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Article: Champlain, Samuel de, Explorations of
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- Dictionary of American History
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CHAMPLAIN, SAMUEL DE, EXPLORATIONS OF
CHAMPLAIN, SAMUEL DE, EXPLORATIONS OF.
Born about 1567 in the small French Atlantic port of Brouage, Samuel de Champlain had most likely already been to Spanish America when, in 1603, he embarked as an observer on a trading expedition to the St. Lawrence Valley. Hoping to find a shorter route to the Orient, he questioned Native people, notably Algonquins, whom he met at the summer trading rendezvous at Tadoussac, about the hydrography of the interior. They subsequently took him on a trip some fifty miles up the Saguenay River before showing him the St. Lawrence as far as the Lachine Rapids above present-day Montreal. The following year, Champlain ...