Ample reference has already been made to the dealings of the French with the Indians. There is much to praise and much to blame in what may be called the native policy of France in North America. The object of the French Government was, as Charlevoix points out, to 'frenchify' the savages;[9] and, as an instance of the value of the Indians to the cause of France in America, he cites 'the Abenaquis, who, though few in numbers, were during the two last wars the principal bulwark of New France against New England.'[9] With the exception of the Five Nation Indians, the natives of North America were almost wholly on the side of the French as against the English, in spite of the fact that the English offered them a better market and sold them better wares. The reason was that the French relations to the Indians were more human than those of the English. No doubt, among the English colonists were Quakers and Moravians, whose tenets bade them deal gently with the people of the soil; and on the New York frontier, from Dutch times, there had been friendship, sometimes warmer sometimes cooler, between the Dutch and the English colonists on the one hand, and the Iroquois on the other. But the ordinary English colonist's view of the red man was the Old Testament view--hard, exclusive, and often cruel. The Puritan New Englander took the land of the heathen in possession, and from his standpoint there was not room in it for him and them. Widely different was the French view. The Indians were not to be excluded from, but incorporated in, the French dominion. The King of France, and his representative the Governor of Canada, were to be the fathers, and the Indians were to be the obedient and trusting children. The missions taught the {342} same lesson. The Indians were not to be exterminated, but to be fruitful and multiply as dutiful children of France and of the Roman Catholic Church. On these lines the French acted consistently from first to last; and their unaltering policy contrasted favourably with the halting, uncertain dealings of the English, which changed from year to year, and were different in the different colonies. The way to win a black man's or a red man's affections is to treat him, if not as an equal, at least as a man, and to be constant in the treatment. For this reason, the Indians loved the French better than the English. Very rarely on the English side appeared a man, like Sir William Johnson, who possessed the mixture of firmness and sympathy which attracted and conciliated the Indians, and which was common among the French. [Footnote 9: Charlevoix (as above), pp. 34, 35.] [Sidenote: _Its defects._]