Samuel Champlain was born at Brouage about 1567, the son of a sea-faring father, and his early years were spent upon the sea.  He served in the army of the Fourth Henry, and after the peace with Spain, made a voyage to Mexico.  Upon his return to France in 1603, he found a fleet preparing to sail to Canada, and at once joined it.  Some explorations were made of the St. Lawrence, but the fleet returned to France within the year, without accomplishing anything in the way of colonization.  Another expedition in the following year saw the founding of Port Royal, while Champlain made a careful exploration of the New England coast, but he found nothing that attracted him as did the mighty river to the north.  Thither, in 1608, he went, and sailing up the river to a point where a mighty promontory rears its head, disembarked and erected the first rude huts of the city which he called by the Indian name of Quebec, or “The Narrows.”  A wooden wall was built, mounting a few small cannon and loopholed for musketry, and the conquest of Canada had begun.  A magnificent cargo of furs was dispatched to France, and Champlain and twenty-eight men were left to winter at Quebec.  When spring came, only nine were left alive, but reinforcements and supplies soon arrived, and Champlain arranged to proceed into the interior and explore the country.

The resources at his disposal were small, he could not hope to assemble a great expedition; so he determined to make the venture with only a few men and little baggage, relying upon the friendship of the Indians, instead of seeking to conquer them, as the Spaniards had always done.  Champlain had from the first treated the Indians well, and it was this necessity of gaining their friendship that determined the policy which France pursued—­the policy of making friends of the Indians, entering into an alliance with them, and helping them fight their battles.  Champlain opened operations by joining an Algonquin war-party against the Iroquois, and assisting at their defeat—­starting, at the same time, a blood feud with that powerful tribe which endured as long as the French held Canada.  In the course of this expedition, he discovered the beautiful lake which bears his name.

He went back to France for a time, after that, and on his next return to Canada, in 1611, began building a town at the foot of a rock which had been named Mont Royal, since corrupted to Montreal.  Succeeding years were spent in further explorations, which carried him across Lake Ontario, and in plans for the conversion of the Indians, to which the aid of the Jesuits was summoned.  Missions were established, and the intrepid priests pushed their way farther and farther into the wilderness.  To this work, Champlain gave more and more of his thought in the last years of his life, which ended on Christmas day, 1635.

Among the young men whom Champlain set to work among the Indians was Jean Nicolet.  The year before his death, Champlain sent him on an exploring expedition to the west, in the course of which he visited Lake Michigan and perhaps Lake Superior.  Following in his footsteps, the Jesuits gradually established missions as far west as the Wisconsin River, and, finally, in 1670, at Sault Ste. Marie, the French formally took possession of the whole Northwest.