Niagara Falls 



1906 Minister that he dispatched the Sieur de Lignery to Mackinac, 

 Severance anc j L ouv jg n y to Detroit, by the Ottawa-river route, because the 

 Senecas had warned him that a band of Foxes lay in wait for 

 plunder at the Niagara portage, or on Lake Erie. 1 If this were 

 not duplicity on the part of the Senecas, it shows that war parties 

 from the West foraged as far east as the Niagara ; notwithstand- 

 ing the supposed jealousy with which the Senecas guarded it. 



• *>••• 



One of the first legislative acts passed under Burnet had aimed 

 to put a stop to the direct trade between the English and the 

 French. It had long been the custom for Albany traders to carry 

 English-made goods to Montreal, while selling them to the 

 French, who in turn traded them to the Indians. The English 

 could supply certain articles which were more to the savage taste 

 than those sent over from France; and they could afford to sell 

 them at a lower price. Having stopped the peddling to the 

 French Governor Burnet made strong efforts to draw the far 

 Western Indians to Albany for trade direct with them. In these 

 efforts he was fairly successful. Bands of strange savages from 

 Mackinac and beyond, accompanied by the squaws and papooses, 

 presented themselves at Albany, where their kind had never been 

 seen before. They had come down Lake Huron, past the French 

 at Detroit, and through Lake Erie ; and paddling down the swift 

 reaches of the navigable Niagara had made the portage, reem- 

 barking below the heights and at the very doorway of the French 

 trading-house; with some interchange, no doubt of jeers and 

 imprecations, but none of furs for the French goods ; and follow- 

 ing the historic highways for canoes they skirted the Ontario 



1 Vaudreuil to the Minister, Oct. 15, 1712. In a subsequent letter, 

 Nov. 6, 1712, Vaudreuil speaks of the band of Otagamis (i. e. 

 Outagamis, otherwise Foxes or Sacs), led by one Vonnere, who lay in 

 wait at the Niagara, portage, so that an expedition for Detroit led by 

 M. de Vincennes was sent by the Ottawa River route, " not only to avoid 

 those savages, but to prevent the convoy from being pillaged by the 

 Iroquois," etc. The name " Vonnere " is found elsewhere in the more 

 probable form " Le Tonnerre," i. e. " Thunderbolt." 



1256 



