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Updated: June 3, 2025
However, this made little or no impression on Cartier; but he consented to leave a proportion of his party behind with the chief Donnacona as hostages, and then started up country in his boats with about seventy picked officers and men. On the 2nd of October, 1535, they reached the vicinity of the modern Montreal, the chief settlement of Hochelaga.
These things were of such import, Cartier thought, that they merited narration to the king of France himself. If Donnacona had actually seen them, it was fitting that he should describe them in the august presence of Francis I. The result was a plot which succeeded. The two ships, the Grande Hermine and the Emerillon, lay at anchor ready to sail.
The hamlet of Stadacone, with its king, Donnacona, and its naked lords and princes, was not the metropolis of this forest state, since a town far greater so the Indians averred stood by the brink of the river, many days' journey above. It was called Hochelaga, and the great river itself, with a wide reach of adjacent country, had borrowed its name.
Accordingly, with a characteristic mixture of caution, subtlety, and conciliation, he allured the principal chief Donnacona, and some of his followers into the fort. There they were seized and carried to the ships, nominally as honored guests, like Montezuma among the followers of Cortez. Cartier then set sail with his captives, and in July reached St. Malo.
The next day being the 17 of September, Donnacona and his company returned euen as at the first, and brought with him many Eeles, with sundry sorts of other fishes, whereof they take great store in the said riuer, as more largely hereafter shall be shewed. And as soone as they were come to our ships, according to their wonted use they beganne to sing and dance.
Our Captaine spake this, onely to assure them, that they should bring Donnacona with them, whom they had left on the other side; which wordes, when Taignoagny heard, hee was very glad, thinking hee should neuer returne into France againe, and therefore promised to come the next day which was the day of the Holy Crosse, and to bring Donnacona and all the people with him. Chap. 18.
He also wished for native witnesses at Court, when he reached France, to testify to the truth of his discoveries, and even more to convince the King of France that there was great profit to be obtained from giving effect to Cartier's explorations. The chief, Donnacona, was full of wonderful stories of the Saguenay region, and of the great lakes to the northwards of Quebec.
Donnacona their Lord desired our Captaine the next day to come and see Canada, which he promised to doe: for the next day being the 13 of the moneth, he with all his Gentlemen and fiftie Mariners very well appointed, went to visite Donnacona and his people, about a league from our ships. The place where they make their abode is called Stadaoona.
When the French explorers entered it, it was a valley of aboriginal, anarchic individualism, with little movable spots of barbaric communistic timocracy, as Plato would doubtless have classified those migratory, predatory kingdoms of the hundreds of red kings, contemporary with King Donnacona, whom Cartier found on the St. Lawrence communities governed by the warlike, restless spirit.
But for all these words our Captaine and Donnacona left not off to speake one to another, and friendly to entertaine one another. The day following we brought our two great shippes within the riuer and harborough, where the waters being at the highest, are three fadome deepe, and at the lowest, but halfe a fadome. We left our Pinnesse without the road to the end we might bring it to Hochelaga.
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