The French-Canadian Outlook : A Brief Account of the Unknown North Americans

The destiny of New France was also shaped by the fact that in the seventeenth century, the great age of the Catholic Revival or Counter Reformation in France, the renewed energy of the Church found in America an outIet from the restraints imposed at home by the dominance of the State under Louis XIV. [...] The new religious spirit found heroic expression in the missionary activity of the Jesuits and Recollects~ who saw to it that the Cross accompanied the fleur-de-lis from the Atlantic almost to the Rockies, and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, as the French explorers bared the heart of the continent to which Jacques Cartier's "river and road" of the St. [...] The great Cardinal tried to give the French traders of the northern seas the same support which the English and the Dutch provided for their merchants of the Indies; but the monopolists of the NEW FRANCB - 7 fur trade failed to fulfill their promises of colonization, and the misfortunes which beset the successive trading companies led to piecemeal and inadequate development of the colony. [...] Furthermore, the missionary effort of 1615-73 was closely related to the necessity of winning the support of the Indians, whose good will was vital to the fur trade, the economic lifeblood of the colony. [...] Despite the daring efforts of Frontenac, Iberville, and a host of lesser partisan leaders, the major factor contributing to the long-delayed decision was the disposition of almost all the Indian lribes except the Iroquois Confederacy to side with the French, who from both religious and commercial motives had always cultivated the friendship of the Indians, whereas the Englisb had sought chiefly to