While the English were settling Virginia and New England, other Europeans were challenging Spain’s monopoly elsewhere in the New World. Jacques Cartier attempted to found a French colony at Quebec in the 1530s. Spain, initially alarmed by the French incursion, considered intervening; but the Spanish emperor thought the northern region too cold and not worth the bother. Cartier soon concurred, as his settlement quickly succumbed to brutal winters, scurvy, and Indian attacks.
Not until the end of the century was another attempt made to colonize the region. Then some intrepid French traders traded with Indians for fur, which had become valuable in Europe. (This was during the “little ice age,” which lasted several hundred years before and after 1600. In 1607, for example, the Thames River in England froze over for the first time in recorded history.) Shivering Europeans craved the soft, thick furs, especially beaver pelts, used for hats or to trim coats and dresses. Indians coveted the strength and sharpness of European metal knives and hatchets, the warmth and strength of European woolens, and—often enough—the intoxicating effects of alcohol.
Unlike the English, who occupied the Indian’s land, or the Spanish, who subjugated Indians and exploited their labor, French traders viewed the Indians as essential trading partners. A handful of French traders, carrying their goods in canoes and small boats, made their way to Indian settlements along the St. Lawrence River and the shores of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. But by 1650, there were only 700 French colonists in New France.
By then, France had perceived both the economic and military potential of North America and the vulnerability of France’s thinly populated string of settlements. To protect its toehold in North America, the French government built forts on key northern waterways and sent soldiers to protect the traders. French military expenditures helped sustain the fledgling colony. By 1700, about 15,000 French colonists lived in scattered settlements along an arc ranging from the mouth of the St. Lawrence in the northeast, through the Great Lakes, and down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
By contrast, nearly a quarter of a million English settlers (and 34,000 Africans, most brought as slaves) had occupied the English colonies. As the English filled up the Atlantic seaboard and pushed steadily westward, the French recruited the Algonquian Indians as military allies. The Algonquians were linguistically similar tribes who had been driven from the Atlantic seaboard into territory occupied by the Iroquois, a confederation of powerful tribes. English settlers commonly entered into treaties with the Iroquois.
Warfare ensued, usually French-Algonquian against English-Iroquois. But now that the Indians had guns and ammunition, warfare became bloodier, and all frontier settlements—Indian and colonist alike—became more vulnerable.
Complicating matters further was the Dutch settlement of New Netherland in the Hudson Valley. The settlers based their claim to the region on the explorations of Henry Hudson in 1609. As early as 1624 they established an outpost, Fort Orange, on the site of present-day Albany. Two years later they founded New Amsterdam at the mouth of the Hudson River, and Peter Minuit, the director general of the West India Company, purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians for trading goods worth about sixty guilders.
The Dutch traded with the Indians for furs and plundered Spanish colonial commerce enthusiastically. Through the Charter of Privileges of Patroons, which authorized large grants of land to individuals who would bring over fifty settlers, they tried to encourage large-scale agriculture. Only one such estate—Rensselaerswyck, on the Hudson south of Fort Orange, owned by the rich Amsterdam merchant Kiliaen Van Rensselaer—was successful. Peter Minuit was removed from his post in New Amsterdam in 1631, but he organized a group of Swedish settlers several years later and founded the colony of New Sweden on the lower reaches of the Delaware River. New Sweden was in constant conflict with the Dutch, who finally overran it in 1655.
World History
