The Young Englishman

In 1612, Samuel de Champlain was in France when he learned some startling news. A youthful employee, Nicolas de Vignau, had been sent to live with an Algonquin tribe far up the Ottawa River. He had now crossed the Atlantic to inform Champlain that he had travelled with his hosts to a northern sea, where he had seen the wreck of a small English boat and been shown the scalps of those in it. All had been killed except a boy who had been passed on to a neighbouring tribe. This tribe, said Vignau, was now willing to present the boy to Champlain to cement an alliance with the French.

Champlain was intrigued, aware that scant months earlier the ship of English explorer Henry Hudson had returned to London reporting its discovery of a vast bay on the northern edge of the Americas. There had also been news of mutiny: seven crew members as well as the captain and his young son had been cast off in a small shallop somewhere in the bay. Mustn’t this be the boy Vignau was...