THE RENEGADE Etienne Brule was one of the great explorers-the first white man to see lakes Ontario, Erie, and Superior, the first to set foot in Michigan. Why have you never heard of him? By Steven Rinella GROWING UP IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION the New World as a boy of 15 under the service of Champlain to the winter of his death. Toward the end of the book, Bishop borrows an epitaph for Brule that was originally offered by the Recollect du Creux, a French missionary order: "Long a transgressor of the laws of God and man, he spent ... his wretched life in vile intemperance, such as no Christian should exhibit among heathen. He died by treachery, perhaps only that he might perish in his sins." But following this quote, almost as if he had anticipated the revisionist movement, Bishop writes, "Let any who wish rehabilitate the memory of this extraordinary discoverer." Nothing is known of Brule's existence prior to the day in April 1608 when he set sail for the New World with Champlain, King Henry IV's royal geographer and the governor-to-be of New France. Champlain had made several previous trips to the Americas, but the scope of the French territory was vague, ranging along the Atlantic seaboard from northern New England to the Gulf of the St. Lawrence and perhaps beyond. Nobody had a clear idea what lay inland, but it was generally agreed that the inventory included the Western Sea, with its passage to the Orient, lost souls to be converted to Catholicism, the lost souls' beaver pelts to be converted into French currency, and the potential for self-supporting colonies. The French saw the St. Lawrence River as the gateway to the interior, so that was where Champlain concentrated his efforts and resources. For years, Indians of the St. Lawrence Basin had traveled down to its mouth to trade furs with European fishermen and independent traders, but Champlain wanted to push far up the river and intercept the commerce. He also had plans for further involve- OF NORTH America, I developed an early appreciation for the European explorers who had long ago traveled the waterways of my home. I read all the books I could find about adventurers like Champlain, Jolliet, Marquette, and Nicolet, and they defined what I thought I should be as a young man: tough, brave, single-minded, and born a couple of hundred years earlier. When I got older, though, I realized that my affection for these men was not shared by everyone. I started college in 1992, seemingly at the height of the so-called revisionist historians' attempts to convert the old pioneering heroes into the new societal enemies. This new line of thinking certainly rubbed off on me, and I had to admit that greatness was something more than the resolute desire to mow down everything and everyone in your path in the name of God and country. It was kind of heartbreaking, though, because I had enjoyed loving the Great Lakes explorers, and now it seemed both unfashionable and unconscionable to do so. But just when I was thinking that I would have to continue my reading with the dry, uninspired analysis of a historian, I was saved by a man named Etienne Brule, a French explorer turned pagan traitor who was killed and eaten by the Huron Indians in the winter of 1632. I first got turned on to Brule when it occurred to me that if the current templates of thinking made the pioneer heroes look like villains, maybe the old pioneering villains should be re-examined for heroic attributes. This idea was spurred on by Champlain: The Life of Fortitude, Morris Bishop's admiring 1948 biography of the French explorer and founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain. Brule weaves in and out of the narrative for 25 years, from his arrival in 66 .~~_~--_. AMERICAN HERITAGE -.-..=----,,---,--,,--- SEPTEMBER 2001 ..,,,.,.---,-------~----------. -~~--- "., 'N" '. _,,,_, '" w :r: :J OJ Z o> « :r: >- z>- u >OJ '" Z o >« '" >- '" :J ~ ~ ment with the Indians, and that was where Brule came in. Years before, while Champlain was exploring up and down the Atlantic coast of America, he had realized that adolescent crewmen had a particular facility both for learning the natives' languages and for surviving the winters, so he had developed a plan to introduce French youths to the allied Indian tribes of the St. Lawrence. Once living with them full-time, Champlain figured, these boys could learn their languages and customs and serve as valuable assets to the fur trade. Brule was to be the exemplar of this plan, the continent's first exchange student. HE QUICKLY PROVED HIS METTLE ON THE FRONT LINE corpses into the bow of a canoe or carry prisoners live to be consumed later. With every bend in the river, Brule probably thought less about Champlain's imperial desires and more about his own safety. One of history's great missing stories is what happened that winter with Brule. All that is really known is that he survived and learned the language, "very well" as Champlain wrote in his journal the following summer. Champlain's journals are the best available device for tracking Brule, but they are sparse with relevant details. The Champlain Society would cringe, but I'd happily trade information about his own lavishly recorded doings for more coverage of Brule's. When Brule's first winter with the Algonquins, away from other white men, was over, he came down the Ottowa River to the St. Lawrence with 200 Indians to meet with the French for what had become an annual trading fair below the Lachine Rapids near Montreal. It was June 13, 1611. They swapped beaver pelts for knives and kettles and hatchets, and Brule served as the interpreter for Chief Iroquet, who now showed complete trust in him. of wilderness imperialism by being one of only 8 out of 24 Frenchmen to survive the first winter in newly founded Quebec. To Champlain's pleasure, Brule spent the winter hunting moose in the deep snows and fishing through the ice around the fort with the local Montagnais Indians, whose difficult language he picked up. After another year, in 1610, Champlain felt enough confidence in his experiment to send his charge into the unknown. Brulewas about 17 years old. Champlain decided that the boy should spend AT THE CLOSE OF THE TRADING SEASON, BRULE ASKED the winter with Chief lroquet of the Algonquin Indians, to go spend the year with the Huron Indians, who lived who had come down to Quebec to trade furs. Iroquet's near what is now known as Lake Huron's Georgian Bay. village was on the upper Ottawa River, probably in what His desires happened to coincide with those of Champlain, today is Ontario, a place no white man had ever seen. who still didn't have an interpreter for the Hurons, a At first, Iroquet resisted Champlain's request, fearing the wealthy and powerful people. So plans were made for the wrath of the French should the boy die. Champlain told boy to go visit the land where, in about 20 years, withhim not to worry, accidents could happen to anyone. out a friend or a nation, he would die. It's hard to fathom the amount of legal release forms Champlain justified his decision to send a boy into so you would have to sign in order to make a trip like that very different a culture by claiming he would demonstrate today. It brings to mind the dog that the Russians sent into Christian principles to the savages. This was certainly a orbit, ignorant of its fate, attached to feelers and sensors to gesture to the church, which saw Champlain's journals gather information for the betterment of another's cause. Brule's chance of survival wouldn't have as dispatches from the war with the devil. Without church support, Chambeen much better. Not only were the Alplain was sunk (as was anyone in govgonquins involved in an ancient, nasty Life in the canoe must ernment), yet even the most pious war with the Iroquois nation to the should have doubted the logic of plantsouth, they were rarely able to stockpile have been pure misery, and ing a single adolescent male into anenough food to last the entire winter. with every bend in the river, other culture in the belief that he'd come But Brule had yet another problem: He Brule probably thought out as a shining representative of his was entirely dependent on the Algonsociety's values. But the single-minded quins' goodwill at the same time he less about Champlain's Champlain felt he needed every advanwas a liability to them, a helpless piece imperial desires and more tage he could get in the fur trade, no matof baggage for their canoes that could about his own safety. ter the cost. easily bring trouble. When Brule left with the Hurons in And these canoes must have been pure 16II, he disappeared from the record misery. Accounts by Champlain and the for four years. With this trip he knew what he was getRecollect missionary Gabriel Sagard give a good picture ting into, so it must have been far different from the one of what Brule must have gone through. While on the move he had taken a year before with Chief Iroquet. Surely he during warmer weather, his new companions, traveling couldn't have cared much about Champlain's financial naked or in loincloths, endured hunger and insects and interests; it's likely he had his own reasons for wanting the physical hardships that would have killed most Frenchmen. life he was pursuing. In France he could be executed for To avoid stopping, they used their wooden food bowls as hunting one of the king's rabbits, but here was an endless chamber pots in the boat. Their diet was radically differexpanse of land on which to hunt deer, bear, and moose. ent from that of the French, comprising dried fish, parched The Hurons had greater reverence for personal autonomy; corn, and whatever the forest or river provided. At times, respect and power were earned by acts, not by birth. Comthey ate their human enemies. They would load quartered 68 AMERICAN HERITAGE SEPTEMBER 2001 '" ~ w I :J <D Z o> « I r- z>- u ing from a country where you could be dealt a bad hand before you even knew what the game was called, this must have been invigorating. What a system the Hurons had! A young man sent to live with them stood a better chance at getting respect and equality than he did among his own countrymen. I can see Brule paddling hard, carrying more than his weight. When he re-emerged in Champlain's journals, four years later, he was completely transformed. He was dressed fully in skins and participated in the open promiscuity of the Huron youth. This resembles remarkably the mating strategy of my generation of college-educated twentysomethings. In both, a young woman would go through any number of male suitors, sleeping with them at will under no pretenses about commitment, before eventually settling down with her favorite. Champlain and the Jesuit and Recollect fathers who would become open critics of Brule probably started to form their nasty opinions of him around this time. Still, the boy brought back with him a great haul of news and rumors, including tales of a northern sea above and west of Lake Huron. Plus, the interpreter now knew many dialects and could speak with almost anyone in the eastern Great Lakes watershed. Just what Champlain needed, too, because in 1615 he was planning an expedition into New York to slaughter a village of Iroquois, and he wanted to assemble an allied force. Forays against the Iroquois were a sort of summer hobby for Champlain. These residents of present-day upstate New York were primarily farmers, but their raids into the St. Lawrence Valley for fur and captives had gained them the bitter enmity of the Hurons and Algonquins. Every beaver pelt that made it into an Iroquois canoe was bound for Dutch merchants to the south, not for the French, so the Iroquois inadvertently picked up some terrible foes. Twice Champlain had ventured to the Iroquois homeland with his muskets and his Indian allies, annihilating forces of Iroquois. For some of these people, the first firearm they ever saw had Champlain's eyeball staring down its barrel. The 1615 expedition was bound for a village along Onondaga Lake, in central New York, and Brule was in the party, along with several hundred Hurons. The plan was for Brule and 12 of the Hurons to split off at Lake Simcoe and head down through enemy territory to gather a force of 500 Andaste warriors who lived to the south along the Susquehanna River near what is now Elmira, New York. Then they all would meet at the Iroquois village and raze it together. On September 8, Brule departed with the Hurons on his mission. Champlain wouldn't see him again for three years. With the 12 Hurons, Brule traveled south from Lake Simcoe, becoming the first white man to see Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, and then headed to the Andaste village. The Andastes agreed to send the 500 men, but they wasted five days on pre-war partying. When they did get around to making the three-day journey north, they were too late. Champlain had already been defeated and wounded by the Iroquois and had left for the north. BRULE WENT BACK WITH THE ANDASTES. TO KILL TIME over the winter, he traveled down the Susquehanna River to Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps near Baltimore, racking up several more firsts for European explorers. He somehow passed unscathed through the lands of many enemies of the French. When his journey south was over, he went back to the Andastes for a while, then left with six men to travel up to the Hurons' country. On the way, the group was attacked by a party of Iroquois and scattered. Brule wandered for days. Lost and starving, he found a path and followed it to three Iroquois who were returning to their village with a load of fish. They fed him and took him home with them. At their village, Brule denied being French and said he came from another, better nation that loved the Iroquois. They knew he was lying, so they began the long, torturous murder process obsessively described by many Frenchmen. They ripped out his fingernails and pulled out his beard and burned him with hot sticks. The ritual was interrupted only when Brule, in desperation, threatened them with the SEPTEMBER 2001 AMERICAN HERITAGE 69 wrath of God just as the clear sky turned cloudy and broke plain that Brule did not want the Indians to settle down out in a great thunderstorm. This scared them so badly that and lead moral lives. He also reported that Brule was "much addicted to women." he became a figure of much importance in the village of his former enemies. It's odd that no one ever discusses Brule as an early force Brother Sagard, a Recollect du Creux lay brother, who against globalization, a person defending an indigenous bad no. problem believing in miracles, found this story way of life that was fading. Instead, his actions are re9f Brule's a little curious. He would later say of it, "God garded just as Champlain described them, as the willyworks his marvels often through the worst persons." Peonilly workings of a lunatic. But his efforts didn't stop with ple familiar with Brule said that the explorer did not his sabotage as an interpreter. even know his prayers and that he commonly offered In r629 a war between France and England had spilled tobacco to inanimate objects in the belief that he would across the Atlantic, and an English general, Thomas Kirke, then receive safe passage. Also, it seems a bit odd that had put Quebec under siege. His ship was the largest ever a people who lived so very directly in the natural world to sail up the St. Lawrence, which could be tough to naviwould be astounded by a sudden change in the weather. gate. No problem, though, for he had a skillful pilot to take Champlain did later witness the physical evidence of him upstream. When Champlain surrendered the fort B,rule's mishandling, and the Iroquois weren't ones to without a fight, he was surprised to see the pilot among take sudden pity on someone after starting in on him. the captors: It was Brule. Champlain wrote down the lecWhatever really happened that day is a mystery. Perhaps ture he gave to his sometime protege that day, and it was Brule had simply charmed them. prophetic: "You will be pointed at with scorn on all sides, In the summer of r6r8, he left his new Iroquois friends, wherever you may be." Brule returned to Huronia. vowing another visit. He returned to the Hurons, then In no time at all, the French regained their territory . .. -made a short journey with them down to Quebec. There, No sooner had Kirke taken Quebec than word of a treaty -he explained his three-year delay to between France and England spread to the New World, and all recent Champlain, and then he left again with the Hurons. conquests were off. Trade with the About r620, he crossed Lake OnIndians continued, and every year they It's odd that no one ever tario, heading west, and then traversed came downriver in greater numbers. discusses Brule as an early the land north of Lake Huron. There In the summer of r633, r40 canoeforce against globalization, loads of Hurons came down. The Inare few known details about this trip, dians were somewhat tense because only that he was checking on the rumor a person defending an of the Great Western Sea. He made the over the winter they had killed and indigenous way of life that first ascent by a European up the rapids eaten Etienne Brule after a quarrel, was fading. Instead, we see at what is now Sault Ste. Marie, was the and they feared French retaliation. him just as Champlain did. first to set foot on Michigan soil, and Champlain told them to forget it. The became the first to enter Lake Superior. man had no nationality, so his life Somewhere along the way in Lake Suwas of no concern to the French; don't perior, perhaps all the way to Isle Royale, he came across let it spoil the trading fair. an ingot of copper, which he later showed to the French Brule would have been boiled in a kettle or hollow log, ---on the St. Lawrence. Many years later, the retrieval of that not roasted, and eaten without salt; we know that. What ---~copper from its source would physically transform the we don't know is why it happened. Champlain suggests northern Great Lakes more than all previous events, more it was because of a woman. According to the Recollect than the missionaries and wars and fur trading that foldu Creux, Brule's trip to the judgment seat was expelowed closely in Brule's steps. dited so that he might sooner be made to answer for his life of sin. The missionaries' attempts to demonstrate His trip up to Lake Superior and northern Michigan something better to the Hurons didn't do them much would be the last history he would make as an explorer of never-before-seen places. He took to spending much good. By r649 they had been annihilated by the Iroquois of his time in Huronia, along the eastern shore of Lake in their villages. Hundreds were led away as slaves or food. Huron near Georgian Bay. By now, his countrymen conEight Jesuits were killed in all, several of them tortured to death. sidered Brule a total pagan, unashamed of his defection to Indian life. As far as the history books go, getting killed by the In r623 Brother Sagard went to Huronia to minister to Hurons was one of Brule's greatest accomplishments. The the people there. While Brule helped guide him around a very few authors that ever mention him always point that little, he ultimately tried to block the missionary's efforts. out. Seeing the name in print was too much for Champlain. Sagard's interpreters struck a deal among themselves that In r633 he revised his journals, removing Brule's name in no one should teach the missionary to master the Huron the discussion of that explorer's greatest adventures. --~la-n-guage. Instead, they taught him obscenities so that if he --trIed to explain the Trinity, he would be talking about some-----Steven Rinella is a freelance writer living in Missoula, Montana. thing else altogether. Sagard later complained to Cham- * 70 AMEIIICAN HERITAGE SEPTEMBER 2001
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