rwards to retire to South Carolina. While New England was sadly
disappointed by this second failure to take Quebec, the French of
Canada considered it a providential interposition in their behalf, and
the church, which had been first named after the defeat of Phipps, was
now dedicated to _Notre Dame des Victoires_.

All this while the French dominion was slowly and surely extending into
the great valleys of the West and South. A fort had been built
opposite to the Jesuit mission of St. Ignace, on the other side of the
Strait of Michillimackinac, and it was now also proposed to make the
French headquarters at Detroit, which had been founded by Antoine de la
Mothe-Cadillac, despite the opposition of the Jesuits, who wished to
have the mission field of the West in their own hands, and resented the
intention to establish Recollets and other priests at the new post. As
soon as the French established themselves permanently at this key to
the Lakes and West, the {208} English practically gave up for fifty
years the hope of acquiring the Northwest, and controlling the Indian
trade. French pioneers were pushing their way into the valleys of the
Illinois and the Wabash. Perrot and Le Sueur had taken possession of
the region watered by the upper Mississippi and its affluents.
Iberville and Bienville had made small settlements at Biloxi, Mobile,
and on the banks of the Mississippi, and with them was associated one
of the most admirable figures of Canadian history, Henry de Tonty, who
had left his fort on the Illinois. In 1711 Louisiana was made a
separate government, with Mobile as the capital, and included the whole
region from the Lakes to the Gulf, and from the Alleghanies to the
Rocky Mountains. By the time of the Treaty of Utrecht the Indian
tribes of the West were, for the most part, in the interest of the
French, with the exception of the Sioux, Sauks, and Foxes, whose
hostility was for a long time an impediment to their progress on the
upper reaches of the Mississippi.

[Illustration: Chevalier D'Iberville.]

Louis XIV. was humbled by Marlborough on the battlefields of Blenheim,
Ramillies, and Oudenarde, and obliged to agree to the Treaty of
Utrecht, which was a triumph for England, since it gave her possession
of Acadia, Hudson's Bay, Newfoundland (subject to the rights of France
in the fisheries), and made the important concession that France should
never molest the Five Nations under the dominion of Great Britai