The historian of this expedition was a mendacious Recollet friar, Father Louis Hennepin, a name which has attained some notoriety in early Canadian annals. Father Hennepin had come out to Canada three years before the date at which we have arrived. Upon landing at Quebec he was at once sent up to Fort Frontenac, as a missionary. He found that wild spot in the western wilderness very much to his liking. He had not been there long before he erected a gigantic cross, and superintended the building of a chapel for himself and his colleague, Father Luke Buisset. He seems to have discharged his duties with a reasonable amount of zeal. He for some time gave himself up to instructing and endeavouring to convert the Indians of the neighbourhood. Later on he visited other Indian settlements, and made a noteworthy journey into the interior of what is now the State of New York, where he preached the Gospel to various tribes of the Five Nations, with indifferent success.
Upon receiving intelligence of La Salle's projected western journey, in 1678, Father Hennepin felt and expressed great eagerness to accompany the expedition. Permission to do so having been obtained from his Provincial, as well as from La Salle, he set out in advance of the latter from Fort Frontenac, early in November, accompanied by the Sieur De La Motte and a crew of sixteen sailors, embarked in a brigantine of ten tons. They skirted the northern shore of Lake Ontario, and in due time arrived at the Indian village of Taiaiagon, situated at the mouth of a river near the present city of Toronto. The river was probably the Humber, and the village was doubtless a collection of wigwams which have left no trace behind them. From this point the explorers crossed the lake to the mouth of the Niagara River, which they entered on the morning of the 6th of December. They landed on the eastern side of the stream, where the old fort of Niagara now stands. The site was then occupied by a small village inhabited by Seneca Indians, many of whom probably then beheld for the first time those wondrous pale-faces, the fame of whose exploits had preceded them into the wilderness. As the vessel rounded the opposite point the entire crew burst forth into sacred song, and chanted "Te Deum Laudamus" until the anchor was cast into the river. Later in the day they ascended several miles farther up the stream, until they reached the present site of Lewiston, where they built a rude dwelling of palisades. After remaining for some time, waiting for La Salle to join them, they set off on an expedition into the interior of New York, to pay a visit to a village of the Senecas.