Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/108

 76 Relations with the natives. [1027- hunting grounds, rather than east of the Alleghanies to the coast. Even if the future growth of the Iroquois power could have been foreseen, a neutral position was impossible for intruders so weakly supported as were the early French traders. According to Champlain's belief he and a force of 120 soldiers supported by his two or three thousand savage allies could force English and Dutch to retire to the coasts, and could then keep the general peace with the Iroquois. A policy of extermination was no part of the French scheme. It was Champlain's hope that the beginnings of New France might be made easy by a warm friendship with the Indians. If a large French popu- lation failed to emigrate, the example of the Spanish colonies showed that the natives themselves could be used as labourers. In order to be gallicised, the Indians must be converted, and the converts must be protected from the raids of the heathen. But the very process of conversion and protection, the insidious effects of contact with civilisation, and the pressure of repeated Iroquois attack, involved the unintentional destruction of the tribes whose alliance was most easily secured. The position of the Hurons in the neighbourhood of Lake Simcoe had made them a defence to the tribes north of the lakes ; with the fall of the Hurons the Algonquins were the next exposed. Thus it happened that the missionary work which engaged the best efforts of the French from 1632 to 1664 was deprived of a large part of its usefulness ; and during this period it was missionary work alone that met with enthusiastic support at home. The members of the Company in whose hands the future of the colony lay, for the most part perceived that their chances of personal profit depended on the fur-trade. A large population of French farmers was not to their advantage; for agriculture diminished the profits of the chase, and in a forest-country yielded a low return. No chartered company had yet found profit in an agricultural colony, and the northern shores of the St Lawrence, being the coldest portion of the country, offered the least hope. Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, each ninety miles distant from its neighbour, were planned as trading-posts only. Of the total population one-third was gathered at Quebec, the least sheltered and least fertile of the three. During the long winter there was no communication between the three posts except on snow- shoes. So slight was the Company's success even in the fur-trade for systematic fraud on the part of its officials could not be effectually checked that the temporary cession of its privileges was found to be advantageous. In 1645 the Canadian colonists obtained the fur-trade in return for an annual payment of a thousand pounds weight of beaver-skins. The Company still allowed no stranger to go to Canada except on its own vessels, and fixed a tariff for the purchase of furs. The Company chose the Governor-General, and on rare occasions he was assisted by a Council