"This famous voyage," says Dean Harris in his interesting 'History of
the Early Missions in Western Canada,' "stimulated to an extraordinary
degree enthusiasm for discovery, and in the following year Talon sent
out expeditions to the Hudson Bay, the Southern Sea, and into the
Algonquin country to the north." Marquette, Tonty, Hennepin, Du Lhut, La
Salle and Perrot explored the Mississippi valley, and the head waters of
the St. Lawrence system, and almost the entire continent was claimed by
the French as belonging to New France. As far as appears, there were no
Indians having settled abodes on the north shore of Lake Erie for more
than a century after the expulsion of the Neutrals. Nor does any attempt
appear to have been made by the whites to explore south-western Ontario
until the close of the last century. The Iroquois continued for a long
period to range its forests for beaver in the winter. The rivalry
between the French and the English for the control of the vast western
fur trade led to the erection of outposts by the English at Oswego and
by the French at Cataraqui, Niagara, Detroit and Michilimakinac, during
the latter part of the 17th century. English traders sailed or paddled
up the lakes to get their share of the traffic, and were from time to
time summarily arrested and expelled by their rivals. Both parties tried
to ingratiate themselves with the natives. The French were as eager to
maintain a state of warfare between the Iroquois and the Indians of the
upper Lakes--the Hurons, Ottawas, Pottawatamies, Ojibways etc.--as to
induce the former to keep the peace with the white inhabitants of
Canada. There were two great trade routes to Montreal, viz: by Mackinac,
the Georgian Bay and the French and Ottawa River and by Detroit, Lake
Erie and Niagara; the Lake Simcoe portage routes by the Trent River
system, and the Holland River and Toronto were also used. Trading or
military parties, under the leadership of La Salle, Tonty, Perrot, Du
Lhut, Cadaillac, passed along the coast of L. Erie in canoes; but little
record if any remained of their visits to the shores. Kettle Creek was
long called the Tonty River. It is so named in one of Bellin's maps of
1755, and by the Canadian Land Board at Detroit as lately as 1793. The
only northern tributaries of Lake Erie to which names are given on the
map of 1755 are the Grand River, River D'Ollier (Patterson's Creek),
which in some maps is called the River of the Wintering--a man