Background
Etienne Brule was born around 1592 in Champigny and came in 1608, when a mere lad, with Champlain to New France.
Etienne Brule was born around 1592 in Champigny and came in 1608, when a mere lad, with Champlain to New France.
Brule took part in the building of the "habitation" at Quebec, escaped the scurvy, which destroyed so many of its colonists, and in 1610 at Champlain's suggestion went to the wilderness with the Algonquin chief Iroquet. The next year he came back, clad like a native, speaking the Indian language, equipped with a superior knowledge of woodcraft.
As an interpreter of an Iroquet language, therefore, he was useful to Champlain and as an explorer he described the hinterland of Canada. In 1612 he went with the Huron tribesmen to their home on Georgian Bay. He would seem thus to have been the first white man to see any of the Great Lakes. He accompanied Champlain in his voyage of 1615 to Huronia and was sent by him on a perilous mission to the Andastes, dwelling on the headwaters of the Susquehanna River.
Later in the same year he explored that stream to its outlet, and probably coasted Chesapeake Bay to the ocean.
These explorations he related to Champlain in 1618, describing also his capture and torture by the Iroquois, and his rescue by a seemingly miraculous storm. Champlain sent him back to the Hurons, where he lived thereafter, and where he received a salary of one hundred pistoles per year for his services to the fur trade company.
He explored widely, but the extent of his voyages is uncertain. There is evidence to show that he visited Lake Superior in 1622 and saw its copper mines: he was also in the Neutrals country in 1624, and probably saw Lake Erie. In that case, he traversed first of any European four of the five Great Lakes--Huron, Ontario, Superior, and Erie. Coming with the Indians to Tadoussac in 1629 Brulé sold his services to the English invaders, for which act of treason Champlain bitterly reproached him.
During the English occupation (1629 - 32) he lived among the Hurons, where his life was so dissipated and licentious that the Bear clan of that tribe killed him in a quarrel and ate his remains. Champlain refused, on his return in 1633, to take vengeance for Brulé's murder, declaring that because of his treason he was no longer a Frenchman.
He died at Toanche, on the Penetanguishene peninsula, Ontario, and was eaten by the Hurons, who interred only those who met death by violence.
Brule was one of that class of wanderers who, while brave and adventurous, became among savages more savage than the aborigines. He emigrated in 1608 and was the first recorded European in what is now the province of Ontario. His chief achievement was that he pioneered the role of interpreter between the French and various tribes, including the Hurons. Later, with another explorer Samuel de Champlain, he went to the Lake Ontario (1615) with the purpose to explore the territory, and probably reached Lake Superior (1622) as well. Brule left no record of his travels, and his activities can be gleaned only from passing references in the accounts of others. He spent most of his active life with Native Americans and was assimilated by them.
Endowed with a great spirit of independence, with initiative and indisputable courage, Brule had, despite all his failings, a remarkable and colourful personality.
