The first European to provide a detailed, first-hand written account of Niagara Falls was the Belgian missionary Father Louis Hennepin, who observed the falls in 1678 while traveling with the explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. Hennepin's exaggerated and awe-struck description in his book A New Discovery brought the "awful" grandeur of the falls to the attention of the Western world for the first time. However, historical records suggest that other Europeans likely saw the falls earlier. The Frenchman Samuel de Champlain wrote about the falls in 1604 based on reports from the indigenous Huron and Neutral peoples, though he never saw them himself. It is also highly probable that Jesuit missionaries like Paul Ragueneau or Jean de Brébeuf visited the site as early as the 1640s while working among the First Nations. While Hennepin holds the title of the first to "publish" his eyewitness experience, the falls had been a sacred and well-known landmark for thousands of years to the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples long before European arrival.
The Niagara River is a river that flows north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. It forms part of the border between the province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York in the United States. There are differing theories as to the origin of the river's name.