Background
Samuel de Champlain was born at Brouage, a small French port on the Bay of Biscay, in 1567. His father was a sea captain, and the boy was early skilled in seamanship and navigation.
Samuel de Champlain was born at Brouage, a small French port on the Bay of Biscay, in 1567. His father was a sea captain, and the boy was early skilled in seamanship and navigation.
Samuel de Champlain entered the army of Henry IV, and served in Brittany under Jean d'Aumont, Frangois de St Luc and Charles de Brissac.
It contains a suggestion of a Panama Canal, " by which the voyage to the South Sea would be shortened by more than 1500 leagues. "
Champlain at once established friendly relations with the Indians and explored the St Lawrence to the rapids above Montreal.
During his absence de Chastes had died, and his privileges and fur trade monopolies were conferred upon Pierre de Guast, sieur de Monts (1560 - 1611).
With him, in 1604, Champlain was engaged in exploring the coast as far south as Cape Cod, in seeking a site for a new settlement, and in making surveys and charts.
They first settled on an island near the mouth of the St Croix river, and then at Port Royal-now Annapolis, N. S. Meanwhile the Basques and Bretons, asserting that they were being ruined by de Monts' privileges, got his patent revoked, and Champlain returned with the discouraged colonists to Europe.
Champlain was placed in command of one of the two vessels sent out.
Champlain fixed on the site of Quebec and founded the first white settlement there in July 1608, giving it its present name.
The Iroquois naturally turned first to the Dutch and then to the English for allies. "
Thus did new France rush into collision with the redoubted warriors of the Five Nations.
Here was the beginning, and in some measure doubtless the cause, of a long suite of murderous conflicts, bearing havoc and flame to generations yet unborn " (Parkman).
Champlain returned to France and again related to Henry IV. -who had previously learned his worth and had pensioned him-his exciting adventures.
De Monts failed to secure a renewal of his patent, but resolved to proceed without it.
Champlain was again (1611) in Canada, fighting for and against the Indians and establishing a trading post at Mont Royal (see Montreal).
He was the third white man to descend, and the second to descend successfully, the Lachine Rapids.
De Monts, now governor of Paris, was too busy to occupy himself in the waning fortunes of the colony, and left them entirely to his associate.
In Champlain alone was the life of New France.
Two great objects eclipsed all others, -to find a route to the Indies, and to bring the heathen tribes into the embraces of the Church, since, while he cared little for their bodies, his solicitude for their souls knew no bounds" (Parkman).
In 1613 Champlain again crossed the Atlantic and endeavoured to confirm Nicolas de Vignau's alleged discovery of a short route to the ocean by the Ottawa river, a great lake at its source, and another river flowing north therefrom.
That year he got as far as Allumette Island in the Ottawa, but two years later, with a " Great War Party " of Indians, he crossed Lake Nipissing and the eastern ends of Lakes Huron and Ontario, and made a fierce but unsuccessful attack on an Onondaga fortified town a few miles south of Lake Oneida.
This was the end of his wanderings.
He now devoted himself to the growth and strengthening of Quebec.
Every year he went to France with this end in view.
He was one of the hundred associates of the Company of New France, created by Richelieu to reform abuses and take over all his country's interests in the new world.
These ill-defended possessions England now prepared to seize.
Three ships were sent out under letters of marque commanded by David, Lewis and Thomas Kirke, and Quebec, already on the verge of starvation, was compelled to surrender (1629).
By instinct and temperament he was more impelled to the adventurous toils of exploration than to the duller task of building colonies.
Samuel de Champlain married the twelve-year-old Hélène Boullé. She was the daughter of Nicolas Boullé, a man charged with carrying out royal decisions at court.
