Larry Schweikert

And it's not just the whites.

It gets even more complicated because the Indians know that some whites are English and some whites are French.

And by and large, the French had very good relations with the Indians because they didn't try to set up giant

population centers.

In fact, they greatly restricted immigration to Canada in order to protect their fur trading business and their fur trading posts.

They treated the Indians more as trading partners as opposed to

opponents who needed to be conquered or whatnot.

So there are all these variations of relationships between Indians and whites that go beyond just racial skin color.

It includes nationalities and it includes tribal relations between different Indian groups.

Well, the French, as I said, saw Canada as a wealthy ground for trade of all sorts of pelts.

Beaver was the most popular at the time, but of course, deer, elk, all sorts of foxes and bears, everything else.

And so they established a very large empire running all the way down the part of the Mississippi River.

The Spanish had come in 100 years earlier into the Mexico region after defeating the Aztecs, and they started a series of farming plantations and comiendas where they rewarded their conquistadors with land.

And they were moving northward and out of Mexico eastward and out of Florida northward as well.

Then you had the English come in.

So when war broke out in Europe,

obviously these colonies were going to be at war with each other in North America.

And so immediately they all scrambled to see who could make alliances with which Indian groups as well.

When the English won the Seven Years' War, the French and Indian War as we call it, and of course I have to always remind my students

that the French did not fight the Indians.