IV.

THE FRENCH COLONIZE THE NORTHWEST.

THE English colonies in America began with villages and outlying farms; the French colonies, with missionary stations, fortified posts, or trading houses, or with the three combined. The triple alliance of priest, soldier, and trader continued through the period of colonization. Often, but not always, settlements grew up around these missions or posts; and these settlements constituted the colonies of New France.

Immediately following the visit of Le Caron and Champlain to the " Mer Douce," in 1615, the Récollet Fathers established missions on its eastern side, which, however, soon passed into the hands of the Jesuits. These missions were stepping-stones to the regions beyond. The reader who has followed the narrative thus far will not be surprised to learn that the French beginnings in the Northwest were within the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Some of these beginnings long ago disappeared, others became permanent settlements. Saint-Esprit, at La Pointe, planted by Allouez in 1665, is one example of the first; Saut Ste. Marie, planted by Marquette in 1668, of the second. This village is the oldest town in the Northwest-fourteen years older than Philadelphia, and one hundred and twenty years older than Marietta, O. A mission was planted on the island of Michilimackinac within a year of that at the Saut. This establishment was soon removed to Pointe St. Ignace, on the mainland, to the north and west, and afterward to the northern point of the Southern Peninsula. But we are not able to trace a continuous

TO NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

history from the mission to the Mackinaw of the fisherman and tourist of to-day.

The beginnings made in Lower Michigan bear such important relations to facts of larger moment that time must be taken to point them out.

In previous chapters I have spoken of the English colonists as contented with their prosaic life, and as not seeking to enter the regions beyond the Mountains and the Lakes. This requires some qualification. Within the State of New York are the Hudson and the Mohawk Rivers. The Dutch, having a passion for beaver equal to that of the French themselves, early occupied the confluence of the two streams, and then began throwing out advanced settlements along the line of the smaller one. The English conquest of the Dutch colony did not at once change its character. Furs long continued the leading staple of its commerce. The two rivers presented the readiest means of reaching the west found south of the St. Lawrence. From the very first, the people of New York cultivated good feeling and commercial relations with their neighbors of the "Long House;" and these, whether in peace or war, were able to influence all the tribes to the very sources of the Mississippi. After they had crushed the Hurons, these intractable warriors claimed Southwestern Canada as their own; and after their western conquests they set up a claim to all the lands to the Mississippi, south of the southern boundary of Michigan. No nation was ever more jealous than the Six Nations; but the skilful diplomatists of New York succeeded in winning from them many valuable concessions, some of which they did and some of which they did not understand. These will be more fully noticed in another place; but here it is important to remark that after the colony had passed into English hands, they sometimes permitted the New York traders to pass through their country to the Lakes. Once on the shore of Lake Erie, the traders were but a few days' paddling from the best beaver-grounds in the whole Northwest-those of the lower Michigan Peninsula.

"The region between Lake Erie and Saginaw was one of the great beaver-trapping grounds. The Huron, the Chippewas, the Ottawas, and even the Iroquois, from beyond Ontario, by turns sought this region in large parties for the capture of this game, from the earliest historic times. It is a region peculiarly adapted to the wants of this animal. To a great extent level, it is intersected by numerous water-courses, which have but moderate flow. At the head-waters and small inlets of these streams the beaver established his colonies. Here he dammed the streams, setting back the water over the flat lands, and creating ponds, in which were his habitations. Not one or two, but a series of such dams, were constructed along each stream, so that very extensive surfaces became thus covered permanently with the flood. The trees were killed, and the land was converted into a chain of ponds and marshes, with intervening dry ridges. In time, by nature's recuperative process -the annual growth and decay of grasses and aquatic plants— these filled with muck or peat, with occasional deposits of boglime, and the ponds and swales became dry again.

"Illustrations of this beaver-made country are numerous enough in our immediate vicinity. In a semicircle of twelve miles around Detroit, having the river for base, and embracing about one hundred thousand acres, fully one-fifth part consists of marshy tracts or prairies, which had their origin in the work of the beaver. A little farther west, nearly one whole township, in Wayne County, is of this character.”1

Dutch and English traders
When Denonville came to

Such temptation as this the could not be expected to resist. Canada as governor, in 1685, he found New France beset on either side. The English of Hudson Bay were seeking to draw the trade of the Northwestern tribes to those northern waters; the English of New York were seeking to draw it to Hudson River. The competition threatened to become too keen; for the Englishman offered cheaper goods, and the Indians liked his rum as well as they did the Frenchman's brandy.

1 Hubbard : Memorials of a Half Century, 362-363.