Niagara Part 2

The above quotation, which was given in Sagard, 1636, was omitted from Daillon's letter by Le Clercq in his "Premier etabliss.e.m.e.nt de la Foi,"

1691. In his translation of the latter work, John Gilmary Shea, in a note concerning this very pa.s.sage, says:

"This was evidently the Niagara River and the route through Lake Ontario," and he adds: "The omission of the pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sed, 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sage 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 compa.s.s; 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.

DOCTEUR GENDRON

In 1660, another, and a most interesting reference to our Cataract appeared in print; written by one Docteur Gendron. It does not appear that he ever saw it, but he seems to have learnt a good deal about it; of course he learnt it from the Indians; moreover, he learnt it from Hurons, who dwelt in more or less proximity to it; from men who, no doubt, themselves had seen it. He learnt it from the same source, not improbably from the same men, from whom Fathers Ragueneau and Bressani had gotten their less comprehensive knowledge of it--for he had a special reason, in the line of his profession, for learning about it.

He had written home to France concerning it, at least three years before Ragueneau, at least seven years before Bressani, had done so.

And, curiously enough, at the very time when Docteur Gendron wrote his letters, Fathers Ragueneau and Bressani were also in that Huron Country. It is, therefore, more than reasonably certain, that all three of them being Europeans, all three living among the Hurons,--whose territory was not large, through which news of the presence of white men in those days traveled fast,--that they must have known each other, not only as acquaintances, but as intimates. The Priests had their headquarters at the Home of the Huron Mission, and the Docteur would, for every reason, take up his residence in that same Indian Village.

Those three men,--with the exception of Champlain, the earliest known chroniclers of the existence of Niagara Falls,--were doubtless near neighbors and close friends, in the Huron Country, in the wilds of Canada, over two hundred and fifty years ago.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NIAGARA IN EARLY DAYS, BY THOMAS COLE.]

In 1636, there had been published at Paris a work in five volumes, written by one Pierre Davity, who had died the year before, ent.i.tled "The Whole World; With all its Parts, States, Empires, Kingdoms, Republics and Governments." It had been reissued at least twice by 1649. In all three of those Editions, "America, The Third Part of the World," had been treated of at some length--especially the Southern Hemisphere;--and while Canada had not been overlooked, there had been no mention of Niagara.

In 1660, Jean Baptiste de Rocoles, who was both a Counsellor to the King and also his State Historian, reissued the work, enlarged and "brought up to date." This issue was in three volumes, folio; rather ponderous tomes; well printed, and elaborately bound. As in the previous editions, it was issued by consent of the King, and with the approval of the Clergy; and it now had the official editing of the King's Historian.

At the end of the portion relating to America--that is, at the very end of the last volume--its contents evidently coming to Rocoles' notice at the last moment; probably after the work was entirely printed (for the preceding page bears the imprint, "End of America"; and there is no mention of its contents in the Index), is a short Chapter ent.i.tled (translated),

"Certain Special Information about the Country of the Hurons in New France. Recorded by the Sieur Gendron, Doctor of Medicine, who has lived for a long time in that Country."

This supplementary Chapter is six pages in length, and, while it is not signed, we may justly a.s.sume that Rocoles himself, and none other, wrote it. It begins,--

"One of my friends having lately placed in my hands a few letters written in the years 1644 and 1645, which Sieur Gendron, native of Voue in Beausse, had sent to him from that Country [of the Hurons], where he was at that time; I have had the curiosity to transcribe from them, word for word, what follows; for a better knowledge and acquaintance of those lands, newly discovered. And I have done so the more willingly because this person is worthy of credence, and he wrote these letters to men of merit, who had travelled much."

In the letters thus transcribed, "word for word," Sieur Gendron gives the location of the Huron Country, where he writes,--

"I now am," "as between the 44th and 45th degrees of Lat.i.tude; and as to Longitude, it is half an hour more to the west than Quebec."

From his descriptions of the Lake Region, from his location of other Indian tribes, and from the context, Sieur Gendron was very near the southern end of Georgian Bay, when he wrote those letters. That he was in the same Indian Village, as was the House, or Headquarters, of the Mission to the Hurons (which was located at that point), is deducable even more strongly, from the fact, that Father Ragueneau, in his report to his Superior, in 1648, uses, word for word, over more than a score of printed lines, in locating the adjoining Indian tribes, the language of Sieur Gendron, written at least three, possibly four, years before, and published by Rocoles in 1660.

That he did so, not plagiarizing, but with the knowledge and consent, and not improbably (in those parts of his letter which dealt with physical conditions) with the a.s.sistance, of Docteur Gendron, must be admitted by those who know from history of the splendid abilities, the exalted piety, and the n.o.ble character of Father Paul Ragueneau, S.J., who, after his labors amongst the Hurons were ended, became the Superior of his Order at Quebec--that is, in Canada.

A little further on, Docteur Gendron writes,--

"Towards the south, and a little towards the west, is the Neuter Nation, whose villages, which are now on the frontier, are only about thirty leagues distant from the Hurons. It is forty or fifty leagues in extent" [that is from west to east, for it extended from the Detroit River to some distance east of the Niagara River].

Then he writes, what for the purpose of this article is the most interesting portion of the letters, as follows:

"Almost south of the Neuter Nation is a large lake, almost 200 leagues in circ.u.mference, called Erie, which is formed from the Fresh Water Sea, [Lake Huron] and falls, from a terrible height, into a third lake called Ontario, which we call St. Louis.

"From the foam of the waters, roaring at the foot of certain large rocks, which are found at this place, is formed a stone, or rather pulverized salt, of a somewhat yellowish color, of great virtue for healing wounds, fistulas, and malignant ulcers. In this place, full of horrors, live also certain savages, who live only on elk, deer, buffalos, and all other kinds of game that the rapids drag and bring down to the entrance of these rocks; where the savages catch them, without running for them, more than sufficient for their needs, and the maintenance of strangers [Indians from other and distant tribes], with whom they trade in these 'Erie Stones'

['Pierres Eriennes']--thus called because of this lake--who carry and distribute them to other Nations."

In confirmation of the Doctor's statement that articles were brought to Niagara, for the purposes of trade,--in 1903 there was opened an Indian Mound, on top of and close to the edge of the Mountain Ridge, some three and a half miles east of the Niagara River, on the Tuscarora Reservation, in the town of Lewiston, Niagara County, N.Y. It was a Burial Pit; and a Peace Burial Pit; more than probably dating from 1640, which was the last date of the ten-year Ceremonial Burials observed by the Neuters, who then owned and occupied all this Niagara Region; for before the expiration of the next ten year period, the Neuters had been annihilated by the Senecas. In it were found nearly 400 skulls, and the bones of probably an equal number of bodies, some articles of copper (made by the French, and proving trade with them), many hundreds of sh.e.l.l beads, and other articles of Indian make, among them some made from large Conche Sh.e.l.ls, such as are found on the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Mexico, and curiously enough three or four large, unbroken, Conche Sh.e.l.ls. These latter, it is fair to a.s.sume, were brought nearly 2,000 miles, to Niagara, there to be traded for those "Erie Stones" (and they were brought unbroken, so that their buyer could cut from them gorgets and other ornaments of the shape and size that suited his fancy), thus proving, that for some years, no one can pretend to say how many, perhaps centuries before Docteur Gendron wrote the second known reference to Niagara, the fame of the Cataract was widely known among the Indians of North America; even beyond the far-off, sunny lands, inhabited by the Arkansaws; clear to the mouths of the Mississippi, "The Father of Waters," and along the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Mexico.

So it was a Physician, in a letter written from an unnamed place in the wilds of Canada, to a friend, of whose name we are ignorant, in France,--the contents of which letter were, in a few years, to be published to the World,--that was, in date the second, though in print the fourth, man ever to refer directly to Niagara Falls.

Yet, it is not surprising that it should have been so, for almost every instance in History tells us that, so far as newly discovered lands are concerned, it is the Explorer, or Empire-Builder, who first penetrates them, and the Priest soon follows the explorer, and the Physician soon follows the Priest. And that was exactly the order which was followed in the explorations of the Great-Lakes-Region of North America.