Samuel de Champlain and Quebec The Rise of New France

If New France rose… it must have fallen!  As we know from living in Canada today, New France did not last: it rose to be important and then fell  Most of Canada was settled and its culture formed by English influences, except in Quebec and parts of the Maritimes.

In the year 1600  Fishing off the Grand Banks is drawing 500 ships per year  Few sailors come ashore for longer than to resupply themselves for the return trip to Europe.  No one wants to stay and create a settlement: usually because of the winter weather.

And then came… Pierre du Gua de Mont  King Henry IV did not want to spend on settlements, so he gave a monopoly to de Monts in fur trading if he would bring settlers over to begin establishing a permanent settlement in New France  This would make de Monts very wealthy!!

De Mont travels to New France  In 1604 de Monts came to New France and brought a mapmaker named Samuel de Champlain who had been here the year before. 

 They chose to settle at Ile Ste-Criox in what is now New Brunswick in the Bay of Fundy.

“ It is impossible to know this country without having wintered here for having arrived in autumn everything is very pleasant owing to the woods, the fine landscape, and the good fishing for cod and other species which are found. But winter in this country lasts for six months.” Samuel de Champlain

 De Mont would not give up so he moved the settlement across the Bay of Fundy to Port Royal ( Nova Scotia today)

Port Royal  Du Gua de Monts' settlement at Port Royal, Acadia, 1607 Illustration by Francis Back Collection of the Canadian Museum of Civilization

 This time they built close to the forest and winterized the fort.  They planted vegetables for food in the winter.  Started the “Order of Good Cheer” to keep spirits up.

The Order of Good Cheer  “We spent this winter very pleasantly, and had good fare by means of the Order of Good Cheer which I established, and which everybody found beneficial to his health, and more profitable than all sorts of medicine we might have used.” Champlain, The Voyages, 1613

Now Champlain became restless  Champlain was a self educated, rough and ready man of action  A tireless promoter and gifted map maker (cartographer)  He bugged de Mont to let him explore down the St. Lawrence river and North Eastern US  Because he was so good, de Mont let him go.

 In 1603, Champlain sailed up the St. Lawrence River and the Saguenay River; they also explored the Gaspe Peninsula. He returned to France in 1603, and decided to search for a Northwest Passage and to settle the Gaspe Peninsula  Samuel de Champlain mapped much of northeastern North America and started a settlement in Quebec. Champlain also discovered the lake named for him (Lake Champlain, on the border of northern New York state and Vermont, named in 1609)New YorkVermont

 In 1608, Champlain led 32 colonists to settle Quebec in order to establish it as a fur-trading center. Only nine colonists survived the first bitter winter in Quebec, but more settlers arrived the following summer. The first habitants.  See page 41 of your text for a diagram of what they built there.  See Quebec today

The Fur Trade Post of Quebec is established  The word “Quebec” came from the Algonquin word “Kebec” which means where the river narrows.  It was at the site where Hocheloga had once stood in the time of Cartier.  For reasons not fully understood the area had been abandoned by the Iroquois for 50 years.  Also far down river from Basque whalers who were causing trouble at Tadoussac upriver.

Coureurs de Bois  The “runners of the woods” or Coureurs de Bois were sent out by Champlain to live among the native people to explore and learn the language, customs, and way of life.  Later these men became the Voyageurs.  This was done to help with their fur trading business

 In 1609, Champlain befriended the Huron Indians and helped them fight the Iroquois (this battle led to 150 years of bitterness and hostility between the Iroquois and the French). It was during this venture that he discovered Lake Champlain

 In support of his Huron and Algonkian trading partners, Samuel de Champlain shot and killed two Iroquois chiefs in 1609 at Ticonderoga, near the lake that now bears his name. This incident helped touch off a long, bitter war between the French and the Iroquois Confederacy,. The Iroquois, like many of North America’s First Peoples, possessed a strong military organization and, through skilful use of ambush and knowledge of the terrain, nearly destroyed New France in the first half of the 1600s.

 In 1613, he again sailed up the St. Lawrence, and explored the Ottawa River. Two years later, after returning from France, he retraced this route and ventured into what is now northern New York state and the eastern Great Lakes (Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, and Lake Ontario).Great Lakes

Then came the Kirke Brothers  Champlain headed the Quebec settlement for years, until the English attacked and took the Fort at Quebec in July, Champlain once again returned to France. After a French-British peace treaty in 1632, Quebec was once again French, and Champlain returned as its governor (1633). He died from a stroke on Dec. 25,  html