John Smith himself never returned to Virginia. In 1614, he explored the coast south of the Penobscot, giving it the name it still bears, New England. A year later, while on another expedition, he was captured by the French and forced to serve against the Spaniards. Broken in health and fortune, he spent his remaining years in London, dying there in 1631. There is a portrait of him, showing him as a handsome, bearded man, with nose and mouth bespeaking will and spirit—just such a man as one would imagine this gallant soldier of fortune to have been.
While the English, under the guiding hand of John Smith, were fighting desperately to maintain themselves upon the James, the French were struggling to the same purpose and no less desperately along the St. Lawrence. We have seen how Jacques Cartier explored and named that region, but civil and religious wars in France put an end to plans of colonization for half a century, and it was not until 1603 that Samuel Champlain, the founder of New France, and one of the noblest characters in American history, embarked for the New World.
Samuel Champlain was born at Brouage about 1567, the son of a sea-faring father, and his early years were spent upon the sea. He served in the army of the Fourth Henry, and after the peace with Spain, made a voyage to Mexico. Upon his return to France in 1603, he found a fleet preparing to sail to Canada, and at once joined it. Some explorations were made of the St. Lawrence, but the fleet returned to France within the year, without accomplishing anything in the way of colonization. Another expedition in the following year saw the founding of Port Royal, while Champlain made a careful exploration of the New England coast, but he found nothing that attracted him as did the mighty river to the north. Thither, in 1608, he went, and sailing up the river to a point where a mighty promontory rears its head, disembarked and erected the first rude huts of the city which he called by the Indian name of Quebec, or "The Narrows." A wooden wall was built, mounting a few small cannon and loopholed for musketry, and the conquest of Canada had begun. A magnificent cargo of furs was dispatched to France, and Champlain and twenty-eight men were left to winter at Quebec. When spring came, only nine were left alive, but reinforcements and supplies soon arrived, and Champlain arranged to proceed into the interior and explore the country.
The resources at his disposal were small, he could not hope to assemble a great expedition; so he determined to make the venture with only a few men and little baggage, relying upon the friendship of the Indians, instead of seeking to conquer them, as the Spaniards had always done. Champlain had from the first treated the Indians well, and it was this necessity of gaining their friendship that determined the policy which France pursued—the policy of making friends of the Indians, entering into an alliance with them, and helping them fight their battles. Champlain opened operations by joining an Algonquin war-party against the Iroquois, and assisting at their defeat—starting, at the same time, a blood feud with that powerful tribe which endured as long as the French held Canada. In the course of this expedition, he discovered the beautiful lake which bears his name.
He went back to France for a time, after that, and on his next return to Canada, in 1611, began building a town at the foot of a rock which had been named Mont Royal, since corrupted to Montreal. Succeeding years were spent in further explorations, which carried him across Lake Ontario, and in plans for the conversion of the Indians, to which the aid of the Jesuits was summoned. Missions were established, and the intrepid priests pushed their way farther and farther into the wilderness. To this work, Champlain gave more and more of his thought in the last years of his life, which ended on Christmas day, 1635.
Among the young men whom Champlain set to work among the Indians was Jean Nicolet. The year before his death, Champlain sent him on an exploring expedition to the west, in the course of which he visited Lake Michigan and perhaps Lake Superior. Following in his footsteps, the Jesuits gradually established missions as far west as the Wisconsin River, and, finally, in 1670, at Sault Ste. Marie, the French formally took possession of the whole Northwest.
It was at about this time there appeared upon the scene another of those picturesque and formidable figures, in which this period of American history so abounds—Robert Cavalier La Salle. La Salle was at that time only twenty years of age. He had reached Canada four years earlier and had devoted himself for three years to the study of the Indian languages, in order to fit himself for the career of western exploration which he contemplated. One day he was visited by a party of Senecas, who told him of a river, which they called the Ohio, so great that many months were required to traverse it. From their description, La Salle concluded that it must fall into the Gulf of California, and so form the long-sought passage to China. He determined to explore it, and after surmounting innumerable obstacles, actually did reach it, and descend it as far as the spot where the city of Louisville now stands, afterwards exploring the Illinois and the country south of the Great lakes, as well as the lakes themselves.
Fired by La Salle's report of his discoveries, two other Frenchmen, Louis Joliet, a native of Quebec, who had already led an expedition in search of the copper mines of Lake Superior, and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest and accomplished linguist, started on a still greater journey. With five companions and two birchbark canoes, they headed down the Wisconsin river, and on June 17, 1673, glided out upon the blue waters of the Mississippi. A fortnight later, they reached a little village called Peoria, where the Indians received them well, and continuing down the river, passed the Missouri, the Ohio, and finally, having gone far enough to convince themselves that the river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico and not into the Gulf of California, they turned about and reached Green Bay again in September, having paddled more than 2,500 miles. Marquette, shattered in health, remained at Green Bay, while Joliet pushed on to Montreal to tell of his discoveries. Marquette rallied sufficiently at the end of a year to attempt a mission among the Illinois Indians, where death found him in the spring of 1675. Joliet spent his last years in a vain endeavor to persuade the government of France to undertake on a grand scale the development of the rich lands along the Mississippi.
But the story which Joliet took back with him to Quebec fired anew the ambition of La Salle. He conceived New France as a great empire in the wilderness, and he determined to descend the mighty river to its mouth and establish a city there which would hold the river for France against all comers. Such occupation would, according to French doctrine, give France an indisputable right to the whole territory which the river and its tributaries drained, and La Salle's plan was to establish a chain of forts stretching from Lake Erie to the Gulf, to build up around these great cities, and so to lay the foundations for the mightiest empire in history. We may well stand amazed before a plan so ambitious, and before the determination with which this great Frenchman set about its accomplishment.
To most men, such a scheme seemed but the dream of an enthusiast; but La Salle was in deadly earnest, and for eight years he labored to perfect the details of the plan. At last, on April 9, 1682, he planted the flag of France at the mouth of the Mississippi, naming the country Louisiana in honor of his royal master, whose property it was solemnly declared to be. That done, the intrepid explorer hastened back to France; a fleet was fitted out and attempted to sail directly to the mouth of the great river, but missed it; the ships were wrecked on the coast of Texas, and La Salle was shot from ambush by two of his own followers while searching on foot for the river.