Tree automata based algorithms are essential in many fields in computer science such as verification, specification, program analysis. They become also essential for databases with the development of standards such as XML. In this paper, we define new classes of non deterministic tree automata, namely residual finite tree automata (RFTA). In the bottom-up case, we obtain a new characterization of regular tree languages. In the top-down case, we obtain a subclass of regular tree languages which contains the class of languages recognized by deterministic top-down tree automata. RFTA also come with the property of existence of canonical non deterministic tree automata.