The Most Fought-Over Portage Road

Before roads, railways, bridges or border crossings, this was one of the most important routes on the continent.

The only way to move goods between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario was to carry them, and your canoe, around the Falls on foot — along this corridor. Whoever controlled this path controlled the flow of furs, food and weapons across a continent. Nations didn't just want it. They fought over it.

Indigenous nations understood this long before Europeans arrived. The Attawandaron, also called the Neutral Nation, lived in this region, while the Haudenosaunee and other nations also knew its importance for trade, diplomacy and travel. When Europeans entered the fur trade in the 1600s, they did not invent a new network here. They joined one that already existed.

Then the European fur trade upset the balance of power. Conflict between the Haudenosaunee and the Neutral Nation grew, and by about 1651 the Neutral Nation had been defeated and dispersed. Many of its people were taken in by other nations. The portage route they had looked after for generations changed hands through war.

About 27 years later, in 1678, members of René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle's expedition, including the priest Louis Hennepin, arrived and wrote the first European description of the Falls. They were guided here by Indigenous people, on paths that were already ancient.

The Falls were never an empty wilderness waiting to be found. They were always the centre of something.