The issuance of this patent was immediately followed by an attempt at settlement, de Monts and Champlain, both of whom had previously been in Canada, sailing with a hundred and twenty men in the spring following the receipt of the grant. Buildings were erected, and the first winter passed on the island of St. Croix, in the mouth of the river of the same name, which empties into Passamaquoddy Bay.29 It was thus the first authorized attempt to colonize any part of New England. The choice of a site had been unfortunate, and in the following spring, the colony removed to Nova Scotia, where it lasted two years more before the cancellation of the grant resulted in its abandonment. A lively and entertaining account of life in the colony was written by a genial lawyer, who was one of its members, and the attention with which American affairs were then being watched is indicated by the appearance of an English translation in the same year in which the original came out in Paris.30 During the three years of his stay, Champlain was indefatigable in exploring the coast, making three principal voyages along the shores of New England, which he described and mapped as far south as the present settlement of Chatham, in Massachusetts.
Manuscript Map of the New England Coast, 1607-8 (believed to have been drawn by Champlain)
The coast of Maine and the shores of Massachusetts Bay were carefully studied for sites for settlement, and the former was for long to form a debatable land between French and English. These years also saw the foundation laid of the friendship between French and Indian, which was to cost the English dear. De Monts’s patent contemplated trade with the natives, rather than an agricultural colony; and the French empire in America, as has already been noted, consisted mainly of a series of trading-posts. It was to the interest of the French that the Indian should remain, as he himself wished, a hunter; whereas the growth of the English agricultural colonies denied him the possibility of continuing his savage life, without, on the other hand, absorbing him into civilization. It was not merely that the French, in the main, were tactful and friendly, accepting the Indian as he was, and even intermarrying, while the English were harsh and disdainful. It may be said that one Indian required to sustain his life approximately as many square miles as the English agriculturist, with his domestic animals, needed acres. On the other hand, the uses to which the French put the soil were identical with those for which it served the savage. The English, indeed, “bought” land, which the French never did; but the French and the Indian shared the soil to the profit of both, while the English deprived the native of his means of subsistence, in exchange for coats and beads.31 Not that they did so intentionally; but the consequence was inevitable. Nor was it the Indian alone who was to fall before the farmer and founder of towns. The French coureurs des bois, and traders in the scattered posts, were likewise to fall and, in part, for the same reason.
Nevertheless, at the time of the first authorized English attempt to colonize New England, the French were, if anything, ahead in the race. Champlain’s knowledge of the coast and its possibilities was quite as accurate, probably, as that of Gosnold or Pring or Weymouth, though English writers usually give many pages to the latter trio while dismissing Champlain in a line or two. A definite grant of the territory had been made, and the first colony of their hereditary enemy was seemingly successfully started within the limits of the English patent, when King James affixed his signature to that document. A struggling little settlement in Virginia, however, was to prove the undoing of the French in the north, and win the New England coast for the English, though not without further effort on the part of its future settlers. But, whatever the local successes of French or English, it must not be forgotten that the colonies of both nations were mere pawns in the game of European policy, and that the allegiance of the colonist was to be determined in the last analysis, not by their own comparative strength on faraway shores, but by the strength which the two nations could put forth in their navies on the sea.
Notes
1. Cf. E. P. Cheyney, European Background of American History (New York, 1904), pp. 3-41.
2. Prowse favors Newfoundland; d’Avezac, Deane, Réclus, Winsor, Brevoort, Eggleston, Winship, Biggar, and Dawson believe in Cape Breton; Biddle, Humboldt, Kohl, Stevens, Kretschmer, and Harrisse point to Labrador. The question is not important, and the alignment is given merely to show the uncertainties of this and other early voyages. The original sources are most accessible to the general reader in C. R. Beazley, John and Sebastian Cabot; London, 1898.
3. In regard to the 1497 voyage, opinion ranges from R. Biddle, Memoir of Sebastian Cabot (Philadelphia, 1831), p. 50, who doubts if the father went, to H. Harrisse, John Cabot (London, 1896), p. 48, who doubts if the son did!
4. S. E. Dawson, “Voyages of the Cabots.” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Series II, 1894, p. 53.
5. Cf.H. Harrisse, The Discovery of North America (London, 1892), pp. 180 ff.; and C. de la Roncière, Histoire de la Marine Française (Paris, 1906), vol. ii, p. 399.
6. Cf.H. Stevens, Historical and Geographical Notes; New Haven, 1869.
7. For the Verrazano voyage, vide B. Smith, An Enquiry into the Authenticity etc.; New York, 1864; J. C. Brevoort, Verrazano the Navigator; New York, 1874; H. C. Murphy, The Voyage of Verrazano; New York, 1875; B. F. deCosta, Verrazano the Explorer; New York, 1881. The Gomez voyage is important but very obscure. The statement by Fiske (The Discovery of America, vol. ii, p. 491) is far too positive. Harrisse (Discovery, pp. 229-43) gives new documents.
8. “The Englishmen, who commonly are lords of the harbors where they fish, and do use all strangers helpe in fishing if need require, accordinge to an old custome of the countrey.” Letter of Anthony Parkhurst, 1578, in Hakluyt, Voyages (Glasgow, 1904), vol. viii, p. 10. H. P. Biggar states that the English were so heavily interested in the American fisheries by 1522, that the Vice-Admiral sent several men-of-war to the mouth of the Channel to protect the returning vessels. Early Trading Companies of New France (Toronto, 1901), p. 20.
9. Cf.W. Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels in Mittelälter (Stuttgart, 1879), vol. ii, pp. 514-40.
10. H. J. Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” in The Geographical Journal, April, 1904, pp. 421-44.
11. If “these thinges be sett downe and executed duelye and with speed and effecte, no doubte but the Spanishe empire falles to the grounde, and the Spanishe kinge shall be lefte bare as Aesops proude crowe . . . if you touche him in the Indies, you touche the apple of his eye; for take away his treasure, which is neruus belli, and which he hath almoste oute of his West Indies, his olde bandes of souldiers will soone be dissolved, his purposes defeated, his power and strengthe diminished, his pride abated, and his tyranie utterly suppressed.” R. Hakluyt, “A Discourse concerning Western Planting”; Maine Historical