French and Dutch Settlements 41“caciques.” The human effort to support the feudal
society was to be supplied by peasants.
This complicated system proved unworkable.
The landgraves and caciques got grants, but they
could not find peasants willing to toil on their
domains. Probably the purpose of all this elaborate
feudal nonsense was promotional; the proprietor
hoped to convince investors that they could make
fortunes in Carolina rivaling those of English lords.
Life followed a more mundane pattern similar to
what was going on in Virginia and Maryland, with
property relatively easy to obtain.
The first settlers arrived in 1670, most of them
from the sugar plantations of Barbados, where slave
labor was driving out small independent farmers.
Charles Town (now Charleston) was founded in
- Another center of population sprang up in
the Albemarle district, just south of Virginia, settled
largely by individuals from that colony. Two quite
different societies grew up in these areas. The
Charleston colony, with an economy based on a
thriving trade in furs and on the export of food-
stuffs to the West Indies, was prosperous and cos-
mopolitan. The Albemarle settlement, where the
soil was less fertile, was poorer and more primitive.
Eventually, in 1712, the two were formally sepa-
rated, becoming North and South Carolina.French and Dutch Settlements
While the English were settling Virginia and New
England, other Europeans were challenging Spain’s
monopoly elsewhere in the New World. Jacques
Cartier attempted to found a French colony at
Québec in the 1530s. Spain, initially alarmed by the
French incursion, considered intervening; but the
Spanish emperor thought the northern region too
cold and not worth the bother. Cartier soon con-
curred, as his settlement quickly succumbed to brutal
winters, scurvy, and Indian attacks.
Not until the end of the century was another
attempt made to colonize the region. Then some
intrepid French traders traded with Indians for fur,
which had become valuable in Europe. (This was
during the “little ice age,” which lasted several hun-
dred years before and after 1600. In 1607, for
example, the Thames River in England froze over
for the first time in recorded history.) Shivering
Europeans craved the soft, thick furs, especially
beaver pelts, used for hats or to trim coats and
dresses. Indians coveted the strength and sharpness
of European metal knives and hatchets, the warmth
and strength of European woolens, and—often
enough—the intoxicating effects of alcohol.
Unlike the English, who occupied the Indian’s
land, or the Spanish, who subjugated Indians and
exploited their labor, French traders viewed the
Indians as essential trading partners. A handful of
French traders, carrying their goods in canoes and
small boats, made their way to Indian settlements
along the St. Lawrence River and the shores of Lake
Ontario and Lake Erie. But by 1650, there were only
700 French colonists in New France.
By then, France had perceived both the economic
and military potential of North America and the vul-
nerability of France’s thinly populated string of settle-
ments. To protect its toehold in North America, the
French government built forts on key northern
waterways and sent soldiers to protect the traders.
French military expenditures helped sustain the fledg-
ling colony. By 1700, about 15,000 French colonists
lived in scattered settlements along an arc ranging
from the mouth of the St. Lawrence in the northeast,
through the Great Lakes, and down the Mississippi to
the Gulf of Mexico.In this 1670 illustration by the court painter for King Charles II,
young Cecilius Calvert receives a map of Maryland from his
grandfather, the second Lord Baltimore. The king’s charter for
Maryland provided that Cecilius’s father and his heirs (first,
Cecilius) were to hold the province as “true and absolute lords.”
The notion was as preposterous as Cecilius’s aristocratic clothing.
Cecilius died in 1682, before he could even attempt to rule
Maryland as a feudal lord.
Source: Courtesy of Enoch Pratt Free Library, Central Library/State Library
Resource Center, Baltimore, MD.