AMERICAN COLONIAL

EMPIRES: FRANCE &

ENGLAND

Jose Rizo

Canada & Iroquoians 1560's -French discovered in Florida that the Spanish were a

powerful foe They moved distant from Spanish power, northern latitudes of North

America safer but smaller prospects of profit.

Short growing seasons didn’t

Didn’t produce tropical crops cherished in Europe.

French settlement led by James Cartier , was defeated by bitter cold, ravages of scurvy, & hostility of Indians. Abandoned further attempts to colonize until the next century

French discovered 2 profitable commodities, Fish & Fur, but limited fur traders & seasonal fishermen.

Needing Indians as allies & hunters, northern traders could not afford them as enemies, rather than risking a break in trade, traders They accepted Indian trade protocols, they restrained their prices & made

alliances.

Entangled in alliances, they were compelled to assist in native wars.

Iroquoians followed hunter & gatherer lifestyle French took early lead in the fur trade, allied with Algonquians.

5 nation Iroquois- inferior hunters & indifferent traders, but good

FUR TRADE

1580- mariners purchased furs from eager Indians & gave them beads, kettles, & knives.

Indians likes Manitou( bright & shiny objects) believing it possessed spiritual power, easy trade for the Europeans who profited more from the fur sales back in their l&

- native adapted to alcohol, first they disliked it, then they craved it, they drank fast to get to their "spiritual trance"

became more destructive & killed more Indians, later alcohol was pricier & less given to them

- Europeans noted Indians asked for higher prices on fur so they worked less for more leisure time

-Indians changed & valued trader goods for utility rather than shine, appealed to metal arrowheads, axes, knives, & hatches(good tools & weapons)

- occasionally, criminal mariners kidnapped Indians & took them to Europe as show & tell items & for guides, but the Indians died from disease before they guided Europeans back to their lands

- Indians still kept wanting to trade, although mariners kidnaps Indian.

fur demand increased. Indians killed more animals & unprecedented rate, they provoked new conflicts by extending their hunting into others territories.

-new weapons helped these Indians defeat their enemies easier.

every native group tried to attract the European traders & keep them away from their enemy

CANADA

French shifted focus northward to secure fur trade.

1. valley was safely distant from Spanish power

2. north location meant thicker more valuable furs

3. north Indians were better skilled hunters than south

4. St Lawrence river is the deepest access westward into continent than any other river (good to meet Indians deep in continent)

They made a harbor and a canon to keep away competitors

- Hurons were middlemen form west-to-east trade, they traded agriculture surplus for furs

- Montagn, Algonkin, and Huron alliance tried to alienate the 5 nation Iroquois in south

- French allied with northern alliance, in a battle the French killed Iroquois with guns, they fled.

fur trade grew competitive, eager for weapons the Iroquois traded en excessive amount of furs for one single gun

DUTCH TRADE

Dutch supplied better quality metal an lower cost than French, Dutch offered guns a lot faster than the French.

Iroquoians were becoming better armed than their northern enemies, and did more northern raids

French could not compete with Dutch trade

5 NATIONS Practiced "mourning wars“- sought prisoners from their enemies to build up their confidence

and ego.

They fought back and forth with this "wars"

Great league for most part, kept the 5 nations at peace.

JESUITS

converting Indians to Catholicism

missionaries worried that thousands of Indians faced eternity in hell

1615 first effort to evangelize Indians of Canada

sending 4 priest, they didn't help much

1625-1626, Eight priests of the Jesuit sent as critical re-enforcements

1634 Champlain obligated Huron to accept Jesuit priests as his price for continued trade, Jesuits mastered native language and built churches

Natives didn't believe in hell or heaven, Indian liked their spiritual experts better because they attracted them with items and powers.

Jesuits fought back to the Indians beliefs, they introduced mass, crucifixes, rosaries, Angus Dei medals, saints, and spiritual healing.

Many died and priest did not, surviving Indians thought priest were a bad omen, they resisted because of their trade needs, they didn't kill them.

Destruction: Mid 17th century, Iroquois warfare escalated to nearly genocidal proportions, 1648 and 1649, Iroquois warriors stormed the Huron villages, capturing hundreds.

Iroquois delimited the Huron villages, great majority at the Huron survived only as adopted captives among the Iroquois.

Iroquois were perceived as relentlessly united, purposeful, and invisible, but they provoked new divisions within their own nations, many Huron exhorted their kin to embrace Catholicism and a French alliance trade.

FRENCH AMERICA

French claimed and affected more of the continent than any other empire.

Their presence depended on Indian consent

Through generosity and restraint, the French could exercise some influence, but they could never command their Indians allies.

Too late the French needed more colonists to defend Quebec, not from the Indians, but from their English rivals. 2 years later, they were easily overwhelmed by three English privateers,

Fearful of losing the colony again, the French crown ordered the Company of New France to recruit more inhabitants

New France grew slowly, from seven hundred colonist in 1650 to three thousand by 1663 By 1660 the English had 58,000 colonists in New England and the Chesapeake. Growing

impatient with New France, crown took control of colony in 1663, crown stimulated emigration by transatlantic passages.

Married men and women tended to stay, but the more numerous single men usually left

After 1673, when the government retrenched to save money, the emigration ground to a halt.

From about 3,000 in 1663, population grew to 15,000 in 1700.

Why did France, population largest in the Western Europe send far fewer emigrants to America?

French rural peasant preferred to endure the known rather than the strange and distant.

Swelling army of Louis XIV absorbed many of the poor and single men who might otherwise have emigrated as engages to New France

Opportunity

Most of the French who did emigrate to Canada ( and stayed) significantly improved their status and standard of living

Authority: To govern New France, the crown appointed three rival officials: a military governor-g general, a civil administrator known as the intendant, and a Catholic bishop.

New France also lacked the town or county governments that permitted so much local autonomy in the British colonies.

The Upper Country : After 1700, hard labor, rapid reproduction, & peace with the Iroquois brought greater security , prosperity, and development t the valley,

Population grew From 15,00-0 in 1700 to 52,000 by 1750

Far more readily that their English or Dutch competitors, the French trader married native woman, which proved critical to their persistent predominance in the fur trade of the Great Lakes country.

Over the generations, these relationships produced a distinctive missed-blood People knows as the Métis, who spoke multiple languages, lived in their own villages, an acted as intermediaries between their French and Indian relatives

To build a native alliance, the French needed more than a supply of trade guns and a network of courier’s devois. Above all, the French had to unify the fractious refuges of the Great Lakes and Illinois countries, which required the arbitration of their many disputes.

Louisiana Armed by an allied with the French, the upper country Indian inflicted bloody

defeats on their former tormentors, the Iroquois, during the 1680 and 1690s. In 1701 the beleaguered Iroquois made a peace that conceded the upper country to the French and their allies

In 1712 the crisis came at Detroit, where the French had attracted too many Indians form divers tribes, too many for their limited presents to mediate or for the local deer and beaver to sustain. The Indian frictions polarized as an alliance of Fox and Mascouten antagonized a larger array of Illinois, Miami, Ojibwa, Wyandot, Potawatomi, and Ottawa peoples.

Abandoned by their allies, the French again had to recognize the real limits on their power by making a grudging peace with the Fox.

The Louisiana French built an alliance by providing arbitration and presents to make peace between enemies. In particular, the French initially tried to reconcile the Choctaw and Chickasaw After the war, to stimulate development, the crown entrusted Louisiana to a private

corporation, the Company of the Indies, which promoted plantations to cultivate tobacco and indigo.

New Orleans became the colony’s largest town, principal seaport, and government headquarters.

Officials worked to keep Indians and Africans apart. French conspicuously employed especially trusted blacks in their militias sent to fight the Indians

Differing equation of race and class represented the contrasting cultural heritages of their different mother countries

Part differences reflected the persistent demographic and economic weakness of the Louisiana colony. Lacking numbers, Louisiana officials felt deeply vulnerable to attack, especially as the English colonial population soared. To compensate the French maintained a regular military garrison in Louisiana

DEPENDENCE

Rebels and Allies: Unable to strike directly at each other, the English and the French competed for influence over the native confederacies.

Indians capable of devastation either colony and critical to the survival of both.

Such a rate, the French could not afford to befriend all the southeastern Indians. The French had to pick their allies.

Governor Bienville concluded that a permanent state of wasting war between the two confederacies best served the French interest. Because putting “these barbarians into play again each other is the sole and only way to establish any security in the colony,” he coldly concluded that “the more of them who are both sided the greater will be our safety.”

DEPENDENCE: New France and Louisiana annually cost the crown more to administer than they generate in revenue form the fur and deerskin trades. Weary of the financial drain, the crown abruptly ordered a withdrawal form the upper-

country posts in 1969

Late 1720s the French post on the Great lakes sold goods a below market value to dissuade the Indians from trading with the British colonists.

The program reveals that the French strategic depended on the Indians exceeded the Indians’ dependence on French trade

French needed native allies to hold the interior and so contain the British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard.

The French became entangled in complex relationships with Indian peoples, who had adapted successfully to the new world wrought by the colonial intrusions