Samuel de Champlain

Samuel de Champlain (possibly baptized 1574 – 1635) was a French explorer, cartographer and colonial administrator. A mariner's son from La Rochelle or Brouage, he reached North America in 1603 and on 3 July 1608 founded Quebec, base of New France.

He mapped the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes using his own observations and Indigenous information, and allied with the Huron and other nations against the Iroquois from 1609. When the English seized Quebec in 1629 he was taken to France; he returned in 1633 and died there on 25 December 1635.