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This was before Philadelphia was founded by William Penn. The first account we have of a voyage on Lake Michigan was by Nicholas Perrot, who, accompanied by some Pottawattomies, passed from Green Bay to Chicago, in 1670. Two years afterwards the same voyage was undertaken by Allouez and Dablon. They stopped at the mouth of the Milwaukie River, then occupied by Kickapoo Indians.
From the banks of the Saguenay at Tadousac, or from the shore of Hudson Bay, where Father Albanel was evangelizing the Indians, to the recesses of the Iroquois country, a Black Robe taught from interval to interval in a humble chapel the truths of the Christian religion. "We may say," wrote Father Dablon in 1671, "that the torch of the faith now illumines the four quarters of this New World.
Perrot says that the beaver north of the mouth of the Wisconsin were better than those of the Illinois country, and the chase was carried on in this region for a longer period; and we know from Dablon that the Wisconsin savages were not compelled to separate by families during the hunting season, as was common among other tribes, because the game here was so abundant.
The victors paid dear for their conquest. Their losses were so heavy that they were forced to remain for two months in the Erie country, to bury their dead and nurse their wounded. The Iroquois, it seems, afterwards made other expeditions, to finish their work. At least, they told Chaumonot and Dablon, in the autumn of this year, that they meant to do so in the following spring.
Father Dablon, who had previously gone with Father Chaumonot among the Onondagas, and had brought back the request for a colony, accompanied the expedition, which left Quebec in the month of June, 1656. On the way up the river the Onondagas were attacked by a band of Mohawks, when the boats carrying the French had gone ahead and were not within sight.
A short, ugly sea gets up very quickly after the wind begins to blow hard, and subsides with equal celerity when the wind goes down. The fluctuations in the level of the waters of these lakes have attracted much attention among scientific observers; and as early as 1670, Father Dablon, in his "Relations," says, "As to the tides, it is difficult to lay down any correct rule.
Prefixed to the Relation of 1671 is that monument of Jesuit hardihood and enterprise, the map of Lake Superior; a work of which, however, the exactness has been exaggerated, as compared with other Canadian maps of the day. While making surveys, the priests were diligently looking for copper. Father Dablon reports that they had found it in greatest abundance on Isle Minong, now Isle Royale.
The great Jesuits were absent in the south, in Onondaga, where they had erected a mission: Father Superior le Mercier, and Fathers Dablon and Le Moyne. Immediately on landing, Father Chaumonot made a sign, and his sea-weary voyagers fell upon their knees and kissed the earth. New France! "Now," said Victor, shaking himself, "let us burn up the remaining herrings and salt codfish.
So, under the One Hundred Assistants, as the French colonizing Company of the early Seventeenth Century was called, missions were dotted throughout the loneliness and terror of the wilderness; Breboeuf and Daniel did their work and met their fate; Raymbault carried the cross to Lake Superior; Gabriel Dreuilettes came down the Kennebec; Jogues was tortured by the Mohawks; Lallemand shed his blood serenely; Chaumont and Dablon built their chapel where now stands Syracuse; and after all, there stood the primeval forests, pathless as before, and the red men were but partially and transiently affected.
The Jesuit fathers Dablon, Dreuillettes, Allouez, and Andre were present. A great council was held on a height. Saint-Lusson had a cross erected with a post bearing the king's arms. The Vexilla Regis and the Exaudiat were sung. The intendant's delegates took possession of the country in the name of their monarch.
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