Champlain Founds Quebec City: France Plants Its Capital in America
Samuel de Champlain arrived with twenty-eight men to build a fur trading post where the St. Lawrence River narrowed. By spring, twenty were dead—scurvy, dysentery, cold. The eight survivors huddled in three wooden buildings they'd named Québec, from the Algonquin word for "where the river narrows." Champlain had picked the spot for defense: 330-foot cliffs made it nearly impossible to attack from water. That death rate—71 percent in one winter—became the foundation of France's North American empire, the only permanent French settlement that lasted.
July 3, 1608
418 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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