The Other States of America: History Podcast

Founding Quebec will be easier than keeping it. Champlain spends the decade crossing the Atlantic over and over again, in an effort to keep the financing of New France afloat. Champlain enters into an unsavory marriage, chases rumors of the lost Henry Hudson and invades Onondaga the center of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy. 

In our continuing story of Samuel de Champlain, Quebec is finally settled, but keeping control of the trade along the St. Lawrence will require overcoming constant obstacles. The Natives convince Champlain to war with the Iroquois and a conspiracy in Quebec requires Champlain to lay down the law. 

Champlain participates in founding Saint Croix, located in the modern day State of Maine, visits Patuxet the Wampanoag Village and future site of Plymouth and maps the coast of Southern Acadia a decade before it became know as New England. At Port Royal the 100 year old Mi'kmaq Chief Membertou meets the French in his own sail boat and claims to have known Jacques Cartier some seven decades ago.

Champlain sailed the seas, fought in wars, befriended a king, worked as a spy, visited New Spain, envisioned a canal across Panama and became ridiculously wealthy, before ever setting foot in New France. 

After the failed colony of Roberval the sailors of St. Malo and elsewhere continued a clandestine trade with the Natives. The St. Lawrence Iroquois mysteriously disappeared and the Innu at Tadoussac create a monopoly on the furs coming from the interior of the continent. France, enveloped in civil wars has few resources to settle their claim to the region, but when the price of fur skyrockets a few brave souls, and a few unwilling prisoners give it try...

The famished colonists of Fort Caroline were preparing to abandon the colony and return to France, when ships were spotted... 

War is coming, but in the end from whom? Will the Civil Wars of France spill over into French Florida? Will a Timucuan Chiefdom turn on the French? Will the Spanish or English invade? The Huguenots of Fort Caroline are about to play their part in shaping American History in unexpected ways. 

After the 1st expedition to Florida ended in mutiny, murder and cannibalism, the Huguenots suffer through the first French Civil War of Religion. The prospects of Florida proved tempting to both the religious refugee and the opportunist alike. However, their settlement, Fort Caroline is built in the Land of the Timucua a people divided into dozens of warring chiefdoms, and the seas crawling with Spanish war ships, who consider Florida their domain. 

1562, The Huguenots sensing the coming wave of violence against their sect, look for opportunities on the fringes of the Empire. Spanish Florida, boarding the French claim to parts north remained Native and had not one loyal Spanish subject, perhaps it could become part of New France? What's the worse that could happen... 

After five years of war and waiting Cartier is given a commission to plant a colony in the New World, only to be usurped by nobleman named Roberval; a dreaded Huguenot. Both men would search for the mystical Kingdom of Saguenay, The Natives finally attack, a woman is abandoned on an island full of polar bears. The French build their first settlement in North America decades before St. Augustine, Jamestown and Plymouth.

In a time when Spain and Portugal laid claim to the entire non-Christian world, Jacques Cartier plunged himself into the realm of the St. Lawrence Iroquois. Searching for a westward passage he meets the mighty Chief Donnacona, and lies from both men spur a tale of abduction, scurvy, a winter spent frozen in ice, river going monsters, and the rumor of a Golden Kingdom.  

I know i pronounce every name in this episode differently moment to moment, don't give me sass.