In 1608, Samuel de Champlain laid claim to the St. Lawrence River for France via the construction of the colony of Quebec, giving his homeland control over the most accessible route into the North American continent. Champlain’s goal was to effectively bypass the more coastal Algonquian speaking natives by buying directly from their more inland cousins. However, in less than a decade Champlain was shifting his focus further west. There was a variety of reasons for this. One, the area was quickly becoming depleted of beaver. Two, the beaver further west were proving to be of better quality. And three, a pandemic swept through the area around 1616, killing over 75 percent of the natives who formerly inhabited the regions east of Quebec. As a result, a new colony named Montreal was founded in 1616 further up the St. Lawrence. From here, French traders purchased pelts from the Huron Confederacy, an alliance of Iroquois speaking tribes that controlled the region between the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. Though the Huron loved to trade for all sorts of items manufactured in Europe, but their favorite was metal axes, mostly because it gave them a decided edge over their long-standing rivals, the Iroquois Confederacy to the south. The French also became part of this conflict, under the assumption that if one group must be good, then the other must be bad, and certainly the first group they met must be good, so why not just shoot a bunch of the second group to show what good friends they could be.
Anyways, Quebec and Montreal were less colonies and more glorified trading posts, home to at best a few hundred French traders who were more than happy to let the Huron do all of the work. This was largely okay with the Huron, since it allowed them to dominate the trade, first by selling pelts from their own territory, then by acting as middlemen between the French and the various tribes further west, the largest two being the Algonquian speaking Ojibwe along the north shore of the Great Lakes and the Cree further north. Though most of the French preferred to stay near their settlements, some of the more enterprising, known as the coureurs des bois, made their way inland to explore, trap, and trade. By 1634, these coureurs had reached as far as what is today Green Bay on Lake Michigan. The primary trade good of the coureurs was alcohol. Though technically it was illegal to sell booze to the natives, rules don’t really apply when you’re hundreds of miles from any type of authority. However, the one rule that the coureurs did not break was the French prohibition of selling firearms to the natives, because some things are just that obvious. Aside from the coureurs, French missionaries were also important early explorers, travelling far and wide to make contact with new peoples to convert to Catholicism. Though many met at times rather grisly demises, they managed to explore the full expanse of the Great Lakes by the early 1640s, giving the French a much better understanding of the North American interior than their main rivals, the English and Dutch.
Compared to the English and Dutch, the French formed a much tighter bond with their native allies, sending men to Huron villages to learn the local language and customs, and taking native women as wives to help cement strong relationships. The much higher quality furs coming from the lands of the Ojibwe and Cree made building these relationships more than worth the time and effort. Unfortunately this trade was disrupted by two major events, namely a pandemic in the late 1630s killing off half of the Huron, followed closely by a decade long war with the Iroquois Confederacy, who being armed with guns sold to them by the Dutch, had a decided advantage in the conflict. By 1650, the Huron were broken and scattered, their former territories held by the Iroquois Confederacy, who had not forgotten which side the French decided to back some thirty years earlier. Though trade via the coureurs continued, it wasn’t what it had been before, the Iroquois not only blockading the most direct routes, but also attacking the French trading posts along the St. Lawrence.
The loss of revenues from New France did not sit well with the investors in the various French fur trading companies, nor the king of France who enjoyed taxing them. As a result, various incentives were created to draw would be settlers across the Atlantic, most of which involved giving away free land, by which I mean some land was given to rich asshats who then paid to ship poor people across the Atlantic to farm it. As a result, the population of New France grew from 500 in 1650, to 3,000 by 1660. These would be farmers helped better secure the territory from not just the Iroquois, but also the growing populations of English and Dutch settlers further south. Given not many women wanted to emigrate for some reason, these would be farmers were strongly encouraged to marry the local natives. Despite things improving, it was not enough for the king of France, who fully seized control of New France in 1663. He soon after sent a regiment of professionally trained soldiers, who not only beat defeated the Iroquois so handily that they sued for peace, but also got the coureurs under control, who in recent years had begun selling pelts to the Dutch traders as much as to the French. Under the newly imposed rules, only licensed traders were to trade beaver pelts, these traders licensed traders being called voyageurs.
The combination of a secure frontier, a stable fur trade, and a better standard of living than being back in France resulted in the population reaching 10,000 by 1680. Though limited by rules which only allowed Catholics to immigrate, more than enough people were willing to take a risk travelling to a land full of clean water, abundant fish and meat, and exotic women. Even if doing so meant either rowing canoes for months on end or working your ass off to farm land technically owned by some asshat noble back home. The influx fully secured the St. Lawrence River region for France. By the 1670s, not only were French missionaries using the peace with the Iroquois as an opportunity to explore south into the Ohio River valley, but voyageurs also began establishing trading posts along the shores of the Great Lakes, establishing more direct trading ties with the Ojibwe and other various other tribes.
