Review: "Champlain's Dream," David Hackett Fischer

By Paul Carrier

In this exhaustive but highly readable biography, historian David Hackett Fischer convincingly argues that Samuel de Champlain, the founder of the 17th-century Canadian colony of New France, is one of North America's greatest historical figures.

Revered in Quebec but little-known in much of the United States, Champlain left his mark as an explorer, political leader, cartographer, artist, visionary, diplomat, warrior and humanist. He founded French settlements in North America years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, explored and named much of the New England coast and is immortalized by the lake that bears his name.

As Fischer makes clear in Champlain's Dream, one of Champlain's greatest contributions was the respect and empathy that he extended to the Indian tribes with whom the French in Canada formed trading, cultural and military alliances.

In a display of tolerance that was nothing short of remarkable for a man of his times, Champlain encouraged settlers in New France to learn Indian languages and to study the ways of native people by living among them. Although he had a few blind spots regarding some Indian customs and beliefs that he found deficient or objectionable, Champlain openly supported the intermarriage of French settlers and Indians.

That attitude stood in sharp contrast to the hostility toward indigenous people that prevailed in the English and Spanish colonies of North America during the colonial period. As the 19th-century American historian Francis Parkman wrote: "Spanish civilization crushed the Indian. English civilization scorned and neglected him. French civilization embraced and cherished him."

Fischer's well-illustrated biography pays such close attention to detail that it includes appendices on everything from the uncertainty surrounding Champlain's birth date to a look at Indian nations as they existed in Champlain's time. 

As a Franco-American with roots in Quebec, I have long known that some of my ancestors were Champlain's contemporaries in New France. This detailed and meticulous biography of one of the most remarkable men in the history of North America made me all the more proud of those ties. Champlain's Dream features more than 100 pages of notes and a 41-page bibliography. Clearly, Fischer did his homework.