Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 3

The French in Gaspé, 1534 to 1760

by David Lee

Part I: The Background

Introduction

Various explanations have been suggested for the origin of the name Gaspé and, as Dr. W. F. Ganong and others have concluded,¹ it probably derives from a Micmac word meaning "land's end." Originally this seems to have referred to the prominent rocky cape which is the first land seen upon making the southeast approach to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The name is probably Micmac because these Indians are believed to have inhabited the shores surrounding the Bay of Gaspé when this area became a popular French fishing ground in the late 16th century. When Jacques Cartier visited the bay in 1534, the Indians he found there were Iroquoian and on his second voyage, a year later, he called the cape "Honguedo." Perhaps this was the Iroquoian name for the region adopted by previous European visitors, for Cartier does not indicate that it was he who gave it that name. The cape continued to be called Honguedo (in various spellings) for 50 years. For some time it was believed that the name "Gaspé" had been in use in Cartier's time but this was due to a misleading statement by Richard Hakluyt in his English edition (1600) of the Cosmographie of Jean Alfonse (Roberval's pilot in 1542). Here he interpolated the phrase "Bay of Molues, or Gaspay" into Alfonse's account of his journey to America, replacing his original "La baye de Onguedo." Alfonse's sketch map of the area says, "Terre Unguedor."² André Thevet, writing about 1586, also talks about "Le Cap de Ognedor."³

Towards the end of the 16th century, the region was occupied or re-occupied by Micmacs and the name "Gaspé" replaced "Honguedo" in general use by visiting fishermen. The earliest known use of the name is in 1599; it is in a contract loaning money to a La Rochelle shipping outfitter to provision a ship being sent to Newfoundland and "aux Ysles de Gaschepé" to fish and trade in furs.⁴ In 1600 "C[ape] Gaspei" appeared on a map by Pierre Berthius. In 1601 "b. gaspi" and "gaspay" appeared on Levasseur's world map.⁵ And in May, 1603, Samuel de Champlain "sighted Gachepé, a very high land, and began to enter the river of Canada."⁶

The name Gaspé can refer in general to the Bay of Gaspé, the Cape of Gaspé (later usually called "le Forillon," however) as well as to the entire Gaspé Peninsula. Some people prefer to use the old (at least as old as Chrétien LeClercq, 1691) but more literary "Gaspésia" with reference to the entire region or peninsula, but in this study the more familiar "Gaspé" will be used when talking about the entire region.

Gaspé as a region possessed a very definite economic unity during the French regime. One species of fish, the cod, dominates the history of Gaspé throughout this period and gives it its historical unity. Cod was found as far up the coast of the St. Lawrence River as Matane⁷ and extended around the peninsula almost to the Restigouche River. There must also be included in Gaspé the islands of Bonaventure and Percé (the "Ysles de Gaschepé" of 1599) and such offshore cod fishing grounds as the Orphan Banks.

As R. G. Trotter has illustrated,⁸ Gaspé was part of the famous Appalachian barrier which had such a profound effect on the history of the English colonies by limiting their settlement to the Atlantic seaboard for so long. Trotter does not pursue the Canadian analogy but the Gaspé Peninsula was certainly a large barrier for ships to circumnavigate between Acadia and Canada and this discouraged shipping and trade (for example, in fish) between these two regions of New France.⁹ But most historians of New France ignore Gaspé altogether, perhaps due to scanty historical documentation. Marcel Trudel claims that in New France, the eastern limit of Canada was at Rimouski, and his definition of Acadia does not include Gaspé either.¹⁰

Gaspé was more than an empty no-man's land between Acadia and Canada and more than an obstacle to communication between the two. The Gaspé barrier itself experienced an historical development. By the 1750s it had a population of 500 to 600 permanent settlers. Its importance to France is also indicated by the hundreds of fishermen who came there to fish and cure their cod every summer. Cod not only provided Gaspé with its unity but also with its distinctiveness. Perhaps the history of Gaspé as a region is similar to that of Newfoundland, but it is certainly distinct from the history of Acadia and Canada.

We shall examine, then, the distinctiveness of Gaspé as an historical unit and its place in the French Empire.