French race.

CHAPTER VI.

FRENCH POSSESSIONS.

THE great rival of the English race upon our

soil reappears. It is time to turn back beyond Spanish, Dutch, and Indian wars, nay, beyond the growth of the English colonies, to trace the progress of the French in America. No other nation, it will be found, not even the English, asserted claims or projected achievements of equal vastness.

New

We left the French the masters of New France

France. a name of vague extension originally, but subsequently confined, as will be remembered, to Acadie and Canada. Acadie being itself shorn of its original dimensions, the province of Canada remained the chief division of New France.

System

of gov

The French, like the English colonies, were not always under the immediate government of the ernment. mother country. An intermediate authority, vested in the Company of New France, prevailed for thirty-five years, (1627-62.) For twelve years more, a French West India Company was commissioned to administer the affairs of the colony, (1663-75.) But with these bodies were associated some officers of royal appointment, so that there was no time when the colony was wholly removed from the oversight of the sovereign. Nor was the season during which the two companies lasted by any means so long or so decisive as the periods of the royal government. New

France, like Old France, was essentially a monarchy, and a monarchy in which the monarch was growing out of all proportion to the people. Its institutions were of the past. A governor general, representing the monarch, with an intendant for a prime minister, a council of notables for a nobility, and a host of ecclesiastics, with a bishop at their head, (from 1659,) constituted the authorities of the colony. The ruling class amongst the people was that of the seigneurs, or lords of the manor; their tenants, called habitans, holding land of them by feudal tenure. press was allowed; no learning of a liberal nature was encouraged. The education of the province was in the hands of the religious orders, whose names and numbers were almost as manifold as in the mother-land. Under these influences, the colony could not but be greatly restricted. The main body of the people were necessarily dependent, unable to act for themselves or for their country, the few alone having the will and the power to urge on the work of colonization and of dominion.

Relations

No

Such were the internal drawbacks upon the progwith In- ress of New France. Of those which we may dians and call external, the chief were the relations of the English. French with the Indians and the English. Those

with the friendly and Now it may seem that the

with the Indians were of two kinds with the unfriendly tribes. amicable intercourse of the French with the large proportion of the natives around them must have been entirely conducive to their prosperity. But it did not prove to be so, on account, principally, of the tendency of the French settlers to sink to the level of their Indian allies, rather than to raise these to themselves. The Frenchman, whether missionary or soldier, explorer or trader, appeared to find a fascination in savage life which he could not resist ; and yet it was the vices rather than the virtues of the

He

Indian character which he admired and imitated. became indolent, treacherous, morosely cruel, in many instances far more of a savage than any Indian. As to the hostile tribes, it is enough, at the present moment, to name the Five Nations, with whom, as will appear hereafter, the French were at war for a century. As to the English, it must be left to the next chapter to set forth the obstacles which they presented to French advancement. It is sufficient to observe that these hinderances from without, joined to those from within, formed a bristling barricade over which all the ardor and all the discipline of the French character would find it difficult to mount. The stronger must have been the impulses to have extended the limits of New France so far as we shall now find them.

Acadie,

The boundaries of Acadie stretched from the including northern coasts, through all the east of Maine, as far Maine. as the Kennebec, the French asserted; as far as the Penobscot, the English allowed. With the portions of the province in the north we have no further concern than to observe that they included all now called Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Cape Breton, together with indefinite regions beyond. Maine was but feebly held by the French. Missions at the mouth of the Penobscot and on the Kennebec, with a post or two for trade, comprised all that could be called settlements. But for the towns and forts of the neighboring parts of Acadie, the east as well as the west of Maine would have fallen into English hands.

Canada,

Passing over the cities and fortresses of Central including Canada, as foreign to our soil, but not without reNew membering their importance, let us pursue the York, Wiscon- Canadian settlements that were made or attempted sin, Michupon actual United States territory. The first to igan. advance was, as usual, a missionary, Le Moyne, who, with a few associates, labored amongst the Five Na

tions, then at peace. A colony was founded in Western New York, but only to be abandoned on account of renewed warfare between the French and Indians, (1656–58.) A few years later, Allouez, another missionary, led the way up the lakes, and founded the mission of St. Esprit, on the southern shore of Superior, in the present Wisconsin, (1666.) Two years after, Dablon and Marquette established a mission at Sault Ste. Marie, in the present Michigan, (1668.) Other missions arose in the adjoining forests and on the contiguous shores. After the missionary came the trader, and after the trader generally the soldier; so that to the mission house there were added dwellings, barracks, and, in time, a fort, whose sounding title frequently drowned the peaceful name of the mission. Thus was Canada extended beyond the St. Lawrence and its tributaries, beyond all neighborhood of the English colonies, into the valleys and the wildernesses of the west.

The Mis

Illinois.

Still more distant realms were reached. Father sissippi. Marquette, of the Michigan mission, hearing of a great river towards the setting sun, resolved to find and to explore it. Before he started, his brethren, Allouez and Dablon, penetrated into the interior of Wisconsin and Illinois, (1672.) Marquette, with a few companions, found the Mississippi, as he had been directed by the natives, and sailed upon its waters as far down as Arkansas, (1673.) On his return, he established a new mission near the present Chicago in Illinois.

The tidings from the Mississippi kindled new Louisiana. plans of trade, new visions of dominion. To begin upon them, there soon appeared a Frenchman, La Salle,in youth a Jesuit, in manhood a trader and an adventurer of the highest stamp amongst the colonists of New France. Repairing to the French court, he obtained a commission to complete the discovery of the great western river, in consid