When was lake superior discovered

The Frank W. The Schooner Barge, Michigan. On Oct. Drake was towing the schooner-barge Michigan in the vicinity of Vermilion Point, 12 miles west of Whitefish Point. Within minutes, a massive wave smashes the two vessels together, destroying the M. Without power, the Drake soon lost headway and waves swept over her decks. The remains of the M. Drake were discovered in by the Shipwreck Society, and her rudder is on exhibit at Whitefish Point. The Shipwreck Museum is open to the public seasonally from May 1 to Oct.

Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission. However, Galinee, who was with La Salle in , at the western end of Lake Ontario, gives the first description that is known to exist of the Great Falls, but which he never saw.

He says: "We found a river one-eighth of a league broad and extremely rapid, forming an outlet or communication from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. The outlet is forty leagues long, and has from ten to twelve leagues above its embrochure into Lake Ontario the finest falls of water in the world; for all the Indians whom I have inquired about it say that the water falls at that place from a rock higher than the tallest pines, that is about feet.

In Father Hennepin visited the Falls, and in he published his first work in which he places the height of the falls in the Niagara river at feet. In he published another work called the "New Discovery," in which he gives a description of the Falls, beginning as follows: "Betwixt the Lakes Ontario and Erie, there is a vast and prodigious cadence of water, which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford a parallel.

From the time of this publication, which was translated into many of the languages of Europe, most Europeans became familiar at least with the name of this great natural wonder. In Charlevoix and Borassow, each independently of the other, made accurate measurements of the height of the Falls.

While these early discoveries, thus related, are the records that have been preserved, it is far from improbable that the first explorers were fur-traders, trappers and voyageurs who had neither ability nor inclination to record their wanderings, nor would these prior journeyings be likely to be mentioned in subsequent writings, for they would detract from the latter explorations, and possibly jeopardize claims.

By the close of Champlain's activity the forces in New France which were destined to affect for almost two centuries the history of the Great Lakes might all have been seen in embryo. The Jesuits were engaged in their heroic but ineffectual efforts to Christianize the savages.

The fur trade had excited the cupidity of men, and Richelieu had already made it a monopoly by establishing the company of the "Hundred Associates. The search for a route to China was a spur to the adventurous. France had laid claim to this vast territory. The deep hostility of the Iroquois had been incurred, and the great struggle with the English for the mastery of the lakes had been commenced.

The missionary spirit was active in the Catholic Church in France when the early voyages of exploration were made to the New World, and side by side with the adventurer in search of gain or fame came the priest, who held it his highest duty to convert the savage nations to Christianity.

The Jesuits were first in the mission field of Canada, but they were soon followed by the Recollects, a reformed branch of the Franciscan order. The Recollects invited the assistance of the Jesuit. These missions were scattered throughout New France, and quickly penetrated the region of the Great Lakes. Father Joseph de la Roche d'Aillon founded a mission among the neutral nations on the Niagara river, and urged the French to open up communication by way of Lake Ontario; but he spoke too soon.

The mission of the Hurons, begun in by the Recollects, was continued by the Jesuits. The Hurons dwelt in palisaded villages. Diligently the advocates of the better life labored, and heroically they endured the hardships and privations of the forest life, yet in they could claim but Christians out of 16, Hurons.

New stations were formed to the southward among the neutrals, and to the northward among the Algonquin tribes. Iroquois Destroy Huron Missions. During the following winter they fell on St.

Ignace and made a still more dreadful havoc, and then one after another fifteen towns succumbed or were abandoned. The Hurons were in this way destroyed as a people, and the remnants of the tribe found lodgment in other tribes and nations, many of them being adopted by their conquerors.

During the fierce irruption of the Iroquois, in , several of the missionaries became martyrs to their religion. The venerable Brebeuf was inhumanly tortured to death, and Father Daniel fell riddled with arrows at the front portal of his chapel. A few of the missionaries fled with the Hurons before the gathered storm, but the mission was broken beyond repair. It had engaged the services of twenty-nine missionaries, seven of whom yielded up their lives in the cause.

Sated with the annihilation of their enemies, and harassed with fresh wars with the Eries and Susquehannas, the Iroquois, about , sought peace with the French and requested that missionaries be sent to them. The zealous and fearless priests responded promptly. It was only a lull in the active warfare of the Five Nations. Embroilments quickly followed, and after a few years of moderate success the Jesuits were compelled to abandon the missions in , when the clouds of war looked blackest.

The route to Lake Superior was natural and easy from the missions on Lake Huron. They found about two thousand Indians there encamped, a number of the Potta-watomies having joined the Ojibways, having been driven north by the Iroquois. From the Pottawatomies these priests heard of the tribe of Indians now known as the Sioux.

Raymbault soon afterward died, and in reporting the event to his superiors in Paris, Vimont said that this good Jesuit father had intended to continue his course westward to China, but that God diverted him to Heaven. While returning to the St. Lawrence country the next year, Father Jogues was taken prisoner by the Iroquois, and he and his Huron companions soon found their canoes floating down toward Lake Champlain, and Jogues was thus the first European to see the wild beauties of Lake George.

He was rescued in by the Dutch. He afterward went to France, and in , having returned to his missionary labors among the wild sons of the forest, was killed by the Mohawks while on an errand of peace to that tribe, being treacherously struck down as he was entering a tent, to which he had been invited to partake of a feast.

Missions on the Upper Lakes. Lawrence and the Upper Lakes. In Garreau, while on his way to the Ottawa country with a flotilla of Indians, was ambushed by the Iroquois and killed.

In August, , the venerable Menard, a veteran of the Huron missions, set out with another Ottawa flotilla in search of the vanished tribe so broken in spirit that it concealed its habitations from even its friends. When he left Quebec, he took with him a scanty stock of necessaries, "for I trust," said he, "in that Providence which feeds the little birds of the air, and clothes the wild flowers of the desert. He went forth with the presentiment that he was performing his last journey, for, in writing back to a friend, he remarked: "In three or four months you may add my name to the memento of deaths.

Theresa -- the day of his arrival being the anniversary day of that patron saint. Deserted here by his Ottawa guides, the aged priest wrote: "Here I had the consolation of saying mass, which repaid me with usury for all my past hardships. Here I began a mission, composed of a flying church of Christian Indians from the neighborhood of the settlement, and of such as God's mercy had gathered in here.

There he remained until the following spring, when he left, accompanied by a single Indian, for Chaquamegon bay, near the head of the lake. They took the route through Portage lake; and while the voyageur was conveying the canoe across the portage, the good Father wandered into the woods, and no trace of him was afterward obtained.

Claude Allouez was the next Jesuit missionary assigned to this remote region. He set out in the summer of with a flotilla of canoes and about savages on their return from a trading voyage to Montreal, and reached Chaquamegon bay, on Lake Superior, October 1. At La Pointe du St. Esprit he began his first mission, and for thirty years afterward was a faithful apostle of Christ throughout the Lake Superior country.

In his intercourse with the various tribes of the Algonquins, he heard of the "great water," which in Allouez's phonetic rendering took the form of "Mes-sipi," which river he was inclined to think entered Chesapeake bay.

Here he fell in with a party of the Sioux nation, who represented their country as lying to the west of Lake Superior, and as being a prairie country. Leaving the Ottawa mission at La Pointe in charge of Marquette, he proceeded, in , to Green Bay, where he established the mission of St.

With Marquette he founded the Illinois mission, and traveled extensively among the tribes westward from the Great Lakes. Other missionaries were sent out, but progress was slow; lay-brothers, who were skilled artisans and workers of metal, had the greatest success on account of the material services they could render their converts.

In Marquette established the mission at the Sault Ste. Marie, the earliest in what is now the State of Michigan, where he was soon joined by Dablon, who, in September, , was sent to La Pointe to relieve Allouez, who from that place went to Green Bay to labor among the Indians and a group of coureurs de bois congregated there. In April, , he ascended the Fox river, and found Indians on Lake Winnebago, mourning losses inflicted on them by the Senecas.

On the Wolf river, an affluent of the Fox river, he founded the mission of St. Mark, and for some time ministered at both missions. Later he reached the head of the Wisconsin, and states that that river leads to the great river "Messisipi.

At La Pointe, Marquette was not satisfied. He had the remnants of the Hurons and Ottawas about him, and bands of the Sioux came to visit him there. A war between the Hurons and the Sioux delayed Marquette in carrying out his plan to go south among the Illinois, to found a mission among them. He was also determined to go to the great river and descend to its mouth, in order to settle the great question as to the ultimate direction of its flow.

But the difficulty between the Hurons and the Sioux drove the former tribe and the Ottawas away from La Pointe, and La-Salle went to the Sault, where Dollier found him in In he was among the Hurons on the north side of the Straits of Mackinac, where he founded the mission of St.

About the same time another priest, Louis Andre, who had joined Marquette at La Pointe, settled with the Ottawas on their retreat to the great Manitoulin island. Marquette died in the spring of , by the side of a little stream, which enters the west side of Lake Michigan, and a few months later his remains were taken by some of the Ottawa Indians, who knew him and loved him well, to the mission at St.

Ignace, and were there buried beneath the little mission chapel. When the Hurons fled from the wrath of the Sioux to Mackinaw, the mission there was in its most flourishing condition. Between and it included Huron, and 1, Ottawas, and was then located at Point St. When Canada became an English possession, the work of the Jesuits in that country was practically ended. The scene of Longfellow's beautiful poem, Hiawatha, is among the Ojibways, on the southern shore of Lake Superior, in the region between the Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable.

The poet, in the following verses, relates the coming of the missionaries:. Men of intelligence and education, they gave up all that civilized life can offer to share the precarious life of wandering savages, and were the first to reveal the character of the interior of the country, its soil and products, the life and ideas of the natives and the system of American languages. Another historian pays them this tribute: "One of the noblest chapters of the Jesuits deals with the heroic devotion of its missionaries in the woods of America.

They were appalled at no perils, shrank from no toils. Men educated in the learning of their time traversed the gloomy forest, and set up the cross at the farthest shores of the Great Lakes. They lived in the smoky huts and dined on the disgusting food of the savages; torture and burning only called out renewed devotions. Their efforts to win the tribes of the northwest to the standard of the cross, prosecuted with great zeal, and under circumstances of privation and suffering, may be regarded as abortive.

There is something impressive in the rites of the Catholic church -- something in its mysteries calculated to overawe the wild men of the woods. So long as the missionary was in their midst and superintended their labors, they yielded to his guidance and adopted his recommendations, so far at least as conduced to their comfort; but when he withdrew, with equal facility they glided into their former habits.

The superstructure raised with so much care fell to the ground the moment the sustaining hand was withdrawn. Speaking of the failure of the missionaries to attain the success which they deserved, Mackenzie, an English traveler, in , remarks that the Canadian missionaries should have been contented to improve the morals of their own countrymen, so that by meliorating their character and conduct they would have given a striking example of the effect of religion to the surrounding savages.

Parkman's Estimate. They, and the stable and populous communities around them, had been the rude material from which the Jesuit would have formed his Christian empire in the wilderness; but one by one these kindred people were uprooted and swept away while the neighboring Algonquins, to whom they had been a bulwark, were involved with them in a common ruin.

The guns and tomahawks of the Iroquois were the ruin of their hopes. Could they have curbed or converted those ferocious bands, it is little less than certain that their dreams would have become a reality. Savages tamed -- not civilized, for that would have been impossible -- would have been distributed in communities through the valleys of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, ruled by priests in the interest of Catholicity and of France.

Their habits of agriculture would have been developed, and their instincts of mutual slaughter repressed. True to her far reaching and adventurous genius, New France would have occupied the West with traders, settlers and garrisons, and cut up the virgin wilderness into fiefs, while as yet the colonists of the English were but a weak and broken line along the shore of the Atlantic; and when at last the great conflict came, England and Liberty would have been confronted, not by a depleted antagonist, but by an athletic champion of the principles of Richelieu and of Loyola.

Their virtues shine amidst the rubbish of error, like diamonds and gold in the gravel of the torrent. For a century and a half after the discovery of the Great Lakes their commerce was chiefly furs. It was a valuable trade. The lakes penetrated inland nearly a thousand miles, and by means of portages gave ready access to a still wider scope of country, inhabited only by roving bands of savages and wild animals.

When the Canadian settlements were established, trade quickly sprang up with the natives, and the Indians made voyages from the upper lake region to Montreal to exchange furs and peltries for the weapons and cheap ornaments of the immigrants. For a long series of years Montreal was the center of a large and profitable trade. Thousands of Frenchmen of all grades of life came over to better their fortunes, and ships bearing the white banners of France crossed the Atlantic, carrying westward passengers and supplies and returning with a freight of peltry.

The earliest demand was supplied by the Indians near by. As the helpless beaver, mink and otter became exterminated, the hardy "voyageurs" pushed and rowed their bateaux in all directions, yet made their home in Montreal, where they spent the winters in rioting on the savings of the summers. Still later it was necessary to establish frontier stations to serve as outposts for the merchants of Montreal, and this movement it was that stimulated exploration.

The fur-trader, the wild, daring wood ranger, or coureur de bois, was the pioneer of New France; in his footsteps followed the priest. The trading post and the mission house are the twin types of the French occupation on the shores of the lakes. The Canadian provinces owe their first start on the road to prosperity to the fur trade. The French pioneers discovered that as the Indians were ignorant of the value of the furs which they accumulated, an enormous profit was possible to the successful trader in these articles.

In the infancy of this industry there was absolutely no limit to the percentage of profit, as the Indians would exchange the most valuable peltries for European trinkets, that were worth nothing except the cost of transportation.

The Indian fur trade is thus described by Colder in his memorial: "The Indians make a long narrow boat, made of the bark of the birch tree, the parts of which they join very neatly. Coincidentally, the Michigan was also being towed by the M.

Drake when it met its watery demise. The two vessels were caught in hazardous weather on October 2, , near Vermilion Point, Michigan, when the Michigan began to sink. Captain J. Nicholson managed to maneuver the Drake alongside the Michigan so that crew members could leap from one vessel to the other. Crews from both Drake and the Michigan were now in danger—but not for long. Two nearby steel steamers managed to rescue the combined crews before both the Drake and the Michigan succumbed to the storm.

A team aboard the David Boyd research vessel spent much of the past summer scanning the depths of Lake Superior. As many as 30, people died in these maritime disasters. American forces first fought for command of the Great Lakes during the War of The five enormous bodies of water later became important trade routes as Midwest industrial cities including Detroit, Chicago, Buffalo and Milwaukee sprang up along their shores.

According to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy , the cold, fresh water of the Great Lakes helps preserve many wrecks in mint condition.