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Historical Background

The French: Trappers and Traders (continued)

HUGUENOT SETTLEMENT ATTEMPTS

France's next efforts at conquering the New World—two decades later—were motivated less by dreams of wealth and glory than by the desire of some Frenchmen to escape religious persecution. After Francis I died, civil and religious wars broke out in France that ultimately led to the downfall and expulsion of the Huguenots (Protestants). Feaning further punishment and reprisals, some Huguenots immediately emigrated elsewhere in Europe and others sought a refuge in the New World.

To establish such a refuge, the Huguenot leader, Adm. Gaspard de Coligny, in 1562 sent out Jean Ribaut, who landed at Port Royal Sound, in present South Carolina, and founded a tiny post, Charlesfort. When he returned to France, he left 30 volunteers behind to hold the post, but they bickered, abandoned the settlement, and sailed for France in a hastily constructed vessel. A passing English ship miraculously rescued the starving band, half-crazed from drinking salt water and reduced to cannibalism.

Yet the Huguenots were not disheartened. Under the leadership of René de Laudonnière, who had returned to France with Ribaut, in 1564 they made another attempt at settlement—Fort Caroline—at the mouth of the St. Johns River in Florida. This aroused the anger of Spain's Philip II. The following year, Pedro Mendéndez de Avilé's established St. Augustine and massacred the Huguenots, including Jean Ribaut. Thus Spain prevented French occupation of the southern Atlantic coast.

In 1564, René de Laudonnière landed with a group of Huguenot settlers along the St. Johns River, in Florida, where he built Fort Caroline. He found that the Florida Indians were worshipping a column erected 2 years earlier by Jean Ribaut during an unsuccessful colonizing attempt. From a 1591 engraving by Theodore de Bry, after an on-the-scene drawing by Jacques le Moyne de Morgues. (Courtesy, Library of Congress.)

But France was not to be deterred for long from reentering the contest for empire. Early in the 17th century, two enterprising leaders took over the direction of French efforts in the New World: Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, a Huguenot leader; and Samuel de Champlain, a young geographer who came to be called the "Father of New France." In 1604, De Monts received an exclusive monopoly of the fur trade, and he enlisted Champlain's aid in founding a permanent settlement in New France to serve as a trading post and a religious haven for Huguenots. Choosing an unfavorable site on St. Croix Island, near the northern boundary of Maine, Champlain's group spent a miserable winter, during which nearly half died of scurvy. When spring came, the survivors moved across the Bay of Fundy to a more suitable site at Port Royal, Nova Scotia, which they called Acadia and where they resided until returning to France in 1608. Meanwhile, in 1604-5, Champlain had explored the New England coastline as far south as Narragansett Bay and as far north as Nova Scotia.

The palisaded Onondaga (Iroquois) fort, in present New York, attacked in 1615 by Samuel de Champlain and his Huron allies. From Champlain's own sketch, published in 1619. (Courtesy, Smithsonian Institution.)

INLAND PENETRATION

In 1608, Champlain planted a permanent settlement, called Quebec, adjacent to the Indian village of Stadacona, as a base for his explorations. The colonists survived the rigors of the winter only because of his grim determination. During the period 1609-15, Champlain struck boldly into the wilderness; he penetrated as far to the south as the southern tip of the lake that bears his name, up the Ottawa River into Canada, along the shores of Georgian Bay to Lake Huron, and back to the eastern end of Lake Ontario. Sometimes with him, and always with his encouragement and support, Jesuit fathers and some Franciscans carried the cross up the rivers and into the forests. Some successes, many disappointments, and a few failures attended their efforts.

To insure Indian acquiescence in his designs for colonization and development of the fur trade, Champlain early cultivated an alliance with the tribes that formed an unwilling buffer between French Canada and the powerful Iroquois. In 1609, he had been persuaded by his Huron Indian friends to join them in an attack on the Iroquois near Lake Champlain—and again, in 1615, on the Oneida village south of Oneida Lake. Thus the French incurred the undying hatred of the five-nation Iroquois Confederacy, of which the Oneida were members, and this had repercussions for nearly a century. When the Iroquois finally overcame the Hurons, bands of the Confederacy—armed by Dutch traders in the Hudson Valley—spread out across southern Canada threatening to leave no Frenchman alive. In the Iroquois War (1642-53), the Indians twice nearly captured the newly founded Montreal and killed hundreds of Frenchmen, including several priests.

Indian attacks were not the only problems for the French. Several times Champlain was forced to return to France to obtain additional backing. In 1627, Cardinal Richelieu organized the Company of One Hundred Associates and took over the control of New France. When dissension rent this group, affairs in New France suffered from poor administration, as well as from Indian attacks. Following Champlain's death, in 1635, New France declined for more than two decades. In 1663, however, King Louis XIV took control away from the quibbling Associates and reorganized it under the jurisdiction of a civil administrator.

Pierre Radisson and Sieur de Grosseilliers, fur traders and explorers, with Indian guides. They were among the first white men to explore and trade in the Lake Superior region. From a painting by Frederic Remington, published in 1906.

The year before Champlain's death, his lieutenant, Jean Nicolet, had traversed Lake Huron and the northern tip of Lake Michigan, and initiated trading compacts with the Indians in the Wisconsin area. In 1654 and 1655, the Sieur de Grosseilliers and his brother-in-law Pierre Radisson traced his route and established a lucrative trading post on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan. Subsequently they explored Lake Superior, and in 1661 founded a post called Fort Radisson on its western shore.

QUASHING THE INDIAN THREAT

The demise of the Associates and the arrival in New France of such powerful leaders as Jean Talon, Count Frontenac, and Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, stimulated expansion. Under Talon, a French army of more than 1,000 troops arrived in Canada; in 1666, it defeated the aggressive Iroquois and their allies and achieved relative peace for two decades. The same year, to prevent future Indian depredations, as well as to check the incursions of English trappers, the French built Fort La Motte at the upper end of Lake Champlain; 1 year earlier, Fort Chambly had been constructed on the Richelieu River, north of the lake. Their position strengthened, Frenchmen plunged again into the forests and soon pushed the frontiers of New France all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

"The Building of the Griffon." Built above Niagara Falls in 1679 by La Salle, the vessel was lost a few months later while returning, loaded with furs, from Green Bay. From an engraving in a book by Pere Louis Hennepin, published late in the 17th century. (Courtesy, Chicago Historical Society.)