Tetinchoua, a Miami

Miami tribe

The Miami are a Native American nation originally found in what is now Indiana, southwest Michigan, and western Ohio. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma is the only federally recognized tribe of Miami Indians in the United States...

 chief, lived in the 17th century. He is described by Nicolas Perrot

Nicolas Perrot

Nicolas Perrot , explorer, diplomat, and fur trader, was one of the first white men in the upper Mississippi Valley. Born in France, he came to New France around 1660 with Jesuits and had the opportunity to visit Indian tribes and learn their languages...

, who met him in 1671 at Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, as being the most powerful of Indian chiefs. According to the French traveller, he could control four or five thousand warriors, never marched without a guard of forty men, who patrolled night and day around his tent when he camped, and seldom held any direct communication with his subjects, but conveyed his orders to them by subordinates. Perrot was received with great honor as an envoy from the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 governor. Tetinchoua sent out a detachment to meet him, which, after performing some remarkable military evolutions, escorted Perrot and his Pottawattamie guard into the principal town of the Miamis. Tetinchoua then assigned him a guard of fifty men, and ordered a game of ball to be played for his diversion. He was unable, owing to his age and infirmities, to accompany Perrot to Sault Ste. Marie

Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

Sault Ste. Marie is a city on the St. Marys River in Algoma District, Ontario, Canada. It is the third largest city in Northern Ontario, after Sudbury and Thunder Bay, with a population of 74,948. The community was founded as a French religious mission: Sault either means "jump" or "rapids" in...

, at the mouth of Lake Superior

Lake Superior

Lake Superior is the largest of the five traditionally-demarcated Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded to the north by the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Minnesota, and to the south by the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Michigan. It is the largest freshwater lake in the...

, where the French took formal possession of all the country on the lakes. He did not even send deputies to the assembly that was held on the occasion, but he gave the Pottawattamies power to act in his name. In 1672 Father Claude Dablon

Claude Dablon

Claude Dablon was a Jesuit missionary, born in Dieppe, France.At the age of twenty-one he entered the Society of Jesus, and after his course of studies and teaching in France, arrived in Canada in 1655. He was at once dispatched with Father Chaumonot to begin a central mission among the Iroquois...

 is said to have met him with his army of 3,000 Miamis. But, although the missionary

Missionary

A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...

was received with marks of friendship, he did not succeed in making any conversions.