"Go, look at
the forts which our King has built, you will see that you can still
hunt under their very walls. They have been built for your good
in the places where you go. The British on the other hand are no
sooner in possession of a place than they drive the game away, the
trees fall before them, the earth is laid bare, so that you can
scarcely find a few branches with which to make a shelter for the
night."
The Frenchman spoke truth. The British settlers were, for the most
part, grave and earnest men who had come to seek new homes. They
felled trees and built their houses, and ploughed the land, turning
wilderness into cornfields and meadow.
The Frenchmen came for the sake of religion or for adventure, they
set up crosses and claimed the land for God and the King. They
scattered churches and hamlets far in the wilderness, but left
the wilderness and the forest still the Redman's hunting ground.
The Frenchmen treated the Indians with an easy, careless sort of
friendliness, while most of the British looked down upon them as
savages.
So very soon after the British took possession of Canada the Indians
became very discontented. For now they got no more presents, they
were no longer treated as brothers, and they were hurt both in their
pockets and their pride. "The English mean to make slaves of us,"
they said, in haughty indignation, and soon a plot to murder all
the British was formed.
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