THIS is the order in which the Great Lakes were discovered by the French explorers: Huron in 1615, by Le Caron, the Recollect friar, and by Champlain, one of the greatest navigators in New France; Ontario, during the same year, by Champlain; Superior, about 1629, by Etienne Brule; Michigan, in 1634, by Jean Nicolet; Erie, probably by Joliet, in 1669. It seems somewhat remarkable, from the positions of the lakes, that Erie should have been the last of the five to come under the dominion of the white men. The reason is this. It lay deep in the recesses of a hostile country, guarded by the "Romans of the West," the Iroquois or Five Nations. From Montreal the course of the French missionaries and traders westward was up the Ottawa river, the route to the upper lakes which was followed by the Hurons.
Joseph Le Caron, the Franciscan friar, who first discovered Lake Huron, reached Quebec in May, 1615, with three other Franciscans. To Le Caron was assigned the district of the Hurons as his mission field. His garb was the customary rude garment of coarse, gray cloth, girt at the waist with a knotted cord, and surmounted by a peaked hood. He was shod with wooden sandals an inch or more in thick-He hastened at once to the site of language and resolved to winter in their villages. Accompanied by twelve Frenchmen he set out about July 1, 1615, with the concourse of Hurons up the Ottawa river, and after many hardships reached the seat of the Huron nation, near the entrance of the bay of Matchedash. Here within an area of thirty or forty miles were many Huron villages, containing a population variously estimated at from 10,000 to 30,000 inhabitants.
Champlain's Voyage. -- Champlain, with two canoes, two Frenchmen and ten Indians followed Le Caron a few days later, and in his narrative describes the journey by way of Lake Nipissing, and thence down its outlet until along the western sky was traced the watery line of the "Fresh-Water Sea" of the Hurons, the Mer Douce or Lake Huron, and southward spread the shores of the Georgian Bay. For more than a hundred miles Champlain followed its dented outlines; thence following an Indian trail inland his eyes soon beheld a scene of cultivated fields, and palisaded villages, the ancient home of the Hurons. Here he met Le Caron, and from this center Champlain led the Huron braves the same year in an unsuccessful campaign against their enemies, the Iroquois, below Lake Oneida, probably crossing Lake Ontario en route from the mouth of the river Trent to a point of land west of Hungry bay.
A controversy has arisen among historians as to the route which Champlain took in 1615 across Lake Ontario. Dr. John Gilmary Shea, of New York, and Gen. James S. Clark, of Auburn, N. Y., basing their opinions partially upon a map printed to the 1632 edition of Champlain's account of the expedition, say the starting point was from what is now Kingston. O. H. Marshall and others have contended that it started from the mouth of river Trent, opposite Point Pleasant. Champlain gives the distance across as fourteen leagues or thirty-five miles. He says they crossed the lake, and from this statement it is argued that they did not merely skirt its edges. This is the first recorded visitation of Lake Ontario by a white man. The Hurons had expected with the aid of Champlain and the few Frenchmen accompanying him, armed with terror-inspiring and death-dealing muskets, to utterly put to rout their ancient enemies, the Iroquois. They concealed their canoes in the forest on the shores of Lake Ontario, and proceeded cautiously inland. The village of Onondaga, near Lake Oneida, was attacked October 10, 1615. It was protected by palisades, and although the Frenchmen did execution with their firearms, the Hurons were undisciplined and fought in their own disordered and disconnected manner, disregarding the instructions of their French leader. Champlain was wounded, and the party finally retired. Finding their canoes unharmed, they re-crossed Lake Ontario, and Champlain passed the winter with the Hurons in the vicinity of Lake Simcoe. This attack upon the Iroquois fanned their hatred against the French. It smoldered for a generation, and then burst out in a fierce flame of destruction.
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