On arriving in Canada Champlain soon made his first great mistake. He was about to commence the great work of colonization of La Nouvelle France, in which he was to succeed, but his first important step was a great blunder and one from which La Nouvelle France was to suffer for many years. The whole story of the Iroquois attacks, which terrorized the French settlements and Montreal for so many years, is bound up in the policy now initiated by the colonial builder of Canada. It will be remembered that in the commissions granted to those sent out to Canada, side by side with the duty of taking every means to attract the natives to Christianity, was the privilege to contract alliances with the natives and if they did not keep their treaties to force them by open warfare, and to make peace or war--but all this, be it understood, in accordance with the dignity of a great power and following established methods of diplomacy. Champlain's fault lies in this, that having arrived in Canada in the spring of 1605 as the representative of the king of France, he was tempted, for the sake of the petty reason of securing traffic facilities, to jeopardize the future by taking sides with the Algonquins and Hurons, who were then in open warfare with the Iroquois. Instead of remembering that the future peace of the colony depended on his neutrality, he went with the few men of the colony against the Iroquois, and with his modern weapons caused deadly havoc among the bewildered Iroquois, who thenceforth became the irreconcilable enemy of the Frenchmen. They never forgot this needless intrusion of the Frenchmen into their quarrels; thus they were implacable in their attacks on their Algonquin allies, and were ready later to ally themselves with the English in their campaign against the colony. It certainly made the work of Christianizing and civilizing the people later very difficult. Champlain's blunder at the battle of Lake Champlain on July 29, 1609, has been avoided in subsequent colonization schemes of other nations as far as possible. This is one of the uses of history. [Illustration: CHAMPLAIN'S PICTURE OF HIS FIGHT WITH THE IROQUOIS]