Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

The Onguiaharas—who appear to have acted as mediators between the Iroquois and the Hurons and Algonquins, members of the rival tribes meeting in peace in their huts—informed Brébœuf that they were themselves at deadly war with a fierce nation living on the west, which they called the Fire Nation, and described as so reckless of human life, that the French did not care to venture among them while so much still remained to be done around the Great Lakes.

Though so near on this occasion to the now world-famous Falls of Niagara, Brébœuf does not appear either to have heard of them or to have visited them. He collected, however, a good deal of information respecting the habits of the natives, which are embodied in the charming Relations des Jesuites, from which the greater part of our early knowledge of the Canadian Indians is derived. In the same year (1641) of this first visit to the Niagara River, two missionaries, named Charles Raymbault and Claude Pigart, made their way to Lake Nipissing—the most north-westerly point reached by Champlain—arriving there just in time to witness a grand native ceremony in honor of the dead, which they describe as extremely imposing.

NIAGARA FALLS.

Lake Nipissing was on this occasion almost covered with the canoes of the warriors, moving solemnly toward that point of the shore where the souls of the departed were to be fêted. Under a long, rough shed, in coffins of bark, wrapped in costly furs, lay the decaying bones of those who had gone to the other world; and over them a song, half of triumph, half of regret, was sung by the warriors, the women accompanying them with a wailing cry, full of unutterable melancholy.

INDIAN BURIAL GROUND.

When these heathen rites were over, the Jesuit fathers, who, with that earnestness and thoroughness which characterized their whole body, had prepared themselves for their mission by the study of the Nipissing language and the Nipissing mode of thought, came forward and addressed the assembled multitudes. They spoke of the Saviour of the white man and of the red, who came back from the grave after laying down His life for all mankind: and so worked upon the already melting mood of the hardy warriors of the West, that they obtained permission to dwell on the shores of Lake Nipissing—nay, more, an eager invitation from some Chippeway guests to visit them in their own homes beyond Lake Superior.

The eagerness with which this opening was seized may be imagined. The Chippewayans, or Athabascas, one of the four families of the great Finnish nation, occupied that great lone land stretching away beyond the north-western banks of Hudson Bay, which has even yet not been fully explored. In those vast solitudes, though the missionaries knew it not, dwelt many a strange tribe, living out its destiny in unconscious simplicity. There roamed the Copper, the Horn Mountain, and the Beaver Indians; the Strong-bows, the Dog-ribs, the Hares, the Red Knives, the Sheep, the Sarsis, the Brushwood, the Nagailer, and the Rocky Mountain Indians, waiting the advent of the fur-trader, from whom they were to receive their distinctive appellations, and to whom they were to yield up the treasures of their deserts and of their mountain fastnesses.

Taking a Jesuit named Isaac Jogues, as his companion, and leaving Pigart to continue his work among the Nipissings, Raymbault started for the North-west, and, crossing Lake Huron in a native canoe, the voyage occupying seventeen days, he arrived safely at the mouth of the straits connecting it with Lake Superior, where two thousand natives were eagerly awaiting his arrival.