for the Indians, therefore the Indians were vital to their survival, and that relationship was the kind that set them apart yet kept them in common with all other colonies, as you will see. The French could not have survived without the natives. Their numbers were so small, and men made up the vast percentage of the colonies. By 1676 almost all French families had Indian blood. Inter-racial marriage was extremely common and encouraged in the less settled outer limits of the Jesuit influence of the St. Lawrence colonies. Yet interracial mixing became so common in the 1660s Francis Colbert called for a complete intermixing of the two cultures. The underlying goal of that order was to civilize the Algonquins, and to settle them into a Christian society in which the whole Indian society would be completely assimilated and therefore easier to control. They called this the Modern Policy. Yet this peaceful interaction was ill laid in the fact that the Indians usually refused French law. Neither could they protect their allies from disease and attacks from rival tribes, such as the Iroquois.The French experience with the Natchez in the lower Mississippi Valley was in extreme contrast with that of the French further north in Canada. The Natchez showed some hostility towards the new settlers. Their trade and interaction only occurred when it was convenient for the French. The French also disregarded Natchez customs when they requested the head of one of their chiefs, although all of the chiefs were traditionally immune to the death penalty. In 1729 when the French made a radical demand that the Natchez hand over a large amount of land without payment, they organized an offensive designed to completely eliminate the French. By this time the French had realized that the Natchez were irrelevant to their cause, and had no second thoughts about attempting to intimidate them, as Nash puts it.Spanish intrusion into the lands of the natives drastically ...
