During the seventeenth century, the French invasion of Canada intensified and many of the French explorers of this time period are today major historical figures. One of these is Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635). Canada in the seventeenth century was not, as some people would have us believe, a vast wilderness waiting to be conquered, tamed, and civilized by Christian Europeans, but it was a land already inhabited by aboriginal peoples who had modified its landscape. Thus, the seventeenth century French explorers encountered many culturally and linguistically diverse groups of people.
It would be nice to imagine that the early French explorers were motivated by curiosity: curiosity about the geography, the flora and fauna, and the peoples of this land. This was, of course, not the case. French exploration was motivated by greed: the desire to acquire wealth by exploiting Canada’s resources (fish, furs, minerals) and finding a passage to China. This greed was sometimes justified by religion, by claiming Native souls for the European god.
Samuel de Champlain’s exploration of Canada began in 1603 when he arrived in Tadoussac, Quebec with the experienced Breton trader Franҫois de Pontegravé. The goal was to obtain furs from the First Nations in exchange for manufactured goods, transport them back to Europe, and sell them at a healthy profit. In her book Exploring the Fur Trade Routes of North America, Barbara Huck reports:
“Skilled as a seaman from boyhood, tempered by war as a youth and, it seems, experienced as an intelligence officer against the Spanish during two years in the West Indies, the 33-year-old Champlain was not satisfied to simply exchange French goods for Canadian furs at Tadoussac.”
Champlain began to explore the St. Lawrence using Indian interpreters who told of the three big lakes to the west. He traveled up the St. Lawrence as far as the Lachine Rapids. He had the Indians draw him a map of the area which was ahead. They described for him both Lake Ontario and Niagara Falls. Champlain was later welcomed by the Montagnais with a pipe ceremony.
The French called this First Nation Montagnais, meaning “mountaineers” as the Laurentian Mountains are in their territory. The Montagnais are an Algonquian-speaking group which means they were culturally distinct from the Iroquoian-speaking Hurons with whom the French were trading.
Champlain was impressed with the Indian bark canoes. In his chapter in North American Exploration. Volume 2: A Continent Defined, Conrad Heidenreich writes:
“They impressed him as being light, faster than a rowboat, twenty to twenty-three feet long and up to four feet wide; they could be paddled by two people and hold up to one thousand pounds of baggage.”
It should be noted that Champlain, like all other European explorers, was following well-known routes that had been used by American Indians for thousands of years. His journeys were made possible by Indian guides and interpreters.
The French returned home with their furs, sold them at a profit. He returned to Canada in 1604 and helped found the French colony of Port Royal at the mouth of the St. Croix River. For the next two years, he explored the coast south of Nova Scotia.
In 1608, Champlain and Franҫois de Pontegravé returned to the St. Lawrence River where they encountered Basque traders at Tadoussac. They continued upstream, establishing the settlement of Québec near the abandoned Indian village of Stadacona. It was hoped that the new settlement would attract Indian furs from the vast inland territories. In his book History of Canada Before 1867, Gordon Stewart reports:
“This location was immensely significant for the subsequent history of Canada, for the French had placed themselves at a key point on the best communication route to the interior of the continent.”
Gordon Stewart also writes:
“The French had failed to find a route to the China Sea; but they found a magnificent water route into the heart of the continent. This fundamental geographical fact shaped the future French colonization enterprise.”
The first winter was difficult for the French. Barbara Huck reports:
“With the Stadacons gone, there was no one to show them the secret of the cedar bark tea and before spring 20 of the 28 men were dead of scurvy or dysentery.”
Regarding the newly established French community, Julie-Anne Bouchard-Perron, in an article in American Antiquity, reports:
“Initially oriented toward the fur industry, the scantily populated colony was slow to develop self-sufficient agriculture, and hunger remained a common issue due to the uncertainty of the Atlantic crossings, the river freezing for half of the year, and frequent squabbles with British troops.”
The French established a trading relationship with the Huron, a confederacy of five nations: Attignawantan, Attigneenongnahac, Arendaronon, Tahontaenrat, and Ataronchronon. In addition, the Petun were allied with the Huron. The Huron occupied 28 villages and had a population of 20,000 to 35,000 people.
Champlain explored the shores of Lake Champlain with a war party of Montagnais, Algonkin, and Huron. While Champlain wanted the warriors to keep watch at night, they refused. Instead, they conducted a shaking tent ceremony and consulted the spirits about the nearness of any enemies. The spirits indicated that no enemy was near and so the warriors slept.
At the southern shore of the lake, they encountered Mohawk who were massed in battle formation and wearing wooden body armor. The French firearms killed several Mohawk leaders and the Mohawk retreated.
The Mohawk are one the five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the League of Five Nations. At that time, the Iroquois were the most powerful Indian confederacy in North America. In his chapter on the French and the Indians in Attitudes of Colonial Powers Toward the American Indian, Mason Wade reports:
“This exploit sealed the alliance of the French with the Algonkians and the Hurons and fixed their deadly enmity with the Iroquois.”
In his travels, Champlain found that the villages which Jacques Cartier had visited in the early sixteenth century were now gone and that Algonquian-speaking groups were now occupying an area which had once been inhabited by Iroquoian-speaking groups.
Champlain sent a young Frenchman, Etienne Brulé, to live among the Wendat and learn the language. In exchange, Champlain took a young Wendat, who he called Savignon with him to France.
The Wendat had been living and farming in southern Ontario for at least a thousand years. Their territory stretched from south of Lake Muakoka. Barbara Huck reports:
“They spoke an Iroquoian language and farmed extensively, like their relatives south of the Great Lakes, but were mortal enemies of the Five Nations Iroquois. Instead, they were linked by treaties and friendship to the Algonquian-speaking tribes of the northern shield, a relationship the Five Nations deemed treasonous.”
The name Wendat means “islanders” or “dwellers on a peninsula”. The French, however, called them Huron, meaning “boar’s head” which referred to their hairstyle.
Brulé becomes a new kind of explorer and fur trader, the coureurs de bois. According to William Goetzmann and Glyndwr Williams, in their book The Atlas of North American Exploration From the Norse Voyages to the Race to the Pole:
“These fur traders lived among the Indians, learned Indian survival skills and traveled by Indian means, canoeing the rivers and portaging the falls.”
Mason Wade writes:
“Thus, Brulé became the first of the later numerous Frenchmen who lived with the Indians and gave their compatriots great advantage by their knowledge of Indian languages and customs.”
Brulé was probably the first European to see Lake Erie and Lake Superior.
For the Europeans, their explorations and conquests were justified through religion. In 1620, Champlain asked the Recollets—an ascetic branch of the Catholic Franciscans—to send a missionary to work among the Indians.
In 1613, Champlain tried to visit the Nipissing, an Algonquian-speaking people living near Lake Nipissing in Ontario. The group of four Frenchmen, an interpreter, and a native guide travelled by canoe. The guide paddled the stern of one of the canoes. Barbara Huck reports:
“Though Champlain had recognized early that birchbark canoes and netted snowshoes—both Canadian inventions—held the keys to summer and winter travel in North America, he and his men were anything but adept at using them and the trip turned out to be one long lesson.”
While they learned about canoeing, Champlain almost drowned in one instance, and they learned the importance of packing properly. They also learned the importance of local Indian knowledge about the immensity of North America.
The group travels to Morrison’s Island near present-day Pembroke. Here they camped with a Kichesipirin Algonquin band under the leadership of Tessouat. Champlain explained to the Algonquin that the French were an ally, that they wanted to help them in their wars, and that they were hoping to borrow canoes and guides to take them to the Nipissing.
The Algonquin were reluctant to help the French and tried to explain to them that the route was difficult, and that the Nipissing were unfriendly. They described the Nipissing as malevolent sorcerers and poor warriors. Conrad Heidenreich writes:
“Most probably, Tessouat did not want Champlain to visit the Nipissings for fear that the Kichesipirinis would have to share the French trade.”
Two years later, ignoring the stories of Nipissing sorcery, Champlain visited one of the Nipissing villages. From here, he travelled to the Huron village near present-day La Fontaine. The village had triple palisades which were 35 feet high. The Huron warriors who were to accompany him were not there, so he journeyed on to the village of Cahiagué which had more than 200 longhouses.
The French party then visited Indians which they called Cheveux Relevées (High Hairs) because their hair was combed to stand very high. These were the Ottawa, an Algonquian-speaking group whose language is considered Southeastern Ojibwa.
Champlain noted that the Iroquois-speaking people who lived near the western end of Lake Ontario were not involved with the conflicts between the Iroquois and the Huron. For this reason, the Europeans called this group Neutral. The Huron call them Atiouandaronk.
In 1615, the French under Champlain aided a joint Huron and Algonquin raiding party against the Iroquois. The joint war party attacked an Onondaga village. Conrad Heidenreich reports:
“After attacking the village and laying siege to it for six days, the army withdrew to the Huron country the way they had come.”
While Champlain views the war as a total failure, it does result in a French-Huron alliance.
In 1618, Champlain proposed to the French Chamber of Commerce that 300 families and 300 soldiers establish an agricultural and commercial settlement on the St. Lawrence in Quebec. Historian Matthew Dennis, in his book Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America, reports:
“Within four years, Champlain believed, the colony would attain self-sufficiency and begin to pay great dividends from its fisheries, forests, mines, fur resources, and farms on the modest investment of the Chamber or the king. In addition, French coffers might be filled by trade with Asia, if a passage to the East was ever located.”
Matthew Dennis also reports:
“Not least among the many advantages of Champlain’s colonization plan was the anticipation that countless souls could be redeemed by the Church.”
King Louis XIII announces his approval of the plan.
In 1629, Champlain was forced to flee to France when the British seized the principal French settlements. He returned in 1633.
In 1633, 18 canoes of Ottawa came down the St. Lawrence River for their annual trading visit. They were met by Champlain who wanted to make sure that they were not going to visit the three English ships which were anchored near the river’s mouth. The Ottawa indicated that they traded with the English to undermine the strength of their enemies, the Iroquois.
While Champlain had previously felt that a peace with the Iroquois would help the fur trade, he now advocated conquering them.
In 1634, Champlain sent Jean Nicollet, an experienced Indian trader, to the west where he contacted the Winnebago and heard about the mighty Sioux nation farther to the west. The French had heard that the Winnebago were living next to a salt sea and thus Nicollet took with him a robe of China damask just in case he encountered the Chinese.
Samuel de Champlain died in 1635. In his book Who Was Who in Native American History: Indians and Non-Indians From Early Contacts Through 1900, Carl Waldman writes:
“His early alliances with the Hurons and Algonquians against the Iroquois affected French policies in North America for more than a century after his death.”
Indians 101
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, this series presents various American Indian topics. More about the histories of the First Nations of Canada from this series:
Indians 101: Cartier invades Canada
Indians 101: The Canadian fur trade 200 years ago, 1821
Indians 101: Outlawing the potlatch in Canada
Indians 101: Canadian First Nations 350 years ago, 1670
Indians 101: Metis
Indians 201: The Pemmican War
Indians 101: The French Fur Trade
Indians 101: Jesuit Relations in New France, 1632-1635