Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/245

Rh claim his share in the spoils of the heathen, and sent Verrazano, in 1524, to pick up the leavings. Verrazano made three voyages, and planted the arms of France from the Mississippi to the St. Lawrence. Though the bull of Pope Paul III. had pronounced the natives here to be real men, not monkeys, — “utpote veros homines” — Francis, in his Commission, declared them to be “savages living without the knowledge of God and without the use of reason.” His successor, Henry IV., wrote : “We have undertaken, with the help of God, — the Author, Distributor, and Protector of all kingdoms and states, — to guide, instruct, and convert to Christianity and the belief of our holy faith the inhabitants of that country, who are barbarians, atheists, devoid of religion,” etc. So the Marquis De la Roche was appointed viceroy here in 1598; but he brought over for this work of conversion only fifty felons from the prisons, and no clergymen.

A similar commission was given in 1601 to M. Chauvin, who was ordered to spread the Catholic faith over North America. But he was a Calvinist. He collected peltry, in which he did a profitable business, and left the missionary work unattempted. In all the subsequent enterprises of the French for colonization and empire here, according to the patronage under which each of them was pursued, there was an alternation of preponderance given to secular or sacred objects to be advanced. As in all worldly interests, according to the Scripture text never challenged, “Money answereth all things,” the support of mission work depended upon thrift in trade. Though the traffickers in brandy and peltry were often brought into collision with the priests, the parties which both of them represented were considered as equally essential to the success of each successive enterprise; so that, as we have said, it was not thought necessary to ask leave of residence or grant of territory. Whether the French monarch conferred his vast gift of geometrically bounded spaces and