descriptions.

From his intimacy with Iroquet—Brule spent the better part of eight years in his Country and in that of his allies; being the territory lying to the north of Lake Ontario—he must have known what Iroquet knew of the location of such a waterfall (which was only about 150 miles from the center of his territory, and a journey of that distance was of small moment to the Indians of those days); and when Iroquet went to it as a "trading place," Brule doubtless accompanied him.

It must also be remembered that it was this same chief, Iroquet, who later confirmed to Father Daillon the renown of "the great River of the Neutrals"—that is the Niagara—as a Center of Trade; whose location he knew well, but refused to divulge to the Priest.

Knowing of such a wonderful waterfall's existence, and its general location; being a "trader," and Niagara being even then a well-known Center of Trade, the probabilities are that Brule visited it at a very early date.

A TRADING PLACE

But, while white men were no doubt at Niagara early in the 17th Century—possibly as early as 1611—and while we know that Traders and Priests were in its immediate vicinity at various times prior to 1669; and while we have good reason to believe, that in that latter year LaSalle himself explored the whole of the Niagara Frontier; yet it is not until 1678 that we have any positive record of any visit, nor any description of the Cataract by a man who claimed to have actually seen it.

Father Hennepin's first work, "Louisiana," published in 1681, tells of that first recorded visit, and gives the first description of Niagara by an eye-witness.

At the time when that first unnamed white man saw the Cataract the Indians had, and firmly believed in, at least one positive tradition regarding it; one which had long been believed in by the tribes far and near, and which had long been turned to good account in trade by former generations of Indians who dwelt at Niagara; and which was believed in and maintained for many a year afterwards. It was a tradition which had long caused the vicinity of the Cataract to be known far and wide as, and to be, a great Center of Trade; because it related to a highly-prized commodity which was found and primarily procurable only at this spot.

The first printed direct mention of Niagara referred to its famous Portage. The two next references to it were indirect and poetic, and, in so far as geographical location, certainly exemplified a poet's license.

The second printed allusion to it,—an indirect one, as noted later,—was in regard to trade.

Champlain was on the lower St. Lawrence River when, in 1603, he first heard of the Niagara Portage; Father Daillon was within a hundred miles of the Cataract when, in 1626, he first heard of Niagara as a "trading place."

When white men first became really acquainted with the Indians, 300 years ago, the various tribes had, and no doubt had long had, certain "trading places" where they annually met for barter.

At that time, the Hurons and Algonquins had such a meeting place on the upper Ottawa River.

It was at such a trade gathering at Lake Saint Peter, that Iroquet, in 1610, received Brule as a gift.

Father Sagard, who in 1625 was a Missionary among them at Lake Nipissing, has stated that the Hurons used each summer to travel for five or six weeks southerly, in order to meet the tribes which had goods they wanted; and that they brought back those articles both for their own use and for sale to other tribes. From the direction stated, and from other deductions, it is probable that that annual summer journey of the Hurons "for trade" had Niagara as its objective point.

That the Indians traded among themselves is unquestioned. When Cartier, in 1534, ascended the St. Lawrence River, the Indians of Hochelaga were smoking tobacco which had been grown in the sunny south lands. The Muskegons, around James Bay, traded their furs with their southern neighbors for birch bark, out of which to make their canoes. Axes and arrow heads of obsidian—a stone found on the lower Mississippi—were in use among the tribes to the north of Quebec. The Indian "trade" was not all done haphazard. The most of it was done at gatherings held at regularly agreed upon times and places. And in the selection of localities, Niagara must have been a favored meeting place.

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:

In the same volume Champlain records that another savage told him,—

It was not the wonders nor the beauty of the Cataract that impressed itself upon the minds of those savages, and that led them to furnish to Champlain—and so to the white man's world—the very first knowledge of the existence of Niagara. No! What most impressed the Cataract upon the minds of those Aborigines was the fact that at this point, the Falls