HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. CHAPTER I. TOPOGRAPHY. THE reader will have a better understanding of the manner in which the territory, herein treated of, was discovered and subsequently occupied, if reference is made, in the outset, to some of its more important topographical features. Indeed, it would be an unsatisfactory task to try to follow the routes of early travel, or to undertake to pursue the devious wanderings of the aboriginal tribes, or trace the advance of civilized society into a country, without some preliminary knowledge of its topography. Looking upon a map of North America, it is observed that westward of the Alleghany Mountains the waters are divided into two great masses; the one composed of waters flowing into the great northern lakes, is, by the river St. Lawrence, carried into the Atlantic Ocean; the other, collected by a multitude of streams spread out like a vast net over the surface of more than twenty states and several territories, is gathered at last into the Mississippi River, and thence discharged into the Gulf of Mexico. As it was by the St. Lawrence River, and the great lakes connected with it, that the northwest territory was discovered, and for many years its trade mainly carried on, a more minute notice of this remarkable water communication will not be out of place. Jacques Cartier, a French navigator, having sailed from St. Malo, entered, on the 10th of August, 1535, the Gulf which he had explored the year before, and named it the St. Lawrence, in memory of the holy martyr whose feast is celebrated on that day. This name was subsequently extended to the river. Previous to this it was called the River of Canada, the name given by the Indians to the whole country. The drainage of the St. Lawrence and the lakes extends through fourteen degrees of longitude, and covers a distance of over two thousand 12 -HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST miles. Ascending this river, we behold it flanked with bold crags and sloping hillsides; its current beset with rapids and studded with a thousand islands; combining scenery of marvelous beauty and grandeur. Seven hundred and fifty miles above its mouth, the channel deepens and the shores recede into an expanse of water known as Lake Ontario. Passing westward on Lake Ontario one hundred and eighty miles a second river is reached. A few miles above its entry into the lake, the river is thrown over a ledge of rock into a yawning chasm, one hundred and fifty feet below; and, amid the deafening noise and clouds of vapor escaping from the agitated waters is seen the great Falls of Niagara. At Buffalo, twenty-one miles above the falls, the shores of Niagara River recede and a second great inland sea is formed, having an average breadth of forty miles and a length of two hundred and forty miles. This is Lake Erie. The name has been variously spelt,—Earie, Herie, Erige and Erike. It has also borne the name of Conti. Father Hennepin says: "The Hurons call it Lake Erige, or Erike, that is to say, the Lake of the Cat, and the inhabitants of Canada have softened the word to Erie;" ride "A New Discovely of a vast Country in America." p. 77 ; London edition, 1698. Hennepin's derivation is substantially followed by the more accurate and accomplished historian, Father Charlevoix, who, at a later period, in 1721, in writing of this lake uses the following words : "The name it bears is that of an Indian nation of the Huron language, which was formerly settled on its banks and who have been entirely destroyed by the Iroquois. Erie in that language signifies cat, and in some accounts this nation is called the cat nation." He adds : " Some modern maps have given Lake Erie the name of Conti, but with no better success than the names of Conde, Tracy and Orleans which have been given to Lakes Huron, Superior and Michigan." At the upper end of Lake Erie, to the southward, is Maumee Bay, of which more hereafter; to the northward the shores of the lake again approach each other and form a channel known as the River Detroit, a French word signifying a straight or narrow passage. Northward some twenty miles, and above the city of Detroit, the river widens into a small body of water called Lake St. Clair. The name as now written is incorrect : " we should either retain the French form, Claire, or take the English Clare. It received its name in honor of the founder of the Franciscan nuns, from the fact that La Salle reached it on the day consecrated to her." Northward some twelve THE LAKES - 13 miles across this lake the land again encroaches upon and contracts the waters within another narrow bound known as the Strait of St. Clair. Passing up this strait, northward about forty miles, Lake Huron is reached. It is two hundred and fifty miles long and one hundred and ninety miles wide, including Georgian Bay on the east, and its whole area is computed to be about twenty-one thousand square miles. Its magnitude fully justified its early name, La Merdouce, the Fresh Sea, on account of its extreme vastness.. The more popular name of Huron, which has survived all others, was given to it from the great Huron nation of Indians who formerly inhabited the country lying to the eastward of it. Indeed, many of the early French writers call it Lac des Hurons, that is, Lake of the Hurons.. It is so laid down on the maps of Hennepin, La Hontan, Charlevoix and Colden in the volumes before quoted. Going northward, leaving the Straits of Mackinaw, through which. Lake Michigan discharges itself from the west, and the chain of Manitoulin Islands to the eastward, yet another river, the connecting link between Lake Huron and Superior, is reached. Its current is swift, and a mile below Lake Superior are the Falls, where the water leaps and tumbles down a channel obstructed by boulders and shoals, where, from time immemorial, the Indians of various tribes have resorted on account of the abundance of fish and the ease with which they are taken. Previous to the year 1670 the river was called the Sault, that is, the rapids, or falls. In this year Fathers Marquette and Dablon founded here the mission of "St. Marie du Sault" (St. Mary of the Falls), from which the modern name of the river, St. Mary's, is derived. Recently the United States have perfected the ship canal cut in solid rock, around the falls, through which the largest vessels can now pass, from the one lake to the other. Lake Superior, in its greatest length, is three hundred and sixty miles, with a maximum breadth of one hundred and forty, the largest of the five great American lakes, and the most extensive body of fresh water on the globe. Its form has been poetically and not inaccurately described by a Jesuit Father, whose account of it is preserved in the Relations for the years 1669 and 1670: "This lake has almost the form of a bended bow, and in length is more than 180 leagues. The southern shore is as it were the cord, the arrow being a long strip of land [Keweenaw Point] issuing from the southern coast and running more than 80 leagues to the middle of the lake." A glance on the map will show the aptness of the comparison. The name Superior was given to it by the Jesuit Fathers, "in conse- 14 - HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. quence of its being above that of Lake Huron. It was also called Lake Tracy, after Marquis De Tracy, who was governor-general of Canada from 1663 to 1665. Father Claude Allouez, in his "Journal of Travels to the Country of the Ottawas," preserved in the Relations for the years 1666, 1667, says: "After passing through the St. Mary's River we entered the upper lake, which will hereafter bear the name of Monsieur Tracy, an acknowledgment of the obligation under which the people of this country are to him." The good father, however, was mistaken ; the name Tracy only appears on a few ancient maps, or is perpetuated in rare volumes that record the almost forgotten labors of' the zealous Catholic missionaries; while the earlier name of' Lake " Superior" is familiar to every school-boy who has thumbed an atlas. At the western extremity of' Lake Superior enter the Rivers Bois-Brnle and St. Louis, the upper tributaries of which have their sources on the northeasterly slope of a watershed, and approximate very near the headwaters of the St. Croix, Prairie and Savannah Rivers, which, issuing from the opposite side of this same ridge, flow into the Upper Mississippi. The upper portions of Lake Huron, Michigan, Green Bay, with their indentations, and the entire coast line, with the islands eastward and westward of the Straits of Mackinaw, are all laid down with quite a degree of accuracy on a map attached to the Relations of the Jesuits for the years 1670 and 1671, a copy of which is contained in Bancroft's History of the United States, showing that the reverend fathers were industrious in mastering and preserving the geographical features of the wilderness they traversed in their holy calling. Lake Michigan is the only one of the five great lakes that lays wholly within the United States,—the other four, with their connecting rivers and straits, mark the boundary between the Dominion of Canada and the United States. Its length is 320 miles; its average breadth 70, with a mean depth of over 1,000 feet. Its area is some 22,000 square miles, being considerably more than that of Lake Huron and less than that of Lake Superior. Michigan was the last of the lakes in order of discovery. The Hurons, christianized and dwelling eastward of Lake Huron, had been driven from their towns and cultivated fields by the Iroquois, and scattered about Mackinaw and the desolate coast of Lake Superior beyond, whither they were followed by their faithful pastors, the Jesuits, who erected new altars and gathered the remnants of' LAKE MICHIGAN - 15 their stricken followers about them; all this occurred before the fathers had acquired any definite knowledge of Lake Michigan. In their mission work for the year 1666, it is referred to "as the Lake Illinouek, a great lake adjoining, or between, the lake of the Hurons and that of Green Bay, that had not [as then] come to their knowledge." .In the Relation for the same year, it is referred to as " Lake Illeaouers," and Lake Illinioues, as yet unexplored, though much smaller than Lake Huron, and that the Outagamies [the Fox Indians] call it Machi-hi-gan-ing." Father Hennepin says : " The lake is called by the Indians, Illinouek,' and by the French, ' Illinois,'" and that the "Lake Illinois, in the native language, signifies the 'Lake of Men." He also adds in the same paragraph, that it is called by the Miamis, " Mischigonong, that is, the great lake." Father Marest, in a letter dated at Kaskaskia, Illinois, November 9, 1712, so often referred to on account of the valuable historical matter it contains, contracts the aboriginal name to Michigan, and is, perhaps, the first author who ever spelt it in the way that has become universal. He naively says, "that on the maps this lake has the name, without any authority, of the ' Lake of the Illinois,' since the Illinois do not dwell in its neighborhood."