In the two hundred and eighty-eight and a half acres of the government reservation here one is in touch visibly with the Past. And what deeds of the Past these old stone buildings might tell if they were given power of speech!
The name Niagara is of Iroquois origin, as are so many names of New York State, and is of ancient application to the river and the falls which bear them. The falls of the Niagara are indicated on Champlain’s map of 1632 and in 1648 are spoken of by the Jesuit Rugueneau as “a cataract of frightful height.” It is certain that the indefatigable emissaries of the order of which he was a member had penetrated to the region of the great falls before this. In 1678 the falls were visited by the Friar Louis Hennepin, who drew a curious picture of them, still preserved, and gave a more curious and exaggerated description.
In the year that the good Friar Hennepin was paying his respects to Nature’s great wonder, Robert Cavelier Sieur de la Salle was building his fort at Frontenac, now Kingston, Canada West, and in 1675 King Louis XIV, that brilliant and indefatigable monarch of France, whose legislative labors in opposition to race suicide in Canada justly earned him the title of the Father of Canada, bestowed upon our cavalier a large grant of land near his fort. La Salle, inspired by the brilliant discoveries of Marquette and Joliet in the region farther west than that wherein he had his bailiwick, determined to explore the lands south of Ontario and to connect the territories which he hoped thus to acquire with Quebec by means of a series of posts. Empowered by his royal master with letters warrant to embark upon this form of enterprise, he crossed over Ontario, picked out a settlement point at, or near, the present Lewiston, New York, and commenced the building of a small vessel on Cayuga Creek above the falls, the supplies for this vessel being carried from his little settlement near Lewiston, below the falls, and in the direction of his main base at Fort Frontenac. At the same time he commenced the construction of a small fort at the mouth of the Niagara River, which would guard the approaches to his work farther in the interior and would also serve as one of the chain of posts by which he hoped to secure to France the territory which he meant to acquire.