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
Spanish conquistador who played an important role in Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca Empire, but is best known for leading the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States, crossing the Mississippi River.
Hernando de Soto
The discoverer of South America, as commander of the fleet with Juan de la Cosa and Amerigo Vespucci (1493-1510).
Alonso de Ojeda
Scottish explorer known for accomplishing the first east to west crossing of America north of Mexico in 1793 (which preceded the more famous Lewis and Clark Expedition by 12 years). The longest river system in Canada is named after him.
Alexander Mackenzie
Spanish explorer known for having crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first European to reach and see the Pacific from the Americas (1513).
Vasco Núñez de Balboa
British explorer who led three voyages to the Pacific. He is known for exploring and charting many islands in the ocean such as Polynesia, New Zealand, The Hawaiian Islands, and the eastern coast of Australia (1768-1779).
James Cook
Spanish conquistador who led the Spanish conquest of Peru. He captured and killed Incan emperor Atahualpa, and claimed the lands for Spain.
Francisco Pizarro
Dutch sailor and explorer who was the second European to land in Australia and the first to reach Western Australia and to leave behind an artifact to record his visit.
Dirk Hartog
French explorer and fur trader in North America who explored the Great Lakes but is best known for a 1682 expedition in which he canoed the Mississippi River from the mouth of the Illinois River to the Gulf of Mexico and claimed the entire Mississippi River basin for France.
René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle
Norse explorer who is credited for being the first European to set foot on American soil (c. 1000).
Leif Erikson
British officer of the Royal Navy best known for his 1791–95 expedition, which explored and charted North America’s northwestern Pacific Coast regions.
George Vancouver
Italian-born French explorer who sailed up the Gabon and Ogoué rivers, who established the French settlement at Mfoa on the Congo, and who was named governor-general of the French Congo (although he was later dismissed for not being exploitative enough of the native population)
Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza
(the French settlement at Mfoa is today known as Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo)
General who raided, captured, and conquered many coastal cities in Asia for the Portuguese Empire.
Afonso de Albuquerque
The first European to travel inland in North America, he claimed the lands he explored for France (1534).
Jacques Cartier
The first European to explore the Congo River and the west coast of Africa, south of the equator (1482-1486).
Diogo Cão
(anglicised as Diogo Cam)
The first Governor of Puerto Rico, he discovered Florida in 1513. He is the first known European to set foot on today’s continental United States (1508-1513).
Juan Ponce de León
The first European to sail around the southernmost tip of Africa, finding the eastern sea route to the Indian Ocean (1488).
Bartolomeu Dias
Scottish physician and missionary who was the first European to cross south-central Africa (during which he named Victoria Falls). Also noted for his obsession with discovering the source of the Nile and his meeting with Henry Morton Stanley.
David Livingstone
British explorer who could communicate in 29 European, Asian and African languages, who translated the Kama Sutra and 1001 Nights for scandalized Victorians, and who disguised himself to experience the Hajj to Mecca. During his African adventures, Somali warlords impaled his face with a spear, leaving an intimidating scar. He searched the source of the Nile and discovered Lake Victoria.
Richard Francis Burton
Conquistador who led the Spanish expedition to explore and conquer the Aztec Empire (1519-1521).
Hernán Cortés
