when did the first french settlers come to canada
French Canadians The first permanent European settlements in Canada were at Port Royal in 1605 and Quebec City in 1608 as fur trading posts. The territories of New France were Canada, Acadia (later renamed Nova Scotia), and Louisiana. The inhabitants of Canada called themselves the Canadiens, and came mostly from northwestern France.[29] The early inhabitants of Acadia, or Acadiens, came mostly but not exclusively from the Southwestern region of France. Canadien explorers and fur traders would come to be known as coureurs des bois, while those who settled on farms in Canada would come to be known as habitants. Many French Canadians are the descendants of the King's Daughters of this era. Many also are the descendants of mixed French and Algonquin marriages.
New France Thus, it extended from Newfoundland to the Canadian prairies and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, including all the Great Lakes of North America.
Indigenous peoples in Canada The first inhabitants of North America arrived in Canada at least 15,000 years ago, though increasing evidence suggests an even earlier arrival.[40] It is believed the inhabitants entered the Americas pursuing Pleistocene mammals such as the giant beaver, steppe wisent, musk ox, mastodons, woolly mammoths and ancient reindeer (early caribou).[41] One route hypothesized is that people walked south by way of an ice-free corridor on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, and then fanned out across North America before continuing on to South America.[42] The other conjectured route is that they migrated, either on foot or using primitive boats, down the Pacific Coast to the tip of South America, and then crossed the Rockies and Andes.[43] Evidence of the latter has been covered by a sea level rise of hundreds of metres following the last ice age.[44][45]
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]