Donnacona | |
---|---|
Born | Canada |
Died | c. 1539 |
Other names | Chief of Stadacona |
Known for | First Nations chief being taken to France by Jacques Cartier |
Chief Donnacona (died c. 1539 in France) was the chief of the St. Lawrence Iroquois village of Stadacona, located at the present site of Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. [1] French explorer Jacques Cartier, concluding his second voyage to what is now Canada, kidnapped Donnacona along with nine other Iroquois captives, and brought them to France, where Donnacona died. [2] Later Cartier would make a third voyage to the same area.
Jacques Cartier made three voyages to the land now called Canada, in 1534, 1535 and 1541. In late July 1534, in the course of his first voyage, he and his men encountered two hundred people fishing near Gaspé Bay. [3] Cartier's men erected a "thirty foot long" cross which provoked a reaction from the leader of this fishing party. After some presentation of gifts to the people there, he left the area the next day, with two men on board, Domagaya and Taignoagny, from the fishing party. He returned to France with them, concluding his first voyage in September 1534. [3] Some sources say that these men were the sons of Donnacona and the fishing party's leader was Donnacona himself, [1] although the original 16th-century report does not mention this directly. [4]
Upon the 25 of the month, we caused a faire high Crosse to be made of the height of thirty feet, [...] in the top was carved in the wood with Anticke letters this posie, Vive le Roi de France. [...] And after we were returned to our ships, their Captain clad with an old Bears skin, with three of his sons, and a brother of his with him, came unto us in one of their boats, but they came not so near us as they were want to do so: there he made a long Oration unto us, showing us the cross we had set up, and making a cross with two fingers, then did he showed us all the Country about us, [...]. One of our fellowes that was in our boat, tooke hold on theirs, and suddenly leapt into it, with two or three more, who enforced them to enter into our ships, whereat they were greatly astonished. But our Captain did straight-waies assure them, that they should have no harme, nor any injurie offered them at all, and entertained them very friendly, making them eate and drinke. Then did we shew them with signes, that the crosse was but onely set up to be as a light and leader which wayes to enter into the port, and that wee would shortly come againe, and bring good store of iron wares and other things, but that we would take two of his children with us, and afterward bring them to the sayd port againe: and. so wee clothed two of them in shirts, and coloured coates [...] we gave to each one.of those three that went back, a hatchet, and some knives, which made them very glad. After these were gone, and had told the newes unto their fellowes, in the afternoone there came to our ships sixe boates of them, with six men in everyone, to take their farewells of those two we had detained to take with us [...] How after we were departed from the sayd porte, following our voyage along the said coast, we went to discover the land lying Southeast, and Northwest. The next day, being the 25 of the month, we had faire weather and went from the said port : and being out of the river, we sailed Eastnortheast, for after the entrance into the said river[...] [3]
The source later says:
After we had cast anker betwene the said great Iland, and the Northerly coast, we went on land and tooke our two wild men with vs, meeting with many of these countrey people, who would not at all approch vnto vs, but rather fled from vs, vntill our two men began to speake vnto them, telling them that they were Taignoagoy and Domagaia [...] [3]
Jacques Cartier's voyage began 19 May 1535 with Domagaya and Taignoagny as guides. They showed Cartier the entrance to the St. Lawrence River, and piloted him upriver to L'Isle-aux-Coudres and on to Donnacona's capital, Stadacona. (Cartier gives Donnacona's title as Agohanna, an Iroquoian word for chief.) Also as part of this voyage, Cartier went further up the St. Lawrence to Hochelega, present-day Montreal, on 2 October 1535, [3] without Domagaya and Taignoagny, who were stopped by the chief from going with him.
In the year of our Lord 1535, vpon Whitsunday, being the 16. of May, by the commandement of our Captaine Iames Cartier, and with a common accord, in the Cathedrall Church of S. Malo we deuoutly each one confessed a selues, and receiued the Sacrament [...]. The Wednesday following, being the 19. of May, there arose a good gale of wind, and therefore we hoysed sayle with three ships [...] [4]
[...]beyond the abouesayd hauen about ten leagues, where we found a goodly great gulfe, full of Islands, passages, and entrances toward what wind soeuer you please to bend: for the knowledge of this gulfe there is a great Island that is like to a Cape of lande [...] We named the sayd gulfe Saint Laurence his bay. [...] The next day after being our Ladie day of August the fifteenth of the moneth, hauing passed the Straight, we had notice of certaine lands that wee left toward the South, which landes are full of very great and high hilles, and this Cape wee named The Island of the Assumption [...] [4]
But for a resolution of the matter Taignoagny and Domagaia tolde our Captaine, that their Lord Donnacona would by no meanes permit that any of them should goe with him to Hochelaga vnlesse he would leaue him some hostage to stay with him: our Captaine answered them, that if they would not goe with him with a good will, they should stay, and that for all them he would not leaue off his iourney thither. [4]
[...] our Captaine with all his Gentlemen and fiftie Mariners departed with our Pinnesse, and the two boates from Canada to goe to Hochelaga: and also there is described, what was seene by the way vpon the said riuer. [4]
As recorded in Cartier's journal, the French wintered in Canada. Relations between the St. Lawrence Iroquoian and French deteriorated over the winter. During the winter, twenty-five French sailors died of scurvy. In spring, Cartier intended to take the chief to France, so that he might personally tell the tale of a country further north, called the "Kingdom of Saguenay", said to be full of gold, rubies and other treasures. In May 1536, he kidnapped Chief Donnacona. It was an arduous trip down the St. Lawrence and a three-week Atlantic crossing. Donnacona and nine others from the tribe, including Domagaya and Taignoagny, arrived in Saint-Malo, France on 15 July 1536, concluding Cartier's second voyage.
Donnacona was treated well in France, and looked after at the king's expense. [2] Cartier promised to bring Donnacona back in 12 moons. Donnacona died in France around 1539. The presence of these First Nations visitors whetted the French appetite for New World exploration with their tales of a golden kingdom called " Saguenay ". All but one of the other Iroquoians died, a little girl whose fate is unknown. [2]
Cartier returned to the new land in May 1541, on his third voyage, without any of those whom he had brought to France. That voyage lasted until his return in May 1542.
A report of Cartier's second voyage was printed in France in 1545, and is today in the British Museum. Excerpts given here are taken from Burrage, using Richard Hakluyt's English translation published in 1589–1600. [3]
Donnacona is remembered by a town, which now bears his name, on the north shore 30 mi (48 km) west of Quebec City, at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and the Jacques-Cartier Rivers.
In 1981, Donnacona was recognized as a National Historic Person by the government of Canada. A plaque commemorating this is located at the Cartier-Brébeuf National Historic Site, 175 De L'Espinay St, Québec, Quebec. [5]
HMCS Donnacona, a stone frigate, is located in Montreal, QC.
Jacques Cartier was a French-Breton maritime explorer for France. Jacques Cartier was the first European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, which he named "The Country of Canadas" after the Iroquoian names for the two big settlements he saw at Stadacona and at Hochelaga.
Richard Hakluyt was an English writer. He is known for promoting the English colonization of North America through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (1582) and The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589–1600).
This section of the timeline of New France history concerns the events between Jacques Cartier's first voyage and the foundation of the Quebec settlement by Samuel de Champlain.
The 16th century in Canada saw the first contacts, since the Norsemen 500 years earlier, between the indigenous peoples in Canada living near the Atlantic coast and European fishermen, whalers, traders, and explorers.
Spruce beer is a beverage flavored with the buds, needles, or essence of spruce trees. Spruce beer can refer to either alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages.
Canada was a French colony within the larger territory of New France. It was claimed by France in 1535 during the second voyage of Jacques Cartier, in the name of the French king, Francis I. The colony remained a French territory until 1763, when it became a British colony known as the Province of Quebec.
Stadacona was a 16th-century St. Lawrence Iroquoian village not far from where Quebec City was founded in 1608.
While a variety of theories have been postulated for the name of Canada, its origin is now accepted as coming from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, meaning 'village' or 'settlement'. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona. Cartier later used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village but to the entire area subject to Donnacona ; by 1545, European books and maps had begun referring to this small region along the Saint Lawrence River as Canada.
Hochelaga was a St. Lawrence Iroquois 16th century fortified village on or near Mount Royal in present-day Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Jacques Cartier arrived by boat on October 2, 1535; he visited the village on the following day. He was greeted well by the Iroquois, and named the mountain he saw nearby Mount Royal. Several names in and around Montreal and the Hochelaga Archipelago can be traced back to him.
Agouhanna was the St. Lawrence Iroquoian term for chief or leader.
Grande Hermine was the name of the carrack that brought Jacques Cartier to Saint-Pierre on 15 June 1535, and upon which he discovered the estuary of the St. Lawrence River and the St. Lawrence Iroquoian settlement of Stadacona. She is believed to be represented in the local flag of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. It is also featured on the Amory Adventure Award of Canadian Scouting. La Grande Hermine was the second ship Jacques Cartier used when exploring the St. Lawrence River.
Fort Charlesbourg Royal (1541—1543) is a National Historic Site in the Cap-Rouge neighbourhood of Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. Established by Jacques Cartier in 1541, it was France's first attempt at a colony in North America, and was abandoned two years later. In 1608, France would establish a successful colony, the Habitation de Québec, 15 kilometers east of the Cap-Rouge fort.
Laurentian, or St. Lawrence Iroquoian, was an Iroquoian language spoken until the late 16th century along the shores of the Saint Lawrence River in present-day Quebec and Ontario, Canada. It is believed to have disappeared with the extinction of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, likely as a result of warfare by the more powerful Mohawk from the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy to the south, in present-day New York state of the United States.
The St. Lawrence Haudenosaunee were an Iroquoian Indigenous people who existed until about the late 16th century. They concentrated along the shores of the St. Lawrence River in present-day Quebec and Ontario, Canada, and in the American states of New York and northernmost Vermont. They spoke Laurentian languages, a branch of the Iroquoian family.
The evergreen aneda was used by Jacques Cartier and his men as a remedy against scurvy in the winter of 1535–1536. It is generally believed to have been Thuja occidentalis, a common tree in Quebec. However, historian Jacques Mathieu has argued at length that aneda was more likely Abies balsamea, given that tree's role as a traditional remedy and given the much higher vitamin C content of its needles. Samuel de Champlain, around 1608, was unable to find the remedy, and some have supposed that the Indians had lost their knowledge of it in the intervening 72 years. However, a more common explanation is that the St. Lawrence Iroquoians whom Cartier met did not speak the same language as the Hurons or Iroquois living in the area at the time of Champlain, and so the term 'annedda' meant nothing to the latter group.
Fort Ville-Marie was a French fortress and settlement established in May 1642 by a company of French settlers, led by Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, on the Island of Montreal in the Saint Lawrence River at the confluence of the Ottawa River, in what is today the province of Quebec, Canada. Its name is French for "City of Mary", a reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Cartier-Brébeuf National Historic Site is a National Historic Site of Canada and so designated by the Historic Sites and Monuments board of Canada in 1958 under the recommendation of John Diefenbaker, the Prime Minister of Canada at the time. It is administered by Parks Canada and located at the confluence of Saint-Charles and Lairet rivers, in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, more precisely in La Cité-Limoilou borough. On the site you can find an interpretation centre and a 6,8 hectares inner-city park characterised by an uneven landscape and divided into two sectors "East" and "West" separated by the Lairet river. Several commemorative monuments and elements are also present.
Bref récit et succincte narration de la navigation faite en MDXXXV et MDXXXVI is a literary work published in 1545, which recounts Jacques Cartier’s second voyage to the St. Lawrence Valley region of North America and details his interactions with the local St. Lawrence Iroquoian peoples. The book was more than likely written by Cartier's secretary, Jehan Poullet.
Events from the year 1535 in France
The lac Jacques-Cartier, main source of the Jacques-Cartier River, is a glacial lake located in the Laurentides Wildlife Reserve, about 90 km to the north of the city of Quebec, in the unorganized territory of Lac-Jacques-Cartier, in the La Côte-de-Beaupré Regional County Municipality, in the administrative region of Capitale-Nationale, in the province of Quebec, in Canada.