1) "Champlain himself was largely responsible for that [wealth of history but lack of personal information]. He wrote thousands of pages about what he did, but only a few words about who he was. His published works are extraordinary for an extreme reticence about his origins, inner thoughts, private life, and personal feelings. Rarely has an author written so much and revealed so little about himself. These were not casual omissions, but studied silences. Here again, as in the old battle-print, Champlain was hidden by his own hand. He was silent and even secretive about the most fundamental facts of his life. He never mentioned his age. His birth date is uncertain. Little information survives about his family, and not a word about his schooling. He was raised in an age of faith, but we do not know if he was baptized Protestant or Catholic."
2) "Champlain was a cagouillard and always remained so, even as he traveled far from his native place. When he went to the West Indies and Mexico, he described the flora and fauna of the new world in the old langue xaintongeaise. A French botanist who studied the text of Champlain's report on the West Indies concluded that it could only have been written by a man who was a native of Saintonge in the sixteenth century."
3) "Champlain's 'design' grew from Henri's vision of New France. Both men had much in common that way. Both reacted against the horrors they had witnessed during the wars of religion. Both dreamed of a Nouvelle France in North America that combined the best of the old world as they understood it, with an expansive idea of humanity that embraced people different from ourselves. Some dark spirits who are writing history today laugh cynically at such a thought. But these extraordinary Frenchmen who lived four centuries ago had witnessed some of the worst cruelties that human beings ever inflicted on one another. They also knew something else about our condition that others never learned. They had witnessed the good and noble things that people do in bad times, which gave them hope for a better world to come."
4) "The celebration continued through the night. Champlain appears to have had an important asset in these meetings -- a remarkable gift of social stamina. When dawn came, the Indians and French bartered beaver skins and trade goods in a spirit of amity and peace, with the promise of serious commerce to follow. Then they parted. Champlain wrote that Bessabez and his companions went in their direction, and 'we in ours, well pleased to have made the acquaintance of these people.' The next day, Champlain took out his instruments and reckoned the latitude at 45 degrees, 25 minutes north. He was about thirty-seven miles off the mark, not bad for a hard-partying navigator with a traveling astrolabe."
5) "Go then with happiness and follow on the way
Wherever fortune leads you since I foresee the day,
When a prosperous domain you will prepare for France
In this fair new world, and the future will enhance
The glory of De Mons, so too, your name shall ring
Immortal in the reign of Henry—your great and puissant king.
This was the first recorded theatrical production performed in New France. Historian Marcel Trudel quoted a comment by an anonymous contemporary of Champlain: 'When the French founded a colony, the first thing they built was a theater; the English, a counting house; the Spanish, a convent.'"
6) "This was one of the first occasions when a European soldier traveled with a large Indian war party in North America. Champlain studied their ways. He was impressed by the skill with which they improvised forts, but he was troubled by their lack of attention to patrols. He urged them to place sentinels at listening posts, 'to keep watch as they had seen us do every night.' The Indians explained patiently that they had different customs. Their parties normally divided into three groups: one for hunting, another always under arms, and a third scouting ahead for signs 'by which the chiefs of one nation reveal themselves to another.'
On July 14, 1609, they reached the large lake from which the river flowed. Champlain exercised his right to name it Lake Champlain on his map, as he and his two French companions may have been the first Europeans to see it. The Indians had not exaggerated its size and beauty."
7) "If he was surprised by the extent of Huronia, Champlain was amazed by its population. He described the land as 'a well cleared country' and 'well peopled with a countless number of souls.' He tried to count them and came to a rough estimate of thirty thousand inhabitants. He was astonished by the number of towns, and still more by their size and strength. The town of Carhagouha (not the largest) impressed him with its massive triple palisade, thirty-five feet tall, as high as a four-storey building. The Huron villages were surrounded by big cornfields, some larger than a thousand acres. He found bumper crops in the fields, much of them nearly ripe in mid-August. The production of corn exceeded consumption. Champlain observed that the Huron raised crops for export to other Indian nations. He wrote, 'They are covered in the pelts of deer and beaver, which they acquired from Algonquins and Nippissing for Indian corn and meal.' Huronia became the breadbasket of other Indian nations. It also produced an abundance of squashes and sunflowers, plums and small apples, raspberries, strawberries, and nuts."
8) "Champlain sent a reply of elaborate courtesy and complete defiance. It began by praising the king of England and his officers as gentlemen of courage and generosity, and explained that 'were we to surrender a fort and settlement, conditioned as we now are, we should not be worthy of the name of men in the presence of our King.' He told Kirke that the French had lost little at Cap Tourmente and had 'grain, Indian corn, peas and beans, not to mention what this country produces.' Champlain warned, 'honor demands that we fight to the death.' He invited the British commander to visit Quebec, and added, 'I am confident that on seeing and reconnoitering it, you will judge it not so easy of you have on these places, from which I remain, Sir, your affectionate servant, CHAMPLAIN.'"
9) "Often, colonial persistence and dynamic creativity are combined, as in Quebec's unique language of cursing, which draws on the rituals of the old Catholic mass. In a moment of fury a Québécois may say câlice (chalice) or tabarnak (tabernacle). This language of cursing of Quebec is very old and was common in Champlain's France. But it is also very creative, and has been continuously reinvented even to our own time.
The culture of Quebec is a bundle of historical paradoxes. To listen to the speechways of Quebec in the twenty-first century is to hear an echo of Champlain's world. It is also to observe a process of preservation and dynamism that began in Champlain's era, and is the most fundamental key to understanding his legacy in North America."
10) "The coureurs de bois differed much from one another, but all were part of a great historical process that had a long reach in time and space. They followed the western rivers into the Mississippi Valley as far south as Louisiana, always in pursuit of furs and skins, which they gained by trading, hunting, and trapping. In the interior parts of North America, their small camps and trading posts grew into towns and later great cities that honor their memory. They became iconic figures in the cultural identity of North America and were living examples of the mixing and merging of people, in the spirit of Champlain's dream. At the same time they became symbols of other ideas that Champlain did not share—of liberty and freedom on the western frontier.
[...] One traveler, Alexander Ross, met an old voyageur and recorded his memories. 'I have now been forty-two years in this country,' the voyageur recalled. 'For twenty-four I was a light canoeman; I required but little sleep, but sometimes got less than I required. No portage was too long for me; all portages were alike. My end of the canoe never touched the ground till I saw the end of it. Fifty songs a day were nothing to me. I could carry, paddle, walk, and sing with any man I ever saw... over rapids, over cascades, over chutes, all were the same to me. No water, no weather, ever stopped the paddle or the song."
