page_title: St. Lawrence Iroquoians
section_title: European contacts
hierarchical_section_title: St. Lawrence Iroquoians / European contacts
caption_attribution_description: English: Jacques Cartier at Hochelaga Français&#160;: Jacques Cartier à Hochelaga
context_page_description: The St. Lawrence Iroquoians were an Indigenous people who existed from the 14th century to about 1580. They concentrated along the shores of the St. Lawrence River in present-day Quebec and Ontario, Canada, and in the American states of New York and northernmost Vermont. They spoke Laurentian languages, a branch of the Iroquoian family.
  The Pointe-à-Callière Museum estimated their numbers as 120,000 people in 25 nations occupying an area of 230,000 square kilometres. However, many scholars believe that estimate of the number of St. Lawrence Iroquoians and the area they controlled is too expansive. The current archaeological evidence indicates that the largest known village had a population of about 1,000 and their total population was 8,000–10,000. The traditional view is that they disappeared because of late 16th-century warfare by the Mohawk nation of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois League, which wanted to control trade with Europeans in the valley.
  Knowledge about the St.
context_section_description: Breton, Basque, and English fishermen may have come into contact with the St. Lawrence Iroquoians early in the 16th century.  French navigator Thomas Aubert visited the area in 1508 and sailed 80 leagues, perhaps 350 kilometres (220 mi), through the Gulf of St Lawrence and into the St. Lawrence River.  He took back to France seven natives, possibly Iroquoians, who he captured during his voyage.
  Jacques Cartier was the first European definitively known to have come in contact with the St. Lawrence Iroquoians.  In July 1534, during his first voyage to the Americas, Cartier met a group of more that 200 Iroquoians, men, women, and children, camped on the north shore of Gaspe Bay in the Gulf of St Lawrence. They had traveled in 40 canoes to Gaspé to fish for Atlantic mackerel which abounded in the area. They were more than 600 kilometres (370 mi) from their home of Stadacona, on the site of present day Quebec City. The Stadaconians met the French "very familiarly" probably indicating previous trading contacts with Europeans.
  In his follow-up expedition of 1535 and 1536, Cartier visited several Iroquoian villages north of Île d'Orléans (near present-day Quebec), including the villages of Stadacona and Hochelaga in the vicinity of modern-day Montreal. Archaeologists in the 20th century have unearthed similar villages further southwest, near the eastern end of Lake Ontario and are finding evidence of additional discrete groups of St. Lawrence Iroquoians.
  At just about the period Jacques Cartier contacted them, Basque whalers started to frequent the area in yearly campaigns (peaking at around 1570–80), holding friendly commercial relations with Saint Lawrence Iroquoians and other natives. The Basques referred to them as Canaleses, probably derived from the Iroquoian word "kanata" which means settlement or village. Basques and American natives of the Labrador-Saint Lawrence area developed a simplified language for the mutual understanding, but it shows a strong Mi'kmaq imprint.
caption: Jacques Cartier at Hochelaga.
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