Geographic Exploration

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Search for the Northwest Passage

In 1497 John Cabot—an Italian navigator sailing in the service of England—reached Newfoundland, the same region visited by the Vikings more than 500 years before. Besides opening up rich new fishing grounds off the North American coast, this and subsequent voyages also provided charts of the unexplored coast. As the shape of the newly discovered New World was being charted out, Northern European powers were keenly interested in finding a navigable route—a Northwest Passage—through North America to Asia.

In the 1520s Italian-French explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed up the Atlantic coast of North America, and, looking for a navigable passage, became the first European to enter what is now New York Bay. The voyages of French explorer Jacques Cartier in the 1530s established that the St. Lawrence River was a means to reach the inner regions of North America. In the 1570s, British navigator Sir Martin Frobisher looked farther north, reaching Baffin Island of northern Canada, but failing to find a passage through. In the early 17th century British navigator Henry Hudson explored the island of Manhattan and what would later be named the Hudson River. On his next voyage, he discovered the passage into what became known as Hudson Bay. Hoping that it would yield the long-sought Northwest Passage, Hudson explored the bay until his crew mutinied and set him adrift to die in the freezing waters.

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Spanish Inland Expeditions

In 1528 Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca led an expedition to explore the Gulf of Mexico coast of North America. The expedition fell apart in what is now Texas, where attacks by Native Americans killed more than half the men. The survivors, including Cabeza de Vaca himself, wandered across Texas and the Rio Grande before finding their way to Spanish Mexico. Cabeza de Vaca’s account spawned legends of the Seven Cities of Cíbola, wealthy Native American cities in the North American interior, which inspired further Spanish explorations. In the early 1540s Spanish conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado reached Cíbola but found only modest Native American settlements. In the 1530s and 1540s Spaniard Hernando de Soto explored what is now the southern United States, becoming possibly the first European to sight the Mississippi River.

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Fur Trade and Exploration

Although Cartier had explored the St. Lawrence in the 1530s, it was not until the early 17th-century expeditions of French explorer Samuel de Champlain that the extent of the fresh-water system now called the Great Lakes, reached via the St. Lawrence, became apparent. This coincided with the rise of the fur trade, as European demand for the fur of North American mammals grew. The fur trade led European powers to establish trading posts in North America. Champlain founded Québec on the bank of the St. Lawrence in 1608. The British established the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1670 and asserted its monopoly over all fur trading in the region.

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The French sought to counter British influence by sending missionaries to the area to convert the native population to Catholicism. In 1672 French missionary Jacques Marquette accompanied explorer Louis Joliet on a journey down the Mississippi River that was forced to turn back at the river’s juncture with the Arkansas River. It was left to French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle to navigate the entire length of the Mississippi in 1682. La Salle claimed the river’s basin for France, naming it Louisiana.

In the late 18th century the Hudson’s Bay Company faced competition from the newly formed North West Company, which sponsored pioneering explorations of the waterways of the vast Canadian interior. In 1789 North West Company explorer Sir Alexander Mackenzie navigated to the Arctic Ocean down what is now called the Mackenzie River. From 1792 to 1793, Mackenzie made the first overland crossing of the continent when he found a route through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific.

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Lewis and Clark Expedition

In 1803 France sold the vast territory of Louisiana to the United States in what is called the Louisiana Purchase. President Thomas Jefferson sent army officers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the new territory. Their remarkable overland journey to the Pacific, known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition, opened up the territory to the imagination of the young country. Over the next decades other American explorers, notably Zebulon Pike and John C. Frémont, further explored the far western United States.

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Finding the Northwest Passage

In the early 19th century the British resumed the search for the long-sought Northwest Passage to Asia through the islands of northern Canada. In 1845 the British Royal Navy mounted a lavish expedition under the command of Sir John Franklin. His large expedition vanished, leading to an intensive decade-long series of rescue expeditions of various nations and sizes. The melancholy memoirs of Franklin’s last days, along with the remains of some of his party, were later found on King William Island. They had frozen to death after their ships became trapped in shifting ice. The massive exploratory effort of the Franklin search had, however, succeeded in filling in most of the remaining blanks on the map of the tortuous maze of islands and ice-choked channels that make up the Canadian archipelago.

British explorer Robert McClure finally proved the existence of the Northwest Passage in the 1850s. McClure’s expedition negotiated much of the passage starting from the Pacific Ocean, but he had to abandon his ship midway. Rescued via the Atlantic route, he and his men completed the Northwest Passage in 1854, but not by a single voyage in a single ship. That had to await the crossing made in a small boat by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen from 1903 to 1906.

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