Local: Sudbury History - Early Exploration
French explorers came to the area in the early 1600s, following the lead
of Etienne Brule who came up the Ottawa, and over the French River into
Lake Huron. In 1615, Samuel de Champlain, the French commander of New
France, himself visited the area for the purpose of trading for furs.
He was accompanied by Jesuit missionaries who began attempting to
convert the natives to Christianity. When the Iroquois started running
low on furs in 1649, they began pushing the Hurons (and the Jesuit
missionaries) northwards out of the area. By 1660, with the help of
several tribes on the west shore of Lake Huron, the Iroquois were driven
back across Lake Ontario and the area stabilized.
In 1849, the Hudson’s Bay Company set up a post at Lake Nipissing, but
the post was not a competitive and commercial success, and closed in
1879. By 1850, however, the region became very busy with lumbering and
mining activity, and the British government sought a treaty with the
Indians. After Treaty 61 was signed with fifteen elected Huron chiefs,
there were disputes over lumber company encroachment on forests inside
Indian reserves that continued until early in the 1900s when the Indians
were paid for timber rights.
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