the tops of cliffs, they lowered in woven baskets the goods they were willing to
swap. Verrazzano’s men, standing in the ship’s boat, then placed in the baskets
what they were willing to give. As the shocked Verrazzano watched, the
Indians concluded their silent trading session with obscene dances and ges-
tures to show that they hated the sailors. Verrazzano made no friends, but he
accomplished his mission.
On the basis of Verrazzano’s trip, France proclaimed that the Atlantic
coast of North America was not La Florida, as the Spaniards had announced,
but the rightful possession of France, Terre Francesca. Probably that gesture
satisfied François I, since, other than putting the name on maps, the French
made no further moves at that time. François’s eyes were glued on Spain, and
it was the then-powerful Ottoman Empire on which he was basing his strat-
egy. A decade later, however, a new opportunity arose in America. The
Vatican, then under the very worldly Pope Paul III, decided that France too
should be given a stake in the New World; the pope ruled that the grand divi-
sion of the world between Spain and Portugal had not covered territories
then not yet discovered. What is now the United States and Canada was
there for the taking. François decided to commission another voyage, and the
French Catholic church offered to help finance it.
This time, the king found a suitable Frenchman, Jacques Cartier, from
the little port of Saint-Malo in Brittany, to lead the expedition. Cartier, the
king was told, was already an experienced mariner who had visited “Brazil
and the New Land.” Legal sanction and finance having been arranged,
Cartier set out in 1534 with two small ships and sixty-one men to explore
the Gulf of the Saint Lawrence. There he found that the Micmac Indians
were already quite familiar with European traders, some of whom he also
met as he made his way west. Deeper into the gulf, on the Gaspé Peninsula,
he encountered a number of Huron Indians from among whom he kid-
napped two to take back to France. So far he had not seen any signs of the
“great quantities of gold” the king had expected. But he reported that there
was hope; on that hope, a new venture was to be mounted the following
year, with a larger group of men in three ships. Again in command, Cartier
determined to find out if the Saint Lawrence was the route to the “South
Sea.” Sailing when he could and rowing when he could not sail, and guided
by the two Hurons, whom he had brought back from France, he went
Fish, Fur, and Piracy 57