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articles
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France
The first settlements made by the French in North America took place in a context of European expansion. French fishermen and traders joined the Portuguese, English, and Dutch in exploiting rich resources recently discovered along the western fringe of the Atlantic. They would sail across the ocean in tiny ships and camp along the shore, trading with the natives. For almost 100 years, no attempt was made to establish more permanent colonies. These transients faced hunger, cold and a dangerous trip across the ocean to trade pelts that were becoming an increasingly popular component of European fashion and to fish, always a lucrative job. With no local crops under cultivation, they depended on buckwheat biscuits imported from France, salted meat and fish, and whatever the could hunt or gather: beaver, moose, geese and berries. As a result they fell subject to unfamiliar diseases. Jacques Cartier describes scurvy which decimated his crew in 1535-36:
Twenty-five sailors died before they trusted the natives for a cure. The leaves of white cedar are rich with Vitamin C which keeps scurvy at bay.
At the start of the 16th century, the most permanent French camp in Canada was at Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay where fishermen and traders took temporary shelter. Then within a few short years a handful of attempts were made to form a permanent colony. In 1604, Pierre Du Gua de Monts and Samuel Champlain scoured the Atlantic coast and St. Lawrence for a good site to settle and build a fort at Port Royale. They stay for 3 difficult years before de Monts decided to settle along the St. Lawrence. He sent Champlain to establish an Habitation (fort) at Quebec.
Champlain was intent on colonizing New France. Further, after his initial experiences with the natives, he believed they would be strong allies if they could be seduced from their violent ways by French education and the Church. Together, they and the French could forge a society made rich with trade and self-supporting in its basic needs. He steadfastly fought to get his government and merchant companies to send farmers and craftsmen to make New France self-sufficient. In his view, if it was farmed, the land along the St. Lawrence showed potential to support both the Quebec and Acadian colonies. Domestic animals including pigs and cattle were imported, pigs being in demand because pork can be salted and so wasn't dependent on building ice houses. 1615 was a watershed. Champlain brought missionaries to New France and explored in Huronia. He established an alliance with the Wendake and even joined them in an attack on the Iroquois. As a result he and the French became allies and sworn enemies of the Five Nations. On June 30 Champlain sailed along the St. Lawrence in a heavily laden ship with 30 carpenters, stonemasons and artisans headed for a spot from which he thought he could control the St. Lawrence. While the ship returned to Tadoussac for more supplies, his crew began felling trees and squaring timbers for the first fort at Quebec, manned as it turns out, by 40 French Huguenots (Protestants) traders with limited interest in a permanent settlement. Champlain's mission was to build the fur trade, but his personal goal was to colonize the country and create a prosperous nation of Frenchmen and Indians living on equal footing as Christians and for this he needed missionaries. His first choice were the Récollets but they met such resistance from the Huguenot traders that they were forced to turn to the Jesuits for support. The Jesuits were no more welcome than the Récollets, but had powerful friends. Within the year, the Jesuit Superior of the Quebec mission, Father Lalemant, had decided that work could not continue with the Huguenots in power. He lobbied Cardinal Richelieu to revoke the traders' charter. Then 2 things happened:
With the signing of the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, Canada was returned to France, Champlain was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of New France and in 1633 arrived with 3 ships and 200 colonists. Meanwhile, the Jesuits got back to work, this time without Récollet assistance. Hearing that the French were back in power, a fleet of 140 canoes arrived that summer in Quebec with 700 natives. The first thing they did was build shelters, then hold a council with the french. This was followed by 2 days of trading, another day of feasting and the homeward voyage. On Christmas day, 1635, Samuel Champlain died.
Extending exploration In 1660 Pierre Radisson and his brother-in-law Médard Chouart travelled as far as Lake Superior and met with the Cree. They exchanged goods and returned to Quebec with a rich haul in furs but since they left without a license, the colonial authorities confiscated their property. Angered that the French were unwilling to help establish trade to the west, Radisson and Groseilliers turned to the English, leading them to the interior via Hudson's Bay. Eight years later the Nonsuch wintered at James Bay, returning to England in the Spring with a such a load of furs that a group of financiers and courtiers formed The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay. They acquired a charter from King Charles to trade along all the rivers that fed into Hudson's Bay. This in retrospect turns out to be about 7.8 million square kilometers.
In 1673 Jesuit Father Marquette and Jolliette were the first Europeans to explore the Mississippi. They were followed nine years later by Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle who navigated the Mississippi's full length and claimed the valley and the Gulf Coast for France and Louis XIV. LaSalle named the area Louisiana and built a fort at Peoria in 1680. In 1684 he sailed from France with colonists and equipment to found a colony in Louisiana but landed in Texas, 400 miles from the Mississippi. One ship ran aground, another returned to France and 180 colonists were deserted at Fort St. Louis (Victoria County, Tx).
In February 1676, the La Belle foundered in a storm leaving them stranded. Over the following year, disease and conflict with local natives reduced the colony to 40 survivors. LaSalle set out on foot to find help at a French settlement on the Mississippi but was killed by his own men. The remaining 20 colonists, many women and children, survived 2 more years before succumbing to an Indian attack. The area between Louisiana and Quebec was named Illinois, for the natives living in the region. Along the Gulf Coast, the French entered a trade network that included Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and Mexico which lasted until the War of the Spanish Succession in 1715.
French colonial plans focussed less on settlement than on establishing solid aliiances with native trade groups and limiting English control of the interior. By the early 18th century, we see the French moving west along the Great Lakes, only building a series of permanent trading posts in the 1730s under Varennes and his sons (the La Vérendrye family). They eventually extended their network to Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan River, for the first time cutting into the English fur trade to the north.
The movement of English and French traders into the Prairies continued to disrupt First Nations' lifestyles, introducing the opportunity to become a full time supplier of animal skins and meat to the trading posts. New trade goods and guns arrived at about the same time as horses were introduced. France lost most of its possessions in North America at the close of the Seven Years War. Lands east of the Mississippi were given to England while lands west were given to Spain. Quebec shrank again at the close of the American War of Independance but French possessions expanded when Spain gave their lands to France in exchange for part of Italy in 1800. This was then sold to the USA by Napolean in 1803 (The Louisiana Purchase).
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Items
recovered from La Belle include cannon, pewter dishes,
700,000 glass beads and a cask of muskets. Read about
it at the