The _Mémoire sur les Mœurs, Coustumes, et Réligion des Sauvages de l’Amérique septentrionale, par Nicolas Perrot, publié pour la première fois par le R. P. J. Tailhan, de la Compagnie de Jésus_, Leipsic and Paris, 1864,[533] was examined by Charlevoix one hundred and fifty years ago, when it was in manuscript, and afforded him useful information. It is the only work referring to the traders at the extremity of Lake Superior between 1660 and 1670, and to the migrations of the Hurons from the Mississippi to the Black River, and from thence to Lake Superior. Much of interest is also derived from the _Histoire de l’Amérique septentrionale_. Par M. de Bacqueville de la Potherie, Paris, 1722, 4 vols.[534]
=1680-1690.=—There are differences of statements regarding the Upper Mississippi Valley, but nevertheless much information of importance, in the letter of La Salle from Fort Frontenac, in August, 1682,[535] in Du Lhut’s _Mémoire_ of 1683, as printed by Harrisse,[536] and in Hennepin’s _Description de la Louisiane_.[537]
Perrot, in the work already quoted, gives the best account of this region from 1683 to 1690.
For the whole period of the exploration of the Great Lakes, the works among the secondary authorities of the chief value are Charlevoix in the last century, and Parkman in the present; but their labors are commemorated elsewhere.
THE local historical work of the Northwest has been done in part under the auspices of various State and sectional historical societies. The Ohio Society, organized in 1831, became later inanimate, but was revived in 1868, and ought to hold a more important position among kindred bodies than it does. Mr. Baldwin has given an account of the historical and pioneer societies of Ohio in the Western Reserve and Northern Ohio Historical Society’s _Tracts_, no. 27; and this latter Society, organized in 1867, with the Licking County Pioneer Historical Society, organized the same year, and the Firelands Historical Society, organized in 1857, have increased the historical literature of the State by various publications elucidating in the main the settlements of the last century. The youngest of the kindred associations, the Historical and Geographical Society of Toledo, was begun in 1871. The State, however, is fortunate in having an excellent _Bibliography of Ohio_ (1880), embracing fourteen hundred titles, exclusive of public documents, which was compiled by Peter G. Thomson; while the _Americana_ Catalogues of Robert Clarke & Co., of Cincinnati, are the completest booksellers’ lists of that kind which are published in America. The _Ohio Valley Historical Series_, published by the same house, has not as yet included any publication relating to the period of the French claims to its territory. The earliest _History of Ohio_ is by Caleb Atwater, published in 1838; but the _History_ by James W. Taylor—“First Period, 1650-1787”—is wholly confined to the Jesuits’ missions, the wars of the Eries and Iroquois, and the later border warfare. (Field, _Indian Bibliography_, no. 1,535.) Henry Howe’s _Historical Collections of Ohio_, originally issued in 1848, and again in 1875, is a repository of facts pertaining for the most part to later times.
