_Swedes_.
1638. South Company makes settlement on the Delaware.
1655. Conquered by the Dutch.




CHAPTER VI


THE FRENCH IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY

%54. The Early French Possessions% on our continent may be arranged
in three great areas: 1. Acadia, 2. New France, 3. Louisiana, or the
basin of the Mississippi River.

ACADIA comprised what is now New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and a part of
Maine. It was settled in the early years of the seventeenth century at
Port Royal (now Annapolis, Nova Scotia), at Mount Desert Island, and on
the St. Croix River.

NEW FRANCE was the drainage basin of the St. Lawrence and the Great
Lakes. As far back as 1535 Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence
River to the site of Montreal. But it was not till 1608 that a party
under Champlain made the first permanent settlement on the river,
at Quebec.

The French settlers at once entered into an alliance with the Huron and
Algonquin Indians, who lived along the St. Lawrence River. But these
tribes were the bitter enemies of the Iroquois, who dwelt in what is now