Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/326

306 France would have been saved from some dreadful stains of persecution now on her annals, and the affinity between the Huguenots and the Puritans of New England would have greatly modified that century and a half of warfare which was waged by two sovereignties and their subjects here. If France had none the less been despoiled of all her territory here, she would have been more largely represented by Frenchmen all over the continent.

What effect, if any, this possible transfer hither of a large French population, with political and religious proclivities in accord with those which have gained the mastery here, would have had upon the fortunes of the Indian tribes, it might be difficult to decide. So far as the substitute in Canada of a Protestant for a Roman Catholic people would have qualified the hostility of Puritan New England (that it would have largely done so is altogether probable), there would have been less occasion for and embitterment of the rivalries and jealousies which brought in the Indians, — never in the dignified position of umpires, hardly even in the equality of allies, — to find themselves losers in every case, whichever of the principals claimed the advantage. Certain it is that the contentions between the English and the French, engaging their respective Indian allies, were intensely aggravated by the differences in religion of the principal combatants. It was at a time when the hatred of the Papacy and the Papists was aggravated for all Englishmen by the policy and diplomacy which entered into the intrigues of European peoples engaged in the rival ecclesiastical systems. Massachusetts followed the statutes of England in sharp legislation against the Papists. In the view of the French Canadian Government it was but an axiom of natural reason, a prompting of common-sense, that they should engage and employ Indian allies. But this obvious suggestion did not at all relieve the matter in the view of the Puritans. It was enough for them, — in their amazement, protests, and