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58 PERIOD 2 Colonial America amid Global Change: 1607–1754

Some Frenchmen married American Indian women, who provided them with both
domestic labor and kinship ties to powerful trading partners. Despite Catholic criti-
These sample pages are distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
cism of these marriages, they enhanced French traders’ success and fostered alliances
among the Ojibwe and Dakota nations to the west. These alliances, in turn, created a
middle ground in which economic and cultural exchanges led to a remarkable degree
of mutual adaptation. French traders benefited from American Indian women’s skills
Copyright (c) 2024 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
in preparing beaver skins for market as well as from American Indian canoes, while
natives adopted iron cooking pots and European cloth.
Strictly for use with its products. NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION.
In 1682, French adventurers and their American Indian allies, led by René-Robert
Cavelier (also known as “La Salle”) journeyed from the Great Lakes down the Mississippi
River in search of a southern outlet for furs. The party traveled to the Gulf of Mexico
and claimed all the land drained by the river’s tributaries for France, naming it Louisi-
ana in honor of King Louis XIV (reigned 1643–1715). The newly claimed territory of
Louisiana encompassed the vast lands between the Rockies, Appalachians, Great Lakes,
and Gulf of Mexico and promised great wealth, but its development was hindered by a
lack of permanent settlers and by underinvestment.
colonization After repeated attempts at colonization in the early eighteenth century, French
The process of settling settlers solidified their grasp of Louisiana’s Gulf coast by establishing forts at Biloxi and
and controlling an already Mobile bays, where they traded with local Choctaw Indians. Recruiting settlers from
inhabited area for the Canada and France, the small outposts survived despite conflicts among settlers, pres-
economic benefit of the sure from the English and the Spanish, a wave of epidemics, and a lack of supplies from
settlers, or colonizers.
France. Still, Louisiana counted only three hundred French settlers by 1715.
Continuing to promote commercial relations with diverse American Indian nations,
the French also built a string of missions and forts along the upper Mississippi and Illi-
nois Rivers during the early eighteenth century. French outposts in the Mississippi River
valley became multicultural communities of diverse American Indian groups, French
fur traders, and Catholic Jesuit missionaries.
These small settlements in the continent’s interior allowed France to challenge both
English and Spanish claims to North America. In addition, extensive trade with a range
of American Indian nations ensured that French power was far greater than the small
number of French settlers suggests.

REVIEW

■ What were the goals of the French in North America?
■ What steps did they take to accomplish these goals?

The Dutch Expand into North America

Like the French, the Dutch sought North American colonies. As Spain’s shipbuilding cen-
ter, the Netherlands benefited from the wealth pouring in from Spain’s American empire,
Calvinism and an affluent merchant class emerged. But the Dutch also embraced Calvinism, a form
A branch of Protestantism of Protestantism, and sought to separate themselves from Catholic Spain. In 1581, the
developed by John Calvin Netherlands declared its independence from King Philip II (reigned 1556–1598), and
that influenced Protestants their ships aided England in defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588. Although Spain
in France, England, refused to recognize their independence for several decades, the Netherlands by 1600 was
and Switzerland in the
seventeenth and eighteenth both a Protestant haven and the trading hub of Europe, controlling trade routes to much
centuries. of Asia and parts of Africa.
In 1609 the Dutch established a fur-trading center on the Hudson River in present-
day New York. From the beginning, their goals were mainly economic, and the Protes-
tant Dutch made no pretense of bringing religion to American Indians in the region.

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