d to the Rockies a few years before the Conquest, and
had built forts on Lake Winnipeg, on the Assiniboine and Red rivers,
and at half a dozen portages on the Saskatchewan. But the "Company of
Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay" had not yet ventured
inland, still content to carry on its trade with the Indians from its
forts along the shores of that great sea. On the Pacific the Russians
had coasted as far south as Mount Saint Elias, but no white man, so far
as is known, had set foot on the shores of what is now British Columbia.

Two immediate problems were bequeathed to the British Government by the
Treaty of Paris: what was to be done with the unsettled lands between
the Alleghanies and the Mississippi; and how were the seventy thousand
French subjects in the valley of the St. Lawrence to be dealt with? The
first difficulty was not solved. It was merely postponed. The whole back
country of the English colonies was proclaimed an Indian reserve where
the King's white subjects might trade but might not acquire land. This
policy was not devised in order to set bounds to the expansion of the
older colonies; that was an afterthought. The policy had its root in
an honest desire to protect the Indians from the frauds of unscrupulous
traders and from the encroachments of settlers on their hunting grounds.
The need of a conciliatory, if firm, policy in regard to the great
interior was made evident by the Pontiac rising in 1763, the aftermath
of the defeat of the French, who had done all they could to inspire the
Indians with hatred for the advancing English.

How to deal with Canada was a more thorny problem. The colony had not
been sought by its conquerors for itself. It was counted of little
worth. The verdict of its late possessors, as recorded in Voltaire's
light farewell to "a few arpents of snow," might be discounted as an
instance of sour grapes; but the estimate of its new possessors was
evidently little higher, since they debated long and dubiously whether
in the peace settlement they should retain Canada or the little sugar
island of Guadeloupe, a mere pin point on the map. Canada had been
conquered not for the good it might bring but for the harm it was doing
as a base for French attack upon the English colonies--"the wasps' nest
must be smoked out." But once it had been taken, it had to be dealt with
for itself.

The policy first adopted was a simple one, natural enough for
eighteenth-century English