Native American and French Settlement Patterns - Northern ...

European foods. Fish was an important part of
the Indian diet, which is found in
ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence.
Father Marquette wrote of the important
fishery at the
Straits of Mackinac:
. . . besides the fish common to
all other Nations, as the herring,
carp, pike, golden fish, whitefish,
and sturgeon, there are here found
three kinds of trout: 1) the common
kind; 2) larger being three feet in
length and one [foot] in width; and
3) monstrous, for no other word
expresses it, -- being moreover so
fat that the Savages, who delight
in grease, have difficulty in
eating it.[41] Now they are so
abundant that one man will pierce
with his javelin as many as 40 or
50, under the ice in three hours'
time.[42]
In 1688 when Baron LaHontan visited the site
he noted "vast shoals of whitefish" and
concluded that: "The Odawa and the Hurons
could never subsist here, without that