USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -In 17th-and 18th-century New France, habitants were independent landowners who established a homestead. Their status came with certain privileges and obligations. For example, during the colony’s early years, only habitants had the right to small-scale fur trading .

Detailed explanation-2: -Each plot of land in rural New France was owned by a seigneur and he would offer sections of his land to families, who were known as habitants. The habitants would live on their piece of land, farm it for food, and pay taxes to the seigneur. This was how all newcomers to the colony lived.

Detailed explanation-3: -In the word’s most familiar meaning, going back to the late 17th century, a habitant was a farmer who worked and lived on a plot of land granted him by a wealthy seigneur (see Seigneurial System).

Detailed explanation-4: -Habitants were free individuals; seigneurs simply owned a “bundle of specific and limited rights over productive activity within that territory". The seigneur – habitant relationship was one where both parties were owners of the land who split the attributes of ownership between them.

Detailed explanation-5: -Acadia and Canada (New France) were inhabited by indigenous nomadic Algonquian peoples and sedentary Iroquoian peoples. These lands were full of unexploited and valuable natural resources, which attracted all of Europe.