CHAPTER V.

DISCOVERY ALONG THE GREAT LAKES.

BY THE REV. EDWARD D. NEILL, A.B., ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA. Corresponding Member Massachusetts Historical Society; Hon. Vice-President New England Historic

Genealogical Society.

RCHAS in his Pilgrimage quaintly writes, that "the great river Canada hath, like an insatiable merchant, engrossed all these water commodities, so that other streames are in a manner but meere pedlers."

This river of Canada, the Hochelaga of the natives, now known as the St. Lawrence, is the most wonderful of all the streams of North America which find their way into the Atlantic Ocean. Its extreme headwaters are on the elevated plateau of the continent, near the birthplace of the Mississippi, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and the Red River of the North, which empties into Hudson's Bay. Expanding into the interior sea, Lake Superior, after rippling and foaming over the rocks at Sault Ste. Marie it divides into Lake Michigan and Lake Huron; and passing through the latter and Lake St. Claire 2 and Lake Erie, with the energy of an infuriated Titan it dashes itself into foam and mist at Niagara. After recovering composure, it becomes Ontario, the "beautiful lake,"3 and then, hedged in by scenery varied, sublime, and picturesque, and winding through a thousand isles, it becomes the wide and noble river which admits vessels of large burden to the wharves of the cities of Montreal and Quebec; and until lost in the Atlantic, "many islands are before it, offering their good-nature to be mediators between this haughty stream and the angry ocean." The aborigines, who dwelt in rude lodges near its banks, chiefly belonged to the Huron or Algonquin family; and although there were variations in dialect, they found no difficulty in understanding one another, and in their light canoes they made long journeys, on which they exchanged the copper implements and agate arrow-heads of the far West for the shells and commodities of the sea-shore.5

4

1 Purchas, His Pilgrimage, London, 1614, p. 747. [Cf. Professor Shaler's Introduction to P. 751. the present volume. - ED.]

2 Named Ste. Claire, or St. Clare, after a Franciscan nun, but now spelled St. Clair.

3 Ontario, or Skanadario, native name for beautiful lake.

5 [See the note on the Jesuit Relations, following the succeeding chapter, and L. H. Morgan on the Geographical Distribution of the Indians, in the North American Review, vol. cx.

♦ Purchas, His Pilgrimage, London, 1614. p. 33.— Ed.]

Cartier, born at the time that the discoveries of Columbus were being discussed throughout Europe, who had toughened into a daring navigator, sailed in 1535 up the St. Lawrence, giving the river its present name, and on the 2d of October he reached the site now occupied by the city of Montreal. Escorted by wondering and excited savages, he went to the top of the hill behind the Indian village, and listened to descriptions of the country from whence they obtained caignetdaze, or red copper, which was reached by the River Utawas, which then glittered like a silver thread amid the scarlet leaves of the autumnal forest.1 The explorations of the French and English in the western world led the merchants of both countries to seek for its furs, and to hope for a shorter passage through it to "the wealth of Ormus and of Ind." Apsley, a London dealer in beads, playingcards, and gewgaws in the days of Queen Elizabeth, wrote that he expected to live long enough to see a letter in three months carried to China by a route that would be discovered across the American continent, between the forty-third and forty-sixth parallel of north latitude.2 The explorations of Champlain have been sketched in an earlier chapter. To the incentive of the fur-trade a new impulse was added when, in the spring of 1609, some Algonquins visited the trading-post, and one of the chiefs brought from his sack a piece of copper a foot in length, a fine and pure specimen. He said that it came from the banks of a tributary of a great lake, and that it was their custom to melt the copper lumps which they found, and roll them into sheets with stones.

3

It was in 1611, when returning from one of his visits to France, where he had become betrothed to a twelve-year-old maiden, Helen, the daughter of a Huguenot, Nicholas Boullé, secretary of the King's Chamber, that Champlain pushed forward his western occupation by establishing a frontier trading-post where now is the city of Montreal, and arranging for trade with the distant Hurons, who were assembled at Sault St. Louis.

Again in 1615, as we have seen, he extended his observations to Lake Huron, while on his expedition against the Iroquois. With the Hurons he passed the following winter, and visited neighboring tribes, but in the spring of 1616 returned to Quebec; and although nearly twenty years elapsed before his remains were placed in a grave in that city, he appears to have been contented as the discoverer of Lakes Champlain, Huron, and Ontario, and relinquished farther westward exploration to his subordinates.

The fur-trade of Canada produced a class of men hardy, agile, fearless, and in habits approximating to the savage. Inured to toil, the voyageurs arose in the morning, "when it was yet dark," and pushing their birch-bark canoes into the water, swiftly glided away, “like the shade of a cloud on the prairie," and often did not break fast until the sun had been for hours above

1 See chapter ii.; also, a paper on the discovery of copper relics near Brockville, in the Canadian Journal, 1856, pp. 329, 334.

2 Colonial State Papers.

? Chapter iii.

4 [Cf. Parkman's references on the fur-trade, given in his Old Régime in Canada, p. 309. --ED.]

the horizon. Halting for a short period, they partook of their coarse fare, then re-embarking they pursued their voyage to the land of the beaver and buffalo, the woods echoing their chansons until the "shades of night began to fall," when,

"Worn with the long day's march and the chase of the deer and the bison, Stretched themselves on the ground, and slept where the quivering firelight Flashed on their swarthy cheeks, and their forms wrapped up in their blankets.”

Among the pioneers of these wanderers in the American forests was Étienne (Anglicized, Stephen) Brulé, of Champigny. It has been mentioned that he went with Champlain to the Huron villages near Georgian Bay, but did not with his Superior cross Lake Ontario. After three years of roaming, he came back to Montreal, and told Champlain that he had found a river which he descended until it flowed into a sea, the river by some supposed to be the Susquehanna, and the sea Chesapeake Bay.2 While in this declaration he may have depended upon his imagination, yet to him belongs the undisputed honor of being the first white man to give the world a knowledge of the region beyond Lake Huron.

3

Sagard mentions that this bold voyageur, with a Frenchman named Grenolle, made a long journey, and returned with a "lingot" of red copper and with a description of Lake Superior which defined it as very large, requiring nine days to reach its upper extremity, and discharging itself into Lake Huron by a fall, first called Saut de Gaston, afterward Sault Ste. Marie. Upon the surrender of Quebec, in 1629, to the English, Étienne Brulé chose to cast in his lot with the conquerors. During the occupation of nearly three years the English heard many stories of the region of the Great Lakes, and they encouraged the aborigines of the Hudson and Susquehanna to purchase English wares.

The very year that the English occupied Quebec, Ferdinando Gorges and associates, who had employed men to search for a great lake, received a patent for the province of Laconia, and the governor thereof arrived in June, 1630, in the ship "Warwick," at Piscataway, New Hampshire. Early in June, 1632, Captain Henry Fleet, in the "Warwick," visited the Anacostans, whose village stood on the shores of the Potomac where now is seen the lofty dome of the Capitol of the Republic. These Indians told Fleet that they traded with the Canada Indians; and on the 27th of the month, at the Great Falls of the Potomac, he saw two axes of the pattern brought over by the brothers Kyrcke to Quebec.6

About the time Quebec was restored to the French, on the 23d of September, 1633,7 Captain Thomas Young received a commission from the King

of England to make certain explorations in America. The next spring he sailed, and among his officers was a "cosmographer, skilful in mines and trying of metals." Entering Delaware Bay on the 24th of July, 1634, he sailed up the river, which he named Charles, in honor of the King, and by the 1st of September had reached the vicinity of the falls, above Trenton, the capital of New Jersey. In a report from this river, dated the 20th of October, he writes: "I passed up this great river, with purpose to have pursued the discovery thereof till I had found the great lake 2 from which the great river issues, and from thence I have particular reason to believe there doth also issue some branches, one or more, by which I might have passed into that Mediterranean Sea which the Indian relateth to be four days' journey beyond the mountains; but having passed near fifty leagues up the river, I was stopped from further proceedings by a ledge of rocks which crosseth the river."

He then expresses a determination the next summer to build a vessel above the falls, from whence he hoped to find "a way that leadeth into that mediterranean sea,” and from the lake. He continues: “I judge that it cannot be less than one hundred and fifty or two hundred leagues in length to our North Ocean; and from thence I purpose to discover the mouths thereof, which discharge both into the North and South Sea." The same month that Captain Young was exploring the Valley of the Delaware, an expedition left Quebec which was not so barren of results.

3

The year that Étienne Brulé came back from his wandering in the far West, in 1618, Jean Nicolet, the son of poor parents at Cherbourg, came from France, and entered the service of the fur company known as the "Hundred Associates," under Champlain. For several years he lived among the Algonquins of the Ottawa Valley, and traded with the Hurons; and because of his knowledge of the language of these people, he was valued as an interpreter by the trading company. On the 4th day of July, 1634, on his eventful journey to distant nations, he was at Three Rivers, a trading post just begun. Threading his way in a frail canoe among the isles which extend from Georgian Bay to the extremity of Lake Huron, he, through the Straits of Mackinaw, discovered Lake Michigan, and turning southward found its Grand Bay, an inlet of the western shore, and impressive by its length and vastness.

Here were the Gens de Mer, or Ochunkgraw, called by the Algon

1 Rymer's Fœdera, vol. xix.

2 [This lake is shown in De Laet's map of 1630, of which a fac-simile is given in chapter ix. - ED.]

thus call the water of the sea. Therefore these people call themselves 'Ouinipegous,' because they come from the shores of a sea of which we have no knowledge; and we must not call

8 Young's "Voyage," in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., them the Nation of Stinkers, but the 'Nation of ix. 115, 116. the Sea.""

Le Jeune to Vimont, in the Relation of 1640, writes: "Some Frenchmen call them the 'Nation of Stinkers,' because the Algonquin word Ouinipeg signifies 'stinking water.' They

In the Jesuit Relations of 1647-48 is the following: "On its shores [Green Bay] dwell a different people of an unknown language, that is to say, a language neither Algonquin nor Huron.