A School History of the United States. John Bach McMaster
definite western boundary; 2. Massachusetts, which owned Maine and a strip of territory across the continent; 3. Rhode Island, with her present bounds; 4. Connecticut, with a great tract of land extending to the Pacific; 5. New York, with undefined bounds; 6. New Jersey; 7. Pennsylvania and 8. Delaware, the property of the Penn family; 9. Maryland, the property of the heirs of Lord Baltimore; 10. Virginia, with claims to a great part of North America; 11. North Carolina, 12. South Carolina, and 13. Georgia, all with claims to the Pacific.
SUMMARY
1. The English seized New Netherland (1664), giving it to the Duke of
York; and the Duke, after establishing the province of New York, gave
New Jersey to two of his friends, and sold the three counties on the
Delaware to William Penn.
2. Meanwhile the King granted Penn what is now Pennsylvania (1681).
3. The Carolinas were first chartered as one proprietary colony, but were sold back to the King and finally separated in 1729.
4. Georgia, the last of the thirteen English colonies, was granted to Oglethorpe and others as a refuge for poor debtors (1732).
BEGINNINGS OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES
English.
Failures:
1579. Gilbert. 1584. }Ralegh, Roanoke Island. 1587. }
Successes:
1606. London Company, Plymouth Company.
1607. Virginia settled.
1609. Boundary of London Company changed. Origin of
Virginia claim.
1620. Landing of the Pilgrims. Plymouth colony.
1622. Grant to Mason and Gorges.
1628. Land bought for Massachusetts Bay colony.
1629. Mason and Gorges divide their grant into Maine
and New Hampshire.
1632. Maryland patent granted.
1639. Connecticut constitution
(Windsor. Hartford. Wethersfield)
1643. New Haven colony organized
(New Haven. Milford. Guilford. Stamford.)
1643. Rhode Island chartered.
1662. Connecticut chartered.
(Connecticut. New Haven.)
1663. Rhode Island rechartered.
1663. Carolina patent granted.
After 1729 North and South Carolina.
1664. New Netherland conquered and New York founded.
1664. New Jersey granted to Berkeley and Carteret.
1681. Pennsylvania granted to Penn.
1682. Three counties on the Delaware bought by Penn.
1691. Plymouth and Maine (and Nova Scotia)
united with Massachusetts.
1732. Georgia chartered.
Dutch. 1613. Begin to colonize New Netherland
Swedes. 1638. South Company makes settlement on the Delaware. 1655. Conquered by the Dutch.
CHAPTER VI
THE FRENCH IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
%54. The Early French Possessions% on our continent may be arranged in three great areas: 1. Acadia, 2. New France, 3. Louisiana, or the basin of the Mississippi River.
ACADIA comprised what is now New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and a part of
Maine. It was settled in the early years of the seventeenth century at
Port Royal (now Annapolis, Nova Scotia), at Mount Desert Island, and on
the St. Croix River.
NEW FRANCE was the drainage basin of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. As far back as 1535 Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence River to the site of Montreal. But it was not till 1608 that a party under Champlain made the first permanent settlement on the river, at Quebec.
The French settlers at once entered into an alliance with the Huron and Algonquin Indians, who lived along the St. Lawrence River. But these tribes were the bitter enemies of the Iroquois, who dwelt in what is now central New York, and when, in consequence of this alliance, the French were summoned to take the warpath, Champlain, with a few followers, went, and on the shore of the lake which now bears his name, not far from the site of Ticonderoga, he met and defeated the Iroquois tribe of Mohawks in July, 1609.
The battle was a small affair; but its consequences were serious and lasting, for the Iroquois were thenceforth the enemies of the French, and prevented them from ever coming southward and taking possession of the Hudson and the Mohawk valleys. When, therefore, the French merchants began to engage in the fur trade with the Indians, and the French priests began their efforts to convert the Indians to Christianity, they were forced to go westward further and further into the interior.
[Illustration: EUROPEAN CLAIMS AND EXPLORATIONS 1650]
Their route, instead of being up the St. Lawrence, was up the Ottawa River to its head waters, over the portage to Lake Nipissing, and down its outlet to Georgian Bay, where the waters of the Great Lakes lay before them (see map on p. 63). They explored these lakes, dotted their shores here and there with mission and fur-trading stations, and took possession of the country.
%55. The French on the Mississippi.%—In the course of these explorations the French heard accounts from the Indians of a great river to the westward, and in 1672 Father Marquette (mar-ket') and Louis Joliet (zho-le-a') were sent by the governor of New France to search for it. They set out, in May, 1673, from Michilimackinac, a French trading post and mission at the foot of Lake Michigan. With five companions, in two birch-bark canoes, they paddled up the lake to Green Bay, entered Fox River, and, dragging the boats through its boiling rapids, came to a village where lived the Miamis and the Kickapoos. These Indians tried to dissuade them from going on; but Marquette was resolute, and on the 10th of June, 1673, he led his followers over the swamps and marshes that separated Fox River from a river which the Indian guides assured him flowed into the Mississippi. This westward-flowing river he called the Wisconsin, and there the guides left him, as he says, "alone, amid that unknown country, in the hands of God."
The little band shoved their canoes boldly out upon the river, and for seven days floated slowly downward into the unknown. At last, on the 17th of June, they paddled out on the bosom of the Mississippi, and, turning their canoes to the south, followed the bends and twists of the river, past the mouth of the Missouri, past the Ohio, to a point not far from the mouth of the Arkansas. There the voyage ended, and the party went slowly back to the Lakes.[1]
[Footnote 1: Read Parkman's La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West.]
%56. La Salle finishes the Work of Marquette and Joliet.%—The discovery of Marquette and Joliet was the greatest of the age. Yet five years went by before Robert de la Salle (lah sahl') set forth with authority from the French King "to labor at the discovery of the western part of New France," and began the attempt to follow the river to the sea. In 1678 La Salle and his companions left Canada, and made their way to the shore of Lake Erie, where during the winter they built and launched the Griffin, the first ship that ever floated on those waters. In this they sailed to the mouth of Green Bay, and from there pushed on to the Illinois River, to an Indian camp not far from the site of Peoria, Ill. Just below this camp La Salle built Fort Crèvecoeur (cra'v-ker, a word meaning heart-break, vexation).
[Illustration: