Pierre Le Moyne was born in July 1661 at Fort Ville-Marie (now Montreal), in the French colony of Canada, the third son[1] of Charles le Moyne de Longueuil et de Châteauguay, a native of Dieppe or of Longueuil near Dieppe, Normandy in France and lord of Longueuil in Canada, and of Catherine Thierry [fr] (called Catherine Primot in some sources) from Rouen.

One, Jacques Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène, led French and Indian forces in the Schenectady massacre in present-day New York's Mohawk Valley.

The following summer, when no supplies arrived, d'Iberville left 12 men at the forts and went first south to Quebec and then to France.

In France, he lobbied for the Compagnie and obtained command of Soleil D'Afrique and returned to James Bay in the summer of 1688.

Returning to Quebec, he was caught up in King William's War and sent south to attack the British colonies (see below).

Finding himself outgunned by a larger English ship, he fled south and captured the new HBC base at Fort Severn.

In 1692, he convoyed supply ships from France and harassed English coastal settlements, taking three prizes.

Sending one to Quebec, he led the other two to the aid of the governor of Acadia, Joseph Robineau de Villebon, whom the English were blockading at the mouth of the Saint John River.

He then sailed east to Placentia, the French capital of Newfoundland, and began the Avalon Peninsula Campaign on 1 November.

Before he could consolidate his hold on Newfoundland, he was diverted north to capture York Factory for a second time during the summer of 1697.

In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle was the first European to travel from the Great Lakes down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.

The French began dreaming of building a great empire by linking the Saint Lawrence and Mississippi basins, thereby bottling up the English on the Atlantic coast.

On his return journey, he is said to have stopped at New York City and sold 9,000 furs that coureurs des bois had given him, in preference to hauling them back to Montreal.

This story illustrates the benefits of the future New Orleans area as a port, the size of the French presence on the Mississippi at this early date, and d'Iberville's questionable business practices.

[6] He went to Havana, where he was involved in planning an expedition against Charles Town, Carolina (an English colonial settlement), when he died suddenly, perhaps of yellow fever, in July, 1706.

D'Iberville was buried at Church of San Cristóbal (Havana Cathedral); the burial records identify him under his French name, and as El General Dom Pedro Berbila.

His widow, Marie Thérèse Pollet (1672–1740) was forced to pay back a large part of her inheritance.