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Samuel de Champlain

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Samuel de Champlain

(born 1567, Brouage, France — died Dec. 25, 1635, Quebec, New France) French explorer. He made several expeditions to North America before founding Quebec in 1608 with 32 colonists, most of whom did not survive the first winter. He joined with the northern Indian tribes to defeat Iroquois marauders and promoted the fur trade with the Indians. He discovered Lake Champlain in 1609 and made other explorations of what are now northern New York, the Ottawa River, and the eastern Great Lakes. English privateers besieged Quebec in 1628, when England and France were at war, and he was taken prisoner. In 1632 the colony was restored to France, and in 1633 Champlain made his last voyage to Quebec, where he lived until his death.

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Biography: Samuel de Champlain
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Samuel de Champlain (ca. 1570-1635) was a French geographer and explorer whose mission was to establish a joint French and Native American agricultural and fur-trading colony. In 21 voyages to New France he laid the foundations for modern Canada.

Samuel de Champlain was born at Brouage, a small Huguenot seaport town in Saintonge. He was probably born a Protestant, but sometime before 1603 he embraced the Roman Catholic faith. He had served against the Catholic League in the army of Henry IV until 1598. By 1601 he was indulging his love of travel and the sea and extending his expertise in navigation.

Early Travels

Champlain spent time during 1601-1603 on voyages as far as the West Indies, working out of Spain. In 1603 he went, probably as an observer, with François Gravédu Pont, whom Aymar de Chaste, holder of the trade monopoly for New France from King Henry IV, was sending on an expedition to the St. Lawrence.

Gravé du Pont's ships arrived at Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay River on the St. Lawrence, some 120 miles below Quebec, on May 26, 1603. Champlain and Gravé du Pont reached Montreal that summer; by questioning natives through an interpreter, Champlain made astonishingly accurate guesses about the network of the Great Lakes, including Niagara Falls. Both men were back in France by the end of September.

Champlain, however, had acquired some interest and curiosity about Acadia (the area of Newfoundland and around the St. Lawrence), where he hoped to find mines and perhaps a more effective route into the interior. De Chaste died and was succeeded in the monopoly by Pierre du Gua de Monts. De Monts was interested in finding a site with a warmer climate and invited Champlain to accompany a new expedition as geographer. Early in May 1604 the expedition made landfall at Port Mouton on what is now the southeast coast of Nova Scotia, some 100 miles southwest of Halifax. Champlain was asked to choose a temporary base for settlement, and he explored the south coast of Nova Scotia; the Bay of Fundy, including the Annapolis Basin; and the St. John River. De Monts, however, chose an island in the estuary of the St. Croix, now called Dochet Island.

The winter of 1604/1605 was a bad one, the cold being exceptionally severe, and the island became surrounded by treacherous half-broken ice floes, making it more a prison than a place of safety. Scurvy was prevalent, but Champlain, as was to be usual with him, seems to have been hardy enough to have escaped it.

In the summer of 1605 De Monts and Champlain explored the American coast as far south as Cape Cod. Although one or two English explorers had preceded Champlain on this coast, he made such precise and excellent charts of it that he really deserves the title of the first cartographer of the New England coast. The winter of 1605/1606 was spent comparatively easily in the Annapolis Basin, in a fort protected from the savagely cold northwest winds by the long high ridge that lies between the basin and the Bay of Fundy. In 1606 new arrivals turned up, with whom Champlain again explored southward along the American coast, this time as far as Martha's Vineyard.

The winter of 1606/1607 was mild and easy, for the new arrivals, Jean de Biencourt de Poutrincourt, Marc Lescarbot, and others, had brought supplies and wine. In May 1607 the whole colony returned to France, stopping en route to explore the area of Canso at the eastern end of Nova Scotia.

In 1608 Champlain received his first official position. Up to now all his work had been as observer or geographer on an informal basis. Now he was made lieutenant to De Monts. This new expedition went once more to the St. Lawrence. Arriving in the St. Lawrence in June 1608, they began the construction of a fort at the site of what is now the Lower Town of Quebec City. In the summer of 1609 Champlain cemented the fateful alliance between the French and the Hurons by an expedition against the Iroquois, up the Richelieu River toward Lake Champlain. This alliance dated from about 1603; if the French wanted furs, they had to support the Native Americans who supplied the furs, or at least controlled access to them. Thus they were compelled to support the Hurons and Algonquins against their enemies.

Champlain was back in France over the winter 1609/1610, making a report to De Monts and the king. The story of Champlain's relations with a number of French backers is long and complicated. There were a variety of them and a good deal of quarreling between various groups seeking to get control of the fur trade. Champlain had less interest in money than in exploration and in the development of a colony. With immense patience and seemingly unwearying persistence, he traveled back and forth across the Atlantic for the next 2 decades. In all he made some 21 voyages across the Atlantic.

Travel to the Interior

In 1615 Champlain made his boldest and most spectacular venture into the interior of Canada. Bound, as he believed himself to be, by promises to the Hurons to help them against the Iroquois and driven by his own considerable curiosity, he began his epic voyage to the Huron country with two Frenchmen and Native American canoeists. He left Montreal in July 1615. Traveling up the Ottawa River and a tributary, he reached Lake Nipissing, continuing down the French River to the northeastern corner of Lake Huron. He was probably the first white man to see it. By August 1 he was in Huronia, a fertile, well-watered country, populated by Huron villages, between the foot of Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe, some 40 miles southeast.

They met with the Huron raiding party at the main village of Cahiagué, on the north side of Lake Simcoe. On September 1 they canoed down the Trent River system to Lake Ontario, and then via the Oswego River to the Iroquois village at the eastern end of Lake Onondaga, not far from present-day Syracuse. Huron impatience and lack of discipline made a coherent assault on the Iroquois fort impossible. Champlain was wounded in the knee by an Iroquois arrow, and with support failing to come from the Susquehannas, the Huron allies, the raiders had to return home. Champlain, unable to walk, was at times carried like a baby on the back of a Huron.

Champlain was obliged to winter in the disagreeable habitat of a Huron village but continued his inveterate habit of travel and exploration, visiting other tribes that were neighbors of the Hurons. In addition, and perhaps more important, he provided a detailed and informed account of the Native American ways of living, one of the earliest and best available. He returned to France in 1616.

In 1619 enforced leisure owing to legal complications gave him opportunity to write accounts of his voyages, which he illustrated with sketches and maps. In 1620, as lieutenant to the viceroy of New France, the Duc de Montmorency, Champlain set out again for Canada, this time with his wife, some 30 years younger than he. In 1627 Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII's chief minister, established the Company of One Hundred Associates, chartered to run the fur trade and organize settlement. Champlain was a member and became, in fact, the commander of the colony under Cardinal Richelieu.

All would have gone well but for the outbreak of war between England and France in 1627. A London company formed to get at the St. Lawrence trade financed, and Charles I of England commissioned, an expedition under David Kirke and his brothers to displace the French from Canada. They took four critically important French supply ships off Gaspé and thus almost stopped the life of the colony. By the summer of 1629, with no relief in sight, Champlain was compelled to surrender to the English and leave.

Not until 1632, with the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, did England agree to restore Quebec (and Port Royal in Acadia) to France. In 1633 Champlain returned to New France, again under the aegis of a revived Company of One Hundred Associates. He died at Quebec, the town he founded, on Christmas Day, 1635.

Champlain was physically a resilient, tough, capable man. He also had the moral essentials for his role, courage and indomitableness. He was good-natured and kind and a man of his word, which explains his considerable success with Native Americans. But he also could be ruthless. When, in 1608, there was a plot against his life by the locksmith Duval, Champlain formed a council that tried Duval and his accomplices. Duval was executed on the spot and his head stuck on a pike at the fort at Quebec.

Champlain was a man of large ideas; his aim was to establish a joint French and Native American agricultural and furtrading colony. He contemplated the Christianizing of Native Americans and their intermarriage with the French. He is, of all the explorers, the real founder of Canada, and he himself would have been pleased to be thought so. It was certainly what he set out to do.

Further Reading

H. P. Biggar edited Champlain's writings: The Works of Samuel de Champlain (6 vols., 1922-1936). Two lively and well-written biographies are Samuel Eliot Morison, Samuel de Champlain: Father of New France (1972), and Morris Bishop, Champlain: The Life of Fortitude (1948).

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Samuel de Champlain
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Champlain, Samuel de (shămplān', Fr. sämüĕl' də shäNplăN'), 1567-1635, French explorer, the chief founder of New France.

After serving in France under Henry of Navarre (King Henry IV) in the religious wars, Champlain was given command of a Spanish fleet sailing to the West Indies, Mexico, and the Isthmus of Panama. He described this three-year tour to the French king in Bref Discours (1859). In 1603 he made his first voyage to New France as a member of a fur-trading expedition. He explored the St. Lawrence River as far as the rapids at Lachine and described his voyage in Des Sauvages (1603).

With the sieur de Monts, who had a monopoly of the trade of the region, Champlain returned in 1604 to found a colony, which was landed at the mouth of the St. Croix River. In 1605 the colony moved across the Bay of Fundy to Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal, N.S.), and in the next three years Champlain explored the New England coast south to Martha's Vineyard, discovering Mt. Desert Island and most of the larger rivers of Maine and making the first detailed charts of the coast. After the sieur de Monts's privileges had been revoked, the colony had to be abandoned, and through the efforts of Champlain a new one was established on the St. Lawrence River.

In 1608 in the ship Le Don de Dieu, he brought his colonists to the site of Quebec. In the spring of 1609, accompanying a war party of Huron against the Iroquois, Champlain discovered the lake that bears his name, and near Crown Point, N.Y., the Iroquois were met and routed by French troops. The incident is believed to be largely responsible for the later hatred of the French by the Iroquois.

In 1612 Champlain returned to France, where he received a new grant of the fur-trade monopoly. Returning in 1613, he set off on a journey to the western lakes. He reached only Allumette Island in the Ottawa River that year, but in 1615 he went with Étienne Brulé and a party of Huron to Georgian Bay on Lake Huron, returning southeastward by way of Lake Ontario. Accompanying another Huron war party to an attack on an Onondaga village in present-day New York, Champlain was wounded and forced to spend the winter with the Huron.

Thereafter Champlain devoted his time to the welfare of the colony, of which he was the virtual governor. He helped to persuade Richelieu to found the Company of One Hundred Associates, which was to take over the interests of the colony. In 1629 Quebec was suddenly captured by the English, and Champlain was carried away to four years of exile in England; there he prepared the third edition of his Voyages de la Nouvelle France (1632). When New France was restored to France in 1632, Champlain returned. In 1634 he sent Jean Nicolet into the West, thus extending the French explorations and claims as far as Wisconsin. He died on Christmas Day, 1635, and was buried in Quebec.

Bibliography

Champlain's works were issued by the Champlain Society (1922-36) with English and French texts. See also biographies by N. E. Dionne (1905, repr. 1963), S. E. Morison (1972), and D. H. Fischer (2008).

Wikipedia: Samuel de Champlain
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Samuel de Champlain

Depiction of Champlain,
by Théophile Hamel (1870),
after the one by Ducornet (d. 1856),
based on a portrait of Michel Particelli d'Emery (d. 1650)
by Balthasar Moncornet (d. 1668).
— No authentic portrait of Champlain is known to exist.[1]
Born Samuel Champlain
between 1567 and 1580
(most probably near 1580)[2]
Brouage, Province of Saintonge, France
Died December 25, 1635 (aged around 55)
Quebec, Canada, New France
Occupation navigator, cartographer, soldier, explorer, administrator and chronicler of New France
Known for exploration of New France, foundation of Quebec City, Canada, being called The Father of New France
Signature
Typical signature of Samuel de Champlain.

Samuel de Champlain (b. c. 1580[2]d. December 25, 1635) ( IPA: [samɥɛl də ʃɑ̃plɛ̃] ), "The Father of New France", was a French navigator, cartographer, draughtsman, soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnologist, diplomat and chronicler. He founded Quebec City on July 3, 1608, and served as its administrator for the rest of his life.

Born into a family of master mariners, Champlain, while still a young man, began exploring North America in 1603 under the guidance of François Gravé Du Pont.[3][4] Five years later, after participating in the exploration and settlement of Acadia between 1604 and 1607, Champlain established in 1608 the French settlement that has since grown to become Quebec City.[5] And Champlain became the first European to explore and describe the Great Lakes, making journeys after which he published maps and accounts of what he saw or learnt from the natives, or from the French interpreters living among the natives. He developed early relationships between French settlers, or French interpreters, and natives: first, with local Montagnais Innu and later with others further west (Ottawa River, Lake Nipissing, or Georgian Bay), with Algonquin and with Huron Wendat, who all convinced him to provide assistance in their wars against the Iroquois.

In every way but formal title, Samuel de Champlain served as Quebec City's and New France's governor, titles that may have been formally unavailable to him due to his non-noble status.[6] He established trading companies that sent goods, primarily fur, to France, and oversaw the growth of New France in the St. Lawrence River valley until his death in 1635.

Champlain is also memorialized as the "Father of New France", and many places, streets, and structures in northeastern North America bear his name, or have monuments established in his memory. The most notable of these is Lake Champlain, which straddles the border between the United States and Canada. In 1609 he led an expedition up the Richelieu River and explored a long, narrow lake situated between the Green Mountains of present-day Vermont and the Adirondack Mountains of present-day New York; he named the lake after himself as the first European to map and describe it.

Contents

Early years

Champlain was born to Antoine Champlain (also written Anthoine Chappelain in some records) and Marguerite Le Roy, most likely in the port town of Brouage, in the French Province of Saintonge. The exact date and location of Champlain's birth are unknown, and all the vital records of Brouage were lost in a fire in 1690. In his 1851 book,[7] Pierre Damien Rainguet, a Catholic priest in Saintonge, estimated Champlain's birth year to be 1567, without giving any reference or raw data he used for his estimate. In 1870, the Canadian Catholic priest Laverdière, in the first chapter of his Œuvres de Champlain, accepted Rainguet's estimate and tried to give details justifying it, but his calculations were based on many assumptions now believed or proven to be incorrect. Although Léopold Delayant (member, secretary, then president of l'Académie des belles-lettres, sciences et arts de La Rochelle) wrote as early as 1867 that Rainguet's estimation was wrong, the books of Rainguet and Laverdière have had a significant influence: the 1567 date was carved on numerous monuments dedicated to Champlain, and has been widely republished as true. In the first half of the 20th century, some authors disagreed and chose 1570 or 1575 instead of 1567. In 1978 Jean Liebel published groundbreaking research about these estimates of Champlain's birth year and concluded, "Samuel Champlain was born about 1580 in Brouage."[8] Liebel asserts that some authors, including the Catholic Priests Rainguet and Laverdière, preferred years when Brouage was under Catholic control (which include 1567, 1570, and 1575).[7][9]

Champlain claimed to be from Brouage in the title of his 1603 book, and to be Saintongeois in the title of his second book (1613). He belonged to either a Protestant family, or a tolerant Roman Catholic one, since Brouage was most of the time a Catholic city in a Protestant region, and his Old Testament first name (Samuel) was not usually given to Catholic children.[10][11] The exact location of his birth is thus also not known with certainty, but at the time of his birth his parents were living in Brouage,[12] near Rochefort in the French province of Saintonge.

Born into a family of mariners (both his father and uncle-in-law were sailors, or navigators), Samuel Champlain learned to navigate, draw, make nautical charts, and write practical reports. His education did not include Ancient Greek or Latin, so he did not read or learn from any ancient literature. As each French fleet had to assure its own defense at sea, Champlain sought to learn fighting with the firearms of his time: he acquired this practical knowledge when serving with the army of King Henry IV during the later stages of France's religious wars in Brittany from 1594 or 1595 to 1598, beginning as a quartermaster responsible for the feeding and care of horses. During this time he claimed to go on a "certain secret voyage" for the king,[13] and saw combat (including maybe the Siege of Fort Crozon, at the end of 1594).[14] By 1597 he was a "capitaine d'une compagnie" serving in a garrison near Quimper.[14]

Early travels

Champlain and guide[15] in Isle La Motte, Vermont, at the site Champlain is said to have first set foot in Vermont (and encamped) in 1609. Lake Champlain is in the background. (Sculptor E.L.Weber, 1967; Photo by Matt Wills, 2009)

In 1598 his uncle-in-law, a navigator whose ship Saint-Julien was chartered to transport Spanish troops to Cadiz pursuant to the Treaty of Vervins, gave Champlain the opportunity to accompany him. After a difficult passage, he spent some time in Cadiz before his uncle, whose ship was then chartered to accompany a large Spanish fleet to the West Indies, again offered in a place on the ship. His uncle, who gave command of the ship to Jeronimo de Vallebrera, instructed the young Champlain to watch over the ship.[16] This journey lasted two years, and gave Champlain the opportunity to see or hear about Spanish holdings from the Caribbean to Mexico City. Along the way he took detailed notes, and wrote an illustrated report on what he learned on this trip, and gave this secret report to King Henry,[17] who rewarded Champlain with an annual pension. Secret, this report was very late published for the first time (it was in 1870 by Laverdière), as Brief Discours des Choses plus remarquables que Sammuel Champlain de Brouage a reconneues aux Indes Occidentalles au voiage qu'il en a faict en icettes en l'année 1599 et en l'année 1601, comme ensuite (and in English as Narrative of a Voyage to the West Indies and Mexico 1599–1602). The authenticity of this account as a work written by Champlain has frequently been questioned, due to inaccuracies and discrepancies with other sources on a number of points; however, recent scholarship indicates that the work probably was authored by Champlain.[18]

On Champlain's return to Cadiz in August 1600, his uncle, who had fallen ill, asked him to look after his business affairs. This Champlain did, and when his uncle died in June 1601, Champlain inherited his substantial estate. It included an estate near La Rochelle, commercial properties in Spain, and a 150-ton merchant ship.[19] This inheritance, combined with the king's annual pension, gave the young explorer a great deal of independence, as he was not dependent on the financial backing of merchants and other investors.[20] From 1601 to 1603 Champlain served as a geographer in the court of King Henry. As part of his duties he traveled to French ports and learned much about North America from the fishermen that seasonally traveled to coastal areas from Nantucket to Newfoundland to capitalize on the rich fishing grounds there. He also made a study of previous French failures at colonization in the area, including that of Pierre de Chauvin at Tadoussac.[21] When Chauvin forfeited his monopoly on fur trade in North America in 1602, responsibility for renewing the trade was given to Aymar de Chaste. Champlain approached de Chaste about a position on the first voyage, which he received with the king's assent.[22]

Champlain's first trip to North America was as an observer on a fur-trading expedition led by François Gravé Du Pont. Du Pont was a navigator and merchant who had been a ship's captain on Chauvin's expedition, and with whom Champlain established a firm life-long friendship. He educated Champlain about navigation in North America, including the Saint Lawrence River, and in dealing with the natives there (and in Acadia after).[3] The Bonne-Renommée (the Good Fame) arrived at Tadoussac on March 15, 1603. Champlain was anxious to see for himself all of the places that Jacques Cartier had seen and described about sixty years earlier, and wanted to go even further than Cartier, if possible. Champlain created a map of the St. Lawrence River on this trip and, after his return to France on September 20, published an account as Des Sauvages: ou voyage de Samuel Champlain, de Brouages, faite en la France nouvelle l'an 1603 ("Concerning the Savages: or travels of Samuel Champlain of Brouages, made in New France in the year 1603").[23] Included in his account were meetings with Begourat, a chief of the Montagnais at Tadoussac, in which positive relationships were established between the French and the many Montagnais gathered there, with some Algonquin friends.

Promising to King Henry to report on further discoveries, Champlain joined a second expedition to New France in the spring of 1604. This trip, once again an exploratory journey without women and children, lasted several years, and focused on areas south of the St. Lawrence River, in what later became known as Acadia. It was led by Pierre Dugua de Mons, a noble and Protestant merchant who had been given a fur trading monopoly in New France by the king. Dugua asked Champlain to find a site for winter settlement. After exploring possible sites in the Bay of Fundy, Champlain selected Saint Croix Island in the St. Croix River as the site of the expedition's first winter settlement. After enduring a harsh winter on the island the settlement was relocated across the bay where they established Port Royal. Until 1607, Champlain used that definitive site as his base, while he explored the Atlantic coast. Dugua was forced to leave the settlement for France in September 1605, because he learned that his monopoly was at risk. His monopoly was rescinded by the king in July 1607 under pressure from other merchants and proponents of free trade, leading to the abandonment of the settlement.

In 1605 and 1606, Champlain explored the North American coast as far south as Cape Cod, searching for sites for a permanent settlement. Small skirmishes with the resident Nausets dissuaded him from the idea of establishing one near present-day Chatham, Massachusetts. He named the area Mallebar ("bad bar").[24][25]

Founding of Quebec City

In Honfleur, remaining of Champlain's departures

In the spring of 1608, Dugua wanted Champlain to start a new French colony on the shores of the St. Lawrence. Dugua equipped, at his own expense, a fleet of three ships with workers, that left the French port of Honfleur. The main ship, called the Don-de-Dieu (the Gift of God), was commanded by Champlain. Another ship, the Lévrier (the Hunt Dog), was commanded by his friend Du Pont. The small group of male settlers arrived at Tadoussac on the lower St. Lawrence in June. Because of the dangerous strength of the Saguenay River ending there, they left the ships and continued up the "Big River" in small boats bringing the men and the materials.[26]

On July 3, 1608, Champlain landed at the "point of Quebec" and set about fortifying the area by the erection of three main wooden buildings, each two stories tall, that he collectively called the "Habitation", with a wooden stockade and a moat 12 feet (4 m) wide surrounding them. This was the very beginning of Quebec City. Gardening, exploring, and fortifying this place became great passions of Champlain for the rest of his life.

Painting by George Agnew Reid, done for the third centennial (1908), showing the arrival of Samuel de Champlain on the site of Quebec City.[26]

In the 1620s, the Habitation at Quebec was mainly a store for the Compagnie des Marchands (Traders Company), and Champlain lived in the wooden Fort Saint Louis newly built up the hill (south from the present-day Château Frontenac Hotel), near the only two houses built by the two settler families (the ones of Louis Hébert and Guillaume Couillard, his son-in-law).

Murder of the King

In May 1610, King Henry was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic, and rule fell to his wife, Marie de' Medici, as regent for the nine-year-old Louis XIII. Marie was a staunch Catholic with little interest in New France, and many of Champlain's Protestant financial supporters, including Pierre Dugua, were denied access to court. Champlain, on hearing the news, returned to France in September 1610 to establish new political connections in support of efforts at colonization.[27]

Marriage

One route Champlain may have chosen to improve his access to the court of the regent was his decision to enter into marriage with the twelve year old Hélène Boullé. She was the daughter of Nicolas Boullé, a man charged with carrying out royal decisions at court. The marriage contract was signed on December 27, 1610 in presence of Dugua, who had dealt with the father (a Protestant like him), and the couple were married three days later. The terms of the contract called for the marriage to be consummated two years later.[28]

Champlain's marriage was initially quite troubled, as Hélène rebelled when she was told to join him in August 1613. Their relationship, while it apparently lacked any physical connection, recovered and was apparently good for many years.[29] Hélène lived in Quebec for several years,[30] but returned to Paris and eventually decided to enter a convent. The couple had no children, although Champlain did adopt three Montagnais girls named Faith, Hope, and Charity in the winter of 1627-8.[31]

Relations and war with natives

Engraving based on a drawing by Champlain of his 1609 voyage. It depicts a battle between Iroquois and Algonquian tribes near Lake Champlain
Enlarged detail from the center of the engraving "Deffaite des Yroquois au Lac de Champlain," from Champlain's Voyages (1613). This is the only contemporary likeness of the explorer to survive to the present. It is also a self-portrait.[32]

During the summer of 1609 Champlain attempted to form better relations with the local native tribes. He made alliances with the Wendat (called Huron by the French) and with the Algonquin, the Montagnais and the Etchemin, who lived in the area of the St. Lawrence River. These tribes demanded that Champlain help them in their war against the Iroquois, who lived further south. Champlain set off with 9 French soldiers and 300 natives to explore the Rivière des Iroquois (now known as the Richelieu River), and became the first European to map Lake Champlain. Having had no encounters with the Iroquois at this point many of the men headed back, leaving Champlain with only 2 Frenchmen and 60 natives.

On July 29, somewhere in the area near Ticonderoga and Crown Point, New York (historians are not sure which of these two places, but Fort Ticonderoga claims that it occurred near its site), Champlain and his party encountered a group of Iroquois. A battle began the next day. Two hundred Iroquois advanced on Champlain's position, and one of his guides pointed out the 3 Iroquois chiefs. Champlain fired his arquebus, killing two of them with a single shot, and one of his men killed the third. The Iroquois turned and fled. This action set the tone for French-Iroquois relations for rest of the century.[33]

Champlain returned to France in an unsuccessful attempt, with Dugua, to renew their fur trade monopoly. They did, however, reach an agreement with some merchants from Rouen, in which Quebec became an exclusive warehouse for their fur trade and, in return, the Rouen merchants supported the settlement.

Exploration of New France

Baie des Chaleurs and Gulf of Saint-Lawrence — extract of Champlain 1612 Map.

On March 29, 1613, arrived back in New France, he first ensured that his new royal commission be proclaimed. Champlain set out on May 27 to continue his exploration of the Huron country and in hopes of finding the "northern sea" he had heard about (probably Hudson Bay). He traveled the Ottawa River, later giving the first description of this area.[34] It was in June that he met with Tessouat, the Algonquin chief of Allumettes Island, and offered to build the tribe a fort if they were to move from the area they occupied, with its poor soil, to the locality of the Lachine Rapids.[25]

By August 26 Champlain was back in Saint-Malo. There he wrote an account of his life from 1604 to 1612 and his journey up the Ottawa river, his Voyages[35] and published another map of New France. In 1614 he formed the "Compagnie des Marchands de Rouen et de Saint-Malo" and "Compagnie de Champlain", which bound the Rouen and Saint-Malo merchants for eleven years. He returned to New France in the spring of 1615 with four Recollects in order to further religious life in the new colony. The Roman Catholic Church was eventually given en seigneurie large and valuable tracts of land estimated at nearly 30% of all the lands granted by the French Crown in New France.[36]

Champlain continued to work to improve relations with the natives promising to help them in their struggles against the Iroquois. With his native guides he explored further up the Ottawa River and reached Lake Nipissing. He then followed the French River until he reached the fresh-water sea he called Lac Attigouautau (now Lake Huron).

In 1615, Champlain was escorted through the area that is now Peterborough, Ontario by a group of Hurons. He used the ancient portage between Chemong Lake and Little Lake (now Chemong Road), and stayed for a short period of time near what is now Bridgenorth.

Military expedition

On September 1, at Cahiagué (A Huron community on what is now called Lake Simcoe), he and the northern tribes started a military expedition against the Iroquois. The party passed Lake Ontario at its eastern tip where they hid their canoes and continued their journey by land. They followed the Oneida River until they arrived at the main Onondaga fort. Pressured by the Hurons to attack prematurely, the assault failed. Champlain was wounded twice in the leg by arrows, one in his knee. The attack lasted three hours until they were forced to flee.

Although he did not want to, the Hurons insisted that Champlain spend the winter with them. During his stay he set off with them in their great deer hunt, during which he became lost and was forced to wander for three days living off game and sleeping under trees until he met up with a band of aboriginals by chance. He spent the rest of the winter learning "their country, their manners, customs, modes of life". On May 22, 1616, he left the Huron country and returned to Quebec before heading back to France on July 2.

Improving administration in New France

Map of New France (Champlain, 1612). A more precise map was drawn by Champlain in 1632.

Champlain returned to New France in 1620 and was to spend the rest of his life focusing on administration of the territory rather than exploration. Champlain spent the winter building Fort Saint-Louis on top of Cape Diamond. By mid-May he learned that the fur trading monopoly had been handed over to another company led by the Caen brothers. After some tense negotiations, it was decided to merge the two companies under the direction of the Caens. Champlain continued to work on relations with the natives and managed to impose on them a chief of his choice. He also negotiated a peace treaty with the Iroquois.

Champlain continued to work on the fortifications of what became Quebec City, laying the first stone on May 6, 1624. On August 15 he once again returned to France where he was encouraged to continue his work as well as to continue looking for a passage to China, something widely believed to exist at the time. By July 5 he was back at Quebec and continued expanding the city.

In 1627 the Caen brothers' company lost its monopoly on the fur trade, and Cardinal Richelieu (who had joined the Royal Council in 1624 and rose rapidly to a position of dominance in French politics that he would hold until his death in 1642) formed the Compagnie des Cent-Associés (the Hundred Associates) to manage the fur trade. Champlain was one of the 100 investors, and its first fleet, loaded with colonists and supplies, set sail in April 1628.[37]

Champlain had overwintered in Quebec. Supplies were low, and English merchants pillaged Cap Tourmente in early July 1628.[38] A war had broken out between France and England, and Charles I of England had issued letters of marque that authorized the capture of French shipping and its colonies in North America.[39] Champlain received a summons to surrender on July 10 from some heavily-armed English merchants, the Kirke brothers. Champlain refused to deal with them, misleading them to believe that Quebec's defenses were better than they actually were (Champlain had only 50 pounds of gunpowder to defend the community). Successfully bluffed, the English withdrew, but encountered and captured the French supply fleet, cutting off that year's supplies to the colony.[40] By the spring of 1629 supplies were dangerously low and Champlain was forced to send people to Gaspé and into Indian communities to conserve rations.[41] On July 19, the Kirke brothers arrived before Quebec after intercepting Champlain's plea for help, and Champlain was forced to surrender the colony.[42] Many colonists were taken first to England and then France by the Kirkes, but Champlain remained in London to begin the process of regaining the colony. A peace treaty had been signed in April 1629, three months before the surrender, and, under the terms of that treaty, Quebec and other prizes taken by the Kirkes after the treaty were supposed to be returned.[43] It was not until the 1632 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye that Quebec was formally given back to France. (David Kirke was rewarded when Charles I knighted him and gave him a charter for Newfoundland.) Champlain reclaimed his role as commander of New France on behalf of Richelieu on March 1, 1633, having served in the intervening years as commander in New France "in the absence of my Lord the Cardinal de Richelieu" from 1629 to 1635.[44] In 1632 Champlain published Voyages de la Nouvelle France, which was dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu, and Traitté de la marine et du devoir d’un bon marinier, a treatise on leadership, seamanship, and navigation. (Champlain made more than twenty-five round-trip crossings of the Atlantic in his lifetime, without losing a single ship.)[45]

Last return, and last years working in Quebec

Champlain returned to Quebec on May 22, 1633, after an absence of four years. Richelieu gave him a commission as Lieutenant General of New France, along with other titles and responsibilities, but not that of Governor. Despite this lack of formal status, many colonists, French merchants, and Indians treated him as if he had the title; writings survive in which he is referred to as "our governor".[46] On August 18, 1634, he sent a report to Richelieu stating that he had rebuilt on the ruins of Quebec, enlarged its fortifications, and established two more habitations. One was 15 leagues upstream, and the other was at Trois-Rivières. He also began an offensive against the Iroquois, reporting that he wanted them either wiped out or "brought to reason".

Illness, last wills, death, and burying

19th century artist's conception of Champlain by E. Ronjat.[47]
Statue of Samuel de Champlain at sunset (looking to the south; with a similar expressive face as traditionally Jacques Cartier's), by Paul-Romain Chevré (Paris, 1896-1898), as newly repaired for 2008, at Quebec City since 1898, near Château Frontenac grand hotel, on the Terrasse Dufferin.

Champlain suffered a severe stroke in October 1635, and died on 25 December 1635, leaving no immediate heirs. Jesuit records tell us he died in the care of his friend and confessor Charles Lallemant.

While his wills (drafted in November, 17, 1635) gave much of his French property to his wife Hélène, he made significant bequests to the Catholic missions and to individuals in the colony of Quebec. However, a cousin girl challenged the wills in Paris (Marie Camaret, wife of Jacques Hersant, daughter of George Camaret, a capitaine, and Françoise Le Roy, a sister of Champlain’s mother) and had them successfully overturned. It is unclear exactly what happened to his estate.[48][49][50][51]

He was temporarily buried in the church while a standalone chapel was built to hold his remains in the upper part of the city. Unfortunately, this small building, along many others, was destroyed by a large fire in 1640. Though immediately rebuilt, no traces of it exist anymore: his exact burial site is still unknown, despite much research since about 1850, including several archaeological digs in the city. There is general agreement that the previous Champlain chapel site, and the remains of Champlain, should be somewhere near the Notre-Dame de Québec Cathedral.[52]

Memorials

Many sites and landmarks have been named to honour Champlain, who remains, to this day, a prominent historical figure in many parts of Acadia, Ontario, Quebec, New York, and Vermont. They include:

Bibliography

These are works that are either known to have been written by Champlain:

  • Brief Discours des Choses plus remarquables que Sammuel Champlain de Brouage a reconneues aux Indes Occidentalles au voiage qu'il en a faict en icettes en l'année 1599 et en l'année 1601, comme ensuite (first French publication 1870, first English publication 1859 as Narrative of a Voyage to the West Indies and Mexico 1599–1602)
  • Des Sauvages: ou voyage de Samuel Champlain, de Brouages, faite en la France nouvelle l'an 1603 (first French publication 1604, first English publication 1625)
  • Voyages de la Nouvelle France (first French publication 1632)
  • Traitté de la marine et du devoir d’un bon marinier (first French publication 1632)

Notes

  1. ^ Morris Bishop, Samuel de Champlain: The Life of Fortitude (New York: Knopf, 1948), 6-7.
  2. ^ a b See discussion in "Early years" on Champlain's birth year.
  3. ^ a b (French) d'Avignon (Davignon), Mathieu (2008) (in fr) Champlain et les fondateurs oubliés, les figures du père et le mythe de la fondation.Québec (Ville): Les Presses de l'Université Laval (PUL)pp. 558ISBN 2-7637-8644-5 http://www.pulaval.com/catalogue/champlain-les-fondateurs-oublies-les-figures-9133.html 
    Note: (French) Mathieu d’Avignon (Ph.D) est historien consultant et chercheur affilié au Groupe de recherche sur l’histoire de l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Il est titulaire d’un doctorat en histoire obtenu à l’Université Laval en 2006. Il prépare une réédition intégrale, en français moderne, des récits de voyages de Champlain en Nouvelle-France.
    (English) The book described here above is a résumé of Mathieu d'Avignon's Ph.D Thesis, who wrote that Champlain's "true mentor" in North America was, from the beginning (1603), François Gravé Du Pont...
    Translation of the French Note above: Mathieu d'Avignon (Ph.D in History, Laval University, 2006) is an affiliate researcher into the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi Research Group on History. He is preparing a special new full edition, in modern French, of Champlain's Voyages in New France.
  4. ^ (French) Denis Vaugeois (lors du 133e congrès du comtié des travaux historiques et scientifiques (CTHS) à Québec le 2 juin 2008), Champlain et Dupont Gravé en contexte.
  5. ^ Thanks to Pierre Dugua de Mons, who fully financed (loosing money) these man-only first years of both French settlements in North America (first in Acadia, then at Quebec).
  6. ^ Some say that the King of France made him his "royal geographer", but it is unproven and may only come from Marc Lescarbot books: Champlain never used that title. The honorific "de" was only added to his name from 1610, when he was already well-known, right after his patron, King Henry IV, was murdered. This usage by a non-noble was tolerated so that he would continue to gain access to the court during the long regency of King Louis XIII (who was only nine years old at the death of his father). Champlain received the official title of "lieutenant" (adjunct representative) of the, one after the other, noble designated as Viceroy of New France, the first being Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons. From 1629 Champlain was named "commandant" under the authority of the King Minister, Richelieu. It is Champlain's successor at Quebec City, Charles Jacques Huault de Montmagny, who was the first to be formally named as the governor of New France and Quebec City, where he moved in 1636, being the first noble to live there in that century.
  7. ^ a b (French) Pierre Damien Rainguet, Biographie saintongeaise ou Dictionnaire historique de tous les personnages qui se sont illustrés dans les anciennes provinces de Saintonge et d'Aunis jusqu'à nos jours, 1851, pages: 140-141
  8. ^ (French) Liebel, Jean (1978). On a vieilli Champlain (They made Champlain older), in la Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, 32 (2): 236
  9. ^ Liebel, 229-237.
  10. ^ According to many modern historians, including Alain Laberge, the 2008 Chair of the History Department at Quebec City's Laval University, a specialist in the history of New France, Champlain could have been born a Protestant. A guest on the February 6, 2008 CBC radio program, Sounds Like Canada, Professor Laberge said that the fact of Champlain's Protestantism would have been downplayed or omitted from educational materials in Quebec by the Roman Catholic Church, who controlled Quebec's education system from 1627 until 1962.
  11. ^ However, Champlain was born in or near a time when the city was taken by Protestants, but Brouage became a royal fortress and its governor, from 1627 until his death in 1642, was Cardinal Richelieu, a strong anti-Protestant, wanting to stop the Religion Wars in France, and chosing to promote Catholicism only because every King of France had to be a Catholic, even if having been first a Protestant, like Henri the last king.
  12. ^ Britannica.com; his family lived in Brouage at the time of his birth; the exact place and date of his birth are unknown.
  13. ^ Fischer, p. 62
  14. ^ a b Fischer, p. 65
  15. ^ Samuel de Champlain, (sculpture)
  16. ^ Vaugeois, p. 87
  17. ^ Three different handwritten copies of this report still exist. One of them is at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
  18. ^ For a detailed treatment of claims against Champlain's authorship, see the chapter by François-Marc Gagnon in Vaugeois, pp. 84ff. Fischer, pp. 586ff, also addresses these claims, and accepts Champlain's authorship.
  19. ^ Fischer, pp. 98-99
  20. ^ Fischer, p. 100
  21. ^ Fischer, pp. 100-117
  22. ^ Fischer, pp. 121-123
  23. ^ Champlain did not begin using the honorific de in his name until at least 1610, when he married, the year King Henry was murdered. A reprint of this book in 1612 was credited to "sieur de Champlain. [1].
  24. ^ "USA National Park Service Archeology Program: Visit Archeology". National Park Service. http://www.nps.gov/history/archeology/visit/Champlain/about.htm. 
  25. ^ a b "Map of Samuel de Champlain voyages". http://www.travel-vermont.net/2008/09/map-samuel-de-champlain-voyages-travels/. 
  26. ^ a b Only at his last arrival (in 1633), Champlain did not left the ships at Tadoussac but arrived directly to Quebec City with them.
  27. ^ Fischer, pp. 282-285
  28. ^ Fischer, pp. 287-288
  29. ^ Fischer, pp. 313-316
  30. ^ Fischer, pp. 374-5
  31. ^ Fischer, pp. 399-400
  32. ^ Fischer, p. 3
  33. ^ In 1701, The Great Peace Treaty was signed in Montreal, involving the French and every native nation coming or living on the shores of the Saint Lawrence River except maybe in wintertime.
  34. ^ In 1953, a rock was found at a location now known as the Champlain lookout, which bore the inscription "Champlain juin 2, 1613". What about this finding?
  35. ^ Les voyages du Sieur de Champlain, Saintangeois, capitaine ordinaire pour le Roy en la Marine.
  36. ^ Dalton, Roy. The Jesuit Estates Question 1760-88, p. 60. University of Toronto Press, 1968.
  37. ^ Fischer, pp. 404-410
  38. ^ Fischer, pp. 410-412
  39. ^ Fischer, p. 409
  40. ^ Fischer, pp. 412-415
  41. ^ Fischer, pp. 418-420
  42. ^ Fischer, p. 421
  43. ^ Fischer, p. 428
  44. ^ Trudel
  45. ^ Fischer, p. 447
  46. ^ Fischer, pp. 445-446
  47. ^ François Pierre Guillaume Guizot, A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Vol. 6, Chapter 53, (Boston: Dana Estes & Charles E. Lauriat (Imp.), 19th C.), 190.
  48. ^ Fischer, p. 520
  49. ^ (French) Photocopy of the Last Wills of Champlain (6 pages) (by Archives Canada-France).
  50. ^ Conrad E. Heidenreich: Who was Champlain? His Family and Early Life. (Métis sur mer; August 8, 2008). — As said into a note to this text, "this lecture is based on parts of a book by Conrad E. Heidenreich and K. Janet Ritch soon to by published by The Champlain Society, provisionally entitled: The Works of Samuel de Champlain: Des Sauvages and other Documents Related to the Period before 1604".
  51. ^ (French) Robert Le Blant: Le triste veuvage d’Hélène Boullé (Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, 18 (3), 1964, pp 425-437).
  52. ^ Time Periods - Life and Death of Champlain
    For a detailed report on the research: (French) La chapelle et le tombeau de Champlain : état de la quesion
  53. ^ History of Acadia National Park
  54. ^ Saint John Additional Information
  55. ^ ed. William J. Gicker (2006). "Samuel de Champlain 39¢ (USA); Samuel de Champlain 51¢ (Canada)" (print). USA Philatelic 11 (3): 7. "This souvenir sheet celebrates the 400th anniversary of the explorations of Samuel de Champlain in 1606.". 

References

Further reading

  • Champlain, Samuel de; =Biggar, H. P.;Langton, H. H.; Ganong, William Francis; Cameron, John Home (1922-1936). The works of Samuel de Champlain. Champlain Society. OCLC 4530824.  A six-volume set of Champlain's writings, translated into English.
  • Morison, Samuel Eliot. Samuel de Champlain: father of New France. Boston: Little, Brown. OCLC 394929652. 
Government offices
Preceded by
Cardinal Richelieu
Lieutenant General of New France
1632–1635
Succeeded by
Charles de Montmagny as Governor of New France

External links


 
 

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