2. Why was Penn thrown into prison? In what ways did he give evidence of his stubbornness? 3. Why did he wish to settle Pennsylvania? Imagine the scene when under the elm-tree Penn met the Indians and made a treaty with them. 4. Tell something about his home life. 5. What do you admire in Penn's character? 6. When did the Quakers settle Pennsylvania? CHAPTER IX Cavelier De La Salle and the French in the Mississippi Valley [1643-1687] [Illustration: Cavelier De La Salle.] The same year in which William Penn laid out Philadelphia and there made a treaty with the Indians, a noted Frenchman sailed down the Mississippi River, exploring it in the interests of France. This man was Robert Cavelier, Better known as La Salle, who, like many of his countrymen, was trying, just as the Spaniards and Englishmen had tried, to find or do something in America that would not only bring glory to his own name, but also wealth and honor to his fatherland. We have now to consider the work of the French in America. In 1534 Cartier, a French explorer, discovered the St. Lawrence, and sailed up the river as far as an Indian village on the present site of Montreal. He took possession of Canada in the name of the French King, and his favorable reports led to several unsuccessful attempts to plant settlements there. More than seventy years after the discovery of the St. Lawrence, another French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, sailed up the noble river. Much impressed with the great beauty of the St. Lawrence Valley and its wealth of forests and furs, he longed to bring all this vast new country under the control of France. In 1608 he planted the first permanent French settlement in Canada, at Quebec, and the following year discovered the lake which bears his name. Although Champlain loved his country and desired to increase its glory and power, he made an unfortunate blunder, which proved fatal to the best interests of France in the New World. In planting the settlement at Quebec, in 1608, he found that the neighboring tribes of Algonquin Indians were bitter enemies of the Mohawks, one of the Five Nations, or Iroquois, who lived in New York. [Illustration: Long House of the Iroquois.] The Algonquins begged him to join them in an attack upon the Mohawks, and he unwisely consented. Having gone up Lake Champlain with a canoe-party of sixty Indians, he landed near the site of Ticonderoga to fight a battle with two hundred hardy Mohawk warriors. Champlain, clad in light armor and gun in hand, advanced at the head of his war-party and, shooting into the ranks of the astonished Mohawks, who stood in battle array, brought to the earth two of their chiefs. The others fled in terror and confusion, while their enemies, Champlain's dusky allies, yelled with joy, and filled the woods with their terrible warwhoops.