13. From the beginning of this colonization, it was plain that France and England were the real rivals for the control of eastern North America. The open struggle between them began in 1689, and lasted some seventy years in a series of wars, until France was thrust out of the continent in 1763.

14. It is easy to point out certain French advantages. At home French statesmen worked steadily to build a French empire in America, while the English government ignored English colonies. The thought of such an empire, too, inspired French explorers in the wilderness, - splendid patriots like Champlain, Ribault, and LaSalle. France also sent forth the most zealous of missionaries to convert the savages. These two mighty motives, patriotism and missionary zeal, played a greater part in founding New France than in establishing either Spanish or English colonies. Moreover, the French could deal with the natives better than the less sympathetic English could, and their leaders were men of far-reaching views. Why, then, did France fail?

15. The chief external cause of French failure was the relentless hatred of the Iroquois. Curiously enough, it was the ability of the French to make friends with the natives which brought upon them this terrible scourge. Champlain (§ 12) came first in touch with Algonkin tribes, and won their friendship. He accompanied these allies on the warpath against their Iroquois foes, and so earned Iroquois hatred for New France.

The Iroquois hindered French success in four distinct ways. They annihilated the Huron Indians, whom French missionaries, after many heroic martyrdoms, had Christianized, and upon whom the French had hoped to build a native civilization. At times they struck terrible blows at New France itself.1

They shielded the English colonies, during their weakness, from French attack. The French in Canada could strike at the English only by way of the route followed later by Burgoyne.

1 Mrs. Catherwood's Romance of Dollard tells the glorious story of one critical conflict. Dollard and his band of heroes were to Quebec what Leonidas and his Three Hundred were to Greece.

§ 15]

THE FAILURE OF FRANCE

11

Everywhere else the wilderness between Canada and the English settlements was impassable except by prowling bands; and this one route was guarded by the Iroquois.

They changed the whole course of French exploration, turning it to the north. The home of the confederacy was in Western New York,-"the military key to the eastern half of the continent." (So Winfield Scott called it, and Ulysses S. Grant afterward.) It commanded the headwaters of the Delaware, Susquehanna, and Mohawk-Hudson system, and the portage

CHAMPLAIN'S FIGHT WITH THE IROQUOIS, on the shores of Lake Champlain. From Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain (Paris, 1613), the volume in which this lake is first given Champlain's name.

at Niagara from Erie to Ontario, as well as part of the headwaters of the Ohio.

The French leaders had keen eyes for military geography and would certainly have seized this position at any cost, if they had been able to learn its character. They would then have fortified the Ohio by a chain of posts, as they did their other waterways; and this would have buttressed their position on the Mississippi and the Lakes so as to defy attack. But they did not learn the importance of the Ohio valley until

too late. Montreal was founded in 1611; but, instead of reaching the interior from there by the upper St. Lawrence and Lake Erie, French traders turned up the Ottawa, so as to avoid the Iroquois, and reached Lake Huron by portage from Nipissing. Lake Erie was the last, instead of the first, of the Lakes to be explored. It was practically unused until after 1700, and the country to the south remained unknown even longer. Navigation was by fleets of canoes, which had to land frequently. Thus, because of the Iroquois, the French could not follow the southern shore, nor use the portage at Niagara. When they awakened to the value of the Ohio valley, English traders had begun to push into it, with cheaper goods;1 and the opportunity for France was already lost.

16. Inherent weaknesses in French colonization, however, were the fundamental cause of French failure. Three essentials were lacking: homes, individual enterprise, and political life.

New France was not a country of homes or of agriculture. Except for a few leaders and the missionaries, the settlers were either unprogressive peasants or reckless adventurers. For the most part they did not bring families; and they remained unmarried or chose Indian wives. Agriculture was the only basis for a permanent colony; but these colonists did not take to any regular labor. Instead, they turned to trapping and the fur trade, and tended to adopt Indian habits. The French government in Europe sought in vain to remedy this by sending over cargoes of "king's girls," and by offering bonuses for early marriages and large families. But even with this fostering, French colonization did not produce numbers. In 1754 when the final struggle for the American continent began, France had three times as many people as England had, but in America she had only a twentieth as many colonists.

Paternalism smothered private enterprise. In all industries, New France was taught to depend upon the aid and direction

1 England's industrial superiority over France was one factor in winning America. After 1725 that superiority was marked.