An important figure in Canadian history, Champlain created the first accurate coastal map during his explorations and founded various colonial settlements.

Born into a family of sailors, Champlain began exploring North America in 1603, under the guidance of his uncle, François Gravé Du Pont.

He formed long time relationships with local Montagnais and Innu, and, later, with others farther west—tribes of the Ottawa River, Lake Nipissing, and Georgian Bay, and with Algonquin and Wendat.

Late in the year of 1615, Champlain returned to the Wendat and stayed with them over the winter, which permitted him to make the first ethnographic observations of this important nation, the events of which form the bulk of his book Voyages et Découvertes faites en la Nouvelle France, depuis l'année 1615 published in 1619.

[6] In 1620, Louis XIII of France ordered Champlain to cease exploration, return to Quebec, and devote himself to the administration of the country.

Many places, streets, and structures in northeastern North America today bear his name, most notably Lake Champlain.

As each French fleet had to assure its own defense at sea, Champlain sought to learn to fight with the firearms of his time: he acquired this practical knowledge when serving with the army of King Henry IV during the later stages of France's religious wars in Brittany from 1594 or 1595 to 1598, beginning as a quartermaster responsible for the feeding and care of horses.

[13] In year 3, his uncle-in-law, a navigator whose ship Saint-Julien was to transport Spanish troops to Cádiz under the Treaty of Vervins, allowed Champlain to accompany him.

[Note 8] On Champlain's return to Cádiz in August 1600, his uncle Guillermo Elena (Guillaume Allene),[16] who had fallen ill, asked him to look after his business affairs.

[17] This inheritance, combined with the king's annual pension, gave the young explorer a great deal of independence, as he did not need to rely on the financial backing of merchants and other investors.

He learned much about North America from the fishermen that seasonally traveled to coastal areas from Nantucket to Newfoundland to capitalize on the rich fishing grounds there.

[20] Champlain's first trip to North America was as an observer on a fur-trading expedition led by François Gravé Du Pont.

Du Pont was a navigator and merchant who had been a ship's captain on Chauvin's expedition, and with whom Champlain established a firm lifelong friendship.

This trip, once again an exploratory journey without women and children, lasted several years, and focused on areas south of the St. Lawrence River, in what later became known as Acadia.

It was led by Pierre Dugua de Mons, a noble and Protestant merchant who had been given a fur trading monopoly in New France by the king.

Champlain had a young man deliver Du Val, along with 3 co-conspirators, two bottles of wine and invite the four worthies to an event on board a boat.

He made alliances with the Wendat (called Huron by the French) and with the Algonquin, the Montagnais and the Etchemin, who lived in the area of the St. Lawrence River.

In a battle that began the next day, two hundred and fifty Haudenosaunee advanced on Champlain's position, and one of his guides pointed out the three chiefs.

[24] One route Champlain may have chosen to improve his access to the court of the regent was his decision to enter into marriage with the twelve-year-old Hélène Boullé.

Champlain set out on May 27 to continue his exploration of the Huron country and in hopes of finding the "northern sea" he had heard about (probably Hudson Bay).

[28] It was in June that he met with Tessouat, the Algonquin chief of Allumettes Island, and offered to build the tribe a fort if they were to move from the area they occupied, with its poor soil, to the locality of the Lachine Rapids.

[35] On 1 September 1615, at Cahiagué (a Wendat community on what is now called Lake Simcoe), he and the northern tribes started a military expedition against the Iroquois.

During his stay, he set off with them in their great deer hunt, during which he became lost and was forced to wander for three days living off game and sleeping under trees until he met up with a band of First Nations people by chance.

[41] By the spring of 1629 supplies were dangerously low and Champlain was forced to send people to Gaspé and into Indian communities to conserve rations.

[43] Many colonists were transported first to England and then to France by the Kirkes, but Champlain remained in London to begin the process of regaining the colony.

Despite this lack of formal status, many colonists, French merchants, and Indians treated him as if he had the title; writings survive in which he is referred to as "our governor".

[citation needed] Although his will (drafted on 17 November 1635) gave much of his French property to his wife Hélène Boullé, he made significant bequests to the Catholic missions and to individuals in the colony of Quebec.

[49][50][51] Samuel de Champlain was temporarily buried in the church while a standalone chapel was built to hold his remains in the upper part of the city.

[54] Many sites and landmarks have been named to honour Champlain, who was a prominent figure in many parts of Acadia, Ontario, Quebec, New York, and Vermont.

Lake Champlain, which straddles the border between northern New York and Vermont, extending slightly across the border into Canada, was named by him, in 1609, when he led an expedition along the Richelieu River, exploring a long, narrow lake situated between the Green Mountains of present-day Vermont and the Adirondack Mountains of present-day New York.