Also known as the French-Iroquois Wars, the Beaver Wars were fought across the Great-Lakes region and created a refugee crisis, spread plagues and reformed alliances from 1609-1701. The future of the European-North American alliance system was recast and this marks a catastrophic decimation of the Indigenous population.

Alongside the Coureurs de Bois, the merchants and artisans of the colony, and the soldiers, missionaries were another important pillar of New France. Recollect Missionaries accompanied many traders and explorers, and they recorded much of what they witnessed, leaving some of the best eye-witness accounts of life in the period.

Samuel de Champlain was the famed military man, explorer extraordinaire, founder of Quebec City, and governor of New France in all but official title. He navigated the Ottawa River, and was the first European to chronicle the experience, naming the Rideau River, Chaudière Falls, and putting the site on paper for the first time.

Etienne Brule was the first coureur de bois, an independent fur trader operating in the Saint Laurence Basin. He travelled up the Ottawa River in 1610, learnt to speak several Indigenous languages to communicate with Algonquin, Huron-Wendat, and Odawa. He lived most of his life in the Great Lakes region, working as a fur trader, diplomat, adventurer, explorer and mercenary.

This episode introduces the Algonquin, an Anishinaabe people who've inhabited the Ottawa area for more than two thousand years. It includes elements of their language (Anishinaabemowin), religion (Midewiwin), and relationships with other Anishinaabe people (Ojibwe,Montagnais-Innu, and Odawa), as well as allied or rival Iroquoian peoples (Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat).

Before Ottawa was Ottawa, it was a forest, and before it was a forest, it was under 80m of water as an extension of the Atlantic Ocean. Whales, seals, walrus and other marine animals called it home. This is what Ottawa was like 115,000 years ago. The Champlain Sea stretched across the Saint Laurence and Ottawa River Valleys, before the glaciers melted and the seabed rose to the surface.

This is the introduction to the Ottawa History Hub Podcast. I introduce the city and give some of the planned structure to the podcast going forward.