During the wars between the French and English colonists to the north and south of the St. Lawrence, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the alliance of neighbouring Indian tribes was courted; and the traditions of the fidelity of the Hurons to the French, and the loyalty of the Iroquois to the English, are cherished as incentives to the fulfilment of obligations entered into on behalf of the little remnant of the Huron nation remaining on the river St. Charles, below Quebec; and to a liberal and generous policy towards the Six Nation Indians settled on the Grand river and elsewhere in Western Canada. But also in the primitive simplicity of border life, the half-civilised Indian and the rude settler meet on common ground; and in some cases the friendly relations established between them have survived the more settled condition of agricultural progress in the clearings. In this respect the older colonists of Quebec fraternised far more readily with the native population than has been the case with English settlers. The relations in which the early French colonists stood to the Indians of Lower Canada bore more resemblance to those of the fur-traders of the North-West in later times, and were of a kindlier nature than those of the intrusive European emigrants of the present century. Prior to the accession of Louis XIV. to the throne, the French possessions in the New World had been regarded as little more than a hunting-ground to be turned to the same account as the Hudson Bay Company’s territory; and the peopling of Canada had given little promise of permanent colonisation. Priests and nuns alone varied the usual class of trading adventurers who resort to a young colony. But soon after the King reached his majority, a systematic shipment of emigrants to Canada was organised under the direction of Colbert; sundry companies of soldiers were disbanded in the colony; and then, at last, the necessity of finding wives for the settlers was recognised. Thereupon a system of female emigration, with bounties on marriage, was established. Colbert, writing to the Canadian Intendant, tells him that the prosperity of the people, and all that is most dear to them as colonists, depend upon their securing the marriage of youths not later than their eighteenth or nineteenth year to girls at fourteen or fifteen; and the next step was to impose a fine on the father of a family who neglected to marry his children when they reached the respective ages of twenty and sixteen.