the territories of France, and the church sent the Jesuits to convert the Indians to the Christian faith. The French in the Mississippi Valley. In their zeal to bring the Indians into the Christian fold the Jesuit missionMissionaries aries pushed far into the interior of the continent. The Jesuits and fur traders expedition suffered every hardship, and not a few of them met death at the hands of the Indians. But not even fear of the awful torture which the red men inflicted upon their victims could turn these heroic priests from their purpose. Hardly less daring were the French fur traders who wandered far and wide in search of the rich peltries for which they exchanged beads and trinkets, hatchets, firearms, and brandy-the "fire-water" which made the Indian more savage than he was by nature. Before the seventeenth century drew to a close there were mission stations and trading posts on the straits of Mackinac, at Sault Ste. Marie, Green Bay, and other places on the Great Lakes. Very early the Frenchmen who visited the region of the Great Lakes heard of a great river farther west. At last Marquette's Father Marquette resolved to find it. In the spring of 1673 he started from the mission station on the straits of Mackinac with Joliet, a French explorer, and five other men. In two birch-bark canoes they made their way to the head of Green Bay and thence up the Fox River to its source. Guided by the Indians, they then crossed to the Wisconsin River and launched their canoes upon its waters. Our greatest American historian, Francis Parkman, helps us to travel in imagination with Marquette and his men down the Wisconsin. "They glided calmly down the tranquil stream, by islands choked with trees and matted with entangling grape-vines; by forests, groves and prairies, the parks and pleasure-grounds of a prodigal nature; by thickets and marshes and broad, bare sand bars; under the shadowing trees, between whose tops looked down from afar the bold brow of some woody bluff. At night, the bivouac-the canoes inverted on the bank, the flickering fire, the meal of bison flesh or venison, the evening pipes, and slumber beneath the stars; and when in the morning they embarked again, the mist hung on the river like a bridal veil, then melted before the sun, till the glassy water and the languid woods basked breathless in the sultry glow," At last "with a joy," writes Marquette, "which I cannot express," they found the great river which they sought. For two weeks the current of the Mississippi bore the explorers Exploring the southward until they came to a village of the Illinois Indians Mississippi who feasted them with porridge, fish, dog's flesh, and fat buffalomeat. Resuming their journey they floated with the stream, day after day, past the mouths of the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Ohio, until they reached the Arkansas River. Marquette and Joliet were now satisfied that the Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and decided to return to Canada and report what they had seen. Accordingly, they slowly retraced their course until they came to the Illinois River, ascended that stream, made their way to Lake Michigan and finally reached Green Bay in safety. While Joliet went to Quebec to report, Marquette remained at Green Bay. He was very much broken in health, but the following year he returned as he had promised to establish a Death of mission among the Illinois Indians. But the work of the Marquette unselfish and fearless Jesuit was over. Marquette died the next spring, while on his way to his own mission at St. Ignace on the straits of Mackinac, and was buried by the shores of Lake Michigan. The work of exploring the Mississippi River, begun by Marquette, was continued by La Salle, the young Frenchman who had already discovered the Ohio. It would have been La Salle hard to find a better man for the great and dangerous task. La Salle had a frame of iron which could endure the terrible exposure and privation of life in the wilderness. He was fertile in plans, bold and energetic in action, and inflexible in purpose. His was an unconquerable soul. His penetrating mind foresaw the greatness of the Mississippi Valley, and it was his ambition. to win it all for France. La Salle began his work by building a vessel upon the bank of the Niagara River above the falls. In this ship, the Griffin, the first that ever sailed upon the Great Lakes, he went to Loss of the Green Bay. From this point the Griffin, laden with furs, began Griffin her return voyage but was never seen again. La Salle, with his men, went on to the Illinois River where he built a fort. The loss of the Griffin and of the supplies, which she was expected to bring, made it necessary for La Salle to return to Canada, La Salle which he reached after an overland journey of great hardship. La Salle soon returned to the land of the Illinois, and early in 1682 he carried out his great plan of exploring the Mississippi La Salle named the new domain of France Louisiana in honor of Louis XIV. The Louisiana of La Salle, however, included not merely our state of that name but all the land Louisiana between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, from the sources of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico. La Salle next planned to plant a French colony in Louisiana near the mouth of the Mississippi. With this end in view he returned to France and, in 1684, sailed for the Gulf of Mexico The fate of with a company of settlers. He failed to find the mouth of La Salle the Mississippi and finally landed on the coast of Texas. Disease and quarrels among the men brought the colony to ruin, and at last La Salle was shot by one of his own men. The failure of La Salle did not prevent the French from occupying the country about the mouth of the Mississippi. Some years after his death a little settlement was made on New Orleans founded the coast and, in 1718, New Orleans was founded and became the capital of Louisiana. The French colony of Louisiana grew very slowly and had only a few thousand inhabitants at the close of the colonial period. By 1750 the French had made many settlements on the banks of the St. Lawrence and had planted the little colony of Louisiana on the lower Mississippi. Jesuit missionaries, roving The work of fur traders, and far-sighted explorers had given France a the French claim to the vast region drained by the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. But this region from Quebec and Montreal to New Orleans, was still a wilderness inhabited by savage Indians and only dotted here and there with French trading posts and mission stations. French The English and French Colonies Contrasted.-There were many differences between the English colonists scattered along the Atlantic seaboard from New Hampshire to Georgia and English and the French settlers on the St. Lawrence. They were unlike in colonists their ways of making a living, in their treatment of the Indians, differed in their social life, and in their forms of government. No less widely striking was the contrast between them in language, in religion, and in their relation to their mother countries. The English colonists were far more numerous than the French. In 1750 there were almost twenty times as many people in the English colonies as in all New France. The In occupation In their relations with the Indians In social life English colonists were nearly all farmers. The French cultivated a little land in Canada, but they were more interested in traffic with the Indians. Many of them were fur traders, trappers, hunters, boatmen, and wood runners, as those who lived a roving life in the forest were called. Both nations had extensive fisheries. The English disliked and despised the Indians and, in the end, either drove them away or killed them. The French made friends with the red men, lived among them, and sometimes intermarried with them. This difference in their treatment of the Indians was due in part to the differing interests of the two groups of colonists. The English cleared the land, built homes, and rapidly increased in numbers. The uncivilized Indians, like the wild animals, were naturally swept away by this growth of civilized life in America. On the other hand, the French, few in number and widely scattered over a vast domain, wished to preserve alike the fur-bearing animals and the Indian trappers with whom they carried on a profitable trade. Too often, instead of civilizing the Indians, the French woodmen and trappers became almost as barbarous as their red neighbors. In the English colonies nearly every man owned his farm, managed it as he pleased, and enjoyed all the fruits of his labor. In Canada the land along the river and lake fronts where most of the people lived was given in great tracts to landlords, who were of higher rank than the rest of the settlers. These landlords gave out strips of land to the actual farmers, who paid them a small rent for it. In addition to this rent each farmer was expected to have his grain ground in his landlord's grist mill, to do several days' labor for the landlord each year, and to give him one fish in every eleven he caught. In a word, the English colonist was a free man, while the French Canadian of colonial days was a peasant, subject to many of the vexatious feudal customs that had existed in France ever since the Middle Ages. In every one of the English colonies the people were represented in the government and were free to manage their local In govern- affairs as they chose. Such freedom was unknown in New France. There the government was entirely in the hands of a governor and other agents appointed by the French king. The people had no voice even in local matters. Their ruler ment |