In the autumn of 1668 he took with him to France one of the hardy _voyageurs_ who had lived in the region of the lakes, and on the 24th of the next February he writes to Colbert, the Colonial Minister, that this man “had penetrated among the western nations farther than any other Frenchman, and had seen the copper mine on Lake Huron. The man offers to go to that mine and explore, either by sea, or by the lake and river, the communication supposed to exist between Canada and the South Sea, or to the region of Hudson’s Bay.”
During the summer of 1669 the active and intelligent Louis Joliet, with an outfit of four hundred livres, and one Peré, perhaps the same person who gave his name to a river leading from Lake Nepigon to Hudson’s Bay,[470] with an outfit of one thousand livres, went to search for copper on the shores of Lake Superior, and to discover a more direct route from the upper lakes to Montreal. Joliet went as far as Sault Ste. Marie, where he did not long remain; but in the place of a mine found an Iroquois prisoner among the Ottawas at that point, and obtained permission to take him back to Canada. In company with another Frenchman, he was led by the Iroquois from Lake Erie through the valley of the Grand River to Lake Ontario, and on the 24th of September, at an Iroquois village between this river and the head of Burlington Bay, he met La Salle with four canoes and fifteen men, and the Sulpitian priests, Galinée and De Casson, who on the 6th of July had left the post at La Chine.
La Salle, alleging ill health, at this point separated from the missionaries, and Joliet, before proceeding toward Montreal, drew a chart of the upper lakes for the guidance of the Sulpitians. By the aid of this the priests reached Lake Erie through a direct river, and near the lake they erected a hut and passed the winter. On the 23d of March, 1670, they resumed their voyage, and on the 25th of May reached Sault Ste. Marie, where there were about twenty-five Frenchmen trading with the Indians. Here was also the mission of the Jesuits among the Ottawas,—a square enclosure defended by cedar pickets twelve feet high, and within were a small house and chapel which had recently been built. Remaining but three days, they returned to Montreal by the old route along the French River of Lake Huron to Lake Nipissing, and thence by portage to the Ottawa River.