Source: Library and Archives Canada/MIKAN 2266052

BRÛLÉ, ÉTIENNE, interpreter of the Huron (Wendat) language, probably the first European to make his way into the Huron country and Pennsylvania, and to see lakes Huron, Ontario, Superior, and Erie; b. c. 1592 probably at Champigny-sur-Marne (near Paris); d. c. June 1633, killed by the Huron .

Étienne Brûlé has unfortunately left no personal description of his life among the First Nations, or of his explorations. The thread of his existence must be sought in the writings of Samuel de Champlain, Gabriel Sagard, and Jean de Brébeuf, and even there it can be picked up only in haphazard fashion. In them Brûlé’s image, eluding any systematic pursuit, as in a forest with scattered clearings, appears and disappears in turn, enigmatic and fascinating.

We know almost nothing of his origins. The year of his arrival in Canada was long the subject of conjecture because Champlain identifies Étienne Brûlé clearly only in 1618. At that date Champlain referred to him by his name, specifying that Brûlé had been living among Indigenous people for eight years. In 1610, a “youth who had already spent two winters at Quebec” asked Champlain’s permission to go and live with the Algonquin in order to learn their language. This youth was the first European, and the only one that year, to attempt such a venture. Cross-checking leads us to suppose that the “youth” of whom Champlain speaks was indeed Étienne Brûlé, and that he had been at Quebec since 1608.

Had Brûlé taken part in Champlain’s first two clashes with the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)? There is no indication that he had. It is possible, however, that he was involved at least in the encounter that took place in the summer of 1610, since it was on the day immediately following this battle that he voiced to Champlain his desire to go and live among the Indigenous people. Champlain, who had already conceived the plan of training interpreters, accepted readily, and entrusted Brûlé to the Algonquin chief Iroquet, welcoming in exchange a young Huron called Savignon, who was to accompany him to France.

No documentary trace remains of this first experience of a Frenchman living among the Indigenous peoples of Canada, or of the journey that Brûlé may have made with the Algonquin, and more specifically with Iroquet’s group. The forest swallowed up the young adventurer, and we lose sight of him. He must have wintered with Iroquet, but where? The Algonquin chief may just as well have spent that winter in the Huron country as in his village, in the Ottawa (Outaouais) River valley. All that Champlain says about the young man’s exploit is that he was the first European to shoot the Sault-Saint-Louis (the Lachine rapids, near Montreal) in a canoe. When later on Champlain, in his turn, ventured down these rapids with the help of Indigenous guides, he admitted that he had never yet done it unaided, “nor had any other Christian, except my young man of whom I have already spoken [Étienne Brûlé].”

Brûlé and the Algonquin returned as arranged one year after their departure, about 13 June 1611. It was a memorable event, which Champlain describes with a certain emotion: “I also saw my French boy who came dressed like an Indian. He was well pleased with the treatment received from the Indians, according to the customs of their country, and explained to me all that he had seen during the winter, and what he had learned from the Indians. . . . My lad . . . had learned their language very well.” A new figure had come into being: the interpreter (truchement), destined to play an important role in the early days of the colony. Living among the Algonquin, in their fashion, he seemed to have been accepted by them as one of their own. From then on he acted as a liaison officer between colonizers and Indigenous people.

Brûlé’s journeys during the four years following his return remain obscure. From certain facts it can be presumed that he stayed in the Huron country – where subsequently he was to take up residence – for at least a part of this period. It is therefore probable that he was the first European to see that region and to make the long trip there via the Ottawa and Mattawa rivers, Lake Nipissing, the French River, and Georgian Bay. His exploration of the Huron country – assuming it took place – was the first of the numerous peregrinations of the interpreter between the years 1615 and 1626.

In 1615, Brûlé started out on an expedition that was to make him famous. Champlain and the Huron, undertaking their third campaign against the Iroquois, were on their way that year towards the village of the Onondaga (situated not far from what became Syracuse, N.Y.), when they decided to send a delegation to the Susquehannock, allies of the Huron, to request their support for the projected battle. The Susquehannock lived to the south of the Five Nations of the Iroquois (in what became Tioga County, N.Y., probably between Elmira and Binghamton). To get there quickly, the delegation had to cross enemy territory; 12 of the best Huron warriors were selected. Brûlé asked Champlain for permission to follow them, “to which I readily agreed,” wrote Champlain, “since he was drawn thereto of his own inclination, and by this means would see their country and could observe the tribes that inhabit it.” The delegation left Champlain at Lake Simcoe, the Huron army pushing on northwards, Brûlé and the 12 Huron heading towards the south. As always when Brûlé was involved, no precise report has been made of the route taken on this journey. However, historians are generally agreed that the party must have followed the Humber River to its mouth (where the city of Toronto would be established), gone around the western end of Lake Ontario, and then landed somewhere on the south shore, perhaps between the Niagara and Genesee rivers, pushing on towards Carantouan, the Susquehannock capital. The mission did not prove successful. Although they succeeded in raising an army of Susquehannock, it reached the meeting-place agreed upon with Champlain two days late, at a time when the Huron army, already defeated by the Iroquois, had abandoned the spot. After this reverse, Brûlé returned with the Susquehannock to Carantouan to continue his exploration.

In the account that Brûlé later gave Champlain of his adventures in the country of the Susquehannock, he stated that he had spent the autumn and winter investigating the neighbouring nations and regions, and “making his way along a river which discharges on the coast of Florida,” and that he had continued “his route along the said river to the sea, past islands and the coasts near them.” As he probably did not possess the necessary knowledge to draw a map or to determine co-ordinates, Brûlé gave only a vague description of the region he visited. Considering the geographical position of Carantouan, it seems likely that the river was the Susquehanna, which Brûlé may have gone down by starting at one of its branches rising in what became the county of Otsego, N.Y., that he reached Chesapeake Bay, which is indeed filled with islands, and that he went as far as the ocean. The bay itself had already been visited in 1608 by Captain John Smith. The latter had not been able, however, to go up the river because of the obstacles. Étienne Brûlé, the first European to see Lake Ontario, would then also be the first to tread the soil of what is now Pennsylvania. But, according to Brûlé’s account, the trip was not yet finished. On the way back he apparently lost his way, and fell into the hands of the Seneca. These Iroquois seemingly had time to subject him to the opening stages of the physical torment reserved for prisoners, thus adding to his exploits the sorry privilege of being the first European to have experienced their tortures. But the Seneca set him free. He may have managed to persuade them to release him, through a ruse – by claiming that the sudden appearance of a storm was an intervention by heaven in his favour. Having set him free, the Seneca accepted him into their community and even included him in their feasts. The historian A.G. Zeller, however, questions the truth of the part of Brûlé’s account relating to the miracle. Anxious to conclude peace and to trade with the white men, they may have released Brûlé on his promise “to make them friends with the French and their enemies, and to make them swear friendship for one another.” Realizing that the conclusion of a Franco-Iroquois peace would compromise the interests of his friends the Huron, Brûlé may have invented the rescue by heaven in order to explain to Champlain the hospitality of the enemy.

The expedition that Brûlé next undertook, in fulfilment of an earlier promise to Champlain, led him to Lake Superior. The historian C.W. Butterfield, who has studied his movements, places this voyage in 1621–23. Despite the lack of written sources, he reconstructs the route with a fair degree of probability. Accompanied by a man named Grenolle, Brûlé seems to have set out from Toanché, a Huron village of the Bear clan where he had established his residence. The two adventurers may have gone northwards in a canoe, making their way along the shore of Georgian Bay as far as the copper mines worked by Indigenous people on the north shore of what became known as the North Channel. In fact Sagard recounts that “at about 80 or 100 leagues from the Hurons, there is a copper mine, from which the Interpreter Brûlé showed me an ingot when he returned from a voyage that he made to the neighbouring Nation with a certain Grenolle.” The two companions may then have gone via the St. Marys River as far as Lake Superior. Butterfield supposes that Brûlé and Grenolle continued their journey by following the north shore of Lake Superior to the spot on the St. Louis River where the cities of Duluth and Superior were eventually built. Yet there is no proof that Brûlé did actually cross the lake, although Sagard seems to state it by implication: “The Interpreter Bruslé and a number of Indians have assured us that beyond the mer douce [Lake Huron] there is another very large lake, which empties into the former by a waterfall, nearly two leagues across, which has been called the Gaston falls [Sault Ste. Marie]; this lake, with the freshwater sea, represents about a 30-day trip by canoe according to the Indians’ statement, and according to the interpreter is 400 leagues long.” The fact that Brûlé’s opinion differed from that of the Indigenous travellers might indicate that he had made the trip and was giving a personal estimation. In that case Brûlé’s explorations of this area would have preceded those of Daniel Greysolon* Dulhut and Nicolas Perrot*.

To the regions traversed by Brûlé it is probably necessary to add the country of the Neutrals. According to Butterfield, he was there about 1625. This hypothesis, very probable though it is, rests on no documentary proof. We can only refer to a sentence in which Father Joseph de La Roche Daillon, in 1626, expressed the desire to go to the Neutral country, about which, he said, the interpreter Brûlé reported wondrous things. The Huron and Neutral nations moreover maintained continuous, friendly relations, a circumstance which makes Brûlé’s voyage still more plausible, considering the number of years that he had spent in the Huron country. If Brûlé went to the Neutral country, he must have seen Lake Erie. Thus he would be the first European to have reached four of the Great Lakes.

Some authors attribute to Brûlé the additional merit of having shared in the writing of Brother Sagard’s dictionary of the Huron language. This is merely a supposition; it is certain only that in the beginning Brûlé helped Sagard to learn the language. It has also been maintained that Brûlé rendered the same service to Brébeuf, who lived for three years, from 1626 to 1629, at Toanché. It is unlikely that he did so, for relations between Brûlé and Brébeuf were never good. As well, Sagard complained that the interpreters banded together subsequently to refuse to teach Indigenous languages to the missionaries.

Despite his remarkable exploits, Brûlé earned harsh judgements from his contemporaries for having adopted the customs and cultures of the Indigenous peoples he encountered. “This man was recognized as being very vicious in character, and much addicted to women,” wrote Champlain. In the eyes of Champlain and the missionaries, this assimilation of a European to what they believed to be an inferior state of civilization stemmed from the desire to live in debauchery, and constituted a sin that they found difficult to pardon. Brûlé was very young when he set out in 1610 to live among the Algonquin, and it appears that his religious upbringing was extremely rudimentary. One day, recounts Sagard, when Brûlé was in danger of death, the only prayer he was able to recite was the Benedicite. Champlain also harboured resentment against Brûlé for another reason: that he was working – like his associate Nicolas Marsolet, an interpreter of the Montagnais and Algonquian languages – for the benefit of the merchants rather than for that of colonization. Brûlé indeed received from business men an annual salary of 100 pistoles to encourage Indigenous people to come and trade. Furthermore, when Quebec was captured in 1629, Brûlé and three companions abandoned Champlain and entered the service of the Kirke brothers. Champlain accused him of treason, and Brûlé went back to live in the Huron country.

The circumstances surrounding Brûlé’s death are shrouded in mystery. For some unknown reason, the Huron, among whom he had lived for 20 years, put him to death, after which they would have eaten him. When Brébeuf returned to Toanché, he found the place deserted. The Bear clan had abandoned the village and split up. According to some, the clan had not been able to “purge themselves” of the killing, and admitted that “no satisfaction had been obtained” from the interpreter’s death. Pursued by epidemics, they might have attributed the cause of these misfortunes to a curse put on them by the avenging spirit of the dead man’s sister or brother. For a long time, suspicion centred on their chief, Aenon, but he refuted these allegations. For want of proof, the enigma of Brûlé’s death remains unsolved.

Endowed with a great spirit of independence, with initiative and indisputable courage Étienne Brûlé, the subject of much criticisms, was a colourful, fascinating personality. His life strikingly illustrates the attraction that Indigenous life and culture held for French youth in the first century of the colony’s history.

Olga Jurgens

Note: A new biography of Étienne Brûlé is forthcoming.