In 1668 one of the most interesting
persons who ever appeared in early Canada, the missionary and explorer,
Father Marquette, founded the mission of Sainte-Marie on the southern
side of the Sault, which may be considered the oldest settlement of the
north-west, as it alone has a continuous history to the present time.

In the record of those times we see strikingly displayed certain
propensities of the Canadian people which seriously interfered with the
settlement and industry of the country. The fur-trade had far more
attractions for the young and adventurous than the regular and active
life of farming on the seigniories. The French immigrant as well as the
native Canadian adapted himself to the conditions of Indian life.
Wherever the Indian tribes were camped in the forest or by the river,
and the fur-trade could be prosecuted to the best advantage, we see the
_coureurs de bois_, not the least picturesque figures of these grand
woods, then in the primeval sublimity of their solitude and vastness.
Despite the vices and weaknesses of a large proportion of this class,
not a few were most useful in the work of exploration and exercised a
great influence among the Indians of the West. But for these
forest-rangers the Michigan region would have fallen into the possession
of the English who were always intriguing with the Iroquois and
endeavouring to obtain a share of the fur-trade of the west. Joliet, the
companion of Marquette, in his ever-memorable voyage to the Mississippi,
was a type of the best class of the Canadian fur-trader.

In 1671 Sieur St. Lusson took formal possession of the Sault and the
adjacent country in the name of Louis XIV. In 1673 Fort Frontenac was
built at Cataraqui, now Kingston, as a barrier to the aggressive
movements of the Iroquois and an _entrepot_ for the fur-trade on Lake
Ontario. In the same year Joliet and Marquette solved a part of the
problem which had so long perplexed the explorers of the West. The
trader and priest reached the Mississippi by the way of Green Bay, the
Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. They went down the Mississippi as far as the
Arkansas. Though they were still many hundreds of miles from the mouth
of the river, they grasped the fact that it must reach, not the western
ocean, but the southern gulf first discovered by the Spaniards.
Marquette died not long afterwards, worn out by his labours in the
wilderness, and was buried beneath the little chapel at St. Ignace.
Joliet's nam