Excerpt from History of Knox and Daviess Counties, Indiana: From the Earliest Time to the Present; With Biographical Sketches, Reminiscences, Notes, Etc

Although, in the journeys often made before the close of the sixteenth century, by explorers, missionaries and traders from Que bec, Montreal and Three Rivers to Kaskaskia upon the Missis sippi, the Wabash was used as a highway, and, as this Indian village was the most important for so many leagues of the route, it was, doubtless, well known to such travelers, yet no trace of the presence of the French earlier than the beginning of the seven teenth century can be found. It was in the early autumn of 1702 when four Canadian beats, containing eight white men, con voyed by a flotilla of Indian laden canoes, gathered from the various villages along the route, having accomplished their long journey by water and portage from the castle of St. Louis at Quebec, were stranded in front of the council-house Upon the site of the present city of Vincennes. The names of but four of these voyagers have been preserved. They were J uchereau, the commander; Leonardy, his lieutenant; Goddare and Turpin, couriers des bar's - travelers of the woods - the surf of the flowing tide of population, ever preceding the wave, slowly intruding up on the realm of solitude and the savage. Impulses having their origin across the ocean, events transpiring in colonies upon the St. Lawrence, had molded their characters, and at last or dained them to become truly light-bearers in a heathen wilder ness. France planted a colony at Quebec in 1608. For the glory of the crown, for the dominion of Christ's holy church, this colony soon came under the patronage of the State and the especial solicitude of the pope. Before Talon, before Guise or Lorain, this union of interest, and yet separation of duties, had been well expressed at the conclusion of a quarrel in the Canadian woods: You show me my way to heaven, said the governor general to the vicar, and I will show you your path on earth.

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