Why are Ada and I standing in front of a statue that looks like a granite Transformer? Because it's a memorial to a real tough man by the name of Jean Chicot, that’s why. The French army of the 17th century had a special cavalry battalion called Les Argoulets,, basically Musketeers on horseback. In Quebec the word was used generally in reference to any exceptional shooter, hunter, fighter, or all around man’s man. So in 1665 when seven men accepted an offer of free land to establish an out-post isolated from the village/fort of Ville-Marie (later Montreal), their small community became known as Côte des Argoulets (The Argoulet Coast). The title was well earned. Within a year two of the men were killed by Iroquois arrows and later another would be scalped and left for dead (he survived to live another 14 years). Even before the Indian attacks started the territorial governor had asked one of the most seasoned and well-known colonists why he had not accepted the offer. He responded that he did not want to risk so much as those men.
On 4 February, 1665, these seven men swore an oath to each other to help build each others houses, protect their families, and provide any other assistance that might be necessary. The community that these men and their families created was later named the village of Verdun, and this city would eventually be incorporated as a burrow of the city of Montreal. This statue, titled "l'Argoulet", is a memorial to their contribution.
Ada and I also spent some time in the Quebec National Archives (can you have national archives if you're not a nation?) and we found some of the documentation of the events I've described. Below are images of the contract ceding a plot of land to Jean Chicot and his wife (Interestingly enough for you feminists, only "Jean Chicot and his spouse" are mentioned in the contract, never Jean by himself). I haven't finished a complete transcription and translation of the document but based on what I have gleaned so far the contract appears to do the following: describes the dimensions and location of the land to be given, establishes water rights, establishes rights to use the St. Pierre Prairie as common property for pasture and levies a tax on the Jean's property for its maintenance, and requires Jean and his wife to develop the land by measurable criteria.
If you're getting bored, here are 3 good reasons you should care about this:
1) If you're an American and you're a Cicotte (not just in my immediate family) you are almost definitely related to this person, which is pretty cool if only because this document is super old. Old stuff is cool, so you are cool by association, if only a little. However I don't plan to collect copies of every mortgage ever taken out by a Cicotte, so read on.
2) The document is historically relevant outside of family history. It is signed by the territorial governor of Ville-Marie (Montreal, that is) Paul Chomedey Sieur de Maisonneuve. M. de Maisonneuve is -how do I say this?- he's kind of a big deal. If you couldn't already tell that by the length of his name, check out his statue in downtown Montreal:
If nothing else, the fact that M. de Maisonneuve is a household name in Quebec increases your coolness by association (see above).
Conversely, M. de Maisonneuve was not well-liked by the territorial government and seen as a failure. He was called back to France in 1665 and died years later in obscurity in Paris. He failed because his responsibility was to create a colony that could feed funds and resources into France's empire-building machine. He tried all kinds of things to get the colony going, like subsidized wages for young men to clear forest and trap beaver, and importing orphan girls so the men would have a reason to stay (the latter program was started by Jean Talon but administered locally by Maisonneuve). With limited resources and virtually no infrastructure, Montreal was unprofitable to the French government up until the territory was lost to the English. But he's a hero in Quebec, which leads us to the third reason you should care:
3) This contract was part of a sea-change in the human experience. Maisonneuve's policies did not build the feudal empire that the French government had hoped for. It was much harder for them to tyrannically control peasants and force them to risk life and limb for the king's coffers from thousands of miles away, which is why Maisonneuve obtained permission from the king to provide personal incentives to the colonists to promote growth. In France at that time it would have been unthinkable for a peasant, born to protestant parents and married to an orphan girl, to own land. In contrast, the New World was by necessity a place where what you could do was more important than who your parents were.
Maisonneuve did not leave a legacy of French greatness, instead he left behind a government that encouraged risk-taking for personal growth and established equality of opportunity, the very image of the New World that would attract floods of people looking for a better life or a second chance. Interestingly enough, a few years after Maisonneuve's departure the Argoulet Coast was placed under a feudal lord and renamed Verdun. But the damage was done, and no one could turn back the tide of individual liberty sweeping across the continent. It's what makes me proud to be the descendant of an Argoulet.
