The Conquest of New France | Page 5

pattern."
France, however, now required at Quebec a man who could do the
needed man's tasks. The real worth of Frontenac had been tested; and
so, in 1689, when England had driven from her shores her Catholic
king and, when France's colony across the sea seemed to be in grave
danger from the Iroquois allies of the English, Frontenac was sent again
to Quebec to subdue these savages and, if he could, to destroy in
America the power of the age long enemy of his country.
Perched high above the St. Lawrence, on a noble site where now is a
public terrace and a great hotel, stood the Chateau St. Louis, the scene
of Frontenac's rule as head of the colony. No other spot in the world
commanded such a highway linking the inland waters with the sea. The
French had always an eye for points of strategic value; and in holding
Quebec they hoped to possess the pivot on which the destinies of North
America should turn. For a long time it seemed, indeed, as if this
glowing vision might become a reality. The imperial ideas which were
working at Quebec were based upon the substantial realities of trade.
The instinct for business was hardly less strong in these keen
adventurers than the instinct for empire. In promise of trade the interior
of North America was rich. Today its vast agriculture and its wealth in

minerals have brought rewards beyond the dreams of two hundred
years ago. The wealth, however, sought by the leaders of that time
came from furs. In those wastes of river, lake, and forest were the
richest preserves in the world for fur-bearing animals.
This vast wilderness was not an unoccupied land. In those wild regions
dwelt many savage tribes. Some of the natives were by no means
without political capacity. On the contrary, they were long clever
enough to pit English against French to their own advantage as the real
sovereigns in North America. One of them, whose fluent oratory had
won for him the name of Big Mouth, told the Governor of Canada, in
1688, that his people held their lands from the Great Spirit, that they
yielded no lordship to either the English or the French, that they well
understood the weakness of the French and were quite able to destroy
them, but that they wished to be friends with both French and English
who brought to them the advantages of trade. In sagacity of council and
dignity of carriage some of these Indians so bore themselves that to
trained observers they seemed not unequal to the diplomats of Europe.
They were, however, weak before the superior knowledge of the white
men. In all their long centuries in America they had learned nothing of
the use of iron. Their sharpest tool had been made of chipped obsidian
or of hammered copper. Their most potent weapons had been the stone
hatchet or age and the bow and arrow. It thus happened that, when steel
and gunpowder reached America, the natives soon came to despise
their primitive implements. More and more they craved the supplies
from Europe which multiplied in a hundred ways their strength in the
conflict with nature and with man. To the Indian tribes trade with the
French or English soon became a vital necessity. From the far
northwest for a thousand miles to the bleak shores of Hudson Bay,
from the banks of the Mississippi to the banks of the St. Lawrence and
the Hudson, they came each year on laborious journeys, paddling their
canoes and carrying them over portages, to barter furs for the things
which they must have and which the white man alone could supply.
The Iroquois, the ablest and most resolute of the native tribes, held the
lands bordering on Lake Ontario which commanded the approaches
from both the Hudson and the St. Lawrence by the Great Lakes to the
spacious regions of the West. The five tribes known as the Iroquois had
shown marked political talent by forming themselves into a

confederacy. From the time of Champlain, the founder of Quebec, there
had been trouble between the French and the Iroquois. In spite of this
bad beginning, the French had later done their best to make friends
with the powerful confederacy. They had sent to them devoted
missionaries, many of whom met the martyr's reward of torture and
massacre. But the opposing influence of the English, with whom the
Iroquois chiefly traded, proved too strong.
With the Iroquois hostile, it was too dangerous for the French to travel
inland by way of Lake Ontario. They had, it is true, a shorter and,
indeed, a better route farther north, by way of the Ottawa River and
Lake Nipissing to Lake Huron. In time, however, the Iroquois made
even