On the other hand, the French alliance with the Hurons, Algonkins, and Montagnais, begun by this brotherhood-in-arms with Champlain, secured for France and the French such widespread liking among the tribes of Algonkin speech, and their allies and friends, that the two Canadas and much of the Middle West, together with Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, became French in sympathy without any war of conquest.

When the French dominion over North America fell, in 1759, with the capture of Quebec by Wolfe's army, tribes of Amerindians went on fighting for five years afterwards to uphold the banner and the rule of the beloved French king.
On Champlain's next visit to Canada, in 1610, he handed over to the Algonkin Indians a French youth named Etienne Brule (see p.

88), to be taught the Algonkin language (the use of which was spread far and wide over north-east America), and, further, sent a Huron youth to France to be taught French.

Between 1611 and 1616 he had explored much of the country between Montreal (the foundations of which city he may be said to have laid on May 29, 1611, for his stockaded camp is now in the centre of it) and Lakes Huron and Ontario, especially along the Ottawa River, that convenient short cut (as a water route) between the St.Lawrence at Sault St.Louis (Montreal) and Lakes Huron and Superior.

With short portages you can get in canoes from Montreal to the waters of Hudson Bay, or to Lake Winnipeg and the base of the Rocky Mountains.
In exploring this "River of the Algonkins" (as he called it), Champlain was nearly drowned between two rocks, and much hurt, from over bravery and want of knowledge of how to deal with a canoe on troubled water; but on June 4, 1613, he stood on the site of the modern city of Ottawa--the capital of the vast Canadian Dominion--and gazed at the marvellous Rideau or Curtain Fall, where the Rideau River enters the Ottawa.