European colonists in the New World,

they didn't remain alone in the Americas for very long.

Just three years after Hernan Cortes captured Tenochtitlan,

the French government sent its first explorer

to poke around North America

and look for what many European explorers

had searched for from the beginning,

a passage to the East.

Now, although the explorers never found

this Northwest passage because it didn't exist,

they, like the Spanish, quickly learned

that there were quite a lot of riches to be had

in the Americas themselves.

In this video, I'd like to take some time to talk about

two of the lesser known European colonies in the New World,

New France up here in pink

and New Netherland, this little orange dot right here.

Now, you can see that compared to the extent of New Spain,

here in the Caribbean and Mexico

and expanding in South America,

these colonial exploits were pretty small indeed,

but I think it's important to learn a little bit about them

because they help us see the ways

in which the different goals of colonial powers

led to very different types of settlement in the New World

and very different relationships

between Europeans and Native Americans.

Now, though it's a little bit hard to see on this map,

these two colonies focused their efforts around two rivers,

the Saint Lawrence River

and the Hudson River

which runs along this little orange strip here.

And along these rivers,

you can still see the cities that were founded

by these colonial ventures like Quebec City up in Canada,

later Montreal and down here of course the most famous

which started as New Amsterdam

and later became the city of New York.

Right about here is the Island of Manhattan

on which New York City,

formerly New Amsterdam, is located.

Now, looking at this map, you might wonder,

why was it that Spain have these giant swabs of territory

really from coast to coast

where New France and New Netherland

really only followed along these rivers,

at least to start with?

And the answer really lies in this idea of goals.

And New France and New Netherland sat on the rivers,

rivers being the highways of the world

really up until the invention of the railroad,

because they were primarily interested in trade.

So let's talk a little bit more about that.

French and Dutch explorers were particularly interested

in gaining valuable furs to trade from Native Americans

living in the Northern part of North America

that they could then sell in Europe.

Long before European colonization began,

beavers had been hunted pretty much to extinction in Europe

while beaver pelts themselves were usually used

to create fancy hats.

This is a hat from a slightly later era,

but you can get the sense here

that Europeans met on something of an equal basis

with Native Americans in the process of the fur trade,

so Europeans wanted beaver pelts

and also the pelts of other animals and often fish,

another thing that was in great supply

in this Northern region which is today

the Northeast United States and Canada.

So how did this focus on trade affect the relationships

between Europeans and Native Americans in the area?

Well, primarily they made relationships between them

considerably friendlier and more cooperative

than the relationships between the Spanish

and Native Americans for example.

Now, Europeans quickly discovered

that it made a lot more sense to instead of sending hundreds

upon hundreds of Frenchmen to Canada

to hunt beavers themselves,

they could instead pay Native Americans

to hunt the beavers for them.

And consequently, there were considerably fewer

French and Dutch settlers in New Netherland and New France

than there were in New Spain.

And because there were fewer of them,

they generally ended up doing things

more on the terms of Native Americans

so whereas the Spanish might have used their guns

and their war dogs to force Native Americans

to labor for them,

the French and the Dutch were more likely to observe

trading rituals like giving gifts

and also fostering trade relationships

through intermarriage.

French traders learned the Algonquian language

and married native women and had children with them

so that they could be considered part of the family.

They even allied with Native American Tribes

against their own enemies and went to war with them

as in the case in 1609

when French explorer Samuel de Champlain

helped Algonquians in their war against the Iroquois.

And like New France,

New Netherland situated as it was in this very good harbor,

the Island of Manhattan, was likewise very focused on trade.

In fact, New Amsterdam was a little bit of a company town

controlled by the Dutch West India Company

which sought to make the most of all of the goodies

that could be brought from North America

and then shipped to Europe.

In fact, you can get a sense of what the major concerns

of the Europeans settling in this area were from this map.

You can see that they point out where beavers, turkeys,

foxes, and bears can be found all with their valuable pelts,

but you also see that there's an extremely detailed

rendering of where many Native American Tribes lived

like this detailed rendering of what I believe

is a Mahican village.

The French and Dutch bothered to learn all of these names

and map all of this territory because they cooperated

with the Native Americans to get these pelts.

It's hard to imagine a Spanish map

that would go into such detail about native villages.

It's important to remember

that Europeans were competing with each other

for resources in the New World

hoping that they could secure the best trade deals for furs

with Native Americans and prevent other nations

from securing those furs.

For example, the Dutch allied with the Iroquois

in the New World as trading partners

because the Iroquois were the long-time enemies

of the Algonquians who were allied with the French.

So just as the Europeans recruited Native Americans

into their competitions to supply Europe with furs,

Native Americans recruited Europeans

into their inter-tribal feuds

to supply the Americas with European goods.

I wanna finish by just briefly comparing

each nation's colonial goals with their outcomes

and what sorts of people settled,

what the relationships were like with Native Americans,

and even how they attempted or didn't attempt

to convert Native Americans to a form of Christianity.

Now, as we saw with Spain,

their goal was to quickly extract natural resources

from the Americas and to set up plantations

for tobacco and later sugar,

plus to convert as many of the native people to Catholicism

as possible by force if necessary

and it was frequently necessary.

Consequently, most of the Spanish settlers

who came to the New World were men and adventurers

who treated native people with violence and enslaved them

in the encomienda system

and in some cases had relationships with native women

and African women that resulted in that very complex set

of racial designations we see in the caste system.

But France and the Netherlands by contrast came for trade.

They wanted furs and fish and so they were very careful

to cultivate very friendly relationships

with Native Americans including by intermarrying with them

in a deliberate and formal way

so that they could take advantage of having natives

do the hunting for them

rather than having to do it themselves

so that really only a few men

came to New France and New Netherland,

nothing like the numbers of Spain.

And unlike the Spanish,

although the French did attempt

to convert natives to Catholicism,

they rarely did so by force.

Now, going forward as we talk about British colonization

in the next few lessons,

I want you to keep both the Spanish

and the French and Dutch modes of colonization in your mind

so you can compare and contrast English colonization

with both of them.

And as we'll see,

the goals of the various English colonies

whether it's to found plantations

like in Jamestown, Virginia,

or to escape religious persecution

like in Massachusetts Bay,

that goal will go on to influence

not only who came to the Americas from Europe,

but also their relationships with native people.