First Contact

 

• Aboriginal people in Canada interacted with Europeans around 1000 CE, where Norse and Scandinavian fishing and logging parties would harvest off the Newfoundland coast
• The first European settlers first arrived on the eastern shores of the continent in the 11th century from Scandinavia – the result of migrating slowly from Europe to Iceland, Greenland, and eventually to the island of Newfoundland.
• Prolonged contact with the rest of Europe came after Europeans established permanent settlements in the 17th and 18th centuries.
• Europeans had heard from returning fishermen about the wealth of resources that the New World offered.
• Attracted by the Grand Banks' teeming cod stocks, European fishermen had already made contact and traded with the Mik'maq and Maliseet peoples of the Eastern seaboard.
• As they returned each summer to fish and dry-cure their catch, these fishermen developed an informal trade system with First Nations, exchanging European goods for furs.
• By the early 1600s the British had established several colonies and begun settlement on a large scale.
• The origins of France's North American empire were the colonies of Acadia in the Maritimes and New France in the St. Lawrence Valley.
• European written accounts generally recorded friendliness of the First Nations, who profited in trade with Europeans.
• Trade strengthened the more organized political entities such as the English alliance with the Iroquois Confederation.
• The Iroquois Confederation was formed in 1142 and brought together five distinct nations in the southern Great Lakes area into "The Great League of Peace"
• For nearly 200 years the Iroquois were a powerful factor in North American colonial policy-making decisions.
• The Iroquois offered political and strategic advantages to the European colonies, but the Iroquois preserved considerable independence.
• Some of their people settled in mission villages along the St. Lawrence River, becoming more closely tied to the French.
• While they participated in French raids on Dutch and later English settlements, where some Mohawk and other Iroquois settled, in general the Iroquois resisted attacking their own peoples.
• Throughout the 16th century, European fleets made almost annual visits to the eastern shores of Canada to cultivate the fishing opportunities.
• The French allied with First Nations north of the St. Lawrence River (the Huron, Algonquin, Odawa and Montagnais) and in Acadia (the Mi'kmaq, Maliseet and Passamaquoddy).