Monts, Pierre du Gua, sieur de [key], c.1560–c.1630, French colonizer in North America. A wealthy Huguenot and a favorite of Henry IV, he was the holder of a trade monopoly in New France and the patron of Samuel de Champlain. Monts had visited the St. Lawrence by 1603. In 1604–5 he and Champlain explored the coast of New Brunswick and New England as far south as Cape Cod. He planted the first French colony in Canada at Port Royal (the modern Annapolis Royal, N. S.) in 1605. Leaving it in Champlain's care, he returned to France but sent ships in 1607 and 1608 to aid the colonists. Monts's monopoly of the fur trade was revoked in 1608, and his influence declined after Henry IV's death (1610), but Monts was involved in Canadian trade into the 1620s.
See W. I. Morse, ed., Pierre du Gua, sieur de Monts: Records (1939).
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