That there, and there only, were found those "Erie Stones," a much-sought-for article, was an important reason for its selection as such; its central location and its accessibility from all points were other reasons.
No tribe which feared the fierce Iroquois—and that embraced almost every known tribe—would have dared to go to a "trading place," when in order to reach it they had to cross the country of the Iroquois. But they could get to Niagara from all sides without touching that Iroquois territory. There they could meet and barter with tribes otherwise almost impossible for them to reach.
The tribes of the southeast, and those of the northeast, could there meet in safety.
Again, it was in the Country of the Neutrals, whose territory lay between that of the Iroquois and the Hurons. And Indian law decreed—and it was observed—that in the cabins of the Neutrals even those bitter foes, Iroquois and Hurons, met in peace.
Champlain was certainly the first white man to mention the Falls of Niagara in Literature; Brule was probably Niagara's first white visitor; and equally probable, he was the first white man ever to "trade" there. One would like well to know the particulars of that "trade"—what he got and what he gave.
EARLY REFERENCES
Champlain and Brule are two names of surpassing interest in their relation to Niagara. The first unquestionably heads the long list of Authors who have ever written about our Waterfall; the other probably heads the infinitely longer list—comprising many millions—of those pale-faces who have ever visited our Cataract.
Peter Kalm's View of Niagara—1751.
That first reference to Niagara in all Literature is found in that of France, in 1603, when Samuel de Champlain, the subsequent founder of Quebec, the first Governor-General of New France,—and still the most picturesque figure in all Canadian history,—narrated, in his now excessively rare pamphlet, "Des Sauvages" (of which only about half-a-dozen copies are known to exist), what the Indians on the St. Lawrence River told him about this waterfall (for he himself never saw Niagara), in these words: