Born into a family of sailors, Champlain began exploring North America in 1603, under the guidance of his uncle, François Gravé Du Pont. After 1603, Champlain's life and career consolidated into the path he would follow for the rest of his life. From 1604 to 1607, he participated in the exploration and settlement of the first permanent European settlement north of Florida, Port Royal, Acadia (1605), as well as the first European settlement that would become Saint John, New Brunswick (1604). In 1608, he established the French settlement that is now Quebec City. Champlain was the first European to describe the Great Lakes, and published maps of his journeys and accounts of what he learned from the natives and the French living among the Natives. He formed long time relationships with local Montagnais and Innu, and, later, with others farther west—tribes of the (Ottawa River, Lake Nipissing, and Georgian Bay), and with Algonquin and Wendat; he also agreed to provide assistance in the Beaver Wars against the Iroquois. Late in the year of 1615, Champlain returned to the Wendat and stayed with them over the winter, which permitted him to make the first ethnographic observations of this important nation, the events of which form the bulk of his book "Voyages et Descovvertvres faites en la Novvelle France, depuis l’année 1615" published in 1619.