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MICHIGAN AS A PROVINCE 1 - 5
When Cadillac came to Detroit he brought with him as a cadet his oldest son, Antoine, a lad of ten years. His wife and other members of his family were left at Quebec in the charge of Father Germain. In August, 1701, Father Germain wrote to Cadillac that his wife desired to join him at once. Madame Tonty, the wife of Cadillac's captain, proposed to accompany her. Father Germain writes: "Every one here admires the magnanimity of these two ladies who certainly have courage to undertake so laborious a journey to go and join their husbands without fearing the great difficulties or the fatigue or other inconveniences which must be endured by roads so long and so rough for persons of their sex. Well, sir, is it possible to show more sincere conjugal affection or a firmer attachment? Some one said pleasantly to them the other day that they would pass for heroines. But on some other ladies more fastidious saying to Madame de Ia Mothe, in order to dissuade her from this journey, that they would be willing if they were going to a pleasant and fertile country where they could always get good company, as in France, but they could not understand how people could make up their minds to go to an uncultivated and uninhabited place where they could have but a very dull time of it in such great solitude, she very discreetly replied that a woman who loves her husband as she ought to do, has no attraction more powerful than his society, in whatever place it may be; all the rest should be indifferent to her. "* Madame Cadillac was an energetic, capable woman, as she had already demonstrated. Having made up her mind to go to Detroit she set out on the journey a month later accompanied by Madame Tonty. She took also her second son. The two daughters were placed in a convent at Quebec. The travellers got no further than Three Rivers where they were obliged to spend the winter.
MICHIGAN
Page 66
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