de. Only four
years before Le Clercq's book appeared a French army, under De
Denonville, had built a fort there; but the hostility of the Iroquois
(incited by British agents) had forced its abandonment a year later.
Anxious to again possess it, planning now to do so by diplomacy rather
than by arms, the French Government would naturally have objected to
any published allusion to the locality as a point of Trade,--which
could in no way have aided its designs, but by further calling
Britain's attention to Niagara's importance, would naturally cause her
agents to be still further vigilant toward frustrating any move of
France for the control thereof.

In the same letter Daillon says:

"But the Hurons having discovered that I talked of leading them
[the Neutrals] to the trade, he [Yroquet] spread in all the
villages when he passed, very bad reports about me * * * in a word,
the Hurons told them so much evil of us [the French] to prevent
their going to trade * * * adding a thousand other absurdities to
make us hated by them, and prevent their trading with us; so that
they might have the trade with these nations themselves
exclusively, which is very profitable to them."

Yroquet, who was Champlain's friend, as before mentioned, being a close
ally of the Hurons, evidently had no desire for a Frenchman to open
trade directly with the Iroquois--the sworn foes of the Hurons--and
thus to divert any of the trade which he carried on with the French in
the Huron Country.

So the first white man known to have been on the Niagara River (in
1626) wrote about it as a "trading place." It clearly was regarded in
that light, at that time, both by the Neutrals and by the Hurons; those
being the only two tribes which Father Daillon had visited. And if it
was so known to the tribes on the west and northwest, there was no
reason why it should not have been so known--and it no doubt was so
known--to the tribes to the south, to the east, and to the west.

On his map, in 1632, Champlain continues his location of the Cataract
at the point where the river enters Lake Ontario; and marks it, "Falls
at the extremity of Lake St. Louis [Ontario] very high, where many fish
come down and are stunned."

[Illustration: NIAGARA IN 1759, BY THOMAS DAVIES.]

In 1640, Fathers Brebeuf and Chaumonot, on their famous Mission to the
Neutrals, crossed the Niagara River at Onguiaahra, a village of that
Nation, which stood o