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MICHIGAN AS A PROVINCE 1 - 5
The views of the company were purely commercial and, of course, all affairs were managed with reference to those
views. In spite of all efforts the colony did not grow. It is said that in 1622 the total population amounted to no more than fifty persons, including women and children. The management of the affairs of the company proved to be so bad that, upon the advice of Champlain, the king superseded it.
Cardinal Richelieu conceived the plan of placing the commerce of New France in the hands of a new company to be formed of some of the best people of France, and which was ultimately known as the Company of a Hundred Associates. This company agreed to send over within a year three hundred workmen of trades of every description, and within twenty years to increase the number of inhabitants to six thousand, to lodge and feed and supply them with every necessary of life for the space of three years, and to concede them afterward as much cleared land as was requisite for their subsistence, and likewise to supply them with seed grain. In return for these agreements th'e king conferred on the company and their successors forever the fort and settlement of Quebec, all the territory of New France, including Florida, all the course of the great river (Mississippi) and of other rivers which discharge themselves thereinto, or which throughout this vast extent of country disembogue themselves into the sea on the eastern or western extremity of the continent; also, islands, harbors, mines and right of fishing. The king reserved to himself the supremacy of the faith and homage, the appointment of officers of justice, the nomination of all captains and commandants of forts. The privilege of traffic in skins
and furs was conferred for fifteen years, provided that the European inhabitants who were neither maintained nor paid at the company's expense might freely carry on the fur trade with the savages on the condition that they should sell the beaver skins to the agents of the company only, who should pay therefor a certain specified minimum price.
MICHIGAN
Page 49
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