European Explorers Flashcards
“The Father of New France” who founded the first permanent European settlements in Canada, and explored many lakes and rivers in the interior lands from early age to his death (1603-1635).
Samuel de Champlain
English privateer who plundered many Spanish towns and ships in the Caribbean and elsewhere. However, he is most notable for completing the second circumnavigation of the world (1577-1580).
Francis Drake
Scottish-Canadian fur trader and explorer, employed by the North West Company, who charted much of what is now British Columbia and built the first European settlement in B.C.
Simon Fraser
English explorer who explored what is now New York and northeastern Canada. In 1611, after wintering on the shore of James Bay, he wanted to press on to the west, but most of his crew mutinied and cast him (and his son and seven others) adrift, never to be seen again.
Henry Hudson
Spanish conquistador and explorer who led a large expedition from Mexico to present-day Kansas 1540-1542 in search of the “Cities of Cíbola.” His expedition marked the first European sightings of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River.
Francisco Vázquez de Coronado
British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer who disappeared while on his last expedition, attempting to chart and navigate the Northwest Passage (prompting further exploration to search for him).
John Franklin
The French botanist who became the first woman to sail around the world after she disguised herself as a man and enlisted as a valet of naturalist Philibert Commercon on the ship of Captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville.
Jeanne Baret
English fur trader employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company who was the first European to reach the Saskatchewan River and the Canadian prairies as well as the first to leave a description of the grizzly bear and bison.
Henry Kelsey
Italian navigator who was the first European to sail along to North American coast since the Norse 500 years prior (1497).
John Cabot
Italian explorer known for “discovering” America (1492).
Christopher Columbus
The first European explorer to journey beyond the St. Lawrence River into what is now known as Canada. He spent much of his early life among the Huron and later became an interpreter and guide for Samuel de Champlain. He is thought to have preceded Champlain to the Great Lakes, reuniting with him upon Champlain’s first arrival at Lake Huron.
Étienne Brûlé
Dutch explorer who was the first known European to sight the islands of Tasmania, New Zealand, and Fiji (1642-1643).
Abel Tasman
Explorer who discovered the land that is now Brazil and claimed it for Portugal (1500).
Pedro Alvares Cabral
Baltic German leader of a circumnavigation expedition that discovered the continent of Antarctica (1820).
Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen
Portuguese explorer who led the first circumnavigation of the globe (1519-1521), although he was killed in the Philippines.
Ferdinand Magellan
Basque explorer who took command after Magellan’s death and completed the voyage, becoming the first person to circumnavigate the earth (1521-1522).
Juan Sebastián Elcano
Danish cartographer who was an officer in the Russian Navy and led the First Kamchatka Expedition (to confirm the existence of the strait between Asia and Alaska) and the Great Northern Expedition.
Vitus Bering
Italian explorer who traveled to the far east and back to Venice. He is noted for making detailed chronicles of his travels (1271-1295)
Marco Polo
Italian navigator known for convincing the Europeans that the New World was not Asia, but an entirely new unknown continent. This new continent was soon named after him.
Amerigo Vespucci
Norwegian settler in Iceland who was reportedly the first European to sight Greenland
Gunnbjörn Ulfsson
English navigator primarily known for his attempt to discover a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, during the course of which he was the first European to discover the marginal sea between Greenland and Canada.
William Baffin
(the marginal sea between Canada and Greenland is Baffin Bay)
Italian explorer (in the service of France) renowned as the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America between Florida and New Brunswick in 1524.
Giovanni da Verrazzano
Portuguese explorer known for being the first European to sail to India (1497-1498).
Vasco da Gama
British-Canadian fur trader, surveyor, and cartographer, known to some native peoples as Koo-Koo-Sint or “the Stargazer”. He traveled some 90,000 km across North America, mapping 4.9 million square km.
David Thompson