Samuel de Champlain

French explorer Samuel de Champlain, born in 1574 began his expeditions to

New France in the early 1600s. Samuel a skilled explorer began trips to the Spanish
colonys and North America to gain navigational knowledge. During this era King Henry
funded and backed many trips over to New France or better know today as North
America. In June of 1608 Samuel and a sailing partner Dugua landed on Canada or better
known today as Quebec City. During this time Samuel began to write journals to report
that his exploration group had befriended the natives and a select group of natives were
savages.
The purpose of this expedition was first to map and claim land. During the
exploration of the new land he mapped a large section of the great lakes, while observing,
Champlain saw the land was great for getting furs. His partners and him proceeded to set
up the first colony to help export furs. Champlain needed to convince people to come to
the New France that he had discovered, so wrote journals about his journey, settlers in
France had heard about the Indians and the troubles that explores had encountered so he
would try to debunk the ideas that the French had about the bad parts of New France.
In the first part of the excerpts from his journal he describes the land as beautiful valleys
and rich fields of corn. In his journal Champlain also mentioned indirectly that he had
made alliances with the Wendat, Algonquin, Montagnais and the Etchemin Indians, who
lived in the area of the St. Lawrence River. As readers of the journal entries this would be
encouraging because it seems to be great, but for any alliance there is two sides, and the
natives had demanded that if the explores wanted their help that the explores had to help
the natives defeat the Iroquois Indians.

Later in the year Champlain came upon the Iroquois. Close to two hundred
Iroquois advanced on Champlains position, and almost immediately Champlain fired his
arquebus and killed the chief and one other Indian. This initial kill shocked the Indians so
much that the tribe retreated into the woods without fighting back. Since Champlain is
trying to convince the reader to come over to this new colony a story of miss treatment
would not be convincing or good for Champlains side of the story. To finish the story
Champlain goes on to describe how the Indians are savage and what the Indians do to the
prisoners They tore out his nails and applied fire to the ends of his fingers. This would
again make the reader think Champlain is not the bad guy, to convince the French to
come to Quebec.

Works Cited
http://www.biography.com/people/samuel-de-champlain-9243971#synopsis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_de_Champlain
The Norton Anthology American Literature