What were three goals of French colonization in the Americas?

One crucial goal of French colonization was to tap into the rich fur trade that was available in modern-day Canada and the Northeast. To this end, French companies chartered by the Crown sent traders to trade with Natives, particularly Algonquian peoples around the Great Lakes. Another motive was to spread Catholicism. Many French Jesuit priests ministered to Indian peoples throughout New France and Louisiana, the massive tract of land to the west of the Mississippi River. Unlike Spanish priests, who had frequently provoked resentment and even rebellions by their insistence that Indian peoples adhere to a dogmatic form of Christianity, French Jesuits converted them on their own terms, but still with limited success. Finally, a third motive for French settlement was to check English expansion in North America. This was especially true in the Ohio Valley, which became a scene of conflict that would lead to the Seven Years' War, a massive global conflict involving France and Great Britain. Indeed, it was the culmination of years of frontier conflict between France (and its Indian allies) and Britain and its colonies.