Jacques Cartier
Jacques Cartier
Jacques Cartier (1491–1557) was a French navigator from Saint-Malo in Brittany whose three voyages to North America laid the foundation of France's claim to Canada. Commissioned by King Francis I to seek gold and a western passage to Asia, he sailed in 1534 to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where he raised a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula claiming the land for France. On his second voyage, in 1535, he became the first European to travel up the St. Lawrence River, visiting the Iroquoian villages of Stadacona, at today's Quebec City, and Hochelaga, where he named the nearby hill Mount Royal, the origin of Montreal's name. During the winter, local people taught his men a remedy for scurvy. His accounts introduced the name Canada, from an Iroquoian word for village. His charts opened the river route that later carried New France into the interior of the continent.
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Seeking a Passage to the Pacific
For centuries explorers sought a waterway across or around North America to the Pacific. Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River, Henry Hudson explored the river and bay that bear his name, and James Cook searched the Arctic coast from the Pacific side. Sent by Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark crossed the continent overland, and Roald Amundsen became the first to sail the Northwest Passage.
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