The Niagara River, with its mighty falls and rapids, was long known by Native Americans before word of its majesty reached European explorers and soldiers in North America, many of whom took time to see it for themselves. In 1615, the French explorer Etienne Brule may have been the first European to view the Falls and gorge. In 1678, La Salle passed through on his way to survey the Great Lakes, and Louis Hennepin, who traveled with him, later published the first engraving of Niagara Falls in Nouvelle Decouverte. In 1720, the French fur trader Chabert Joncaire established a trading post at the lower portage landing at the foot of the gorge and likely guided many early visitors to the Falls. By 1750, French soldiers stationed at Fort Niagara at the mouth of the Niagara River were well placed to visit regularly, and two French officers escorted the Swedish botanist and agriculturalist Peter Kalm to the Falls. After the English captured Fort Niagara in 1759, they too had access, and General Sir William Johnson, Colonel Frederick Haldimand, Reverend John Ogilvie, and other officers were escorted by three companies of light infantry to see Niagara Falls. In 1760, Thomas Davies, a British artilleryman and officer, became one of the first to illustrate views of the Falls when he created An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara while on a survey for Major General Jeffery Amherst. Davies illustrated these and many other scenes during the French and Indian War, when artists in organized armies used their powers of observation to document places and events.