It was the aim
of Champlain, as of his successors, to persuade the threatened and
endangered hordes to live at peace with each other, and to form against
the common foe a virtual league, of which the French colony would be the
heart and the head, and which would continually widen with the widening
area of discovery. With French soldiers to fight their battles, French
priests to baptize them, and French traders to supply their increasing
wants, their dependence would be complete. They would become assured
tributaries to the growth of New France. It was a triple alliance of
soldier, priest, and trader. The soldier might be a roving knight, and
the priest a martyr and a saint; but both alike were subserving the
interests of that commerce which formed the only solid basis of the
colony. The scheme of English colonization made no account of the Indian
tribes. In the scheme of French colonization they were all in all.
In one point the plan was fatally defective, since it involved the
deadly enmity of a race whose character and whose power were as yet but
ill understood,--the fiercest, boldest, most politic, and most
ambitious savages to whom the American forest has ever given birth.
The chiefs and warriors met in council,--Algonquins of the Ottawa, and
Hurons from the borders of the great Fresh-Water Sea.
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