New France: Jacques Cartier 1st and 2nd Voyages (1534-36)

Welcome back to the podcast in our first episode of the season. We looked at the natives who lived along the st. Lawrence and on the island of Newfoundland and then in our second episode of the season, we looked at all the Explorers of the North Atlantic from the various European powers and all the various claims they had to the area and the very early on efforts to colonize or at least claim huge chunks of North America without any basis in the living reality of the land and the people there and what we ended on was the one voyage of Giovanni de Verrazzano up the coast of what would now be most of the United States Eastern Seaboard and Canada and on the maps that were drawn based on his expedition. This area would be labeled New France in various languages, but New France nonetheless and as far as the French crown was concerned what would be Jamestown, New France, what would be Plymouth, New France, what would be New York City or New Amsterdam under the Dutch, New France, but you can draw lines on maps all you want the natives of course had no idea what any of this meant or any of this was happening and then other European powers would contest this endlessly and the fact of the matter remained unless you had boots on the ground France would remain a paper tiger in the new world the largest obstacle in the way of legitimizing any French claims to North America were these papal bulls we talked about in our last episode and these treaties between the Iberian powers that basically divided the non-christian parts of the earth between Portugal and Spain. However, by the 1530s these arrangements were 40 years old the Pope who declared them long since dead and the man on the throne of France at the time was Francis the first who I brought up in the last episode. He reminds me of the villain in the second Ghostbusters movie bloodshot eyes just large scary, but you could tell he was intensely smart. He lost his father at a young age and he became the heir to the throne of France to his own cousin who of course distrusted him and was suspicious of him and so kept him on the periphery of the Empire. So not a very good childhood for somebody with a royal background, but nonetheless he became king of France at the age of 20 and now he had to get in good with the papacy so to speak right because again the world was divided between these two powers the non-christian world, but the new Pope was a Medici and if you know anything about the Medici family, you know, if you want to get something done with them, there will be a way to do it. They're at the root of it all their merchants and so he married one of his sons Francis the first married his son to a niece of the Pope a Medici this son will be the future Henry the second of France or only the second but now Francis is in the Catholic family. They're really they're all related to each other now and so through a series of documents and proclamations and statements statements saying we're going to colonize parts of the new world in an attempt to spread Catholicism. Well now all of a sudden the new Pope has a different mindset than the Pope from 40 years ago. Now, it's not about splitting the world between two Iberian powers. It's about splitting the world between Catholic powers any Catholic power that wants to go out there and spread the gospel. Well, that's a okay with him. Of course North America was never the aim of these European Explorers ultimately and in the beginning they were looking for a way West Christopher Columbus looking for a way West Giovanni Caboto John Cabot looking for a way West they wanted to get to Asia. They wanted to get to India China the the West Indies and as that objective failed the Spanish consoled themselves by taking over these rich native Empires full of gold and silver and the Spanish and the Portuguese starting these colonies bringing home these rich cash crops. These were all plan B's but they were wonderful plan B's North America didn't even have the plan B. There were no great Empires to be taken over no huge stockpiles of gold or even larger stockpiles of silver. Remember the gold the silver ratio in terms of value was somewhere around 1 to 10 and since that time the ratio is never gone back to the pre-columbian levels ever not once so North America didn't even offer a plan B. So as we learned about in our last episode, what was Verrazano looking for? What was Cabot looking? What were they all looking for? They were looking for a West or Northwest passage through North America to get to Asia. They didn't want North America at all previous Explorers culminating with Magellan basically show that there was no way of getting West to Asia except by going under the extreme southern tip of South America way out of the way very dangerous took a very long time might as well go around the Horn of Africa. And so all that was left to explore was a way straight West from Europe or Northwest the only possible ways you could get to Asia that were still open for exploration and so for the great Kingdom of France enter Jacques Cartier a native of San Malo or st. Malo a fishing town off the coast of Brittany an area that recently came under total control of France and the French Crown and before that kind of on the periphery Jacques Cartier and his family were well connected in the area and they had their foothold in the fishing industry in the in the boating industry going in and out of San Malo and Brittany in general. So he was well connected for the industry born in 1491. He's the generation after Columbus. It was born a year before Columbus decided to sail West and he himself is thought through the various documents we have on the man to have been on ships that went to Brazil on ships that went to Newfoundland and all these other places. Remember those school maps were lying to you in the textbooks on the wall when it showed five or six Explorers. You might see Degama Cabot here. Of course, you're going to see Christopher Columbus those five or six lines coming from the European countries to the various places in the new world one was colored yellow one was colored orange whatever that's mostly a lie because in addition to those five or six really famous Explorers there were tons of nameless fishing expeditions and then later fur-finding expeditions and whaling expeditions. And so we're not dealing with five or six people after Columbus exploring the new world. There's hundreds and we don't know the name of most of them and Jacques Cartier could have been become one of these nameless bunch because he's part of these fishermen going out to the Great Banks off of Newfoundland and going along the coast of North America opening up little fishing operations drying out cod, especially bringing it back home to feed Europe. He married well, and it's thought that based on the records we have that he was even the stepfather or the godfather to Brazilian natives who were brought back to France before Jacques Cartier took off on his own very famous voyages to what would become the new world of the northern part of North America. Some even believe that Verrazano took Cartier along with him. So you'd be quite familiar with the areas he would be exploring, but you don't need Jacques Cartier to be on Verrazano's expedition to explain Cartier's expertise in the world. Again, people have this thought in their head that there was Verrazano then right after that was Gomes and then there was Degama, you know over here and then blah blah blah. There were way more people way more than just the five or six people on those maps. I'm done bringing up that point. I promise. And so while Cartier was already well-traveled, we're going to call this first thing that he does this first expedition of note. This will be his first voyage as history remembers it, although he's been on tons of voyages. The object of this first voyage is to find a Northwest passage. He's not looking to start a colony. He's not looking to claim vast amounts of North America for France. He wants to find his way through North America. In reality, the Europeans didn't want to have much to do with North America above Mexico. At first this voyage seems to have been funded by the merchant communities around St. Malo and Brittany and maybe even Normandy. But at some point the king gets word of this expedition and he decides to throw some money Cartier's way. So now this is a royal expedition. This is on behalf of the king of France and based on the surviving documents. We know that he was ordered to go beyond Newfoundland where some people have been there before you go back 20 years ago. There's Thomas Albert who was a Frenchman who may have sighted the St. Lawrence and it shows up on some maps, but the area is fuzzy and the king of France Jacques Cartier many of the people in St. Malo. They think there might be a passageway to get around that North American continent somewhere beyond there. They're not quite sure where and so the fishermen of France, they're well aware of Newfoundland at this time of Labrador. They know the coastline. They know Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island. That's all within their working memory. That's all on their maps. Well-known well-defined but beyond that they know there's land there. They know there's waterways, but the exact shape and outline in nature of them are not quite defined yet Jacques Cartier go that one extra step Cartier had two ships and 61 men. He left in late April of 1534. They made it to Newfoundland very quickly. They had good weather kind winds and they made it there in a surprisingly short amount of time. It was a good omen for the voyage Cartier left a log of this first voyage and a lot of this portion of it is full with full of description of the land and a lot of description of birds. He seems to have been obsessed with birds for this portion of the expedition until he runs into actual people that he could try to communicate with at Newfoundland. He seems to have spotted the Bay of Thuk but they didn't approach him. They are notoriously shy the first episode in the season. We cover that quite a bit and there are some very good reasons for that Jacques Cartier says of Newfoundland this land should not be called the new land being composed of stones and horrible rugged rocks the whole of the North Shore. I did not see one cartload of Earth and yet I landed in many places except that block sublime. There's nothing but moss and short studded shrubs. I am rather inclined to believe that this is the land God gave to Cain that of course is a reference to the story of Cain and Abel in the Bible where Cain kills Abel out of jealousy and he is banished to this land whom many European writers picture as being a land of punishment someplace barren and unworthy of human inhabitation. We should remember as Europeans expanded outward from Europe Europe itself. They had to explain all these new places in relation to what they knew from the Bible because the Bible is from the Middle East and has a certain world view and a certain scope of the world, right? Ancient people only knew so many miles in either direction of where they were living and so as Europeans were actually circumnavigating the globe they had to fit the narrative all these weird people they were running into into the biblical stories that were from a rather more narrow lens. And so when a European dude runs into some far-flung Island, he'll say, okay, these must be the descendants of Ham and then they go somewhere else and okay, well based on how they act these must be the descendants of Ishmael. They would they would have to fit it into everything. After this point in time Jacques Cartier actually hits the North American continent and he runs into the Mi'kmaq people we mentioned in the first episode. A lot of people call them the Mi'kmaq. It's just a lot easier to say in European languages, but Mi'kmaq is closer to how they would say their own identity. The Mi'kmaq at this point are actually very used to European encounters. So Jacques Cartier, despite those high school maps, which I said I wouldn't bring up, but I did it again. Despite those maps there had been white men here before because the natives knew exactly what to do and what kind of stuff they would have to trade. So from Cartier's own account here around the beginning of July, we caught sight of two fleets of savage canoes that were crossing from one side to the other which numbered in all some 40 or 50 canoes. Upon one of the fleets reaching this point, they're spraying out and landed a large number of people who set up a great clamor and made frequent signs to come ashore, holding up some skins on sticks. Now I've said this before, when Europeans show up somewhere and the natives are holding on sticks, the only trade good that Europeans could possibly want from them, Europeans have been there before. So we know right here, the coastline of North America, right here at the opening of the St. Lawrence, Europeans have already been here. Jacques Cartier was not the first one. This has all been a lie, but he is the guy sent from the King of France. And so that's why he often gets the accolades. These migamac were so insistent on having a trade with the Europeans that their canoes came closer and closer and they were trying to get on to the European ships on the Jacques Cartier ships that finally he shot off the cannons. He wanted to shoo them away because they were just too frightening in their approach. The natives seem to have gotten the message. Day or two later a much smaller party came very calmly in their canoes over to Jacques Cartier's expeditionary group and they made trade. They traded furs for metal objects unknown to Jacques Cartier. This is what this is what's going to drive the story of New France. The interplay between these two groups and the exchange of goods that you can only get in the new world and you can only get in the old world and relations were friendly. They were nonviolent. We don't see the types of horror stories. You now know about Columbus for instance, of course for from his point of view these people wearing animal skins trading for bits of metal seem pathetic. But then again from the native point of view the fact that they're getting this invaluable metal material that nobody else can get for them and all they have to do is trade away their furs something they have in abundance a lot of and basically have little value to them. The natives themselves didn't trade furs very often between groups because everyone had them. So each side viewed these transactions as great opportunities for themselves later in the month as Cartier is bouncing around the mouth of the st. Lawrence before it really narrows into a thin River. He runs into the great Native American leader known as Donna Kona or Donna Kona Donna Kona is the chief of a village further upstream and he is part of the st. Lawrence Iroquois group. That's his culture that we've reconstructed from the archaeology now. He is not her on he is not part of the Haudenosaunee as far as we know they were a completely separate Iroquois group. Now. Remember there was a lot of different Native American tribes that spoke Iroquois languages who weren't in the Iroquois Confederacy. This is one of them and this is the first time we see Europeans interacting with an Iroquois speaking group big moment upon mixing with this group of st. Lawrence Iroquois Jacques Cartier realized that this was a different group of natives than the first one. He interacted with the Mi'kmaq most likely or the Beothuk. He he just witnessed off the coastline of Newfoundland. He knew that the st. Lawrence Iroquois were set apart culturally different and they were well as we know one is part of the Algonquin language group. And now we have the Iroquois language group and they're as different as could be considering how close they live to one another Cartier was smart enough to notice that difference. He didn't just broadly categorize. Everyone is the red man or Indians. Although we do see he used the word Savage and when we get to a later episode on Samuel de Champlain, you'll see that Savage might not have had the connotation it does today. These two groups got along quite well until Cartier was actually planning on leaving and then he erected on the beaches of Gaspé this huge massive cross in the sand Dona Kona and his party took exemption to this. They took insult to this what exactly they thought was going on there. Who knows but Cartier was erecting the cross to claim this land for the Catholic Church and for the kingdom of France. So, of course, even if he did understand the context he should be insulted and so Dona Kona he took his canoes and he approached Cartier ships and started yelling at him and causing a harangue as the records would use the term. Of course, the language barrier is still very great. So eventually Cartier's man just sees the men in their canoes and pull them on board at this point Jacques Cartier could take the whole party back to France with him if he wished. However, he gave gifts to Dona Kona calmed him down explained the best that he could that he meant no harm and Dona Kona or Dona Kona or Donna Kona. There's a million ways to say it. He actually agrees and we don't know how much force was used here. He actually agrees to give Cartier his two sons to take back to France who would eventually become translators the natives knew this they had a way of adopting out young children to each other between groups to work as translators and intermediaries the Europeans on the other hand, they didn't quite have a tradition of this Europeans would show up somewhere and just kidnap people and they would become translators whether they liked it or not. Of course when you have you know, no French to Algonquin dictionaries somehow that lines of communication have to be opened up and many Europeans just decided to take people so Cartier's is not the lone sinner in this issue of kidnapping natives to become translators. He's just a symptom of the times so let's not lay too much blame on him, but he leaves with Donna Kona's two sons and they go back to France now much like Verrazano or Henry Hudson last season of this show Cartier returns a failure. He didn't find a Northwest passage. He bounced around the st. Lawrence not to the point where it really thinned out and it became obvious that it was just a river and so there was the promise that this wide gap at the end of the st. Lawrence would just stay open and continue to flow right across the top of the North American continent and into Asia. Hopefully and then there were also these two natives. He brought back who told stories about kingdoms rich kingdoms to the West and so while being a failure in terms of meeting his objectives Cartier had planted seeds of promise. There are possibilities still out there maps to be made world to explore and Jacques Cartier and the king both felt that they were just on the doorstep to something great beyond and so very soon after the ending of the first expedition and their safe return to France a second expedition was in the planning stages by May of 1535 Cartier was already ready to go. He had three ships. He had 15 months of supplies. He had support from the king. He had a hundred and ten men most of which were from San Malo including a lot of his own relatives Etienne and Jacques Noel were his nephews some sorts of say grandnephews. It's more likely. They were just as regular old nephews at this time what we would have called nepotism today was actually a good thing back then because you have people who would train in a practice like, you know being sea captains at a very young age and by the time they were older teenagers. They would be experts and so having family support their own and teach them the crafts of their own was was typical and it was encouraged and so Jacques Cartier's expeditions are full of in-laws nephews and then just generally people who lived in his community people. He knew and he trusted and he also had these two translators the sons of Donna Connor Donna Connor Donna. I'm never gonna say his name, right? You know who I'm talking about now. Unlike the first voyage rough start heavy seas big storms and the two boats actually get separated for a while, but they meet up on what Jacques Cartier calls the island of birds again. He's obsessed with birds. The man loves describing birds killing birds eating birds. He's all about birds now within the Gulf of the st. Lawrence his two guides become very important. These are the two sons of Donna Connor their names are tie a good nanny and don't make a I believe that's how you say it again. We're talking about French people writing down st. Lawrence Iroquois names 400 years ago. So who knows how to actually pronounce these two guys names, but these two brothers are going to guide Cartier to their village to the realm of the st. Lawrence Iroquois. And of course as they're going further and further along up the st. Lawrence the description start coming in as the two guides start to recognize places and what from Cartier is seeing and what from they're saying everything's going to narrow and that's the last thing Cartier ever wanted to hear that basically means we don't have a nice wide Channel or a huge inland sea that will open up and give you a nice easy way to Asia. We have a river that's slowly going uphill getting smaller getting more narrow and will eventually just lead to the inside of this continent that the French desperately just want to get around. These lands that they were passing would be perhaps inhabited by the Innu or the Mi'kmaq or even the Abenaki and eventually you would get to the land of the st. Lawrence Iroquois and Cartier records. We went on to the land and we took with us the two men. We seized on our former voyage. We came upon several of the people of the country who began to run away and would not come near until our two men had spoken to them and told them who we were and that they were Tayaganoni and Damayega and when they knew who it was they began to welcome them dancing and going through many ceremonies and some of the head men came to our longboats bringing us many eels and other fish with two or three measures of corn, which is their bread in that country. The two brothers had done Cartier a solid said these guys are friendly. They're going to hook you up. They got trade goods. Come on down another important contribution of these two brothers to history among many is that at one point Cartier says to them. Oh, what is that? What is the name of this land here? Where are we going? But what land are you from and the two brothers respond with a word that today we would say Canada. Maybe their pronunciation was more like Canada or Canada or something like that. But today we call it Canada now in the st. Lawrence Iroquois language as far as we can reconstruct it that simply meant village. So Cartier said to him to the two brothers rather where we going and the brother said we're going to take you to our village and Cartier heard Canada and he just assumed that was the name for the entire land around where they lived rather than the inside of just their you know, small community and boy has the name stuck second largest country in the world in terms of landmass Canada today came from this misunderstanding the brothers were now at ease being back in their country. They trusted the Frenchman a little more. And eventually they led them to the city of Stata Kona which is where their father Donna Kona was the head chief the French of course had no way of understanding Native American chief systems at all. And so Donna Kona is alternatively called the king the Lord, you know, they don't know what a chief is in the Native American sense Cartier said of this homecoming that day many canoes filled with the people of the country both men as well as women came to our ships to see and welcome our two men the captain received them all well and treated them to what he had to offer and to ingratiate himself with them. He gave them some small presents of little value at which they were much pleased on the morrow the Lord of Canada named Donna Kona, but as the leader they called him a Guhana came to our ships accompanied by many people in 12 canoes. He then sent back 10 of these and came alongside our ships with only two canoes carrying 16 men and when he was opposite to the smallest of our three ships this a Guhana begin to make a speech into harangue us moving his body and limbs in a marvelous manner as their custom when showing joy and contentment and when he came opposite to the captain's vessel on board of which were Taya Gunani and Damayega the leader spoke to them and they to him telling him what they had seen in France and the good treatment meted out to them there at this the leader was much pleased and begged the captain to stretch out his arms to him that he might hug and kiss them which is the way they welcome one in that country. Obviously Donna Kona was very pleased that he got his two sons back from seemingly some distant land. He's never heard of never seen he didn't know that they would be back within a year and so the French now tested and proven friendly were allowed into the village and for the first time Cartier and his men got to see a way of life that was utterly foreign from everything they had experienced before a communal living in long houses as the Iroquois had they saw strange foods. They never had a chance to eat and then they also saw familiar things. They saw metal objects certain European beads. So there was trade coming in to the stead of Conan's but the But their their joy at Jacques Cartier's arrival implies that it wasn't direct trade or they only really traded with the Europeans when they went downstream as they had last July to go fishing the Europeans probably didn't make it this far upstream. There was no need to there was always natives willing to trade at a much shorter distance than the upper st. Lawrence. What's curious about this second voyage is Cartier describes the giving of gifts when he meets these groups, which is a common thing in the Native American culture of the Northeast North American continent. So it shows a familiarity and it begs the question did he have this before his first recorded voyage when he was noodling around Newfoundland, maybe or maybe down in Brazil. He picked up on this tradition or perhaps he learned it from the two brothers, but somehow Cartier knew if you're showing up into someone's territory, you should have some gifts to give them as a hey, I'm here. I'm friendly. Here's some stuff for welcoming me into your land. Most sources ignore the native perspective at this point because we don't have the written record of it. But the archaeological record tells us that that by this time Dona Cana's people though the wider st. Lawrence Iroquois culture was in decline already. There were less settlements than maybe a hundred years before so there were pressure on them mostly from outside groups Dona Cana himself mentions enemies who committed massacres against his people further downstream of the st. Lawrence might have been the Mi'kmaq for Dona Cana or Dona Cana Cartier represented a lifeline. He could supply him with metal objects stuff. He wouldn't have to go downstream for and wouldn't have to trade with other groups to get to he would get it directly he cut out the middleman and then he would be the middleman and he could disseminate these metal goods as favors to other groups and thus raise the standard of his village and his people because Dona Cana was part of a larger native trade network, which we've talked about before and that Cartier gets wind of by talking to the natives. And so as far as we can tell there was a copper trade. It was basically copper for seashells was the main commodity moving back and forth among other things much. How we say like the Silk Roads when we refer to the networks between Asia the Middle East and the far eastern parts of Asia. There was a trade network and from the Great Lakes region we would get raw copper and that copper would be making their way East as the shells that would be used to make what we call wampum today would make their way West wampum and beads and other objects like that. And so while this network didn't move things essential to survival. It was the beginning of luxury culture fine copper luxurious beautiful beads, right? And so a network already existed Dona Cana being roughly halfway in between he's a middleman in this and this network can move north of him. It can go south of him to the other side of the st. Lawrence to where his cousins presumably would live in this wonderful trade Network Stata Kona. His village would be a minor footnote rest stop and a place that again could be easily avoided but if he had a guy who could provide metal to the Native American world specifically iron that could be worked into weapons and snares and tools. Well, geez the whole the whole trade Network is going to be rewritten because right now the natives who are getting the most access to European metal are going to be the same types of natives. He just battled with that. I just mentioned the Migamac Cartier's thinking was very similar but from his point of view once once seeing this raw native copper and little ingots and whatnot he inquired about it. And came to discover that the copper wasn't coming from European sources. Well, it was in a raw state. It wasn't a finished European good at all. He discovered it was coming from inland from the West the native spoke to Cartier of a of a land far in that direction called Sagan a Sagan a and that's where the copper or was coming from now. Here's a pivotal moment in the entire saga here of New France and specifically Cartier and Donna Connor's life Cartier at this point knows he failed there is no Northwest Passage this way as far as he could tell it's been getting narrower and narrow the st. Lawrence smaller smaller. They're big. They've been going upstream further into the continent. They have reached a dead end. But if he can go back to France with the location of copper mines, that is something we've talked about this before with other Explorers when they don't meet their first goal if they can come back with some consolation gifts for their financial backers. It's something and it might get you another expedition in the future. So copper mines were now on Cartier's mind and he was thinking much like Donna Connor. Let's cut out the middleman. I don't need static on the village if I can get past this and find the source of the copper. There you go. Direct the source wholesale and from these natives Cartier learned that there's a village further upstream who are in league with the static Onans, but Donna Connor is not the leader of them. So they exist in some sort of Union similar to the Iroquois Confederacy or the Huron Confederacy again. It's consistent with Iroquois government styles. There's another village further upstream on the way to Sagan a that village is called Hacha Laga now Cartier asked for some guides to get him there and all of a sudden the static Onans are like, oh no, you don't want to go there. They start coming up with rumors every sort of excuse in the book. And now from Donna Connors perspective, you know, he would be going right around static Ona and making an alliance with the hotel agents who at that point although allied with him would become the center of trade and then he once again would be a satellite to where the trade is coming in and out. So on the spot Donna Connor proposes an Alliance Cartier is not really aware of this but Donna kind of starts giving Cartier members of his family both his matrilineal side and his own kids just here take my kids. Let's make an Alliance right now. Let's make a deal here and now before you go anywhere. I want to be your native guy. I'm going to be your point of connection. So here take my family now again, we have to speculate. He could have been giving these family members up to become future translators who of course would direct trade right to his village or it could be an attempt to mix the two peoples together. We see that a lot in Iroquois culture that they're very good at incorporating other groups. Of course, their enemies would call it assimilation, but the Iroquois would call it adoption and growing your family either way. It's clear that Donna Kona wants to make some sort of deal right now before Cartier goes anywhere Cartier tries every diplomatic measure. He knows of to get someone to take him further upstream. He even goes to the two brothers that he took and he says to them. Hey, you take me just one village up, please. Can we can we go that way? Of course the brothers say no can't take you there. Sorry, we're not going and of course if you are a red-blooded human being at this point, you're definitely going to go there, right? You've never been to Hochulaga, but the fact that everyone doesn't want you to go there. It's going to make you want to go there all the more and it's on the way to Saguenay where this mystical land with copper mines. So you're going to find your way there one way or another and Donna Kona could see it. And so he has one last desperate plan to try to trick Cartier and to not going further upstream. This is where Jacques Cartier describes the static Conan's putting on this play to try to trick the Europeans. They had some some of their members dress up in dog skins and black in their faces and where all sorts of grotesques masquerading costume bits and they went into canoes upstream and they came down as some horrifying looking man monsters and the static Conan's would rush out in a furied haze and defeat these monsters who came from further upstream. And then then of course they looked at Cartier and said you definitely don't want to go up there those kinds of things live up there. Please don't go up that way. Of course Jacques Cartier saw behind the ruse for what it really was and now more than ever the French were determined to go upstream and so they left static Kona which is by the way, the future site of Quebec City going upstream Cartier was careful to observe the various waterways and the conditions on the land and he found much of it empty to his eyes again. This is the land of the st. Lawrence Iroquois, but to a European much of it would have seemed empty again. They the natives would have used a lot of it for hunting grounds, which means you have to leave it pristine but to a French eye it would have seemed undeveloped unclaimed even and it is engaged in hunting that Jacques Cartier finds his next group of natives. He runs into a group of men out on the hunt and to quote Cartier where he always refers to himself as the captain he writes in the third person. So get get used to it. They came to meet our boats without fear or alarm and in as familiar a manner as if they had seen us all their lives and when our longboats grounded one of those men took the captain in his arms and carried him on shore as easily as if he had been a six-year-old child so strong and big was that man. We're at an interesting meeting point in history here where the European diet provides just very recently a lot of protein but mostly calories. We have a continent dense in population and just feeding people is important and then you have these Native Americans living in an old world term a Mesolithic lifestyle where they have farming but they also have hunting and that's a huge part of their diet and fishing. And so the native diet was actually more nutritious. So if you live to adulthood in the native realm of the Northeast United States, typically you are very healthy and you got a enough vitamins and mineral from the wild game and the fish that you were probably taller and larger than your average European who was subsisting on mostly grains mostly calories. What do we call starches? And so Cartier is the first among many European Explorers who just were marveled at how large these people who again were living a Mesolithic lifestyle were it's because they had better nutrition, although a slightly less stable food supply. So give and take their these men give Cartier a great welcome. They showed them all the hunting they had been doing the piles of dead animals. They trade little metal trinkets with them and they give them directions to Hachalaga which is the next big village and this is where exactly where Cartier wants to go and on their approach to the great native city. They found all these natives along the banks who are celebrating Cartier is showing up and they were giving with food and they wanted to trade and they wanted to hug and celebrate and dance and sing and all these great welcoming gestures. One interpretation of course would be that these people who live close enough to the Atlantic Coast that they're aware of Europeans coming with valuable trading goods and yet were blocked off by the Innu and the Mi'kmaq and Abenaki on the other side of the St. Lawrence. They're all these people in the way with directly trading with these white foreigners from Europe. Now all of a sudden they're showing up in their neighborhood and they're excited. That's one point of view there. There's probably several other interpretations and I'm not expert enough to tell you which one was right. But in my interpretation it was like in my hometown when Krispy Kreme first came in all we had was Dunkin Donuts. Now all of a sudden there was Krispy Kreme. What is it like? Is it amazing? I've heard stories from distant lands about this wonderful Krispy Kreme and there were lines around the block and people were buying dozens and dozens of just the the glaze regular donuts from them and they were making tons of money. Well, then of course the diabetes sets in and the obesity and the crippling depression from your life fading away from too much Krispy Kreme, but that was all distant distant in the future years off. And so that's that's the closest thing I can relate it to in my life, which shows you the the cloistered shallow life that I've lived having come to Hachalaga the great crowd gathered to greet him and what Jacques Cartier calls the head man came out chief of the village and in his own words. He says the captain presented him with a couple of hatchets and a couple of knives as well as with the cross and crucifix which he made him kiss and then hung it around his neck for these head men. Thank the captain when this was done. We marched on in about a half a league fence found that the land began to be cultivated. It was a fine land with large fields covered with the corn of the country which resembles Brazil millet and is about as large or larger than a pea. They live on this as we do wheat and on the middle of the fields is situated and stands the village of Hachalaga near and adjacent to a mountain the slopes of which are fertile and cultivated and from the top of which one can see for a long distance. We named this mountain Mount Royale. And so if you were listening carefully you heard a description of maize or what I call corn and you probably call corn which to Jacques Cartier was just this weird exotic food that you know came from the Americas. He had a hard time even describing it. He's like it's the roughly the size of peas but it grows on a stalk. It was utterly bizarre to him alien to us. It's just meat and potatoes dinner to him. It might as well be something that shot in from outer space. And then if you also paid attention to that quote you would have heard the term Mount Royale Mount Royal the the beginning of what would become the namesake of Montreal. So pretty important guy here because we have Quebec City and Montreal boom one expedition. Here. We are both future cities, of course pre-existed by native inhabitations. The Hachalagans allow Cartier and his men to come into their village and it's very much the same as in Stata Kona. It has long houses. It has rows of palisades. The entire village is circular in shape and it very much resembles a typical village of an Iroquois speaking people or northern Iroquois speaking people. That is to say so the Five Nations the Haudenosaunee the Huron they all lived this general lifestyle and they had a base culture like a primer that was very much the same. Although they had very strong and very real political differences. It is at this point that we see the first written reference to what is possibly Wampum and so in Cartier's own words most precious article they possess in the world is Esnogi which is white as snow. They produce it from shells in the river in the following manner when a man has incurred the death penalty or has taken some prisoners of war. They kill one and make a great incision in his buttocks and thighs and about his legs arms and shoulders then at the spot where this Esnogi is found. They sink the body to the bottom and leave it there for 10 or 12 hours. It is then brought to the surface and in the above-mentioned cuts and incisions they find these shells of which they make this sort of bead which has the same use among them as gold and silver among us now surely Cartier misunderstood whatever they were trying to tell them about how they got these beads or the natives were flat-out lying to him so that he didn't know the source of these beads. The next thing about this subject is that a lot of scholars argue that wampum as we know it with a finely drilled hole down the middle a long cylindrical thin bead was not possible before European tools were available to the natives. They had no way of drilling that fine little hole. So we might not be dealing with wampum as you picture it but rather some sort of larger beat as foreign as corn seem to Cartier Cartier to the Hachalagans was some sort of alien being a man. They had never seen before again. We are far enough inland that they probably haven't seen white folks before so when Cartier shows up they bring out they're sick and they're infirmed believing that he might have some cure for them. He might possess some sort of spiritual magic that hadn't made it to their part of the world yet. And maybe he was able to cure them. Now this might sound ridiculous to you. This might sound silly to you but people in general throughout history, especially when they don't have answers for things are attracted to people. They find exotic because with that exoticism comes the possibility of them being superior in some way in knowledge or in spiritual knowledge. One great example from semi-modern history that the boomers might recognize is Ravi Shankar who is a musician from India. He played folk music from the Indian subcontinent. He was a musician but coming over here the crowds in the late 60s early 70s. They treated him like he was a mystic like he was some sort of Hindu prophet. They didn't know what to make of him and reality. He was just a magician musician musician with a very exotic and different background, but they added all sorts of layers of mysticism and mystery on top of him and they made him out to be some sort of spiritual being that he just wasn't and if you look at his history since then you can see he's just a regular guy, but we do this. We put these layers of powers on things. We don't understand and so Cartier not knowing what to do used his Catholic background and did the signs of the cross and gave out blessings and did everything within his Christian worldview to help these poor sick people Cartier then asked to be taken to the top of Mount Royale Montreal Mount Royal whatever you want to call it. He wants to go to the top of the mountain for one reason. The st. Lawrence seems to really narrow at this point come to an end and so he wants to climb this mountain and see what's going on. Is there a mystical magical land far off to the West? Is there a big body of water far to the West? Maybe the Pacific Ocean. Let's see on climbing the mountain. He probably observes the Adirondack Mountains in New York State from this height. He also noticed that there was plenty of good fields for farms often in his description of his voyages. He's pointing out little indications of hey, it would be nice to colonize this area. They got a lot of food a lot of fresh game friendly natives here good farmland potentially and so while he's just voyaging and supposedly looking for a way West there's these little hints left and right that he's found a place that could be colonized and again remember when Explorers who are supposed to find a West or Northwest passage failed to do so they had to come up with something else, right? They had to bring back something of promise something that might make profit for somebody down the road. And so Cartier's pointing out potential revenue streams, but here's where everything changes up for Cartier and for the natives and for our story of new friends when they're on top of Montreal Mount Royal, whatever the natives they grab Cartier's whistle chain and the hilt of his dagger and different metal objects that are on Cartier some made of silver a little bit of gold little bit of copper and they point West as if to indicate that's where we get this kind of stuff. Now the natives at this point probably don't distinguish between copper gold silver. It's all metal at this point. It's very new to them. And so for them metal was metal. They probably just had a word for metal right now, but Cartier took it literally when the one native pointed to gold and then pointed to the West to the kingdom of Seguin a as Cartier put it. He said, oh, no, no, no, no Donna Kona told us that copper comes from this direction. But here we have this native saying that we can get gold over there. We can get silver over there. And now Cartier has his thing. He can bring back to the crown to his investors and say listen couldn't find a westward passage. St. Lawrence gets narrower and narrower until it's nothing but listen further West. I climbed a mountain talk to the natives. There's a kingdom kingdom called Seguin a and according to the natives. It's full of copper. It's full of silver. It's full of gold. It's another Mexico. It's another Incan Empire and it can be ours. The sea that was planted by Donna Kona is now growing and it's only going to get bigger and at the end of the day not to spoil it. It's going to cause a lot of pain and sorrow. Now Cartier has been gone for some time and he left a good chunk of his men way back at Stata Kona. It's early October and it's getting to the point where they're going to have to stay the winner over in the st. Lawrence and Cartier is going to experience what Verrazano only noticed that the climate in Europe and North America are quite different despite the fact that you could compare on similar latitudes. So a lot of the st. Lawrence is on the same group of latitudes as France, which makes sense that the French would be exploring over in that way. And so the theory was that well based on what we know of the world so far. If you go to places in Spain that are at the same latitude of places in Italy, for example, the weather similar not identical but similar especially with yearly temperatures, but North America is quite different than Europe. Isn't it? Now if I told you that the weather in France is going to be the same as the weather in Canada, you would look at me oddly. Of course back then they didn't know that and so they're about to spend a winter in a climate. They had no preparation for when Cartier returns to Stata Kona. He sees that his men have already started to build winter habitations. They're planning on staying over winter, but they've also built a stockade. Now whatever happened while they were gone Cartier realizes right away stuff has gone down relations between my men and the natives have gone awry at some point and now I'm going to have to spend all winter with these people. And now this begs the question what did Cartier actually know about the natives of the st. Lawrence and what was his opinion of them? Well up to this point it's been semi-friendly descriptions. They're often very happy to see him, but he notices different things about their culture that he doesn't find so savory at a certain point. He seems to have observed a brothel full of young girls. Is that what was actually happening? I don't know but that's how he interpreted it. And so that's going to color the way he relates to these people then at other points back in Stata Kona. He notices that they're probably worshiping who he identifies as the devil or at least a demon working for the devil and we'll see this later in the Jesuit relations and elsewhere back then it wasn't you know, if you are a monotheist and you believed in the Hebrew the Christian Islamic God, it wasn't that all the other gods were made up more often than not they were worshiping evil malevolent spirits and this goes all the way back to the beginning of Christianity and maybe even before I mean the ancient Greek word for their gods was demonos or something like that. You know, I'm pronouncing that incorrectly but in there we see the etymology of the word demon. And so if we if we take away all the novelty that he sees all the wonders underneath it all he sees these people as demon worshipers devil worshipers sex crazed primitive people and so again Cartier returns. He finds his men constructing a barricade and now Stata Kona is going to slowly shun the Frenchman shunning is a thing. We don't really do anymore, but more and more there's less trade less giving of food at one point Donna Kona disappears Donna Kona disappears and then he shows up again with a great number of people and that scares Cartier because he's thinking maybe a war parties assembling. Maybe they're planning an attack on us and the natives too must have been thinking. Why are these people still here? What are they doing here? How are they going to overwinter in our territory and not have a discussion with us about that and as the cold st. Lawrence winter began to really set in there was an outbreak of scurvy among the natives and the Europeans this caused the natives to withdraw even more from the Europeans until you had two camps of people who would just shout at each other across an expanse. They weren't interacting with one another they were no longer friendly Cartier's men were spread among his ships frozen in the Riverway in this barricade and of the hundred and ten men or so at a certain part in the deep part of the winter. There was only 10 who are healthy enough to move around and take care of everyone else and people weren't just getting sick. They were dropping dead and at a certain point Cartier laments and he doesn't think that anyone's going to make it through this winter reaching out to the static Onans. He learns that there's already 50 dead in the village from scurvy and he provides these god-awful descriptions of teeth falling out and purple blood your body just just dissolving from the lack of what actually is vitamin C scurvy is nothing but a deficiency in vitamin C. And of course, where are you going to get you know, where are you going to get freaking orange in the middle of January on the st. Lawrence Cartier came to learn that one of the sick natives was Dama Gaia. So the just a few people who could even communicate with him and his fellow Frenchmen. They were dying themselves Cartier and his men began going through their religious rituals and basically preparing the entire expedition for a slow agonizing cold death. And then one day Cartier notices over the barricade. There's that guy. There's Dama Yaga or however, you say his name. There's that guy that I kidnapped the first expedition who a month ago was dying and now he's walking around. So he Cartier calls out to him. He says hey, dude, you're supposed to be dead. What's going on? You were sick. How did you get over it? And then Dama Yaga takes Cartier and his men out to the forest and they gather different parts of white cedar and they boil that down into a tea and then from just these little tiny bits of white cedar. They were able to extract enough vitamin C. Of course, the natives didn't call it vitamin C. They didn't know what it was, but it was the cure for scurvy. And somehow Dama Yaga knew that and despite this many of the natives died themselves even though they had the secret to this medicine of sorts. So it had to be just the smallest amount of vitamin C just enough to help those who were not that bad off to begin with but it works and Dama Yaga and his cure pretty much bring the French expedition back to life from almost certain death to maybe a hundred of the hundred and ten men and despite this cure by spring Cartier loses enough men that he has to abandon one of his three ships and during this year spring came very late. It wasn't until mid-April that they were able to break the boats loose from the ice that was still on the St. Lawrence and when the French make it clear to Donacona that they're planning on leaving. He says what wait here wait here because we've already given you some natives to take back but I want you to take this guy named Agona. He wants to be chief of the village. He wants me gone and if you take this guy, it'd be a great favor to me. We'll have great relations with one another trade will keep flowing. What do you say now? This might explain why Donacona brought so many more people with him after his winter hunting party while Cartier looked on and was afraid that maybe these people were here for him. They were probably there in attempt to shift the political balance of the village. Now again, although Donacona is often described as a Lord or a king by Cartier and Frenchmen. They're not understanding the more Democratic system that the Iroquois hat where the Iroquois speaking people had it's likely he was bringing in people from the country or from other villages to become inhabitants of his city. And so he could maintain his power. He was probably enlarging enlarging enlarging his clan. That's all that was happening there and it's because this guy Agona and an upcoming clan was most likely poised to assume political power through a semi-democratic process. So Donacona says listen, you got to take this guy. How about it and Cartier says, yeah, that sounds great. You know what? We're only going to take some kids become translators. We'll bring right back and we're going to take this guy. You don't like sound good. All right. Well, why don't you come over here and we'll step in the boat and you know, we'll have a party and so he lulls Donacona onto his boats through this false promise basically and then of course they seize him. They take control of him. The other thing they did is they constructed another 35-foot cross and stuck it into the land just like they did off the gas bay in during his first voyage that got Donacona so upset they did it again and they claimed all the land for Francis the first complete betrayal Donacona is now captive on his ship Cartier is leaving with about 10 natives this of course will leave a Gona to become leader of Stata Kona Donna Connor now prisoner has to reevaluate his entire approach to Cartier. This is a complete betrayal. Like I said what he notices is that Cartier and the other Frenchman they keep asking about this kingdom of Sagan a they keep asking about metal and so Donna Kona stories about the lands to the west of his own become more elaborate and more embellished and the French become more interested. They become more helpful more friendly towards him. So he just keeps it going what other tools does he have at his disposal and by the time that Donna Kona is presented to King Francis the first of France. The story is so outlandish that it prompts a third voyage one on a scale that we have never seen before and so tune into our next episode to hear the whopper of a tale that Donna Kona tells the king of France and the fallout from it. Thank you for listening to the other states of America history podcast. If you like us find us on Facebook and Twitter review us on Apple podcasts. If you'd like send us a big fat bag of money, we would appreciate it. Thank you.