Canada

A

1

Indigenous Peoples

In a series of migrations that occurred during the last stages of the Pleistocene Ice Age, the settlement of the Americas began when Mongoloid peoples from Asia reached North America, probably crossing the Bering Strait. Gradually they spread over the continent and into South America. By 1600, more than 250,000 of their descendants inhabited what is now Canada. Developing a Stone Age economy, they hunted, fished, and gathered food and, in warmer areas, also farmed. The basic social unit was the band, which varied from a few families to several hundred people. In areas of higher population density, bands were organized into tribes and even confederations of tribes.

The largest linguistic group was the Algonquian, which included migratory hunting tribes such as the Cree and Naskapi in the eastern subarctic region and the Abenaki and Micmac in the eastern woodlands on the coast. By the 18th century, Algonquians had spread west, where the Ottawa, Ojibwa, Blackfoot, Plains Cree, and others roamed the prairies and plains in search of bison. The Iroquoian-speaking peoples—the Huron and the Iroquois—lived in permanent farm settlements and had a highly developed tribal organization in the St Lawrence Valley and around Lakes Ontario and Erie.

Tribes of Salishan, Athabascan, and other linguistic groups occupied fishing villages along the rivers of interior British Columbia. On the Pacific coast, Salishan tribes, such as the Bellacoola, and related Wakashan-speaking tribes—the Kwakiutl and Nootka—developed a rich culture, based on salmon-fishing, expressed in carved wooden totem poles and the lavish displays of wealth in potlatch ceremonies. In the western subarctic, the Athabascan group—Carrier, Dogrib, and others—lived in a nomadic, hunting economy similar to that of the Algonquians. Small, isolated Inuit bands developed a unique culture based on hunting seals and caribou, enabling them to survive the harsh environment of the Arctic.

A

2

European Intruders

The first Europeans to reach North America were probably the Icelandic colonizers of Greenland. According to Icelandic sagas, Leif Ericson reached Vinland—somewhere along the North Atlantic coast—about ad 1000. Archaeological evidence suggests that Nordic people established short-lived settlements in Newfoundland. Claims that they penetrated deep into the mainland have not been substantiated.

A second wave of European exploration, between about 1480, when ships from Bristol began fishing off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and 1540, firmly established the existence of the new land in European minds. Many of the explorers, under government auspices, sought a North West Passage by sea from Europe to Asia’s riches and thus regarded the Canadian land mass as an obstacle as well as a potentially useful discovery. The voyage to Newfoundland in 1497 of John Cabot, a Venetian in English service, inspired a series of further explorations and laid the basis for English claims to Canada.

During the 1530s and 1540s the French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed up the St Lawrence River, claiming the land for France. His failure to find a North West Passage—or gold, as the Spanish had found in Peru—discouraged further exploration. France was also too preoccupied with domestic religious wars to make any substantial commitment. Canada was important, however, to English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese fishing fleets, all of which by then regularly fished the Grand Banks.

English and French interest in Canada revived in the late 16th century, largely for commercial reasons. The English explorers Martin Frobisher in the 1570s and Henry Hudson in 1610 and 1611 continued the fruitless search for a passage to Asia. English fishing interests in the 1630s secured a virtual prohibition on efforts to colonize Newfoundland.

A

3

Earliest French Settlements

The French were more successful. Fishermen had noticed the abundance of beaver, whose pelts merchants were eager to market in Europe. The French government, motivated by visions of building an empire in the New World, decided to work through commercial monopolies, which in return for control of the fur trade would foster colonization. A monopoly granted to Pierre du Guast, sieur de Monts, in 1603 established trade settlements in Acadia in 1604 (now New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island) and at Quebec on the St Lawrence. The settlement of Quebec in 1608 owed much to Samuel de Champlain, an explorer hired by de Monts, who became the foremost champion of French colonization. Eventually Champlain convinced Cardinal Richelieu, chief adviser to Louis XIII, of the importance of North America to his mercantilist system of state-aided economic development. In 1627 Richelieu organized a joint-stock company, the Company of One Hundred Associates, to found a powerful centre of French civilization in the New World.

For the following 250 years, geographical factors limited European settlers to relatively small areas of what is now Canada, so that the relationship between them and the indigenous peoples centred on trade (principally the fur trade) rather than conquest. While this avoided the worst bloodshed of what became known in the United States as the Indian Wars, it did not prevent the destruction of indigenous peoples through successive waves of disease (particularly smallpox), and alcohol, which the fur companies used both as an article of trade and as a means of ensuring the submissive compliance of the bands with which they traded.

B

New France (1627-1763)

As a French possession, New France reflected the interests of the parent country.

B

1

A Proprietary Colony

Under the proprietorship of Richelieu’s company, and later its colonial agent, the Community of Habitants (1645-1663), the new French colony took shape along the St Lawrence. In the French feudal tradition, large fiefs of land were granted to seigneurs, men who promised to parcel it out among habitants, or tenant farmers. Frenchmen were induced to emigrate, resulting in a population of about 2,000 by 1666. Hardy, adaptable, and tenacious, many entered the lucrative fur trade, which was brought under central control. New trade settlements were founded, notably at Trois-Rivières (1634) and Montreal (1642). Further explorations of the interior were carried out by coureurs de bois, adventurous, unlicensed fur traders who wanted to escape company restrictions. Two of them, Pierre Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart, sieur des Groselliers, explored west of Lake Superior in the 1650s.

Of more lasting significance was the role of the Roman Catholic Church. French Protestants, defeated in France, were prohibited from settling in the new colony. Roman Catholic religious orders were charged with maintaining and spreading the faith. Franciscan Récollet friars arrived in 1614 to convert the indigenous peoples, but were replaced in 1635 by the heroic priests, such as Jean de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, of the richer, better-organized Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits. Later came Ursuline nuns (1639), who educated girls, and Sulpicians (1657), who ran missions. In 1659 a vicar apostolic, the Jesuit-trained Bishop F. X. de Laval-Montmorency, arrived to take command of the missions and to found parishes. The Church increasingly became a powerful, rigidly moralistic force in colonial life.

The survival of New France was uncertain, however, because of almost continuous warfare with the Iroquoian Confederacy. In 1608 Champlain had allied himself with the Algonquians and with the Hurons, who were amenable to missionary activities and acted as the principal suppliers of furs. This alliance, however, antagonized the Iroquoian Confederacy, traditional rivals of the Huron and suppliers of furs to the Dutch in New Amsterdam. After the Iroquois had brutally ravaged Huron country north of the St Lawrence in 1648 and 1649, they turned against New France itself. The fur trade was no longer profitable, and the threat to the colony was now so great that the French considered abandoning it.