the
city of New Orleans, and all the vast and indefinite territory known as
Louisiana, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the unexplored regions
of the northwest. New France was a dream of the past.

The French policy in America had one essential and fatal feature. The
French came more as a garrison than as colonists. They came to govern,
rather than possess the land, to rule, but not to supplant the natives of
the soil. This policy insured some immediate strength, because the
Indians were naturally less jealous of Europeans who did not threaten
their hunting-grounds. On the other hand the ultimate failure of such a
course was inevitable, in dealing as rivals and antagonists with a people
who had come to possess the land, to drive out the Indian, to make the
New World their home and a heritage for their descendants. The English
settlers might be driven back for a time; their cabins might be turned
into ashes, and the tomahawk and scalping-knife leave dire evidence of
savage vengeance and Gallic inhumanity. But the rally was as certain as
the raid was sudden. A garrison might be massacred; a colony could not be
exterminated, and the defeats of Braddock and Abercrombie only burned
into English breasts the resolution to tear down forever on the American
continent the flag which floated over the evidence of England's dishonor.

The Algonquin Indians, who had regarded the French as allies and
protectors, were now left to defend themselves against the English.
Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, conceived the idea of inducing all the
tribes to unite in a general attack upon the English settlements as a
last desperate resort to stay the advance of the whites. Pontiac is
supposed to have led the Ottawas who assisted the French in defeating
Braddock, and he perhaps underrated the power and prowess of his British
antagonists. He was an able chieftain, of the same type as King Philip,
Tecumseh and Sitting Bull. He saw that the white man and the red man
could not possess the land together, and he determined to make a stand in
behalf of his race. The struggle lasted for about two years, attended by
the usual barbarities of savage warfare, and ended in the death of
Pontiac, who, after suing for peace, was murdered by a drunken Indian,
bribed by an English trader with a barrel of rum to commit the deed.
Instead of preventing, Pontiac's War only hastened the flight of the
Indian and the march of the colonists toward the setting sun.