First French Foot Prints Beyond the Lakes. 129 



The apostles of failh were also political intriguers. They 

 knew that nothing but the supremacy of France could afford a 

 basis for permanence in their missions. Accordingly, of them- 

 selves they worked for French domination as for self-preservation, 

 and they were often formally appointed ambassadors. 



Moreover, they sometimes established a sort of theocratic feu- 

 dalism, or oriental patriarchate, in which they were themselves 

 lords paramount. 



According to Parkman, " it behooved them to require obedi- 

 ence from those whom they imagined God had confided to their 

 guidance. Their consciences then acted in perfect accordance 

 with the love of power innate in the human breast. 



" These allied forces mingle with a perplexing subtlety. Pride 

 disguised even from itself walks in the likeness of love and 

 duty, and a thousand times on the pages of history we find hell 

 beguiling the virtues of heaven to do its work. The instinct of 

 domination is a weed that grows rank in the shadow of the 

 temple." (Jesuits, p. 159.) 



Always and everywhere Jesuits have been charged with usurp- 

 ing political sway. In 1667, the Canadian Intendant, Talon, ad- 

 dressed a remonstrance to Colbert, the French premier, complain- 

 ing that the Jesuits "grasped at temporalities, encroaching even 

 on that police which concerned magistrates alone." This com- 

 plaint related to intermeddling on the St. Lawrence. But on the 

 Upper Lakes and beyond them, there could not be too much 

 Jesuit domination to please French statesmen. 



But another class of political agents were very early abroad in 

 the west. Nicolet, whom I have mentioned as in Wisconsin in 

 1631, and probably the first white man ever there, had been dis- 

 patched to Green Bay as a peace maker between the tribes of that 

 vicinity and the Hurons. 



Soon after the year 1650 the Iroquois had vanquished all the 

 tribes east of Lake Michigan. They expelled them from their 

 old home.'^, and drove most of them beyond that lake, some of 

 them even beyond the Mississippi. In this flight theOttawas de- 

 scending the Wisconsin, and pushing up the Mississippi some 

 dozen leagues, entered the Little Iowa and sought an asylum on 

 9 



