his narrative.

The doings of this ardent abbe were too keenly interesting to Parkman to allow of his losing this opportunity. What a sensational chapter he could create out of the chaos of historic data! Unfortunately, most of what we know of the doings of Le Loutre rests on the two suspicious sources I have just mentioned. The less contemptible of the two is an anonymous work styled “Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.” Parkman takes good care not to say that the book is anonymous, that the author professes a deep hatred for the clergy, that he is so partial to the infamous Intendant Bigot as to call him an honest man. This author's hatred for the clergy is so glaring that Murdoch, who incidentally quotes him in reference to other matters, has the frankness to cast doubts on his veracity :

“It must nevertheless! be remembered, that we have derived our information of Le Loutre from sources not friendly to priests — the French of that period being tinged with the philosophy of Voltaire.”

This is the caution of an historian worthy of the name; but Parkman, as usual, is silent about all such matters, nay, he emphasizes his inferences by laying stress on the fact that he is quoting an authority that is French. His fraud, however, does not stop there. To add weight to his assertions, lie sometimes uses the author vaguely as “a Catholic contemporary as if a Voltairian could be a Catholic, and thus we cannot even guess that he is alluding to the “Memoires sur le Canada.” No alternative is left to the ingenuous reader but to suppose that there is question of some additional authority corroborating what was said by another w riter or confirming the “Memoires” themselves. Of one poor authority he cunningly builds up two apparently good ones. This is killing two birds with one stone; multiplying by dividing. Between such double-dealing and the candor of Murdoch yawns a bridgeless gulf.

Parkman's other authority is very much worse yet,, and, in passing from one to the other, he falls out of the frying-pan into the fire. I refer to Pichon, a French subaltern, who, after having been several years at Louisburg, was transferred to Beausejour in 1758, that is, two years after the events we are now considering Captain Scott was then in command at Fort Lawrence. Pichon found means to secure an interview with him. in the course of which he offered his services, pledging himself, in return for a pecuniary reward and promises of protection, to communicate all the information he could get hold of on the actions and plans of the French, and copies of all the documents that might pass through his hands. Pichon transacted this hateful business with great assiduity, in Ins communications, first with Scott and later on with Captain Hussey, who soon succeeded the former in the command of Fort Lawrence. Pichon continued his treachery at Halifax, Louisburg and Philadelphia; after which he withdrew to England, where he published a pamphlet entitled, “Letters and Memoirs relating to Cape Breton.”

Such was the man and such the part he played. A creature of this stamp is, evidently, not a weighty authority, even if there were nothing worse against him; but we have plenty of other reasons for discrediting his testimony. He was all that his dirty work implied. Captain Hussey, when transmitting to the Governor the information he had received from Pichon, gave his reasons for believing and for doubting him, and frequently pointed out his inconsistencies and the slender credit one could give to his affirmations; so much so that he ended by expressing the opinion that it would be better to cease all intercourse with him. Dr. Brown also discusses the testimony and the writings of Pichon, and very sagaciously sets off the baseness they reveal. Admiral Boscawen would not believe Pichon, and Murdoch, having to quote him with regard to the taking of Beausjour, begs the reader’^ pardon, and alleges as an excuse the absence of all other sources of information.

Without the “Memoires sur le Canada” and Pichon’s numerous details, Parkman would have to lose all his anecdotes about Le Loutre and the most interesting part of his two chapters. He knew how all that would be eagerly devoured, how his gifts of word-painting would tell in the book-market. What was to be done? The situation was ticklish in the extreme, full of temptations and dangers. Must he let so tine a plum fall without plucking it whilst it is within easy reach? True, no one had ever dared to touch it before: but this only made it more of a temptation. Traitors are never cordially believed; how is it possible to bind them by ordinary ties?”

Later, Hussey to Scott: “enclosed you have some letters I received from Pichon, I must confess 1 have some suspicions of his sincerity.. .” Hussey to the Commissioner in Chief, 12th Nov, 1754: “The 8th of this month I received the enclosed letter, which, whether authentic or not, I think my duty to transmit to you. . . I cannot help suspecting Pichon's sincerity, and very often find great inconsistencies in his letters. I cannot but remark, that in this, sir, lie makes the governor of Canada say that he engages Le Loutre and de Vergor to find some plausible pretext to make the Indians breakout, and tells me that de Vergor will take care that they do not attempt anything here."

“He hath also, ever since I have been here, complained how narrowly he is observed anti how jealous Le Loutre—whom in contempt he styles Moses—is of him, which 1 think, is a little inconsistent with his trusting him with his letters so far as to take copies of them, “I think, sir, I hate good reasons to believe that the letter Pichon calls Mr. Dusquesne’s is of his own composing, for I ant this morning informed from. . . .

“Mr. Pichon is also mistaken about. . . . would you think proper of my keeping up this correspondence with him during the winter?” The Rev. Mr. iirown devotes a whole chapter to dissecting Pichon’s inconsistencies and character, with the title: “ Casual hints from the letters of Pichon indicating the state of his mind during his traitorous correspondence.”

Admiral Boseawen, writing to Lord Chatham after the taking of Louisburg in 1758, says: “ 1 received this statement with but a moderate amount of belief in its accuracy, as Pichon my informer was not there himself, and, being ait open scoffer at the priesthood, without impugning his veracity, I think he was prone to believe any canards he heard that tended to disparage French authorities or priests. It resembles too closely the harsh charges of pillage at Beausejour for which we have only his assertion.” Se non e vero, e ben trovato. At last, the inevitable has come to pass; Parkman yields and seizes the forbidden fruit. Still, we must give him credit for having long hesitated before plucking it, as is evident from the great pains he takes to disguise Pichon’s identity and to suppress whatever might depreciate.

An analysis of Parkman’s embarrassment is extremely interesting; it constitutes a sort of vivisection of the ways and means, ruses and shifts that may be adopted by a tricky writer. We witness the fluctuations of a soul buffeted to and fro by glee and distress, and yet maturing the most skilful combinations of a fertile brain.

As to the “Memoires sur le Canada,” he seems to have made up his mind readily enough. After all, thought he, there was no need to follow Murdoch’s example; it was not absolutely necessary to say that the work is anonymous, that it exudes hatred of the clergy. But, in the case of Pichon, the problem was far more difficult; something must be said of the part he played. Here several alternative courses were open to Parkman : he might (1) quote Pichon under the vague designation of “a French officer;” (2) simply refer to his letters or to the page of the volume of the archives for those of his letters that are there; (3) mention his name without comment; (4) acknowledge Pichon’s odious occupation and yet say something in his favor to act as a buffer against the shock of the disclosure; or, (5) finally, take shelter behind some respectable name. Instead of choosing one of these numerous alternatives, Parkman thought the best way out of the tangle was to take them all up one after another, in skilful gradation, so as properly to prepare the reader. Thus, in ease of attack, he had five doors to escape through, not to speak of the windows. In sheer astuteness it would be hard to find a parallel to this feat. All Parkman seems to care about is to cover and protect his retreat in case of an attack, which was very unlikely. Who would be painstaking and suspicious enough to search and ferret out, to weigh and compare? Certainly not the Acadians, whose astuteness would not rise to the level of such refined tricks. If we could have read Park-man's thoughts and seen him chuckling over his discovery of these five tricks for whitewashing or concealing his Pichon. we should have witnessed a scene of lush comedy.

First trick: Pichon’s name does not appear; Packman quotes him in this way: “A French officer says,” “a French writer relates,” doing like the naughty boy in the Spanish proverb "he throws a stone and then puts his hands in his pockets, “ tira la 'piedra y esconde la mano." Second trick: a little further on, he refers to the pages of the volume of the archives, still without naming Pichon. Third trick: he names Pichon without a word of comment. Fourth trick: he tells us very briefly what Pichon was, but does his best to raise him in the reader’s estimation: “he was now acting the part of a traitor, carrying on a secret correspondence. He wan a man of education, born in France of an English mother, he was author of genuine letters relating to Cape Breton, a work of some value.”

Thanks to this method, the reader is not aware that Pichon has been really quoted about twenty times. If he knows nothing of Parkman’s dodges (and how could he know them?), he supposes that the "French officer” was very respectable, and that his testimony is all the more convincing because he relates facts that tell against his fellow-countrymen. In the second alternative, the authority is, apparently, no longer “a French officer,” still less Pichon, but the volume of the archives, there' fore, some official document; this satisfies the reader, and saves him the trouble of consulting that volume. In the third alternative, he reads Pichon’s name; but, as he does not yet know who he is, he pays no special attention to that name. At length, in another chapter, towards the end of the story, and far apart from the first, he learns that a certain Thomas Pichon, a storekeeper, was a traitor to his country; but there is nothing to show that lie is the French officer quoted in another chapter, especially as Parkman, by another characteristic ruse of his, speaks of him, no more as an officer, but as “Commissary of stores." Moreover, the reader, being introduced to a man of whom Parkman writes favorably, lays no further stress on the matter. He has been deftly thrown off the scent.

It must be admitted that all this is “very smart,” and such smartness, with an attractive style, is a quality with which Parkman cannot but be credited. Yet he seems, at last, to have been ashamed of himself, or rather, to have feared lest perhaps his artifice should be discovered; for—and this is the fifth trick—after what he has admitted about the traitor, he adds, while quoting Pichon once more, “Pichon cited by Murdoch.’' Evidently he felt he was not quite safe; he must seek shelter behind a respectable name. But Murdoch, who really does cite Pichon once or twice, speaks of him at some length and tells us immediately and without subterfuge what he was. He cites him anent the siege of Beaus6jour on questions that have no further importance than to satisfy curiosity; and, even then, he seems to have felt scruples, and so excuses himself by the absence of other sources: “In the following account of the siege of Beausjour we have not any English account, official or private, to help us. . . . The main parts of our narrative are derived from Pichon.”

Thus, Murdoch’s use of him, far from being blameworthy, gives us a high idea of the historian's character; while Parkman’s methods produce a diametrically opposite impression, and, in particular, his attempt to enlist Murdoch as an accomplice, aggravates, instead of attenuating, his guilt.

Painful as is the task I have undertaken with respect to Parkman, I venture to think that the interests of historic truth make it imperative. Leaving to others the duty of applying a similar analysis to his other works, I will confine myself to the ninety pages he has written on the subject in hand.

After this long parenthesis I return to the murder of Edward Howe and to Parkman's account of it, drawn from Pichon, who was then at Louisburg; for, as has already been said, he did not come to Beausejour till two years later, in 1758, so that he was not even a resident, still less an eye-witness. We have read how Parkman said: “The French officers indignant at this villainy, did not hesitate to charge it upon Le Loutre, for, says one of them: “What is not a wicked priest capable of doing?'"

Now, I am going to give Pichon’s account of this murder. It is to be found at page 195 of the Volume of the Archives:

“It was very wrongfully and with the greatest injustice that the English accused the French of having a hand in the horrors committed daily by Le Loutre with his Indians. What is not a wicked priest capable of doing ? He clothed in an officer’s regimentals an Indian named Cope, and laying an ambuscade of Indians near to the Fort, he sent Cope to it, waving a white handkerchief in his hand, which was the usual sign for the admittance of the French into the English Fort, having affairs with the commander of tlie Post. The Major of the Fort, a worthy man, and greatly beloved by all the French officers, taking Cope for a French officer, came out with his usual politeness to receive him. But he no sooner appeared than the Indians in ambush fired at him and killed him. All the French officers had the greatest horror and indignation at Le Loutre's barbarous actions: and. 1 dare say, if the Court of France had known them, they would have been very far from approving them ; but he had so ingratiated himself with the Marquis de la Calissonniere that it became a crime to write against him. It is needless to explain further Le Ixjutre’s execrable conduct. Cruelty and inhumanity has ever been sacerdotal from all ages."

On comparing Pichon’s narrative with Parkman’s, it is easy to see that the one is the offspring of the other. We have Parkman clothed in Pichon’s regimentals with some additional trimmings drawn from his imagination. On one point Parkman has been imprudent. By yielding to the temptation of quoting Pichon’s ipsissima verba: *What is not a wicked priest capable of doing?” he has furnished us with indisputable proof that the officer on whom he relied was none other than Pichon, and that Pichon himself was also his only authority for if erring to “the French officers” in general and to their supposed indignation at Le Loutre. Was it possible to doubt that Le Loutre was the real culprit, when Parkman was bucked, apparently at least, by the French officers themselves? “The French officers,” says he, “did not hesitate to charge it on Le Loutre, for, says one of them, etc.”

There is much scientific work in all this, and the public, it is to be regretted, seems indulgent when smartly taken in. “Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare” is one of Machiavelli’s sayings. The spirit that animated Pichon is manifest in the closing sentence: "Cruelty and inhumanity has ever been sacerdotal from all ages.” The hypocritical traitor thus aimed at flattering the prejudices of those whom he was writing for and increasing his chances of reward. Let us note, by the way, that Edward Howe was neither major nor commander of the fort, as Pichon calls him.

Cornwallis, writing to the Duke of Bedford less than a month after the murder, says:

“I have now an affair of more extraordinary a nature to inform you of. Captain Howe was employed on the expedition to Beaubassin as knowing the Country well, and being better acquainted both with the Indians and inhabitants, and. poor man. fancied he knew the French better, and personally those villains de la Come and Le Loutre. His whole aim and study was to try a peace with the Indians and to get our prisoners out of their hands. For which purpose, he had frequent conferences with Le Loutre and the French officers under a flag of truce. La Come sent, one day, a flag of truce by a French officer to the water side of a small river that parts his people from our troops. Captain Howe and the officer held a parley for some time across the river. Howe had no sooner taken leave of the officer, than a party that lay perdue fired a volley at him and shot him through the heart.”

Cornwallis’s account is, clearly, very different from the Pichon-Parkman one. True, Cornwallis speaks dispairingly of the French, and especially of De la Corne and Le Loutre in connection with this murder. It is clear that he entertained suspicions of complicity, but it is equally clear that his suspicions are of a vague, general character. Other accounts there are which Parkman knew of, since he refers to them at the foot of the page. Provost, intendant-commissary (commissaire-ordonnateur) at Louisburg, says distinctly that Howe had been forewarned by Le Loutre himself of the risk he ran by trusting too much to the Indians, and that it was owing to his own imprudence, and for'not having followed Le Loutre’s advice, that he was killed.

“Mr. Howe,” says Provost . . . “having long annoyed the Indian1, took it into his head to risk it again. notwithstanding the warnings of Abbe Le Loutre and even of the Indians themselves. He came, with a white flag, opposite one of them, and the Indian, having a red flag, fired his gun at bun and stretched him dead.”

The iMiW Maillard seeihs to confirm Prevost’s testimony. “ If that man did not wisli to perish in this way, he ought to have carefully avoided any meeting with the Micmacs. He had been warned to that effect shortly before this fate befell him.”

Another version is from M. de la Valliere, an officer who was then at Fort Beausejour and who kept a journal of local events from September 19, 1750 to July 28, 1751; therefore, to all appearances, a man well able to form a correct opinion.

He thus related Howe’s death:

“About the 10th of October, the Indians, who had observed and had been informed that Mr. Howe, commissary of the English troops, often came to walk on the river bank, where he had already had conferences with the officers and missionaries, in order to speak to the inhabitants and persuade them, by making many promises, to come over to tlie English side, went during the night into ambush with some Acadians behind a levee that runs along the river; and, at about eight o’clock in the morning, Stephen Batard went with a white flag opposite on the other side of the river. The Indian, after putting a few questions to Mr. Howe, threw down his flag and gave the signal to his men, who fired immediately on Mr. Howe and wounded him mortally.”

These are the only authorities I know; Parkman mentions another in a note, *Memoires sur le Canada,” which, lie says, declares that Le Loutre was present. So it does, but it does not accuse him of complicity in the murder, evil-minded though its author always is against the priests. Now, whosoever weighs and compares these different accounts cannot help thinking that Parkman’s view, expressed with so much assurance and as though it was the only one, is by far the most improbable. I felt a lively personal interest in ascertaining the truth, and yet I am now far from inclined to advance a positive opinion in favor of any view: in fact, no one could do so with the diverse and conflicting testimonies which we possess.

’This anonymous writer, often quoted by Parkman, is so inaccurate in all that. concerns Acadian affairs that it is better to ignore him. His version of Howe’s murder is a new one and evidently absurd in more than one point. We should bear in mind that the author must have resided in Quebec or Montreal, as his book treats chiefly of Canadian affairs.

Although I have not yet .solved the problem, I will, however, hesitatingly hazard an explanation. Howe, as may have been gathered from Cornwallis’s letter, had been sent to this post with a view to concluding a treaty with the Indians and to withdrawing from their hands the prisoners they held. Having been there some weeks, if not some months, he had already had several conferences with the Indians on the banks of the little river that was the border-line between them, Though he had hitherto been unsuccessful, he still persisted in his efforts. He also had frequent interviews in the same place with Le Loutre and the French officers. My view is, that, on this occasion, Howe went to the usual place to meet an officer, who was perhaps accompanied by Le Loutre; that Cope, chief of one Indian tribe. Le Batard, chief of another, and some other savages, were in ambush along the levee, watching for an interview between Howe and the French officers in order to carry out their purpose; that, directly after the French officer and Le Loutre had left, at the end of the interview, and before Howe had withdrawn, the Indians waved a flag as a signal that they wished to have a parley. This interpretation has, at least, the merit of reconciling otherwise irreconcilable differences in the various accounts. Pichon says Howe went down to the river bank to meet an Indian dressed as an officer. This is scarcely possible, as Cornwallis, who was not likely to be mistaken about a fact which he could verify, says that “Howe and the officer held a parley for some time across the river.” “Howe had, no sooner taken leave of the officer than a party that lay perdue, etc.” The Indians had to make haste in order not to let Howe escape; consequently, the French officer and Le Loutre, if indeed the latter was present, cannot have been far off. Provost pretends that the Indian who killed Howe was Cope; La VallitSre accuses Stephen Le Batard; perhaps both of them had a hand in it.

Cornwallis makes it clear that Howe had a conference with a genuine officer, that he held/or some time a parley with him, that when their parley was over they took leave of each other. It could not have been so if that man had been an Indian in an officer's regimentals, as the fraud would surely have been detected at once ; and this is made clearer by Cornwallis's further statement that it was after taking leave of the French officer that “a party that lay perdue fired a volley.” The absurd story of an Indian clothed in an officer's regimentals is not alluded to by any other than Pichon, and is, inferentially, contradicted by Cornwallis. Moreover, according to Cornwallis, that officer was sent by De la Corne himself, so that, if there was an ambush by others than Indians, we should have to connect with it the commander of the French post and the officer who held the parley. Thus, Parkman, who, for these particulars, had the testimony of the English governor about facts part of which he had been able to verify and control, has preferred to accept in all details the fanciful and absurd story of Pichon, for no other motive, it seems, than the better to connect Le Loutre with this murder.

To sum up in a few words: Parkman’s proof of Le Loutre’s complicity in the murder of Howe has no other foundation than the testimony of Pichon, of Pichon who then, and for the two subsequent years, lived at Louisburg. Directly, inferentially or in essential details, he was contradicted by Maillard, Provost, La Valliere and

Cornwallis, that is, by a distinguished priest, two officers of high rank and one governor. The odds were thus very heavy against the version Parkman sought to foist on the public, and few even of the most artful and unscrupulous writers would have faced such odds. Parkman, however, did. He was bound to get Pichon admitted and to give him a solid backing. Audacity is an insatiable craving which every success develops more and more. Parkman had succeeded so well in recommending the “Memoires sur le Canada” thanks to his little trick of division by which this witness suspected of partiality and irreligion is made to reappear incog, under the veil of “a Catholic contemporary" that he thought he could adopt similar tactics in Pichon’s case : only he must make them more elaborate to fit the higher importance of this new accusation. His first step was to give Pichon an air of respectability by speaking of him, without naming him, as “a French officer.” His next was to make use of this officer as a voucher that all the French officers held the same opinion. But now Parkman was confronted with a more serious difficulty. What was to be done about Maillard, Provost, La Valliere and Cornwallis? Must he reproduce the substance of their version, or should he ignore them completely ? Neither of these extreme courses suited him: he sought and found a third alternative. He ingeniously contrived to put their names at the foot of the page with an unimportant remark about each of them, so worded, however, as to create the impression that they had not taken a different view of the matter, but that the little they had said tended to corroborate his “French officer.”

So with nothing, or something worse than nothing in his favor, and with an overwhelming proof against his charges, Parkman has constructed crushing evidence against Le Loutre. He has so twisted and distigured every authority as to make it appear that Le Loutre was accused and condemned on all sides: by u a French officer,” “all the French officers,” * by Provost, Maillard. La Valliere, Cornwallis, and “Les Memoires sur le Canada.”

Thus, Parkman has given an honorable character to the worst accusations against Le Loutre, particularly to that which implicated him in a murder. After that, he had no doubt people would believe whatever he chose to advance against him.

With such methods you can prove anything. Give Parkman a blackmailing letter from the veriest blackguard, and, if not closely looked after, he might bring about the conviction and electrocution of the President of the United States. Have we not a right to apply Pichon’s virtuous indignation to Parkman and exclaim: “What is not a wickod story-teller capable of doing?” Let us not forget that the first use made of Pichon is about Le Loutre; that, subsequently, he quotes him no less than fifteen or twenty times in five different disguises. He could safely divulge the name and character of Pichon when once he had extracted from him all his venom against Le Loutre, and when the divulging thereof did not remove the euphemism under cover of which he had administered his poison.

It may be very difficult to get a correct idea of the details of Howe’s death; but I refuse to believe that an officer or a priest, great as may have been their prejudices or their fanaticism, can have had the smallest share in a crime of this sort, when they had nothing to gain or more to lose than to gain by even an indirect participation in it. Barbarians alone could have conceived and executed such a crime.

I do not believe that suspicions were then entertained at Halifax of Le Loutre’s complicity in the murder; though, if they were, these suspicions would lead, as a natural consequence, to the further supposition that he was capable of any villainy. But if, in fact, according to the affirmations of Provost and Maillard, Le Loutre had really warned Howe of the danger he ran, we are confronted no longer with a crime, nor with the suspicion thereof, but with a praiseworthy action that exhibits Le Loutre in a less unlikely character and one far more in keeping with his past devotedness as a missionary.

In order to elucidate this mysterious affair, I have, as I usually do in such matters, tried to fathom the motives of the actors therein. I find that, though Le Loutre may have been jealous of Howe’s influence with the Acadians, this jealousy is far from sufficient to implicate him in this murder. My first reason is that, without convincing evidence, no one can be warranted in making a monster of a man who had sacrificed all the comforts of life to the salvation of his soul and to the higher interests of religion. Secondly, this crime would be altogether at variance with what we already know of him. Thirdly, it were impossible to suppose him shortsighted or blind enough not to have foreseen the disastrous and inevitable consequences of such a deed for him and for his dearest interests. Fourthly, to connect Le Loutre with this crime seems necessarily to imply the complicity of certain French officers, in particular of the Commandant De la Come, and thus charge them with the same perverseness and blindness. Xow we have the clearest proofs that these officers had excellent reason to be jealous, and were indeed jealous, of Le Loutre’s influence and of his share iu the conduct of military and civil operations. Moreover, we know that Howe was held in high esteem by these same French officers. Therefore, I infer, they cannot have conspired with Le Loutre against Howe.

What, then, can have been the motive of the Indian assassins? I do not know. Written proofs are wanting, as they are wanting in so many other chapters of this history, where clearly-defined facts are the exception. Though the Indians may have had many a long-standing grudge to wipe out, they probably had no more valid excuse than the harm Howe was doing them by his zeal for the service of England.

However, we are justified in supposing that Le Loutre, by his overstrained ardor and his violent diatribes, may have, indirectly and unconsciously, influenced to some extent the conduct of the murderous Indians. For many years lie had been fanning the flames of fanaticism; and to the savage mind the logical and practical consequence might have been the removal of the man who personified all that made against their nation, against France and Catholicism. This is the conclusion I am inclined to arrive at, in virtue, not of documentary evidence, but of arguments based on the study of human motives and the teachings of history.

Seeing that Parkman undoubtedly aimed at imparting a flavor to his narrative by implicating a priest in this murder, he might have attained his object in a less sensational fashion but more plausibly, had he used the method I have adopted. This method, albeit necessary, he seldom follows. For him, as all his works show, history is merely a clever game of legerdemain, a hunt after anecdotes, a salmagundi of items picked up everywhere without much regard to their origin or their value. He has no misgivings, he cuts the toughest Gordian knots with a few swift strokes of the pen, with a few admirably balanced sentences which give the reader no inkling of the tremendous difficulties involved. Small wonder that he should thus deport himself; analysis would shackle his dainty feet, would overweight his style; analysis is a painful process, which suits the sincere writer alone ; analysis is the weapon of him only who, seeking in history nothing but the truth, is not afraid to place the reader in a position to judge by himself of the facts at issue, and of the value of conflicting testimony. Hence it is that Parkman, even if he had the necessary penetration, seldom sifts and analyzes evidence in such a way that the public may judge of his power of analysis.

The facts that form the basis of the foregoing chapter are important, not only in that they afford full play to Parkman’s peculiar methods, but also in their bearing on the subsequent history of the Acadians. Howe’s death had much to do with the sequel of that sad history. By increasing the irritation of the English against the French it made the deportation possible.