Champlain, born at Brouage on the Bay of Biscay in 1567, was the son of a French naval captain and the nephew of a Spanish pilot major. He served with French troops as a quarter-master before the Peace of Vervins and later captained a Spanish transport conveying troops to the West Indies. He was there for two years. Having an observant eye he carefully sketched and mapped everything he saw in the Caribbean, the account of his adventures even containing a suggestion of a Panama Canal whereby “the voyage to the South Sea would be shortened by more than 1500 leagues.”
When he first came to the St. Lawrence valley in 1603 as an advance agent of a company with a fur trade monopoly, Samuel de Champlain held the title of Geographer Royal, a brevet nobility. It had been conferred upon him by Henry IV in recognition of his demonstrated ability to get at the facts in America. Now a captain in the French navy he came with instructions from the French monarch to bring back a true report on the St. Lawrence valley. While others in the expedition spent their time bartering with the aborigines, Champlain and Francois Grave, Sieur duPont, a principal merchant of the company, set out to explore the great waterway to the west and to get all the intelligence they could about it.
Actually, they penetrated no farther west than Cartier had done, and not so far as other traders in recent years, but Champlain judiciously recorded what he learned from the Indians and made impressive recommendations. Before returning to France he made a similar survey of the regions about Gaspe and the Acadian Peninsula where there were thought to be rich mines. His report, while recognizing the advantages of establishing a trading post on the St. Lawrence at Three Rivers as Dupont-Grave recommended, pointed out that the powerful league of Iroquois nations barred the way to any farther penetration westward. Too, the feasibility of a possible passage by this route to China was complicated by rapids and ice.
It might be better to try for a more southerly passage, one that would flank the war-like Iroquois, Champlain suggested. There were rivers on the coast south of the St. Lawrence that might lead directly to the lakes in the west—possibly to the western sea.
The new Huguenot head of the company, Pierre de Guast, Sieur de Monts, favored this plan. He’d like to find a new entry into New France, one free of the bitter cold of Canada, and one free of the jealousies of the merchants who had pioneered in the St. Lawrence. The king fully approved. The prospects of finding minerals in the more southerly parts intrigued him. To make sure the company had sufficient ground in which to operate he gave de Monts a patent extending from Cape Breton south to present-day Philadelphia, from 46° north latitude to 40°.
The next few years were spent in making settlements in the Bay of Fundy, at St. Croix and at Port Royal.
Scurvy and cold plagued the colonists even more than Basque pirates, Hollanders and other poaching foreigners annoyed the company’s traders. Trade was brisk nevertheless, with the furriers and hatters of Rouen and Paris bidding up all the pelts that could be shipped to France. In fact, prices rose so high that the Hatters Corporation of Paris complained to the ministry.
Meanwhile, Champlain explored to the south of the French settlements as far as Cape Cod for better sites. He found that Englishmen had been investigating that coast, but he didn’t discover a river that led inland to the lake country, skirting the terrible Iroquois. He didn’t look south far enough. If he had found the Connecticut or the Hudson, New England might today be populated by Frenchmen. And New Yorkers probably wouldn’t have their Dutch ancestors.
In the end Champlain advised the king and the merchants that the company should return to the St. Lawrence valley. Trading posts should be established there, he said. With the help of native enemies of the Iroquois he believed he could defeat the Five Nations—force them to trade—force a way through to Tartary or the western sea.
This is what the company now proceeded to do. An expedition was sent to the St. Lawrence in 1608. Dupont-Grave traded at Tadoussac with one ship while Champlain in another set out to erect a factory at Quebec. There, at the foot of the cliff where the river was narrow, he built a trading post fort consisting of a two-story wooden building surrounded by a large moat. Cannon which would carry across the river were placed on mounds at the corners, and the surrounding land was cleared of timber and brush against attack.