Champlain's journal: River of the Iroquois By Joel Banner Baird, Free Press Staff Writer • June 30, 2009 Samuel de Champlain was keenly aware of the summer’s brevity in these parts. He’d endured two miserable winters in northern North America; many of his fellow-Frenchmen had died of cold and malnutrition. The summer of 1609 allowed Champlain a few idle interludes. He cut short an expedition upstream on the St. Lawrence in late June 1609 — drifting back to Quebec in order to celebrate common purpose with native tribes ill-disposed toward the powerful Iroquois. The party lasted five or six days (Champlain lost count), and featured dancing, large meals and recreational gunfire. Fortified and reassured of his new allies, Champlain pressed on. His agenda: to confirm the economic potential for sustaining New France.
On June 28, 1609, his flotilla of French barques (small sailing ships) and Huron and Algonquin canoes (collectively containing several hundred warriors) headed southwest, up the St. Lawrence River. On July 1, they arrived at Point St. Croix, a spot Champlain believed to be the spot where his countryman Jacques Cartier, had spent the winter of 1541-1542. The expeditionary force downsized when Champlain’s friend and fellow seaman Francois du Pont Grave turned back with a number of men to re-fortify the French trading post of Tadoussac, about 100 miles downstream. If Champlain had second thoughts, he didn’t write them in his journal: “This resolution being taken, I embarked in my shallop (a shallow-water sailboat) all that was necessary, together with Des Marais and La Routte, our pilot, and nine men.” His guides tempted Champlain with stories of native trade routes that would bring him tantalizing close to an ocean. Champlain, a man of discipline, declined for the time being to pursue his over-arching quest for a Northwest Passage to China. Instead, in the first week of July 1609, Champlain’s sense of purpose sharpened when his flotilla arrived at the mouth of the Richelieu River. Champlain knew it as the River of the Iroquois, named for the nation of tribes whose expansion he was determined to blunt. The complete “Voyages of Samuel de Champlain” are in the public domain, and can be found online at http://www.gutenberg.org or at The Champlain Society: http://www.champlainsociety.ca . Contact Joel Banner Baird at 660-1843 or
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