Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

Because the northern pattern was primarily one of trading, therewas little conflict between the French and most of the Indian tribes northof the Great Lakes. In fact, these Indians became partners with the Frenchin the trading enterprise and were also receptive to the Christianity of theJesuit missionaries who traveled with the Coureurs de Bois. This was especiallytrue of Hurons and Algonquins. Relations with the Iroquois south ofthe Great Lakes became another matter, and the decision of the French toside with the Hurons and Algonquins was to prove costly later in the 17thcentury. But the conflict with the Iroquois lay elsewhere than in a disputeover the possession of land. 14It is also worth noting that the English colonists who came to theAtlantic seaboard left a motherland in the throes of change. SeventeenthcenturyEngland was the time when Parliament wrested power from theking, and when there was no king for twenty-one years. Not surprisingly,those who came to the American colonies brought something of the strugglewith them, expressed in a strong wish to found new and independent institutionsof government. Seventeenth-century France, on the other hand,was the time of Louis XIV, who established New France as a royal provincedirectly under his control, although the practical running of the colony wasdelegated to a Superior Council of three members in Quebec City. Nonetheless,the habitants who settled in the Saint Lawrence Valley were not inclinedto break their ties with France, or with French institutions, even though theywere capable of resisting the demands of a government uncongenial to theirown welfare. Thus the kinds of issues further south that eventually led tothe American Revolution were simply not issues in Quebec, and the stressesupon the value of authority and order there at the beginning continued untilFrench rule ended, only to be reconfirmed under British rule through theQuebec Act of 1774. 15This northern emphasis upon order and authority extended westwardin the 19th century and affected the settlement of the Canadian West.The first attempts to establish a colony west of the Canadian Shield from 1812onward were ordered and regulated by the Hudson Bay Company, whichup to 1869 owned one-third of Canada. At that time, two years after confederation,the Bay Company sold its holding of Rupertsland (including areasof present-day Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and theNorthwest Territories) to the newly formed Dominion of Canada. Its authority,however, was soon replaced by that of the Northwest Mounted Police.Formed in 1873, the Mounties were given the task of securing the West forCanada until it could be properly settled. That meant helping new arrivalsdig in, ordering relations between settlers and Indians, and convincing62