<P> New France was the vast area centered on the Saint Lawrence river, Great Lakes, Mississippi River and other major tributary rivers that was explored and claimed by France starting in the early 17th century . It was composed of several colonies: Acadia, Canada, Newfoundland, Louisiana, Île - Royale (present - day Cape Breton Island), and Île Saint Jean (present - day Prince Edward Island). These colonies came under British or Spanish control after the French and Indian War, though France briefly re-acquired a portion of Louisiana in 1800 . The United States would gain much of New France in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, and the U.S. would acquire another portion of French territory with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 . The remainder of New France became part of Canada, with the exception of the French island of Saint Pierre and Miquelon . </P> <P> By 1660, French fur trappers, missionaries and military detachments based in Montreal pushed west along the Great Lakes upriver into the Pays d'en Haut and founded outposts at Green Bay, Fort de Buade and Saint Ignace (both at Michilimackinac), Sault Sainte Marie, Vincennes, and Detroit in 1701 . During the French and Indian War (1754--1763) many of these settlements became occupied by the British . By 1773, the population of Detroit was 1,400 . At the end of the War for Independence in 1783, the region south of the Great Lakes formally became part of the United States . </P> <P> The Illinois country by 1752 had a French population of 2,500; it was located to the west of the Ohio Country and was concentrated around Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Sainte Genevieve . According to one scholar, "The Illinois Habitant was a gay soul; he seemed shockingly carefree to later, self - righteous Puritans from the American colonies ." </P> <P> French claims to French Louisiana stretched thousands of miles from modern Louisiana north to the largely unexplored Midwest, and west to the Rocky Mountains . It was generally divided into Upper and Lower Louisiana . This vast tract was first settled at Mobile and Biloxi around 1700, and continued to grow when 7,000 French immigrants founded New Orleans in 1718 . Settlement proceeded very slowly; New Orleans became an important port as the gateway to the Mississippi River, but there was little other economic development because the city lacked a prosperous hinterland . </P>

Why did most early settlements develop near the atlantic coast and rivers