Samuel de Champlain

Samuel de Champlain was a Frenchman who first came to the New World as a ship captain in the service of Spain in 1599. Returning a few years later to France, he published an account of his trip and of the natural riches and government practices in the Spanish colonies. By 1603 he had been assigned to a French expedition following up on the Jacques Cartier expeditions of the 1530s to the St. Lawrence gulf region in Canada, with the goals of converting natives, expanding the fur trade, and searching for riches and the elusive passage across the continent.

In his years in North America, Champlain established settlements, such as the first one at the city of Quebec, and made extensive maps of the region based on his many explorations, which took him along the eastern coast from Maine as far...