Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

HistoryIn mid-river we join the ancient forceof mud and leaves moving in their journeydown the face of the continent and afterthe first dance of leavingone element for another we fall quiet,waiting for silence to give us aglimpse of history. 12Canada has a history, even though it might from one point of viewseem to be but a plume of smoke in a vast land or a handful of leaves floatingupon the surfaces of its rivers. Here I want to offer a few glimpses ofthat history and how it differs from that of the United States.From the first colony at Jamestown in 1607, the Atlantic seaboard tothe south was populated by men and women who came to settle, howevervaried their backgrounds or reasons for coming to the New World. In fact,settling into the space between the seaboard and the Appalachians was theprimary work of Americans throughout the 17th century. There were exploratoryprobes through the Appalachians into the territory west of them,but it was not until well into the 18th century that there was any significantmovement across that frontier. The Ohio Company began its work in the1740s, and Daniel Boone crossed into Kentucky in 1767.One consequence of this early and clear pattern of settlement wasan almost inevitable conflict with the Indian tribes along the Atlantic seaboard,once an initial period of mutual goodwill had passed—inevitable,because many of these tribes had abandoned their earlier hunting patternsto become farmers themselves.In contrast, the French who arrived north of the Great Lakes werein the main explorers and fur traders with little interest in settlement. Thus,settlement as such proceeded slowly. Acadia (Nova Scotia) was founded in1605 and Quebec City in 1608. Yet by 1663 there were only three thousandinhabitants in New France, most of them still engaged in the fur trade. 13Because of the fur trade, however, exploration westward proceeded throughoutthe 17th century and into the 18th, both on the part of the Coureurs deBois and Hudson Bay traders, as distinct from the slower movement westwardfrom the Atlantic seaboard to the south. By 1673, Jolliet and Marquettewere exploring south of the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi to the Gulfof Mexico, and by 1795 the northern waterways had brought AlexanderMackenzie first to the Arctic Ocean and then to the Pacific coast.61