1. French Exploration 1534-1602

From Canadian History Portal - HCO

C. New France →→ 1. French Exploration 1534-1602 → 2. The Acadian Saga → 3. First Settlements → 4. The Royal Colony → 5. Fur Traders and Missionaries → 6. Daily Life in New France → 7. Wars with the English 1685-1763 →→ D. British North America

A number of factors led European merchants to begin looking westward for trade and adventure. Just before 1300, Marco Polo had sparked interest in the fabulous gold, silk, and spices of China, Persia, and India. But because of the distance, and the danger from robbers on the overland route, Europeans started to look to an alternate western water route.

Imperial rivalry provided another push. European nations grew jealous of the riches flowing into Spain, as the conquistadors colonized the Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs of Central and South America. The Portuguese and the Dutch had developed a lucrative spice trade with the East Indies. England and Italy soon joined in the race, and France did not want to be left behind.

At the same time, long sea voyages were now safer and more secure for those who invested in sea-borne trade. Maps and charts were now far more reliable. New ship design, such as the three-masted Portuguese caravel that did not rely on prevailing winds, made for faster and more reliable sea passages. Ship designs continued to improve with the addition of stern rudders and tillers, triangular sails (called lateen), three masts, and better rigging. In addition, the astrolabe allowed for far greater accuracy in measuring latitudes thus allowing a ship's captain to follow a planned route more precisely. Europeans also made the magnetic compass more usable, so sailors could estimate their location when they were out of sight of land.

Finally, Europe was fired by a spirit of exploration. The Renaissance ushered in a rebirth of curiosity and individual achievement. Its motto was "Man is the measure of all things and that sentiment encouraged the testing of limits and barriers. Superstitious notions were being laid to rest - the world was not flat, and you could not fall off the edge if you sailed too far west. The ideas of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo not only ended the idea of the Earth being the centre of the universe, but also led to a passion to explore its boundaries rationally and scientifically.

Cartier to Canada

Jacques Cartier; fictitious portrait by Théophile Hamel; Chateau Ramezay

French fishermen had been harvesting cod off the eastern coast of Canada for almost a century when France decided to join the search for a route to the Orient. King François I commanded a Breton navigator, Jacques Cartier, to do the job, because he had already served with Verrazano on a voyage to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in 1524. He commissioned him to find a passage to the orient, and also to "discover certain islands and lands where it is said that a great quantity of gold and other precious things are to be found";

Cartier Raises Cross at Gaspé

Cartier sailed from St. Malo on April 20, 1534, with two ships and a crew of twenty - several of whom were pardoned criminals. Pushed by strong winds, he reached Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland on May 10, after a three week crossing. His ship was stopped ten days by ice, then he skirted the east coast of Newfoundland, and explored the Strait of Belle Isle, and west, hoping that it might be a passageway to China. But the site he looked upon was anything but inviting, so much so that he described the barren coast as "the land God gave to Cain." On June 9, he sailed into what he determined was a large river, which he named the St. Lawrence, on the Saint's feast day. He then sailed southward into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, hugging the west coast of Newfoundland. Stopping for provisions and water at Îles aux Oiseaux (now the Rochers-aux-Oiseaux bird sanctuary, northeast of Brion Island in the Magdalen Islands), his crew slaughtered around 1000 birds, most of them great auks (now extinct).

Passing by the north-west tip of Prince Edward Island, Cartier sailed into Chaleur Bay, where he had two brief encounters with Micmac people, and some trading was done. On July 24, he landed at Penouille Point on the Gaspé peninsula, where met a group of of Iroquoians from up the St. Lawrence, in the Gulf - the territory they called "Honguedo" - for a summer hunt. Their chief Donnacona was not pleased when Cartier erected a ten-metre cross earing the words "Long Live the King of France", and took possession of the land for François I.

Sensing hostility, Cartier kidnapped the two sons of their chief, Domagaya and Taignoagny. Donnacona finally agreed that they could be taken to France, under the condition that they return with European goods to trade.[ , sure that he had reached an Asian coast.

Cartier returned to France in September 1534 without the much-desired gold, but convinced he had reached Asia. He did bring back two aboriginals, Domagaya and Taignoagny, sons of the Iroquois chief. The two young men fascinated the French with their tales of the "Kingdom of the Saguenay" to the west, and "the way to Kanata", where infinite gold and other riches were to be found. Understandably, François I, thinking of the wealth Spain had amassed in Peru and Mexico, ordered Cartier out for a second voyage.

Departing on May 19, 1535 with three ships and 110 men, in addition to Donnacona's two sons, Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River, arriving on September 14 at the settlements the Iroquois called Kanata (likely the area of present day Charlesbourg and the St. Charles River valley).

Cartier arrives at Quebec

Chart of Iroquois Settlement of Hochelaga; note French visitors outside the gates

Cartier Visits the Hochelagans

When Jacques Cartier arrived at Quebec in 1535, he wanted to explore further up the St. Lawrence River to find a route to the Orient, but Chief Donnacona warned him not to, and Iroquois shamans also warned Cartier of the dangers and the 'devils' which lived to the west. Cartier ignored the warning, and set off in his smallest ship, the Émerillon, up the St. Lawrence River.

On October 2, 1535, Cartier and crew arrived at a large island in the river. Rowing to shore, they soon found cultivated cornfields. Nearby, at the base of a mountain, he discovered the large Iroquoian town of Hochelaga. Like Stadacona it had a wooden palisade around it, but it was far larger - inside were fifty long-houses. Cartier estimated that 1000 people lived in the settlement.

The Iroquois of Hochelaga were eager to trade with Cartier. They exchanged gifts and hosted a feast, where they introduced the French to tobacco, which was packed into pipes and set alight and passed around in a token of peace. Cartier also found the natives accepting of Christianity - Cartier's priest is allowed to bless the Indian sick - and he felt that they could easily be converted. the Iroqois told him of rapids and rivers to the west, and of mines of gold and copper.

Before returning to Stadacona, Cartier climbed a large hill which he named Mount Real (Mount Royal). From its summit, Cartier noted that he could see the land and river for many kilometres. He realized it was a magnificent site, and no enemy could approach without being seen. But he also saw rapids to the west. He knew that his ships would not be able to sail any further up the river because they were too large to pass upriver farther than what he called Lachine (China). His dream of a quick route to the Pacific had come to a disappointing end.

NOTE: Legend says Cartier proclaimed "What a royal mountain," ("Quel Mont Royal (Mont Réal!)", this giving the city its name. More likely it comes from the name of the French home village of one of his captains.

The Winter of 1535-36

Domagaya Tells Cartier About the Cure for Scurvy

With the onset of colder weather, Cartier returned down-river to his fort at Stadacona, where he intended to spend the winter. Although his fort was no further north than parts of England the winter was much colder than a European winter. Eventually his men developed a disease called scurvy. Scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C in the diet. It is a very serious ailment, causing bleeding gums, muscle weakness, body aches and death.

Cartier lost 25 men to scurvy that winter. Eventually he discovered a cure. When Some Iroquois visited his fort, some of them arrived showing signs of scurvy. When they came back a few days later they were cured. Cartier learned from Donnacona's son that boiling the leaves and bark of the white cedar tree created a drink that could relieve their scurvy.

When spring arrived Cartier found that other Stadacona Iroquois were unhappy with the leadership of Donnacona, particularly over Cartier's visit to Hochelaga. Cartier knew it was time to return to France, but before he left, he kidnapped Donnacona and other Iroquois to take back to France. Cartier gambled that by taking Donnacona and his two sons away, another person would become chief, and he would help the French in the future.

Cartier's second voyage proved to be more important than his first. He had uncovered a mammoth highway, the St. Lawrence River, and had seen many rivers branch off which future explorers would use to explore the interior of the continent. He and his crew had faced the harshness of a Canadian winter. He had further evolved the early relationship with the local Iroquois people. And on his return voyage, Cartier found the strait that separates Newfoundland from Cape Breton, which led map makers to conclude that Newfoundland was an island.

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Cartier's Third Voyage

Likely Jacques Cartier and the Colonists of Charlesbourg-Royal; from the Vallard Map of 1547

François I, King of France

On February 16, 1540, French courtier Jean-François de La Roque, Sieur de Roberval persuaded King François I to give him command of an expedition and permanent settlement on the lands discovered by Jacques Cartier five years earlier. The King also desired to find the same precious minerals that were enriching the treasury of the King of Spain. The King was to have one third of the profits, Roberval one third, while the rest was to be set aside for expenses.

The King gave Roberval the grand title, Lord of Novembeque. He was to act as the king's "Viceroy and Lieutenant General of the armies in Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Cap Rouge, Labrador, the Great Bay and Baccalaos". To staff his expedition, Roberval was permitted to enlist from various French prisons convicts who were condemned to death. Even then he had trouble raising a crew. The King grew impatient, and in October 1540, conferred a new commission on veteran mariner Jacques Cartier as Captain General and Master Pilot, with orders to assist Roberval in his expedition to Canada. When the winter of 1540-41 ended, only five of the planned fifteen ships were provisioned and ready to proceed. Cartier was ordered to set sail at once, while Roberval was to follow when he could.

During his previous two voyages, Cartier had discovered the St. Lawrence River, set up friendly relationships with the local Iroquoians, kidnapped 2 sons of Chief Donnacona to take to France as proof of the New World, and returned them to their father the following year. He had explored upstream as far as Hochelaga (Montreal), and then kidnapped the same 2 sons again, along with their father, Donnacona, 3 other Natives, and 4 children who had been 'gifted' to the King of France. All had perished of European disease except one girl.

Possibly the Only True Portrait of Cartier; from the Vallard Atlas of 1547 (Some have suggested the captain is Roberval)

On May 23, 1541, Jacques Cartier set sail from St-Malo, France on his third and final voyage, with the 5 ships and over 500 hundred colonists and crew. Accompanied by Guyon, Count de Beaupré, his duty was to prepare the way for the arrival of governor Roberval, with settlers, supplies, and artillery.

The expedition was a disaster from the start. Drinking water ran out on the miserable three month crossing. On August 23, 1541, they arrived at the site of the Iroquois village of Canada, where Cartier had wintered in 1535-36, but there was no sign of settlement, so Cartier led his ships to the mouth of the Cap Rouge River 14 km upstream, where he ordered two of the vessels unloaded and sent back to France.

1547 Vallard Map detail; this is the first instance of the use of the name Canada on a map

In the meantime, twenty men started clearing an acre and a half of land which they sowed with turnips, cabbage, turnips and lettuce - the shoots appeared 8 days later. Another party cleared paths up the cliff side to the cape and built a fort there to protect the colonists from attack by the Indians. The fort accopied a secure position, with easy access from the river, and defended by a zone of swampy ground between the plain and the cape.

Cartier named the Fort Charlesbourg-Royal, after the King's third son. Apart from Cartier's small fort at Québec, built in 1535, it was the first European settlement north of Mexico.

As Cartier later wrote,

"On both sides of the said River there are very good and fair grounds, full of as fair and mighty trees as any be in the world, and diverse sorts, which are above ten fathoms higher than the rest... At the mouth of it toward the East there is a high and steep cliff, where we made a way in manner of a pair of stairs, and aloft we made a Fort.

Another party set off to explore, and soon discovered an Eldorado of what they believed to be gold, silver and diamonds - in reality iron pyrite, quartz and mica.

Leaving Guyon de Beaupré in command, Cartier went with two boats to explore the rapids above Hochelaga. When he returned, Roberval had still failed to arrive, and relations with the Iroquois were deteriorating. Cartier met with the new chief Agona. He lied to the chief, telling him that Donnacona and family had become rich, and decided to stay in France.

Agona did not believe Cartier, and over the Winter kept the fort under steady seige with nuisance raids - some Iroquois even boasted to Spanish fishermen that they had killed 35 Frenchmen. Without arms and artillery for his fort, Cartier saw the situation was perilous, and he wisely decided to abandon Charlesbourg-Royal and take the colonists back to France. On June 8, 1542, with still no word from Roberval, a dispirited Jacques Cartier sailed away from Charlesbourg-Royal, never to return.

Roberval's Colony

Portrait of Sieur de Roberval from the Chateau de Chantilly

In the Spring of 1542, after a year and a half of difficulty and delay, Jean-François de Roberval finally set about leaving for the New World to join Jacques Cartier.

Roberval was the soldier son of the Governor of Carcasonne. He was a free spender, was deeply in debt to his cousins, and had to sell and mortgage some of his properties. He desperately wanted to recoup his wealth by organising a colony in Canada, and convinced King François I that the new land discovered by Jacques Cartier could have ample mines producing gold and silver for the Treasury of France.

On March 9, 1541, The King gave Roberval a grant of £40,000 livres, and appointed him "Viceroy of the Kingdom of Canada, as well as Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Cap Rouge, Labrador, the Great Bay and Baccalaos".

"Whereas," said the King, "we have undertaken this voyage for the honor of God our Creator, desiring with all our heart to do that which shall be agreeable to Him, it is our will to perform a compassionate and meritorious work towards criminals and malefactors, to the end that they may acknowledge the Creator, return thanks to Him, and mend their lives. Therefore we have resolved to cause to be delivered to our aforesaid lieutenant (Roberval), such and so many of the aforesaid criminals and malefactors detained in our prisons as may seem to him useful and necessary to be carried to the aforesaid countries."

Still Roberval needed to raise more cash as he was getting his ships outfitted. He spent a few months privateering, and seized and sold the contents of an English merchant ship. A Spanish spy reported that he was preparing to establish a colony in Canada, but the king of Spain was not overly concerned by the French threat to Spanish power in the Americas.

Coat of Arms of Sieur de Roberval

On April 16, 1542, Roberval finally left LaRochelle with three ships - the Valentine, the Anne and the Lechefraye - commanded by captain Jean Fonteneau. The small fleet carried 200 people, mostly freed convicts:

The Roberval expedition also included priests and engineers - since the mission was also to establish a colony with churches and fortified towns - rounded out by a few gentlemen and ladies of the court.

In early June Roberval reached the haven of modern-day St. John's, Newfoundland, part of his Viceroyship. He found seventeen fishing-vessels from many nations lying there at anchor, and proceeded to set up some kind of French administration for the port, so he could tax the ships.

Shortly afterward, on June 8, 1542 the ships of Jacques Cartier came into the harbour on their way back to France. Roberval ordered Cartier to return to Cap Rouge, pointing out that the French now had sufficient forces to confront the Iroquois. Cartier was not impressed. Disappointed by Roberval's lack of support, he slipped away by night, heading for St. Malo.

Shortly after his arrival, a chemist told Cartier that the diamonds and gold samples he brought back were nothing but worthless rock. This gave rise to the cynical French saying, faux comme un diamant du Canada. Cartier retired in disgust to his estate of Limoilou.

Back in the New World, Roberval ordered his fleet to leave Newfoundland and head up the Gulf of St. Lawrence. All went smoothly, except for the incident where Roberval cruelly abandoned his niece, Marguerite de La Roque, on an island with her lover. (See: 1542 - The Sad Tale of Marguerite Roberval)

Roberval sailed on to Cap Rouge. The fortifications Cartier erected the previous year seem to have been burned by local Iroquois, because everything had to be rebuilt. Soon Roberval's engineers had constructed a new fort that "was very strong, located on a mountain" and incorporating "a large tower" and a main building on the summit of Cap Rouge.

Roberval's Settlement at Charlesbourg-Royal, Renamed France-Roy

According to chronicler André Thevet, another fort and "strong house" was built at the foot of the cape, "of which part formed a two-storey tower, with two good main buildings." Thevet thought the settlement "beautiful to look upon and of surprising strength within which were two corps de logis (dwelling-rooms) and an annex of forty-five by fifty-five feet in length which contained divers chambers, a kitchen, offices, and two tiers of cellars. Near them he built a bakery and a mill, and dug a well."

Roberval baptised the new settlement "France-Roy" ("France's King") and the St. Lawrence River "France-Prime".

The French Fort at Cap-Rouge, with Cannon; Detail from the Vallard Map of 1547

Faced with all the French armament and cannons which the French noisily set off, Chief Agona and his Iroquois kept their distance.

Roberval soon sent a fleet of small boats with 70 men commanded by Lespinay, La Brosse, Longueval and Frotte to the mouth of the Saguenay River in the east. They found a small settlement of Basque fishermen from the Pyrenees, who had built drying racks for their cod catch. After they built a fort to serve as a base for mineral exploration, they headed upriver, but returned without having found the Kingdom of Saguenay, nor the precious stones, and with the loss of one of the boats in the rapids by Chicoutimi.

Roberval himself sailed upstream to Hochelaga, but failed to get his own boat above the Lachine Rapids.

During the winter of 1542-43 famine and scurvy struck France-Roy, killing one-quarter of the French colonists. The expedition had neglected to pack enough food, and the colonists were reduced to eating fish bought from the Indians, and roots boiled in whale-oil.

Several convicts threatened mutiny. Thevet wrote that Roberval showed a very Calvinistic severity: "Capt. Roberval was very cruel in dealing with his men, forcing them to work; otherwise they were deprived of water or food. If someone was fainting or falling his duty, he was automatically punished. On day, he had six men hung and an other one was exiled to an isolated island with chain to his feet because he found he had stollen no more than five sous. Others were flayed for similar petty theft." Thevet says several people, both men and women, were shot; even the Indians were moved to pity, and "wept at the sight of their woes".

Roberval did, however, pardon one of his friends, Aussillon de Sauveterre, who had killed a stubborn sailor. This pardon, dated September 9, 1542 and bearing the hand-written signature "J. F. de La Roque" is Canada's oldest and first legal document and official paper.

By the spring of 1543, no gold had been discovered. Fearing to spend another winter like the last, Roberval lost hope in the success of his venture. He sent Sauveterre and Guignecourt to France, asking King François I for help, and when the ships returned, he ordered everyone to sail away from France-Roy. By the beginning of September 1543 the survivors were back in France, and Roberval sold his ships to pay the creditors.

In later years, Roberval tried to repossess his kingdom of Canada, and turned to privateering again, one one occasion sacking Havana, Cuba. But one night in 1560, as he was coming out of a Calvinist meeting, he was attacked along with his fellow Protestants and murdered near the Church of the Innocents, in the heart of Paris. The first Viceroy of Canada had became one of the first victims of the wars of religion in France.

Sidelight - Archeologists find Charlesbourg-Royal

During an archaeological inventory prior to building a scenic lookout connected to the Promenade Samuel de Champlain - the gift of Québec to its capital for its 400th birthday - a 43 year old Québec goverment archeologist named Yves Chrétien discovered the first artifacts associated with the remains of buildings of Cartier and Roberval on the promontory of Cap Rouge.

Archeologist Yves Chrétien in the Diggings

"I was hired to do an archeological inventory," says Chrétien, but instead turned up the charred wooden remains of Cartier or Roberval's main fort about 30 centimetres below the surface of the ground. He was aware of the archeological potential, "but researchers had been looking for this site for more than 50 years, so I would say I had little hope."

"It truly is of major importance," says Chrétien. "It is the first French settlement in the Americas.... The site is very extensive, and very important, and we will be going over it very, very slowly - with a toothbrush."

"This is where it all started. This was where the Europeans made the very first attempts at colonizing the continent north of Mexico. This was the first of everything: the first European women to arrive here, the first carpenters, the first farm animals, truly the first real attempt at building a settlement."

Chrétien believes at least 85 settlers could be buried on the site. Locating their remains could reveal many details about the first French settlers. "It will be a unique occasion to reconstitute an important piece of history that has remained silent for over 400 years," he said.

Sample of Isoriato

Chrétien has dug up over 150 objects including ceramics, pottery, forged nails, a ring, glass beads, pearls of glass, crucibles and other vessels, an axe and pieces of blue faience pottery that date the site pretty accuratey. Two series of Carbon-14 dating on six wood samples have also confirmed that the site dates from the mid-16th century.

The Italian faïence fragments match the Istoriato style produced in Faenza in this period, and there are also fragments of Iroquoian pottery found in the upper parts of the archaeological site.

"My initial thought was that I didn't know that kind of material. So I did a quick Internet search to try to identify that kind of ceramic." He found a scholarly inventory of historic ceramics, which showed an identical "Istoriato" plate manufactured in Faenza, Italy, between 1540 and 1550, at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Chrétien suspects it might have belonged to Roberval himself.

Roberval's attempt to establish a permanent colony with his company of 200 former convicts fell before the combined forces of lack of discipline, cold, famine, and disease. It would be more than half a century until France would make another attempt.

Another Fictitious Cartier

Cartier's voyages to Canada were great milestones, in spite of the failures and disappointments. He was the first European to explore the Gulf of St. Lawrence as well as the St. Lawrence River deeper into the continent. He put many aboriginal place names on his maps - Kanata, meaning village or meeting place and Kebec, meaning the place where the river narrows. He established that Newfoundland was an island. He forged a trading and social relationship with the native Iroquois peoples. Cartier was the first European to try and found a permanent colony in what is now Canada. Although it failed, successors would build upon his shoulders. Finally, he awakened interest and curiosity on the part of his countrymen in the wonders of this new world.

European rivalry intensified for the remainder of the 1500s. Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe in 1580 - Ferdinand Magellan's surviving crew of seventeen had been the first to do so in 1522, although without their captain. The seas became freer for the French and English after the monumental defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. And a year later, France crowned a new king in the person of Henri IV, who believed in exploring and building a French empire in the new world. Henri needed to rebuild the royal treasury that had been depleted by religious wars between Protestants and Catholics over the previous decades. He also thought that a strong missionary motive should go alongside any financial and strategic ambition.

The final French colonizing attempt of the 1500s occurred on Sable Island along the Atlantic coast. In 1598, the Marquis de la Roche, along with fifty settlers, endured for three years. However, no French supply ship came in 1602 and in the following year, the remaining eleven surviving colonists returned to France.