# IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET {MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 ■-iltt ^ 1^ IM 12.0 U III 1.6 V] /' v: ^^^J' *>y ^7^ Z'/ V /A Photographic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 '%' "^^ £?< CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHIVI/ICMH Collection de microfiches. x^ Canadian Institute for Historical IMicroraproductions Institut Canadian de microraproductions historiquea 1980 ^mjtm'zvi'.ixf*j,a.L -_%L'i jaflw ™p>»!>!» Technical and Bibliographic Notas/Notes techniques et bibiiographiques The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Features of this copy which may be bibliographically unique, which may alter any of the images in the reproduction, or which may significantly change the usual method of filming, are checked below. D D Coloured covers/ Couverture de couleur Covers damaged/ Couverture endommagde □ Covers restored and/or laminated/ Couverture restaur^e et/ou peiliculAe □ Cover title missing/ Le titre de couverture manque Coloured maps/ Cartes g^ographiques en couleur □ Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black)/ Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noire) □ Coloured plates and/or illustrations/ Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur □ Bound with other material/ Reli6 avec d'autres documents Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin/ La reliure serrde peut causer de I'ombre ou de la distortion le long de la marge intirieure D Blank leaves added during restoration may appear within the text. Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming/ II se peut que certaines pages blanchvss ajouttes lors d'une restauration apparaissent dens le texte, mais, lorsque cola Atait possible, ces peges n'ont pas 6t6 film^es. Additional comments:/ Commentaires supplAmentaires; L'Institut a microfilm6 le meilleur exemplaire qu'il lui a 6tA possible de se procurer. Les details de cet exemplaire qui sont peut-Atre uniques du point de vue bibliographique, qui peuvent modifier une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une modification dans la mithode normale de filmage sont indiqu6s ci-dessous. r—\ Coloured pages/ Pages de couleur Pages damaged/ Pages endommag6es □ Pages restored and/or laminated/ Pages rastaur6es et/ou pellicul6es / Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/ Pages d6color6es, tachet6es ou piqudes I I Pages detached/ Pages ddtachdes Showthrough/ Transparence Quality of prir Quaiitd in^gaie de I'impressionf Includes supplementary materii Comprend du materiel suppldmentaire I I Showthrough/ r~n Quality of print varies/ I I Includes supplementary material/ D D Only edition available/ Seule Edition disponible Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata slips, tissues, etc., have been refilmed to ensure the best possible image/ Les pages totalement ou partiellement obscurcies par un feuillet d'errata, une pelure, etc., ont 6t6 film6es A nouveau de fapon A obtenir la meilleure image possible. «»• Pages 227 and 228 are bound out of sequence after page 236. mThis item is filmed at the reduction ratio checked below/ Ce document est filmA au taux de reduction indiqu* ci-decsous. 10X 14X 18X 22X 26X 30X 12X 16X 2DX 24X 28X 32X The copy filmed here has been reproduced thanks to the generosity of: National Library of Canada L'exemplaire film6 fut reproduit grdce d la g6n6rosit6 de: Bibliothdque nationale du Canada The images appearing here are the best quality possible considering the condition and legibility of the orig nal copy and in keeping with the filming contract specifications. Les images suivantes ont 6t6 reproduites avec le plus grand soin, compte tenu de la condition et de la nettet6 de l'exemplaire film6, et en conformity avec les conditions du contrat de filmage. Original copies in printed paper covers are filmed beginning with the front cover and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, or the back cover when appropriate. All other original copies are filmed beginning on the first page with a printed or illustrated impres- sion, and ending on the last page with a printed or illustrated impression. Les exemplaires originaux dont la couverture en papier est imprim6e sont filmds en commenpant par le premier plat et en terminant soit par la dernidre page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration, soit par le second plat, selon le cas. Tous les autres exemplaires originaux sont film^s en commenpant par la premidre page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la dernidre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. The last recorded frame on each microfiche shall contain the symbol —^(meaning "CON- TINUED"), or the symbol y (meaning "END"), whichever applies. Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la dernidre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbols — ► signifie "A SUIVRE ", le symbols V signifie "FIN". Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre film^s d des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clichd, il est film6 d partir de Tangle sup6rieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. t 2 3 ■:ii: ,. 1 2 3 4 5 6 • __ • H OD fl P^ i ^ ^ ^ W 5 B H ^i H M ? ~ I i^ d J -^ ^ *. p^ ..^*-^ — A^ rr^""' ^ y '^ \ /«-- * ^K IF^. £ ■iW.'^ ^«\ v^^l > ■• ^;V.. ^ (J T* ? o wj ee P^ rOS Ul I X li tj "• \ "TS^^I ^ 1 v^ ~Vi ^>A ^ /^ •p T r _5- A^i — /'sr* /?! ^1 % X iFrTr7«-';-,wr' , .// THE -*;*•; Old northwest JK/r/y A VIEW OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES AS CONSTITUTED BY THE ROYAL CHARTERS BY B. A. HINSDALE, Ph.D. TROFESSOR OF THE SCIENCE AND ART OF TEACHING, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN; AUTHOR OF "SCHOOLS AND STUDIES," AND EDITOR OF "THE WORKS OF JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD" " Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happi- ness of mankind, schools and the means-, of education shall forever be encouraged." — Ordinance of 1787. " No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has Just commenced at the Muskingum." — Washington. "We look to you of the Northwest to finally decide whether this is to be a land of slavery or freedom. The people of the Northwest are to be the arbiters of its destiny." — SSWARD. NEW YORK TOWNSEND MAC COUN 1888 la 5^ 'e? w, ., '> ; (\ L) "i ^'^> .L J COPVF'GHT, 1888 TOWNSEND MAC COUN MEW YORK a \'r TROWS PnrNTtNQ AND eOOKBINOrNQ COMPANY, NEW VORK. iiii! !) PREFACE. Save New England alone, there is no section of the I United States embracing several States that is so distinct an [historical unit, and that so readily yields to historical treat- 'ment, as the Old Northwest. It is the part of the Great West first discovered and colonized by the French. It was the occasion of the final struggle for dominion between France and England in North America. It was the thea- tre of one of the most brilliant and far-reaching military ex- ploits of the Revolution. The disposition to be made of it at the close of the Revolution is the most important territo- rial question treated in the history of American diplomacy. After the war, the Northwest began to assume a constantly increasing importance in the national history. It is the origi- nal public domain, and the part of the West first colonized under the authority of the National Government. It was the first and the most important Territory ever organized by Congress. It is the only part of the United States ever under a secondary constitution like the Ordinance of 1787. No other equal part of the Union has made in one hundred years such progress along the characteristic lines of American development. Moreover, the Northwest has stood in very important relations to questions of great national and inter- national importance, as the use and ownership of the Missis- IV PREFACE. sippi River, and the territorial growth and integrity of the Union. To portray those features of this region that make it an historical unit is the central purpose of this book. But as the Northwest is intimately dependent upon the Atlantic Plain, a view of the Thirteen Colonies as Constituted by the Royal Charters has also been given. No previous writer has covered the ground, and the work is wholly new in concep- tion. Dr. Edward A. Freeman insists " that the most ingenious and eloquent of modern historical discourses can, after all, be nothing more than a comment on a text." Historical texts are not history, but even ingenious and eloquent comments often suffer from lack of a sufficiency of the text that they are written to elucidate. In this work, liberal quotations from original documents will be found, accompanied by the necessary discussion. The subjects treated in Chapters VL, VII., XI., XII., and XIII., in particular, cannot be satisfac- torily handled in any other way. Furthermore, while these documents are in no sense rare, they do not lie in the way of the common reader or of the ordinary student or teacher of history. This feature of the work, it is believed, will be highly appreciated by all these classes, and especially by the student and the teacher. ■; B. A. Hinsdale. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, March i, 188S. CONTENTS. I. North America in Outline, .... II. The First Division of North America, III. The French Discover the Northwest, IV. The French Colonize the Northwest, V. England wrests the Northwest from France : The First Treaty of Paris, VI. The Thirteen Colonies as Constituted by the Royal Charters (I.), VII. The Thirteen Colonies as Constituted by the Royal Charters (II.), .... VIII. The Western Land Policy of the British Gov- ernment from 1763 to 1775, IX. The Northwest in the Revolution, PAOi I 21 38 55 70 98 120 147 X. The United States wrest the Northwest from England : The Second Treaty of Paris, . 162 XI. The Northwestern Land-Claims, . XII. The Northwestern Cessions (I.), . XIII. The Northwestern Cessions (II.), . 192 203 224 \ r ■:! Ml VI CONTENTS. XIV. The Land-Ordinance of 1785, XV. The Ordinance of 1787, .... XVI. The Territory of the United States Northwest PACK 263 OF THE River Ohio, . 280 XVII. The Admission of the Northwestern States to THE Union, . • • • • • 3'7 XVIII. Slavery in the Northwest, . . . -345 XIX. The Connecticut Western Reserve, . . 368 XX. A Century of Progress, . . • -393 .|V. T n ! PACK • 2SS . 263 i^iiiiff'^ LIST OF MAPS. 3"7 345 368 393 I. The Old Northwest, ^11. Frontispiece. ...iv. Drainage Features of the United States IVI. [II. Iix. !x. :i. French Explorations and Posts in the Old Northwest, • . . . Territory of the Present United States, 1755 to 1763, Territory of the Present United States after February 10, 1763, . Proposal of the Court of France at the Second Treaty of Paris, PAGB 2 38 62 68 176 Boundary-lines proposed at the Second Treaty OF Paris, . . „ • • • . loo Territory of the Present United States after September 3, 1783, ,gg Territory of the Thirteen Original States, Map of Ohio Surveys, . 7 • • • The Old Northwest in 1888, , 200 291 393 .■.>t> In.: ; i III m ^ the ad '* the G tween tendin miles openin Th First, 1 elevati the At Heigh from il and nc in Noi gently- Plain Lakes, •: THE OLD NORTHWEST. I. NORTH AMERICA IN OUTLINE. I North America is easily separable into three very plainly marked physical divisions. The Pacific Highlands, which are a vast plateau surmounted by the Rocky and Sierra iNevada Mountain systems, extend from the Arctic Ocean to Ithe Isthmus of Panama, and form the primary feature of the [continent. The Atlantic Highlands, consisting of the Lab- rador Plateau and the Appal-ichian Mountain system, with the adjacent eastern slope, extend from Labrador almost to the Gulf of Mexico, and form the secondary feature. Be- I tvveen the Pacific Highlands and the Atlantic Highlands, ex- \ tending from the southern Gulf to the northern Ocean, 5,000 miles in length by 2,000 in breadth at the widest part, and opening out like a fan to the north, is the Central Plain. The Central Plain is also easily separable into three parts. First, the Arctic Plain descends by easy slopes from the wavy elevation called the Height of Land, north and northeast to I the Arctic Ocean and Hudson Bay. Secondly, south of the Height of Land and a second similar elevation that tjikes off from it, near the head of Lake Superior, and sweeps southeast and northeast until it unites with the Appalachian Mountains in Northern New York, the Mississippi Valley falls away gently to the Gulf of Mexico. Thirdly, between the Arctic Plain and the Mississippi Valley lies the Basin of the Great Lakes, that is lengthened eastward in the St. Lawrence Valley, i; i THE OLD NORTHWEST. The two sides of the continent, as divided by the eastern ranges of the Rocky Mountains, present the strongest con- trasts. The western side consists of great mountain chains, |v attaining high elevations, with short and abrupt descents to the Pacific Ocean ; the eastern side is a vast plain, descending to the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico, by long and easy lines, save in the southeast, where it is interrupted by the moderate elevation of the Appalachian Mountains. Straight lines can be drawn from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, from the southern shore of Lake Ontario to the Rio Grande, and from the source of the Ohio to the source of the Kansas, that will at no point rise 2,000 feet above the level of the sea. In fact, the geographer passes over whole States without finding any elevations of surface that he need represent upon a map intended for com- mon purposes. On the one side, and particularly south of 49° north lati- tude, the coast line is remarkably regular ; on the other side, remarkably irregular. On the west, few rivers descend to the sea, and not one of these cuts through the mountain masses and reaches the inte- rior; on the east, every subdivision of the Central Plain is traversed by a great natural water-way, Hudson Strait, Hud- son Bay, and the Nelson-Winnipeg River system together reach the very foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains. The noble St. Lawrence, cutting through the Appalachian Moun- tains, opens a channel for the Great Lakes to discharge their floods, and for man to ascend to the central parts of the con- tinent. The Mississippi — Father of Waters — with his 35,000 miles of navigable affluents, gives ready means of access to every part of the great valley that bea'-s his name. If three men should ascend these three water-ways to their farthest sources, they would find themselves in the heart of North America, and, so to speak, within a stone's-throw of one another. One of these water-ways has played hitherto no considerable part in the affairs of civilized men; but the P eastern st con- tains, :ents to cending Mexico, re it is ilachian ; Arctic hore of )urce of oint rise igrapher .tions of for com- trth lati- her side, 5t one of the inte- Plain is y lit, Hud- together IS. The m Moun- irge their the con- lis 35,000 access to If three r farthest of North w of one therto no ; but the •>»-. JR, S,. jiffi-t I'i \ 111 r^ ! NORTH AMERICA IN OUTLINE. other two are as prominent In the history of America as they are in its geography. The world scarcely offers a parallel to the ease and celerity with which the passage can be made from the upper waters [of any one of these great water-ways to either of the others. ' The Great Lakes occupy an elevated plateau, '■he summit, n fact, of the vast expanse of land which spreads out between he Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains ; no large streams ow into them, and they drain limited areas ; " ' and their sins are separated from the regions north and south by ater-sheds that in no point rise to the dignity of mountains. Lalce Superior is 900 feet above the Gulf of St. Lawrence ; ,^. iliiake Itasca, Pittsburg, and Cairo are 1650, 700, and 300 feet respectively above the Gulf of Mexico. From Omaha west , tlong the Platte River, the Union Pacific Railroad ascends by ;jit grade of five feet to the mile ; while from St. Paul north- ,|!feest to the Yellowstone, the ascent is but two feet to the tiile. In Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin the streams owing in opposite directions often head in the same swamps ; land in times of high water it would almost be possible to 2push a flat-bottomed boat from the Lake Basin into the Mis- issippi Valley. The highest level of the Ohio Canal is 395 eet, the highest level of the Miami Canal, 380 feet, above j ke Erie. A simple pump suffices to carry the sewage of hicago to a level where gravitation takes it to the Missis- ippi. Lake Michigan once had an outlet to the Gulf of exico, and should the " Hennepin Canal " ever be built, it ill be an artificial outlet. In the days when the Northwest was discovered and ex- lored, and again in the days when it was settled, the short nd easy portages between the northern and southern streams, cattered all the way from Western New York to Minnesota, ere of very great importance. The Appalachian system consists of several chains or ' Hubbard : Memorials of a Half Century, 3. THE OLD NORTHWEST. ranges, and the valleys lying between them. To the ex- plorer or pioneer attempting to reach the interior, they op- posed a continuous mountain-wall from 3,500 to 7,000 feet in height, a slight obstacle, indeed, as compared with the moun- tains on the other side of the continent, but still considerable, and pla> ing no unimportant part in history. The Atlantic Plain, as the slope east of these mountains is called, is coursed by maay rivers that furnish excellent harbors at their mouths and render the whole region readily accessible from the sea. Five of these rivers, the Hudson, the Delaware, the Sus- quehanna, the Potomac, and the James, cut through the mountain-wall. The valleys of these rivers to-day are road- ways for great lines of travel and transportation leading to the West ; but when the country was in a state of nature, only one of them offered an easy passage from the Atlantic Plain to the Mississippi Valley. Geologists tell us that once Lake Ontario had an outlet to New York Bay ; and certain it is that by the Hudson and Mohawk, the streams flowing to the Lakes whose sources are intertwined with those of tht, Mohawk, and the short and easy portages between them, thi explorer and the colonist could readily have reached the in- terior but for a formidable obstacle that will receive attention in another place. Despite this obstacle, the site of Oswego was visited by Englishmen before the site of Pittsburg; while it was through the Mohawk Valley that the first canal and railroad were built connecting the East and the West. From New York Bay to the St. Lawrence extends a deep valley. that cuts the mountains asunder; Hudson River fills thej southern half, Lake Champlain and the River Richelieu thej northern half, of this valley ; and these waters, together with! the easy " divide " between them, have played a very impor-[ tant part in American history from the very first. These geographical features of our continent have been! boldly sketched, because they have had the greatest influence] upon the course of American, and particularly of Western- American, history. Had some convulsion of nature lowered) the ex- ;hey op- D feet in e moun- iderable, Atlantic ; coursed ■ mouths the sea. the Sus- )ugh the are road- ading to f nature, Atlantic that once d certain s flowing >se of the | :hem, the ;d the in- attention f Oswego irg; while canal and 3t. From :ep valley r fills the helieu the 2ther with Dry impor- NORTH AMERICA IN OUTLINE. $ he Appalachian Mountains to the level of the country east nd west at the time the first English colonies were founded n the Atlantic slope, or thrown up a system of mountains as igh as the Appalachians along the low water-sheds that sep- rate the Lake Basin and the Arctic Plain from the Missis- fy^pippi Valley when the first French settlements in Canada %ere planted, no one can tell in what different lines history tould have run. Nor can one rightly estimate the prodigious fluence upon the Northwest of the fact that it lies partly ii^ithin the Lake Basin and partly within the Mississippi Val- ley, and that it holds in its bosom all the rivers flowing to the Lakes on the south, and to the Mississippi on the west, from the Ohio to the head of Lake Superior. Speaking relatively, North America has an open and a closed side; and fortunately it is the open side that faces Europe. have been! t influence! Western- ,re lowered! ' ^■' II. THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA. For two hundred years after its discovery, North America had no independent life and history. The seeds of future American questions were being thickly planted, but for the time no such questions appeared. The continent was the theatre of European ambition, strife, and endeavor. Three great nations played each an important part in the drama- Spain, France, and England. We are now to see how the country was first divided among them. I. The Spaniards in the Gulf of Mexico. The Spaniards had not firmly established themselves in the West Indies before they plunged into the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Columbus himself was on the coast of j South America in 1498, and on the coast of Central America in 1502 and 1503. Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and | discovered and named the South Sea, in 15 13. Cortez began the conquest of Mexico in 15 19, and Pizarro that of Peru in 1526. In 1 5 12 Ponce de Leon discovered and named Florida. Miruelo ran along the western side of the peninsula as far as Pensacola in 15 16. In 15 19 Pineda coasted the northern] shore of the Gulf as far as Panuco, in Mexico, and on his re- turn discovered the Mississippi River, which was first called I "The River of the Holy Spirit." In 1520 Ayllon sailed to the coast of Georgia and South Carolina; and five years later he continued his explorations as far as Virginia, where he] planted an ill-fated settlement on the future site of James- town. In 1527 De Narvaez conducted an unfortunate expe-l mm THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA. Idition to the northern shore of the Gulf. He lost his life [while crossing the stream of the Mississippi out at sea, but De jVaca, one of his lieutenants, and a few others, survived the jerils of the deef. and of the land, to tell in after-years one of ^he most romantic tales to be found in the history of Ameri- tan exploration. Hernando de Soto, Governor of Cuba, hav- ig obtained from Charles V. a grant of the country from •"lorida to the River of Palms, landed at Tampa Bay in 1539 rith a large and well-appointed command. He hoped to find I rich Indian kingdom, such as Pizarro had found in Peru and )rtez in Mexico. After two years' marching in the interior, }e Soto, disappointed in his search, found himself in latitude ^° north, on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. Crossing Wlg river, he continued his march many hundreds of miles to t^e northwest ; but, still disappointed, he returned the next «ear to the river, his command greatly reduced by battle, dis- ' ise, and famine, and himself wasted in body and broken in )irit, where he died. In the sonorous language of Bancroft : His soldiers pronounced his eulogy by grieving for their 5SS ; the priests chanted over his body the first requiems that rere ever heard on the waters of the Mississippi. To conceal lis death, his body was wrapped in a mantle, and in the still- less of midnight was silently sunk in the middle of the Stream. The wanderer had crossed a large part of the conti- lent in his search for gold, and found nothing so remarkable |is his burial-place." * His surviving companions fled down the |-iver to the Gulf, and made their way to their countrymen In Mexico. At the same time that De Soto was seeking his imaginary El Dorado in the region south of the Missouri, 7oronado, who had come overland from Mexico, was Searching in the same region for the fabled " Seven cities of Ahola." The two commands were so near each other " that \n Indian runner, in a few days, might have carried tidings )etween them ; " in fact, " Coronado actually heard of his ' History : 6-voIunie edition, 1876, I., 50. 8 THE OLD NORTHWEST. countrymnn, and sent him n letter, bui his messenger failed to find De Soto's party." ' Spaniards had now virtually met in the centre of the Mississippi Valley, coming from points as distant as Tampa Bay and the Gulf of California ; they had found no El Dorado or Cibola, and they gave over the at- tempt at exploration and conquest in these regions. In no important sense did the Spanish discoveries mal:e known the Mississippi to the world. Holding the shore line from Florida to Mexico, Spain, in the sixteenth century, had the finest opportunity ever offered any nation to explore, occupy, and possess the Mississippi Valley ; the Appalachi- cola, the Mobile, the Colorado, and, above all, the Mississippi itself, invited her to ascend them and people their banks. No powerful Indian nation was on the soil to oppose her, no European rival was present to deny her right. Why did she not do so ? The answer is one of the exploded theories of political economy. In that age Europeans generally, and Spaniards particularly, held to the " Bullion Theory :" The precious metals are the only form of wealth. Not finding them in the region visited by De Soto, Spain fixed her atten- tion on regions where she had already found them ; and sol intent was she on the mines of Mexico and South America, j that her gallions ploughed the waters of the Gulf for one hun- dred years, ignorant or regardless of the fact that they were j crossing and recrossing before a portal that stood always open to admit them to the richest valley in the world. So indif- ferent was Spain to her opportunity that in the next century she allowed the Mississippi to slip from her hands to those I of France, without serious protest. When another century had gone, she awoke from her indifference, and made strenu- ous efforts to recall the mistake. Unfortunately for her, but! fortunately for the world, it was too late. Fortunately for the world ; for what greater calamity could have befallen civ- ilization on this continent than a South America or a Mexico! ■ Narrative and Critical History of America, II., 292. THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA. 9 planted between the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains ? Still, Spain, in the sixteenth century, founded two ^settlements [within the present limits of the United States. Santa F^, [hidden away, in 1582, in one of the upper valleys of the Rio [Grande, never played any part in history until our own times, lut to hold Florida against all comers was to Spain a simple lecessity. The peninsula offered an excellent base for attack- ig the fleets that bore the spoil of the East Indies, Mexico, ^nd Peru from Vera Cruz and Carthagena to Spain, as well for menacing the islands at the entrance of the Gulf ; and ithc hurricanes of the tropics had already strewn the Florida )ast with the fragments of Spanish wrecks."' Hence the savage vigor with which she expelled the Huguenot colonies llfom Northern Florida, and the persistence with which she Keld the English colonists on the north at bay down to 1763, when she surrendered the peninsula as the price of the Queen Ctf the Antilles. St. Augustine, founded in 1565, a castle Ifether than a colony, was the key to the positions of Spain in the Gulf and in the East India seas. II. The French in the Valley of the St. Lawrence. Verrazzano in 1524 led the first French ofificial exploring expedition to North America. He sailed along the coast from latitude 32° to Newfoundland, landing at many places, and visiting New York Bay, and then returned to France. This /^oyage, which added considerably to contemporary knowledge )f America, and led to other and more important voyages, rave color to the claim that France afterward made to the ^hole coast within the extreme points that Verrazzano touched. James Cartier, also with a French commission, lade three voyages to the northern parts of the continent in [1534, 1535, and 1540. In 1534 he explored the coast of New- |foundland and the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, visited ibrador, and discovered the St. Lawrence River. Hoping ' Narrative and Critical History of America, XL, 254. 10 THE OLD NORTHWEST. 'Ill >> i that this river was the long-sought passage to Cathay, Cartier ailed up its current to Stadcconna, the Indian name of Que- bec. Leaving here his ships, he pushed on with two or three boats and a few companions to Hochelaga, an Indian town on the present site of Montreal. It was the month of Sep- tember ; the northern forests were putting on their gorgeous autumn garments, and the Frenchmen could not sufficiently admire the beauty of the country. Cartier visited Stadeconna and Hochelaga again in 1540, when he took possession of Canada, as the Indians called the country, in the name of his royal master, by raising a cross surmounted by the fleur-de- lis, and emblazoned with the legend : Franciscus PRIMUS, DEI GRATIA Francorum Rex regnat. Attempts to col- onize the valley were immediately made, but they ended in failure. Samuel de Champlain was the father of Canada. He came to America with Pontgrav6, in 1603. Sent up the St. Law- rence to Hochelaga, he was filled, like Cartier, with admira- tion as he viewed the country, and was at once convinced that this valley, and not Acadia, must be the seat of the future French-American Empire. Deeply patriotic and fervently religious, Champlain longed to plant among the forests and waters of the north a colony that should shed lustre on the arms of France and extend the bounds of the Catholic Church. The forests and waters abounded in the valuable furs that, next to gold and silver, were the prime object of search to the first American colonists ; they would shield a colony from its enemies ; while the great river that was lost in unknown re- gions of mystery would probably lead on to the lands of Marco Polo. He returned to France burning with desire to carry out this purpose. His coveted opportunity soon came ; in 1608 he had the great happiness to plant, under the rock of Quebec, the first permanent French settlement in Canada. The next year he plunged into the wilds of Northern New York, where, near the head of Lake Champlain, he met a war party of Mohawk Indices. Although he destroyed the party, THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA. II Champlain was so much impressed by their courage, and by what he heard of the formidable confederacy to which they belonged, that on returning to Canada he directed his atten- tion to the north and west, where he found man, if not nature, more tractable. The Gulf and River St. Lawrence, and the streams that fall into the river on the north, gave the French easy entrance to the interior of the great continent. Ascending to the head of Lake Huron by the Ottawa, Lake Nipissing, and Georgian Bay, they were at the foot of Lakes Michigan and [Superior, that stand to the Northwest in some such relation lifts the lung-lobes to the human body. Ascending the St. •?'^awrence to the southern shore of Lake Ontario, they had turned the left flank of the Appalachian Mountains, and gained the edge of that vast plain which stretches away to the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande. The use that they made of these advantages will form the subject of a future chapter. It was most fortunate that Champlain concluded not to invade the seats of the Iroquois, but to lay the foundations of New France farther to the north. Had he persisted in his first purpose, and been successful, he would have made the re- gion in which the Genesee and the Richelieu, the Hudson and the Delaware, the Susquehanna and the Ohio take their rise French territory, and so have given the French the advant- age of a position that two great generals have called the key to the eastern half of the United States.' As it was, Champlain fully won the title accorded him : " Father of New France." The planting of Quebec was the most important event that had taken place in North America since its discovery, save only the planting of Jamestown the previous year. ' "General Scott, standing on the field of Bemus Heights, declared this Com- monwealth [New York] to hold the military key of the continent east of the Mis- sissippi, and on the same spot. General Grant confirmed the judgment." Roberts : New York, in Commonwealth Series, L, 124. 13 THE OLD NORTHWEST. III. The English on the Atlantic Plain. John Cabot, sailing with a commission from Henry VII. of England, discovered North America in 1497. His son Sebastian visited it again in 149(8. How much of the coast these navigators skirted, is matter of controversy ; some say the whole coast from 36° to 6/° north latitude. But it is certain that the elder Cabot made his landfall a j'ear and more before Columbus touched the shore of the sister conti- nent. Both the Cabots took possession of the country in the name of the English king, and English historians, statesmen, and jurists have always based on these voyages England's claim to that portion of North America which fell to her at the first apportionment. For a long time, owing to her unwillingness to offend Spain, to her absorption in attempts to find the northeast and northwest passages, to her domestic troubles, and to her indif- ference, England took little interest in the new empire that the Cabots had given her ; but toward the close of the six- teenth century she began to awake to her opportunity, and to take an interest in western planting. Her first colony was Jamestown, planted in 1607 ; and between that date and 1733 she had absorbed the Dutch and the Swedes on the Hudson and the Delaware, and divided the whole coast, often by boundary lines that ran to the Pacific Ocean, into thirteen colonies. Both in respect to character and geographical position, the colonists of the Atlantic Plain present strong points of con- trast to those on the Gulf coast and those in tho St. Lawrence Valley. They were not adventurers thirsting for gold and conquest, like the Spaniards ; nor were they trappers, traders in furs, voyageurs, and priests intent on Indian evangelization, like the French. There was, indeed, in most of the thirteen colonies a considerable infusion of adventure, but it took the direction of business rather than of conquest. Nearly all the THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA. 13 ■ English colonists were interested in industry, trade, and poli- tics ; and many of them, as the New Englanders and Mary- lander:;, came seeking in the wilderness those religious and civil rijjhts that were denied them at home. They were not lind to the advantage of the fur trade, nor wholly indifferent o the religious state of the Indians ; but Indian trade was the mailer wart of their commerce, and their religious zeal took he direction ol establishing a new church where they could hemsclves live at peace rather than of converting the savages :o the old one. Accordingly, they were more than content to plant their settlements by the sea. Then the English seem to have been more thoroughly than either the French or the Spaniards under the influence of those false ideas of the North vXmcrican continent that did so much to shape the course of history. To the imag'nation of Europe, America was first an archi- elago. The explanation of this belief is due to several cir- umstancos : to C^olumbus's expectation that he would first ome to the outljing Asiatic islands; to his belief that the West Indies were rhe islands that he expected to find ; and to the fact that the early voyagers to North America touched the coast at widely separated parts, which geographers were unable for a long tine properly to connect. In 1660 Endicott called New England "this Patmos," and as late as 1740 the Duke of Newcastle directed letters to the " Island of New England." Navigators and gi'ographers next conceived of our conti- nent as a long and narrow strip of land running north and south, cut by water-\/ays that connected the two oceans. Most evident signs thai a great continent lay behind the shore that seamen touched iit points as remote as Labrador and Mexico, such as the gieat rivers that came down to the sea, were constantly disregarded. "A Mapp of Virginia" sold in London in 165 1 lays dotvn Hudson River as communicating by "a mighty great lake" with "the sea of China and the Indies," and carries a leg ;nd running along the shore of Call- 14 THE OLD NORTHWEST. fornia, " whose happy shores (in ten days' march v/ith fifty foot and thirty horsemen from the head of James River, over those hills and through the rich adjacent valleys beautifyed with as profifitable rivers which necessarily must run into that peacefull Indian sea) may be discovered to the exceeding benefit of Great Britain and joye of all true English," ' An of- ficial map of Maryland, published in 1670, and certified by a competent authority to be by " no means a bad one," represents the Alleghanies above the Cumberland Mountains, and gives this description of them : " These mighty high and great Moun- taines, trending N.E. and S.W. and W.S.W., is supposed to be the very middle ridg of Northern America and the only Natural cause of the fierceness and extrcame stormy cold winds that come northwest from thence all over this continent and makes frost." " This conception of North America ex- plains the endeavors of Smith, Hudson, and Cartier to find the India road in the rivers that they explored. It explains also the fact that Captain Newport, in 1608, brought over from England a barge so constructed that it could be taken to pieces and then put together, with which he and his company were instructed to ascend the James River as far as the falls, then to carry their barge beyond the falls and descend to the I south sea, " being ordered not to return without a lump of gold as a certainty of the said sea." This persistent misconception of North America was due to that mental prepossession which prevented men seeing any insuperable obstacle to their find-] ing a western sea-road to the Indies, and to the fact that Bal- boa, Drake, and others, from the mountains of Darien, had seen I the two oceans that wash its shores. It is well to illustrate | this false notion thus at length, because evidences of its influ- ence in history are abundant. Shut out from the Gulf of Mexico by the Spaniards, and I from the River St. Lawrence by the French ; not caring to ' Narrative and Critical History, III., 465. * Browne : Maryland, in the Commonwealth Series, 100. THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA. 15 utifyed ito that ceeding An of- ed by a presents id gives t Moun- )osed to ;he only my cold ontinent srica ex- • to find explains ght over taken to company , the falls, I id to the I p of gold I jnception on which leir find- that Bal- , had seen illustrate its influ-| iards, and I caring to venture far from the coast inland, and actually confined to it by a great physical cause, the English were much slower than ■ their rivals in seeing in North America a vast continent. Then, when the English colonists ascended from one to two ^hundred miles the rivers coursing the Atlantic Plain they * found themselves confronted by the Appalachian wall and i^-their further progress arrested. Accustomed to pass and re- •itoass these mountains in a few hours' time at a dozen points, ^it is difficult for us to conceive how, at that day, they im- jpressed the imaginations of men and retarded the spread of "Itettlements to the West. The southern Indians called them the " Endless Mountains," the English, sometimes, " the Great "Mountains." The memorials of the first emigrants to Ohio, although die best natural roads had now been discovered and im- 'liiifoved, and all obstruction from the Indians had ceased, tell •'i^s how difficult of passage they found these mountain ridges. Hn fact, at the close of the last century, the safest, easiest, and ^^uickest line of travel from Philadelphia or Baltimore to Cen- tral Kentucky, or even to Fort Hamilton, that stood on the )resent site of Cincinnati, led to Wadkins' Ferry on the Po- tomac ; thence up the Shenandoah Valley, through Martins- )urg, Winchester, and Staunton; thence over the "divide" New River and on to Cumberland Gap — the " Wilder- 10 less Road" of early Western emigration, the "Valley Road" )f recent warfare — and thence by Crab Orchard and Lex- ington to the Ohio.' At the north. Nature had indeed prepared a highway to khe West ; biit the Mohawk Valley was exposed to attack from Canada, as the burning of Schenectady shows, while the )eople of the Long House blocked the Englishman's way to the Lake Basin almost as effectually as they blocked the "renchman's way to the sources of the Delaware and the >usquehanna. The Iroquois were generally friendly to the ' Speed : The Wilderness Road, 12, 23. i6 THE OLD NORTHWEST. English and hostile to the French ; but that haughty, jealous race were but little more disposed to see their ancestral seats invaded by their friends than by their foes. The facts now presented account for the extreme tardiness of the English colonists in entering the country west vi the Appalachian Mountains. It is related that one Colonel Abra- ham Wood, who dwelt at the falls of the Appomattox, with a party of hunters and tradciS, crossed the Blue Ridge and discovered New River in 1654. It is said that a Captain Henry Batte, in 1666, coming also from Appomattox, crossed the mountains, and followed for some distance a stream flow- ing westward. It is further related that a Captain Bolton reached the Mississippi in 1670; that a party of New Eng- landers, in 1677, made their way overland to New Mexico, and on their return told their story to the Boston authorities; and that Virginians were at the falls of the Kanawha in 1671. To find authority for these reports, or any of them, seems a hopeless undertaking. P'arkman says neither the Wood nor the Bolton tale is " sustained by sufficient authority," and } he pronounces the Boston story " without proof and im- probable." ' The tenacity with which the English colonists clung to the coast, their meagre ideas of the continent behind them, and the lack of romantic elements in their life, are well illus- trated in Governor Spotswood's famous adventure to the Shen- andoah Valley in August and September, 17 16. We have the authority of the governor for saying that a company of Virginians ascended the Blue Ridge Mountains, " Tho' they had hitherto been thought to be unpassable," in 1610; but he himself was the first to lead the way into the valley beyond, Attended by some members of his staff, Spotswood pro- ceeded in his coach from Williamsburg to the frontier. Here he was joined by some Virginia gentlemen and their retainers, a company of rangers, and four Indians, fifty persons in all. ' La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, Introduction. THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA. ^7 |Taking to horse, the gay company took their westward /ay by the upper Rappahannock. On the thirty-sixth day from Williamsburg they scaled the mountains, and saw the valley beyond that has commanded so much admiration, ifter drinking the king's health, they descended the western lope to the river, which they crossed and named the : Euphrates." The governor took formal possession of the fgion for George I. of England. Much light is thrown upon le convivial habits of Virginians at that time by an entry iund in the diary of the chronicler. " Wc got all the men Sgethcr and loaded their arms, and we drank the king's health in champagne and fired a volley, the princess' health in Burgundy and fired a volley, and all the rest of the royal family in claret and a volley ; we drank the governor's health and fired another volley. We had several sorts of liquors : viz., Virginia red wine and white wine, Irish usque- llfiugh, brandy, shrub, two sorts of rum, champagne, canary, .ji^erry punch, cider, etc." The lapse of eight weeks and the Mstance of 440 miles travelled, going and coming, brought Ppotswood back to Williamsburg. He now celebrated the hardships of the journey by creating the " Knights of the rolden Horseshoe." To ascend the mountains the horses lad been shod with iron, which was unnecessary in tide-water Virginia ; and the governor caused small golden horseshoes, =t with jewels and inscribed with the legend. Sic juvat trans- mdcre monies, to be made in London and distributed among |iis companions. This expedition was important in results, »ut its most noticeable feature is its date, 17 16. This was |ne hundred and nine years after the landing at Jamestown, Ind thirty-four years after La Salle had navigated the Missis- [ippi from the Illinois to the Gulf. Spotswood's main ob- 2Ct was to study the relation of the Virginia frontier to the •"rench in the Lake country. How little advantage he de- jived from his observations and inquiries of the Indians is i^ell told in this paragraph from one of his letters, written W 1718: % i8 THE OLD NORTHWEST. " The chief aim of my expedition over the great mountains, | in 17 16, was to satisfy myself whether it was practicable to I come at the Lakes. Having on that occasion found an easy '4 passage over that great ridge of mountains w'ch before were vl judged impassable, I also discovered, by the relation of Indians who frequent those parts, that from the pass where I was it is but three days' march to a great nation of Indians living on a river w'ch discharges itself in the Lake Erie ; that from ye western side of one of the small mountains w'ch I saw that lake -J very visible, and cannot, therefore, be above five days' march from the pass aforementioned, and that the way thither is also very practicable, the mountains to the westward of the great ridge being smaller than those I passed on the eastern side, w'ch shews how easy a matter it is to gain possession of those lakes." ' Who the first Englishmen were to pass the Great . Moun- tains and descend the streams flowing to the setting sun, can never be known. They undoubtedly belonged to that class of Indian hunters who, following every stream to its head- spring, and entering every gap in the mountain ranges, dis- covered the path leading from the Potomac by Wills' Creek to the Ohio in 1748, and who, a little later, "gave names to the streams and ridges of Tennessee, annually passed the Cumberland Gap, and chased game in the basin of the Cum- berland River." ' They are men who have no individuality,! as have the French discoverers in the north and west. The influence of the Colonial character in confining the English I to the sea-shore has been pointed out ; the reflex of that con- finement upon the Colonial character and life will receive at- tention in another place ; but here the observation may be I dropped that the colonists were a long time developing the! • Cooke, Virginia, in the Commonwealth Series, 314, 315, and WaddcU, An- nals of Augusta County, 6-9, give accounts of the Spotswood expedition. The| passages quoted are from Waddell. ' Bancroft : History, II., 362 ; III., 63. THE FIRST DIVISION OF NORTH AMERICA. 19 [typical Indian hunter and fighter. Such men as Boone and [Kenton and Wetzel belong to the country west of the moun- I tains. By a sort of tacit agreement, the three powers adopted •riority of discovery as the rule for dividing and appropriat- ing North America. Spain was at first disposed to claim the ^hole continent under the papal bull of 1493 ; but the mari- time enterprise, military and naval power, and diplomatic irce of England and France compelled her to admit them to % share of the spoil. The Spanish navigators and explorers fifom Columbus to De Soto gave the Gulf region to Spain ; Cartier gave the St. Lawrence to France; the Cabots, the At- llmtic Plain to England. /i The adjustment of territorial claims and rights was a long id difficult process ; and it was only as the principle of use id settlement, and even the sword, was brought in to help iut discovery that points of dispute were ever settled. The Recognition by Spain of discovery as the ground of title left inanswered the question where the boundary line should be Irawn between Florida and Georgia and the Carolinas, and the question was never put at rest until she yielded the whole »eninsula in 1763. France at first claimed the Atlantic coast jouth of Nova Scotia under the voyage of Ver-azzano ; but :he failure of the Huguenot colonies in Carolina and Florida, ind the resolution of England in insisting upon the Cabot :itle, led France to yield that shore, and to content her ambi- :ion with the north. The Cabots discovered the northeastern :oast years before the first French navigator crossed the ocean ; lut as England did not follow up discovery with settlement, ind as the French made greater discoveries in that quarter, a 'ast region that might have been England's fell to France, ienry IV. of France, in the patent that he gave to De Monts, ;arried the southi^rn boundary of Acadia to the latitude of [Philadelphia ; and the English kings lapped their charters over ipon the French, as we shall soon see. Again, under the rule 20 THE OLD NORTHWEST. of priority Spain was entitled to the Mississippi Valley ; but, like England on the northeast coast, she did not follow dis- covery with occupation, and so the valley fell to France, who entered it from the north. This brought France and England into collision along the western side of the Alleghanies, as well as in the northeast and north. In general, the disputes as to the rightful ownership of a given region of territory grew out of one or both of two circumstances : a disagreement as to who the first discoverer was, or a disagreement as to how far the rights resulting from his discovery extended. Every one of the powers admitted that the others had territorial rights, but their quarrels never ended until France retired from the continent. The remark should be added that it is impossible to repre- sent correctly these facts on maps. The names " Acadia," "Virginia," and " Florida "stand for very different things at different times ; and at no particular time, for a full century following Jamestown, were their boundary lines defined. The lines of delimitation, drawn on the most carefully constructed , maps, answer but a vague general purpose. The French in- cluded Plymouth and New Amsterdam in Acadia, and Spanish j maps of the seventeenth century sometimes carry Florida be- yond Quebec. But more absurd than this, some sixteenth- 1 century geographers, and notably the Dutch, " out of spite to i the Spaniards," include the whole of both North and South | America in New France. * Parkman ; Pioneers of France in the New World, 183, 184, note. III. % :THE FRENCH DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST. ; What ready access to the heart of North America the Saint Lawrence gave the French, was pointed out in the first 9X\d second chapters. We are now to see what use they made j(|jf their opportunity. :i The advantages of the position harmonized admirably with jihe French character, particularly as developed under the ,Aew conditions, and with the great ideas that underlay New France. These northern colonists shrunk from a life of ma- terial development like that of their southern neighbors ; they had some agriculture, but they were not such tillers of the soil as the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, the Dutch of [Hudson River, the Quakers of the Delaware, and still less [the Virginia or Carolina planters ; they cared for no trade but [that in furs and peltries; they were indifferent to civil and Ireligious freedom, and had no share in that passion for politi- cal and religious progress that characterized the British colo- [nists ; and, so far from desiring a State without a king and a Church without a bishop, they could not even conceive of State [and Church without them. They never developed a self-reli- I ant colonial character, but were more than content to go on as they began — the children of patronage and power. But they desired to enlarge the borders of France and increase her glory ; they loved the fur trade ; and they longed to plant the emblems of the true faith beside all the unknown rivers and hidden lakes of the wilderness. Not only did the bolder minds burn to penetrate the secrets of the continent, but the majority, now hunters or farmers, and now soldiers or voj/- 22 THE OLD NORTHWEST. lp\> agcurs, loved the free and picturesque life of the forests and waters that made the history of Canada one long adventure. Dominion, evangelization of the Indians, and the fur trade | were the three ideas on which the colony rested. The sol- dier, the priest, and the trader are the three types of charac- ter that are never out of our sight. In one marked feature the French plan of colonization differed from that of the English. The English found no place whatever, not even the smallest, for the Indians : the French made them the very centre and heart of their whole scheme. Sympathetic, social, pliable to new conditions, the French revealed a genius for getting on with the savages that is rather confirmed than disproved by their sore experience with the Iroquois. With such ideas as these, under leaders who combined adventure, religious zeal, and far-reaching policy, they gained the rear and northern flank of the English settlements, and, almost before the lat- ter, absorbed with their farms and shops, fishing and trade, churches and politics, were aware of what was going on, well- nigh confined them to the narrow slope between the moun- tains and tiie sea. There is no reason to think that Cham- plain saw the final end ; but he marked out the general plan, and was himself the first to put it in practice. In i6ii Champlain made the rude beginnings of the city of Montreal. Here he and the French traders met the wild warriors and hunters as they descended the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa : he to win influence over the Indians and to gain knowledge of their country, they to buy the Indian catch of beaver-skins. In 1613, following two pioneers whom he had sent to winter with the Indians, he ascended the Ottawa, and thus began the first survey of the route by which the Cana- dian Pacific Railway passes from the valley of the St. Lawrence to the region of the Upper Lakes. Trusting the false tale of one of the two pioneers, he expected to reach a great northern sea that would bear him on to the regions of the East, which Columbus had sought in the western waters. Disappointed in this endeavor, he still reached the Isle des Allumettes, the THE FRENCH DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST. 23 Indian half-way house to Lake Huron, before returning to Quebec. In this vast primeval forest, six years after Smith I landed on the shore of the James, but seven years before the [foot of Miles Standish touched Plymouth Rock, Champlain Iwon the respect of the Indian tribes and displayed the em- [blems of his religion. In the month of May, 161 5, four Recollet friars, a branch lof the great Franciscan order, landed at Quebec. They came by the procurement of Champlain to carry forward the work of Indian conversions. Having celebrated the first mass ever heard in Canada, they distributed to each a province of the wilderness empire of Satan. To Le Caron the Hurons were ^signed ; and soon the priest was on his way to their distant Villages. As well the heroic temper of the man as his relig- ious outlook is shown by a single sentence from one of his let- ters to a friend : " I must needs tell you what abundant con- solation I found under all my troubles ; for when one sees so many infidels needing nothing but a drop of water to make them children of God, he feels an inexpressible ardor to labor for their conversion, and sacrifice to it his repose and his life." ' Soon the soldier followed the priest. Ascending the [Ottawa and the Mattawan, crossing the portage to Lake I Nipissing, and then descending French River and Georgian Bay, Champlain found his way to the " Mer Douce " of the French maps, the Lake Huron of ours. Striking inland from Thunder Bay, he found Le Caron already established in the country of the Hurons. The savages were all expectation ; for the white chief whose prowess on the battle-field they had already learned, had prom- ised to lead them against the Iroquois. The attack upon the Senecas in Central New York proved a failure, and Cham- plain returned with the Hurons to their villages, where he spent the winter. In the spring he returned to his colony, where he had been given up for dead ; and the first French ' Parkman : Pioneers of France, 363, 364. 24 THE OLD NORTHWEST. i exploration undertaken with a settled plan was at an end. Three or four important things had been accomplished. The two early routes to Lake Huron had been discovered — one by the Ottawa and Ni[iissing, the other by the Trent and Lake Simcoe ; " Mer Douce " and Lake Ontario, the first two of the five lakes seen by white men, had been found; French in- fluence over the mind of the savages had been felt in a wider sphere; and, finally, the scene of the future Huron Mission had been visited. It was Champlain's last and greatest achievement as an explorer; it was the first step toward the French possession of the old Northwest, and also the first in that long march which more than a hundred years later brought Frenchmen and Englishmen together in deadly strife beyond the Great Mountains. Were we sketching the broader subject, we should now turn aside to watch the experiment of Indian evangelization tried by the Jesuits, who had succeeded the R^collets, among the Hurons. Mr. Parkman has told that story with his accus- tomed learning and eloquence. Here two facts will suffice. Just as the Jesuits were thanking God for what seemed an as- sured success — the conversion of a savage nation to the Cross — the Iroquois fell upon them, and scattered the Hurons in a storm of blood and fire. Secondly, the destruction of this mission, rather the truculent fury of the " Romans of the West " that caused it, was an important element in great ques- tions. Mr. Parkman tells us that, could the French have brought the haughty Iroquois within the circle of their full in- fluence, American history would still have reached its des- tined goal, but by somewhat different paths. Tamed savages ruled by priests would have been scattered through the val- leys of the Lakes and the Mississippi ; slaughter would have been repressed and agriculture developed ; the Indian popula- tion would not have declined, if it did not increase ; and the fur trade would have enriched Canada. France would have filled "the West with traders, settlers, and garrisons, and cut up the virgin wilderness into fiefs, while as yet the colonies of Engl thci land plete and ] princ block the I Lake: *"whi Iher c jrowl ^r^-fetrugj since :,;,;vinona ;^^:||fto fre( a star which Et prefer peneti did and its si: water; In man, ■ Michi in thi " grea which been days r In ii! m' •^i-^V; THE FRENCH DISCOVER THE NORTHWEST. 25 England were but a weak and broken line along the shore of the Atlantic ; and when at last the great conflict came, Eng- land and Liberty would have been confronted, not by a de- pleted antagonist, still feeble from the exhaustion of a starved and persecuted infancy, but by an athletic champion of the principles of Richelieu and Loyola." While the Iroquois blocked the Englishman's way to the West, they also turned the Frenchman aside from the St. Lawrence and the Lower Lakes to the Ottawa and Nipissing; they ruined the fur trade I" which was the life-blood of New France;" they "made all ler early years a misery and a terror ; " they retarded the jrowth of Absolutism until Liberty was equal to the final Itruggle; and they influence our national history to this day, lince "populations formed in the ideas and habits of a feudal lonarchy, and controlled by a hierarchy profoundly hostile to freedom of thought, would have remained a hindrance and Fa stumbling-block in the way of that majestic experiment of which America is the field." ' Etienne Brul6, who had served Champlain as an inter- preter in his journey to the " Mer Douce," was the first to penetrate the region beyond that body of water. This he did before 1629, bringing back with him an ingot of copper and a description of a lake that well fits Lake Superior, its size, length, and the rapids by which it discharges its waters. In 1634 Jean Nicollet, a hardy explorer and trained woods- man, passed through the Straits of Mackinaw, discovered Lake Michigan, and made his way to Green Bay. He remained in this region a year, during which time he heard much of a " great water " to the west that he took to be the sea, but which was really the Mississippi River. He appears to have been on the Wisconsin, for he says if he had paddled three days more he should have reached the sea. In 164 1 Fathers Jogues and Raymbault preached to two ' The Jesuits in North America, 446-449, . ?!',,'-^'5;'.t; /'''■.. ,-/ ...(a,« ilk.. 26 THE OLD NORTHWEST. thousand Indians, Ojibvvas and others, at the Saut Saintc Marie. In 165^1660 GrosscUiers and Radisson reached the head of the great Lake, and visited Indians dwelling among the streams and lakes of Western Wisconsin and Eastern Minne- sota. They also visited the country beyond Lake Superior, and were the first to give the world information of those for- midable tribes, the Sioux. In 1661 Father Menard and Jean Guerin penetrated the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, leaving Lake Superior at Keweenaw Bay. Their lines of travel are lost in history, as their footsteps are in the wilderness, but some writers sup- pose that they actually found the Mississippi. The French had now discovered, and in this order, four of the Great Lakes : Huron, Ontario, Superior, and Michigan. From the day that he found the " Mer Douce," Champlain probably conjectured theit its waters mingled with those of the (Ottawa under the rock of Quebec ; but years elapsed be- fore the connection was thoroughly established. The Father of New France laid down a connection on his map of 1632, representing Lake Erie as a widened river ; but on some maps of later date the Upper and Lower Lakes are wholly discon- nected. In fact, the Susquehanna was once thought to be an outlet of Lake Erie. This lake was the very last to be discovered, as well as the very last to be thoroughly explored. It was known to the French as early as 1640, but we have no certain information of its navigation, nor of the river connect- ing it with Lake Huron, until 1669. In that year Louis Joliet, who ranks as an explorer next to Champlain and La Salle, returning from Lake Superior, where he had gone in quest of copper, made the passage and sailed along the north- ern shore to the eastward. At least, in September of that year we find Joliet, La Salle, and two Sulpitian priests in the woods of Grand River, between Lakes Erie and Ontario, dis- cussing geography, trade, and Indian conversions. Adopting Joilet's advice, the Sulpitians concluded to go by the new while < >f wh; rest, tl the CO the "10; p