CHAPTER IX
Cavelier De La
Salle and the
French in
the Mississippi
Valley
[1643-1687]
The same year in which William Penn laid out Philadelphia and there made a treaty with the Indians, a noted Frenchman sailed down the Mississippi River, exploring it in the interests of France. This man was Robert Cavelier, Better known as La Salle, who, like many of his countrymen, was trying, just as the Spaniards and Englishmen had tried, to find or do something in America that would not only bring glory to his own name, but also wealth and honor to his fatherland. We have now to consider the work of the French in America.
In 1534 Cartier, a French explorer, discovered the St. Lawrence, and sailed up the river as far as an Indian village on the present site of Montreal. He took possession of Canada in the name of the French King, and his favorable reports led to several unsuccessful attempts to plant settlements there.
More than seventy years after the discovery of the St. Lawrence, another French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, sailed up the noble river. Much impressed with the great beauty of the St. Lawrence Valley and its wealth of forests and furs, he longed to bring all this vast new country under the control of France. In 1608 he planted the first permanent French settlement in Canada, at Quebec, and the following year discovered the lake which bears his name.
Although Champlain loved his country and desired to increase its glory and power, he made an unfortunate blunder, which proved fatal to the best interests of France in the New World. In planting the settlement at Quebec, in 1608, he found that the neighboring tribes of Algonquin Indians were bitter enemies of the Mohawks, one of the Five Nations, or Iroquois, who lived in New York.
Long House of the Iroquois.
The Algonquins begged him to join them in an attack upon the Mohawks, and he unwisely consented. Having gone up Lake Champlain with a canoe-party of sixty Indians, he landed near the site of Ticonderoga to fight a battle with two hundred hardy Mohawk warriors. Champlain, clad in light armor and gun in hand, advanced at the head of his war-party and, shooting into the ranks of the astonished Mohawks, who stood in battle array, brought to the earth two of their chiefs. The others fled in terror and confusion, while their enemies, Champlain's dusky allies, yelled with joy, and filled the woods with their terrible warwhoops.
From that day, however, the Iroquois were the bitter enemies of the French, and this enmity seriously interfered with the successful carrying out of French plans. Having control of the St. Lawrence River, France greatly desired to get control of the Mississippi River as well. Once securing possession of these two great streams, she would come into possession of the wealth of the North American Continent.