The French settlers were far less numerous [Footnote: Probably not more
than 20,000 Frenchmen were residing in the New World in 1688. By 1750
their number had increased perhaps to 60,000.] but more widespread.
From their first posts in Acadia (1604) and Quebec (1608) they had
pushed on up the St. Lawrence. Jesuit and other Roman Catholic
missionaries had led the way from Montreal westward to Lake Superior
and southward to the Ohio River. In 1682 the Sieur de La Salle, after
paddling down the Mississippi, laid claim to the whole basin of that
mighty stream, and named the region Louisiana in honor of Louis XIV of
France. Nominally, at least, this territory was claimed by the English,
for in most of the colonial charters emanating from the English crown
in the seventeenth century were clauses which granted lands "from sea
to sea"--that is, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The heart of "New
France" remained on the St. Lawrence, but, despite English claims,
French forts were commencing to mark the trails of French fur-traders
down into the "Louisiana," and it was clear that whenever the English
colonists should cross the Appalachian Mountains to the westward they
would have to fight the French.
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