Samuel de Champlain

V

Third Visit

In 1607 de Monts lost his commission to govern Acadia. The following year he decided to establish a trading post far up the St Lawrence, at a point where it narrows to less than a mile wide. There his traders could greet indigenous people bringing furs from the west and take away business that would otherwise go to Tadoussac. This trading post, established by Champlain on July 3, 1608, became Quebec.

Champlain was given the title of lieutenant of the viceroy of New France in 1612. From this time, his aims were to explore and map the continent, to find a water route to the Pacific, and to convert the indigenous peoples to Christianity. The fur trade promised a source of funding to achieve these aims. Champlain had also realized that the indigenous people of the area could aid his exploration. He therefore made a commercial alliance with the northern and western nations, the Montagnais, Algonquin, and Huron.

The alliance was entered into on the part of the indigenous peoples on the basis that they would receive military aid. In June 1609, Champlain and two of his men joined these nations when they invaded the hunting grounds of a longtime enemy, the Iroquois confederacy. This marked the beginning of warfare between the French and the Iroquois that lasted off and on for 90 years and almost destroyed the colony.

VI

Further Travels and Explorations

In 1613 Champlain explored the Ottawa, the river that would become the main highway to the west, as far as Allumette Island. He then returned to France and persuaded the Franciscan Récollet order to send four missionaries to Canada, with whom he returned to the colony in 1615. He then set out on a major voyage of discovery to the country of the Huron, the territory between Georgian Bay and Lake Ontario, both of which he explored.

Champlain spent the winter of 1615 in the Huron country, where he learned much about the land and its inhabitants. He was particularly interested in knowledge of the area farther west, beyond Lake Huron. He learned that this area contained other vast lakes, but the Huron would not allow him to go there, as they were at war with the nations to the west and were afraid that the French might establish relations with their enemies. Thus Champlain had to rely on scanty information for the map that he eventually produced of the region. As a result his map was flawed, but his account of his stay with the Huron is a mine of information about these people, their customs and religion, and the geography of the country.

VII

The Struggle for Financing

In 1618, struggling to keep his command over Quebec, Champlain presented reports on the future of the French colonies in America to Louis XIII and to the French Chamber of Commerce. In these reports he proposed that 300 settler families and 15 Récollets be established at Quebec, with 300 soldiers to protect them. He claimed that this would give France the ability to control the interior of the continent and to convert the pagans to Christianity. Wealth would pour into France from the land’s resources of fish, timber, copper, iron, silver, and precious stones. However, he believed that the major benefit would be the revenue from the short water route to the western ocean and China, once this route was discovered.

Champlain’s struggles to maintain the infant colony took a turn for the better in 1627 when the king’s first minister, Cardinal Richelieu, took charge of the overseas colonies. He founded a joint stock company—the Company of One Hundred Associates—and required each associate to invest a large sum of money. Champlain became one of the associates and remained in charge of New France.

But two years later disaster struck. Anglo-Scots privateers, the Kirke brothers, drew up their ships at Quebec in 1629 and demanded its surrender. Champlain had to comply because he did not have the manpower to resist: in all of New France—Canada and Acadia together—there were only 107 settlers at that time. The Kirkes also seized the company’s convoy of ships bringing reinforcements and supplies up the St Lawrence. That loss exhausted the company’s capital, and it never recovered. Champlain was taken prisoner and held in England until 1632. In 1633 he returned to New France and tried to repair the damage done by the Kirkes and reestablish good relations with his old allies. However, his health began to fail, and he died at Quebec on December 25, 1635.

VIII

Evaluation

In the face of great difficulties, Champlain had established the commercial and military alliances that were to endure to the end of the French regime in Canada. He also produced the first accurate chart of the Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to Cape Cod and maps of the St Lawrence Valley and Great Lakes Basin. Many of his observations were published in the large body of writing he left behind, which was eventually printed in six volumes. His accounts of the habits and characteristics of indigenous peoples, although flawed by his lack of understanding of their cultures, have been of great value to historians.