CHAPTER IV FRENCH DISCOVERIES AND SETTLEMENTS 32. New France founded. Soon after Cabot had discovered Newfoundland for England, French fishermen settled in little groups along its shores and there dried the fish that they afterwards sold in the Mediterranean ports. In 1534 the adventurous navigator, Cartier, discovered for France the St. Lawrence River; 1 but it was nearly three quarters of a century after that before any lasting settlement was made by French people upon our mainland.' In July, 1608, Champlain, whom the King made Governor of New France, as French possessions in America were henceforth called, established his little capital on the lofty cliff of Quebec. He thought that this situation could readily be defended against Indian attacks and any possible assault from the English - for the latter claimed that Frenchmen had no right whatever to settle in a country that had been discovered by an English explorer. Three years after this Montreal was founded, and gradually there sprang up other little villages along the St. Lawrence and its tributary streams. Because at first there were no roads, the early French in Canada traveled mostly by boats; and for this reason every man wanted to live where a river passed his door. 33. Champlain's explorations. Governor Champlain was a remarkably wise and courageous man, and one of the most 1 He ascended the stream "until land could be seen on either side"; and the following year (1535) repeated his voyage, going up as far as the site of Montreal. The Indians of that place, who had never before seen a white man, treated him "as if a god had come down to cure them"; and he delighted them by giving them knives, hatchets, and beads, and having his buglers blow trumpets in their honor. 2 In 1604 Champlain and others settled at Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia), on the east shore of the Bay of Fundy. They afterward removed to Quebec. 1 venturesome of American explorers. He traveled far and wide with native guides through the dense wilderness of Canada, canoeing 1 upon rivers with swift currents and perilous rapids and falls, and visiting the wildest and most hostile tribes and making treaties with them. Once he journeyed, amid great dangers, as far west as Lake Huron; it was in 1615 that he discovered this inland sea.2 Champlain won for his people the warm friendship of the neighboring Algonquian tribes, among whom he introduced the fur trade. Once, however, he made a serious mistake. A year after building Quebec he good-naturedly went with a war party of these neighbors to help them fight their old enemy, the fierce Iroquois, who lived chiefly in the valley of the Mohawk River, in the present State of New York. The Iroquois had never before seen a white man; and their own weapons being spears and bows and arrows, they of course knew nothing about firearms. When Champlain met them on Lake Champlain, which he discovered and named, and fired at them with his heavy, large-barreled gun, he killed several; the others fled in terror before this new and mysterious weapon.3 The people of New France soon came bitterly to regret this easy victory over the Iroquois, for the latter were the most skillful fighters among North American savages and never forgave the injury. In time, they themselves obtained guns from the Dutch and the English to the south and east of them; and for every Iroquois killed on that memorable day hundreds of Frenchmen in later years paid forfeit with their lives. 1 Europeans soon became skillful in the use of the light bark canoes made by the natives. 2 The Great Lakes were found by the French in this order: Huron and Ontario, 1615; Superior, about 1629; Michigan, 1634; Erie, 1640. Although near the French settlements, Erie was the last to be visited by Frenchmen because the Iroquois of New York were masters of this water; and the French, who greatly feared them, were long obliged, in making their voyages into the Far Western country, to go by way of the Ottawa and French Rivers and Lake Huron. 3 It is interesting to know that a few weeks after this unfortunate event took place on Lake Champlain, Henry Hudson was exploring Hudson River for the Dutch, only a hundred miles to the south. The enterprising Champlain selected several sturdy young men of his colony to live among the Canadian Indians for years at a time, until they had learned the customs and languages of the savages and knew how to overcome fatigue and meet danger in the great wilderness. After this vigorous education these Painting by J. L. G. Ferris. Courtesy, Glen Falls Insurance Co. CHAMPLAIN'S FIGHT WITH THE IROQUOIS This probably occurred a little north of where Fort Ticonderoga was afterwards built consin. By means of explorations such as these, the boundaries of New France were greatly extended.1 34. French relations with the Indians. Frenchmen managed to live on better terms with their Indian neighbors, excepting the Iroquois, than did the English. There were two good reasons for this: (a) Englishmen cut down the forests and opened farms, and thus drove away the game on which the Indians chiefly lived. The French colonists cared little for farming, raising only produce enough for their own need; their chief wish was to conduct the fur trade2 and explore the wilderness. 1 In traveling through the interior of the continent, the French made much use of the "portage" paths which the Indians had from early days established between the headwaters of streams flowing in opposite directions. By means of these they readily passed back and forth between waters flowing into the drainage system of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, and those waters that reach the sea through the Mississippi River. (See the map of the principal portage paths, on page 35.) 2 Furs were then very fashionable in Europe. Wherever the early explorers (b) The French often married Indian wives, and mingled with the natives like brothers. On the other hand, Englishmen did not hide their opinion that they belonged to a superior race, for which the red men would have to make room. The natives were proud and did not relish this treatment; so most of them at first bitterly hated the English, although in later years they realized that the latter nearly always treated them with fairness. 35. Fur-trade posts. At convenient points along the rivers and lakes of New France, the fur traders built small warehouses of logs or stone, in which to store their furs. Sometimes the warehouse was a little fort, or "post," with a few soldiers to protect the traders and their property against unruly Indians who might seek to rob or molest them. In time there came to be a long line of these posts, sometimes several days' journey apart, extending all the way from Quebec on the St. Lawrence, up the Great Lakes by way of Detroit, Mackinac, and Green Bay, and down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, to New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico.1 Few of them were strong enough to repel a civilized foe; but as a rule they could resist the attacks of savages, who had no artillery. From such posts the traders would roam through the vast regions of Canada and the country west of the Allegheny Mountains, bartering with the Indians, and often meeting with thrilling ad ventures. 36. Jesuit missionaries. Among the brave men who traveled most widely in New France were the members of the Society of Jesus, called Jesuits, who sought to convert the Indians to Christianity. In order to do this, the black (especially the French and the English) went, they asked the natives to bring them furs, and gave them in exchange gayly colored glass beads, cheap rings and other ornaments of brass, iron kettles and axes, cloths, blankets, and firearms, articles which the Indians greatly coveted. This trade soon became the principal occupation of the people of New France. 1 Small villages grew up outside the walls of many of these old French posts, and later some of them became American towns of importance. Detroit, Mackinac, and Green Bay, for instance, were important and strongly built posts, and guarded the entrance to large regions of fur-bearing wilderness. gowned Fathers 1 lived in native villages far in the depths of the forest, learning the daily life and manners of the red man. In the face of the gravest dangers, the Jesuits made long journeys into the wilderness, seeking new tribes to instruct; and thus they often visited regions that no other white men had yet seen. Often they were very badly treated by the wild men whom they sought to help, and suffered terribly MAP OF FRENCH FORTS AND PORTAGE ROUTES from starvation and miseries of every sort; some were even put to death by the savages, with cruel tortures. 37. The French explore the Mississippi. Father Marquette, whose little chapel was on the Straits of Mackinac, is the best known of these Jesuit missionaries. In 1673 he set out in company with Louis Jolliet, who had already won fame as an official explorer, to find the south-flowing Mississippi, about which the Indians had told him, and to 1 The Indians called them "black gowns," because of their uniform, a long black robe. 2 Marquette was a native of France. While upon this famous expedition he became ill and spent the next winter at a Jesuit mission in Wisconsin. In the following spring (1674) he returned to preach to the Illinois Indians, but had to |