When the news of Christopher Columbus' early trip and discoveries in the new world in 1492 spread through the courts of Europe, England and France see the opportunity to claim for themselves some of the potential vast wealth that these new lands have to offer.
France's earliest thrust
to claim some of the new world for itself is in the Spring of 1534, when
Francis I sends a French sailor, Jacques Cartier, from St. Malo, France,
April 20, with sixty-one men. Arriving in less than three weeks to Canada,
Cartier disembarks and plants a 30 foot wooden cross to which he has attached a
shield bearing the fleur-de-lis and on which he has carved the words Vive le
Roy de France (Long Live the King of France). He does not linger long in
the new land, leaving quickly for France, bringing back with him two young
Indian braves, sons of the local chief.
The following year, on May 19,1535, Cartier leaves France with
three ships. He leaves with 110 men and the two Indian braves he had brought to
France the previous year.
Cartier's mission is to spend the winter in the new land. He
arrives at the mouth of the St-Lawrence River in July, and begins the journey
up the great river in search of new routes to China and India. When he arrives
at the Indian village of Stadacona, built on the high promontory of what is now
Quebec, Cartier is warned by the local Indian chief of the perils that await
him farther up the river. Cartier decides to proceed on another river, leaving
the other two ships at Stadacona. Toward the end of September, Cartier nears
the important Indian trading center at Hochelaga, now Montreal, and the Lachine
Rapids that prevent any farther advance along the St-Lawrence. Cartier and his
party go ashore at Hochelaga, visit with the local Indian tribe, exchanging
trinkets for safe passage in the area and gaining information about the land
beyond the Rapids. By mid-October Cartier is back at Stadacona to prepare for
the winter stay. The winter proves disastrous for the French; many die of
scurvy and are buried in the drifted snow. In the Spring of 1536, Cartier
leaves for France because so many of his sailors have been lost during the
bitter winter.
Cartier makes a third trip to the new world in 1541, with the hope
of establishing a permanent French colony. He returns to the area of Stadacona
and establishes a settlement, Charlesbourg Royal. The attempt at colonization
at Charlesbourg is a failure due to the discord among the settlers, many of
whom are misfits, and to the disagreements between Cartier and the Lord of
Roberval, who had been named to head the settlement by the King. Cartier
returns to France the same year, and the settlement is finally abandoned the
following year.
No other serious attempt at colonization
is made by France in the 16th century, although fishing and fur trading
expeditions continue.
Samuel
de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain
is born near La Rochelle
in France and spends his early years in the army. After the death of Philip II
of Spain and peace between Spain and France, Champlain finds employment on a
French ship in the service of Spain. In 1599, he sails to the Spanish colonies,
visits Mexico City, makes his way to the Pacific Ocean, all the time keeping
notes and plotting numerous maps.
In 1601, Champlain
returns to France where he seeks and receives an audience with the Calvinist
king of France, Henry IV. Champlain describes to the king the greatness and the
wealth that he has seen in the Spanish colonies. Henry IV is so impressed that
he keeps Champlain at court as the royal geographer, gives him a pension, and
makes him a noble
In 1603, Champlain is
sent by Henry IV to chart the territories that France claims in the northern part
of the new world. Champlain executes his mandate faithfully, bringing back to
the court and to the commercial sponsors detailed charts of the territories
from the mouth of the St-Lawrence River to Montreal.
The following year, in
March of 1604, Champlain leaves leaves France with two ships and 120 workmen to
establish a permanent colony for France. The expedition is sponsored
financially by the king. The ships make their way to the coast of Nova Scotia
where Champlain begins to look for the best site on which to establish the
settlement. The convoy finally enters the Bay of Fundy where Champlain finds a
spacious and landlocked harbor he calls Port Royal. In June, at the end of the
bay, at the mouth of the St-Croix River, Champlain founds the colony on a small
island that provides security from any sudden attack. The colony endures until
it is destroyed in May 1613, by Samuel Argall who sails up the eastern coast
from the English Protestant colony at Jamestown, Virginia seeking out French
Catholic settlements. Argall captures some settlers and sails away with them
after destroying Port Royal. Other settlers scatter into the woods.
Later they would gather
again with more men at what is now Quebec, protecting from the English because
it is far inland and on high cliff. Champlain rules in the manner of an Indian
chief and deals with the natives in this manner.
A
Deadly Blow
Champlain loses one of
his major financial supporters when the Protestant King Henry IV is
assassinated by a Catholic fanatic. This event places a strain on Champlain's
ability to keep the budding colony at Québec growing. Champlain makes numerous
trips across the Atlantic to seek financial support for Québec.
Many missionaries come to the new world in those early
days. Both Jesuit and Recollet
missionaries come to the territories claimed by France with the
"mission" of converting the "savages" to Christianity.
Missions are scattered from the shores of the St-Lawrence River to those of the
Great Lakes.
The
First Fall of Québec City
No supplies reach Québec
the following winter due to the persistent raids by the English privateers
known as the Kirke brothers. Finally, in July 1629, the Kirkes land at Québec
with a hundred and fifty men. The English capture the capital of New France on
July 20th. They drive out the settlers and the missionaries, burn the
habitation, and build a fort on the cliffs of the Cap-aux-Diamants overlooking
the St-Lawrence River. Champlain is carried off as a prisoner of war and lands
in Plymouth, England on October 24, 1629. It is then that learns that England
and France had signed a peace treaty on April 24, 1629, before the capture of
Québec, a fact the Kirkes were well aware of at the time of their attack.
Champlain crosses over to France and convinces the King that France has lost a
vast and rich empire. France demands from England the return of New France and
Champlain returns to Québec City on May 23, 1633, as Governor of New France.
With him come two hundred new colonists recruited by the reactivated Company of
New France, Jesuit missionaries, and soldiers to defend the renewed French
colony.
The Western Frontiers - The Spread of Catholicism and the
Fur Trade
France has two main
interests in the new world, exploiting the land for monetary gain, principally
through the trade in furs, and converting "the pagan savage souls" to
Catholicism. As mentioned earlier, missionaries had come with Champlain to
New France as early as 1615. The priests make contact with the Huron
Indians. Later it was the Jesuits priests who direct their attention to
the converting of the Hurons to Catholicism. The most famous example of these
endeavors is the establishment of the mission to the Hurons. The mission,
referred to as Sainte-Marie au Pays des Hurons, reaches its zenith in the late
1640's when it includes stables, workshops, medical facilities and lodgings. At
one time it houses as many as 66 Europeans as well as visiting Hurons.
In 1648 and 1649 the Iroquois
from Upper New York State, the dreaded enemy of the Hurons and the French
Americans, begin a systematic destruction of Huron villages in what is now
southern Ontario, killing the inhabitants and torturing and killing the French
missionaries. On June 14, 1649 the Jesuits set fire to Sainte-Marie to avoid
its desecration by the Iroquois. It is during this Iroquois reign of terror
that six of North America's eight martyrs are killed, among them St-Jean de
Brebeu. The remaining Hurons flee to Champlain’s capital in Quebec City, to the
islands in Georgian Bay, to the northern shores of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan
and even to Wisconsin.
Forgetting for the moment the desire for
empire and land, the other motivating force for opening up the frontiers of the
new world is the lure of profits from the fur trade and from providing supplies
and services to the French colonial regime and its military. In particular,
trading furs offers the opportunity for enterprising individuals to obtain
wealth not otherwise available from the trades or in farming. The quest for
this wealth and perhaps the quest for the greater individual freedom to be
enjoyed on the frontiers lead to the establishment of a vast empire on the
"western frontiers" of New France. Voyageurs and fur traders
from the St Lawrence settlements, principally Québec City, Trois Rivières and
Montréal, first open up much of the continent by following the northern water
routes through much of the northern great lakes of Superior, Huron and
Michigan. By the late 1600's they establish a trading network which extended
westward to the prairies of Canada and the United States, some say as far as
the Rocky Mountains, and northward to Hudson's Bay.
Marquette, the priest & Jolliet, the fighter discover
opportunity in Illinois
Louis Jolliet was born
in Quebec in 1645. He was the first important explorer born in North America
from European descent. He was taught at the Jesuit seminary in Quebec, but for
unknown reasons left the order in 1667, and journeyed to France, probably
studying cartography there. The next year he returned to Canada, became a fur
trader and met Father Jacques Marquette.
Marquette was born
in 1637 in Laon, France. He became a Jesuit priest, and, on his own request,
was sent to Quebec in 1666. In 1668 he set up a new mission, at Chequamegon Bay
near the western end of Lake Superior. When the Huron Indians that he worked
among fled after Sioux attacks, he followed them and moved the mission on the
northern shore of the Straits of Mackinac.
Rumours
had been heared about a large river in the south (the Mississippi), and the French
hoped that this river would lead them to the Pacific and China. Louis Jolliet
was sent out to search for this river, and Marquette was chosen to be the
missionary of the expedition.
In 1673
Jolliet, Marquette and five others left on their journey to the Mississippi.
They followed Lake Michigan to Green Bay, canoed up the Fox River, crossed over
to the Wisconsin and followed that river downstream to the Mississippi.
The first
Indians they encountered were the Illinois, who were extremely friendly to the
explorers. They expressed their great happiness to have the French visiting
them, and provided them with a peace pipe or calumet to use for the
remainder of the journey.
As they
went further on along the river, they grew more and more convinced that it
flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, and not the Pacific. Yet they pushed on until
almost the mouth of the Arkansas near present-day Memphis. Here the Indians
told them that the sea was only ten days away, but also that hostile Indians
would be found along the way. They also noticed the presence of Spanish trade
goods among the Indians. Not wanting to be captured by Indians or Spanish, they
decided to return. They used an easier route now, shown by the Indians, up the
Illinois and then by way of the Chicago River to Lake Michigan.
In October
1674, Marquette went back to the Illinois, intending to live and preach among
the Illinois people. However, he did not manage to reach the village that year,
and had to winter near present day Chicago (Harlem Avenue). Arriving around
Easter 1675, he preached to a large number of Indian chiefs and braves.
However, his health was deteriorating. He decided to return north, but died of
dysentery before reaching the mission where he intended to spend his last days.
Jolliet's journal and map got lost when his canoe
overturned on the Montreal rapids. The only remaining record of the expedition
is an unfortunately rather short diary, reputedly written by Marquette. For
some time he clashed with the authorities about the proceeds of his trip, but
in 1679 he travelled up the Saguenay and Rupert rivers to spy on the British
positions around the Hudson Bay, and received Anticosti Island as a reward. In
1694 he made another journey, exploring the coast of Labrador and visiting the
Eskimos. He died in 1700, being lost on a trip to one of his land holdings.
Following military campaigns against the Iroquois in 1667, a
period of peace ensues between the French and the Iroquois nation. By the mid
1700's primary trade routes are firmly established linking the French
settlements on the St Lawrence River to a string of forts and trading posts
located on the western plains, the northern lakes and south along the Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico. These include colonies at St. Louis,
Kaskaskia, Illinois, and a trading post at Chicagou.