Mattawa

Mattawa stands at the meeting of the Ottawa and Mattawa rivers. From here an old Indigenous route led west by river, portage and Lake Nipissing to Georgian Bay and the upper Great Lakes. Travellers faced rapids and falls along the Mattawa, carrying their canoes and loads around the obstacles. Étienne Brûlé travelled the route with Algonquin companions in 1610, and Samuel de Champlain followed with a Huron party five years later.

In 1686 the Chevalier de Troyes stopped at the junction on his expedition towards James Bay. Tradition holds that he ordered three crosses erected to mark the meeting of the rivers. The North West Company built a post here in 1784; after its merger with the Hudson's Bay Company, canoe brigades came from Fort Coulonge to trade. A permanent Hudson's Bay Company post opened at Mattawa in 1837.