FRENCH IN NORTH AMERICA. 395 



will illustrate by a short sketch of the progress of French discoveries 

 on this continent. 



Although Jacques Carrier entered the St. Lawrence in the first half 

 of the sixteenth century, it was not till the beginning of the seven- 

 teenth that any sustained effort was made towards a permanent occupa- 

 tion of the country. A few trading visits were made from time to 

 time; but at the period of Champlain's first voyage, in 1603, it is 

 doubtful whether there was any establishment even at Tadousac, where 

 parties regularly wintered, and certainly there was nothing bevond. 

 He proceeded up the river as far as the Sault St. Louis, now the La 

 Chine Rapids, and having crossed the portage to obtain a view of the 

 country beyond, he returned to France, and devoted the following 

 years to exploring the Atlantic coast of Maine, Nova Scotia, New 

 Brunswick and Gaspe. It was not till the year 1608 that he returned 

 to the St. Lawrence, and built the first house at Quebec. 



Champlain at once entered into friendly relations with the Indians 

 inhabiting the northern shore of the St. Lawrence. The Montagnets, 

 from Quebec downwards, and higher up the Algoumequins, as he de- 

 signates them, who were afterwards called Algonquins, together with 

 allied tribes of various names, from the Ottawa country, appear all to 

 have belonged to the great Chippewa family, which still extends over 

 nearly a quarter of the continent. He also fell in with parties of the 

 Ochateguins, or Hurons, as they are subsequently called, their own 

 name for themselves being Yendats, or Wyandots, according to the 

 English pronunciation. It was this tribe apparently that Carrier had 

 found in occupation of the island of Montreal, but their settlements 

 were now exclusively on the great lake which the French called by their 

 name, and they only came down to the St. Lawrence for the purposes 

 of trade. They belonged to the same race as the Iroquois, though 

 at that time at deadly enmity with them. With the Iroquois them- 

 selves, called by the English the Five Nations, who occupied the south 

 bank of Lake Ontario and the upper St. Lawrence, no cordiality ever 

 existed, to the end of the French rule in Canada. 



The very next spring after his arrival, with two or three companions, 

 Champlain joined the Algonquins and Hurons in an expedition against 

 the Iroquois, and having proceeded up the river Richelieu to the lake 

 which still bears his name, he defeated them near where Ticonderoga now 

 stands. During these earlier years Champlain himself seems generally 

 to have returned to France for the winter, but some of his party re- 

 mained behind at Quebec, or at another station on the island of St. 

 Croix, and one of them accompanied a party of Algonquins to the 

 upper Ottawa, in exchange for an Indian, whom Champlain took with 



