Samuel de Champlain
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In 1815 he started on his famous expedition to the Onondaga Indians. He followed Father Le Caron and his party to Lake Huron, to which he gave the name of Mer Douce. Returning across the great forests, he sailed with several hundred canoes down a stream into the Bay of Quinte, and entered the broad Lake Ontario, which he named Lac St. Louis. With a considerable war party, chiefly Hurons, he crossed the lake into the country of the Iroquois, in (present) New York. Hiding their canoes in the forest, they pressed onward to the Indian post on the shore of Onondaga Lake. It was at the time of the maize harvest, and the Iroquois were attacked in the fields. They retired to their town, which was fortified with four rows of palisades. On the inside of these were galleries furnished with stones and other missiles, and a supply of water to extinguish a fire if kindled beneath these wooden walls. The Hurons were rather insubordinate, and the attack was ineffectual. Champlain had constructed a wooden tower, which was dragged near the palisades, and from the top of which his marksmen swept the galleries filled with naked Iroquois. But he could not control the great body of the Hurons, and, in their furious and tumultuous assault upon the palisades, they were thrown back in confusion, and could not be induced to repeat the onset, but resolved to retreat. Champlain, wounded on the leg, was compelled to acquiesce, and he made his way back to Quebec (1616), after a year's absence. The same year he went to France and organized n fur-trading company. On his return to Canada he took with him some Recollect priests to minister to the colonists and the pagans. The colony languished until 1620, when a more energetic viceroy gave it a start. Champlain got permission to fortify it, and he returned with the title and power of governor, taking with him his child-wife. Jesuit priests were sent to Canada as missionaries, and Champlain worked energetically for the cause of religion and the expansion of French dominion. In 1628 Sir David Kertk appeared with n English fleet before Quebec and demanded its surrender. Champlain's bold refusal made Kertk retire, but on his way down the St. Lawrence he captured the French supply-ships. This produced great distress in Quebec; and in July of next year Champlain was compelled to surrender to Kertk's brothers, and was carried to England. By a treaty in 1632, Canada was restored to the French. Champlain was reinstated as governor, and sailed for the St. Lawrence in 1633. He did not long survive, but worked energetically and faithfully until the last. His wife survived him. She was a Protestant when she was married, but died an Ursuline nun. Champlain's zeal for the propagation of Christianity was intense. A college was established at Quebec, in which the children of the natives were taught and trained in the habits of civilization. In 1603 Champlain published an account of his first voyage, and, in 1613 and 1619, a continuation of his narrative. In 1632 they were included in a work of his then published, which comprised a history of New France from the time of Verrazani's discoveries to 1631, entitled Les Voyages a la Nouvelle France Occidentale et Canada. He died in Quebec, Dec. 25, 1635. In 1870 a complete collection of his works, including his voyage to Mexico, with facsimiles of his maps, was published in Quebec, edited by Abbes Laverdiere and Casgrain.
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