12 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY: 
daring arctic explorer of Hudson Bay, and afterwards the 
first regularly appointed French governor of Louisiana, en- 
tered the mouth of the Mississippi from the Gulf, this being 
the first authentic record of a regular sailing vessel reaching 
lower Louisiana by this route. 
With the close of the seventeenth century, and the ush- 
ering in of the year 1700, we leave behind the romance of 
discovery and adventure, and enter upon the more common- 
place details of civilized history. The Mississippi river is 
no longer a mythical stream, affording, it may be, an outlet 
to the South Sea and the Indies. Its navigable waters have 
been accurately traced, and its principal tributaries have 
been laid down m published maps. The nature of the 
country through which it flows, and the aboriginal tribes 
that occupy its banks have been described in more or less 
detail, though it must be admitted, too often clothed with 
exaggerated features. It is a wilderness to be redeemed 
from heathenism to Christianity, and where to all appear- 
ances French civilization will establish a permanent foot- 
hold in the new world. The men to accomplish this great 
work were being educated in the cloisters of the Catholic 
church, or trained to endurance in the rude school of Can- 
adian frontier life. It would be difficult to find elements 
more promising for attaining grand results; every thing 
seemed to point to French supremacy. Spain was absorbed 
in her rich southern dependencies, and English colonies 
were but slowly struggling into permanent settlement along 
the Atlantic seaboard. In the west, France was without 
a rival; her policy of ingratiating the good will of the abo- 
riginal tribes, by generous treatment, and securing their re- 
spect by the imposing ceremonies of a religion addressed 
largely to the senses, preserved the early French settlers 
from many of the dangers to which Spanish cruelty, and 
English overbearance, exposed their respective colonies. 
Hence, we find little to record in the matter of Indian wars 
