Note 90 — Chapter III

"To the south of the Nation of the Beaver is an island, in that fresh-water sea [Lake Huron], about thirty leagues in length, inhabited by the Outaouan [Ottawas]. These are a people come from the nation of the Standing Hair [Cheveux Relevés]."—Vimont, Relation, 1640, p. 34. In William R. Smith's translation of so much of this Relation as names the various tribes visited by Nicolet (Hist. Wis., Vol. III., p. 10), what relates to the Cheveux Relevés is omitted—probably by accident. On a large island, corresponding as to locality with the Great Manitoulin, is placed, on Du Creux' Map of 1660, the "natio surrectorum capillorum"—identical with the Cheveux Relevés, just mentioned.

The Ottawas were first visited by Champlain. This was in the year 1615. They lived southwest of the Hurons. It was he who gave them the name Cheveux Relevés—Standing Hair. Sagard saw some of them subsequently, and calls them Andatahonats. See his "Histoire du Canada," p. 199.

Although, in the citation from the Relation of 1640, just given, the band of the Ottawas upon the Great Manitoulin are said to have "come from the nation of the Standing Hair," it does not fix the residence of those from whom they came as in the valley of the Ottawa river. On the contrary, Champlain, in his "Voyages" and Map, places them in an opposite direction, not far from the south end of the Nottawassaga bay of Lake Huron. Says J. G. Shea (Wis. Hist. Soc. Coll., III., 135): "There is no trace in the early French writers of any opinion then entertained that they [the Ottawas] had ever been [resided] in the valley of the Ottawa river. After the fall of the Hurons [who were cut off by the Iroquois a number of years subsequent to Nicolet's visit], when trade was re-opened with the west, all tribes there were called Ottawas, and the river, as leading to the Ottawa country, got the name."