Stadacona

Stadacona was a St Lawrence Iroquoian village near the confluence of the St Charles and the great river, in the country where Québec would later rise. Its inhabitants cultivated crops and travelled the river in canoes. Their word kanata, meaning a village or settlement, gave the French the name Canada for the surrounding country. Donnacona was one of the village's chiefs when the first French ships sailed upriver.

In 1535 Jacques Cartier returned with Donnacona's sons, whom he had taken to France the previous year. His men spent the winter nearby; scurvy killed twenty-five of them before they learned of an Indigenous remedy made from a tree called annedda. In May 1536 Cartier seized Donnacona, his sons and other inhabitants and carried them to France. Donnacona died there, probably in 1539. Cartier returned in 1541 without him, and the French attempt to establish a colony farther upriver soon failed. By the time Samuel de Champlain founded Québec in 1608, the Iroquoian communities Cartier had met were no longer living there as before.