This is the first known mention of Niagara Falls. Champlain mapped the Niagara frontier, and his map of 1613 shows the position of the great Falls; he refers to it only as a "waterfall," which was "so very high that many kinds of fish are stunned in its descent." He probably never saw Niagara but wrote his description from hearsay. During the half century between Champlain's Lake Ontario tour and the coming of La Salle and Hennepin the Niagara must have been often visited by the Catholic missionaries, but few of them left mention of it.
In 1615, Champlain's interpreter, Etienne Brule, was sent southward to seek aid from the Andastes and is lost to sight in the western forests for three years; it is possible that Brule even reached the copper region of Lake Superior at this time, and it is fairly probable that this intrepid wanderer, first of all Frenchmen, followed the Niagara River and gazed upon its mighty cataract. The first knowledge we have, however, of a Frenchman's presence on Niagara River is of Father Joseph de la Roche Dallion, who crossed it near Lewiston eleven years later, 1626. Nicolet was in the Straits of Mackinac and at Sault Ste. Marie in 1634, at the time that Champlain (now in the last year of his eventful life) founded Three Rivers on the St. Lawrence above Quebec for the defence of this endangered capital!
Father L'Allemant, in his Relation of 1640-41, refers to the Niagara River as the Onaguiaahra, and calls it the "celebrated" river of the Neutral Nation.
Montreal was founded in 1642, simultaneously with the memorable capture of Father Jogues, who now, first of Europeans, passed through Lake George en route to the homes of the merciless Iroquois. In fact it was Father Jogues who first named this beautiful sheet of water, when he entered it on the eve of Corpus Christi, "Lake Saint Sacrament"; Sir William Johnson, at a later date rechristened it Lake George. Jogues may have heard the Niagara cataract.
Ragueneau, writing to France in 1648, affirmed that "North of the Eries is a great lake, about two hundred leagues in circumference, called Erie, formed by the discharge of the mer-douce, or Lake Huron, and which falls into a third lake called Ontario, over a cataract of frightful height." The description by La Salle's Sulpician companion, Galinee, in 1669, is the most accurate of all early accounts. After La Salle's visit to the Senecas the party struck westward toward Niagara.
Niagara Falls by Father Hennepin.
The first known picture of Niagara, dated 1697.
We found [wrote Galinee] a river, one-eighth of a league broad and extremely rapid, forming the outlet of communication from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. The depth of the river (for it is properly the St. Lawrence), is, at this place extraordinary, for, on sounding close by the shore, we found 15 or 16 fathoms of water. The outlet is 40 leagues long, and has, from 10 to 12 leagues above its embouchure into Lake Ontario, one of the finest cataracts, or falls of water, in the world, for all the Indians of whom I have enquired about it, say, that the river falls at that place from a rock higher than the tallest pines, that is about 200 feet. In fact we heard it from the place where we were, although from 10 to 12 leagues distant, but the fall gives such a momentum to the water, that its velocity prevented our ascending the current by rowing, except with great difficulty. At a quarter of a league from the outlet where we were, it grows narrower, and its channel is confined between two very high, steep, rocky banks, inducing the belief that the navigation would be very difficult quite up to the cataract. As to the river above the falls, the current very often sucks into this gulf, from a great distance, deer and stags, elk and roebucks, that suffer themselves to be drawn from such a point in crossing the river, that they are compelled to descend the falls, and to be overwhelmed in its frightful abyss.
Our desire to reach the little village called Ganastogue Sonono-toua O-tin-a-oua prevented our going to view the wonder, which I consider as so much the greater in proportion as the river St. Lawrence is one of the largest in the world. I will leave you to judge if that is not a fine cataract in which all the water of that large river, having its mouth three leagues broad, falls from a height of 200 feet, with a noise that is heard not only at the place where we were, 10 or 12 leagues distant, but also from the other side of Lake Ontario, opposite its mouth, where M. Trouve told me he had heard it.