nd women that
the French church could furnish; besides these institutions, the
admirable plan of a training colony, at which converted Indians should
be trained to civilized life, was realized at Sillery, in the
neighborhood. The sacred city of Montreal had been established as a base
for missions to the remoter west. Long in advance of the settlement at
Plymouth, French Christianity was actively and beneficently busy among
the savages of eastern Maine, among the so-called "neutral nations" by
the Niagara, among the fiercely hostile Iroquois of northern New York,
by Lake Huron and Lake Nipissing, and, with wonderful tokens of success,
by the Falls of St. Mary. "Thus did the religious zeal of the French
bear the cross to the banks of the St. Mary and the confines of Lake
Superior, and look wistfully toward the homes of the Sioux in the valley
of the Mississippi, five years before the New England Eliot had
addressed the tribe of Indians that dwelt within six miles of Boston
harbor."[21:1]

Thirty years more passed, bringing the story down to the memorable year
1688. The French posts, military, commercial, and religious, had been
pushed westward to the head of Lake Superior. The Mississippi had been
discovered and explored, and the colonies planted from Canada along its
banks and the banks of its tributaries had been met by the expeditions
proceeding direct from France through the Gulf of Mexico. The claims of
France in America included not only the vast domain of Canada, but a
half of Maine, a half of Vermont, more than a half of New York, the
entire valley of the Mississippi, and Texas as far as the Rio Bravo del
Norte.[21:2] And these claims were asserted by actual and almost
undisputed occupancy.

The seventy years that followed were years of "storm and stress" for the
French colonies and missions. The widening areas occupied by the French
and by the English settlers brought the rival establishments into nearer
neighborhood, into sharper competition, and into bloody collision.
Successive European wars--King William's War, Queen Anne's War (of the
Spanish succession), King George's War (of the Austrian
succession)--involved the dependencies of France and those of England in
the conflicts of their sovereigns. These were the years of terror along
the exposed northern frontier of English settlements in New England and
New York, when massacre and burning by bands of savages, under French
instigation and leadership, made th