Samuel de Champlain

Four centuries ago Europeans were celebrating an unprecedented age of social development and scientific advance established by their recent Renaissance. Early French explorers in North America took the view that the local inhabitants they found here could be useful allies for their knowledge of the…

<p><span class="deck">Etienne Brulé was one of the great explorers—the first white man to see Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Superior, and the first to set foot in Michigan. Why have you never heard of him?</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">New York Indians discover Henry Hudson and his crew in 1765.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">The journeys 400 years ago of a French and Dutch explorer would forever alter the history of North America.</span></p>

<p>A soldier-humanist fights a war for peace in North America.</p>

<p>As much as nine-tenths of the indigenous population of the Americas died in less than a generation from European pathogens.</p>