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Introduction
- Wayne State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
From the time the French first settled in North America in the early seventeenth century, French colonists never ceased to blaze new trails across the continent. Their taste for adventure, fascination with the fur trade, and desire to improve their circumstances all contributed to the expansion of New France—with the result that barely a century after its founding, it had become a vast empire stretching to the far north, westward beyond the Mississippi, eastward to the English colonies, and southward as far as the Gulf of Mexico. The fur trade was the driving force behind this movement. From the early seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth , French Canadians actively participated in all phases of the trade. As canoeists, traders, and voyageurs, they played a vital role in this commerce centered around the Great Lakes, always pushing back the frontiers of the colony. In so doing, they came into contact with Amerindian peoples, with whom they formed such strong bonds that some decided to integrate into Amerindian societies. This scattering of the population over such a wide area may have posed a threat to the survival of New France, but the scores of small, isolated French Canadian communities throughout the continent proved remarkably hardy. In spite of peace treaties, shifts of allegiance, and the decline of the regional fur trade at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they somehow managed to sustain themselves. The territory known as Michigan changed allegiance at least twice in the eighteenth century:first,after the victory of England over France in 1760, and again after the Jay Treaty of 1794 when the territory officially switched from England x INTRODUCTION to the United States. But these changes did not seem to alter the way French Canadians lived in this region. The industrialization of the continent during the nineteenth century and the market economy that disrupted the agricultural way of life caused various problems and inspired renewed interest in migration among some French Canadians who had problems adjusting to the new economic reality of the open market. Many borrowed money to invest in mechanization in order to produce a surplus to sell on the market, but were met with bankruptcy when they failed to find the necessary buyers. This wave of migration from Quebec, which began before the 1860s, was directed in roughly equal streams toward the New England states and the American Midwest. The latter movement, principally to the state of Michigan, is not surprising, as the colonists associated with the fur traders had taken this same route earlier: the arrival of these new migrants replenished and stimulated communities long established in the region, instilling in them new vitality. In 1890, there were 537,298 people of French Canadian origin living in the United States. Of this number, the great majority, some 72 percent, lived in the states of the Northeast. Nevertheless , 137,168 French Canadians, or 26 percent of all those living in the United States, resided in the Midwest, and 58,377, or 43 percent of these, lived in Michigan.1 This book analyzes French Canadian immigration from 1840 to the beginning of the twentieth century to two regions of the state: the Saginaw River Valley, including the counties of Bay and Saginaw, and the Keweenaw Peninsula—aptly named Copper Country—which includes the counties of Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon. These regions were selected for examination because they were affected by the forestry and mining industries, respectively—the two major economic pillars of industrial development in nineteenth-century Michigan—and because they were the two regions of the state, outside of Detroit, that attracted the greatest number of French Canadians. The period under study coincides with the beginning of industrialization, which changed both regions and favored the influx of thousands of migrants. My [54.211.203.45] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:22 GMT) Introduction xi study ends in 1914, the year that marked the end of the most important strike ever seen in the Keweenaw Peninsula. The conflict was decisive in several respects, and its outcome brought a profound change to social relations in the communities of the region. This book emphasizes that the process of French colonization on the continent continued to make its mark long after the Conquest, the victory of England over France in 1760. It seeks to give an account of this phenomenon, especially as it concerns the region of Michigan which, conveniently adjacent to the Great Lakes, served for a long period as the hub...