The French in the Heart of America

The French in the Heart of
America

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Title: The French in the Heart of America
Author: John Finley
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THE FRENCH IN THE HEART OF AMERICA
BY JOHN FINLEY

PREFACE
Most of what is here written was spoken many months ago in the
Amphithéâtre Richelieu of the Sorbonne, in Paris, and some of it in
Lille, Nancy, Dijon, Lyons, Grenoble, Montpellier, Toulouse,
Bordeaux, Poitiers, Rennes, and Caen; and all of it was in the American
publisher's hands before the great war came, effacing, with its nearer
adventures, perils, sufferings, and anxieties, the dim memories of the
days when the French pioneers were out in the Mississippi Valley, "The
Heart of America."
As it was spoken, the purpose was to freshen and brighten for the
French the memory of what some of them had seemingly wished to
forget and to visualize to them the vigorous, hopeful, achieving life that
is passing before that background of Gallic venturing and praying. It
was planned also to publish the book simultaneously in France; and,
less than a week before the then undreamed-of war, the manuscript was
carried for that purpose to Paris and left for translation in the hands of
Madame Boutroux, the wife of the beloved and eminent Émile
Boutroux, head of the Fondation Thiers, and sister of the illustrious
Henri Poincaré. But wounded soldiers soon came to fill the chambers
of the scholars there, and the wife and mother has had to give all her
thought to those who have hazarded their all for the France that is.
But it was my hope that what was spoken in Paris might some day be
read in America, and particularly in that valley which the French

evoked from the unknown, that those who now live there might know
before what a valorous background they are passing, though I can tell
them less of it than they will learn from the Homeric Parkman, if they
will but read his immortal story.
My first debt is to him; but I must include with him many who made
their contributions to these pages as I wrote them in Paris. The
quotation- marks, diligent and faithful as they have tried to be, have, I
fear, not reached all who have assisted, but my gratitude extends to
every source of fact and to every guide of opinion along the way, from
the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, even if I have not in every
instance known or remembered his name.
As without Parkman's long labors I could not have prepared these
chapters, so without the occasion furnished by the Hyde Foundation
and the nomination made by the President of Harvard University to the
exchange lectureship, I should not have undertaken this delightful filial
task. The readers' enjoyment and profit of the result will not be the full
measure of my gratitude to Mr. James H. Hyde, the author of the
Foundation, to President Lowell, and to him whose confidence in me
persuaded me to it. But I hope these enjoyments and profits will add
something to what I cannot adequately express.
That what was written could, in the midst of official duties, be prepared
for the press is due largely to the patient, verifying, proof-reading
labors of Mr. Frank L. Tolman, my young associate in the State
Library.
The title of this book (appearing first as the general title for some of
these chapters in _Scribner's Magazine_ in 1912) has a purely
geographical connotation. But I advise the reader, in these