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Champlain's journal: Entering 'The Lake Between' By Joel Banner Baird, Free Press Staff Writer • July 14, 2009 Guided by his Montagnais, Huron and Algonquin allies, Samuel de Champlain entered Ondakina on July 14, 1609. That body of water (usually translated as “The Lake Between”) is the only place on Earth that Champlain named for himself: Lake Champlain. The Frenchman organized the voyage ostensibly to blunt northward Iroquois expansion. But for awhile, he had time to indulge in what seems to be his first loves: exploration and observation. “.. I saw four fine islands, ten, twelve and fifteen leagues long (what now comprise Grand Isle County), which were formerly inhabited by the savages, like the River of the Iroquois (the Richelieu River, his conduit to the lake); but they have been abandoned since the wars of the savages with one another prevail.”
He noted chestnut trees on the lakeshore — a species unfamiliar to him; and remarked upon an unusual fish, which his guides called “chaousarou,” (the bony-scaled or gar pike). He was told the species grew 8 to 10 feet long. Champlain did not register his disappointment with more modest specimens. “I saw some five feet long, which were as large as my thigh; the head being as big as my two fists, with a snout two feet and a half long, and a double row of very sharp and dangerous teeth. “Its body is, in shape, much like that of a pike; but it is armed with scales so strong that a poniard (dagger) could not pierce them. Its color is silver-gray. The extremity of its snout is like that of a swine. This fish makes war upon all others in the lakes and rivers. “It also possesses remarkable dexterity, as these people informed me, which is exhibited in the following manner. When it wants to capture birds, it swims in among the rushes, or reeds, which are found on the banks of the lake in several places, where it puts its snout out of water and keeps perfectly still: so that, when the birds come and light on its snout, supposing it to be only the stump of a tree, it adroitly closes it, which it had kept ajar, and pulls the birds by the feet down under water. Champlain, as usual, dutifully documents the local anglers’ more far-fetched claims: “The savages gave me the head (of a chaousarou), of which they make great account, saying that, when they have the headache, they bleed themselves with the teeth of this fish on the spot where they suffer pain, when it suddenly passes away.” The complete “Voyages of Samuel de Champlain” are in the public domain, and can be found online at http://www.gutenberg.org or at The Champlain Society: http://www.champlainsociety.ca . Contact Joel Banner Baird at 660-1843 or
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