page_title: Lake Erie
section_title: European exploration and settlement
hierarchical_section_title: Lake Erie / History / European exploration and settlement
caption_attribution_description: The steamship Walk in Water, built in Buffalo, was the first steamship on Lake Erie
context_page_description: Lake Erie is the fourth-largest lake of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the eleventh-largest globally if measured in terms of surface area. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has the shortest average water residence time. At its deepest point Lake Erie is 210 feet deep.
  Situated on the International Boundary between Canada and the United States, Lake Erie's northern shore is the Canadian province of Ontario, specifically the Ontario Peninsula, with the U.S. states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York on its western, southern, and eastern shores. These jurisdictions divide the surface area of the lake with water boundaries.
  The lake was named by the Erie people, a Native American people who lived along its southern shore. The tribal name "erie" is a shortened form of the Iroquoian word erielhonan, meaning long tail.
  Situated below Lake Huron, Erie's primary inlet is the Detroit River. The main natural outflow from the lake is via the Niagara River, which provides hydroelectric power to Canada and the U.S. as it spins huge turbines near Niagara Falls at Lewiston, New York and Queenston, Ontario.
context_section_description: In 1669, the Frenchman Louis Jolliet was the first documented European to sight Lake Erie, although there is speculation that Étienne Brûlé may have come across it in 1615. Lake Erie was the last of the Great Lakes to be explored by Europeans, since the Iroquois who occupied the Niagara River area were in conflict with the French, and they did not allow explorers or traders to pass through. Explorers followed rivers out of Lake Ontario and portaged directly into Lake Huron. British authorities in Canada were nervous about possible expansion by American settlers across Lake Erie, so Colonel Talbot developed the Talbot Trail in 1809 as a way to stimulate settlement to the area; Talbot recruited settlers from Ireland and Scotland and there are numerous places named after him, such as Port Talbot and the Talbot River and Talbotville in southern Ontario.
  During the War of 1812, Oliver Hazard Perry captured an entire British fleet in 1813 near Put-in-Bay, Ohio, despite having inferior numbers. American soldiers swept through the Ontario area around Port Rowan burning towns and villages, but spared a gristmill owned by a Canadian mason named John Backhouse, according to one report. Generally, however, despite the two exceptions being the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 which involved conflicts between the U.S. and the United Kingdom, relations between the U.S. and Canada have been remarkably friendly with an "unfortified boundary" and an agreement "that has kept all fleets of war off the Great Lakes."
  In 1837, rebellions broke about between Canadian settlers and the British Colonial government. These primarily concerned political reforms and land allocation issues. Some of the rebels stationed themselves in the U.S. and crossed the ice from Sandusky Bay to Pelee Island wearing "tattered overcoats and worn-out boots", and carrying muskets, pitchforks, and swords, but the islanders had already fled. Later, there was a battle on the ice with the Royal 32nd regiment, with the rebels being driven to retreat.
  Settlers established commercial fisheries on the north coast of the lake around the 1850s. An important business was fishing. In the pre-Civil War years, railways sprouted everywhere, and around 1852 there were railways circling the lake. Maritime traffic picked up, although the lake was usually closed because of ice from December to early April, and ships had to wait for the ice to clear before proceeding. Since slavery had been abolished in Canada in 1833, but was still legal in southern states of the U.S., a Lake Erie crossing was sometimes required for fugitive slaves seeking freedom:
  When Kentucky fugitive Lewis Clarke arrived in Cleveland, he had no idea how to find Canada. "I went out to the shore of the lake again and again, to try and see the other side, but I could see no hill, mountain, nor city of the asylum I sought," he once told an interviewer. "I was afraid to inquire where (Canada) was, lest it would betray such a degree of ignorance as to excite suspicion at once." Many fugitives also had to overcome fears instilled by their former masters ...
  — Chris Lackner in the Ottawa Citizen, 2006
  Merchant shippers lacked modern radar and weather forecasting so vessels were often caught up in intense gales:
  A violent gale is blowing on Lake Erie ... The schooner Stranger came in this morning and reports seeing a vessel about 12 miles [19 km] up, 2 miles [3.2 km] from the Canada shore, with three men clinging to the masts, which alone were visible above the water–heard their cries and screams ...
  — The New York Times, October 1853
  There were reports of disasters usually from sea captains passing information to reporters; in 1868, the captain of the Grace Whitney saw a sunken vessel "three men clinging to the masthead" but he could not help because of the gale and high seas.
  A balloonist named John Steiner of Philadelphia made an ambitious trip across the lake in 1857. He was described in The New York Times as an eronaut or aeronaut; powered boats were called propellers; and fast was deemed railroad speed. He
caption: Walk in Water, built in Buffalo, was the first steamship on Lake Erie. Picture circa 1816.
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