To it was given the name of the Fresh Sea (Mer Douce).  But, as yet, no white man had set foot upon any portion of what now constitutes the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Eastern Minnesota.  And thereafter, for nearly a score of years this whole region remained, so far as the visitation of white men was concerned, an undiscovered country; and such it continued down to the year 1684.  However, previous to this date, something had been learned by the French settlers upon the St. Lawrence, of this (to them) far off land; but the information has been obtained wholly from the Indians.  This knowledge was of necessity crude and, to a considerable extent, uncertain.  Such of it as has been preserved is properly treated of under the following heads:  First, as to what had been gleaned concerning the physical aspects of the country; second, as to what had been brought to light relative to the various tribes inhabiting this region.

Previous to 1634, nothing had been learned of Lake Erie, Lake St. Clair, or Lake Michigan although it was understood there was some kind of a water-way connecting the Fresh Sea (Lake Huron) with Ontario.  A little knowledge had been gained of a great body of fresh water lying beyond the “Mer Douce,” “a grand lac,” so called by the French—­now known as Lake Superior.  The length of this superior lake with that of the Fresh Sea (Lake Huron), the Indians declared was a journey of full thirty days in canoes.  At the outlet of the great lake was what was described by the savages, as a considerable rapid, to which the French gave the name of “Sault de Gaston,” the present Sault St. Marie, in the St. Mary’s river, the stream, which, it is well known, flows from Lake Superior into Lake Huron.

Accounts also had been received from the Indians prior to the year last mentioned, of a lake of no great size, through which flowed a river discharging its waters into the Fresh Sea (Lake Huron).  These were reports of Lake Winnebago and Fox river, in what is now the State of Wisconsin.  As the French upon the St. Lawrence had no knowledge as yet of Lake Michigan, they imagined the location of this small lake, and its river was beyond, and to the northwest of Lake Huron and that they emptied into it; Green Bay into the head of which Fox river really flows, being (like Lake Michigan) wholly unknown to them.

It had further been reported by the Indians before this date that there was a mine of copper on an island in what has been mentioned as probably Lake Winnebago; doubtless, however, this island should have been located in Lake Superior.  A specimen of native copper had as early as 1610, been exhibited by an Indian to an interested Frenchman upon the St. Lawrence, and an account given by him as to the rude method employed by the savages in melting that metal.  But other islands besides the one containing the copper mine had been brought to the knowledge of the French settlers.  A large one southeast of the “Sault de Gaston” being described, and two smaller ones, to the south of it.  These islands were, it is suggested, the Great Manitoulin, Drummond, and Little Manitoulin, of the present day.