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About A.D 1000, Vikings from Iceland and Greenland became the first known Europoeans to reach North America.The Vikings, led by Leif Erikson, landed somewhere on the northeast coast, a region the explorer called Vinland. The vikings established a colony in Vinlans, but they lived there only a short time.
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Lasting Contact between Europe and America began with the voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Columbus sailed west from Spain to find a short sea route to the Indies, as Europeans called Eastern Asia. This region was known for its jewels, silks, spices and other luxery goods. When Columbus landed in America, he thought he had landed in the Indies.
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He Hired him to cross the Atlantic Ocean in search of a shorter route to Asia than the one Columbus had taken. No one knows exactly where Cabot landed.
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Cartier sailed to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He landed on the Gaspe Peninsula and claimed it for France.
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He sailed up the St. Lawrence River to the site of the present day Montreal.
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On his third visit Cartier joined a french Expedition that hoped to establish a permantent settlement in Canada, but only lasted untill 1543.
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King Henry IV of France completed plans to organize the fur trade and to set up a colony in Canada. The next year, a French explorer named Pierre du Gua, Sieur de Monts, led a small group of settlers to a site near the mouth of the St. Coix River. This is on the border between what are now New Brunswick and Maine.
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In 1605, the settlers left the spot near the mouth of the St.Croix River and founded Port-Royal. The French called their colony Acadia.
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He named the village Quebec. Champlain made friends with the Algonquin and Huron Indians living nearby and began to trade with them for furs.
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An Enlgish sea captain, Henry Hudson sailed into the hudson bay in his search for the passage. England later based its claim tio the vast Hudon Bay region on this voyage.
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English forces captired the town of Quebec. The French regained the town in 1632
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He sent troops to Canada to fight the Iroquois and appointed administrators to govern and devlop the colony.
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The boundries of New France expanded rapidly to the west and south after Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, became the govenor in 1672.
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Louis Jolliet, a French Canadian fur trader, and Jaques Marquette, a French Missonary, sailed down then Missisippi River to its junction with the Arkansas River. The French soon built forts and fur trading posts along the Great Lakes and along the Illoinois and Missisippi Rivers.
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Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, reached the mouth of the Missisippi at the Gulf of Mexico. He claimed all the land drained by the river and its branches for france
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The first of three wars between the French and English colonists broke out in Europe before spreading to America. These wars in America were king Williams War (1689-1679), Queen Anne's War (1702- 1713), and King George's War (1744-1748). Only after the second war did either side gain territory. In 1713, under the Treaty of Utrecht, France gave the United Kingdom Newfoundland, the mainland Nova Scotia region of Acadia, and the Hudson Bay territory.
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During hunting, buffalo herds were driven into pounds or corrals and killed, or were stampeded over steep cliffs while acquisition of the horse greatly facilitated buffalo hunting, muzzle loading guns proved inferior to bow and arrows, which were given up only after shorter breechloaders were introduced by the 1860's
