A School History of the United States Part 6

BEGINNINGS OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES

_English_.

Failures:

1579. Gilbert.

1584. }Ralegh, Roanoke Island.

1587. }

Successes:

1606. London Company, Plymouth Company.

1607. Virginia settled.

1609. Boundary of London Company changed. Origin of Virginia claim.

1620. Landing of the Pilgrims. Plymouth colony.

1622. Grant to Mason and Gorges.

1628. Land bought for Ma.s.sachusetts Bay colony.

1629. Mason and Gorges divide their grant into Maine and New Hampshire.

1632. Maryland patent granted.

1639. Connecticut const.i.tution (Windsor. Hartford. Wethersfield) 1643. New Haven colony organized (New Haven. Milford. Guilford. Stamford.) 1643. Rhode Island chartered.

1662. Connecticut chartered.

(Connecticut. New Haven.) 1663. Rhode Island rechartered.

1663. Carolina patent granted.

After 1729 North and South Carolina.

1664. New Netherland conquered and New York founded.

1664. New Jersey granted to Berkeley and Carteret.

1681. Pennsylvania granted to Penn.

1682. Three counties on the Delaware bought by Penn.

1691. Plymouth and Maine (and Nova Scotia) united with Ma.s.sachusetts.

1732. Georgia chartered.

_Dutch_.

1613. Begin to colonize New Netherland

_Swedes_.

1638. South Company makes settlement on the Delaware.

1655. Conquered by the Dutch.

CHAPTER VI

THE FRENCH IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY

%54. The Early French Possessions% on our continent may be arranged in three great areas: 1. Acadia, 2. New France, 3. Louisiana, or the basin of the Mississippi River.

ACADIA comprised what is now New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and a part of Maine. It was settled in the early years of the seventeenth century at Port Royal (now Annapolis, Nova Scotia), at Mount Desert Island, and on the St. Croix River.

NEW FRANCE was the drainage basin of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. As far back as 1535 Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence River to the site of Montreal. But it was not till 1608 that a party under Champlain made the first permanent settlement on the river, at Quebec.

The French settlers at once entered into an alliance with the Huron and Algonquin Indians, who lived along the St. Lawrence River. But these tribes were the bitter enemies of the Iroquois, who dwelt in what is now central New York, and when, in consequence of this alliance, the French were summoned to take the warpath, Champlain, with a few followers, went, and on the sh.o.r.e of the lake which now bears his name, not far from the site of Ticonderoga, he met and defeated the Iroquois tribe of Mohawks in July, 1609.

The battle was a small affair; but its consequences were serious and lasting, for the Iroquois were thenceforth the enemies of the French, and prevented them from ever coming southward and taking possession of the Hudson and the Mohawk valleys. When, therefore, the French merchants began to engage in the fur trade with the Indians, and the French priests began their efforts to convert the Indians to Christianity, they were forced to go westward further and further into the interior.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EUROPEAN CLAIMS AND EXPLORATIONS 1650]

Their route, instead of being up the St. Lawrence, was up the Ottawa River to its head waters, over the portage to Lake Nip.i.s.sing, and down its outlet to Georgian Bay, where the waters of the Great Lakes lay before them (see map on p. 63). They explored these lakes, dotted their sh.o.r.es here and there with mission and fur-trading stations, and took possession of the country.

%55. The French on the Mississippi.%--In the course of these explorations the French heard accounts from the Indians of a great river to the westward, and in 1672 Father Marquette (mar-ket') and Louis Joliet (zho-le-a') were sent by the governor of New France to search for it. They set out, in May, 1673, from Michilimackinac, a French trading post and mission at the foot of Lake Michigan. With five companions, in two birch-bark canoes, they paddled up the lake to Green Bay, entered Fox River, and, dragging the boats through its boiling rapids, came to a village where lived the Miamis and the Kickapoos. These Indians tried to dissuade them from going on; but Marquette was resolute, and on the 10th of June, 1673, he led his followers over the swamps and marshes that separated Fox River from a river which the Indian guides a.s.sured him flowed into the Mississippi. This westward-flowing river he called the Wisconsin, and there the guides left him, as he says, "alone, amid that unknown country, in the hands of G.o.d."

The little band shoved their canoes boldly out upon the river, and for seven days floated slowly downward into the unknown. At last, on the 17th of June, they paddled out on the bosom of the Mississippi, and, turning their canoes to the south, followed the bends and twists of the river, past the mouth of the Missouri, past the Ohio, to a point not far from the mouth of the Arkansas. There the voyage ended, and the party went slowly back to the Lakes.[1]

[Footnote 1: Read Parkman's _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_.]

%56. La Salle finishes the Work of Marquette and Joliet.%--The discovery of Marquette and Joliet was the greatest of the age. Yet five years went by before Robert de la Salle (lah sahl') set forth with authority from the French King "to labor at the discovery of the western part of New France," and began the attempt to follow the river to the sea. In 1678 La Salle and his companions left Canada, and made their way to the sh.o.r.e of Lake Erie, where during the winter they built and launched the _Griffin_, the first ship that ever floated on those waters. In this they sailed to the mouth of Green Bay, and from there pushed on to the Illinois River, to an Indian camp not far from the site of Peoria, Ill. Just below this camp La Salle built Fort Crevecoeur (cra'v-ker, a word meaning heart-break, vexation).

[Ill.u.s.tration: %FRENCH CLAIMS% MISSIONS AND TRADING POSTS IN MISSISSIPPI VALLEY %in 1700%]

Leaving the party there in charge of Henri de Tonty to construct another ship, he with five companions went back to Canada. On his return he found that Fort Crevecoeur was in ruins, and that Tonty and the few men who had been faithful were gone, he knew not where. In the hope of meeting them he pushed on down the Illinois to the Mississippi. To go on would have been easy, but he turned back to find Tonty, and pa.s.sed the winter on the St. Joseph River.

From there in November, 1681, he once more set forth, crossed the lake to the place where Chicago now is, went up the Chicago River and over the portage to the Illinois, and early in February floated out on the Mississippi. It was, on that day, a surging torrent full of trees and floating ice; but the explorers kept on their way and came at last to the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Mexico. There La Salle took formal possession of all the regions drained by the Mississippi, the Ohio, and their tributaries, claiming them in the name of France, and naming the country thus claimed "Louisiana." The iron will, the splendid courage, of La Salle had triumphed over every obstacle and made him one of the grandest characters in history.

But his work was far from ended. The valley he had explored, the territory he had added to France, must be occupied, and to occupy it two things were necessary: 1. A colony must be planted at the mouth of the Mississippi, to control its navigation and shut out the Spaniards. 2. A strong fort must be built on the Illinois, to overawe the Indians.

In order to overawe the Indians, La Salle now hurried back to the Illinois River, where, in December, 1682, near the present town of Ottawa, on the summit of a cliff now known as "Starved Rock," he built a stockade which he called Fort St. Louis. In 1684, while on a voyage from France to plant a colony on the Mississippi, he missed the mouth and brought up on the coast of Texas; and, landing on the sands of Matagorda Bay, the colonists built another Fort St. Louis. But death rapidly reduced their numbers, and, in their distress, they parted. Some remained at the fort and were killed by the Indians. Others, led by La Salle, started for the Illinois River and reached it; but without their leader, whom they had murdered on the way.

SUMMARY

1. After the settlement of Quebec (1608) the French began to explore the regions lying to the west, discovered the Great Lakes, and heard of a great river--the Mississippi.

2. This river Marquette and Joliet explored from the mouth of the Wisconsin to the mouth of the Arkansas (1673).

3. Then La Salle floated down the Mississippi from the Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico, took formal possession of the valley in the name of his King, and called it Louisiana (1682).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Starved Rock]

CHAPTER VII

THE INDIANS

[Ill.u.s.tration: A typical Indian]