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History of Montreal


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Archaeological evidence demonstrates that various nomadic First Nations native people occupied the island of Montreal for at least 2,000 years before the arrival of Europeans. By the year AD 1000, they had started to cultivate maize. Within a few hundred years, they had built fortified villages. The Saint Lawrence Iroquoians, a people distinct from the Iroquois nations of the Haudenosauneethen based in present-day New York, established the village of Hochelaga at the foot of Mount Royal centuries before the French arrived. Archeologists have found evidence of their habitation there and at other locations in the valley since at least the 14th century. The French explorer Jacques Cartier visited Hochelagaon October 2, 1535, and estimated the population of the native people at Hochelaga to be "over a thousand people".

Seventy years later, the French explorer Samuel de Champlain reported that the St. Lawrence Iroquoians and their settlements had disappeared altogether from the St. Lawrence valley, possibly due to outmigration, epidemic of European diseases, or intertribal wars. In 1611 Champlain established a fur trading post on the Island of Montreal, on a site initially named La Place Royale. At the confluence of Petite Riviera and St. Lawrence River, it is where present-day Pointe-à-Callière stands. In 1639, Jérôme Le Royer de La Dauversière obtained the Seigneurial title to the Island of Montreal in the name of the Society de Notre-Dame de Montréal to establish a Roman Catholic mission for evangelizing natives. Paul Comedy de Maisonneuve was the governor of the colony, which was established on May 17, 1642. In 1689, the English–allied Iroquois attacked Lachine on the Island of Montreal, committing the worst massacre in the history of New France.

Ville-Marie became a centre for the fur trade and a base for further French exploration in North America. By the early 18th century, theSulpician Order was established there. To encourage French
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