when did the first european settlers come to canada
History of Canada In 1604, a North American fur trade monopoly was granted to Pierre Du Gua, Sieur de Mons.[51] The fur trade became one of the main economic ventures in North America.[52] Du Gua led his first colonization expedition to an island located near the mouth of the St. Croix River. Among his lieutenants was a geographer named Samuel de Champlain, who promptly carried out a major exploration of the northeastern coastline of what is now the United States.[51] In the spring of 1605, under Samuel de Champlain, the new St. Croix settlement was moved to Port Royal (today's Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia).[53] Samuel de Champlain also landed at Saint John Harbour on June 24, 1604 (the feast of St. John the Baptist) and is where the city of Saint John, New Brunswick and the Saint John River gets its name.[54]
Navajo Archaeological and historical evidence suggests the Athabaskan ancestors of the Navajos and Apaches entered the Southwest around 1400 CE.[7][8] The Navajo oral tradition is said to retain references of this migration.[citation needed]
Viking Age In about 986, the Norwegian Vikings Bjarni Herj처lfsson, Leif Ericson and 횧처rfinnr Karlsefni from Greenland reached North America, over 500 years before Christopher Columbus, and they attempted to settle the land they called Vinland. They created a small settlement on the northern peninsula of present-day Newfoundland, near L'Anse aux Meadows. Conflict with indigenous peoples and lack of support from Greenland brought the Vinland colony to an end within a few years. The archaeological remains are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[67]
History of Canada With the end of the Seven Years' War and the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763), France ceded almost all of its remaining territory in mainland North America, except for fishing rights off Newfoundland and the two small islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon where its fishermen could dry their fish. France had already secretly ceded its vast Louisiana territory to Spain under the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762) in which King Louis XV of France had given his cousin King Charles III of Spain the entire area of the drainage basin of the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rocky Mountains. France and Spain kept the Treaty of Fontainebleau secret from other countries until 1764.[97] In return for acquiring Canada, Britain returned to France its most important sugar-producing colony, Guadeloupe, which the French at the time considered more valuable than Canada. (Guadeloupe produced more sugar than all the British islands combined, and Voltaire had notoriously dismissed Canada as "Quelques arpents de neige", "A few acres of snow").[98]