• Sunday-What'sUP June 22 - 01:15 pm

As we have been doing the weekly "Pasty Cameos" which started back in February, I've been introduced to some parts of U.P. history for the first time. Regressing through time to the earliest explorers, I've been wondering who was actually the first of the white-men to set foot in the U.P. There may have been someone before him not as well documented, but it appears Etienne Brule may have been that first European visitor. (Etienne is French for Stephen, which is easier to pronounce).

The monument above is found in Old Mill, Toronto, Canada. What impressed me about Brule's story was at how young an age he came to the New World (16). Perhaps he was the first exchange student?

Thanks for all the suggestions for future Cameo's about the U.P. We also would welcome any significant dates you might know that are appropriate to include in "Day in History", which we send your way Monday through Saturday.

Have a good week :o)

Good morning all!

<<Several generations of my ancestors were in the fur trade, as voyageurs or boatmen, traveling in convoys from Montreal up the Ottawa River system to Fort Mackinaw and on to the Lake Superior country. In 1808 my great?great grandfather sailed to Michilimackinac, Mississippi and the Missouri territories. The first record of my grandparents sailing to Superior country occurred in 1853 when Michel Chaput emigrated to the Michigan Copper Country to work as a woodsman for the local copper smelting companies.

This is what I wrote 10 years ago about my first trip up the St Marys River in 1958

My grandmother had a cabin on the Brule river in Wisconsin. She was from the Bad River reservation.

He may have been the first European in modern times. The jury is still out on other cultures coming here in ancient times. There are new discoveries lately that shed some light on this. There are too many anomilies to discount previous visits by Europeans and maybe even the Phonecians to this area. One thing was the blue eyed Erie indians.Some of the past visitors could have been absorbed into the local populations.
Maybe we will never find out for sure but it is an interesting subject.

If Brule was born in 1595 and arrived in 1608, doesn't that make him 13 years old when he came?

Charlie,

I guess I had better go and have a look for that monument. The
Old Mill on the Humber River is just a couple of miles from my
house. How interesting. There is an Etienne Brule School a couple
of kilometres downstream. Maybe it's next to where the Humber
empties into Lake Ontario. I better check that out too.

Sarah, Maybe it's because they use the metric system in Canada that accounts for the differece, don'tcha think, eh? ;-)

All of the other sources I found (Britannica, Wikipedia, etc.) give Brule's date of birth as c.1592, which would have made him 16 in 1608. (see the opening titles on today's Cameo.) I had not noticed the date discrepency on the monument. Guess that's why they put the 'c' in front of it.

I like the metric system rationale better.