Jacques Cartier

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jacques Cartier was a French trader and explorer. He was born on December 31, 1491 in Saint-Malo, a small town in Brittany (which was later part of France), and lived until September 1,1557). He sailed three times to Canada looking for gold.

He was the first European man to see Prince Edward Island, the St. Lawrence River, and also Hochelaga (today called Montreal), where the Wendats (Iroquois) and other First Nations (or American Indian) tribes lived.

In Europe, the thought that the Earth was not flat was not well-known before the late 1400's. After Christopher Columbus first travelled to the West Indies from Spain in 1492, he first thought that it was China or India. People then got the idea that the shortest way to the East (that is, to China and India) was not by sailing East but by sailing West, to where the sun set. Europe was already trading with these places but only by going through Asia or around Africa; it was a long way and very costly. European countries raced to take the land and riches from the New World. Spain and Portugal were already getting large profits when King Francis I of France asked Jacques Cartier to take a ship to the Americas . Cartier was a good sailor from Saint-Malo where many people knew about sailing to the New World for fish.

Cartier sailed to what is now Canada in 1534. His men took the sons of an Iroquois chief, Donnacona, with him to France on his first trip. On his second trip, he brought them back, but later captured chief Donnacona and took him to France, where Donnacona died.

On his third trip, he brought French people to try to make a French colony on Iroquois land. The Iroquois were not as friendly this time as they had been on his first two visits, so after many difficulties they had to go back to France.

Because Cartier was the first European to take land for France in Canada, the French later said they had a right to control Eastern Canada.