The fur-trade of Canada produced a class of men hardy, agile, fearless, and in habits approximating to the savage.[446] Inured to toil, the voyageurs arose in the morning, “when it was yet dark,” and pushing their birch-bark canoes into the water, swiftly glided away, “like the shade of a cloud on the prairie,” and often did not break fast until the sun had been for hours above the horizon. Halting for a short period, they partook of their coarse fare, then re-embarking they pursued their voyage to the land of the beaver and buffalo, the woods echoing their chansons until the “shades of night began to fall,” when,
“Worn with the long day’s march and the chase of the deer and the bison,
Stretched themselves on the ground, and slept where the quivering firelight
Flashed on their swarthy cheeks, and their forms wrapped up in their blankets.”
Among the pioneers of these wanderers in the American forests was Étienne (Anglicized, Stephen) Brulé, of Champigny.[447] It has been mentioned that he went with Champlain to the Huron villages near Georgian Bay, but did not with his Superior cross Lake Ontario. After three years of roaming, he came back to Montreal, and told Champlain that he had found a river which he descended until it flowed into a sea,—the river by some supposed to be the Susquehanna, and the sea Chesapeake Bay.[448] While in this declaration he may have depended upon his imagination, yet to him belongs the undisputed honor of being the first white man to give the world a knowledge of the region beyond Lake Huron.
Sagard[449] mentions that this bold voyageur, with a Frenchman named Grenolle, made a long journey, and returned with a “lingot” of red copper and with a description of Lake Superior which defined it as very large, requiring nine days to reach its upper extremity, and discharging itself into Lake Huron by a fall, first called Saut de Gaston, afterward Sault Ste. Marie. Upon the surrender of Quebec, in 1629, to the English, Étienne Brulé chose to cast in his lot with the conquerors.[450] During the occupation of nearly three years the English heard many stories of the region of the Great Lakes, and they encouraged the aborigines of the Hudson and Susquehanna to purchase English wares.
The very year that the English occupied Quebec, Ferdinando Gorges and associates, who had employed men to search for a great lake, received a patent for the province of Laconia, and the governor thereof arrived in June, 1630, in the ship “Warwick,” at Piscataway, New Hampshire.[451] Early in June, 1632, Captain Henry Fleet, in the “Warwick,” visited the Anacostans, whose village stood on the shores of the Potomac where now is seen the lofty dome of the Capitol of the Republic. These Indians told Fleet that they traded with the Canada Indians; and on the 27th of the month, at the Great Falls of the Potomac, he saw two axes of the pattern brought over by the brothers Kyrcke to Quebec.[452]
About the time Quebec was restored to the French, on the 23d of September, 1633,[453] Captain Thomas Young received a commission from the King of England to make certain explorations in America.[454] The next spring he sailed, and among his officers was a “cosmographer, skilful in mines and trying of metals.” Entering Delaware Bay on the 24th of July, 1634, he sailed up the river, which he named Charles, in honor of the King, and by the 1st of September had reached the vicinity of the falls, above Trenton, the capital of New Jersey. In a report from this river, dated the 20th of October, he writes: “I passed up this great river, with purpose to have pursued the discovery thereof till I had found the great lake[455] from which the great river issues, and from thence I have particular reason to believe there doth also issue some branches, one or more, by which I might have passed into that Mediterranean Sea which the Indian relateth to be four days’ journey beyond the mountains; but having passed near fifty leagues up the river, I was stopped from further proceedings by a ledge of rocks which crosseth the river.”
He then expresses a determination the next summer to build a vessel above the falls, from whence he hoped to find “a way that leadeth into that mediterranean sea,” and from the lake. He continues: “I judge that it cannot be less than one hundred and fifty or two hundred leagues in length to our North Ocean; and from thence I purpose to discover the mouths thereof, which discharge both into the North and South Sea.”[456] The same month that Captain Young was exploring the Valley of the Delaware, an expedition left Quebec which was not so barren of results.
The year that Étienne Brulé came back from his wandering in the far West, in 1618, Jean Nicolet, the son of poor parents at Cherbourg, came from France, and entered the service of the fur company known as the “Hundred Associates,” under Champlain. For several years he lived among the Algonquins of the Ottawa Valley, and traded with the Hurons; and because of his knowledge of the language of these people, he was valued as an interpreter by the trading company. On the 4th day of July, 1634, on his eventful journey to distant nations, he was at Three Rivers, a trading post just begun. Threading his way in a frail canoe among the isles which extend from Georgian Bay to the extremity of Lake Huron, he, through the Straits of Mackinaw, discovered Lake Michigan, and turning southward found its Grand Bay, an inlet of the western shore, and impressive by its length and vastness.
Here were the Gens de Mer,[457] or Ochunkgraw, called by the Algonquins Ouinipegous or Ouinipegouek,—people of the salt or bad-smelling water; and the traders gave them the name of Puants.
Calling a council of these Winnebagoes and the neighboring tribes, and knowing the power of display upon the savage, he appeared before them in a grand robe of the damask of China, on which was worked flowers and birds of different colors, and holding a pistol in each hand,—a somewhat amusing reminder of the Jove of mythology, with his variegated mantle and thunderbolts. To many he seemed a messenger from the spirit-land; and the women and children, on account of his pistols, called him the man who bore thunder in his hands.[458]