Eric Jay Dolan in his great new book "FUR, FORTUNE, AND EMPIRE; THE EPIC HISTORY OF THE FUR TRADE IN AMERICA" vividly writes about what have been labeled THE BEAVER WARS......in the mid 1600's the most powerful eastern indian tribes(the Iroquois Confederation consisting of the Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga and Oneida) went to war against the Hurons(of the Great Lakes region) to secure new sources of beaver pelts for their trade with the Dutch........The Iroquois New York State lands had been largely trapped out and to continue to get the guns, knives and European living utensils which had become must have items for these indians, the Huron lands to the West had to be secured for the beaver rich waterways which existed there.........................Father Allouez, a French Missionary is quoted below about his reflections on this period as he explored the Great Lake Region.................Beaver, Wildcat(Cougars/Bobcats), Stags and Bison abound in the region 1665-1667

Father Allouez's Journey
to Lake Superior,
1665-1667

THE Jesuit missions to the Western tribes that had be-
gun so auspiciously in the early years of the seventeenth
century were completely wrecked in the middle of the cen-
tury (1649) by the hostile incursions of the Iroquois, and the
death or flight of the Indian neophytes.

 The tribes that had dwelt on the shores of Lake Huron, the islands of Geor-
gian Bay, and the lower peninsula of Michigan fled like leaves
before a northern blast and sought refuge on the distant
shores of Lake Superior, or hid themselves in the dense forests
of northwestern Wisconsin. Driven from their former habi-
tats, lurking in hidden coverts of the woods, the remnant of
the Huron tribes and their Algonquian neighbors wandered
through the northern wilderness, stopping here and there
as chance brought them respite to build temporary villages
or raise an occasional crop of corn.

    The Jesuit fathers, of whom some had suffered martyr-
dom with their Huron converts, and others had fled to the
settled parts of the colony, sought in vain for more than a
decade to re-establish their ruined missions. In 1654 Father
Leonard Garreau courageously set forth from Montreal to
accompany an Algonquian fleet to the western country;
but only a short distance up the Ottawa River he fell into
an Iroquois ambuscade and was killed. Father Rene Me-
nard Allouez a refugee from the Huron mission, succeeded in 1660 in
reaching the shores of Lake Superior, where, after wintering
in a wretched hut at the bottom of Keweenaw Bay, he started
in the early summer of 1661 to visit some refugee Huron upon
the headwaters of Black River.    
    ""The country of the Outagami(Saux and Outagami) lies

 southward toward theLake of the Ilimouek. They are a populous

 tribe, of about athousand men bearing arms, and given to hunting

and war. These people are not very far removed from the rec-
ognition of the Creator of the world; for it is they who told
me what I have already related, namely, that they acknowl-
edge in their country a Great Spirit, the maker of Heaven
and earth, who dwells toward the country of the French.
It is said of them and of the Ousaki that, when they find a
man alone and at a disadvantage, they kill him, especially
if he is a Frenchman; for they cannot endure the beards of
the latter people.

     

 ""The Ilimouec speak Algonquin, but a very different i
dialect from those of all the other tribes.l I understand them
only slightly, because I have talked with them only a very
little. They do not live in these regions, their country being
more than sixty leagues hence toward the south, beyond a
great river-which, as well as I can conjecture, empties into
the sea somewhere near Virginia. These people are hunters A
and warriors, using bows and arrows, rarely muskets, and i
never canoes. They used to be a populous nation, divided
into ten large villages; but now they are reduced to two,
continual wars with the Nadouessi on one side and the Iro-
quois on the other having well-nigh exterminated them".

    The language of the Illinois-Miami division of the Algonquian stock
differs considerably from that of the northern tribes with whom Allouez was
familiar. They have fields of Indian corn, and live in a country
offering excellent facilities for the hunting of the wildcat,
stag, wild ox, and beaver. Canoes they do not use, but
commonly make their journeys by land, bearing their pack-
ages and their game on their shoulders. These people are as
much addicted to idolatry as the other nations.

 Of the Mission to the Nadouesiouek:

    ""These are people dwelling to the west of this place,
toward the great river named Messipi.    They are forty
or fifty leagues from this place, in a country of prairies, rich
in all kinds of game. They cultivate fields, sowing therein
not Indian corn, but only tobacco; They do not use muskets,

 but only bows and arrows, with which they shoot very skillfully.

Their cabins are not covered with bark, but with deerskins,

carefully dressed,and sewed together with such skill that the

 cold does not enter.These people are, above all the rest, savage

 and wild, appear-ing abashed and as motionless as statues in

 our presence.Yet they are warlike, and have conducted hostilities

 againstall their neighbors, by whom they are held in extreme fear".