The story of the Great Lakes

Standing in Lake Park, Chicago, beside the statue of General Logan, the supporter of Douglas and, later, of Lincoln, one has behind him the most marvellous city of modern times,...

On the 28th of July, 1615, Samuel de Champlain paddled out of the mouth of the French River into the waters of Georgian Bay, an arm of Lake Huron; or, as he named it from its gr...

From 1615, when Father Joseph Le Caron celebrated the first mass among the Hurons, for fourteen years a few intrepid priests braved the difficulties of savage life, and endeavor...

With the destruction of the Huron missions western exploration ceased for a few years. In 1660 Father Ménard passed through the Sault Ste. Marie and spent a winter ministering t...

The next noteworthy event in the story of the Great Lakes is the building and the launching of the _Griffon_, and the voyage of La Salle from the Niagara River to the southern e...

In the summer of 1679, La Salle returned from Fort Frontenac to Niagara to find the _Griffon_ finished and ready for her first voyage. By the completion of this vessel his enter...

Like all strong men Frontenac made many enemies. He was recalled in 1682, and General La Barre, a man of about sixty, was sent out in his place. La Barre had made a good record...

After the failure which has been recounted in the preceding chapter, La Barre was recalled to France, and a new governor, Denonville, sent over to take his place. He had not muc...

The importance of Niagara in trade and warfare was early recognized by both the French and the English as well as by the Iroquois. La Salle and Denonville, in their desire to mo...

On the thirteenth day of September, 1760, five days after the surrender of Montreal, Major Robert Rogers, the most energetic Indian fighter of the time, set out from Montreal wi...

A fur trader by the name of Alexander Henry was the first Englishman to reach Mackinac after the fall of New France. His story of his adventures gives a graphic picture of the c...

With the turn of a single page of history and the passage of a single decade of time, during this century of struggle for possession, the actors in the drama change, or if the s...

From the surrender of the northwest posts and the founding of Cleveland to the year 1812, there is little to note in the history of the Great Lakes. The forts were gradually str...

The year 1813 began with another disaster for the United States. After the surrender of Detroit, Governor William Henry Harrison, of the Indiana Territory, placed himself at the...

A period of conflict always leaves behind it changed and unsettled conditions. Between the close of a war and the final readjustment of affairs leading up to a settled and perma...

The settlement of northern Illinois and Wisconsin by American colonists brought on in 1832 the last serious Indian outbreak in the lake region. The white men had been pushing th...

The Great Lakes are entered from the outer world by a series of natural gateways extending from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the westernmost end of Lake Superior. With a shr...

As the Indian read in the signs of the trail--the depth of a moccasin print or the direction of a broken twig--the story of those who had journeyed over the path before him, so...

Before the nineteenth century, travellers who visited Niagara generally went there by way of Montreal and Lake Ontario, returning to the seacoast by Presque Isle (Erie, Pennsylv...

Since the beginning of the century there had been more or less talk of a canal to connect the Hudson with Lake Erie, and in 1816 the legislature of New York voted to undertake t...

The decade from 1830 to 1840 witnessed a rush of people to the country of the Great Lakes. As pioneers had poured into New York State twenty years before and changed the wildern...

Lake Erie became in the nineteenth century the portal of the Great Lakes. To her shores came from the east an army of immigrants pouring into the states beyond, and from these r...

In the last years before the Civil War, Illinois became a political storm centre to which the eyes of the whole nation were turned. Reaching farther south than any other lake st...

As the northern frontier of the United States the Great Lakes, although at some distance from the decisive battles of the Civil War, were the scene of strong Confederate activit...

No part of the story of the Great Lakes is more significant than the tale of the building up of the large enterprises that have made that region one of the leading centres of pr...

Nowhere has the life of the Great Lakes developed more clearly an individuality of its own than in its shipping. The conditions which confronted the navigators on these great in...

The last sixty years of the nineteenth century witnessed on the shores of the Great Lakes the development of the city. The towns which we have traced through their early stages...

This period is taken up in Parkman’s _Pioneers of France in the New World_, _The Jesuits in North America_, _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_, and _Count Frontenac...

For the struggle between France and England Parkman’s _Half Century of Conflict_ (2 vols.), _Montcalm and Wolfe_ (2 vols.), and _Conspiracy of Pontiac_ (2 vols.) give the best c...

The bibliography of this section would include all that has come before, and much from pamphlets, historical society publications, local histories, and records of anniversary ce...