The Ottawa River

In the early 1600s, when Samuel de Champlain first explored the St. Lawrence beyond Hochelaga on the island of Montreal, the North American continent was peopled with a series of nations with amorphous borders. These peoples had highly ritualized communications among them and long-standing relationships. Champlain could not know that the Algonquin nations that he met were in the middle of border skirmishes with the Mohawk Nation to the south, but he realised quickly that they expected him to choose sides. He stood with the Algonquin, thereby establishing himself as an ally, and next they sought a confrontation to prove themselves. Soon he began trading with the Algonquin on the Kitchisipi River, the name the Kichesipirini and the Weskarini, both Algonquin Nations, had for the lower Ottawa River.

Among Champlain’s party was an adventuresome Frenchman named Jean Nicollet de Belleborne, and he volunteered to live with the Algonquin on Allumette Island. Over the next years, he lived with the Huron-Wendat and the Nipissing as well, learning their languages and customs. He became a valuable emissary to the French and a legendary character travelling in a brightly coloured Chinese robe. He was not the first Frenchman to choose to live with the Algonquin, nor was he the only one. Etienne Brûlé and Nicolas du Vignau were others from around the same time who accepted to be exchanged for an Algonquin chief’s son. In Brûlé’s exchange the chief’s son was Wendat, named Savignon, and he went to Paris. Upon his return he characterized the French as strange people who argue loudly but don’t fight and who let people go hungry.

The Wendat Nations lived closely around Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay. They were a part of a larger group in their gift culture that included the Algonquian and other Iroquoian Nations. (from Insatiable Hunger)

With the help of these men the French began to build up the human resources to explore further inland. When they got as far as Lake Huron, Champlain observed a small band that had exceptionally good beaver pelts to offer in exchange. Upon inquiry, he learned that these were the Adawe, or Ottawa, a word that means ‘trader.’ Champlain’s curiosity was piqued and he discovered that the Ottawa, who were centred on Manitoulin Island, were a small nation that had found a niche for itself carrying gifts and exchanging them among the nations along the rivers that joined the Great Lakes, and even as far as the rivers that were home to the Cree in the Hudson Basin. They were respected everywhere they went, and their influence was out of proportion to their numbers.

Champlain encouraged trading with the Ottawa, and the French had only to meet the Ottawa at the Wendat villages around Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. With this development, the need for men like Nicollet, Brûlé and Vignau changed. They did not have to explore, and soon the French became reliant upon the Ottawa for their excellent pelts. The Ottawa would pick up French products and return with furs, spreading the French goods as far as Sault Ste. Marie and into the Hudson Basin to the Cree. The French remained active partners with the Ottawa, helping and encouraging their trading. They supplied them with steel weapons and hunting equipment, and in one case this caused a serious incident in which the French successfully intervened, avoiding conflict. The Ottawa looked for negotiated solutions to problems but were willing to turn to war where necessary. When they came up against the Winnebago on the western shores of Lake Michigan, their steel tools were resented and the Winnebago refused to cooperate or to let them on their territory. The Ottawa sent negotiators, but these ambassadors were killed. Stunned by the rebuff, the Ottawa reported the incident to the French and prepared for war. The French, concerned that a war would not help trade, sent the legendary Jean Nicollet to meet with the Winnebago. He arrived in 1634 wearing his famous brightly coloured Chinese robe and was likely the first European they had ever seen. His novelty probably contributed to saving him from sharing the fate of the Ottawa ambassadors and he succeeded in negotiating a peace between the Ottawa and the Winnebago.

French trading patterns were seriously disturbed by the British capture of New France in 1629, not because of the British directly, but because the British traded with the Five Nations not with the Algonquin and Huron-Wendat. As a result, during the three years that they held New France, before the French king negotiated it back, they turned to the Mohawk of the Five Nations to bring them furs. Also, the British and the Dutch readily gave firearms in exchange for furs, something that the French had refrained from doing until then. When the French took New France back, they discovered that the Mohawk did not go away. It was inevitable that the Great Lakes nations, allied with the French, would form an alliance against the Five Nations, and it was inevitable that the French would begin to trade arms with this new alliance. Unlike the Five Nations, which was a federation, the alliance needed leadership, and the natural leaders were the Ottawa. As traders, they were known and respected by the other partners. They also provided its greatest single leader a century later in the person of Pontiac.

Had the Five Nations never displaced French trade, the political map of North America might have evolved much differently. The French and the Great Lakes nations grew closer in the face of the Five Nations and the British, but nation after nation was dragged into the conflict on one side or the other. These included the Nipissing, Ojibwe, Shawnee, Miami and Cherokee and involved a total of 20 nations, extending into the Mississippi Valley and out west. During this whole period, the Ottawa maintained a leadership role and the French support was constant. By the 1690s they discovered that the beneficiaries of the human fighting were the beavers. Preoccupied by war, the fighting sides neglected beaver pelts and the beaver numbers recovered, leading to a collapse of their price on the French market. By itself this would perhaps have been nothing more than a market correction, except that King Louis XIV decided that the reduced value of the trade was an auspicious time for him to listen to the advice that he had received from the Jesuits. They had told him that the fur trade had caused great instability in the New World, and so he passed an edict banning furs from the Great Lakes region. Of course, this caused greater instability, since the alliance and the economy had become dependant on beaver pelts. Ammunition had become essential among the Indigenous nations and even the techniques for tying an arrowhead on a shaft had been neglected.

Somehow the Ottawa managed to keep a loyal alliance going in support of the French despite this action of the King, and the alliance maintained after the King’s edict had ended. The damage was done, though, and the French influence was on the wane. Had the French Crown been of a different mindset, a large, French-speaking Indigenous culture might exist today, stretching into the middle of the continent.

The Ottawa River’s name was first recorded by the French cartographer Bernou in 1680. He never saw it himself and was expressing the impressions held in France of the importance of the Ottawa. While the name stuck, its choice overlooked the name the Ottawa would have used for the same river from time immemorial: Kitchisipi, a descriptive meaning Grand River. The Algonquin people who stewarded it also bore the river’s name: People of the Grand River, or Kichesipirini. Today, the original name is commemorated, thanks to consultation in an Algonquin naming and engagement exercise, where the John A. MacDonald Parkway was renamed Kichi Zībī Mīkan, or Great River Road, in 2023.