The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Vol. 1: Acadia, 1610-1613
History
The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Vol. 1: Acadia, 1610-1613
Canada -- History -- To 1763 (New France); Indians of North America -- Canada; Jesuits -- Missions; Jesuits -- North America
2. (p. 55)--The reports of Champlain, and the maps and charts with
which, upon returning from his voyage of 1603, he entertained
Henry IV., so interested the latter that he vowed to encourage the
colonization of New France. To carry on this work he commissioned,
as his lieutenant-general in Acadia, Pierre du Gua, Sieur de Monts,
governor of Pons, a Huguenot resident at court, and, according to
Champlain, "a gentleman of great respectability, zeal, and honesty." De
Monts' commission is given at length in Baird's _Huguenot Emigration
to America_, vol. i., p. 341; his charter of "La Cadie" embraced the
country between the 40th and 46th degrees of latitude, and he held
therein a monopoly of the fur trade. J. G. Bourinot, in _Canadian
Monthly_, vol. vii., pp. 291, 292, says the name Acadia (also written
Acadie, and La Cadie) "comes from àk[^a]de, which is an affix used
by the Souriquois or MIC Macs ... to signify a place where there is
an abundance of some particular thing."--See, also, Laverdière's
_Oeuvres de Champlain_ (Quebec, 1870), p. 115. In 1604, De Monts
sailed from France with a colony composed of Catholics and Huguenots,
served by "a priest and a minister." Champlain and Poutrincourt were
with the expedition, and Pontgravé commanded one of the two ships.
The cancelling of his monopoly (1607), deprived De Monts of the means
to carry on his colonization schemes. The title to Port Royal he had
already ceded to Poutrincourt. The king renewed De Monts' monopoly
for one year, upon his undertaking to found a colony in the interior.
Thereupon De Monts sent Champlain to the St. Lawrence (1608), as
his lieutenant. Upon the death of Henry IV. (1610), De Monts, now
financially ruined, surrendered his commission, selling his proprietary
rights to the Jesuits.
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