Shining Big Sea Water: The Story of Lake Superior

Chapter Two LIFE ALONG THE SHORE

19 Chapter Two LIFE ALONGTHE SHORE The settlements that France established along the St. Lawrence River in the early years of the seventeenth century had only one purpose— furthering the fur trade. The French government sent to the New World only traders and soldiers; the Catholic Church added a handful of missionaries. There were no women or children until the latter half of the century, when the youthful Louis XIV caught the fever of colonial empire. With furs in mind, colony governor Samuel de Champlain befriended the Algonquin people of the river valley and sent them to trade with the Woodland tribes farther inland. That action placed the French in the middle of a rare tribal conflict. The five nations of the Haudenosaunee—the Iroquois Confederacy—residing south of Lake Ontario (present-day western New York), were sworn enemies of the St. Lawrence Algonquin. Warfare escalated when the French used firearms to protect their Algonquin allies. The Iroquois’ initial alarm at the sound of gunfire gave way to rage, and they began raiding the French settlements , nearly wiping out the trading post of Montreal. Deprived of the use of lakes Ontario and Erie by Iroquois hostility, the French found a more northerly route to the western Great Lakes. The Ottawa River emptied into the St. Lawrence at Montreal, and from its headwaters a short portage led to waters that drained into Lake Huron. Astride this natural highway to the west were the Ottawa or Odawa, an Algonquian people whose very name translated as “trader.” For years 20 Shining Big Sea Water the sociable Ottawa had been the link between the St. Lawrence valley and the western lakes. Their reach extended west as far as Wisconsin, to the Siouan-speaking Winnebago or Ho-Chunk. They also traded with their neighbors to the south, the Wyandotte or Huron, who lived along the shores of the lake that bears their name. Of Iroquois language stock, the Huron resided in semi-permanent villages, and, like members of the Haudenosaunee, they tended gardens of corn, squash, and ­tobacco when growing seasons were adequate. The French absorbed both Ottawa and Huron into their trading system, and the two tribes became middlemen , swapping beads and blankets, occasionally even firearms, for furs, which they carried to Montreal. In 1610, before the French clashed with the Iroquois, Champlain had sent a young protégé, Etienne Brulé, to live with the Huron and learn their language. Adapting to Huron ways, Brulé lived and traveled with them for many years. He was the first white man to describe Lake Huron, paddle Georgian Bay, and perhaps visit the Straits of Mackinac. Sometime around the year 1620, he told French missionaries that “above Mer Douce [the “sweet sea,” Lake Huron] is another very great lake, discharging into it by rapids nearly two leagues broad.” Brulé claimed the Indians had told him that this upper lake “has an extent of thirty days’ journey by canoe.” Brulé himself paddled along the shore far enough to visit a place where Indians were taking copper from a mine. Although Brulé was not always a reliable informant, details such as the copper mine suggest his tale was true, making him the first European to visit Lake Superior. In 1634, Champlain learned from Huron traders of the Ho-Chunk, who lived on a great lake far to the west. Thinking these people might know of a water route across the continent, the governor sent another of his youthful protégés, Jean Nicolet, to find them. En route to a rendezvous with the Ho-Chunk at Green Bay, Nicolet crossed Georgian Bay of Lake Huron and came upon a river (later named the St. Marys) flowing into the lake from the north. Venturing along the river, he came upon a settlement of people who spoke a language similar to that of his Ottawa guides. At the head of the river, the waters of Lake Superior cascade over a sandstone ledge and drop twenty-two feet in a rapids three-quarters of a mile long. The river flows on for another forty-five miles before Life Along the Shore 21 emptying into Lake Huron. Discovering that the Indians of the river lived mostly on fish caught in the rapids, Nicolet called them Saulteurs, “people of the rapids.” Years later, a French missionary described their method of taking fish: It is at the foot of these rapids, and even...