hes and
expectations of those engaged in it, was destined to produce as its last
result an American city.

Antoine de La Mothe-Cadillac commanded at Michilimackinac, whither
Frontenac had sent him in 1694. This old mission of the Jesuits, where
they had gathered the remnants of the lake tribes dispersed by the
Iroquois at the middle of the seventeenth century, now savored little of
its apostolic beginnings. It was the centre of the western fur-trade and
the favorite haunt of the _coureurs de bois_. Brandy and squaws
abounded, and according to the Jesuit Carheil, the spot where Marquette
had labored was now a witness of scenes the most unedifying.[15]

At Michilimackinac was seen a curious survival of Huron-Iroquois
customs. The villages of the Hurons and Ottawas, which were side by
side, separated only by a fence, were surrounded by a common enclosure
of triple palisades, which, with the addition of loopholes for musketry,
were precisely like those seen by Cartier at Hochelaga, and by Champlain
in the Onondaga country. The dwellings which these defences enclosed
were also after the old Huron-Iroquois pattern,--those long arched
structures covered with bark which Brebeuf found by the shores of
Matchedash Bay, and Jogues on the banks of the Mohawk. Besides the
Indians, there was a French colony at the place, chiefly of fur-traders,
lodged in log-cabins, roofed with cedar bark, and forming a street along
the shore close to the palisaded villages of the Hurons and Ottawas. The
fort, known as Fort Buade, stood at the head of the little bay.[16]

The Hurons and Ottawas were thorough savages, though the Hurons retained
the forms of Roman Catholic Christianity. This tribe, writes Cadillac,
"are reduced to a very small number; and it is well for us that they
are, for they are ill-disposed and mischievous, with a turn for intrigue
and a capacity for large undertakings. Luckily, their power is not
great; but as they cannot play the lion, they play the fox, and do their
best to make trouble between us and our allies."

La Mothe-Cadillac[17] was a captain in the colony troops, and an admirer
of the late governor, Frontenac, to whose policy he adhered, and whose
prejudices he shared. He was amply gifted with the kind of intelligence
that consists in quick observation, sharpened by an inveterate spirit of
sarcasm, was energetic, enterprising, well instructed, and a bold and
sometimes a visionary schemer, with a restless spirit, a n