The Amazing True Adventures of Étienne Brûlé!

By James LaForest

What boy does not dream of adventure? And what young man does not set out at some point on an adventure of his own making? Boys spend their days bearing the swords of Arthur, the weapons of war, racing through the open plains of their imaginations. From the beginning of recorded history the heroic deeds of young men have inspired boys as they grow to maturity, plotting their own paths to renown.

It is intuitive and natural to understand the cave paintings of Lascaux as records of great exploits, no doubt in turn charming untrained hunters to pick up a spear.  Abraham broke his fathers idols and set out to found, at the behest of a new God, a new nation. Odysseus traveled the Mediterranean world encountering every conceivable mystery and obstacle. History has been told and cultures formed through the stories of the great Crusades to the Holy Land, shaman-led quests for manhood throughout the Siberian world, Viking raids, and pilgrimages on foot for thousands of miles. 

And that is all before the so-called Age of Exploration! Think Cabot, Cartier, and Columbus among many others. Later, in the 17th century another group of adventuring explorers made way into the interiors of the American continents. Many whose names are familiar to Americans today as the monikers of cities and universities such as Marquette, Champlain (known as the Father of New France), and LaSalle were of French origin. There were countless others, traders and minor explorers whose names are less well known. 

One such young man, who set out to explore the boreal wilds west of Montreal at the behest of Samuel de Champlain, experienced what may be the apotheosis of a boy’s adventure fantasies: being eaten by savages! Legend has it that Étienne Brûlé met such a fate. According to the 19th century genealogist Father Cyprien Tanguay, Brûlé was killed and consumed by the Wendat (Hurons) Tribe in what is now Ontario in the 1630s. René Jetté, another esteemed French-Canadian genealogist was more politic, noting simply that he had been killed by the Hurons, making no reference to the manner of his death.  

What little is known about the life of Étienne Brûlé is the textbook definition of an adventurer.  Leaving his native France at the age of 16, he sailed to Quebec in 1608. He was in the service of de Champlain, who sent him to live among the Algonquin, becoming the first Frenchman to live among the North American indigenous people. Champlain wrote: “I had with me a youth who had already spent two winters at Quebec and wanted to go among the Algoumequins [Algonquins] to master their language … learn about their country, see the great lake, take note of the rivers and the peoples living along them; and discover any mines, along with the most curious things about those places and peoples, so that we might, upon his return, be informed truthfully about them.”  

Thus he set out and, finding a tribe in the lands of the Wendat, he became one of them, adopting their habits, dressing according to their customs, and learning their language. Unlike later missionaries in the region, there is no mention of Brûlé bringing the Christian faith to the natives. A year later, Champlain forged his own way into the region to find Brûlé. He later wrote: “I saw too my lad come dressed in the manner of the savages, mightily pleased with the treatment which the savages had accorded him, according to the custom of their country, and he related to me all that he had seen during his winter among them and had learned from said savages. … My lad … had learned their language very well.”

Traveling with his adopted people, and on his own, Brûlé ranged through Pennsylvania, Lake Erie, around Niagara Falls, the Lake Huron Area, and met again with Champlain at Georgian Bay in Northeast Lake Huron in 1615. Along the way, he had been captured, tortured, and released by the Iroquois promising to work for an alliance between them and the French. In 1618, he made known that he desired to push further into the Great Lakes region and again Champlain commissioned him to do so. Eventually he made his way to the rapids at the east end of Lake Superior, which would become Sault Ste. Marie, the first French settlement west Montreal. According to the Recollect friar Gabriel Sagard, “The interpreter Bruslé [sic] with several Savages assured us that beyond the Freshwater Sea [Lake Huron] there was another very large lake which empties into it by a waterfall, which has been called ‘Saut de Gaston’ [Gaston Falls, i.e., Sault Ste. Marie].”

Sagard was one of the first historians of Canada. He met Brûlé in 1624 as they were both headed to the St. Lawrence Valley from the interior. It was after this meeting that Brûlé’s fortunes turned. Sagard denounced Brûlé to Champlain, citing his loose morals and claimed that he was being duplicitous in his dealings with Champlain. In 1629, Champlain lost Quebec, temporarily, to the Kirke brothers and the colony was all but abandoned for three years by the French. Brûlé however deserted to the Kirke brothers and declared his intention to remain in Huronia. The alternative was less than appealing: a forced return to France and to be hung for treason.

But alas, here, the trail of Brûlé’s adventures largely goes cold. He was reported to have been killed in 1633 by the Hurons. Whether he was eaten as the legend goes cannot be proven. Others claim he was done in due to the political intrigue of his last years.  

The idea that Brûlé was eaten by the Huron Indians raises questions about the demise of this young adventurer. Is it possible, having “gone native” as Champalin recorded and having been clearly comfortable living an indigenous life, that metaphorically he was subsumed, adopted, into their tribe rather than literally eaten? Perhaps his acculturation was so total that he became an undifferentiated member of the Wendat people. Or, knowing the danger that now faced him among the French officials and church men, he simply pushed on ever further into the interior, adventuring for adventure’s sake. Perhaps there exist obscure legends of an early explorer, a White man in Huron garb, turning up among the Cree? The Ojibwa? The Menominee? Did this young adventurer with “loose morals” leave behind children with Indian wives?  

The infamy placed upon Brûlé by Sagard would become a theme throughout the fur trade in which traders, the courier des bois (runners of the woods) were always suspect, particularly in the eyes of Catholic missionaries. The fur trade required kinship ties, thus intermarriage between the French and indigenous tribes became a common feature in the Great Lakes fur trade settlements. It also required men with a sense of adventure! They bravely set out down lonely rivers, meeting new peoples, skirting civilization in law and custom.

The life of Étienne Brûlé is a North American archetype, characterizing the role of men trapping for furs in New France and into the 19th century, that of a daring man – sometimes a hero. And like Brûlé, heroes often die in obscurity, leaving no trace of themselves, only to live on, whether in glory or infamy, in the stories of later generations. A heroic figure in a wild land, Brûlé was the true personification of a boy’s adventure fantasy.