Just as the men left in the fort were reduced to the very last extremity, and were wishing for death to relieve them of their miseries, a war-party from the Miamis on an expedition against the Senecas reached the fort and gave that relief so long vainly looked for by the inmates. Several of these who first regained their strength set out for Montreal to carry the news of their sore straits to the government; and on one pleasant, beautiful day in April the long expected sail was seen on the horizon bringing relief to the remnant of those who had been left in the fort the preceding summer.
In command of the expedition was D'esbergeres, and with him Father Milet, besides a large company of companions. As soon as they landed, Father Milet conducted mass and then put all the men who were able to work constructing a large cross. While they were at the work, Father Milet traced upon its arms: "Regnat, Vincit, Imperat Christus."
On Good Friday, the priest again held mass, and erected the cross in the centre of the square of the fort, thus symbolising a victory wrung from the clutches of defeat itself.
With spring, the new companions, and a goodly supply of provisions, was born new hope in the fort. The little company were very busy during the summer, despite the fact that the Iroquois, stirred on by the English, gave them continual trouble. In September Mahent came with the vessel La Général, with orders to D'esbergeres to abandon the fort. This was quite a blow to the commander, as having held the post all summer he hoped to continue to do so. The outer barracks were all destroyed, which was not so difficult a task, as the severe storms of the previous winter had done much of this work; but the cabins were all left standing. On the morning of the 15th of September, 1688, the garrison sailed away, once more leaving the shores of the great Niagara untroubled by the contentions of white men, and open to the nation who should seize it or conciliate the savages who held the surrounding regions.
Yet De Nonville had done something for which to be remembered beyond raiding the Long House and fortifying the river of the Neuters; he had left it a name that should live as he had, first of white men, so far as we know, written it. The orthography of the name Niagara seems to have now been established—1687. Champlain did not use any name in 1613, though on his map we find the following words attached to the stream connecting Lakes Erie and Ontario, chute d'eau, giving us our first genuine record of Niagara Falls.
We have seen that L'Allemant spelled the name Onguiaahra in 1640. In 1657 it appears on Sanson's map as Ongiara, and is applied to the Falls; in 1660 Ducreux's map shows us "Ongiara Cataractes." In 1687 De Nonville gives us our present Niagara. Of the name Mr. Marshall has left this authoritative opinion:
Onguiaahra and Ongiara are evidently identical, and present the same elements as Niagara. They are undoubtedly compounds of words expressive of some meaning, as is usual with aboriginal terms, but which meaning is now lost. The "o" which occurs in both the French and English orthography is probably a neuter prefix, similar to what is used by the Senecas and Mohawks. One writer contends that Niagara is derived from Nyah´-gaah´, or as he writes it, "Ne-ah´-gah," said to be the name of a Seneca village which formerly existed on the Niagara River below Lewiston, and now applied by the Senecas to Lake Ontario. This derivation, however, cannot be correct, for Onguiaahra, and its counterpart Ongiara, were in use as names of the river and falls long before the Seneca village in question was in existence. The Neutral Nation, from whose language the words were taken, lived on both borders of the Niagara until they were exterminated by the Senecas in 1643. It is far more probable the Nyah´-gaah´ is a reappearance of Ongiara in the Seneca dialect, and this view is strengthened by the fact that the former, unlike most Iroquois names, is without meaning, and as the aborigines do not confer arbitrary names, it is an evidence that it has been borrowed or derived from a foreign language. The conclusion then is, that the French derived Niagara from Ongiara, and the Senecas, when they took possession of the territories of the Neutral Nation, adopted the name Ongiara, as near as the idiom of their language would allow, and hence their name Nyah´-gaah´.