- [Narrator] Although the Spanish were the first
European colonists in the New World,
they didn't remain alone in the Americas for very long.
Just three years after Hernan Cortes captured Tenochtitlan,
the French government sent its first explorer
to poke around North America
and look for what many European explorers
had searched for from the beginning,
a passage to the East.
Now, although the explorers never found
this Northwest passage because it didn't exist,
they, like the Spanish, quickly learned
that there were quite a lot of riches to be had
in the Americas themselves.
In this video, I'd like to take some time to talk about
two of the lesser known European colonies in the New World,
New France up here in pink
and New Netherland, this little orange dot right here.
Now, you can see that compared to the extent of New Spain,
here in the Caribbean and Mexico
and expanding in South America,
these colonial exploits were pretty small indeed,
but I think it's important to learn a little bit about them
because they help us see the ways
in which the different goals of colonial powers
led to very different types of settlement in the New World
and very different relationships
between Europeans and Native Americans.
Now, though it's a little bit hard to see on this map,
these two colonies focused their efforts around two rivers,
the Saint Lawrence River
and the Hudson River
which runs along this little orange strip here.
And along these rivers,
you can still see the cities that were founded
by these colonial ventures like Quebec City up in Canada,
later Montreal and down here of course the most famous
which started as New Amsterdam
and later became the city of New York.
Right about here is the Island of Manhattan
on which New York City,
formerly New Amsterdam, is located.
Now, looking at this map, you might wonder,
why was it that Spain have these giant swabs of territory
really from coast to coast
where New France and New Netherland
really only followed along these rivers,
at least to start with?
And the answer really lies in this idea of goals.
And New France and New Netherland sat on the rivers,
rivers being the highways of the world
really up until the invention of the railroad,
because they were primarily interested in trade.
So let's talk a little bit more about that.
French and Dutch explorers were particularly interested
in gaining valuable furs to trade from Native Americans
living in the Northern part of North America
that they could then sell in Europe.
Long before European colonization began,
beavers had been hunted pretty much to extinction in Europe
while beaver pelts themselves were usually used
to create fancy hats.
This is a hat from a slightly later era,
but you can get the sense here
that Europeans met on something of an equal basis
with Native Americans in the process of the fur trade,
so Europeans wanted beaver pelts
and also the pelts of other animals and often fish,
another thing that was in great supply
in this Northern region which is today
the Northeast United States and Canada.
So how did this focus on trade affect the relationships
between Europeans and Native Americans in the area?
Well, primarily they made relationships between them
considerably friendlier and more cooperative
than the relationships between the Spanish
and Native Americans for example.
Now, Europeans quickly discovered
that it made a lot more sense to instead of sending hundreds
upon hundreds of Frenchmen to Canada
to hunt beavers themselves,
they could instead pay Native Americans
to hunt the beavers for them.
And consequently, there were considerably fewer
French and Dutch settlers in New Netherland and New France
than there were in New Spain.
And because there were fewer of them,
they generally ended up doing things
more on the terms of Native Americans
so whereas the Spanish might have used their guns
and their war dogs to force Native Americans
to labor for them,
the French and the Dutch were more likely to observe
trading rituals like giving gifts
and also fostering trade relationships
through intermarriage.
French traders learned the Algonquian language
and married native women and had children with them
so that they could be considered part of the family.
They even allied with Native American Tribes
against their own enemies and went to war with them
as in the case in 1609
when French explorer Samuel de Champlain
helped Algonquians in their war against the Iroquois.
And like New France,
New Netherland situated as it was in this very good harbor,
the Island of Manhattan, was likewise very focused on trade.
In fact, New Amsterdam was a little bit of a company town
controlled by the Dutch West India Company
which sought to make the most of all of the goodies
that could be brought from North America
and then shipped to Europe.
In fact, you can get a sense of what the major concerns
of the Europeans settling in this area were from this map.
You can see that they point out where beavers, turkeys,
foxes, and bears can be found all with their valuable pelts,
but you also see that there's an extremely detailed
rendering of where many Native American Tribes lived
like this detailed rendering of what I believe
is a Mahican village.
The French and Dutch bothered to learn all of these names
and map all of this territory because they cooperated
with the Native Americans to get these pelts.
It's hard to imagine a Spanish map
that would go into such detail about native villages.
It's important to remember
that Europeans were competing with each other
for resources in the New World
hoping that they could secure the best trade deals for furs
with Native Americans and prevent other nations
from securing those furs.
For example, the Dutch allied with the Iroquois
in the New World as trading partners
because the Iroquois were the long-time enemies
of the Algonquians who were allied with the French.
So just as the Europeans recruited Native Americans
into their competitions to supply Europe with furs,
Native Americans recruited Europeans
into their inter-tribal feuds
to supply the Americas with European goods.
I wanna finish by just briefly comparing
each nation's colonial goals with their outcomes
and what sorts of people settled,
what the relationships were like with Native Americans,
and even how they attempted or didn't attempt
to convert Native Americans to a form of Christianity.
Now, as we saw with Spain,
their goal was to quickly extract natural resources
from the Americas and to set up plantations
for tobacco and later sugar,
plus to convert as many of the native people to Catholicism
as possible by force if necessary
and it was frequently necessary.
Consequently, most of the Spanish settlers
who came to the New World were men and adventurers
who treated native people with violence and enslaved them
in the encomienda system
and in some cases had relationships with native women
and African women that resulted in that very complex set
of racial designations we see in the caste system.
But France and the Netherlands by contrast came for trade.
They wanted furs and fish and so they were very careful
to cultivate very friendly relationships
with Native Americans including by intermarrying with them
in a deliberate and formal way
so that they could take advantage of having natives
do the hunting for them
rather than having to do it themselves
so that really only a few men
came to New France and New Netherland,
nothing like the numbers of Spain.
And unlike the Spanish,
although the French did attempt
to convert natives to Catholicism,
they rarely did so by force.
Now, going forward as we talk about British colonization
in the next few lessons,
I want you to keep both the Spanish
and the French and Dutch modes of colonization in your mind
so you can compare and contrast English colonization
with both of them.
And as we'll see,
the goals of the various English colonies
whether it's to found plantations
like in Jamestown, Virginia,
or to escape religious persecution
like in Massachusetts Bay,
that goal will go on to influence
not only who came to the Americas from Europe,
but also their relationships with native people.