From the day of his arrival at Quebec the governor saw the pressing need of extending French, influence and control into the regions bordering upon the Great Lakes.  To dissipate the colony’s efforts in westward expansion, however, was exactly what he had been instructed not to do.  The King and his ministers were sure that it would be far wiser to devote all available energies and funds to developing the settled portions of the land.  They desired the governor to carry on the policy of encouraging agriculture which Talon had begun, thus solidifying the colony and making its borders less difficult to defend.  Frontenac’s instructions on this point could hardly have been more explicit.  “His Majesty considers it more consistent with the good of his service,” wrote Colbert, “that you apply yourself to clearing and settling the most fertile places that are nearest the seacoast and the communication with France than to think afar of explorations in the interior of the country, so distant that they can never be inhabited by Frenchmen.”  This was discouraging counsel, showing neither breadth of vision nor familiarity with the urgent needs of the colony.  Frontenac courageously set these instructions aside, and in doing so he was wise.  Had he held to the letter of his instructions, New France would never have been more than a strip of territory fringing the Lower St. Lawrence.  More than any other Frenchman he helped to plan the great empire of the West.

Notwithstanding the narrow views of his superiors at Versailles, Frontenac was convinced that the colony could best secure its own defense by controlling the chief line of water communications between the Iroquois country and Montreal.  To this end he prepared to build a fort at Cataraqui where the St. Lawrence debouches from Lake Ontario.  He was not, however, the first to recognize the strategic value of this point.  Talon had marked it as a place of importance some years before, and the English, authorities at Albany had been urged by the Iroquois chiefs to forestall any attempt that the French might make by being first on the ground.  But the English procrastinated, and in the summer of 1673 the governor, with an imposing array of troops and militia, made his way to Cataraqui, having first summoned the Iroquois to meet him there in solemn council.  In rather high dudgeon they came, ready to make trouble if the chance arose; but Frontenac’s display of armed strength, his free-handed bestowal of presents, his tactful handling of the chiefs, and his effective oratory at the conclave soon assured him the upper hand.  The fort was built, and the Iroquois, while they continued to regard it as an invasion of their territories, were forced to accept the new situation with reluctant grace.