In the summer of 1615 Champlain, returning from France, made his way up the Ottawa River, and, by a short portage, to Lake Nipissing, thence down French River to the waters of Lake Huron.  On the banks of the French River he met a detachment of the Ottawa tribe (of the Algonkin family).  These people he styled the Cheveux Releves, because the men’s hair was gathered up and dressed more carefully and becomingly on the top of the head than (he says) could at that time be done by a hairdresser in France.  This arrangement of the hair gave the men a very handsome appearance, but here their toilet ended, for they wore no clothes whatever (in the summertime), making up for this simplicity by painting their faces in different colours, piercing their ears and nostrils and decorating them with shell beads, and tattooing their bodies and limbs with elaborate patterns.

These Ottawas carried a club, a long bow and arrows, and a round shield of dressed leather, made (wrote Champlain) “from the skin of an animal like the buffalo".[26] The chief of the party explained many things to the white man by drawing with a piece of charcoal on the white bark of the birch tree.  He gave him to understand that the present occupation of his band of warriors was the gathering of blueberries, which would be dried in the sun, and could then be preserved for eating during the winter.

[Footnote 26:  This was the first intimation probably that any European sent home for publication regarding the existence of the bison in North America, though the Spanish explorers nearly a hundred years before Champlain must have met with it in travelling through Louisiana, Texas, and northern Mexico.  The bison is not known ever to have existed near Hudson Bay, or in Canada proper (basin of the St. Lawrence).  South of Canada it penetrated to Pennsylvania and the Susquehanna River, but not farther eastward.]

From French River, Champlain passed southwards to the homeland of the Hurons, which lay to the east of what Champlain called “the Fresh Water Sea” (Lake Huron).  This country he describes in enthusiastic terms.  The Hurons, like the other Iroquois tribes (and unlike the hunting races to the north of them), were agriculturists, and cultivated pumpkins, sunflowers,[27] beans and Indian corn.

[Footnote 27:  The Amerindians of the Lake regions made much use of the sunflowers of the region (Helianthus multiflorus).  Besides this species of sunflower already mentioned, which furnishes tubers from its roots (the “Jerusalem” artichoke) others were valued for their seeds, and some or all of these are probably the originals of the cultivated sunflower in European gardens.  The largest of these was called Soleille by the French Canadians.  It grew in the cultivated fields of the Amerindians to seven or eight feet in height, with an enormous flower.  The seeds were carefully collected and boiled.  Their oil was collected then from the