The explorers' aim was always to reach the further sea. That it must be somewhere to the west, in the opposite direction to the homes from whence they came, they knew or conjectured; but of the immense distance at which it lay, and of the Rocky Mountain barrier which must be surmounted to find it, they were wholly ignorant. They followed the water, and, when they had gained some knowledge of the great lakes, they reached the closely adjoining sources of the tributaries of the Mississippi, the Wisconsin, the Ohio, and the Illinois; and, borne with the stream, they came in due course not to the west but to the south, not to the Pacific but to the Gulf of Mexico.
| The missionaries and Western discovery. |
There was the usual mixture of motives—love of adventure, love of gain, political ambition, religious fervour. There was rivalry and competition. One trader or band of traders was jealous of another. One man or set of men was backed by the Governor for the time being, another secured the favour of the Intendant. Missionaries played a great part in exploration. At first they led the van of discovery; they were always in or near the front rank; but, as years went on, and as the simple desire of adding to geographical knowledge, of opening new fields for France and for Christianity, became more and more alloyed with commercial greed, the ministers of religion, when heart-whole themselves, realized that the multiplication of trading posts in the backwoods meant lawlessness of white men, deterioration of natives; and they no longer gave hearty support to the bold French adventurers whose enterprise opened up the West.
| The gates of the waterways of Canada. |
It will be noticed, on reference to a map of Canada—or rather of that part of the Dominion which was comprised in New France—not only that there is water communication from end to end, from the extreme west of Lake Superior to the Atlantic, but also that there are very distinct points along the way, which are, so to speak, natural toll-bars, where the waters narrow, where the rivers or lakes meet. Here the explorer must pass to reach a goal beyond; here the trader could intercept traffic; here the missionary was sure to find Indians to be converted, and coureurs de bois to be reclaimed; these were the places which must be occupied by the would-be sovereigns of North America. Consequently, at these points of vantage along the route, at one time and another, mission stations, trading posts, and forts were planted.
Montreal itself, at the head of the colony, at the beginning of its hinterland, commanded the junction of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence. At Cataraqui, where the St. Lawrence leaves Lake Ontario, Fort Frontenac was built. A little above the outlet of the Niagara river into Lake Ontario and below the falls, another French fort was reared, Fort Niagara; while on the channel between Lakes Erie and Huron was the fort of Detroit. The Iroquois, as we have seen, knew as well as the French the value of these positions: they feared and resented the building of the forts, as limiting the range of their power, and taking from them the control of the fur trade. On the upper lakes there were at least two posts of prime importance: one was the Sault St. Marie at the junction of Lake Huron and Lake Superior, the other was Michillimackinac at the junction of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. It must not be supposed that the points mentioned were occupied in chronological order, as they have been enumerated above; or that there was any regular series of occupants, that the explorer came first, followed by the missionary, the trader, and so forth: but the net result was that French enterprise and French statesmanship took and kept the gateways on the highroad of Upper Canada.
| Lake Michigan. Michillimackinac. Green Bay. The route to the Mississippi from Green Bay, |
Lake Michigan was known to the French as the 'Lac des Illinois.' The narrows where it joins Lake Huron were the straits of Michillimackinac, now Mackinac or Mackinaw; and on their northern side stood the trading station of the same name, and the mission of St. Ignace. Within the straits on the western side, is a large indentation, forming a sheet of water which runs south-west, nearly parallel to the main lake. This was at first called, after certain Indians who lived on its shores, the Baie des Puans; but it was subsequently named the Grande Baie, and this title was corrupted into Green Bay, its present name. The Fox river flows into the head of Green Bay, and, if the upward course of this river is followed through Lake Winnebago and beyond, a point is reached at which the waters of the Wisconsin river are not more than a mile and a half distant. The Wisconsin is a tributary of the Mississippi.
| and from the end of Lake Michigan. |
A slightly longer portage was needed to reach the Mississippi basin from the end of Lake Michigan. Still it was a matter of very few miles to leave the lake, where the city of Chicago now stands, and to strike one or other of the branches of the Illinois river, the nearest being the stream known as Des Plaines. Canoes launched on that stream were carried down into the Illinois, and so to the Mississippi at a point far south of its confluence with the Wisconsin.