Stadacona

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Stadacona ( French Stadaconé ) was a village of the Saint Lawrence Iroquois in the first half of the 16th century. It had a population of over 500 and was located in what is now the Canadian city ​​of Québec , on the banks of the Rivière Saint-Charles . The area surrounding the former village is now a city park and classified as a national historical site .

history

The French navigator Jacques Cartier explored the Saint Lawrence River in 1535 with three ships and a crew of 110 . He was looking for a north-west passage that would lead him to the riches of Asia . On September 7th, the ships reached what is now the city and turned into the tributary Rivière Saint-Charles . They anchored about two kilometers inland near the mouth of the Rivière Lairet (today a predominantly underground stream). There was the village of Stadacona, which had between 500 and 800 inhabitants. It consisted of several long houses , each with space for about 40 people. The inhabitants lived from hunting and fishing, and they also grew corn , pumpkins and beans . The location at that time may only have been the last known, as the Saint Lawrence Iroquois had the habit of dismantling their villages and rebuilding them at another location when the soil fertility declined. The head of the village was Donnacona , whom Cartier had met a year earlier in the Bay of Gaspé .

Cartier sailed on up the Saint Lawrence River to the Île de Montréal and returned to Stadacona in October 1535 to hibernate. Part of the crew had stayed there to build a camp on the opposite bank of the Rivière Saint-Charles, surrounded by stakes. Relations between the French and the Iroquois have been shaped by mutual distrust over time. During the very harsh winter, almost the entire crew fell ill with scurvy , 25 of the men died. The Iroquois, who also suffered from the disease, gave the French a hot brew from Annedda . These were probably needles from the western thuja . Before leaving for France in May 1536, Cartier had Donnacona kidnapped, who died there three years later.

In 1541 Cartier returned to New France with five ships and 350 settlers . He was given the task of founding a colony near Stadacona. Due to hostilities with the locals, the project could not be carried out at the intended location. As a replacement location, Cartier chose the mouth of the Rivière du Cap Rouge , a few kilometers away , where Charlesbourg-Royal was founded. But after only two years this settlement had to be abandoned. For more than six decades there were no more French colonization efforts. When Samuel de Champlain followed Cartier's footsteps in 1603, Stadacona could no longer be found and the Saint Lawrence Iroquois had disappeared without a trace. Conflicts with neighboring Iroquois tribes, the effects of epidemics brought in by Europeans or a migration towards the Great Lakes are blamed for their disappearance . The former is considered the most likely.

Aftermath

The country name Canada comes from Laurentian , the language of the Saint Lawrence Iroquois in Stadacona and the rest of the Saint Lawrence Lowland. In this language the word kanata meant "village" or rather "settlement". Another contemporary translation was "accumulation of dwellings". Laurentisch was closely related to other languages ​​of the Iroquois language family : in the modern Mohawk, for example, the word kaná: ta means "(small) town". Jacques Cartier transcribed kanata to Canada . He was the first to use this word to refer not only to the village of Stadacona, but also to the wider area around the St. Lawrence River. From 1547, maps designated the entire area north of the river as Canada.

The Cartier-Brébeuf National Historic Site has existed since 1958 and is managed by Parks Canada .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Marcel Trudel: Jacques Cartier . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
  2. ↑ Québec ... (avant 1608). (No longer available online.) City of Québec, 2014, archived from the original on October 6, 2014 ; Retrieved October 1, 2014 (French). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ville.quebec.qc.ca
  3. ↑ Marcel Trudel: Donnacona . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
  4. ^ William F. Johnston: Northern White Cedar. USDA Forest Service, accessed October 1, 2014 .
  5. ^ Raymond L'Italy: Colonies et empires - lieux de fondation. In: Musée virtuel de la Nouvelle-France. Canada's National Museum of History and Society , accessed October 1, 2014 (French).
  6. ↑ Bruce Trigger : The Disappearance of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians . In: The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 . McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal 1976, ISBN 0-7735-0627-6 , pp. 214-228 .
  7. ↑ a b Origine du nom - Canada. Patrimoine Canada, June 19, 2013, accessed October 1, 2014 (French).
  8. ^ Alan Rayburn: Naming Canada: stories about Canadian place names . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2001, ISBN 0-8020-8293-9 , pp. 13 .
  9. ^ Marianne Mithun: The Languages ​​of Native North America . Cambridge University Press , Cambridge 1999, ISBN 0-521-29875-X , pp. 312 .

Coordinates: 46 ° 49 ′ 28 "  N , 71 ° 14 ′ 36.4"  W.