Samuel de Champlain (b. c. 1580[2] – d. December 25, 1635) ( IPA: [samɥɛl də ʃɑ̃plɛ̃] ), "The Father of New France", was a French navigator, cartographer, draughtsman, soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnologist, diplomat and chronicler. He founded Quebec City on July 3, 1608, and served as its administrator for the rest of his life. Born into a family of master mariners, Champlain, while still a young man, began exploring North America in 1603 under the guidance of François Gravé Du Pont.[3][4] Five years later, after participating in the exploration and settlement of Acadia between 1604 and 1607, Champlain established in 1608 the French settlement that has since grown to become Quebec City.[5] And Champlain became the first European to explore and describe the Great Lakes, making journeys after which he published maps and accounts of what he saw or learnt from the natives, or from the French interpreters living among the natives. He developed early relationships between French settlers, or French interpreters, and natives: first, with local Montagnais Innu and later with others further west (Ottawa River, Lake Nipissing, or Georgian Bay), with Algonquin and with Huron Wendat, who all convinced him to provide assistance in their wars against the Iroquois. In every way but formal title, Samuel de Champlain served as Quebec City's and New France's governor, titles that may have been formally unavailable to him due to his non-noble status.[6] He established trading companies that sent goods, primarily fur, to France, and oversaw the growth of New France in the St. Lawrence River valley until his death in 1635. Champlain is also memorialized as the "Father of New France", and many places, streets, and structures in northeastern North America bear his name, or have monuments established in his memory. The most notable of these is Lake Champlain, which straddles the border between the United States and Canada. In 1609 he led an expedition up the Richelieu River and explored a long, narrow lake situated between the Green Mountains of present-day Vermont and the Adirondack Mountains of present-day New York; he named the lake after himself as the first European to map and describe it. Champlain was born to Antoine Champlain (also written Anthoine Chappelain in some records) and Marguerite Le Roy, most likely in the port town of Brouage, in the French Province of Saintonge. The exact date and location of Champlain's birth are unknown, and all the vital records of Brouage were lost in a fire in 1690. In his 1851 book,[7] Pierre Damien Rainguet, a Catholic priest in Saintonge, estimated Champlain's birth year to be 1567, without giving any reference or raw data he used for his estimate. In 1870, the Canadian Catholic priest Laverdière, in the first chapter of his Œuvres de Champlain, accepted Rainguet's estimate and tried to give details justifying it, but his calculations were based on many assumptions now believed or proven to be incorrect. Although Léopold Delayant (member, secretary, then president of l'Académie des belles-lettres, sciences et arts de La Rochelle) wrote as early as 1867 that Rainguet's estimation was wrong, the books of Rainguet and Laverdière have had a significant influence: the 1567 date was carved on numerous monuments dedicated to Champlain, and has been widely republished as true. In the first half of the 20th century, some authors disagreed and chose 1570 or 1575 instead of 1567. In 1978 Jean Liebel published groundbreaking research about these estimates of Champlain's birth year and concluded, "Samuel Champlain was born about 1580 in Brouage."[8] Liebel asserts that some authors, including the Catholic Priests Rainguet and Laverdière, preferred years when Brouage was under Catholic control (which include 1567, 1570, and 1575).[7][9] Champlain claimed to be from Brouage in the title of his 1603 book, and to be Saintongeois in the title of his second book (1613). He belonged to either a Protestant family, or a tolerant Roman Catholic one, since Brouage was most of the time a Catholic city in a Protestant region, and his Old Testament first name (Samuel) was not usually given to Catholic children.[10][11] The exact location of his birth is thus also not known with certainty, but at the time of his birth his parents were living in Brouage,[12] near Rochefort in the French province of Saintonge. Born into a family of mariners (both his father and uncle-in-law were sailors, or navigators), Samuel Champlain learned to navigate, draw, make nautical charts, and write practical reports. His education did not include Ancient Greek or Latin, so he did not read or learn from any ancient literature. As each French fleet had to assure its own defense at sea, Champlain sought to learn fighting with the firearms of his time: he acquired this practical knowledge when serving with the army of King Henry IV during the later stages of France's religious wars in Brittany from 1594 or 1595 to 1598, beginning as a quartermaster responsible for the feeding and care of horses. During this time he claimed to go on a "certain secret voyage" for the king,[13] and saw combat (including maybe the Siege of Fort Crozon, at the end of 1594).[14] By 1597 he was a "capitaine d'une compagnie" serving in a garrison near Quimper.[14] In 1598 his uncle-in-law, a navigator whose ship Saint-Julien was chartered to transport Spanish troops to Cadiz pursuant to the Treaty of Vervins, gave Champlain the opportunity to accompany him. After a difficult passage, he spent some time in Cadiz before his uncle, whose ship was then chartered to accompany a large Spanish fleet to the West Indies, again offered in a place on the ship. His uncle, who gave command of the ship to Jeronimo de Vallebrera, instructed the young Champlain to watch over the ship.[16] This journey lasted two years, and gave Champlain the opportunity to see or hear about Spanish holdings from the Caribbean to Mexico City. Along the way he took detailed notes, and wrote an illustrated report on what he learned on this trip, and gave this secret report to King Henry,[17] who rewarded Champlain with an annual pension. Secret, this report was very late published for the first time (it was in 1870 by Laverdière), as Brief Discours des Choses plus remarquables que Sammuel Champlain de Brouage a reconneues aux Indes Occidentalles au voiage qu'il en a faict en icettes en l'année 1599 et en l'année 1601, comme ensuite (and in English as Narrative of a Voyage to the West Indies and Mexico 1599–1602). The authenticity of this account as a work written by Champlain has frequently been questioned, due to inaccuracies and discrepancies with other sources on a number of points; however, recent scholarship indicates that the work probably was authored by Champlain.[18] On Champlain's return to Cadiz in August 1600, his uncle, who had fallen ill, asked him to look after his business affairs. This Champlain did, and when his uncle died in June 1601, Champlain inherited his substantial estate. It included an estate near La Rochelle, commercial properties in Spain, and a 150-ton merchant ship.[19] This inheritance, combined with the king's annual pension, gave the young explorer a great deal of independence, as he was not dependent on the financial backing of merchants and other investors.[20] From 1601 to 1603 Champlain served as a geographer in the court of King Henry. As part of his duties he traveled to French ports and learned much about North America from the fishermen that seasonally traveled to coastal areas from Nantucket to Newfoundland to capitalize on the rich fishing grounds there. He also made a study of previous French failures at colonization in the area, including that of Pierre de Chauvin at Tadoussac.[21] When Chauvin forfeited his monopoly on fur trade in North America in 1602, responsibility for renewing the trade was given to Aymar de Chaste. Champlain approached de Chaste about a position on the first voyage, which he received with the king's assent.[22] Champlain's first trip to North America was as an observer on a fur-trading expedition led by François Gravé Du Pont. Du Pont was a navigator and merchant who had been a ship's captain on Chauvin's expedition, and with whom Champlain established a firm life-long friendship. He educated Champlain about navigation in North America, including the Saint Lawrence River, and in dealing with the natives there (and in Acadia after).[3] The Bonne-Renommée (the Good Fame) arrived at Tadoussac on March 15, 1603. Champlain was anxious to see for himself all of the places that Jacques Cartier had seen and described about sixty years earlier, and wanted to go even further than Cartier, if possible. Champlain created a map of the St. Lawrence River on this trip and, after his return to France on September 20, published an account as Des Sauvages: ou voyage de Samuel Champlain, de Brouages, faite en la France nouvelle l'an 1603 ("Concerning the Savages: or travels of Samuel Champlain of Brouages, made in New France in the year 1603").[23] Included in his account were meetings with Begourat, a chief of the Montagnais at Tadoussac, in which positive relationships were established between the French and the many Montagnais gathered there, with some Algonquin friends. Promising to King Henry to report on further discoveries, Champlain joined a second expedition to New France in the spring of 1604. This trip, once again an exploratory journey without women and children, lasted several years, and focused on areas south of the St. Lawrence River, in what later became known as Acadia. It was led by Pierre Dugua de Mons, a noble and Protestant merchant who had been given a fur trading monopoly in New France by the king. Dugua asked Champlain to find a site for winter settlement. After exploring possible sites in the Bay of Fundy, Champlain selected Saint Croix Island in the St. Croix River as the site of the expedition's first winter settlement. After enduring a harsh winter on the island the settlement was relocated across the bay where they established Port Royal. Until 1607, Champlain used that definitive site as his base, while he explored the Atlantic coast. Dugua was forced to leave the settlement for France in September 1605, because he learned that his monopoly was at risk. His monopoly was rescinded by the king in July 1607 under pressure from other merchants and proponents of free trade, leading to the abandonment of the settlement.