ican steel that has enabled us to invade
foreign markets, and promises to so reduce the cost of our ships, that we
may be able to compete again in ship-building, with the yards of the Clyde
and the Tyne. Along the shores of these unsalted seas, great shipyards are
springing up, that already build ships more cheaply than can be done
anywhere else in the world, and despite the obstacles of shallow canals,
and the treacherous channels of the St. Lawrence, have been able to build
and send to tidewater, ocean ships in competition with the seacoast
builders. The present of the lake marine is secure; its future is full of
promise. Its story, if lacking in the elements of romance that attend upon
the ocean's story, is well worth telling.

A decade more than two centuries ago a band of Iroquois Indians made their
way in bark canoes from Lake Ontario up Lake Erie to the Detroit River,
across Lake St. Clair, and thence through Lake Huron to Point Iroquois.
They were the first navigators of the Great Lakes, and that they were not
peace-loving boatmen, is certain from the fact that they traveled all
these miles of primeval waterway for the express purpose of battle.
History records that they had no difficulty in bringing on a combat with
the Illinois tribes, and in an attempt to displace the latter from Point
Iroquois, the invaders were destroyed after a six-days' battle.

It is still a matter of debate among philosophical historians, whether
war, trade, or missionary effort has done the more toward opening the
strange, wild places of the world. Each, doubtless, has done its part, but
we shall find in the story of the Great Lakes, that the war canoes of the
savages were followed by the Jesuit missionaries, and these in turn by the
bateaux of the voyageurs employed by the Hudson Bay Company.

After the Iroquois had learned the way, trips of war canoes up and down
the lakes, were annual occurrences, and warfare was almost perpetual. In
1680 the Iroquois, 700 strong, invaded Illinois, killed 1200 of the tribe
there established, and drove the rest beyond the Mississippi. For years
after the Iroquois nation were the rulers of the water-front between Lake
Erie and Lake Huron. While this tribe was in undisputed possession,
commerce had little to do with the navigation of the Great Lakes. The
Indians went up and down the shores on long hunting trips, but war was the
principal business, and every canoe was equipped for a fray at any time.