Peter A. Porter

“ So the bark might ride on even keel,
Then pushed it out on the tide.
Swiftly it darted from the land,
Propelled by strong and fearless hand,
Over the dangerous current flies,
As the Chief the paddle rapidly plies,
Until, the wildest portion crossed,
The frail canoe is no longer tossed
By curling waves, but floats, awhile,
On the quiet stream above the Isle,
Towards whose beach it slowly glides
For weal or woe, as its voyage betides.
The Priest stood up, above his head
The holy Cross he raised,
And the words of the "Misereri" said
As heavenwards he gazed. ”

“ The Legend of Healing is, that anyone, Brave or Squaw, if ill, would quickly be restored to perfect health could they but reach the base of the Falls, go in behind the sheet of falling waters,—entering, as it were, the abode of the Great Spirit,—and, on emerging therefrom, be able to behold a complete circular Rainbow—which should symbolize the Deity's absolute promise of restoration to perfect health. ”

“ No tribe which feared the fierce Iroquois—and that embraced almost every known tribe—would have dared to go to a "trading place," when in order to reach it they had to cross the country of the Iroquois. But they could get to Niagara from all sides without touching that Iroquois territory. There they could meet and barter with tribes otherwise almost impossible for them to reach. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus, Niagara, which to-day is famous the World over, for its Scenery, for its Botany, for its Geology, for its History, for its Hydraulic works, and lastly (and almost equally with its Scenery) , for its Electrical developments, has also, through Docteur Gendron's "hasty letter"—written in 1644 or 1645—a distinct, and a very, very early claim to a place in the annals of the Healing Art—as it was known and practiced on the Continent of North America, during the first half of the 17th Century; and also therefrom another distinct proof that the locality was an Aboriginal Center of Trade. ”

“ Father Sagard, who in 1625 was a Missionary among them at Lake Nipissing, has stated that the Hurons used each summer to travel for five or six weeks southerly, in order to meet the tribes which had goods they wanted; and that they brought back those articles both for their own use and for sale to other tribes. From the direction stated, and from other deductions, it is probable that that annual summer journey of the Hurons "for trade" had Niagara as its objective point.
That the Indians traded among themselves is unquestioned. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The currents of air, and the furious blasts of water which they create, rush constantly away from the under surface of the falling sheet, and continuously against the face of the cliff. These scour and cut away the rock, even as a sand blast would do, though more slowly. They allow no chance for deposits. The strata of the Clinton Formation (which commences at about the level of the water in the Gorge, and of the Niagara shale, which overlie it—the two combined having a depth of about eighty feet) are eaten away the faster. ”

“ Niagara, meaning thereby the Niagara Frontier, or, more properly, that portion thereof which extended from Lake Ontario to about two miles above the Falls (which included Fort Niagara, and the whole of the famous Portage around the Cataract) even in Aboriginal days, before the first Fort Niagara was built, when the Indians applied the word Onguiaahra to the same territory, by reason of its accessibility, its central location, its Portage and its "Erie Stones," was widely known as a "Center of Trade." When the French became the masters of this region its main importance lay in its portage ”

“ Possibly, though improbably, he may have been one of those holy men, Priests of the Catholic Church, who devoted their learning, their strength, and their years to the cause of their Maker; who daily risked their lives, as alone they braved the hardships and the sufferings of long journeys through pathless forests, and who encountered the fury of unknown savages, as they carried the Gospel to Tribes who dwelt along the shores of mighty waters, in a vast and an unexplored wilderness ”

“ One relates to Worship, one to Healing, one to Burial,—embracing the Deity, Disease, and Death.
The Legend of Worship is the inhuman yet fascinating one that the Onguiaahras (one of the earliest-known orthographies of the word Niagara) , who were a branch of the Neutrals, and dwelt in the immediate vicinity of the Great Fall—and, according to Indian custom, took their name from the chief physical feature of their territory—long followed the custom of annually sacrificing to the Great Spirit "the fairest maiden of the Tribe" ”

“ 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. ”

“ These latter, it is fair to assume, 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 ”

“ It was evidently a leading, and a much-sought-for, prescription among the Aborigines. To-day, it has no value whatever. It is still to be found in abundance in the immediate vicinity of the Falls, in the Gorge below them; but no one seeks to gather it, save as a curiosity.
But, in those early days, among the ignorant and phenomenally superstitious Savages, those "Erie Stones," to be "found only at Niagara," seemed to them a special gift from the Great Spirit to his children. To the Savages, they were, veritably, "Big Medicine." ”

“ As a geological substance it is still collected, but with greater ease than formerly, for, besides being found on and below the face of the cliff, its existence in the limestone all over the vicinity of the Falls has been demonstrated by means of the huge excavations that have been made in the development of the various Power Plants at Niagara. ”

“ Bradstreet's Army, it is recorded that over 5,000 barrels of provisions alone lay at Fort Schlosser, the upper terminus of Niagara's portage, awaiting shipment to the West. By Niagara also went—had to go, for besides being the only feasible route, it was the only safe way, for it had military protection,—all the traders, with their boat loads of cheap merchandize; men who spent months at a time in journeying among the tribes in the Northwest, trading their wares for valuable furs ”

“ He adds, "The circumstance of this Spray not being found above the Falls seems to suggest an opinion that that part of the vapor which hangs upon the surrounding rocks is the heaviest, as being most loaded with earthy particles, whilst the remainder which mounts up is the purest and contains little or no earth."
Dewit Clinton, when he visited Niagara in 1810—as a Member of the first Board of Commissioners, appointed by the State of New York, to report on the whole subject of the proposed Erie Canal, noted in his diary,
"A beautiful white substance is found at the bottom of the Falls ”

“ Knowing of such a wonderful waterfall's existence, and its general location; being a "trader," and Niagara being even then a well-known Center of Trade, the probabilities are that Brule visited it at a very early date. ”

“ The masses are of various sizes and shapes, but seldom exceed the bulk of a man's hand. Sometimes they are of a soft substance and crumble like damp sugar; while other pieces are found quite hard, and of a shining, foliated appearance ”

“ First Picture of Niagara, by Father Hennepin—1697.
It is more likely to have been one of those fearless and hardy men, one of the earliest members of what later became a distinct class—the Coureurs de Bois, or Woodsmen—a class founded by Champlain; on a correct principle for commercial intercourse and the extension of sovereignty, under conditions as they then and there existed (but probably without any full appreciation of the important and prominent part it was destined, later, to play in the development of New France) ”

“ Whatever may be its composition, it does not appear that it will bear to be exposed to the air, as some pieces which seem to have fallen longer than the rest are quite soft; while such as had lately fallen are of a much harder nature. ”

“ 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. ”