First era, the life during the wild forest period

The chief Pontiac
The intermediary
Etienne Brulé
The woodsmen
Jean Cadieux’s Legend
Champlain, the explorer

Second era, the end of the wild forest period

The lumbering and the drive
George Bryson, the lumber baron
The settler

Pontiac

Pontiac

Pontiac and his warriors

An Outaouais warrior in 1530

For millennia, the Pontiac was inhabited by natives. First the archaic Laurentians, clever craftsmen who occupied the region between the years 2000 and 4000 BC. In the main, north east part of the American region,   artifacts are found. The numerous archaeological sites of the region were not very excavated. We have only a bit of information about the Human groups which succeeded one after another until about the year 1000, the beginning of a period when the Algonquin inhabited the region.

From 1615, the Ottawa River became a business route used by the Native people to trade with the French people. The Algonquin took advantage to impose a fee for the right to pass. Towards 1640, the Iroquois fought battles on the Ottawa River, forcing the Algonquin to leave the region for safer places. As the big river was an important business area in New France, the forts and fortified trading posts were built to ensure the security of the travelers and to collect the precious furs. Fort Coulonge, Allumettes Lake (or Fort William), Joachims Falls (Rapides des Joachims) were created. It was the great era of the woodsmen. The beginning of the 1800’s was an important period for the region’s future. The first forest industry was created, and jobs were available in the region. The first settlers came and the wheat fields took the place of the ancient white pine forest. The puny bark canoes of the last trappers navigated the river with the majestic steam boats. Then came the railway which caused the disappearance of the steam boats. With the disappearance of the railway the road became the Cyclopath, the great pleasure of the cyclist !

The Great people of the Pontiac

His father was Odawa, and his mother Ojibwav. Born in 1720 at Nipissing Lake, he became the Chief of the Ottawa tribe and supreme Chief of the Great Lakes Algonquin Confederation thanks to his strategies and his good communication skills. Allied with the French and loyal friend of Montcalm, he guided the Ottawas at war and distinguished himself during the Monongahéla battle in 1755. After the French defeat, the English were hard set against the Natives. Pontiac fought for their territories to be free. Under his authority, eighteen Native nations united against the English. In May 1764, he commenced a revolt and took 9 English posts out of 11. Pennsylvania, Virginia and New-York were pillaged. He was almost winning the war, but the Detroit Fort, thanks to the French Canadians resisted. The English sent up reinforcements and spread epidemics by giving contaminated blankets to native villages.

Pontiac went away but he fought one more year in spite of being abandoned by certain allies. In 1765, corporal Bouquet, at the head of strong troops, obliged Pontiac to abandon the war and to sign a peace agreement. Pontiac still wanted the war because of political reasons ; he tried to create a native government, and he sent Ottawa natives to do training in Great Britain to learn the manufacturing of textiles to create industries. To take revenge on Pontiac for the problems he had caused, the English started a rumour that he had been bribed in signing the peace treaty. Pontiac had to leave his tribe and live far from those he loved and for whom he fought. He was murdered by a member of the Peorias tribe in 1769. He was buried with military honours along the Mississippi by a French garrison of the Vincennes and Chartres fortification commanded by Captain Louis Saint-Ange de Bellerive.

Brulé prisoner of the Huron

Brulé

The intermediary (The intermediary (Le truchement)

From the first contact between the Europeans and the Natives, volunteers went away to live with the Natives to become interpreters called intermediaries. Their presence was very important in the creation of New France because they gave information about the country. They were real intermediaries between the Natives and the French, and this favoured a good connections between the two communities. But, in contact with the free and adventurous life, they were so free that they didn’t accept any constraints of civilized life. They soon became the evil ones for the Récollets and the Jésuites (missionaries) because they showed bad examples to the Natives and obstructed religious conversions.

Étienne Brulé

Born in France in 1591, he arrived in Québec at a very young age with Champlain. After two winter periods that he passed with Champlain at the place that is now Quebec city, he went away with an Algonquin troop towards the Outaouais, the Pontiac and the Georgian Bay regions. He was certainly the first " White person " who explored these unknown territories. He lived a while at Allumettes Island. This explorer, interpreter and representative of Champlain had a tumultuous life. He was a very good interpreter and was able to talk easily with many Native tribes such as Montagnais, Algonquin, Huron and Andaste.

In 1615, Brulé was asked by Champlain to gather an army of 500 Andaste natives to go to war against the Iroquois. He had to join Champlain near Syracuse where the latter fought in the Onnontagués village with a Huron army. Champlain was twice wounded and had to leave the village. Brulé came too late. He was captured and tortured by the Iroquois in 1616, but he managed to escape. The Huron, allied with the French, adopted him. He also helped the Kircke fathers who took Quebec in 1629 for the English. Several years later, he was killed by the Huron because of his infamous sexual actions.

French tradesman in 1760

Huron village

Voyageurs canoe in 1703

The woodsman (coureur des bois)

After the development of the fur trade, the beaver became rare. The natives who furnished the furs, victims of tribal war and epidemics, were now difficult to approach. In the west, big unknown lands where the furs were abundant awaited the adventurers. A new type of explorer was created : the woodsmen.

A rich tradesman financed the expedition, bought the bark canoes, the supplies the cheap and shoddy goods. He hired about ten men called voyageurs (travelers). The team was made up of a guide, a canoe driver, an interpreter, a commercial traveler and often novices. The navigation of rivers was hard and dangerous, because a little shock against a stone or a floating wood made a hole on the bark and supplies became unusable. Every evening, the canoe was unloaded, brought in out of the water, and inspected and repaired. The day was long because they left early in the morning and stopped late in the evening. The work was difficult and food consisted of corn porridge with a little fat. In the Fall season, before the first cold weather, they chose a sure winter place, near a native village and a lake or a river where they could fish to eat. They built a fortification and houses, under the direction of a clerk. When it was all finished, they stayed the winter with the natives and collected furs from the tribes, even at far away airstandes, organizing many expeditions. In the Spring, the canoes were loaded with furs and they traveled towards Montreal. When they arrived in town, the team celebrated the end of the voyage and they drank much. Many voyageurs began their own business and illegally traded furs. Most of them took native women. They preferred the wild than to live in the town.   The Outaouais was an obligatory passing place for the woodsmen who took advantage, during their rest at the Grand Calumet Island portage, to meditate at the grave of the most famous of them : Cadieux.

Jean Cadieux’s Legend

Jean Cadieux, the woodsman, had a family with an Algonquin wife, Marie Bourdon. Cadieux was born in Boucherville, March 12, 1671 of Jean Cadieux and Marie Valade. He was the youngest son. Hunter and trapper, he traded with the natives and exchanged supplies and manufactured products for furs, this allowed him to pass the winter in a house in the forest. On a beautiful day of May 1709, he traveled with some natives of the Morisson Island to Montreal to sell furs. During a rest at the Seven Falls portage at the Grand Calumet Island, one of his companions, a young Algonquin went out on reconnaissance. He saw an Iroquois group who were preparing an ambush to take the precious furs. To escape them, they had to clear impassable falls and do it, under a fusillade of arrows ! To increase the survival chances of his companions and his family, Cadieux decided with a young Algonquin warrior to create a diversion and to attract the Iroquois far away from the falls to them to pass the rapids safely. They hid in the bottom of their canoe, went upstream of the rapids, and were ready to go at the signal : a shot of a gun.

One hour later, Cadieux and his companion came on the Iroquois by surprise and drew them far away from the rapids. Many guns fired a shot : it was the signal that the companion of Cadieux were waiting to travel through the rapids. The stupefied Iroquois didn’t understand and were too busy fighting against their assailants then to shoot at the fugitives.

With an uncommon dexterity, the Algonquin paddlers guided their weak bark canoe through the roaring waters, avoiding all the stones which could tear the weak birch bark and cause their death. For two days, they navigated quickly and came to the Two Mountains Lake (Lac des Deux Montagnes) where they found shelter in the fortification.

The Algonquin didn’t see Cadieux and the young warrior so three of them, after insuring the saftey of their family and the furs, went away to search for them. The Iroquois weren’t at the Island anymore and the Algonquin found a little shelter of branches near the seven falls portage. The Algonquin warriors searched for their friends, reading the tracks left by the Iroquois searched . The young Algonquin was killed and for three days, the Iroquois searched the whole Island for Cadieux, who continued to fight. He was as uncatcheable as a shadow !

After two days of fruitless search, without  hope of finding Cadieux, they discovered a wood cross in the ground near the shelter that they saw on their arrival. And here, almost buried, they saw the body of Jean. He had a long piece of birch bark in his hand,  and on this he had written just before his death, an epic in the form a lament.

He had escaped the Iroquois, but exhausted, weakened by three days of fighting and deprivation, he saw his companions who came to bring him back, but had no strength for crying out. He was prepared to die, digging his grave and putting  up a cross after he had written his lament. He buried himself with his last strength, waiting for death in a place called the Little Rock of the High Mountain (le Petit Rocher de la Haute Montagne).

Hundreds of years later, Jean-Charles Taché said that the Cadieux Legend was present in the woodsmen minds to such an extent, that they stopped when they came to the Outaouais at his grave to pray, maintain the cross and take a piece of shaving which brought good luck. Some of them hung on a tree nearby a copy of the lament written on a birch bark. Taché copied the lament which had eleven verses and found a priest, Father Cadieux. This latter said that Jean Cadieux was the grand father of his grand father.

In 1905, the workers who built Bryson’s law courts asked and obtained the permission to build a stone memorial to honour Cadieux at the place of the wooden cross. They built this memorial without being paid, just to honour Cadieux’s memory.

Then came the war between Bryson and the Grand Calumet Island. Each wanted to have the memorial at their place. The memorial was sacked then destroyed by vandals. To protect it, the island inhabitants got back the memorial during the night and erected it in the park at the entrance of the Grand Calumet village be able to look at it.

Champlain in the Georgian Bay

Champlain, the explorer

Explorer, cartographer and author, Samuel de Champlain left us some texts which allow us to better know the region before the big changes caused by the fur trade, the epidemics and the native wars.

Is it necessary to introduce Champlain ? Born in 1570, at Brouage en Saint-Onge. He was a soldier, sailor, geographer, and explorer. He founded Quebec city, Ville-Marie named after Montreal, father of the New France, he was twice in the Pontiac region. In France, Champlain met Nicolas du Vigneau who claimed being at the north sea in less than seventeen days, there and back from Ville-Marie. In 1613 with four French men, du Vigneau and a native guide, Champlain traveled on the Ottawa River and discovered the Gatineau River, the Rideau River, the Chaudière falls and then finished his trip at the Allumettes Island. There Tessouat, the Algonquin chief denied du Vigneau’s claim. Champlain had difficulty saving du Vigneau because the Algonquin didn’t like liars and wanted to kill him. In 1615, Champlain came again to make the same trip as in 1613, with Etienne Brulé, a servant and about ten natives. He took the Ottawa River to Mattawa. On the 26^th July, 1615, he came to Nipissing Lake. He navigated Georgian Bay, on  Huron Lake and took helped in a fight at a fortification. He was wounded twice during the fight and passed the winter season in Huronnia before he went back to Quebec city next year.

It was Champlain's last big exploration trip. He devoted himself after that to the development of the young colony.

First raft on the Ottawa River

Forest camp

Forest camp

Forest camp in 1871

Raft

Log slide on the Coulonge Falls

Raft

The Ann Sisson steam boat

Second era, the end of the wild forest

The lumbering and the drive (drave)

At the end of August, the settlers left their farms for forest camps. Often, only the young went to the camps, the adults stayed on the farm to do the work. It was not rare to see children of about twelve going to cut wood ! They stayed during the whole winter season and came back only at the thaw, in the Spring. The woodcutter’s group consisted of about 25 men and horses. With axes and saws, they cut in one season about 2000 big pines that they carried to the nearest river with draught horses. The supplying of the camps was done by settlers who came to sell their products : beans, fat bacon, flour, pig meat was the food for the woodcutter. The camps, made of logging houses, were displaced every three or four years when the nearby forest was totally cut. The men slept in big furnished cabins in bunk beds. There was also a big table and seats for meal times. In the center, there was always a fire burning in a sand container to supply the heat and allow the food to cook. A hole in the roof allowed the to escape of the smoke.

During the spring, little dams and lock systems were built on the water to allow the floating of the logs to the main river. There, the most experienced woodcutter became a raftsman to accompany the logs to their destination, watching that they didn’t made a log jam (embâcle). The log jams were formed where the river contracted and where stones made an obstacle for the circulation of the logs. The logs were familiarly called Pitoune. Thanks to long, double-headed poles, the rafstmen jumped from one log to another, trying to wedge and to guide the logs so that they became free and could continue on their way. Often, the raftsmen were killed during this work.

Nature was also a victim of this practice. The barks of thousand of cut trees and the lost pitoune rotting in the water, polluted and changed the environment. The logs ploughed the bank, increasing the erosion greatly, they demolished the vegetation and the spawning grounds of the fish were destroyed during the reproduction season.

The last natives and woodsmen couldn't travel with their canoes any longer, it was too dangerous for them to hit a pitoune and capsize.

As soon as the logs arrived in the main river, they were gathered in rafts formed with logs (cage de bois) to stop them from scattering and running aground. When the rafts came to the rapids and blocked them, the rafts were dismantled and the raftsmen guided the logs through the rapids with long poles and then built the rafts again as soon as possible. To pass the big falls of the Ottawa River, digging work was done and log slides were built. In this way the rafts could this way pass the rapids without dismantling them. The need of safe navigation for the big steam boats marked the end of the drive on the Ottawa River. On certain tributaries, the drive remained but disappeared progressively when the railroad and later on, the roads were constructed.

Pontiac’s white pine were used to build the towns of Boston, New-York and Chicago.

George Bryson, the lumber baron

 In 1835, George Bryson left Ontario for the Pontiac region. At the age of 22, he created a forest industry. He built an impressive log slide on the big falls of the Coulonge River. He could this way work into the hinterland and cut the forest. With his fortune he built the famous Bryson House, Fort Coulonge’s stone houses and the Presbyterian Church. All these majestic buildings still exist today. Bryson was a forester, a farmer, the founder of a bank and also a politician.

The trapper

Many woodsmen became domesticated and lived a semi-civilized, semi-native life. Taking the best of both worlds, they became trappers. They lived in log cabins, making their bark canoes, their snowshoes, their clothes; free and without constraint in the forest, they counted on their trapping lines to catch furs which allowed them to have all that they could not produce. To ensure their livelihood, they did various activities besides trapping to sell the furs and meat, they fished, they became gold diggers they searched for mussel pearl, they built canoes and snowshoes and they became woodcutters and raftsmen. Not long ago, we still met trappers in the Outaouais region, but the arrival of the new laws which regulated the hunting and fishing put them on the outside and they were viewed as poachers. But really they only perpetuated the way of life of their ancestors.

Nowadays, trapping is heavily regulated but the tradition still continues. Many sons and grandsons of trappers still use their leisure time to put out trapping lines.

The settler