His immediate superior, the Huguenot Sieur de Monts, received a charter
from King Henri IV granting him all the lands north of 40°latitude (roughly
the site of modern Philadelphia). De Monts was to explore what became the
northeastern United States and eastern Canada and settle the territory in the
name of France. Under his direction, Champlain began a series of voyages
along the North American coast that would take the French sailors south
around Cape Cod almost to what is now Rhode Island. There, the Indians
received them with the same hostility with which their fathers had received
Verrazzano. Perhaps discouraged, he returned to the Saint Lawrence. There
in 1608, he helped to found a trading post at what became Quebec.
Unlike the Indians near Cape Cod, those in remote Canada met his
party with singing, dancing, and a tabagie,or feast. A realist, Champlain
was aware that the Indians were delighted to see him because they had
decided he could be of use to them. The nature of that utility was immedi-
ately evident. The Hurons (Ochateguins) and their Algonquin allies were
locked in mortal hostility with the Iroquois. As Champlain witnessed a
gruesome scene of torture, killing, and eating of Iroquois prisoners, he con-
cluded that that war was likely to be perpetual and that each side would
seek all the help it could get. Since he happened to be with the Hurons
and the Algonquians, he chose to side with them. The firepower of his
arquebuses would make the difference between life or death for them. He
thus established what would become a persistent theme of French (and
English) dealings with the Native Americans, intervening in local wars to
emerge themselves as the victors.
Alliance with the Algonquians and Hurons against the Iroquois was to
be the heart of Champlain’s strategy; it was to lay the foundation for French
Canada. A similar strategy would later win allies among the Illinois, the
Miami, and other Indian peoples who also were terrified of the powerful
Iroquois confederation. That policy would shape the America that began
to emerge around the Great Lakes. Far more astute and humane than his
Spanish predecessors or his English and Dutch successors, Champlain
tried to win the “hearts and minds” of the natives—or at least the hearts and
minds of one faction of them.
The policies Champlain originated were followed by his successors out
of necessity. La Nouvelle France never had a large population of French
62 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA