Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814

French Imperial Policy for the Great Lakes Basin

— 21 — FrenchImperialPolicyfortheGreatLakesBasin W . J . E c c l e s This article is an attempt to view this part of the world through the eyes of the French, the British, their American colonists, and the Indian nations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1663, Louis XIV decided to take control of the French colonies in North America into his own hands, out of the hands of the private companies that had been exploiting them. The man placed in charge of this endeavor was the minister of finance, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. His plan was that the French should adopt England’s colonial policy. The French colonies would thus provide France with the raw materials previously obtained from the Dutch. In Canada, up to that point in time, the sole mainstay of the Canadian economy had been the fur trade. From their subsistence farms along the banks of the St. Lawrence, the young men embarked for the northwest in their birch bark canoes with loads of European goods to trade with the Indian nations for furs. Thus, every year a large proportion of the men were out of the colony for months at a time, instead of laboring to clear their land and make the colony self sufficient in food, rather than importing it from France. Colbert was determined to put a stop to that activity. The Canadian settlers were forbidden, by decree, to leave the confines of the colony without a permit issued W. J. E c c l e s — 22 — by the newly appointed royal officials. Instead, the western Indians were, somehow, to be induced to bring their furs to the colony to trade. It seemed a rational policy, but it failed; it was defeated by economic opportunity, geography, and sex. First, economic opportunity: one summer’s voyage to the northwest could garner a man a far greater profit than years of back-breaking labor clearing trees from a 200-acre farm. Striving to curb the proclivity of these men was as futile as attempting to bail out a boat with a fork. The Indians with their furs were in the west. The Canadians were determined to garner them. Moreover, they had the means to do it. Second, geography: from Canada the Ottawa River led to Lake Huron, and from there to the richest fur-bearing lands, west and north—at the junction of Lakes Huron, Michigan and Superior. It was there that the Canadian traders or coureurs de bois—as they came to be called—established their main base, Michilimackinac. The Canadians also had the only practical means of getting there and back—the Indians’ birch bark canoe. The coureurs de bois who made their way to Michilimackinac then fanned out to the remote Indian villages and quickly established good relations with their hosts, mastered their languages, adopted their customs, their mores—eventually becoming more Indian than French. The Jesuit missionaries were appalled by this development. In particular, they held firmly to the belief that premarital sex was anathema. Michilimackinac they declared to be a den of gambling, drunkenness, and lechery. The Indians regarded the missionary attitude as ridiculous. Indian girls were masters of their own bodies, free to take any man who took their fancy as a lover, and this included the Canadians. The Indians considered that unions between their young women and the Canadians strengthened the trade and military alliance between them. The Jesuits, early on, strove to have the Indians adopt the French way of life, to become assimilated. As it happened, the Indians assimilated the Canadians . The result was the métis nation in the northwest. Colbert’s “compact colony” policy had no chance of success. During the years 1663–1700, some of the royal officials, notably the intendant, Jean Talon, and the governor-general, Louis de Buade, comte de Frontenac, both knee-deep in the fur trade for their own accounts—paid not even lip service to Colbert’s orders. In alliance with some of the Montreal fur-trade merchants, a chain of trading posts was established through the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi. Imperial rivalries in Europe had led to war—known as the War of the League of Augsburg (in America known as King William’s War). War, rather than peace, Fre n ch Im p e ri a l Pol i cy for th e G re at Lakes Basin — 23 — was the norm in Europe...