Jacques Cartier was a French explorer who claimed much of the territory inside today’s Canada for France. The name Canada is also attributed to him and comes from the Huron-Iroquois word for settlement, kanata.
His exploits paved the way for France’s colonisation of the northern part of the New World.
Jacques Cartier's beginnings
Jacques Cartier was born on 23 December 1491 in Saint-Melo, Brittany, France, to humble beginnings. At the age of 28, he married Mary Catherine des Granches (born 1499), whose family were of a higher status in the region.
It seems they had no children.
According to A Collection of Documents relating to Jacques Cartier and the Sieur de Roberval (H. P. Biggar, 1930), he was cited at over 20 infant christenings in the region, acting as either a witness or the godfather. This is evidence that locals respected him in his hometown.
Edict of Union
Brittany, where Cartier was born and grew up, was its own semi-independent entity from about 486 AD, when the Franks, under Clovis I, defeated the Gallo-Romans under Syagrius at Soissons.
In the 800s, Brittany began to descend into anarchy. The Frankish kings nominated administrators for the state. Nominoe was placed in position by King Louis the Pious before he rebelled, declaring autonomy for Brittany.
Over the next few hundred years, Brittany was an important site of the Hundred Years War and William the Conqueror’s expansions.
Finally, in 1532 (during Cartier’s lifetime and before his first voyage), the Edict of Union was signed, merging Brittany with France.
Jacques Cartier - first expedition
Cartier was introduced to the French king, Francis I, by the bishop of Saint-Malo (his hometown), Jean Le Veneur. He had previously led expeditions to Newfoundland and Brazil. Le Veneur would use this experience to persuade the king to give Cartier a commission.
The king accepted, and Cartier headed out on his first voyage on 20 April 1534. On this occasion, he was looking for the Northwest Passage, a hoped-for route that the French could use to trade with the wealthy nations in the east. He would also look for riches, in general, on the lands he came across.
Sailing across to Newfoundland took twenty days. When they reached the New World, they began exploring points along Newfoundland, the Strait of Belle Isle and the southern-most points of the Labrador Peninsula. They also travelled all the way down to Prince Edward Island, stopping at Anticosti and the Magdalen Islands on the way.
We think that Cartier had three encounters with Native tribes, Iroquoians. The first two were probably very brief and happened on the north side of Chaleur Bay. However, the third took place at Gaspé Bay on 24 July 1534, where he kidnapped two members of the tribe (probably including either the chief, Donnacona, or one or two of his sons), and also planted a 10m cross with the words Long Live the King of France sprawled across it.
This action displayed Cartier’s intentions to the Iroquois tribe, who must have immediately realised that these European settlers were trouble. Eventually, it seems the tribe agreed that Cartier could take his two captives with him, provided he returned them on his next voyage along with goods to trade.
Cartier arrived back in France in September 1534. He was convinced that he’d reached Asia. Given that Native tribes are of Siberian descent, he had pretty good reason to. Of course, we now know that he was far, far off.
Cartier’s second voyage (1535)
For Cartier’s second voyage, he left France on 19 May 1535. With him, he had three ships, 110 men and the two Iroquoian captives he’d brought back from the previous trip.
He sailed straight for the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River and sailed upriver. This was the first time, so far as we know, that any European pushed into the continent of what we now call North America.
Reaching Stadacona (near present-day Quebec City), the Iroquoian capital, Cartier left his two largest ships in the harbour. He continued on the smallest ship, arriving at Hochelaga (Montreal today) on 2 October. Hochelaga was considerably larger than the smaller village of Stadacona. It’s reported that a crowd of over 1,000 Natives came to greet the French expedition.
The rapids, at this point, halted their progress. Cartier was so confident that China lay beyond the rapids that he named them La Chine (“China”). Today, you can still visit the Lachine Rapids and the nearby town of Lachine, Quebec.
Cartier spent two days with the Natives in Hochelaga before returning to Stadacona on 11 October. They then decided, for reason or reasons unknown, to spend the winter of 1535–1536 there.
The men stacked firewood to prepare for winter, strengthened their fort, and salted meats. It was to be a miserable time.
Snow was four feet deep. The ice on the river (which was also locking in his ships) was almost two metres thick. On top of the cold, scurvy broke out, passing from the Iroquoians to the Frenchmen.
85 of the 110 Frenchmen would survive the scurvy outbreak, thanks to Domagaya, one of Chief Donnacona’s sons (possibly one who had been kidnapped by Cartier the previous year). Domagaya told Cartier how the bark from the annedda tree could cure scurvy.
In the middle of February 1536, Cartier wrote in his journal,
“Out of 110 that we were, not ten were well enough to help the others, a pitiful thing to see.”
The annedda tree concoctions, though, worked a treat. Most of the men would fully recover.
All in all, the French lost 25 men, with the Iroquoians losing about 50 (according to Cartier’s estimates).
The fleet had been frozen from mid-November 1535 to mid-April 1536. By the time May came around, Cartier was ready to return to France. He, again, enacted a kidnapping, this time taking Chief Donnacona with him. He wanted Donnacona to personally tell the king about the mysterious Kingdom of Saguenay further north from the Iroquoian position; a land said to be flowing with gold, rubies, and blonde-haired men.
They arrived back at Saint-Malo on 15 July 1536. Cartier was away from home for 14 months in total.
Cartier’s third voyage (1541)
In 1540, King Francis ordered Cartier to return to Canada again. This time, the focus would shift from the Northwest Passage to finding the Kingdom of Saguenay and establishing a permanent French settlement in the area. However, on 15 January 1541, command of the expedition was instead given to Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval, a good friend of the king. He was to be in charge of the new settlement and was given the title lieutenant-general of French Canada.
While Roberval waited for extra supplies, he allowed Cartier to proceed. So he did.
Cartier left Saint-Malo on 23 May 1541 with five ships. He first anchored at Stadacona but realised that the once-friendly Iroquois were, this time, tense. (Is it any wonder, given that he had kidnapped both Chief Donnacona and his sons on his two previous expeditions?)
Instead, he sailed a few miles further upriver to a location he had previously noticed. Today, the place is known as Cap-Rouge in Quebec. After landing, the new town, known as Charlesbourg-Royal, was officially founded. They let the cattle loose, and the men got to work building the fort and preparing the ground for kitchen gardens.
Another fort was built on a nearby cliff, overlooking their position, for extra protection.
The sailors thought they had found diamonds and gold and sent two of their ships home to check them. However, it turned out that they were just quartz and iron pyrite.
Once they had settled down and Cartier had dished out jobs to those who would stay behind, he and a few men set off towards Lachine Rapids in longboats. Chief Donnacona probably accompanied him.
Again, the rapids impeded their progress, so they returned to Charlesbourg-Royal. Once they’d come back, Cartier realised they were in trouble. Instead of friendly trading, the Iroquoians prowled around the fort ominously. They had, no doubt, become fed up with the hostile French colonisation tactics and the constant kidnapping of their leaders.
Of course, they were right to be worried and, from the Iroquoian point of view, driving the French away would be the most logical action at this time.
There aren’t any surviving records of the 1541–1542 winter. However, we can work out approximately what happened from the accounts of surviving sailors who returned to France the following year.
It seems that the Iroquois attacked the French while many of them were outside the fort, killing about 35 of them. Although most of them survived another scurvy outbreak (again thanks to the Native remedy), Cartier seems to have realised that he had far from sufficient manpower to settle Charlesbourg-Royal permanently.
Thus, thoroughly miserable, Cartier’s party retreated to France in June 1542. On the way, he ran into Roberval arriving with his ships. Roberval tried to persuade him to turn around and head to Charlesbourg-Royal with him, but Cartier slipped away from him under cover of night. He arrived back in Saint-Melo in October and would never return to Canada.
Roberval continued onto Charlesbourg-Royal and attempted to resettle it. However, he too was forced to abandon it the next year (1543) due to disease, harsh winters and aggressive neighbours.
Jacques Cartier - overall
Overall, Cartier was an excellent explorer with a good eye for estimating something’s worth. However, his attempts to make peace with the Natives were probably undermined by his excitement at thoughts of riches — a trait common to almost every white man at the time. He kidnapped essential members of the Iroquois tribe and thus drove them to hostility.
If Cartier hadn’t been so aggressive in taking Iroquoians hostage, they might well have helped him establish Charlesbourg-Royal. The French would have had a permanent settlement long before Port Royal was founded in 1605, and history may well have looked very different.
Faults aside, Cartier was and is a crucial figure in Canadian and French histories. He is almost certainly responsible for the name Canada coming to be (who he also referred to as Canadiens) and for the first in-depth contact and trade with the Natives. He knew he had to retreat in 1542 and made the very wise call to do so, leaving Roberval to fend for himself.
On top of all this, Cartier was an accomplished sailor. He never lost a ship (although one was abandoned due to insufficient crew in 1535), despite sailing over almost wholly uncharted waters and harbours.
Although it was, by and large, his discovery, Cartier was one of the first to realise that Canada was, in fact, a separate landmass from Asia.
Cartier spent the rest of his life in his hometown of Saint-Malo. His estate was nearby. He often worked as a Portuguese translator during this time.
He died on 1 September 1557 — possibly of typhus, although his cause of death is listed as unknown. He was 65 and was interred in the Saint-Malo Cathedral.