Excluding the brief notices of life at St Croix, Port Royal, and Quebec, Champlain’s Voyages present a story of discovery by sea and discovery by land.  In other words, the four years of Acadian adventure relate to discoveries made along the seaboard, while the remaining narratives, including the Des Sauvages of 1604, relate to the basin of the St Lawrence.  Mariner though he was by early training, Champlain achieved his chief success as an explorer by land, in the region of the Great Lakes.  Bad fortune prevented him from pursuing his course past Martha’s Vineyard to the mouth of the Hudson and Chesapeake Bay.  It was no small achievement to accomplish what he did on the coast of Norumbega, but his most distinctive discoveries were those which he made in the wilderness, leading up to his fine experience of 1615-16 among the Hurons.

To single out Champlain’s chief literary triumph, it was he who introduced the Algonquin, the Huron, and the Iroquois to the delighted attention of France.  Ever since the days of Cartier the French had known that savages inhabited the banks of the St Lawrence, but Champlain is the pioneer in that great body of literature on the North American Indian, which thenceforth continued without interruption in France to the Rene and Atala of Chateaubriand.  Above all other subjects, the Indians are Champlain’s chief theme.

To some extent the account of Indian life which is given in the Voyages suffers by comparison with the Relations of the Jesuits.  The Fathers, by reason of their long residence among the Indians, undoubtedly came to possess a more intimate knowledge of their character and customs than it was possible for Champlain to acquire during the time he spent among them.  On the other hand, the Jesuits were so preoccupied with the progress of the mission that they tended to view the life of the savages too exclusively from one angle.  Furthermore, the volume of their description is so great as to overwhelm all readers who are not specially interested in the mission or the details of Indian custom.  Champlain wrote with sufficient knowledge to bring out salient traits in high relief, while his descriptive passages are sufficiently terse to come within the range of those who are not specialists.  When we remember the perpetual interest which, for more than three hundred years, Europe has felt in the North American Indian, the Voyages of Champlain are seen in their true perspective.  For he, with fresh eyes, saw the red man in his wigwam, at his council, and on the war-path; watched his stoic courage under torture and his inhuman cruelty in the hour of vengeance.  Tales of the wilderness, the canoe, the portage, and the ambush have never ceased to fascinate the imagination of Europe.  Champlain’s narrative may be plain and unadorned, but, with such a groundwork, the imagination of every reader could supply details at will.