Early marriages were a result of the way people lived in New France. Into the 1650s, New France’s handful of settlers depended for their survival on the annual arrival of supply ships from France, but in that decade the reliance on imported food abruptly Ended. As immigrants continued to arrive and take up land, New France began to produce more than enough to feed itself. The price of bread went into a decline that would last almost seventy-five years. Farming in New France became a subsistence occupation, in which people grew enough to feed themselves rather than producing mostly for commercial sale. Land was abundant. Even in the narrow St. Lawrence valley, there was never a shortage of adequate farming land. As a result, the engage and his wife who decided to stay in New France, or the children they raised, could always acquire sufficient land to support a family. A family, in fact, was what a settler needed, for it was almost impossible to run a farm without many hands. Large families, often a burden in the land-scarce Old World, were a blessing and a key to success in the New.
The seventeenth-century engage who decided to stay after his three years’ labour usually planned to become an habitant, the tenant-proprietor of a family farm. He began with some small savings from his hired service and a concession, or conditional lease, to perhaps sixty arpents (an arpent is about one-third of a hectare, or slightly less than an acre) of primeval forest. His first task was not to plant but to clear: simply to attack the woods with an axe and let in the sunlight. As the clearing slowly progressed, he had to build a shelter and begin assembling the elements of a farm. He could pause to work for wages or go into debt, but to have a worthwhile farm he had to keep clearing an arpent or so every year. He might start this work alone—at least as long as men outnumbered women, some progress towards self-sufficiency was almost a prerequisite to marriage—but sustained effort was always a family enterprise. If he married the daughter of settlers, her family might assist them. If the couple had savings, they might buy the lease of someone who had already cleared some land, for there were always leases available as habitants turned to the fur trade or town life, returned to France, or simply sought new locations. Whatever the case, clearing and building became a couple’s lifework. As historian Louise Dechene writes of the pioneer habitant, “At his death, thirty years after he received the concession, he possesses thirty arpents of arable land, a bit of meadow, a barn, a stable, a slightly more spacious house, a road by the door, neighbours, and a pew in the church. His life has passed in clearing and building.” For those who endured, the later years might be eased as the farm became productive and a growing family shared the burden. This arduous progress, as heroic in its way as any of the epic battles of New France, was the essential element in creating a permanent settled population along the St. Lawrence.
Far from any markets that would bid up the price of their produce, the habitants
L’Atre, a comfortable eighteenth-century stone farmhouse (now a restaurant) on the lie d’Orleans, reflects the traditional style of New France’s domestic architecture: steep bellcast roof covered with thatch (later, as here, with cedar shingles), dormer windows, thick walls, sloping gable ends derived from northern France, and centrally positioned parlour chimney.
Grew what they needed. Bread was the staple of their diet, so wheat was New France’s basic crop, although there might be a little corn, oats, barley, and a bit of tobacco. Most farms had a vegetable garden. There would be just enough livestock to support a family, and with even a little meat, dairy products, and eggs, the habitants were better fed than most European peasants or urban poor. Self-sufficiency extended to most of what the farmers used and wore: simple tools, woollens from their sheep, linen from homegrown flax, shoes from hand-cured leather. Since the work of the farm required the labour of every member of the family, there was barely a separate “domestic” sphere. Women tended the farm along with the men and could take over its management when widowed. Children were unlikely to receive much education beyond a rudimentary catechism (rural illiteracy rapidly rose towards 90 per cent), and they were soon working in the fields beside their parents.
The form of the standard farmhouse evolved early, particularly the steep roof to shed snow. Most farmhouses were built of wood, in piece-sur-piece construction: a timber frame filled with smaller, horizontal, squared logs. Sometimes plastered or whitewashed, the houses were roofed with thatch or boards. Inside there would be a single room or perhaps two, divided by a central chimney and fireplace. In the seventeenth century, few farmhouses had stoves, and most used the fireplace for both heat and cooking. The furnishings were spartan: the minimum in furniture, mostly homemade, and almost no decoration. In these rooms and a narrow attic lived the large habitant families.
Were the habitants good farmers? Many of the immigrants did not have farming backgrounds, and lack of education, participation in non-farm work (such as the fur trade), and isolation from markets probably kept habitant farming methods simple And resistant to change. The little farms arduously hacked out of the surrounding forest certainly looked primitive, though there is evidence of crop rotation and other techniques broadly comparable to those used elsewhere at the time. The key to habitant agriculture is probably not skill or ignorance but adaptation to local conditions. With land abundant and labour scarce, there was no need to learn or adopt the intensive farming practised in parts of Europe where the conditions were reversed.
World History
