Jacques Cartier - Explorer | Mini Bio

French mariner and explorer Jacques Cartier led three expeditions into what is now Canada and claimed much of these lands for France. He is also the man who named Canada, inspired by the Huron-Iroquois word for settlement, kanata. Jacques Cartier and his explorations of present-day Canada led eventually to the colonization by France. He was the one who laid the original claim for France and North America. Cartier was born in 1491 in Saint-Malo, Brittany, France. In 1534, Francis I of France commissioned Cartier to explore the northern lands of the Americas to search for gold, spices, and the long-sought northeast route to Asia. Jacques Cartier's first expedition sailed with two ships to the St. Lawrence Seaway. He coasted around Newfoundland into the St. Lawrence Seaway, where ultimately he encountered a Native American village and he kidnapped two young Indians, the sons of the chief, and brought them back to France. Back in France, Cartier's stories of fertile lands, mineral wealth, and Chief Donacona's captive sons impressed Francis I enough, so he immediately funded a second, larger expedition back to North America. When Cartier returns in 1535, he comes back with Donacona's two sons. They sail up the river now known as the St. Lawrence River, and they first come to a place called Stadacona, the site of modern-day Quebec. They go farther upriver until they find a place called Oglaga, which is a site of what is now known as Montreal. Upon Cartier's return from this voyage, Francis I was determined to colonize the lands that Cartier described to him. Cartier set out as an advance party, expecting Sieur de Robertval, a member of the court, to follow shortly thereafter. Cartier returns to St. Lawrence, reaches Stadacona, leaves a small contingent behind who had found the French city of Quebec, and then takes a group of men into the wilderness looking for the gold that he heard existed in Saguenay. That search ends up fruitless, and Cartier decides he is tired of waiting for Robertval, and he decides he's going to sail back to France. Cartier, as far as we know, spends the rest of his life in Saint-Malo as a, we would say today, a technical advisor on navigation. Cartier does not return to the New World. Jacques Cartier died on September 1st, 1551, in his manor in Limoilou, near Saint-Malo. Jacques Cartier is known for making three voyages, none of which found the Northwest Passage to East Asia, none of which found any great wealth, but which enabled the French to make a legitimate claim in the contest with other Europeans for land in North America.