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MICHIGAN:

A HISTORY OF GOVERNMENTS.

CHAPTER I.

MICHIGAN IS EXPLORED, AND MISSIONS AND TRADING POSTS ESTABLISHED.

It was between the great lakes that the western currents of French and English colonization, starting from distant points upon the St. Lawrence and along the Atlantic, after a century and a half of unfriendly rivalry, with occasional bloody and devastating wars, met at last and blended in a peaceful and prosperous commonwealth.

Europe was dazzled by the discovery of a new world, and every maritime nation hastened to share with Spain the fame to be won in adventurous exploration. But in colonization Spain was long without a rival. Attracted by the amazing wealth of tropical production, but far more by the inexhaustible mines of precious metals of which fame brought such wondrous reports from the interior, that country was not long in seizing

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and occupying the Antilles and the mainland from Mexico to Peru, and the Spanish crown could boast possessions in America of which Rome would have been proud in the height of her supremacy. Portugal, a little later, had obtained a foothold in Brazil; but it was some time before any people or any ruler in Northern Europe appeared to take in the full significance of American discovery, or seemed to appreciate the great fact that a vast and fertile continent, whose possibilities for humanity were beyond calculation, was now offered for the acceptance of European civilization. For more than a century after the discovery by Columbus, the attention of the people of England was so far absorbed by the polemical controversies and the bitter political contests attendant upon a change in the state religion, that the mysterious continent across the ocean excited only occasional and transitory interest. And France, which then, in rivalry with England, was preparing to contest the claim of Spain to the leadership of the world, contented herself for a long time with a lion's share in the harvests which hardy fishermen were gathering on the banks of Newfoundland, and with voyages of adventure and exploration upon the bay and the river St. Lawrence, through which it was hoped there might be found an avenue for trade with the Indies. Roberval and Jacques Cartier attempted a colony at Cape Roque in 1542, but it failed to

THE FRENCH IN CANADA.

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take root; La Roche with forty transported convicts made a like attempt on Sable Island in 1598, but took off five years later all whom death had not already removed; and Du Monts, in 1604, made a settlement on an island near the mouth of the St. Croix, which the next year he abandoned for Port Royal, and Port Royal in its turn was abandoned in 1607 when the fur monopoly, which had been granted to Du Monts, was taken away. It was Samuel de Champlain who was the father of New France; and by him, at Quebec, the first permanent settlement was made the year following the planting of the English colony at Jamestown. Other points were soon occupied, of which Montreal was the most important.

The primary objects of French adventure in Canada were profitable trade with the savages and their conversion to the true faith of Christ. Every company of adventurers had its priests, and the eagerness of the trader for gain was more than equaled by the self-sacrificing zeal of the missionary of the cross. Champlain himself was a sincere and devoted son of the Church; and while he endeavored to foster and advance the fur trade, he gave his best energies to establishing and maintaining missions among the Indians, and to protecting against their enemies the tribes which submitted to his guidance, and tacitly acknowledged the French supremacy. In 1615 he visited the shore of Lake Huron, where for the

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