Jacques Cartier

Columbus had reached the Caribbean forty years before the voyages of Jacques Cartier. Columbus had set off a series of Spanish expeditions to South America, eventually leading to Vasco Balboa crossing Panama in 1513. While the Spanish were busy conquering the Natives in Northern South America, in the name of the Catholic God, and reaping in their golden successes, the Portuguese were in Southern South America doing the same with Brazil and its people. The Portuguese were also distracted by their monopoly over the Spice Islands route around the Cape of Good Hope, Africa. All the while the English had hired an Italian, John Cabot (1497), to explore North of Spanish occupied America, North America.
It was the French who then decided to go North of the English, following known routes to Newfoundland and then exploring beyond. Under the leadership of Jacques Cartier (1534), the French, it could be said, were successful – they had established their own stronghold in the New World.

Like other explorers, Jacques Cartier was an expert at gaining political and financial support. Unlike the other explorers, we know relatively little about the seagoing tales of his three transatlantic voyages. Cartier documented well, at least his scribes did, and he laid the foundations for the first Aids to Navigation, in the form of documenting the seas (weather, soundings, geology) and establishing markers to safe harbors (crosses). It is unclear if Cartier’s men suffered the same horrible fates as many other sailors did at the time, in the terms of disease and starvations, though it may be safe to guess that the relatively quick crossings of the North Atlantic (never more than two months) allowed for a more comfortable journey. While ashore in Canada, Cartier was also lucky with the Natives, never being attacked and always being welcomed with gifts, food and even medicine. At no point did Cartier’s voyages last through a winter – he was well on his way home before winters approached.
My interest is always to understand in which ways historical figures like Cartier influenced maritime culture, and it is simply not clear in this case. Cartier’s voyages were seemingly safe and incident free. We know that Cartier used his sailors as laborers while on shore and as soldiers when force was needed. Many of Cartier’s sailors suffered from scurvy, and Cartier was given a “cure” by the local natives (under the rule of Donnacona). This medicinal episode was well documented and it shows how the religious attitudes of the day suppressed progress for the conditions of sailors (more below).
After his first voyage, and the successful arrival in Canada and return to France, Cartier wrote the following letter to his king, in a bid to be commissioned for a second voyage. The point I am taking, and making, from my research into Cartier is how he used religious arguments to move forward his own agenda – this we saw in every other great captain-general in the age of exploration, though in Cartier it is inflated and highlighted!

The following is the introduction of a letter Cartier wrote to the King of France, Francis the First, before his second voyage.

To the Most Christian King,

Considering, O my most redoubted Prince, the great benefits and favours it has pleased God, the Creator, to grant to His creatures, and amongst other to place and fix the sun, upon which the lives and existence of all depend, and without which none can bring forth the fruit nor generate, at that place where it is, where it moves and sets in a motion contrary and different from that of the other planets, by which rising and setting all the creatures on earth, no matter where they live, are able in the sun’s year, which is 365 days and six hours, to have as much visual sight of it, the one as the other. Not that its beams and rays are as warm and hot in some places as in others, nor the division of days and nights of like equality everywhere, but it suffices that its heat is of such a nature and so temperate that the whole earth is or may be inhabited, in any zone, climate, or parallel whatsoever, and that these zones, with their waters, trees, plants, and all other creatures of whatever kind or sort they may be, may through the sun’s influence give forth fruit and offspring according to their natures for the life and sustenance of humanity. And should any persons wish to uphold the contrary of the above, by quoting the statements of the wise philosophers of ancient times, who have written that the earth was divided in five zones, three of which they affirmed to be uninhabitable, namely the torrid zone which lies between the two tropics or solstices, on account of the great heat and the reflection of the sun’s rays, which passes over the heads of the inhabitants of that zone, and the artic and antarctic zones, on account of the great cold that exists there, owing to their small elevation above the said sun’s horizon, I confess that they have so written and firmly believe they were of that opinion, which they formed from some natural reasonings whence they drew the basis of their argument, and with these contented themselves without adventure or risking their lives in the dangers they would have incurred had they tried to test their statements by actual experience. But I shall simply reply that the prince of those philosophers left among his writings a brief maxim of great import, to the effect that ‘Experience is the master of all things,’ by which teaching I have dared to set before the eyes of Your Majesty this preface as an introduction to this little work, for the simple mariners of today, not being afraid at your royal command to run the risk of those perils and dangers, as were the ancients, and being desirous of doing you some humble service to the increase of the most holy Christian faith, have convinced themselves by actual experience of the unsoundness of that opinion of the ancient philosophers.

I have set forth the above for the reasons that just as the sun which rises every day in the east and sets in the west, goes round and makes the circuit of the earth, giving light and heat to everyone in twenty-four hours, which is a natural day, without any interruption of its movement and natural course, so I, in my simple understanding, and without being able to give any other reason, am of opinion that it pleases God in His divine goodness that all human beings inhabiting the surface of the globe, just as they have sight and knowledge of the sun, have had and are to have in time to come knowledge of and belief in our holy faith. For first our most holy faith was sown and planted in the Holy Land, which is in Asia to the east of our Europe, and afterward by succession of time it has been carried and proclaimed to us, and at length to the west of our Europe, just like the sun, carrying its like and its heat from east to west, as already set forth. And likewise also, we have seen this most holy faith of ours in the struggle against wicked heretics and false lawmakers here and there sometimes go out and then suddenly shine forth again and exhibit its brightness more clearly than before. And even now at present, we see how the wicked Lutherans, apostates, and imitators of Mahomet from day to day strive to cloud it over and finally out it out altogether, if God and the true members of the same did not guard against this with capital punishment, as one sees daily by the good regulations and order you have instituted throughout your territories and kingdom. Likewise one sees the princes of Christendom and the true pillars of the Catholic church, unlike the above infants of Satan, striving day by day to extend and enlarge the same, as the Catholic king of Spain has done in the countries discovered in the west of his lands, and kingdoms, which before were unknown to us, unexplored and without the pale of our faith, as New Spain, Isabella, the Spanish Main and other islands, where innumerable peoples have been found, who have been baptized and brought over to our most holy faith.[…]

On his second voyage Cartier’s scribe details the account of befriending Donnacona, a leader of a tribe of natives in Canada. Once befriended, by trading iron tools and garments, Cartier used Donnacona’s knowledge to explore the Rivers of that country. Later Cartier had made the decision to take Donnacona back to his king. In order to capture such a savage, as Cartier called all the natives, Cartier tricked Donnacona into coming near his fort (built earlier by sailors), by holding out gifts. The scribe writes that he was “captured,” and “placed in safe custody,” which is a strange way to describe placing a stranger into slavery. After the capture 100s of concerned tribesmen came rowing to Cartier’s ships, to free their leader. Concerned and outnumbered, Cartier swore to Donnacona that he would be treated like a king and would be returned in “12 moons.” Donnacona felt comforted by this and told his men to withdraw and await his return. Donnacona later died in France, a slave ignorant of the trickery.

Before kidnapping the leader of this Canadian tribe, Donnacona offered a “medicinal bark” to the sick men. “Sailors who had been suffering for five or six years from the French pox were by this medicine cured completely.” And even though a seemingly superb medicine had been given to the French by the natives, Cartier gave credit to God, and there is no remaining trace of medicinal bark. Cartier’s ignorance betrayed sailors for centuries, ignoring a medicine that could had saved the sufferings and deaths of 100s of thousands of sailors thereafter.