His expedition against the Iroquois.

with a war party of Algonquin Indians, he made his way southward from Quebec, and on the banks of the lake that now bears his name attacked and routed a band of Iroquois. A similar expedition a few years later was not so successful, and the only result of espousing the cause of the Algonquins against their ancient foe was to make the warriors of the Five Nations the inveterate enemies of the French.

DEFEAT OF THE IROQUOIS. FROM CHAMPLAIN'S VOYAGES, 1613. The Iroquois were a powerful and capable race. All the tribes of the North and East stood in dread of them.

The five nations.

As

far west as the Mississippi, as far east as Maine, as far south as the Carolinas, they were known and feared. They are said to have called Lake Champlain the gateway of the country. Such it may be said to be to-day. It forms with the Hudson a line of communication with the Atlantic; it is the road to Canada from the south. Hence in all wars between the nation that possesses Canada and that which holds the Atlantic coast this valley must be a place of great strategic importance. The Iroquois seem to have felt the strength of their position.

THE IROQUOIs Country, REPRODUCED FROM THE JESUIT RELATION OF 1665.

manot

they too for some years held the Iroquois as allies. Thus tribes, and when the Dutch were supplanted by the English York, more fortunate, made friends with these life in Canada miserable." The Dutch of New enduring enemies of the French. "For over a century the Iroquois found no pastime equal to rendering These people were now made by Champlain's action the

Results of
Iroquois enmity.

the settlements of the middle Atlantic coast were in their early years protected from French attack by this living barrier, the Iroquois-a barrier impassable by French war parties. Moreover, partly because of the Iroquois, the French made their explorations into the west and northwest rather than to the south and southwest. Lake Superior was known before Lake Erie, and the Mississippi had been traversed before the waters of the Ohio were known. In consequence, for a long time the French and English settlements diverged, the French occupying positions on the Great Lakes and the rivers of the far West long before they dared to come near the English by occupying places immediately beyond the mountains. The great struggle between France and England did not come till, under different conditions, the authorities of Canada tried to take and hold strategic points in the eastern portion of the Ohio Valley.

Early French explorers.

The seventeenth century is a picturesque period in the history of Canada. Bold adventurers and soldiers, brave and patient priests, hardy fur traders and restless rovers, all did their part in exploring the great West, carrying the lilies of France, the cross of the church, or the brandy and gewgaws of the merchant into the remote solitudes of the interior. As early as 1634 Jean Nicollet was in Wisconsin and Illinois. A few years later Jesuit priests preached their faith before two thousand naked savages at the falls of Ste. Marie. Soon after this Allouez began a mission in this same region, and for thirty years he passed from tribe to tribe in that far-off wilderness, preaching and exhorting and striving to implant his faith. Marquette gathered the Indians about him at Sault Ste. Marie, and passed even to the farther end of Lake Superior, seeking to win souls for the Church. St. Lusson (1671), at the Sault, with solemn ceremony before a motley concourse of braves, proclaimed the sovereign title of the great monarch of France to all the surrounding lands, " in all their length and breadth, bounded on the one

side by the seas of the North and West, and on the other by the South Sea." In 1673 Joliet and Marquette paddled up the Fox River in their birchen canoes, floated down the Wisconsin, and came out on the broad waters of the Mississippi. Descending even beyond the Missouri, they returned by way of the Illinois and the Chicago portage. But most conspicuous among these bold explorers is Robert Cavalier de la Salle, a marvel of a man, resolute, brave, inflexible of purpose. Danger, disappointment, hardships, treachery, beset him, but he overcame them all and effected. his object. In the year 1682 his little flotilla of canoes floated down the Mississippi to its mouth, and La Salle took possession of the vast valley in the name of Louis XIV. Thus the dauntless French explorers had traversed the great West, while the English settlements nestled close to the Atlantic seaboard, almost within sound of New France. the surf. France possessed the two great gateways and highways to the interior of the continent.* And thus New France was founded with its two heads, as Parkman has said, one in the canebrakes of Louisiana and the other in the snows of Canada. The first settlement in Louisiana was in 1699, and New Orleans was founded in 1718. By this time little groups of Frenchmen had settled down upon the banks of the Western rivers. Here and there a fort was built. Detroit was founded by Cadillac in 1701. Even thus early throughout the West the points of military advantage were chosen.

The methods of French colonization form a sharp contrast to those of the English. The Englishman came to

* It should be noticed that the English were hemmed in between the mountains and the sea. While the mountains acted as a barrier to the extension of the English colonies, they also served to protect the settlers from attack. Doubtless the chief reason why the English did not extend their settlements at an early day into the far West was the fact that they were chiefly interested in industrial and commercial life, in clearing farms, in founding towns, and in building ships.