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The first documented European passage of this valley is dated to the month — and its day stands in conflict, printed whole. The course: René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, built Fort Miami at the St. Joseph River's mouth in 1679 and ascended the river that December with eight canoes, seeking the Kankakee portage — the carry between the St. Joseph and the Kankakee that made this valley a highway. The narrative tradition (Howard after the Joutel relation) dates the upriver voyage's start to 3 December 1679: the party missed the portage, La Salle was lost overnight in a snowstorm, and the portage was found the next morning. Levi Baker's monograph, The St. Joseph-Kankakee Portage (Northern Indiana Historical Society, 1899; read first-hand), fixes the geography the narrative moves through: the portage landing 2¾ miles northwest of the South Bend courthouse — the ground of modern Riverview Cemetery, 2700 Portage Avenue — and a carry of four to five miles to the Kankakee. The conflict: the State's own South Bend marker for La Salle carries the inscription "December 5, 1679" — against the narrative tradition's December 3. Both print; the two-day gap (a voyage begun on the 3rd, a portage reached on the 5th, is the obvious harmonisation, and it is not asserted, because no carrier reached asserts it) stands as the record gives it. Behind La Salle stands one earlier probable passage, graded as its source grades it: Marquette's probable use of the portage in May 1675 — Baker's "very probable," with other authorities denying the companion claim for Allouez — printed at that strength. The governing fort of the next century, Fort St. Joseph (near modern Niles, Michigan), governed the valley from elsewhere and stands at pointer: this ground was passed through and administered, never garrisoned.
Principal sources: Levi Baker, The St. Joseph-Kankakee Portage (NIHS, 1899), read first-hand from the Internet Archive copy, November 2026; Howard (1907) and the Joutel tradition as carried in the county record; the Indiana Historical Bureau's La Salle marker inscription, as carried.