Note 421 — Chapter XV

It is hardly remembered at the present day that the French nation once claimed, and had begun to colonize the whole region which lies at the back of the thirteen original United States, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to that of the Mississippi, comprising both the Canadas and the vast fertile valley of the Ohio, and had actually occupied the two outlets of this whole region by its ports at Quebec and New Orleans.[422] Canada, the oldest French colony, and the only one on the continent to which that nation has sent any considerable number of settlers, was under the management of an exclusive company, from 1663 to the downfall of what was called the Mississippi Scheme, in 1720; and this circumstance, still more, perhaps, than the vicious system of granting the land to non-resident proprietors, to be held by seignorial tenure, checked its progress. Louisiana, with more sources of surplus wealth from climate and soil, was never a very thriving colony, and was surrendered to Spain with little reluctance, from which last power its dominion passed to the United States.

The French traders and hunters intermarried and mixed with the Indians at the back of our settlements, and extended their scattered posts along the whole course of the two vast rivers of that continent. Even at this day, far away on the upper waters of these mighty streams, and beyond the utmost limits reached by the backwoodsman, the traveler discovers villages in which the aspect and social usages of the people, their festivities and their solemnities, in which the white and red man mingle on equal terms, strangely contrast with the habits of the Anglo-American, and announce to him, on his first approach, their Gallic origin.—Merivale, vol. i., p. 58; Sismondi, Etudes sur L'Ecole Politique, vol. ii., p. 200; Latrobe.