Champlain attempts to form better relations with…
July 1609 CE
Champlain attempts to form better relations with the local First Nations during the summer of 1609, making alliances with the Wyandot (called Huron by the French) and with Algonquins to the north of the St. Lawrence River, promising to help them in their war against the Iroquois.
Champlain sets off with nine French soldiers and three hundred natives in order to explore the Rivière des Iroquois (now Richelieu River) and becomes the first European to map Lake Champlain.
Having had no encounters with the Iroquois at this point many of the men head back, leaving Champlain with only two Frenchmen and sixty natives.
Champlain and his party encounter a group of Iroquois at Ticonderoga (now Crown Point, New York) on July 2.
A battle begins the next day.
Two hundred Iroquois advance on Champlain's position as a native guide points out the three Iroquois chiefs.
Champlain fires his arquebus and kills two of them with one shot; one of his men kills the third.
The Iroquois turn and flee.
This is to set the tone for French-Iroquois relations for the next one hundred years.
Images
Enlarged detail from the center of the engraving "Deffaite des Yroquois au Lac de Champlain," from Champlain's Voyages (1613). This is the only contemporary likeness of the explorer to survive to the present. It is also a self-portrait.
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