Voyages to Canada
Jacques Cartier · 1534 CE – 1542 CE · Earth
Find, for King Francis, lands said to hold gold, and perhaps a passage to Asia.
Historical context
King Francis sent Jacques Cartier west in 1534 to find lands said to hold gold, and perhaps a passage to Asia. Cartier found instead the Gulf of St Lawrence and, guided in 1535 by two sons of the Stadacona chief Donnacona whom he had taken to France, the great river and the Iroquoian towns of Stadacona and Hochelaga, which had vanished by the time Champlain came. The voyages are known from the relations of 1534 and 1535–36, which survive in copies, and from an incomplete English version of the third, printed by Hakluyt; their dates are Julian.
The voyage, step by step
From Saint-Malo
20 April 1534
On 20 April 1534 Cartier leaves Saint-Malo with two ships of about sixty tons and sixty-one men, to look for lands said to hold gold, and perhaps a way to Asia.
The cross at Gaspé
24 July 1534
In July 1534 he trades with Mi’kmaq and Iroquoian peoples of the gulf, and at Gaspé raises a cross that the Iroquoian chief protests against.
Hochelaga
2 October 1535
On 2 October 1535, though Donnacona has tried to hold him back, Cartier reaches Hochelaga, and the next day climbs a hill he names Mont Royal above the village.
Stadacona
1536 CE
Wintering beside Stadacona, near the site of future Quebec, Cartier loses twenty-five men to scurvy, and in May 1536 carries its chief, Donnacona, off to France.
Outcome
Charted the Gulf of St Lawrence in 1534; in 1535 went up the river to Hochelaga, wintered at Stadacona, lost twenty-five men to scurvy and carried Donnacona and nine others to France, where all but one girl died; the gold and diamonds of the 1541–42 colony were pyrite and quartz.
Jacques Cartier
French navigator who explored the St Lawrence River and laid the basis for French claims in North America.
Sources
- The Voyages of Jacques Cartier, published from the originals with translations, notes and appendicesH. P. Biggar (French texts of the relations of 1534 and 1535–36 with English translation) · Publications of the Public Archives of Canada, no. 11, Ottawa · 1924
- Cartier, Jacques — Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 1Marcel Trudel · University of Toronto / Université Laval · 1966
- Donnacona — Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 1Marcel Trudel · University of Toronto / Université Laval · 1966
- The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, vol. 13: America, part 2 (the third voyage of Jacques Cartier and the voyage of the Sieur de Roberval)Richard Hakluyt, edited by Edmund Goldsmid · Project Gutenberg eBook no. 25645
- Jacques Cartier — Wikipedia
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