[Footnote 24:  Spelt by Champlain with a “ch” instead of sh.]

[Footnote 25:  Then called the Riviere des Iroquois.]

But results far more serious arose from these two skirmishes with the Iroquois in 1609 and 1610.  The Confederacy of the Five Nations (afterwards six) realized that they had been attacked unprovoked by the dominant white men of the St. Lawrence, called by the Montagnais Mistigosh, and by the Iroquois Adoreset[-u]i ("men of iron”, from their armour).  They became the bitter enemies of the French, and tendered help first to the Dutch to establish themselves in the valley of the Hudson, and secondly to the English.  In the great Colonial wars of the early eighteenth century the Iroquois were invaluable allies to the British forces, Colonial and Imperial, and counted for much in the struggle which eventually cost France Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine, the two Canadas, and Louisiana.  On the other hand, the French alliance with the Hurons, Algonkins, and Montagnais, begun by this brotherhood-in-arms with Champlain, secured for France and the French such widespread liking among the tribes of Algonkin speech, and their allies and friends, that the two Canadas and much of the Middle West, together with Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, became French in sympathy without any war of conquest.  When the French dominion over North America fell, in 1759, with the capture of Quebec by Wolfe’s army, tribes of Amerindians went on fighting for five years afterwards to uphold the banner and the rule of the beloved French king.

On Champlain’s next visit to Canada, in 1610, he handed over to the Algonkin Indians a French youth named Etienne Brule (see p. 88), to be taught the Algonkin language (the use of which was spread far and wide over north-east America), and, further, sent a Huron youth to France to be taught French.  Between 1611 and 1616 he had explored much of the country between Montreal (the foundations of which city he may be said to have laid on May 29, 1611, for his stockaded camp is now in the centre of it) and Lakes Huron and Ontario, especially along the Ottawa River, that convenient short cut (as a water route) between the St. Lawrence at Sault St. Louis (Montreal) and Lakes Huron and Superior.  With short portages you can get in canoes from Montreal to the waters of Hudson Bay, or to Lake Winnipeg and the base of the Rocky Mountains.

In exploring this “River of the Algonkins” (as he called it), Champlain was nearly drowned between two rocks, and much hurt, from over bravery and want of knowledge of how to deal with a canoe on troubled water; but on June 4, 1613, he stood on the site of the modern city of Ottawa—­the capital of the vast Canadian Dominion—­and gazed at the marvellous Rideau or Curtain Fall, where the Rideau River enters the Ottawa.  But the air was resonant with the sound of falling water.  Three miles above the falls of the Gatineau and the Rideau, the main Ottawa River descended with a roar and a whirl of white foam and rainbow-tinted mist into the chasm called the Chaudiere or Kettle.  On a later occasion he describes the way in which the Algonkins propitiated the Spirit of the Chasm: