Among a number of reasons which were assigned for the planting of British colonies in New England, there was one which declared that it would "be a service unto the Church of great consequence, to carry the gospel into those parts of the world, and raise a bulwark against the kingdom of anti-christ which the Jesuits labor to rear up in all parts of the world."* The Reverend Cotton Mather, in his Ecclesiastical History of New England, says, that, in the year 1696, an Indian chief informed a christian minister of Boston, that the French, while instructing the Indians in the christian religion, told them that the Savior was of the French nation, "that they were the English who had murdered him; and that, whereas he rose from the dead, and went up to the heavens, all that would recommend themselves unto his favor, must revenge his quarrel upon the English, as far as they can."+

Thus, in North America, throughout a long period, there was, between the early colonists of England and the early colonists of France, no true christian sympathy-no lasting friendly intercourse no long season of peace.

Ever eager to advance the interests of their respective governments, the French and English colonists, forming small and weak branches of christian nations, and nourishing antagonistic creeds, hot animosities, bitter revilings, and deadly warfare, were agitating, oppressing, and destroying one another. The Indian tribes, in their intercourse with the European colonists, heard, and saw, and felt, the evils of this hostile course of conduct; and they listened doubtingly, to the instructions of the few pious men who told them that the truths of the christian religion were revealed to the world, by the Son of the only true God, in order to establish, on earth, peace and good will among

men.

The missionary Hennepin, who, in 1680, visited the Indian villages on the borders of the Illinois river, says: "There are many obstacles that hinder the conversion of the savages; but in general the difficulty proceeds from the indifference they have to every thing. When one speaks to them of the creation of the world, and of the mysteries of the christian religion,

*Ecc. His. of New England, by Rev. Cotton Mather, B. 1. 65.

†Id. B. vii, Art. XXII. -ADAIR'S HIS. AM. INDIANS, London 4to. ed. p. 153.

they say we have reason; and they applaud, in general, all that we say on the great affair of our salvation. They would think themselves guilty of a great incivility, if they should show the least suspicion of incredulity, in respect of what is proposed. But, after having approved all the discourses upon these mat-ters, they pretend likewise, on their side, that we ought to pay all possible deference to the relations and reasonings that they may make on their part. And, when we make answer that what they tell us is false, they reply that they have acquiesced to all that we said; and that it is a want of judgment to interrupt a man that speaks, and to tell him that he advances a false proposition. ** The second obstacle which hinders their conversion, proceeds from their great superstition. * * * The third obstacle consists in this, that they are not fixed to a place. *** The traders who deal commonly with the savages, with a design to gain by their traffic, are likewise another obstacle. * * They think of nothing but cheating and lying, to become rich in a short time. They use all manner of stratagems to get the furs of the savages cheap. They make use of lies and cheats to gain double, if they can. This, without doubt, causes an aversion against a religion which they see accompanied, by the professors of it, with so many artifices and cheats."

*

"The Illinois," says the same missionary, "will readily suffer us to baptize their children, and would not refuse it themselves; but they are incapable of any previous instruction concerning the truth of the gospel, and the efficacy of the sacraments. Would I follow the example of some other missionaries, I could have boasted of many conversions; for I might easily have baptized all those nations, and then say, (as I am afraid they do, without any ground,) that I had converted them. * * * Our ancient missionary recollects of Canada, and those that succeeded them in that work, have always given it for their opinion, as I now own it is mine, that the way to succeed in converting the barbarians, is to endeavor to make them men, before we go about to make them christians. * America is no place to go to out of a desire to suffer martyrdom, taking the word in a theological sense. The savages never put any christian to death on the score of his religion. They leave every body at liberty in belief. They like the out

*

*

ward ceremonies of our church, but no more.

*** They

do not kill people but in particular quarrels, or when they are brutish, or drunk, or in revenge, or infatuated with a dream, or some extravagant vision. They are incapable of taking away any person's life out of hatred to his religion."

Through the persevering efforts of missionaries, aided by the enterprising spirit of a few adventurous traders, pacific relations and a small traffic were established between the Miamis and the French colonists of Canada, before the close of the seventeenth century. In the year 1684, M. de la Barre, the governor-general of Canada, laid before the English colonial authorities, at Albany, a remonstrance, in which he stated that the Iroquois, or Five Nations, between whom and the English a league of friendship then existed, were interfering with the rights and property of French traders among remote western Indian tribes.

When the Five Nations were informed of this charge, they made a defense against it by saying that their enemies were supplied with arms and ammunition by French traders. M. de la Barre, soon afterward, held a council with certain chiefs of the Five Nations, on which occasion he told them that they, the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks, had abused and robbed French traders who were passing to the west. Grangula, a celebrated Onondaga chief, in replying to this charge, said:-"We plundered none of the French but those who carried guns, powder, and balls, to the Twightwees [Miamis] and Chicktaghicks, because those arms might have cost us our lives. We have done less [evil] than either the English or French, who have usurped the lands of so many Indian nations."

The active hostilities which broke out, in 1689, between the Five Nations* and the colonists of Canada, and the almost constant wars in which France was engaged until the treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, combined to check the grasping policy of Louis XIV, and to retard the planting of French colonies in the valley of the Mississippi. Between the years 1680 and

*The Five Nations were the Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Senecas. In 1677, the total number of warriors in this confederacy was 2150. About the year 1711, the Tuscarora tribe of Indians retired from Carolina, and joined the Iroquois, or Five Nations, which, after that event, became known as the Six Nations.

1700, several missionaries, successively, made efforts to instruct and civilize the Illinois Indians. A church, composed of a few Frenchmen, and, probably, a very small number of Indians, was founded on the banks of the river Illinois, at, or near, a post which was founded by La Salle, and called Fort St. Louis. The war which was carried on, about this time, between the Five Nations and the French and their Indian allies, was the principal cause of the dispersion of the settlers at Fort St. Louis, or Great Rock. A party of Indians went down the Illinois river, and settled on the eastern bank of the river Mississippi, on a prairie which lies about twenty-three miles below the mouth of the Missouri. A missionary, a few traders, and some roving adventurers, followed them to their new settlement, which was called Cahokia. The traders, generally, formed matrimonial alliances with the Indians, and lived in amity with them. The beautiful prairies on the borders of the small river Kaskaskia, (which enters the Mississippi at a point about one hundred miles above the mouth of the river Ohio,) attracted the attention of the French adventurers in the Illinois country; and, about the close of the 17th century, a small number of them settled on the banks of that river, and became the founders of the village of Kaskaskia.

SOON after the discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi, by La Salle, in 1682, the government of France began to encourage the policy of establishing a line of trading posts and missionary stations in the country lying west of the Allegheny mountains, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico; and this policy was maintained by France, with only partial success, throughout a period of about seventy-five years. During all this period, the labors of a small number of missionaries were continued, amid many obstacles, without producing any general and permanent improvement in the condition of the Indian

tribes of the west. The missionaries were always followed, and sometimes preceded, by a class of traders who gave intoxicating liquors to the Indians, in exchange for furs and peltries.

The river St. Joseph of lake Michigan was called "the river Miamis" in 1679, in which year La Salle built a small fort on its bank, near the shore of the lake. The principal station of the mission for the instruction of the Miamis, was established on the borders of this river; and, after the founding of this mission, the river was called the St. Joseph of lake Michigan.

The missionary Hennepin gives the following account of the building of the first French post within the territory of the Miamis:-"Just at the mouth of the river Miamis there was an eminence with a kind of a platform naturally fortified. It was pretty high, and steep, of a triangular form-defended on two sides by the river, and on the other by a deep ditch, which the fall of the waters had made. We fell the trees that were on the top of the hill; and having cleared the same from bushes for about two musket shot, we began to build a redoubt of eighty feet long and forty feet broad, with great square pieces of timber, laid one upon another; and prepared a great number of stakes, of about twenty-five feet long, to drive into the ground, to make our fort the more inaccessible on the river side. We employed the whole month of November [1679] about that work, which was very hard, though we had no other food but the bears' flesh our savage [Indian] killed. These beasts are very common in that place, because of the great quantity of grapes they find there; but their flesh being too fat and luscious, our men began to be weary of it, and desired leave to go a hunting to kill some wild goats. M. La Salle denied them that liberty, which caused some murmurs among them; and it was but unwillingly that they continued their work. This, together with the approach of the winter, and the apprehension that M. La Salle had that his vessel [the Griffin] was lost, made him very melancholy, though he concealed it as much as he could. We had made a cabin wherein we performed divine service every Sunday; and father Gabriel and I, who preached alternately, took care to take such texts as were suitable to our present circumstances, and fit to inspire us with courage, concord, and brotherly love. * The fort was at last perfected, and called Fort Miamis."

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