| The English inherited the Iroquois alliance. |
Into this kindly heritage the English entered;23 and, though their treatment of the Indians left much to be desired, the alliance, if often strained, was, in the case of the Mohawks at any rate, never sundered; and finally, at the close of the War of Independence, many of the Five Nation Indians, after fighting for England, migrated into Canada, and were assigned lands in the province of Ontario, where their descendants are still to be found. In the words of the Indian orators, a chain of friendship held together the English and the Iroquois. 'Our chain,' they said, 'is a strong chain, it is a silver chain, it can neither rust nor be broken';24 and it would be difficult to overrate the advantage which accrued to the English colonies from their traditional alliance with the strongest natives of North America.
23 Colden, as above, 'In 1664, New York being taken by the English, they likewise entered into a friendship with the Five Nations.'
24 Colden, p. 125.
| The founding of Quebec. |
In the summer of 1608, Champlain founded the first French settlement at Quebec. A year before, the English had settled at Jamestown in Virginia. A year later, the Dutch found their way to the Hudson. Till his death, at the end of 1635, the story of Champlain is the story of Canada. His colleagues in the new enterprise were men with whom he had already worked in Acadia—De Monts and Pontgravé. De Monts had obtained from the King one year's monopoly of the Canadian fur trade, and two ships which he sent to the St. Lawrence were in charge of Pontgravé and Champlain respectively. Pontgravé, the merchant, stayed at Tadoussac through the summer, bartering with the Indians and coming to blows with Basque traders, who held the French King's patent of little account. Champlain, the explorer, went higher up the river, and erected wooden buildings by the water-side, on the site of the lower town of Quebec. There he stayed through the winter, while his friend went home, and, when Pontgravé returned in the following summer, travels and adventures began which made Champlain's name great among the Indian tribes of Canada.
| Champlain's explorations and collision with the Iroquois. |
His first expedition, in 1609, was to the lake which is still called after him. He went as an ally of the Huron and the Algonquin Indians against their enemies the Iroquois. Up the St. Lawrence, up the Richelieu, and on to Lake Champlain he took his way, and at the head of the lake, somewhere near the site where Fort Ticonderoga afterwards stood, the white men's firearms dispersed the warriors of the Five Nations and won a victory. The summer of 1609 ended, and Champlain went back to France, returning to Canada in the following spring.25
25 Canada was first known as New France after Champlain's return to Europe, in 1609 (Charlevoix's Histoire Générale de la Nouvelle France, 1744 ed., vol. i, bk. iv, p. 149).
| His difficulties in France. |