François Gravé (Saint-Malo, November 1560[1] – 1629 or soon after), said Du Pont (or Le Pont, Pontgravé...), was a French navigator (captain on the sea and on the "Big River of Canada"), an early fur trader and explorer in the New World.[2]
Gravé Du Pont is known to have traded furs in the New France, since maybe 1580, surely before 1599, reaching Trois-Rivières in that year. In 1600, he and Pierre de Chauvin de Tonnetuit founded a fur trading post at Tadoussac.
In 1603 he returned there, with the two Montagnais Indians having lived in France for the last year, and accompanied by a new observer, Samuel de Champlain. They met with Begourat and Anadabijou, chiefs of the Montagnais Innu, who summered in the Tadoussac area, and made a strong alliance with them and their nation. That summer, Du Pont went with Champlain exploring the Saint Lawrence River up to the Mont Royal (like Jacques Cartier did in 1535), after which he resumed fur trading, this time for Aymar de Chaste, the new monopoly holder.
In 1604, Gravé Du Pont was in the service of Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons, the new holder of the trading rights. They went, with men only, in Acadia to establish there a French settlement, with Champlain still an observer. In 1605, Du Pont was involved, along with Champlain, relocating the de Mons' colony to Port-Royal from Île-Saint-Croix.
From 1608 to 1629, Du Pont returned to the Saint Lawrence River. He was present in 1608, helping, when Champlain founded, at Quebec City, the other French de Mons' colony in America.