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5. Early References



Champlain and Brule are two names of surpassing interest in their relation to Niagara. The first unquestionably heads the long list of Authors who have ever written about our Waterfall; the other probably heads the infinitely longer list--comprising many millions--of those pale-faces who have ever visited our Cataract.

PETER KALM'S VIEW OF NIAGARA--1751

That first reference to Niagara in all Literature is found in that of France, in 1603, when Samuel de Champlain, the subsequent founder of Quebec, the first Governor-General of New France,--and still the most picturesque figure in all Canadian history,--narrated, in his now excessively rare pamphlet, "Des Sauvages" (of which only about half-a-dozen copies are known to exist), what the Indians on the St. Lawrence River told him about this waterfall (for he himself never saw Niagara), in these words:

"Then they come to a lake [Ontario] some eighty leagues long, with a great many Islands [the Thousand Islands], the water at its extremity being fresh and the winter mild. At the end of this lake they pass a fall [Niagara] somewhat high, where there is quite a little water which falls down. There they carry their canoes overland for about a quarter of a league, in order to pass the fall; afterwards entering another lake [Erie] some sixty leagues long and containing very good water."

In the same volume Champlain records that another savage told him,--

"That the water at the western end of the lake [Ontario] was perfectly salt; that there was a fall about a league wide, where a very large mass of water falls into said lake."

It was not the wonders nor the beauty of the Cataract that impressed itself upon the minds of those savages, and that led them to furnish to Champlain--and so to the white man's world--the very first knowledge of the existence of Niagara. No! What most impressed the Cataract upon the minds of those Aborigines was the fact that at this point, the Falls themselves, together with the Rapids for a short distance above them, and for a long distance below them, were an insuperable obstacle to water--that is, canoe--navigation; that here they were obliged to make a long "portage." It was the only break in an otherwise uninterrupted water travel of hundreds of miles; which, going westward, extended from a point on the St. Lawrence, many miles east of the outlet of Lake Ontario, clear to the farthest end of Lake Superior; and which, coming eastward, extended nearly 1,500 miles, from where the City of Duluth now stands even until it reached the bitter waters of the Atlantic Ocean in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence.

In the same volume, "Des Sauvages," appeared a poem by one "La Franchise," addressed to Champlain, in which mention is made of the "Saults Mocosans" or Mocosan Falls, "which shock the eyes of those who dare to look upon that unparalleled downpour."

Mocosa was the name of that territory vaguely called Virginia, and which seems to have embraced everything from New York to Florida, extending indefinitely to the west and northwest. The allusion is generally considered to refer to Niagara; thus making Niagara's appearance in Poetry cotemporaneous with its appearance in prose.

In 1609, Lescarbot published his "Histoire de la Nouvelle France," wherein he quotes extensively (including the references to Niagara) from Champlain; the work being reissued in several editions in subsequent years. And in 1610, Lescarbot, who was a great admirer of Champlain (he may himself have been "La Franchise"), produced a poem, wherein he speaks of the "great falls" which the Indians encounter in going up the St. Lawrence, from below the present site of Montreal, "jusqu'au voisinage de la Virginia"; which, under the above-noted boundaries of Virginia, has been stretched in imagination to include Niagara, but more likely meant the Rapids of the St. Lawrence.

Champlain, in the map which he made in 1612, notes a "waterfall," but places it at the Lake Ontario end of the river; still it is clearly meant for Niagara.

Early references to this Niagara Region--which up to about the middle of the 17th Century was owned and occupied by the Neuters, and after that time by their conquerors and annihilators, the Senecas--are to be found in that wonderful series of Reports made by the Catholic Missionaries in Canada to their Superiors in France, during a large part of the 17th Century, and known as the "Jesuit Relations."

From them we learn that Father Daillon was among the Neutrals, and "on the Iroquois Frontier" (which was east of the Niagara River, somewhere about midway between that and the Genesee River), in 1626.

In a letter, dated at Tonachin, a Huron village, 18th July, 1627, Father Daillon told of his visit to the Neuters the year before. In it he wrote:

"I have always seen them constant in their resolution to go with at least four canoes to the trade, if I would guide them, the whole difficulty being that we did not know the way. Yroquet, an Indian known in those countries, who had come there with twenty of his men hunting for beaver, and who took fully five hundred, would never give us any mark to know the mouth of the river. He and several Hurons assured us well that it was only ten days journey [from the Huron Country] to the trading place; but we were afraid of taking one river for another and losing our way, or dying of hunger on the land."

The above quotation, which was given in Sagard, 1636, was omitted from Daillon's letter by Le Clercq in his "Premier Établissement de la Foi," 1691. In his translation of the latter work, John Gilmary Shea, in a note concerning this very passage, says:

"This was evidently the Niagara River and the route through Lake Ontario," and he adds: "The omission of the passage by Le Clercq was evidently caused by the allusion to trade."

That omission was doubtless at the instance of the French Government, whose permission was then a necessity before any book could be published. That Government knew the importance and the advantages of Niagara, both as a strategic point and as a Center of Trade. Only four years before Le Clercq's book appeared a French army, under De Denonville, had built a fort there; but the hostility of the Iroquois (incited by British agents) had forced its abandonment a year later. Anxious to again possess it, planning now to do so by diplomacy rather than by arms, the French Government would naturally have objected to any published allusion to the locality as a point of Trade,--which could in no way have aided its designs, but by further calling Britain's attention to Niagara's importance, would naturally cause her agents to be still further vigilant toward frustrating any move of France for the control thereof.

In the same letter Daillon says:

"But the Hurons having discovered that I talked of leading them [the Neutrals] to the trade, he [Yroquet] spread in all the villages when he passed, very bad reports about me * * * in a word, the Hurons told them so much evil of us [the French] to prevent their going to trade * * * adding a thousand other absurdities to make us hated by them, and prevent their trading with us; so that they might have the trade with these nations themselves exclusively, which is very profitable to them."

Yroquet, who was Champlain's friend, as before mentioned, being a close ally of the Hurons, evidently had no desire for a Frenchman to open trade directly with the Iroquois--the sworn foes of the Hurons--and thus to divert any of the trade which he carried on with the French in the Huron Country.

So the first white man known to have been on the Niagara River (in 1626) wrote about it as a "trading place." It clearly was regarded in that light, at that time, both by the Neutrals and by the Hurons; those being the only two tribes which Father Daillon had visited. And if it was so known to the tribes on the west and northwest, there was no reason why it should not have been so known--and it no doubt was so known--to the tribes to the south, to the east, and to the west.

On his map, in 1632, Champlain continues his location of the Cataract at the point where the river enters Lake Ontario; and marks it, "Falls at the extremity of Lake St. Louis [Ontario] very high, where many fish come down and are stunned."

NIAGARA IN 1759, BY THOMAS DAVIES

In 1640, Fathers Brebeuf and Chaumonot, on their famous Mission to the Neutrals, crossed the Niagara River at Onguiaahra, a village of that Nation, which stood on the site of the present Lewiston. They probably never saw the Falls; their visit being filled with danger, hunger, and threats of their destruction by the very savages whose souls they were trying to save. Father L'Allement, their Superior, in his account of their Mission, in the Jesuit Relation of 1642, speaks merely of "the village Onguiaahra, of the same name as the river."

Another passage in his letter says,--

"Many of our Frenchmen, who have been here in the Huron Country, in the past made journeys in this Country of the Neutral Nation, for the sake of reaping profit and advantage from furs, and other little wares that one might look for."

And in all probability some of those Frenchmen had reached the Niagara River, in their trade with the Neutrals, before Father Daillon crossed its stream.

Niagara was then, as it is now, the geographical center of the eastern one-third of North America; it was the center of population among the many and widely distributed Indian Tribes; it was the most accessible, the most easily reached place, from all directions, in America. Indian trails led toward it from all points of the compass; it was easily accessible by water from every quarter--and, by canoe, was the Indians preferred means of transportation.

It was thus easily reached by the tribes on the east and northeast by Lake Ontario; by the tribes on the north by Lake Simcoe and the portage to Toronto; by the tribes in the great west and northwest (covering a vast territory) by all the upper lakes; by the tribes in the southwest by the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Alleghany rivers; by the tribes in the southeast by the Susquehanna River. Even in aboriginal days--by reason of its central location, its portage, its position as a Center of Trade, and its "Erie Stones"--Niagara was the best and most widely known spot on the Continent; even as--for other reasons--it is to-day.

Father Ragueneau, in a letter written from the Huron Country, in Canada, in 1648, and published in the "Jesuit Relation" of 1649, makes the second known direct printed reference to the Falls themselves, when he writes,--

"Lake Erie, which is formed by the waters from the Mer Douce [Lake Huron], discharges itself into Lake Ontario, over a Cataract of fearful height,"

which description was, word for word, the same as is found in a letter, written not later than 1645, from that same Huron Country, by Docteur Gendron, but which was not published until 1660.

The third direct printed reference to our Cataract was in a letter, written by Father Bressani, from that same Huron Country, in 1652, and published the following year. He wrote,--

"Lake Erie discharges itself, by means of a very high Cataract, into a third lake, which is still larger and finer, called Lake Ontario."

Thus, up to 1660, the Jesuit Fathers, Ragueneau and Bressani, were the only persons, except Champlain, who had made any direct printed reference to Niagara's Waterfall; like him, neither of them ever saw it;--the three known men, who first mentioned in print what is to-day the best known Cataract on Earth, wrote from hearsay,--and none of them gave it a name.

Sanson, who, in 1650, had issued a map of North America, largely following those of Champlain, but improving on their accuracy (though not indicating Niagara), in 1656, issued one of New France or Canada, whereon he both correctly places our Waterfall, and, for the first time in Literature or Cartography gave it a direct name, marking it "Ongiara Sault." Much information about Canada had no doubt been made public in France--by Missionaries and Explorers, with the Government's approval--during those half-a-dozen years.

Hennepin, in 1683, was the first person to use the word "Niagara," which has been the accepted name ever since; though more than a hundred different ways of spelling it have been found. And from Hennepin's time,--by every known form of pictorial reproduction; during the last forty years by photography more than all other forms put together--Niagara has been the most pictured and therefore the best known spot on earth.