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Samuel de Champlain

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).

 
 
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.

For more information on Samuel de Champlain, visit Britannica.com.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: 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) and S. E. Morison (1972).

 
Wikipedia: Samuel de Champlain
Statue symbolizing Samuel de Champlain in Ottawa.
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Statue symbolizing Samuel de Champlain in Ottawa.

Samuel de Champlain , the "father of New France," was born between 1567 and 1570 in the town of Brouage, a seaport on France's west coast and died in 1635 in Québec. A sailor, he also came to be respected as a talented navigator, mapmaker, and founder of Quebec City. He was also integral in opening North America up to French trade, especially the fur trade. Champlain's pattern was to spend several months or years exploring North America and then to head back to France to raise more funds for further explorations.

Early travels

He was born in Brouage, France in around 1567 that was reported in the title of his 1603 book but much of Champlain's early life is unknown: it is speculated by some that his mother was a Huguenot. He arrived on his first trip to North America on March 15, 1603, a member of a fur-trading expedition. Although he had no official assignment on the voyage, he created a map of the St. Lawrence River and after his return to France on September 20, wrote an account published as Des Sauvages: ou voyage de Samuel Champlain, de Brouages, faite en la France nouvelle l'an 1603 ("Of Savages: or travels of Samuel Champlain, of Brouages, made in New France the year 1603").[1] Instructed by Henry IV to make a report on his further discoveries, Champlain joined another expedition to New France led by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts in the spring of 1604. He helped found the Saint Croix Island settlement in the Bay of Fundy. However, after enduring a harsh winter on the island, the settlement was abandoned the following spring when Champlain relocated the settlers to the Fundy coast of Nova Scotia at Port Royal. Champlain remained at the site until 1607, while he explored the Atlantic coast.

In 1605 and 1606, Champlain explored the land that is now Chatham, Cape Cod as a prospective settlement but small skirmishes with the resident Monomoyick Indians dissuaded him from the idea. He named the area Port Fortune. [citation needed]

Founding of Quebec City

In the spring of 1608, three ships left the French port of Honfleur, one of them the Don-de-Dieu commanded by Champlain. In June, the small group of settlers arrived at Tadoussac. There, they left the ships and continued to Québec in small boats. On July 3, 1608, Champlain landed at the "point of Quebec" and set about fortifying the area by building three main buildings (each two stories tall), to which he referred collectively as "l'Abitation", and also a moat 15 feet (5 m) wide. This was to become the city of Quebec. Fortifying Quebec City became one of his passions, which he embarked on periodically for the rest of his life.

The first winter was difficult for the colonists. Of the twenty-eight people who stayed for the winter only eight survived, [2] most having died of scurvy, some of smallpox and some of the extremely cold weather.

Relations and war with natives

During the summer of 1609, Champlain attempted to form better relations with the local First Nations. He made alliances with the Wendat that the French called Huron and with the Algonquin, the Montagnais and the Etchemin, who lived in the area of the St. Lawrence River and who demanded that Champlain helped them in their war against the Iroquois, who were much more to the south. Champlain set off with 9 French soldiers and 300 natives in order to explore the Rivière des Iroquois (now Richelieu River) when he subsequently mapped 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 at Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York), Champlain and his party encountered a group of Iroquois. A battle began the next day. 200 Iroquois advanced on Champlain's position as a native guide pointed out the 3 Iroquois chiefs. Champlain fired his arquebus and killed 2 of them with one shot. The Iroquois turned and fled. This was to set the tone for French-Iroquois relations for the next one hundred years.

After this expedition, he returned to France in an unsuccessful attempt, with the Sieur de Monts, to renew their fur trade monopoly. They did, however, form a society with some Rouen merchants, in which Quebec would become an exclusive warehouse for their fur trade and, in return, the Rouen merchants would support the settlement. Champlain returned to Quebec on April 8, 1610.

Securing New France

Samuel de Champlain arrives in Quebec.
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Samuel de Champlain arrives in Quebec.

During the summer of 1611, he traveled to the area which is now Montreal where he cleared the land and built a wall "to see how it would last during the winter." Then, in order to increase his prestige among the natives, he shot the Lachine Rapids with them, a feat that had been done only once before by a European.

That fall he returned again to France to secure a future for his venture in the New World. Having lost the support of the merchants in 1610, he wrote a note to king Louis XIII to ask him to intervene on his behalf. On October 8, 1612, Louis XIII named Charles de Bourbon, comte de Soissons his lieutenant-general in New France. Soissons died almost immediately, and was succeeded in the office by Henry II, Prince of Condé. Champlain was given the title of lieutenant and received the power to exercise command in the lieutenant-general's name, to appoint "such captains and lieutenants as shall be expedient," to "commission officers for administration of justice and maintenance of police authority, regulations and ordinances," to make treaties and carry out wars with the natives, and to restrain merchants who did not belong to the society. His duties included finding the easiest way to China and the Indies, as well as to find and exploit mines of precious metals in the area.

Without making any allusion in his writings there, Champlain achieved at the beginning of the winter an important gesture: on December 27, 1610, aged at least 30 years, he signed a marriage contract with a 12-year-old girl, Helene Boullé. Because of her youth, it is specified that the marriage was to be carried out only after two years had elapsed. The engagement took place two days later and, on December 30, the bridal blessing was given in the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, in Paris. Promised a dowry (6 000ª), Champlain received 4.500ª the day before, which is an invaluable supplement for his company.

Exploration of New France

On March 29, 1613, he arrived back in New France and proclaimed his new royal commission. 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 (In 1953, a rock was found at a location now known as the Champlain lookout, which bore the inscription Champlain juin 2, 1613). It was in June that he met with Tessouat, the Algonquin chief of Allumette 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.

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[3] 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 would be 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. [4]

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 Peterborough area by a group of Hurons. He used the ancient portage between Chemong Lake and Little Lake (now Chemong Road); stayed for a short period of time in Bridgenorth area.

Military expedition

On September 1, at Cahiagué (on Lake Simcoe), he started a military expedition. 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 found themselves at an 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 didn't 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 Indians 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 was back in Quebec on July 11 before heading back to France on July 20.

Improving administration in New France

Map of New France.
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Map of New France.

Champlain returned to New France in 1620 and was to spend the rest of his life focusing on administration of the country rather than exploration.

Champlain spent the winter building Fort Saint-Louis on top of Cap Diamant. By mid-May he learned that the fur trade 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 Indians and managed to impose on them a chief of his choice. He also managed to create a peace treaty with the Iroquois tribes.

Champlain continued to work on improving his fortification around 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 to look for a passage to China. At the time, most of the European powers believed that North America included a passage on land to China. By July 5th he was back at Quebec and continued expanding the city.

Things weren't to continue well for Champlain and his small village. Supplies were low during the summer of 1628 and English merchants had pillaged Cap Tourmente in early July. On July 10, Champlain received a summons from the Kirke brothers, English merchants. Champlain refused to deal with them and, in response, the English cut off supplies from going to the city. By the spring of 1629 supplies were dangerously low and Champlain was forced to send people to Gaspé to conserve rations. On July 19, the Kirke brothers arrived and Champlain was forced to negotiate the terms of the cities' capitulation. By October 29, Champlain found himself in London.

A member of the Compagnie des Cent-Associés, from 1629 to 1635 Champlain was commander in New France "in the absence of my Lord the Cardinal de Richelieu". [2] During the next several years Champlain wrote Voyages de la Nouvelle France dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu as well as Traitté de la marine et du devoir d’un bon marinier. It wasn't until the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1632 that Quebec was given back to France and on March 1, 1633, Champlain reclaimed his role as commander of New France on behalf of Richelieu.

Champlain returned to Quebec on May 22, 1633, after an absence of four years. On August 18, 1634, he sent a report to Richelieu stating that he had rebuilt on the ruins of Quebec, enlarged its fortifications, constructed another habitation 15 leagues upstream, as well as another one at Trois-Rivières. He had also begun an offensive against the Iroquois Indians stating he wanted them wiped out or "brought to reason".

Illness and death

By October of 1635, Champlain was stricken with paralysis and stroke. He died childless on December 25, 1635. He was buried temporarily in an unmarked grave while construction was finished on the chapel of Monsieur le Gouverneur. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by fire in 1640 and immediately rebuilt but nothing is known of it after 1640, although after 1674 it no longer existed. As such the exact burial site of Champlain is unknown.

However, Jesuit records tell us he died in the hands of his friend Charles Lallemant who also heard his last confession, a reassuring point for a Catholic of the period.

Honours

Many sites and landmarks were 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:

Anecdote

Example of a fictional "portrait of Champlain", by Théophile Hamel (1870), after a portrait of Particelli d'Émery by Moncornet. No authentic portrait of Champlain exists.[5]
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Example of a fictional "portrait of Champlain", by Théophile Hamel (1870), after a portrait of Particelli d'Émery by Moncornet. No authentic portrait of Champlain exists.[5]

There is no authentic portrait of Champlain. The only surviving picture we have of him is a drawing illustrating the battle at Lake Champlain in 1609, in which the facial features are too vague to make out. Some much-reproduced fictional "portraits of Champlain" have been shown to be actually made after a portrait of Michel Particelli d'Émery, by Balthasar Moncornet.

Notes

  1. ^ By 1613, when it was reprinted, he was credited as "sieur de Champlain [1].
  2. ^ Francis, R. Douglas & Jones, Richard & Smith, Donald B.; Origins: Canadian History to Confederation (5th Ed.) pp.47; Scarborough: Nelson, 2004.
  3. ^ Les voyages du Sieur de Champlain, Saintangeois, capitaine ordinaire pour le Roy en la Marine.
  4. ^ Dalton, Roy. The Jesuit Estates Question 1760-88, p. 60. University of Toronto Press, 1968.
  5. ^ Morris Bishop, Samuel de Champlain: The Life of Fortitude (New York: Knopf, 1948), 6-7.

References


Preceded by
Henry II, Prince of Condé
Lieutenant General of New France
16131627
Succeeded by
Champlain as Governor of New France


Preceded by
new title
Governor of New France
16271635
Succeeded by
Charles de Montmagny

External links


 
 

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