MEMOIR FOR THE MARQUIS OF SEIGNELAY REGARDING THE DANGERS THAT THREATEN CANADA, THE MEANS OF REMEDYING THEM, AND OF FIRMLY ESTABLISHING RELIGION COMMERCE AND THE KING'S POWER IN NORTH AMERICA. JANUARY 1687. [

Paris Doc. III. ]

Canada is encompassed by many powerful English Colonies who labour incessantly to ruin it, by them away with their peltries for which the English give them a great deal more merchandize than the French, because they pay no duty to the King of England. This profit attracts towards the English, also, all our Bush rangers (Coureurs de bois) and French exciting all our savages, and drawing

libertines who carry their peltries to them, deserting our Colony and establishing themselves in those

of the English who take great pains to attract them.

They advantageously employ those French deserters to bring the far savages to them who formerly brought their peltries into our Colony which wholly destroys its trade.

The English began by the most powerful and best disciplined [Indians] of all America.

They

have excited them entirely against us by the avowed protection they afford them, and the manifest usurpation they claim to the sovereignty of their country, which belongs beyond contradiction to the

King for nearly a century without the English having up to this present time had any pretension to it.

They also employ the Iroquois to incite all our other Indians against us. They set them last year Hurons and the Outawas, our most ancient subjects swept by surprise from them more than 75 prisoners among whom were some of their principal Chiefs, killed several others, and finally offered them peace and the restitution of their prisoners, if they would quit the French and to attack the