and with American nations of European origin. But even in America
there have been wide differences in the way the work has had to be
done in different parts of the country, since the close of the great
colonial contests between England, France, and Spain.

The extension of the English westward through Canada since the war of
the Revolution has been in its essential features merely a less
important repetition of what has gone on in the northern United
States. The gold miner, the transcontinental railway, and the soldier
have been the pioneers of civilization. The chief point of difference,
which was but small, arose from the fact that the whole of western
Canada was for a long time under the control of the most powerful of
all the fur companies, in whose employ were very many French voyageurs
and coureurs des bois. From these there sprang up in the valleys of
the Red River and the Saskatchewan a singular race of half-breeds,
with a unique semi-civilization of their own. It was with these
half-breeds, and not, as in the United States, with the Indians, that
the settlers of northwestern Canada had their main difficulties.

In what now forms the United States, taking the country as a whole,
the foes who had to be met and overcome were very much more
formidable. The ground had to be not only settled but conquered,
sometimes at the expense of the natives, often at the expense of rival
European races. As already pointed out the Indians themselves formed
one of the main factors in deciding the fate of the continent. They
were never able in the end to avert the white conquest, but they could
often delay its advance for a long spell of years. The Iroquois, for
instance, held their own against all comers for two centuries. Many
other tribes stayed for a time the oncoming white flood, or even drove
it back; in Maine the settlers were for a hundred years confined to a