“France takes Possession of the West”: The Council at Sault Ste-Marie, 1671

Abstract

By a ceremony of prise de possession held at Sault Ste-Marie in June 1671, a subdelegate of the intendant named Daumont de St-Lusson formally laid claim to the North American interior for France. This incident is frequently cited in early American literature and consistently misunderstood. Though he purported to act in the name of Louis XIV, St-Lusson was actually engaged in a somewhat shady fur trading operation, in defiance of the governor of New France and against the wishes of imperial authorities. The general impulse to expand into the west came from Canadian traders, missionaries, and colonial officials; and the specific origins of St-Lusson’s expedition lay in a competition for spoils pitting the governor against the intendant. “France” as embodied by the king and his naval minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, sought to consolidate its hold on the St. Lawrence Valley, avoiding any spatial dispersal of efforts. This article demonstrates that “the French” did not form a monolith with a unified, centrally directed approach to colonialism. Instead, the Sault Ste-Marie case illustrates the complex dynamics of imperial expansion, which typically involves metropolitan governments, colonists on the periphery, and Indigenous peoples, all pursuing divergent interests in fluid circumstances.