swaths of land throughout the watershed. The primary inhabitants of the region were the Algonquin Anishinaabe, who carved complex networks of portage routes to circumvent waterfalls and other natural landmarks. Exploration and the fur trade Samuel de Champlain is the first recorded European to label the falls, chaudière, (which the English for a time would call 'Big Kettle') during his 1613 voyage along the Ottawa River. Champlain describes in his journal on June 14, 1613: "At one place the water falls with such violence upon a rock, that, in the course of time, there has been hollowed out in it a wide and deep basin, so that the water flows round and round there and makes, in the middle, great whirlpools. Hence, the savages call it Asticou, which means kettle. This waterfall makes such a noise that it can be heard for more than two leagues off." "After having carried their canoes to the foot of the falls, they assembled at one place where one of them with a wooden plate takes up a collection, and each one of them places in this plate a piece of tobacco… the plate is placed in the middle of the group, and all dance about it, singing in their fashion; then one of the chiefs makes a speech, pointing out that for a long time they have been accustomed to making this offering, and that by this means they are protected from their enemies…the speaker takes the plate and throws the tobacco into the middle of la chaudière [kettle] and they make a great cry all together." As a medicine plant, the use of tobacco in this Indigenous ceremony signifies that the falls were made a sacred offering. In the days of the fur trade, the Chaudière Falls were an obstacle along the Ottawa River trade route. Canoes were portaged around the falls at the place now known as Hull. European colonization The arrival of Philemon Wright to this area in 1800 marked the start of the development of the city of Hull. In 1827, the region's first bridge, Union Bridge was built close to the falls. When the logging industry began in this area and farther upstream, the falls were again an obstacle for log driving. In 1829, Ruggles Wright (son of Philemon Wright) built the first timber slide, allowing logs and timber rafts to bypass the falls along the north shore,