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Michigan Chapter Six Cadillac as Feudal Lord
Still, they ought not to be driven off nor abandoned. The question is how to maintain them.
The intendant, Duchesnau, writes: "Many of our gentilshommes, officers and other owners of seigniories lead what in France is called the life of a country gentleman, and spend their time in hunting and fishing. As their requirements in food and clothing are greater than those of the simple habitants, and as they do not devote themselves to improving their land, they mix themselves up in trade, run into debt on all hands, incite their young habitants to range the woods and send their own children there to trade for furs in the Indian villages and in the depths of the forest, in spite of the prohibition of his majesty. Yet with all this they are in miserable poverty. " Says the intendant Cham-pigny, "It is pitiful to see their children, of whom they have great numbers, passing all summer with nothing on them but a shirt, and their wives and daughters working in the fields. " While their rank and station did not permit them to do manual labor, the same restrictions did not apply to the female members of their families. Champigny appeals to the king for aid to Repentigny with his thirteen children and Tilly with his fifteen. "We must give them some corn at
once, " he says, "or they will starve. " He adds, "I pray you grant no more letters of nobility, unless you want to multiply beggars. " So the granting of letters of nobility was incontinently cut off, very greatly to the disappointment of Cadillac. Doubtless he would not have been unduly puffed up by the distinction. He might have been a little more conspicuous figure in the colony as Marquis of Detroit, but it would have added nothing to his place in history. He was obliged to make the best of the situation as a simple sieur, with his seigniory and all its responsibilities and appurtenances to look after.
Michigan
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