"'Was the cross large?' asked Father Chaumonot.
"'Large,' spoke back the other, 'yes, large enough to crucify us all.'"
It is idle to insist on judgments by the ordinary standards in a case like this. As Parkman says, it belongs not to history, but to psychology. Brébeuf saw the luminous cross in the heavens above the Niagara; not the material, out-reaching arms of Niagara's spray, rising columnar from the chasm, then resting, with crosslike extensions on the quiet air, white and pallid under the winter moon. Such phenomena are not unusual above the cataract, but may not be offered in explanation of the priest's vision. He was in the neighborhood of Grimsby, full twenty miles from the falls, when he saw the cross; much too far away to catch the gleam of frosted spray. Nor is it a gracious spirit which seeks a material explanation for his vision. The cross truly presaged his martyrdom; and although the feet of Father Brébeuf never again sought the ungrateful land of the Neuters, yet his visit and his vision were not wholly without fruit. They endow local history with an example of pure devotion to the betterment of others, unsurpassed in all the annals of the holy orders. To Brébeuf the miraculous cross foretold martyrdom, and thereby was it a sign of conquest and of victory to this heroic Constantine of the Niagara.
After Brébeuf and Chaumonot had turned their backs on the Neuters, the Niagara region was apparently unvisited by white men for more than a quarter of a century. These were not, however, years of peaceful hunting and still more placid corn and pumpkin-growing, such as some romantic writers have been fond of ascribing to the red men when they were unmolested by the whites. As a matter of fact, and as Fathers Dallion, Brébeuf and Chaumonot had discovered, the people who claimed the banks of the lower reaches of the Niagara as within their territory, were the embodiment of all that was vile and barbarous. There is no record that they had a village at the angle of lake and river, where now stands old Fort Niagara. It would have been strange, however, if they did not occasionally occupy that sightly plateau with their wigwams or huts, while they were laying in a supply of fish. If trees ever covered the spot they were killed by early camp-fires, probably long before the coming of the whites. Among the earliest allusions to the point is one which speaks of the difficulty of getting wood there; and such a treeless tract, in this part of the country, could usually be attributed to the denudation consequent on Indian occupancy.
A decade or so after the retreat of the missionaries came that fierce Indian strife which annihilated the Neuters and gave Niagara's banks into the keeping of the fiercer but somewhat nobler Iroquois. The story of this Indian war has been told with all possible illumination from the few meager records that are known; and it only concerns the present chronicle to note that about 1650 the site of Fort Niagara passed under Seneca domination. The Senecas had no permanent town in the vicinity, but undoubtedly made it a rendezvous for war parties, and for hunting and fishing expeditions.
Meanwhile, the Jesuits in their Relations, and after them the cartographers in Europe, were making hearsay allusions to the Niagara or locating it, with much inaccuracy, on their now grotesque maps. In 1648 the Jesuit Ragueneau, writing to the Superior at Paris, mentions Niagara, which he had never seen or approached, as "a cataract of frightful height." L'Allemant in the Relation published in 1642, had alluded to the river, but not to the fall. Sanson, in 1656, put "Ongiara" on his famous map; and four years later the map of Creuxius, published with his great "Historiæ Canadensis," gave our river and fall the Latin dignity of "Ongiara Catarractes." One map-maker copied from another, so that even by the middle of the seventeenth century, the reading and student world—small and ecclesiastical as it mostly was—began to have some inkling of the main features and continental position of the mid-lake region for the possession of which, a little later, several Forts Niagara were to be projected. It is not, however, until 1669 that we come to another definite episode in the history of the region.
In that year came hither the Sulpitian missionaries, François Dollier de Casson and René de Bréhant[3] de Galinée. They were bent on carrying the cross to nations hitherto unreached, on Western rivers. With them was the young Robert Cavelier, known as La Salle, who was less interested in carrying the cross than in exploring the country. Their expedition left Montreal July 6th, nine canoes in all. They made their way up the St. Lawrence, skirted the south shore of Lake Ontario, and on Aug. 10th were at Irondequoit Bay. They made a most eventful visit to the Seneca villages south of the bay. Thence they continued westward, apparently by Indian trails overland, and not by canoe. De Galinée, who was the historian of the expedition, says that they came to a river "one eighth of a league broad and extremely rapid, forming the outlet or communication from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario," and he continues with a somewhat detailed account of Niagara Falls, which, although he passed near them, he did not turn aside to see. The Sulpitians and La Salle crossed the river, apparently below Lewiston. They may indeed have come to the river at its mouth, skirting the lake shore. One may infer either course from the narrative of de Galinée, which goes on to say that five days after passing the river they "arrived at the extremity of Lake Ontario, where there is a fine, large sandy bay ... and where we unloaded our canoes."
Pushing on westward, late in September, on the trail between Burlington Bay and the Grand River, they met Joliet, returning from his expedition in search of copper mines on Lake Superior. This meeting in the wilderness is a suggestive and picturesque subject, but we may not dwell on it here. Joliet, though he had thus preceded LaSalle and the Sulpitians in the exploration of the lakes, had gone west by the old northern route along the Ottawa, Lake Nipissing and the French River. He was never on the Niagara, for after his meeting with LaSalle, he continued eastward by way of the Grand River valley and Lake Ontario. Fear of the savages deterred him from coming by way of the Niagara, and thereby, it is not unlikely, becoming the white discoverer of Niagara Falls.[4] He was the first white man, so far as records relate, to come eastward through the Detroit River and Lake Erie. Our lake was therefore "discovered" from the west—a fact perhaps without parallel in the history of American exploration.
After the meeting with Joliet, La Salle left the missionaries, who, taking advantage of information had from Joliet, followed the Grand River down to Lake Erie. Subsequently they passed through Lake Erie to the westward, the first of white men to explore the lake in that direction. De Galinée's map (1669) is the first that gives us the north shore of Lake Erie with approximate accuracy. On October 15th this devout man and his companion reached Lake Erie, which they described as "a vast sea, tossed by tempestuous winds." Deterred by the lateness of the season from attempting further travel by this course, they determined to winter where they were, and built a cabin for their shelter.