France Explores America

On his first two trips to North America, Cartier discovered and mapped the St.  Lawrence River.  He then returned a third time in 1541 intending to found a colony, but the harsh winter convinced him to return to France.  In the decades after Cartier’s last voyage, fighting between Catholics and Protestants tore apart France.  For the next 60 years, the French government made no further attempt to colonize North America.  In the early 1600s, however, the French government’s interest revived.

New France Is Founded

In the 1500s, the French began to fish near North America.  The fishing crews often went ashore to trade their goods for furs from the Native Americans.  By 1600 fur—particularly beaver fur—had become very fashionable in Europe.  As the demand for fur increased, French merchants became interested in expanding the fur trade.  In 1602 King Henry IV of France authorized a group of French merchants to create colonies in North America. 
The merchants hired the royal geographer, Samuel de Champlain, to help them colonize North America.  In 1605 Champlain helped establish a French colony in Acadia, what is today Nova Scotia.  The site was attractive because of the many rivers that flowed to Acadia’s eastern seaboard.  In 1608 he founded Quebec, which became the capital of the new colony of New France.

Life in New France

The company that founded New France wanted to make money from the fur trade, and so they did not need settlers to clear the land and build farms.  As a result the colony grew slowly, and by 1666 it had just over 3,000 people.  Most of the fur traders did not even live in the colony.  Known as coureurs de bois, or “runners of the woods,” the fur traders lived among the Native Americans with whom they traded.  They learned their languages and customs and often married Native American women.

The fur traders were not the only ones who traveled into the woods to live with the Native Americans.  Soon after the founding of Quebec, Jesuit missionaries arrived intending to convert the Native Americans to Christianity.  Known as “black robes” to the Native Americans, the Jesuits tried to live among the local people and teach them the Catholic faith.

Explaining
Why did King Francis I of France send Verrazano and Cartier to America?
 

New France Expands

The slow growth of New France worried the French as they watched the Spanish and English build prosperous colonies farther south.  Finally, in 1663, France’s king Louis XIV seized control of New France and made it a royal colony.  His government then launched a series of projects to expand the colony’s population.

The French government began by shipping over 4,000 immigrants to New France.  It then sent over 900 young women to provide wives for the many single men in the colony.  If a woman under 16 or a man under 20 married, they received a royal wedding gift.  Parents who had more than 10 children received financial bonuses.  Fathers whose children did not get married early were fined.  By the 1670s the population was nearly 7,000, and by 1760 it was over 60,000.

Exploring the Mississippi

In addition to promoting immigration to New France, the French government began exploring North America.  In 1673 a fur trader named Louis Joliet and a Jesuit priest named Jacques Marquette set off in search of a waterway the Algonquian people called the “big river”—the Mississippi.  Canoeing along inland lakes and rivers, the two men finally found the Mississippi River and followed it as far south as the Arkansas River.  In 1682 René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle (known as Lord La Salle) followed the Mississippi all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, becoming the first European to do so.  La Salle then claimed the region for France, and he named the entire territory Louisiana in honor of King Louis XIV.

GEOGRAPHY
Settling Louisiana

Count Frontenac, the governor of New France, hoped to ship furs to France by way of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.  Unfortunately, settling the lower Mississippi proved to be very difficult.  The coastline had no good harbors, and shifting sandbars made navigation dangerous.  The oppressive heat caused food to spoil quickly.  The swamps were breeding grounds for mosquitoes that spread yellow fever and malaria.

The French did not permanently settle the region until 1698, when Lord d’Iberville founded Biloxi, in what is today Mississippi.  Over the next few decades, more French settlements appeared in Louisiana, including Mobile and New Orleans.  Farther upriver, the French built several forts, including Fort St.  Louis and Fort Detroit, to ensure control of the Mississippi River.

The French settlers in southern Louisiana realized that the crops that could be grown there, such as sugar, rice, tobacco, and indigo, required hard manual labor.  Few settlers were willing to do that kind of labor unless they were paid extremely well.  Enslaved people, on the other hand, could be compelled to do the work.  By 1721 the French in Louisiana had imported over 1,800 enslaved Africans to work on their plantations.

Rivalry With Spain

The Spanish had always been concerned about the French colonies in North America.  Indeed, they had founded the town of St.  Augustine, Florida, in 1565 to protect their claim to the region after the French had tried to settle what is today the Carolinas.  St.  Augustine prospered and became the first permanent town established by Europeans in what is today the United States.  The arrival of the French at the mouth of the Mississippi spurred the Spanish into action once again.  In 1690 they established their first mission in what is today eastern Texas.  In 1716 the first Spanish settlers arrived in eastern Texas to secure the Spanish claim and to block French expansion into the region.  The French and Spanish empires in North America now bordered each other.  Neither empire, however, posed a serious threat to the other’s position in North America.  The real challenge to French and Spanish domination of North America would come from another quarter.  While Spain focused its colonies primarily in the Southwest and France along the Mississippi River, England began settling numerous colonies along a narrow strip of the Atlantic coast.

Explaining
Why did the French establish forts and settlements along the Mississippi?