Onondaga Indians, keepers of the council fires for the Iroquois League, lived in this area. In 1654 French soldiers and Jesuit missionaries came from Canada to seek their friendship, and that year Father Simon LeMoyne discovered salt springs here. Salt works were established in 1788, soon after the first permanent settlement, and salt manufacturing flourished until the 1860's. For many years, the tax on salt supplied the state's chief revenue, and this industry gave the name Salina to the original site of Syracuse. After 1825, the Erie Canal and the Oswego Canal, connecting the Erie at Syracuse with Lake Ontario, ushered in prosperity and expansion. Railroads and highways later followed the east-west water level route and stimulated industrial growth. Situated on the edge of the fruitful lake plain beside Onondaga Lake and near the geographical center of New York State, Syracuse served a wide area through industries that began with the salt works and came to include chinaware, alloy steel, automobiles and automotive gears, air-conditioning and typewriters, chemicals, and electronics, reflecting the industrial growth of America. The first New York State Fair was held in Syracuse in 1841, and it has been an annual event there since 1890.