Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/310

290 of a country which has had no place on a seaman's chart, establishes by the law of nations the right of discovery, and so of possession, for the monarch from one of whose ports the vessel sailed bearing the navigator who caught that glance, what shall we say of rights and claims assured by early and continued French enterprise on this continent? While the levity and hilarity of spirit which characterize that people, and the easy abandon of their morals in the temptations of a wilderness, may have lightened and cheered their ventures of exploration, some stiffer sinews, some firmer fibres, some loftier pitch of spirit were needed by them in that perilous work. They had at least leaders of a dauntless heroism, of pluck, energy, and endurance unmatched in adventure. I would include the French with the Indians, as having been spoiled of their inheritance here.

3. But what is more directly to our purpose, in our theme of the red man in his relations with Europeans on this continent, is to note the paramount claim of France, through her colonists here, to sway and influence over the savages. It is but fair, and fully conformed to historic truth, to say that of all the colonists who entered the New World, for whatever ends involving trespass upon or dispossession of the native tribes, Frenchmen were the most friendly, the most serviceable, and, we may add, the most just toward them. Of course, in affirming this we may still recall with all their aggravations the fierce and bitter wars with the Indians, the raids and devastations and massacres which so deeply stain with woe and horror the dominion of New France in America. The French brought many miseries upon tribes which they could not win to friendship; and they aggravated the darkest and direst penalties visited upon their allied tribes by subjecting them to the common vengeance of the English as being the bloody tools of their rivals. But, notwithstanding this, France might claim to-day a hold upon some of this