Edward Duffield Neill

“ The entrance to Lake Superior is obstructed by a succession of rapids, first called by traders Sault, or in modern French, Saut du Gaston, in compliment to Jean Baptiste Gaston, [1] the younger brother of Louis the Thirteenth, but in 1669, named by Jesuit missionaries, Sault de Sainte Marie. Here, the French traders arrived in the days of Champlain, and found a band of Indians, who largely subsisted upon the white fish of the region, and were known among the Iroquois, as Estiaghicks or Ostiagahoroones. ”

“ FRENCH TRADERS PUSH WESTWARD.
Owing to the hostility of the Sacs and Foxes, for some time after the year 1700, the French had little intercourse with the Ojibways. By the Treaty of Utrecht, concluded in 1713, the French relinquished all posts on Hudson's Bay to the English, and it was necessary to check Indians disposed to go there to trade. In 1716, therefore, the Canadian authorities decided to open the Lake Superior trade, and seek for a sea toward the west. ”

“ In 1641, the Hurons, then living on the east side of the lake which bears their name, gave a great feast, at which several tribes were present, and there the Jesuit missionaries saw for the first time the Ojibways.
Year after year, the adventurous fur traders became better acquainted with the tribes of the Upper Lakes. Father Le Mercier, [7] in a letter dated at Quebec, the 21st day of September, 1654, alludes to a flotilla of canoes guided by traders, loaded with furs belonging to friendly Indians, who came from the west, a distance of four hundred leagues. ”

“ On the 17th of August, more than two hundred canoes arrived at Montreal with furs, Indians, and Frenchmen. In the language of a "Narrative" of that period, [36] "It is impossible to conceive the joy of the public in beholding such a vast quantity of riches. For several years Canada had been impatiently waiting for this prodigious heap of beaver, which was reported to be at Missilimakinac. The merchant, the farmer, and other individuals who might have some peltries there, were dying of hunger, with property they did not enjoy. ”

“ Here were gathered all the chiefs of the Outawas du Sable, Outawas Sinagos, Kiskakons, Sauteurs, D'Achiliny, some Hurons and Oumamens, the chief of the Amikoues, and Du Luth announced that the Frenchmen had been killed, and it had been decided that two of those engaged in the murder should be put to death, and left the council. The Jesuit missionaries now baptized the culprits, and Du Luth writes: "An hour after I put myself at the head of forty-two Frenchmen, and in sight of more than four hundred savages, and within two hundred paces of their fort, I caused the two murderers to be shot." ”

“ After 1689, the trading post and mission house was abandoned at Sault Ste. Marie, and Mackinaw became the central point for traders and missionaries.
In May, 1690, Governor Frontenac sent M. de Louvigny, a half-pay captain, to relieve Sieur du la Durantaye, at Mackinaw, and Nicholas Perrot accompanied him, with presents and messages for the upper nations. As a result of this visit, in August, five hundred of the upper Indians arrived at Montreal to trade, and the merchants rejoiced, as so large a number had not appeared for a long time. ”

“ The presence of traders attracted the the Ojibways to Keweenaw, and the refugee Hurons and Ottawas were drawn from the Ottawa Lakes, in the interior of Wisconsin, to Chagouamigon Bay, where a trading post had also been established.
Here the latter fished, hunted, and cultivated Indian corn and pumpkins. Upon one occasion, about the year 1660, while on a hunting excursion, they met a party of Ojibways with some Frenchmen on their way to Chagouamigon, to trade. A war party of one hundred Iroquois came not long after to Sault Ste. Marie, and encamped about five leagues above the rapids. ”

“ While twenty-one of Véranderie's party, in June, 1736, were camped upon an isle in Lake of the Woods, they were surprised by a band of the Sioux, and among the killed were five voyageurs, a priest, and a son of Véranderie. [48] Four years after this attack, Joseph Le France, a half-breed born at Saut St. Marie, whose mother was an Ojibway, in 1740, by the north shore of Lake Superior and the chain of lakes to Winnipeg, reached the Hudson Bay Company posts, and in his narrative he mentions the tribes he found. ”

“ During the year 1679 the Sioux and Ojibways were on friendly terms, and Du Luth [24] with some Ojibways visited the former. La Salle mentions that "the Sauteurs [Ojibways] who are the savages who carry peltries to Montreal, and who dwell on Lake Superior, wishing to obey the repeated words of the Count [Governor Frontenac] made a peace to unite the Sauteurs and French, and to trade with the Nadouesioux situated about sixty leagues west from Lake Superior." ”

“ Marie, the number of traders increased around Lake Superior. Frontenac, Governor of Canada, sent his engineer Raudin to the extremity of the lake with presents, to conciliate the Sioux and Ojibways, and on the 1st of September, 1678, Du Luth who had been a gendarme in his French majesty's guard, at the battle of Seneffe in 1674, left Montreal for Lake Superior, with three Indians and three Frenchmen. ”

“ A Miami Indian having brought the intelligence that the fort at Niagara had been demolished by order of the Governor of Canada, on the 27th of August, he burned Fort St. Joseph, and retired to Mackinaw.
Lahontan mentions that when he was at Sault Ste. Marie there was no permanent Indian village on the banks of Lake Superior. The first trading post of Du Luth at Kaministigoya was given up, while a post existed at Chagouamigon, Lemipiscki (Nepigon) , and at the River Bagouache, on the north shore, a short distance east of the outlet of Lake Nepigon. ”

“ Gallinée, a Sulpitian priest, who had been with La Salle on Lake Erie in May, 1670, visited the post, [18] and thus described the Ojibways: "The Saulteux, or in the Algonquin, Paouitikoungraentaouak, or the Outchipoué, where the Fathers are established, from the melting of the snow until the commencement of winter, dwell on the banks of a river about a half league in breadth, and three leagues in length, where the Lake Superior empties into Lake Huron. Here the river is abundant in fish, called white, in the Algonquin, Attikamegue." ”

“ Immediately Du Luth resolved to go to the Sault and seize the assassin. At dawn of the next day he embarked with two canoes. In one was the Jesuit missionary Enjalran, Chevalier Fourcelle, Cardonniere, and Du Luth; in the other, Baribaud, [27] Le Mere, La Fortune, and Maçons. A league from the Sault, Du Luth and party left the canoe, and through the woods walked to the mission house to prevent the guilty one from escaping, and soon arrested him, and placed him under a guard of six Frenchmen. ”

“ In August, 1654, while those Indians were trading at Quebec, thirty young Frenchmen equipped themselves to return with them, and engage in the fur trade, but after they commenced their journey were driven back by the Iroquois. ”

“ The French have no fixed rate in trading brandy, but never give a quart for one beaver.
The English do not discriminate in the quality of beaver but take all, at the same rate, 50 per cent. higher than the French. ”

“ In the same relation, it is mentioned, that if a person could be found, who would send thirty Frenchmen into that country, not only would they gain many souls to God, but they would receive a profit that would surpass the expenses they would incur for the support of the Frenchmen that might be sent, because the finest peltries came, in the greatest abundance, from those quarters. ”

“ The next day the chief called his men aside, and said that the white man should never have boasted of murdering his employer and family: and added, "We boast of having killed our enemies, never our friends. ”

“ Oshibwek, in the plural, the pronouncing slowly of shib (root) , to draw out; that is to say, to lengthen out a word by the slow pronunciation of its syllables; the particle we signifying articulate, pronounce; the k is an animated plural, which here can only be applied to men. ”

“ Myths, like the above, silently creep into history, as moths into cloth, and are difficult to expel. ↑ Cadillac corroborates this statement, in a letter, written in 1703, from Detroit. His words are: "It is proper that you should be informed that more than fifty years since [about 1645] the Iroquois by force of arms drove away nearly all of the other Indian nations from this region [Lake Huron] to the extremity of Lake Superior, a country north of this post, and frightfully barren and inhospitable. ”

“ Pangwa is an expression denoting shallow water on rocks. The inflection eeg is an animate plural. Ing is the local terminal form of nouns. In the south or American channel there is no positive leap of the water, but an intensely swift current." ↑ Sir William Johnson, British Superintendant of Indian Affairs, calls them Chippeweighs, also Chippewæ. In the treaty of 1807, at Detroit, this tribe are called Chippeways; and in that of 1820 at Sault Ste. Marie they are "the Chippeway tribe of Indians." ↑ Rev. G. A. Belcourt. Annals of Minnesota Historical Society, 1853, pp. 25–26. ”

“ Peré had left his prisoners in charge of twelve Frenchmen, at a place four leagues from the post, and at dawn of the 25th, with four more men he went back, and by two o'clock in the afternoon returned with the captives, who were placed under guard in a room in Du Luth's house. ”

“ As Folle Avoine had insinuated that his father Achiganaga was an accessory to the murder, the latter was brought into the presence of his four sons, and when the latter were asked if he had advised them to kill the Frenchmen they answered, "No."
"This confrontation," writes Du Luth, "which the savages did not expect, surprised them, and seeing the prisoners had convicted themselves, the chiefs in council said, 'It is enough; you accuse yourselves ”

“ Mills' Boundaries of Ontario, pp. 231, 232. ↑ Captain Paul Legardeur Saint Pierre was the son of J. Baptiste Legardeur, who on the 11th of July, 1656, had married Marguerite, the daughter of the brave explorer Jean Nicolet, the first white man who in 1634–35 visited Green Bay and vicinity in Wisconsin. ↑ Ottawa MSS., 3d series, vol. vii. ↑ On modern maps still called Iron River. N. Bellin, in a map of Lake Superior, in Charlevoix's Nouvelle France, Paris, A.D. 1744, calls the stream Piouabic or R. au Cuivre. Baraga gives Miskwabik, as the Ojibway word for copper. ”