chivalry--the
chivalry of love and peace, whose weapons were the kindness of their
hearts, the purity of their motives, and the self-denial of their lives.

The term "_voyageur_"[52] literally signifies "traveller;" and by this
modest name are indicated some of the bravest adventurers the world has
ever seen. But it is not in its usual, common-place signification that I
employ the word, nor yet in that which is given it by most writers on
the subject of early French settlements and explorations. Men are often
affected by the names given them, either of opprobrium or commendation;
but words are quite as frequently changed, restricted, or enlarged in
meaning, by their application to men. For example: you apply the word
soldier to a class of men; and if robbery be one of the characteristics
of that class, "soldier" will soon come to mean "robber" too. And thus,
though the parallel is only logical, has it been with the term
"_voyageur_." The class of men to whom it is applied were
travellers--_voyageurs_; but they were _more_; and as the habits and
qualities of men came in time to be better understood than the meaning
of French words, the term, used in reference to Western history, took
much of its significance from the history and character of the men it
assumed to describe. Thus, _un voyageur_ means not only a traveller, but
a traveller with a purpose; an adventurer among the Western wilds; a
chivalrous missionary, either in the cause of science or religion. It
includes high courage, burning zeal for church and country, and the most
generous self-devotion. It describes such men as Marquette, La Salle,
Joliet, Gravier, and hundreds of others equally illustrious, who lived
and died among the dangers and privations of the wilderness; who opened
the way for civilization and Christianity among the savages, and won,
many of them, crowns of martyrdom.

They were almost all Frenchmen. The Spaniards who came to this continent
were mere gold-seekers, thirsting only for wealth; and if they sought to
propagate Christianity, or rather the Christian _name_, it was only a
sanguinary bigotry that prompted them. On the other hand, the English
emigrants came to take possession of the country for themselves. The
conversion of the natives, or territorial acquisition for the
mother-country, were to them objects of barely secondary importance.
They believed themselves persecuted--some of them _were_ persecuted--and
they fled: it was only safe