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MICHIGAN AS A PROVINCE 1 - 5
The Ottawa route involved many portages, that river being broken by numerous rapids, but they were for the most part short and easy. The light canoes were carried by hand and the packages of furs and merchandise were transported on the backs of the natives. The long portage, so called, was from Lake Nipissing to the head tributaries of the Ottawa and was some five or six miles in length and extremely rough and rocky. Algonquin villages were found at the terminals and here labor could be employed for the carrying of burdens. In the primitive times this was the best that could be done. In spite of the inconvenience of it a vast amount of business was done. All the traffic between Montreal and the upper lake region passed this way, as well as that originating in or destined for the uttermost regions of the sources of the Mississippi and the trading posts of Hudson's bay.
THE motives and methods of colonization of New France were greatly different from those of New England. The climate and the face of the country had something to do with the matter, but most of all the national characteristics of the two peoples. The Puritans came over to escape from intolerable conditions and to establish themselves in permanent homes. They cut themselves loose from mother country; they organized their new commonwealth under charters granted by the crown, and with the wide stretch of the Atlantic between them and royal prerogatives they proceeded to do pretty much as they pleased. In religion they were Non-Conformists, but they did not tolerate Quakers nor Schismatics. The French seemed to be imbued with a holy zeal to proselyte the savages of the whole continent. They did not permit Protestants to enter the country under their control. Missionaries, explorers, adventurers came in their order, but none of these were expected to stay very long.
MICHIGAN
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