{"id":2338,"date":"2011-11-21T17:20:48","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T21:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/"},"modified":"2012-04-17T12:53:46","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T16:53:46","slug":"the-explorers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/the-explorers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Explorers"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 18th century maps, New France covers an enormous expanse stretching from Hudson\u2019s Bay to the mouth of the Mississippi, and from the shores of Acadia to the Rocky Mountains. \u00a0As the areas settled by the French represented only a minute fraction of this space, there is something misleading here.\u00a0 Yet these maps attest to the prodigious scope of over two hundred years of explorations and claims.<\/p>\n

This section of the Virtual Museum of New France invites you to get to know the Frenchmen who, by turns, pushed back the frontiers of the lands known to Europeans and who made it possible for France to extend its sphere of influence.<\/p>\n

La Verendrye Plaque (front)<\/strong>
This lead tablet was discovered in 1913 in the city of Pierre, in South Dakota. It was buried by Fran\u00e7ois and Louis-Joseph La V\u00e9rendrye on March 30, 1743 to take possession of the territory in the name of Louis XV. This was the westernmost point explored by the French, and it was only 61 years later that the region would be revisited by White people, with the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Museum of the South Dakota State Historical Society, Pierre SD<\/div>\">\"La<\/a>

La Verendrye Plaque (front)<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

From Cartier to the La V\u00e9rendryes, with Champlain and Cavelier de La Salle, readers will retrace the steps of men pushed further and further by the stubborn hope of discovering mineral riches or a navigable passage towards Asia.\u00a0 The Mississippi and the mythical \u201cWestern Sea\u201d would long capture the imagination.<\/p>\n

Journeying in search of distant peoples, with whom they hoped to trade of among whom they wished to establish missions, men such as Des Groseilliers and Marquette laid the foundations of a crucial alliance network.\u00a0 Informed and guided by Aboriginal peoples, these explorers ranged the territory, measured and mapped it, and described its characteristics and those of its occupants.\u00a0 By allowing France and Europe to discover North America, they prepared the way for its eventual colonization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 18th century maps, New France covers an enormous expanse stretching from Hudson\u2019s Bay to the mouth of the Mississippi, and from the shores of Acadia to the Rocky Mountains. \u00a0As the areas settled by the French represented only a minute fraction of this space, there is something misleading here.\u00a0 Yet these maps attest to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":837,"parent":0,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2338"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2341,"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2338\/revisions\/2341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}