Bad crops in Fance force more to the New World, and more go to Louisiana to trap furs, inter marrying and converting the natives. Not so many people that France wishes to keep it, but that a large proportion of natives are half-white, and a larger part Christian. As for the Métis or Mestizos, whatever half-white-half-Indian, increasing their population shouldn't be difficult that Nouvelle-François tend to have a lot of children (13 in my grandfathers case, almost 30 in others). This way everyone from the Nez Perce to the Sauk and Fox aren't as "necessarily" needed to be assimilated. However, this gives more Indians guns etc, and might give Indians more resistance, so the US goes even more overkill than OTL (did I mention they sent 50,000 men to search for Geronimo's 50 person band?) to exterminate/assimilate the natives.
An interesting turnout would be that less people might settle Louisiana that it is inhabited by more Frenchmen and half-"savages", so they either remain East or go for the Pacific and Southwest, possibly more land taken from Mexico and British Columbia. Also, even if it does get settled, French is gonna get spoken alot more and in more places in the US than just southern Lousiana, a band of the northeast stretching from upstate New York to New Brunswick, and a county or two in the western Great Lakes. I think yet another term for this new of Nouvelle François would be needed: Mississippians, anyone? (In this case Upper Lousianians might only apply to areas away from the Mississippi proper or around the Great Lakes.
With French in control of America's shipping highway, might there be conspiracy theories more than Quebecois Catholic priests plotting to takeover America?
