The spring of 1659 found the explorers still among the prairie tribes

of the Mississippi. From these people Radisson learned of four other

races occupying vast, undiscovered countries. He heard of the Sioux, a

warlike nation to the west, who had no fixed abode but lived by the

chase and were at constant war with another nomadic tribe to the

north--the Crees. The Crees spent the summer time round the shores of

salt water, and in winter came inland to hunt. Between these two was a

third,--the Assiniboines,--who used earthen pots for cooking, heated

their food by throwing hot stones in water, and dressed themselves in

buckskin. These three tribes were wandering hunters; but the people of

the fire told Radisson of yet another nation, who lived in villages

like the Iroquois, on "a great river that divided itself in two," and

was called "the Forked River," because "it had two branches, the one

toward the west, the other toward the south, . . . toward Mexico."

These people were the Mandans or Omahas, or Iowas, or other people of

the Missouri.[13]

A whole world of discoveries lay before them. In what direction should

they go? "We desired not to go to the north till we had made a

discovery in the south," explains Radisson. The people of the fire

refused to accompany the explorers farther; so the two "put themselves

in hazard," as Radisson relates, and set out alone. They must have

struck across the height of land between the Mississippi and the

Missouri; for Radisson records that they met several nations having

villages, "all amazed to see us and very civil. The farther we

sojourned, the delightfuller the land became. I can say that in all my

lifetime I have never seen a finer country, for all that I have been in

Italy. The people have very long hair. They reap twice a year. They

war against the Sioux and the Cree. . . . It was very hot there. . . .

Being among the people they told us . . . of men that built great

cabins and have beards and have knives like the French." The Indians

showed Radisson a string of beads only used by Europeans. These people

must have been the Spaniards of the south. The tribes on the Missouri

were large men of well-formed figures. There were no deformities among

the people. Radisson saw corn and pumpkins in their gardens. "Their

arrows were not of stone, but of fish bones. . . . Their dishes were

made of wood. . . . They had great calumets of red and green

stone . . . and great store of tobacco. . . . They had a kind of drink

that made them mad for a whole day." [14] "We had not yet seen the

Sioux," relates Radisson. "We went toward the south and came back by

the north." The _Jesuit Relations_ are more explicit. Written the

year that Radisson returned to Quebec, they state: "Continuing their

wanderings, our two young Frenchmen visited the Sioux, where they found

five thousand warriors. They then left this nation for another warlike

people, who with bows and arrows had rendered themselves redoubtable."

These were the Crees, with whom, say the Jesuits, wood is so rare and

small that nature has taught them to make fire of a kind of coal and to

cover their cabins with skins of the chase. The explorers seem to have

spent the summer hunting antelope, buffalo, moose, and wild turkey.

The Sioux received them cordially, supplied them with food, and gave

them an escort to the next encampments. They had set out southwest to

the Mascoutins, Mandans, and perhaps, also, the Omahas. They were now

circling back northeastward toward the Sault between Lake Michigan and

Lake Superior. How far westward had they gone? Only two facts gave

any clew. Radisson reports that mountains lay far inland; and the

Jesuits record that the explorers were among tribes that used coal.

This must have been a country far west of the Mandans and Mascoutins

and within sight of at least the Bad Lands, or that stretch of rough

country between the prairie and outlying foothills of the Rockies.[15]

The course of the first exploration seems to have circled over the

territory now known as Wisconsin, perhaps eastern Iowa and Nebraska,

South Dakota, Montana, and back over North Dakota and Minnesota to the

north shore of Lake Superior. "The lake toward the north is full of

rocks, yet great ships can ride in it without danger," writes Radisson.

At the Sault they found the Crees and Sautaux in bitter war. They also

heard of a French establishment, and going to visit it found that the

Jesuits had established a mission.

Radisson had explored the Southwest. He now decided to essay the

Northwest. When the Sautaux were at war with the Crees, he met the

Crees and heard of the great salt sea in the north. Surely this was

the Sea of the North--Hudson Bay--of which the Nipissing chief had told

Groseillers long ago. Then the Crees had great store of beaver pelts;

and trade must not be forgotten. No sooner had peace been arranged

between Sautaux and Crees, than Cree hunters flocked out of the

northern forests to winter on Lake Superior. A rumor of Iroquois on

the war-path compelled Radisson and Groseillers to move their camp back

from Lake Superior higher up the chain of lakes and rivers between what

is now Minnesota and Canada, toward the country of the Sioux. In the

fall of 1659 Groseillers' health began to fail from the hardships; so

he remained in camp for the winter, attending to the trade, while

Radisson carried on the explorations alone.

This was one of the coldest winters known in Canada.[16] The snow fell

so heavily in the thick pine woods of Minnesota that Radisson says the

forest became as sombre as a cellar. The colder the weather the better

the fur, and, presenting gifts to insure safe conduct, Radisson set out

with a band of one hundred and fifty Cree hunters for the Northwest.

They travelled on snow-shoes, hunting moose on the way and sleeping at

night round a camp-fire under the stars. League after league, with no

sound through the deathly white forest but the soft crunch-crunch of

the snowshoes, they travelled two hundred miles toward what is now

Manitoba. When they had set out, the snow was like a cushion. Now it

began to melt in the spring sun, and clogged the snow-shoes till it was

almost impossible to travel. In the morning the surface was glazed

ice, and they could march without snow-shoes. Spring thaw called a

halt to their exploration. The Crees encamped for three weeks to build

boats. As soon as the ice cleared, the band launched back down-stream

for the appointed rendezvous on Green Bay. All that Radisson learned

on this trip was that the Bay of the North lay much farther from Lake

Superior than the old Nipissing chief had told Dreuillettes and

Groseillers.[17]

Groseillers had all in readiness to depart for Quebec; and five hundred

Indians from the Upper Country had come together to go down the Ottawa

and St. Lawrence with the explorers. As they were about to embark,

_coureurs_ came in from the woods with news that more than a thousand

Iroquois were on the war-path, boasting that they would exterminate the

French.[18] Somewhere along the Ottawa a small band of Hurons had been

massacred. The Indians with Groseillers and Radisson were terrified.

A council of the elders was called.

"Brothers, why are ye so foolish as to put yourselves in the hands of

those that wait for you?" demanded an old chief, addressing the two

white men. "The Iroquois will destroy you and carry you away captive.

Will you have your brethren, that love you, slain? Who will baptize

our children?" (Radisson and Groseillers had baptized more than two

hundred children.[19]) "Stay till next year! Then you may freely go!

Our mothers will send their children to be taught in the way of the

Lord!"

Fear is like fire. It must be taken in the beginning, or it spreads.

The explorers retired, decided on a course of action, and requested the

Indians to meet them in council a second time. Eight hundred warriors

assembled, seating themselves in a circle. Radisson and Groseillers

took their station in the centre.[20]

"Who am I?" demanded Groseillers, hotly. "Am I a foe or a friend? If

a foe, why did you suffer me to live? If a friend, listen what I say!

You know that we risked our lives for you! If we have no courage, why

did you not tell us? If you have more wit than we, why did you not use

it to defend yourselves against the Iroquois? How can you defend your

wives and children unless you get arms from the French!"

"Fools," cried Radisson, striking a beaver skin across an Indian's

shoulder, "will you fight the Iroquois with beaver pelts? Do you not

know the French way? We fight with guns, not robes. The Iroquois will

coop you up here till you have used all your powder, and then despatch

you with ease! Shall your children be slaves because you are cowards?

Do what you will! For my part I choose to die like a man rather than

live like a beggar. Take back your beaver robes. We can live without

you--" and the white men strode out from the council.

Consternation reigned among the Indians. There was an uproar of

argument. For six days the fate of the white men hung fire. Finally

the chiefs sent word that the five hundred young warriors would go to

Quebec with the white men. Radisson did not give their ardor time to

cool. They embarked at once. The fleet of canoes crossed the head of

the lakes and came to the Upper Ottawa without adventure. Scouts went

ahead to all the _portages_, and great care was taken to avoid an

ambush when passing overland. Below the Chaudière Falls the scouts

reported that four Iroquois boats had crossed the river. Again

Radisson did not give time for fear. He sent the lightest boats in

pursuit; and while keeping the enemy thus engaged with half his own

company on guard at the ends of the long _portage_, he hurriedly got

cargoes and canoes across the landing. The Iroquois had fled. By that

Radisson knew they were weak. Somewhere along the Long Sault Rapids,

the scouts saw sixteen Iroquois canoes. The Indians would have thrown

down their goods and fled, but Radisson instantly got his forces in

hand and held them with a grip of steel. Distributing loaded muskets

to the bravest warriors, he pursued the Iroquois with a picked company

of Hurons, Algonquins, Sautaux, and Sioux. Beating their paddles,

Radisson's company shouted the war-cry till the hills rang; but all the

warriors were careful not to waste an ounce of powder till within

hitting range. The Iroquois were not used to this sort of defence.

They fled. The Long Sault was always the most dangerous part of the

Ottawa. Radisson kept scouts to rear and fore, but the Iroquois had

deserted their boats and were hanging on the flanks of the company to

attempt an ambush. It was apparent that a fort had been erected at the

foot of the rapids. Leaving half the band in their boats, Radisson

marched overland with two hundred warriors. Iroquois shots spattered

from each side; but the Huron muskets kept the assailants at a

distance, and those of Radisson's warriors who had not guns were armed

with bows and arrows, and wore a shield of buffalo skin dried hard as

metal. The Iroquois rushed for the barricade at the foot of the Sault.

Five of them were picked off as they ran. For a moment the Iroquois

were out of cover, and their weakness was betrayed. They had only one

hundred and fifty men, while Radisson had five hundred; but the odds

would not long be in his favor. Ammunition was running out, and the

enemy must be dislodged without wasting a shot. Radisson called back

encouragement to his followers. They answered with a shout. Tying the

beaver pelts in great bundles, the Indians rolled the fur in front

nearer and nearer the Iroquois boats, keeping under shelter from the

shots of the fort. The Iroquois must either lose their boats and be

cut off from escape, or retire from the fort. It was not necessary for

Radisson's warriors to fire a shot. Abandoning even their baggage and

glad to get off with their lives, the Iroquois dashed to save their

boats.

[Illustration: Voyageurs running the Rapids of the Ottawa River.]

A terrible spectacle awaited Radisson inside the enclosure of the

palisades.[21] The scalps of dead Indians flaunted from the pickets.

Not a tree but was spattered with bullet marks as with bird shot. Here

and there burnt holes gaped in the stockades like wounds. Outside

along the river bank lay the charred bones of captives who had been

burned. The scarred fort told its own tale. Here refugees had been

penned up by the Iroquois till thirst and starvation did their work.

In the clay a hole had been dug for water by the parched victims, and

the ooze through the mud eagerly scooped up. Only when he reached

Montreal did Radisson learn the story of the dismantled fort. The

rumor carried to the explorers on Lake Michigan of a thousand Iroquois

going on the war-path to exterminate the French had been only too true.

Half the warriors were to assault Quebec, half to come down on Montreal

from the Ottawa. One thing only could save the French--to keep the

bands apart. Those on the Ottawa had been hunting all winter and must

necessarily be short of powder. To intercept them, a gallant band of

seventeen French, four Algonquins, and sixty Hurons led by Dollard took

their stand at the Long Sault. The French and their Indian allies were

boiling their kettles when two hundred Iroquois broke from the woods.

There was no time to build a fort. Leaving their food, Dollard and his

men threw themselves into the rude palisades which Indians had erected

the previous year. The Iroquois kept up a constant fire and sent for

reinforcements of six hundred warriors, who were on the Richelieu. In

defiance the Indians fighting for the French sallied out, scalped the

fallen Iroquois, and hoisted the sanguinary trophies on long poles

above the pickets. The enraged Iroquois redoubled their fury. The

fort was too small to admit all the Hurons; and when the Iroquois came

up from the Richelieu with Huron renegades among their warriors, the

Hurons deserted their French allies and went over in a body to the

enemy. For two days the French had fought against two hundred

Iroquois. For five more days they fought against eight hundred. "The

worst of it was," relates Radisson, "the French had no water, as we

plainly saw; for they had made a hole in the ground out of which they

could get but little because the fort was on a hill. It was pitiable.

There was not a tree but what was shot with bullets. The Iroquois had

rushed to make a breach (in the wall). . . . The French set fire to a

barrel of powder to drive the Iroquois back . . . but it fell inside

the fort. . . . Upon this, the Iroquois entered . . . so that not one

of the French escaped. . . . It was terrible . . . for we came there

eight days after the defeat." [22]

Without a doubt it was Dollard's splendid fight that put fear in the

hearts of the Iroquois who fled before Radisson. The passage to

Montreal was clear. The boats ran the rapids without unloading; but

Groseillers almost lost his life. His canoe caught on a rock in

midstream, but righting herself shot down safely to the landing with no

greater loss than a damaged keel. The next day, after two years'

absence, Radisson and Groseillers arrived at Montreal. A brief stop

was made at Three Rivers for rest till twenty citizens had fitted out

two shallops with cannon to escort the discoverers in fitting pomp to

Quebec. As the fleet of canoes glided round Cape Diamond, battery and

bastion thundered a welcome. Welcome they were, and thrice welcome;

for so ceaseless had been the Iroquois wars that the three French ships

lying at anchor would have returned to France without a single beaver

skin if the explorers had not come. Citizens shouted from the terraced

heights of Château St. Louis, and bells rang out the joy of all New

France over the discoverers' return. For a week Radisson and

Groseillers were fêted. Viscomte d'Argenson, the new governor,

presented them with gifts and sent two brigantines to carry them home

to Three Rivers. There they rested for the remainder of the year,

Groseillers at his seigniory with his wife, Marguerite; Radisson, under

the parental roof.[23]

[1] Mr. Benjamin Sulte establishes this date as 1634.

[2] See _Jesuit Relations_, 1656-57-58. I have purposely refrained

from entering into the heated controversy as to the identity of these

two men. It is apart from the subject, as there is no proof these men

went beyond the Green Bay region.

[3] These routes were; (1) By the Saguenay, (2) by Three Rivers and the

St. Maurice, (3) by Lake Nipissing, (4) by Lake Huron, through the land

of the Sautaux, (5) by Lake Superior overland, (6) by the Ottawa. See

_Jesuit Relations_ for detailed accounts of these routes. Dreuillettes

went farther west to the Crees a few years later, but that does not

concern this narrative.

[4] The dispute as to whether eastern Minnesota was discovered on the

1654-55-56 trip, and whether Groseillers discovered it, is a point for

savants, but will, I think, remain an unsettled dispute.

[5] The _Relations_ do not give the names of these two Jesuits,

probably owing to the fact that the enterprise failed. They simply

state that two priests set out, but were compelled to remain behind

owing to the caprice of the savages.

[6] Whether they were now on the Ottawa or the St. Lawrence, it is

impossible to tell. Dr. Dionne thinks that the band went overland from

Lake Ontario to Lake Huron. I know both waters--Lake Ontario and the

Ottawa--from many trips, and I think Radisson's description here

tallies with his other descriptions of the Ottawa. It is certain that

they must have been on the Ottawa before they came to the Lake of the

Castors or Nipissing. The noise of the waterfall seems to point to the

Chaudière Falls of the Ottawa. If so, the landing place would be the

tongue of land running out from Hull, opposite the city of Ottawa, and

the _portage_ would be the Aylmer Road beyond the rapids above the

falls. Mr. Benjamin Sulte, the scholarly historian, thinks they went

by way of the Ottawa, not Lake Ontario, as the St. Lawrence route was

not used till 1702.

[7] _Jesuit Relations_, 1660.

[8] _Jesuit Relations_, 1660, and _Radisson's Journal_. These "people

of the fire," or Mascoutins, were in three regions, (1) Wisconsin, (2)

Nebraska, (3) on the Missouri. See Appendix E.

[9] Benjamin Sulte unequivocally states that the river was the

Mississippi. Of writers contemporaneous with Radisson, the Jesuits,

Marie de l'Incarnation, and Charlevoix corroborate Radisson's account.

In the face of this, what are we to think of modern writers with a

reputation to lose, who brush Radisson's exploits aside as a possible

fabrication? The only conclusion is that they have not read his

_Journal_.

[10] I refer to Radisson alone, because for half the time in 1659

Groseillers was ill at the lake, and we cannot be sure that he

accompanied Radisson in all the journeys south and west, though

Radisson generously always includes him as "we." Besides, Groseillers

seems to have attended to the trading, Radisson to the exploring.

[11] If any one cares to render Radisson's peculiar jumble of French,

English, Italian, and Indian idioms into more intelligent form, they

may try their hand at it. His meaning is quite clear; but the words

are a medley. The passage is to be found on pp. 150-151, of the

_Prince Society Reprint_. See also _Jesuit Relations_, 1660.

[12] It will be noted that what I claim for Radisson is the honor of

discovering the Great Northwest, and refrain from trying to identify

his movements with the modern place names of certain states. I have

done this intentionally--though it would have been easy to advance

opinions about Green Bay, Fox River, and the Wisconsin, and so become

involved in the childish quarrel that has split the western historical

societies and obscured the main issue of Radisson's feat. Needless to

say, the world does not care whether Radisson went by way of the

Menominee, or snow-shoed across country. The question is: Did he reach

the Mississippi Valley before Marquette and Jolliet and La Salle? That

question this chapter answers.

[13] I have refrained from quoting Radisson's names for the different

Indian tribes because it would only be "caviare to the general." If

Radisson's manuscript be consulted it will be seen that the crucial

point is the whereabouts of the Mascoutins--or people of the fire.

Reference to the last part of Appendix E will show that these people

extended far beyond the Wisconsin to the Missouri. It is ignorance of

this fact that has created such bitter and childish controversy about

the exact direction taken by Radisson west-north-west of the

Mascoutins. The exact words of the document in the Marine Department

are; "In the lower Missipy there are several other nations very

numerous with whom we have no commerce who are trading yet with nobody.

Above Missoury river which is in the Mississippi below the river

Illinois, to the south, there are the Mascoutins, Nadoessioux (Sioux)

with whom we trade and who are numerous." Benjamin Sulte was one of

the first to discover that the Mascoutins had been in Nebraska, though

he does not attempt to trace this part of Radisson's journey definitely.

[14] The entire account of the people on "the Forked River" is so exact

an account of the Mandans that it might be a page from Catlin's

descriptions two centuries later. The long hair, the two crops a year,

the tobacco, the soap-stone calumets, the stationary villages, the

knowledge of the Spaniards, the warm climate--all point to a region far

south of the Northern States, to which so many historians have stupidly

and with almost wilful ignorance insisted on limiting Radisson's

travels. Parkman has been thoroughly honest in the matter. His _La

Salle_ had been written before the discovery of the _Radisson

Journals_; but in subsequent editions he acknowledges in a footnote

that Radisson had been to "the Forked River." Other writers (with the

exception of five) have been content to quote from Radisson's enemies

instead of going directly to his journals. Even Garneau slurs over

Radisson's explorations; but Garneau, too, wrote before the discovery

of the Radisson papers. Abbé Tanguay, who is almost infallible on

French-Canadian matters, slips up on Radisson, because his writings

preceded the publication of the _Radisson Relations_. The five writers

who have attempted to redeem Radisson's memory from ignominy are: Dr.

N. E. Dionne, of the Parliamentary Library, Quebec; Mr. Justice

Prudhomme, of St. Boniface, Manitoba; Dr. George Bryce, of Winnepeg,

Mr. Benjamin Sulte, of Ottawa; and Judge J. V. Brower, of St. Paul. It

ever a monument be erected to Radisson--as one certainly ought in every

province and state west of the Great Lakes--the names of these four

champions should be engraved upon it.

[15] This claim will, I know, stagger preconceived ideas. In the light

of only Radisson's narrative, the third voyage has usually been

identified with Wisconsin and Minnesota; but in the light of the

_Jesuit Relations_, written the year that Radisson returned, to what

tribes could the descriptions apply? Even Parkman's footnote

acknowledged that Radisson was among the people of the Missouri. Grant

that, and the question arises, What people on the Missouri answer the

description? The Indians of the far west use not only coal for fire,

but raw galena to make bullets for their guns. In fact, it was that

practice of the tribes of Idaho that led prospectors to find the Blue

Bell Mine of Kootenay. Granting that the Jesuit account--which was of

course, from hearsay--mistook the use of turf, dry grass, or buffalo

refuse for a kind of coal, the fact remains that only the very far

western tribes had this custom.

[16] _Letters of Marie de l'Incarnation_.

[17] _Jesuit Relations_, 1658.

[18] See Marie de l'Incarnation, Dollier de Casson, and Abbé Belmont.

[19] _Jesuit Relations_, 1660.

[20] It may be well to state as nearly as possible exactly _what_

tribes Radisson had met in this trip. Those rejoined on the way up at

Manitoulin Island were refugee Hurons and Ottawas. From the Hurons,

Ottawas, and Algonquins of Green Bay, Radisson went west with

Pottowatomies, from them to the Escotecke or Sioux of the Fire, namely

a branch of the Mascoutins. From these Wisconsin Mascoutins, he learns

of the Nadoneceroron, or Sioux proper, and of the Christinos or Crees.

Going west with the Mascoutins, he comes to "sedentary" tribes. Are

these the Mandans? He compares this country to Italy. From them he

hears of white men, that he thinks may be Spaniards. This tribe is at

bitter war with Sioux and Crees. At Green Bay he hears of the Sautaux

in war with Crees. His description of buffalo hunts among the Sioux

tallies exactly with the Pembina hunts of a later day. Oldmixon says

that it was from Crees and Assiniboines visiting at Green Bay that

Radisson learned of a way overland to the great game country of Hudson

Bay.

[21] There is a mistake in Radisson's account here, which is easily

checked by contemporaneous accounts of Marie de l'Incarnation and

Dollier de Casson. Radisson describes Dollard's fight during his

fourth trip in 1664, when it is quite plain that he means 1660. The

fight has been so thoroughly described by Mr. Parkman, who drew his

material from the two authorities mentioned, and the _Jesuit Relations_

that I do not give it in detail. I give a brief account of Radisson's

description of the tragedy.

[22] It will be noticed that Radisson's account of the battle at the

Long Sault--which I have given in his own words as far as

possible--differs in details from the only other accounts written by

contemporaries; namely, Marie de l'Incarnation, Dollier de Casson, the

Abbé Belmont, and the Jesuits. All these must have written from

hearsay, for they were at Quebec and Montreal. Radisson was on the

spot a week after the tragedy; so that his account may be supposed to

be as accurate as any.

[23] Mr. Benjamin Sulte states that the explorers wintered on Green

Bay, 1658-1659, then visited the tribes between Milwaukee and the river

Wisconsin in the spring of 1659. Here they learn of the Sioux and the

Crees. They push southwest first, where they see the Mississippi

between April and July, 1659. Thence they come back to the Sault.

Then they winter, 1659-1660, among the Sioux. I have not attempted to

give the dates of the itinerary; because it would be a matter of

speculation open to contradiction; but if we accept Radisson's account

at all--and that account is corroborated by writers contemporaneous

with him--we must then accept _his_ account of _where_ he went, and not

the casual guesses of modern writers who have given his journal one

hurried reading, and then sat down, without consulting documents

contemporaneous with Radisson, to inform the world of _where_ he went.

Because this is such a very sore point with two or three western

historical societies, I beg to state the reasons why I have set down

Radisson's itinerary as much farther west than has been generally

believed, though how far west he went does not efface the main and

essential fact _that Radisson was the true discoverer of the Great

Northwest_. For that, let us give him a belated credit and not obscure

the feat by disputes. (1) The term "Forked River" referred to the

Missouri and Mississippi, not the Wisconsin and Mississippi. (2) No

other rivers in that region are to be compared to the Ottawa and St.

Lawrence but the Missouri and Mississippi. (3) The Mascoutins, or

People of the Fire, among whom Radisson found himself when he descended

the Wisconsin from Green Bay, conducted him westward only as far as the

tribes allied to them, the Mascoutins of the Missouri or Nebraska.

Hence, Radisson going west-north-west to the Sioux--as he says he

did--must have skirted much farther west than Wisconsin and Minnesota.

(4) His descriptions of the Indians who knew tribes in trade with the

Spaniards must refer to the Indians south of the Big Bend of the

Missouri. (5) His description of the climate refers to the same

region. (6) The _Jesuit Relations_ confirm beyond all doubt that he

was among the main body of the great Sioux Confederacy. (7) Both his

and the Jesuit reference is to the treeless prairie, which does not

apply to the wooded lake regions of eastern Minnesota or northern

Wisconsin.

To me, it is simply astounding--and that is putting it mildly--that any

one pretending to have read _Radisson's Journal_ can accuse him of

"claiming" to have "descended to the salt sea" (Gulf of Mexico).

Radisson makes no such claim; and to accuse him of such is like

building a straw enemy for the sake of knocking him down, or stirring

up muddy waters to make them look deep. The exact words of Radisson's

narrative are: "We went into ye great river that divides itself in 2,

where the hurrons with some Ottauake . . . had retired. . . . This

nation have warrs against those of the Forked River . . . so called

because it has 1 branches the one towards the west, the other towards

the South, wch. we believe runns towards Mexico, by the tokens they

gave us . . . they told us the prisoners they take tells them that they

have warrs against a nation . . . that have great beards and such

knives as we have" . . . etc., etc., etc. . . . "which made us believe

they were Europeans." This statement is _no_ claim that Radisson went

to Mexico, but only that he met tribes who knew tribes trading with

Spaniards of Mexico. And yet, on the careless reading of this

statement, one historian brands Radisson as a liar for "having claimed

he went to Mexico." The thing would be comical in its impudence if it

were not that many such misrepresentations of what Radisson wrote have

dimmed the glory of his real achievements.

CHAPTER IV

1661-1664

RADISSON'S FOURTH VOYAGE

The Success of the Explorers arouses Envy--It becomes known that they

have heard of the Famous Sea of the North--When they ask Permission to

resume their Explorations, the French Governor refuses except on

Condition of receiving Half the Profits--In Defiance, the Explorers

steal off at Midnight--They return with a Fortune and are driven from

New France

Radisson was not yet twenty-six years of age, and his explorations of

the Great Northwest had won him both fame and fortune. As Spain sought

gold in the New Word, so France sought precious furs. Furs were the

only possible means of wealth to the French colony, and for ten years

the fur trade had languished owing to the Iroquois wars. For a year

after the migration of the Hurons to Onondaga, not a single beaver skin

was brought to Montreal. Then began the annual visits of the Indians

from the Upper Country to the forts of the St. Lawrence. Sweeping down

the northern rivers like wild-fowl, in far-spread, desultory flocks,

came the Indians of the _Pays d'en Haut_. Down the Ottawa to Montreal,

down the St. Maurice to Three Rivers, down the Saguenay and round to

Quebec, came the treasure-craft,--light fleets of birch canoes laden to

the water-line with beaver skins. Whence came the wealth that revived

the languishing trade of New France? From a vague, far Eldorado

somewhere round a sea in the North. Hudson had discovered this sea

half a century before Radisson's day; Jean Bourdon, a Frenchman, had

coasted up Labrador in 1657 seeking the Bay of the North; and on their

last trip the explorers had learned from the Crees who came through the

dense forests of the hinterland that there lay round this Bay of the

North a vast country with untold wealth of furs. The discovery of a

route overland to the north sea was to become the lodestar of

Radisson's life.[1]

[Illustration: Montreal in 1760: 1, the St. Lawrence; 20, the Dock;

18-19, Arsenal; 16, the Church; 13-15, the Convent and Hospital; 8-12,

Sally-ports, River Side; 17, Cannon and Wall; 3-4-5, Houses on Island.]

"We considered whether to reveal what we had learned," explains

Radisson, "for we had _not_ been in the Bay of the North, knowing only

what the Crees told us. We wished to discover it ourselves and have

assurance before revealing anything." But the secret leaked out.

Either Groseillers told his wife, or the Jesuits got wind of the news

from the Indians; for it was announced from Quebec that two priests,

young La Vallière, the son of the governor at Three Rivers, six other

Frenchmen, and some Indians would set out for the Bay of the North up

the Saguenay. Radisson was invited to join the company as a guide.

Needless to say that a man who had already discovered the Great

Northwest and knew the secret of the road to the North, refused to play

a second part among amateur explorers. Radisson promptly declined.

Nevertheless, in May, 1661, the Jesuits, Gabriel Dreuillettes and

Claude Dablon, accompanied by Couture, La Vallière, and three others,

set out with Indian guides for the discovery of Hudson's Bay by land.

On June 1 they began to ascend the Saguenay, pressing through vast

solitudes below the sombre precipices of the river. The rapids were

frequent, the heat was terrific, and the _portages_ arduous. Owing to

the obstinacy of the guides, the French were stopped north of Lake St.

John. Here the priests established a mission, and messengers were sent

to Quebec for instructions.

Meanwhile, Radisson and Groseillers saw that no time must be lost. If

they would be first in the North, as they had been first in the West,

they must set out at once. Two Indian guides from the Upper Country

chanced to be in Montreal. Groseillers secured them by bringing both

to Three Rivers. Then the explorers formally applied to the French

governor, D'Avaugour, for permission to go on the voyage of discovery.

New France regulated the fur trade by license. Imprisonment, the

galleys for life, even death on a second offence, were the punishments

of those who traded without a license. The governor's answer revealed

the real animus behind his enthusiasm for discovery. He would give the

explorers a license if they would share half the profits of the trip

with him and take along two of his servants as auditors of the returns.

One can imagine the indignation of the dauntless explorers at this

answer. Their cargo of furs the preceding year had saved New France

from bankruptcy. Offering to venture their lives a second time for the

extension of the French domain, they were told they might do so if they

would share half the profits with an avaricious governor. Their answer

was characteristic. Discoverers were greater than governors; still, if

the Indians of the Upper Country invited his Excellency, Radisson and

Groseillers would be glad to have the honor of his company; as for his

servants--men who went on voyages of discovery had to act as both

masters and servants.

D'Avaugour was furious. He issued orders forbidding the explorers to

leave Three Rivers without his express permission. Radisson and

Groseillers knew the penalties of ignoring this order. They asked the

Jesuits to intercede for them. Though Gareau had been slain trying to

ascend the Ottawa and Father Ménard had by this time preached in the

forests of Lake Michigan, the Jesuits had made no great discoveries in

the Northwest. All they got for their intercessions was a snub.[2]

While messages were still passing between the governor and the

explorers, there swept down the St. Lawrence to Three Rivers seven

canoes of Indians from the Upper Country, asking for Radisson and

Groseillers. The explorers were honorable to a degree. They notified

the governor of Quebec that they intended to embark with the Indians.

D'Avaugour stubbornly ordered the Indians to await the return of his

party from the Saguenay. The Indians made off to hide in the rushes of

Lake St. Peter. The sympathy of Three Rivers was with the explorers.

Late one night in August Radisson and Groseillers--who was captain of

the soldiers and carried the keys of the fort--slipped out from the

gates, with a third Frenchman called Larivière. As they stepped into

their canoe, the sentry demanded, "Who goes?" "Groseillers," came the

answer through the dark. "God give you a good voyage, sir," called the

sentry, faithful to his captain rather than the governor.

The skiff pushed out on the lapping tide. A bend in the river--and the

lights of the fort glimmering in long lines across the water had

vanished behind. The prow of Radisson's boat was once more heading

upstream for the Unknown. Paddling with all swiftness through the

dark, the three Frenchmen had come to the rushes of Lake St. Peter

before daybreak. No Indians could be found. Men of softer mettle

might have turned back. Not so Radisson. "We were well-armed and had

a good boat," he relates, "so we resolved to paddle day and night to

overtake the Indians." At the west end of the lake they came up with

the north-bound canoes. For three days and nights they pushed on

without rest. Naturally, Radisson did not pause to report progress at

Montreal. Game was so plentiful in the surrounding forests that

Iroquois hunters were always abroad in the regions of the St. Lawrence

and Ottawa.[3] Once they heard guns. Turning a bend in the river,

they discovered five Iroquois boats, just in time to avoid them. That

night the Frenchman, Larivière, dreamed that he had been captured by

the Mohawks, and he shouted out in such terror that the alarmed Indians

rushed to embark. The next day they again came on the trail of

Iroquois. The frightened Indians from the Upper Country shouldered

their canoes and dashed through the woods. Larivière could not keep up

and was afraid to go back from the river lest he should lose his

bearings. Fighting his way over windfall and rock, he sank exhausted

and fell asleep. Far ahead of the Iroquois boats the Upper Country

Indians came together again. The Frenchman was nowhere to be found.

It was dark. The Indians would not wait to search. Radisson and

Groseillers dared not turn back to face the irate governor. Larivière

was abandoned. Two weeks afterwards some French hunters found him

lying on the rocks almost dead from starvation. He was sent back to

Three Rivers, where D'Avaugour had him imprisoned. This outrage the

inhabitants of Three Rivers resented. They forced the jail and rescued

Larivière.

Three days after the loss of Larivière Radisson and Groseillers caught

up with seven more canoes of Indians from the Upper Country. The union

of the two bands was just in time, for the next day they were set upon

at a _portage_ by the Iroquois. Ordering the Indians to encase

themselves in bucklers of matting and buffalo hide, Radisson led the

assault on the Iroquois barricade. Trees were cut down, and the Upper

Indians rushed the rude fort with timbers extemporized into

battering-rams. In close range of the enemy, Radisson made a curious

discovery. Frenchmen were directing the Iroquois warriors. Who had

sent these French to intercept the explorers? If Radisson suspected

treachery on the part of jealous rivals from Quebec, it must have

redoubled his fury; for the Indians from the Upper Country threw

themselves in the breached barricade with such force that the Iroquois

lost heart and tossed belts of wampum over the stockades to supplicate

peace. It was almost night. Radisson's Indians drew off to consider

the terms of peace. When morning came, behold an empty fort! The

French renegades had fled with their Indian allies.

[Illustration: Château St. Louis, Quebec, 1669, from one of the oldest

prints in existence.]

Glad to be rid of the first hindrance, the explorers once more sped

north. In the afternoon, Radisson's scouts ran full tilt into a band

of Iroquois laden with beaver pelts. The Iroquois were smarting from

their defeat of the previous night; and what was Radisson's amusement

to see his own scouts and the Iroquois running from each other in equal

fright, while the ground between lay strewn with booty! Radisson

rushed his Indians for the waterside to intercept the Iroquois' flight.

The Iroquois left their boats and swam for the opposite shore, where

they threw up the usual barricade and entrenched themselves to shoot on

Radisson's passing canoes. Using the captured beaver pelts as shields,

the Upper Indians ran the gantlet of the Iroquois fire with the loss of

only one man.

The slightest defeat may turn well-ordered retreat into panic. If the

explorers went on, the Iroquois would hang to the rear of the

travelling Indians and pick off warriors till the Upper Country people

became so weakened they would fall an easy prey. Not flight, but

fight, was Radisson's motto. He ordered his men ashore to break up the

barricade. Darkness fell over the forest. The Iroquois could not see

to fire. "They spared not their powder," relates Radisson, "but they

made more noise than hurt." Attaching a fuse to a barrel of powder,

Radisson threw this over into the Iroquois fort. The crash of the

explosion was followed by a blaze of the Iroquois musketry that killed

three of Radisson's men. Radisson then tore the bark off a birch tree,

filled the bole with powder, and in the darkness crept close to the

Iroquois barricade and set fire to the logs. Red tongues of fire

leaped up, there was a roar as of wind, and the Iroquois fort was on

fire. Radisson's men dashed through the fire, hatchet in hand. The

Iroquois answered with their death chant. Friend and foe merged in the

smoke and darkness. "We could not know one another in that skirmish of

blows," says Radisson. "There was noise to terrify the stoutest man."

In the midst of the mêlée a frightful storm of thunder and sheeted rain

rolled over the forest. "To my mind," writes the disgusted Radisson,

"that was something extraordinary. I think the Devil himself sent that

storm to let those wretches escape, so that they might destroy more

innocents." The rain put out the fire. As soon as the storm had

passed, Radisson kindled torches to search for the missing. Three of

his men were slain, seven wounded. Of the enemy, eleven lay dead, five

were prisoners. The rest of the Iroquois had fled to the forest. The

Upper Indians burned their prisoners according to their custom, and the

night was passed in mad orgies to celebrate the victory. "The sleep we

took did not make our heads giddy," writes Radisson.

The next day they encountered more Iroquois. Both sides at once began

building forts; but when he could, Radisson always avoided war. Having

gained victory enough to hold the Iroquois in check, he wanted no

massacre. That night he embarked his men noiselessly; and never once

stopping to kindle camp-fire, they paddled from Friday night to Tuesday

morning. The _portages _over rocks in the dark cut the _voyageurs'_

moccasins to shreds. Every landing was marked with the blood of

bruised feet. Sometimes they avoided leaving any trace of themselves

by walking in the stream, dragging their boats along the edge of the

rapids. By Tuesday the Indians were so fagged that they could go no

farther without rest. Canoes were moored in the hiding of the rushes

till the _voyageurs_ slept. They had been twenty-two days going from

Three Rivers to Lake Nipissing, and had not slept one hour on land.

It was October when they came to Lake Superior. The forests were

painted in all the glory of autumn, and game abounded. White fish

appeared under the clear, still waters of the lake like shoals of

floating metal; bears were seen hulking away from the watering places

of sandy shores; and wild geese whistled overhead. After the terrible

dangers of the voyage, with scant sleep and scanter fare, the country

seemed, as Radisson says, a terrestrial paradise. The Indians gave

solemn thanks to their gods of earth and forest, "and we," writes

Radisson, "to the God of gods." Indian summer lay on the land.

November found the explorers coasting the south shore of Lake Superior.

They passed the Island of Michilimackinac with its stone arches.

Radisson heard from the Indians of the copper mines. He saw the

pictured rocks that were to become famous for beauty. "I gave it the

name of St. Peter because that was my name and I was the first

Christian to see it," he writes of the stone arch. "There were in

these places very deep caves, caused by the violence of the waves."

Jesuits had been on the part of Lake Superior near the Sault, and poor

Ménard perished in the forests of Lake Michigan; but Radisson and

Groseillers were the first white men to cruise from south to west and

west to north, where a chain of lakes and waterways leads from the

Minnesota lake country to the prairies now known as Manitoba. Before

the end of November the explorers rounded the western end of Lake

Superior and proceeded northwest. Radisson records that they came to

great winter encampments of the Crees; and the Crees did not venture

east for fear of Sautaux and Iroquois. He mentions a river of

Sturgeons, where was a great store of fish.

The Crees wished to conduct the two white men to the wooded lake

region, northwest towards the land of the Assiniboines, where Indian

families took refuge on islands from those tigers of the plains--the

Sioux--who were invincible on horseback but less skilful in canoes.

The rivers were beginning to freeze. Boats were abandoned; but there

was no snow for snow-shoe travelling, and the explorers were unable to

transport the goods brought for trade. Bidding the Crees go to their

families and bring back slaves to carry the baggage, Radisson and

Groseillers built themselves the first fort and the first fur post

between the Missouri and the North Pole. It was evidently somewhere

west of Duluth in either what is now Minnesota or northwestern Ontario.

This fur post was the first habitation of civilization in all the Great

Northwest. Not the railway, not the cattle trail, not the path of

forward-marching empire purposely hewing a way through the wilderness,

opened the West. It was the fur trade that found the West. It was the

fur trade that explored the West. It was the fur trade that wrested

the West from savagery. The beginning was in the little fort built by

Radisson and Groseillers. No great factor in human progress ever had a

more insignificant beginning.

The fort was rushed up by two men almost starving for food. It was on

the side of a river, built in the shape of a triangle, with the base at

the water side. The walls were of unbarked logs, the roof of thatched

branches interlaced, with the door at the river side. In the middle of

the earth floor, so that the smoke would curl up where the branches

formed a funnel or chimney, was the fire. On the right of the fire,

two hewn logs overlaid with pine boughs made a bed. On the left,

another hewn log acted as a table. Jumbled everywhere, hanging from

branches and knobs of branches, were the firearms, clothing, and

merchandise of the two fur traders. Naturally, a fort two thousand

miles from help needed sentries. Radisson had not forgotten his

boyhood days of Onondaga. He strung carefully concealed cords through

the grass and branches around the fort. To these bells were fastened,

and the bells were the sentries. The two white men could now sleep

soundly without fear of approach. This fort, from which sprang the

buoyant, aggressive, prosperous, free life of the Great Northwest, was

founded and built and completed in two days.

The West had begun.[4]

It was a beginning which every Western pioneer was to repeat for the

next two hundred years: first, the log cabins; then, the fight with the

wilderness for food.

Radisson, being the younger, went into the woods to hunt, while

Groseillers kept house. Wild geese and ducks were whistling south, but

"the whistling that I made," writes Radisson, "was another music than

theirs; for I killed three and scared the rest." Strange Indians came

through the forest, but were not admitted to the tiny fort, lest

knowledge of the traders' weakness should tempt theft. Many a night

the explorers were roused by a sudden ringing of the bells or crashing

through the underbrush, to find that wild animals had been attracted by

the smell of meat, and wolverine or wildcat was attempting to tear

through the matted branches of the thatched roof. The desire for

firearms has tempted Indians to murder many a trader; so Radisson and

Groseillers _cached_ all the supplies that they did not need in a hole

across the river. News of the two white men alone in the northern

forest spread like wild-fire to the different Sautaux and Ojibway

encampments; and Radisson invented another protection in addition to

the bells. He rolled gunpowder in twisted tubes of birch bark, and ran

a circle of this round the fort. Putting a torch to the birch, he

surprised the Indians by displaying to them a circle of fire running

along the ground in a series of jumps. To the Indians it was magic.

The two white men were engirt with a mystery that defended them from

all harm. Thus white men passed their first winter in the Great

Northwest.

Toward winter four hundred Crees came to escort the explorers to the

wooded lake region yet farther west towards the land of the

Assiniboines, the modern Manitoba. "We were Caesars," writes Radisson.

"There was no one to contradict us. We went away free from any burden,

while those poor miserables thought themselves happy to carry our

equipage in the hope of getting a brass ring, or an awl, or a

needle. . . . They admired our actions more than the fools of Paris

their king. . . .[5] They made a great noise, calling us gods and

devils. We marched four days through the woods. The country was

beautiful with clear parks. At last we came within a league of the

Cree cabins, where we spent the night that we might enter the

encampment with pomp the next day. The swiftest Indians ran ahead to

warn the people of our coming." Embarking in boats, where the water

was open, the two explorers came to the Cree lodges. They were

welcomed with shouts. Messengers marched in front, scattering presents

from the white men,--kettles to call all to a feast of friendship;

knives to encourage the warriors to be brave; swords to signify that

the white men would fight all enemies of the Cree; and abundance of

trinkets--needles and awls and combs and tin mirrors--for the women.

The Indians prostrated themselves as slaves; and the explorers were

conducted to a grand council of welcome. A feast was held, followed by

a symbolic dance in celebration of the white men's presence.

Their entry to the Great Northwest had been a triumph: but they could

not escape the privations of the explorer's life. Winter set in with a

severity to make up for the long, late autumn. Snow fell continuously

till day and night were as one, the sombre forests muffled to silence

with the wild creatures driven for shelter to secret haunts. Four

hundred men had brought the explorers north. Allowing an average of

four to each family, there must have been sixteen hundred people in the

encampment of Crees. To prevent famine, the Crees scattered to the

winter hunting-grounds, arranging to come together again in two months

at a northern rendezvous. When Radisson and Groseillers came to the

rendezvous, they learned that the gathering hunters had had poor luck.

Food was short. To make matters worse, heavy rains were followed by

sharp frost. The snow became iced over, destroying rabbit and grouse,

which feed the large game. Radisson noticed that the Indians often

snatched food from the hands of hungry children. More starving Crees

continued to come into camp. Soon the husbands were taking the wives'

share of food, and the women were subsisting on dried pelts. The Crees

became too weak to carry their snow-shoes, or to gather wood for fire.

The cries of the dying broke the deathly stillness of the winter

forest; and the strong began to dog the footsteps of the weak. "Good

God, have mercy on these innocent people," writes Radisson; "have mercy

on us who acknowledge Thee!" Digging through the snow with their

rackets, some of the Crees got roots to eat. Others tore the bark from

trees and made a kind of soup that kept them alive. Two weeks after

the famine set in, the Indians were boiling the pulverized bones of the

waste heap. After that the only food was the buckskin that had been

tanned for clothing. "We ate it so eagerly," writes Radisson, "that

our gums did bleed. . . . We became the image of death." Before the

spring five hundred Crees had died of famine. Radisson and Groseillers

scarcely had strength to drag the dead from the tepees. The Indians

thought that Groseillers had been fed by some fiend, for his heavy,

black beard covered his thin face. Radisson they loved, because his

beardless face looked as gaunt as theirs.[6]

Relief came with the breaking of the weather. The rain washed the iced

snows away; deer began to roam; and with the opening of the rivers came

two messengers from the Sioux to invite Radisson and Groseillers to

visit their nation. The two Sioux had a dog, which they refused to

sell for all Radisson's gifts. The Crees dared not offend the Sioux

ambassadors by stealing the worthless cur on which such hungry eyes

were cast, but at night Radisson slipped up to the Sioux tepee. The

dog came prowling out. Radisson stabbed it so suddenly that it dropped

without a sound. Hurrying back, he boiled and fed the meat to the

famishing Crees. When the Sioux returned to their own country, they

sent a score of slaves with food for the starving encampment. No doubt

Radisson had plied the first messengers with gifts; for the slaves

brought word that thirty picked runners from the Sioux were coming to

escort the white men to the prairie. To receive their benefactors, and

also, perhaps, to show that they were not defenceless, the Crees at

once constructed a fort; for Cree and Sioux had been enemies from time

immemorial. In two days came the runners, clad only in short garments,

and carrying bow and quiver. The Crees led the young braves to the

fort. Kettles were set out. Fagged from the long run, the Sioux ate

without a word. At the end of the meal one rose. Shooting an arrow

into the air as a sign that he called Deity to witness the truth of his

words, he proclaimed in a loud voice that the elders of the Sioux

nation would arrive next day at the fort to make a treaty with the

French.

The news was no proof of generosity. The Sioux were the great warriors

of the West. They knew very well that whoever formed an alliance with

the French would obtain firearms; and firearms meant victory against

all other tribes. The news set the Crees by the ears. Warriors

hastened from the forests to defend the fort. The next day came the

elders of the Sioux in pomp. They were preceded by the young braves

bearing bows and arrows and buffalo-skin shields on which were drawn

figures portraying victories. Their hair was turned up in a stiff

crest surmounted by eagle feathers, and their bodies were painted

bright vermilion. Behind came the elders, with medicine-bags of

rattlesnake skin streaming from their shoulders and long strings of

bears' claws hanging from neck and wrist. They were dressed in

buckskin, garnished with porcupine quills, and wore moccasins of

buffalo hide, with the hair dangling from the heel. In the belt of

each was a skull-cracker--a sort of sling stone with a long handle--and

a war-hatchet. Each elder carried a peace pipe set with precious

stones, and stuck in the stem were the quills of the war eagle to

represent enemies slain. Women slaves followed, loaded with skins for

the elders' tents.

[Illustration: A parley on the Plains.]

A great fire had been kindled inside the court of the Cree stockades.

Round the pavilion the Sioux elders seated themselves. First, they

solemnly smoked the calumet of peace. Then the chief of the Sioux rose

and chanted a song, giving thanks for their safe journey. Setting

aside gifts of rare beaver pelts, he declared that the Sioux had come

to make friends with the French, who were masters of peace and war;

that the elders would conduct the white men back to the Sioux country;

that the mountains were levelled and the valleys cast up, and the way

made smooth, and branches strewn on the ground for the white men's

feet, and streams bridged, and the doors of the tepees open. Let the

French come to the Sioux! The Indians would die for the French. A

gift was presented to invoke the friendship of the Crees. Another rich

gift of furs let out the secret of the Sioux' anxiety: it was that the

French might give the Sioux "thunder weapons," meaning guns.

The speech being finished, the Crees set a feast before their guests.

To this feast Radisson and Groseillers came in a style that eclipsed

the Sioux. Cree warriors marched in front, carrying guns. Radisson

and Groseillers were dressed in armor.[7] At their belts they wore

pistol, sword, and dagger. On their heads were crowns of colored

porcupine quills. Two pages carried the dishes and spoons to be used

at the feast; and four Cree magicians followed with smoking calumets in

their hands. Four Indian maids carried bearskins to place on the

ground when the two explorers deigned to sit down. Inside the fort

more than six hundred councillors had assembled. Outside were gathered

a thousand spectators. As Radisson and Groseillers entered, an old

Cree flung a peace pipe at the explorers' feet and sang a song of

thanksgiving to the sun that he had lived to see "those terrible men

whose words (guns) made the earth quake." Stripping himself of his

costly furs, he placed them on the white men's shoulders, shouting: "Ye

are masters over us; dead or alive, dispose of us as you will."

Then Radisson rose and chanted a song, in which he declared that the

French took the Crees for brethren and would defend them. To prove his

words, he threw powder in the fire and had twelve guns shot off, which

frightened the Sioux almost out of their senses. A slave girl placed a

coal in the calumet. Radisson then presented gifts; the first to

testify that the French adopted the Sioux for friends; the second as a

token that the French also took the Crees for friends; the third as a

sign that the French "would reduce to powder with heavenly fire" any

one who disturbed the peace between these tribes. The fourth gift was

in grateful recognition of the Sioux' courtesy in granting free passage

through their country. The gifts consisted of kettles and hatchets and

awls and needles and looking-glasses and bells and combs and paint, but

_not_ guns. Radisson's speech was received with "Ho, ho's" of

applause. Sports began. Radisson offered prizes for racing, jumping,

shooting with the bow, and climbing a greased post. All the while,

musicians were singing and beating the tom-tom, a drum made of buffalo

hide stretched on hoops and filled with water.

Fourteen days later Radisson and Groseillers set out for the Sioux

country, or what are now known as the Northwestern states.[8] On the

third voyage Radisson came to the Sioux from the south. On this

voyage, he came to them from the northeast. He found that the tribe

numbered seven thousand men of fighting age. He remarked that the

Sioux used a kind of coke or peat for fire instead of wood. While he

heard of the tribes that used coal for fire, he does not relate that he

went to them on this trip. Again he heard of the mountains far inland,

where the Indians found copper and lead and a kind of stone that was

transparent.[9] He remained six weeks with the Sioux, hunting buffalo

and deer. Between the Missouri and the Saskatchewan ran a well-beaten

trail northeastward, which was used by the Crees and the Sioux in their

wars. It is probable that the Sioux escorted Radisson back to the

Crees by this trail, till he was across what is now the boundary

between Minnesota and Canada, and could strike directly eastward for

the Lake of the Woods region, or the hinterland between James Bay and

Lake Superior.

In spring the Crees went to the Bay of the North, which Radisson was

seeking; and after leaving the Sioux, the two explorers struck for the

little fort north of Lake Superior, where they had _cached_ their

goods. Spring in the North was later than spring in the South; but the

shore ice of the Northern lakes had already become soft. To save time

they cut across the lakes of Minnesota, dragging their sleighs on the

ice. Groseillers' sleigh was loaded with pelts obtained from the

Sioux, and the elder man began to fag. Radisson took the heavy sleigh,

giving Groseillers the lighter one. About twelve miles out from the

shore, on one of these lakes, the ice suddenly gave, and Radisson

plunged through to his waist. It was as dangerous to turn back as to

go on. If they deserted their merchandise, they would have nothing to

trade with the Indians; but when Radisson succeeded in extricating

himself, he was so badly strained that he could not go forward another

step. There was no sense in risking both their lives on the rotten

ice. He urged Groseillers to go on. Groseillers dared not hesitate.

Laying two sleds as a wind-break on each side of Radisson, he covered

the injured man with robes, consigned him to the keeping of God, and

hurried over the ice to obtain help from the Crees.

The Crees got Radisson ashore, and there he lay in agony for eight

days. The Indians were preparing to set out for the North. They

invited Radisson to go with them. His sprain had not healed; but he

could not miss the opportunity of approaching the Bay of the North.

For two days he marched with the hunters, enduring torture at every

step. The third day he could go no farther and they deserted him.

Groseillers had gone hunting with another band of Crees. Radisson had

neither gun nor hatchet, and the Indians left him only ten pounds of

pemmican. After a short rest he journeyed painfully on, following the

trail of the marching Crees. On the fifth day he found the frame of a

deserted wigwam. Covering it with branches of trees and kindling a

fire to drive off beasts of prey, he crept in and lay down to sleep.

He was awakened by a crackling of flame. The fire had caught the pine

boughs and the tepee was in a blaze. Radisson flung his snow-shoes and

clothing as far as he could, and broke from the fire-trap.

Half-dressed and lame, shuddering with cold and hunger, he felt through

the dark over the snow for his clothing. A far cry rang through the

forest like the bay of the wolf pack. Radisson kept solitary watch

till morning, when he found that the cry came from Indians sent out to

find him by Groseillers. He was taken to an encampment, where the

Crees were building canoes to go to the Bay of the North.

The entire band, with the two explorers, then launched on the rivers

flowing north. "We were in danger to perish a thousand times from the

ice jam," writes Radisson. ". . . At last we came full sail from a

deep bay . . . we came to the seaside, where we found an old house all

demolished and battered with bullets. . . . They (the Crees) told us

about Europeans. . . . We went from isle to isle all that

summer. . . . This region had a great store of cows (caribou). . . .

We went farther to see the place that the Indians were to pass the

summer. . . . The river (where they went) came from the lake that

empties itself in . . . the Saguenay . . . a hundred leagues from the

great river of Canada (the St. Lawrence) . . . to where we were in the

Bay of the North. . . . We passed the summer quietly coasting the

seaside. . . . The people here burn not their prisoners, but knock

them on the head. . . . They have a store of turquoise. . . . They

find green stones, very fine, at the same Bay of the Sea

(labradorite). . . . We went up another river to the Upper Lake

(Winnipeg)." [10]

For years the dispute has been waged with zeal worthy of a better cause

whether Radisson referred to Hudson Bay in this passage. The French

claim that he did; the English that he did not. "The house demolished

with bullets" was probably an old trading post, contend the English;

but there was no trading post except Radisson's west of Lake Superior

at that time, retort the French. By "cows" Radisson meant buffalo, and

no buffalo were found as far east as Hudson Bay, say the English; by

"cows" Radisson meant caribou and deer, and herds of these frequented

the shores of Hudson Bay, answer the French. No river comes from the

Saguenay to Hudson Bay, declare the English; yes, but a river comes

from the direction of the Saguenay, and was followed by subsequent

explorers, assert the French.[11] The stones of turquoise and green

were agates from Lake Superior, explain the English; the stones were

labradorites from the east coast of the Bay, maintain the French. So

the childish quarrel has gone on for two centuries. England and France

alike conspired to crush the man while he lived; and when he died they

quarrelled over the glory of his discoveries. The point is not whether

Radisson actually wet his oars in the different indentations of Hudson

and James bays. The point is that he found where it lay from the Great

Lakes, and discovered the watershed sloping north from the Great Lakes

to Hudson Bay. This was new ground, and entitled Radisson to the fame

of a discoverer.

From the Indians of the bay, Radisson heard of another lake leagues to

the north, whose upper end was always frozen. This was probably some

vague story of the lakes in the region that was to become known two

centuries later as Mackenzie River. The spring of 1663 found the

explorers back in the Lake of the Woods region accompanied by seven

hundred Indians of the Upper Country. The company filled three hundred

and sixty canoes. Indian girls dived into the lake to push the canoes

off, and stood chanting a song of good-speed till the boats had glided

out of sight through the long, narrow, rocky gaps of the Lake of the

Woods. At Lake Superior the company paused to lay up a supply of

smoked sturgeon. At the Sault four hundred Crees turned back. The

rest of the Indians hoisted blankets on fishing-poles, and, with a west

wind, scudded across Lake Huron to Lake Nipissing. From Lake Nipissing

they rode safely down the Ottawa to Montreal. Cannon were fired to

welcome the discoverers, for New France was again on the verge of

bankruptcy from a beaver famine.

A different welcome awaited them at Quebec. D'Argenson, the governor,

was about to leave for France, and nothing had come of the Jesuit

expedition up the Saguenay. He had already sent Couture, for a second

time, overland to find a way to Hudson Bay; but no word had come from

Couture, and the governor's time was up. The explorers had disobeyed

him in leaving without his permission. Their return with a fortune of

pelts was the salvation of the impecunious governor. From 1627 to 1663

five distinct fur companies, organized under the patronage of royalty,

had gone bankrupt in New France.[12] Therefore, it became a loyal

governor to protect his Majesty's interests. Besides, the revenue

collectors could claim one-fourth of all returns in beaver except from

posts farmed expressly for the king. No sooner had Radisson and

Groseillers come home than D'Argenson ordered Groseillers imprisoned.

He then fined the explorers $20,000, to build a fort at Three Rivers,

giving them leave to put their coats-of-arms on the gate; a $30,000

fine was to go to the public treasury of New France; $70,000 worth of

beaver was seized as the tax due the revenue. Of a cargo worth

$300,000 in modern money, Radisson and Groseillers had less than

$20,000 left.[13]

Had D'Argenson and his successors encouraged instead of persecuted the

discoverers, France could have claimed all North America but the narrow

strip of New England on the east and the Spanish settlements on the

south. Having repudiated Radisson and Groseillers, France could not

claim the fruits of deeds which she punished.[14]

[1] The childish dispute whether Bourdon sailed into the bay and up to

its head, or only to 50 degrees N. latitude, does not concern

Radisson's life, and, therefore, is ignored. One thing I can state

with absolute certainty from having been up the coast of Labrador in a

most inclement season, that Bourdon could not possibly have gone to and

back from the inner waters of Hudson Bay between May 2 and August 11.

J. Edmond Roy and Mr. Sulte both pronounce Bourdon a myth, and his trip

a fabrication.

[2] "Shame put upon them," says Radisson. Ménard did _not_ go out with

Radisson and Groseillers, as is erroneously recorded.

[3] I have purposely avoided stating whether Radisson went by way of

Lake Ontario or the Ottawa. Dr. Dionne thinks that he went by Ontario

and Niagara because Radisson refers to vast waterfalls under which a

man could walk. Radisson gives the height of these falls as forty

feet. Niagara are nearer three hundred; and the Chaudière of the

Ottawa would answer Radisson's description better, were it not that he

says a man could go under the falls for a quarter of a mile. "The Lake

of the Castors" plainly points to Lake Nipissing.

[4] The two main reasons why I think that Radisson and Groseillers were

now moving up that chain of lakes and rivers between Minnesota and

Canada, connecting Lake of the Woods with Lake Winnipeg, are: (1)

Oldmixon says it was the report of the Assiniboine Indians from Lake

Assiniboine (Lake Winnipeg) that led Radisson to seek for the Bay of

the North overland. These Assiniboines did not go to the bay by way of

Lake Superior, but by way of Lake Winnipeg. (2) A mémoire written by

De la Chesnaye in 1696--see _Documents Nouvelle France_,

1492-1712--distinctly refers to a _coureur's_ trail from Lake Superior

to Lake Assiniboine or Lake Winnipeg. There is no record of any

Frenchmen but Radisson and Groseillers having followed such a trail to

the land of the Assiniboines--the Manitoba of to-day--before 1676.

[5] One can guess that a man who wrote in that spirit two centuries

before the French Revolution would not be a sycophant in

courts,--which, perhaps, helps to explain the conspiracy of silence

that obscured Radisson's fame.

[6] My reason for thinking that this region was farther north than

Minnesota is the size of the Cree winter camp; but I have refrained

from trying to localize this part of the trip, except to say it was

west and north of Duluth. Some writers recognize in the description

parts of Minnesota, others the hinterland between Lake Superior and

James Bay. In the light of the _mémoire_ of 1696 sent to the French

government, I am unable to regard this itinerary as any other than the

famous fur traders' trail between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg by

way of Sturgeon River and the Lake of the Woods.

[7] _Radisson Relations_, p. 207.

[8] We are now on safe ground. There was a well-known trail from what

is now known as the Rat Portage region to the great Sioux camps west of

the Mississippi and Red River valleys. But again I refuse to lay

myself open to controversy by trying definitely to give either the

dates or exact places of this trip.

[9] If any proof is wanted that Radisson's journeyings took him far

west of the Mississippi, these details afford it.

[10] _Radisson's Journal_, pp. 224, 225, 226.

[11] Mr. A. P. Low, who has made the most thorough exploration of

Labrador and Hudson Bay of any man living, says, "Rupert River forms

the discharge of the Mistassini lakes . . . and empties into Rupert Bay

close to the mouth of the Nottoway River, and rises in a number of

lakes close to the height of land dividing it from the St. Maurice

River, which joins the St. Lawrence at Three Rivers."

[12] _Les Compagnies de Colonisation sous l'ancien régime_, by

Chailly-Bert.

[13] Oldmixon says: "Radisson and Groseillers met with some savages on

the Lake of Assiniboin, and from them they learned that they might go

by land to the bottom of Hudson's Bay, where the English had not been

yet, at James Bay; upon which they desired them to conduct them

thither, and the savages accordingly did it. They returned to the

Upper Lake the same way they came, and thence to Quebec, where they

offered the principal merchants to carry ships to Hudson's Bay; but

their project was rejected." Vol. I, p. 548. Radisson's figures are

given as "pounds "; but by "_L_" did he mean English "pound" or French

livre, that is 17 cents? A franc in 1660 equalled the modern dollar.

[14] The exact tribes mentioned in the _Mémoire of 1696_, with whom the

French were in trade in the West are: On the "Missoury" and south of

it, the Mascoutins and Sioux; two hundred miles beyond the "Missisipy"

the Issaguy, the Octbatons, the Omtous, of whom were Sioux capable of

mustering four thousand warriors, south of Lake Superior, the Sauteurs,

on "Sipisagny, the river which is the discharge of Lake Asemipigon"

(Winnipeg), the "Nation of the Grand Rat," Algonquins numbering two

thousand, who traded with the English of Hudson Bay, De la Chesnaye

adds in his mémoire details of the trip from Lake Superior to the lake

of the Assiniboines. Knowing what close co-workers he and Radisson

were, we can guess where he got his information.

CHAPTER V

1664-1676

RADISSON RENOUNCES ALLEGIANCE TO TWO CROWNS

Rival Traders thwart the Plans of the Discoverers--Entangled in

Lawsuits, the two French Explorers go to England--The Organization of

the Hudson's Bay Fur Company--Radisson the Storm-centre of

International Intrigue--Boston Merchants in the Struggle to capture the

Fur Trade

Henceforth Radisson and Groseillers were men without a country. Twice

their return from the North with cargoes of beaver had saved New France

from ruin. They had discovered more of America than all the other

explorers combined. Their reward was jealous rivalry that reduced them

to beggary; injustice that compelled them to renounce allegiance to two

crowns; obloquy during a lifetime; and oblivion for two centuries after

their death. The very force of unchecked impulse that carries the hero

over all obstacles may also carry him over the bounds of caution and

compromise that regulate the conduct of other men. This was the case

with Radisson and Groseillers. They were powerless to resist the

extortion of the French governor. The Company of One Hundred

Associates had given place to the Company of the West Indies. This

trading venture had been organized under the direct patronage of the

king.[1] It had been proclaimed from the pulpits of France.

Privileges were promised to all who subscribed for the stock. The

Company was granted a blank list of titles to bestow on its patrons and

servants. No one else in New France might engage in the beaver trade;

no one else might buy skins from the Indians and sell the pelts in

Europe; and one-fourth of the trade went for public revenue. In spite

of all the privileges, fur company after fur company failed in New

France; but to them Radisson had to sell his furs, and when the revenue

officers went over the cargo, the minions of the governor also seized a

share under pretence of a fine for trading without a license.

Groseillers was furious, and sailed for France to demand restitution;

but the intriguing courtiers proved too strong for him. Though he

spent 10,000 pounds, nothing was done. D'Avaugour had come back to

France, and stockholders of the jealous fur company were all-powerful

at court. Groseillers then relinquished all idea of restitution, and

tried to interest merchants in another expedition to Hudson Bay by way

of the sea.[2] He might have spared himself the trouble. His

enthusiasm only aroused the quiet smile of supercilious indifference.

His plans were regarded as chimerical. Finally a merchant of Rochelle

half promised to send a boat to Isle Percée at the mouth of the St.

Lawrence in 1664. Groseillers had already wasted six months. Eager

for action, he hurried back to Three Rivers, where Radisson awaited

him. The two secretly took passage in a fishing schooner to Anticosti,

and from Anticosti went south to Isle Percée. Here a Jesuit just out

from France bore the message to them that no ship would come. The

promise had been a put-off to rid France of the enthusiast. New France

had treated them with injustice. Old France with mockery. Which way

should they turn? They could not go back to Three Rivers. This

attempt to go to Hudson Bay without a license laid them open to a

second fine. Baffled, but not beaten, the explorers did what

ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have done in similar

circumstances--they left the country. Some rumor of their intention to

abandon New France must have gone abroad; for when they reached Cape

Breton, their servants grumbled so loudly that a mob of Frenchmen

threatened to burn the explorers. Dismissing their servants, Radisson

and Groseillers escaped to Port Royal, Nova Scotia.

[Illustration: Martello Tower of Refuge in Time of Indian Wars--Three

Rivers.]

In Port Royal they met a sea-captain from Boston, Zechariah Gillam, who

offered his ship for a voyage to Hudson Bay, but the season was far

spent when they set out. Captain Gillam was afraid to enter the

ice-locked bay so late in summer. The boat turned back, and the trip

was a loss. This run of ill-luck had now lasted for a year. They

still had some money from the Northern trips, and they signed a

contract with ship-owners of Boston to take two vessels to Hudson Bay

the following spring. Provisions must be laid up for the long voyage.

One of the ships was sent to the Grand Banks for fish. Rounding

eastward past the crescent reefs of Sable Island, the ship was caught

by the beach-combers and totally wrecked on the drifts of sand.

Instead of sailing for Hudson Bay in the spring of 1665, Radisson and

Groseillers were summoned to Boston to defend themselves in a lawsuit

for the value of the lost vessel. They were acquitted; but lawsuits on

the heels of misfortune exhausted the resources of the adventurers.

The exploits of the two Frenchmen had become the sensation of Boston.

Sir Robert Carr, one of the British commissioners then in the New

England colonies, urged Radisson and Groseillers to renounce allegiance

to a country that had shown only ingratitude, and to come to

England.[3] When Sir George Cartwright sailed from Nantucket on August

1, 1665, he was accompanied by Radisson and Groseillers.[4] Misfortune

continued to dog them. Within a few days' sail of England, their ship

encountered the Dutch cruiser _Caper_. For two hours the ships poured

broadsides of shot into each other's hulls. The masts were torn from

the English vessel. She was boarded and stripped, and the Frenchmen

were thoroughly questioned. Then the captives were all landed in

Spain. Accompanied by the two Frenchmen, Sir George Cartwright

hastened to England early in 1666. The plague had driven the court

from London to Oxford. Cartwright laid the plans of the explorers

before Charles II. The king ordered 40s. a week paid to Radisson and

Groseillers for the winter. They took chambers in London. Later they

followed the court to Windsor, where they were received by King Charles.

The English court favored the project of trade in Hudson Bay, but

during the Dutch war nothing could be done. The captain of the Dutch

ship _Caper_ had sent word of the French explorers to De Witt, the

great statesman. De Witt despatched a spy from Picardy, France, one

Eli Godefroy Touret, who chanced to know Groseillers, to meet the

explorers in London. Masking as Groseillers' nephew, Touret tried to

bribe both men to join the Dutch. Failing this, he attempted to

undermine their credit with the English by accusing Radisson and

Groseillers of counterfeiting money; but the English court refused to

be deceived, and Touret was imprisoned. Owing to the plague and the

war, two years passed without the vague promises of the English court

taking shape. Montague, the English ambassador to France, heard of the

explorers' feats, and wrote to Prince Rupert. Prince Rupert was a

soldier of fortune, who could enter into the spirit of the explorers.

He had fought on the losing side against Cromwell, and then taken to

the high seas to replenish broken fortunes by piracy. The wealth of

the beaver trade appealed to him. He gave all the influence of his

_prestige_ to the explorers' plans. By the spring of 1668 money enough

had been advanced to fit out two boats for Hudson Bay. In the _Eagle_,

with Captain Stannard, went Radisson; in the _Nonsuch_, with Captain

Zechariah Gillam of Boston, went Groseillers. North of Ireland furious

gales drove the ships apart. Radisson's vessel was damaged and driven

back to London; but his year was not wasted. It is likely that the

account of his first voyages was written while Groseillers was away.[5]

Sometime during his stay in London he married Mary Kirke, a daughter of

the Huguenot John Kirke, whose family had long ago gone from Boston and

captured Quebec.

Gillam's journal records that the _Nonsuch_ left Gravesend the 3d of

June, 1668, reached Resolution Island on August 4, and came to anchor

at the south of James Bay on September 29.[6] It was here that

Radisson had come overland five years before, when he thought that he

discovered a river flowing from the direction of the St. Lawrence. The

river was Nemisco. Groseillers called it Rupert in honor of his

patron. A palisaded fort was at once built, and named King Charles

after the English monarch. By December, the bay was locked in the

deathly silence of northern frost. Snow fell till the air became

darkened day after day, a ceaseless fall of muffling snow; the

earth--as Gillam's journal says--"seemed frozen to death." Gillam

attended to the fort, Groseillers to the trade. Dual command was bound

to cause a clash. By April, 1669, the terrible cold had relaxed. The

ice swept out of the river with a roar. Wild fowl came winging north

in myriad flocks. By June the fort was sweltering in almost tropical

heat. The _Nonsuch_ hoisted anchor and sailed for England, loaded to

the water-line with a cargo of furs. Honors awaited Groseillers in

London. King Charles created him a _Knight de la Jarretière_, an order

for princes of the royal blood.[7] In addition, he was granted a sum

of money. Prince Rupert and Radisson had, meanwhile, been busy

organizing a fur company. The success of Groseillers' voyage now

assured this company a royal charter, which was granted in May, 1670.

Such was the origin of the Hudson's Bay Company. Prince Rupert was its

first governor; Charles Bayly was appointed resident governor on the

bay. Among the first shareholders were Prince Rupert, the Duke of

York, Sir George Cartwright, the Duke of Albermarle, Shaftesbury, Sir

Peter Colleton, who had advanced Radisson a loan during the long period

of waiting, and Sir John Kirke, whose daughter had married Radisson.

That spring, Radisson and Groseillers again sailed for the bay. In

1671, three ships were sent out from England, and Radisson established

a second post westward at Moose. With Governor Bayly, he sailed up and

met the Indians at what was to become the great fur capital of the

north, Port Nelson, or York. The third year of the company's

existence, Radisson and Groseillers perceived a change. Not so many

Indians came down to the English forts to trade. Those who came brought

fewer pelts and demanded higher prices. Rivals had been at work. The

English learned that the French had come overland and were paying high

prices to draw the Indians from the bay. In the spring a council was

held.[8] Should they continue on the east side of the bay, or move

west, where there would be no rivalry? Groseillers boldly counselled

moving inland and driving off French competition. Bayly was for moving

west. He even hinted that Groseillers' advice sprang from disloyalty

to the English. The clash that was inevitable from divided command was

this time avoided by compromise. They would all sail west, and all

come back to Rupert's River. When they returned, they found that the

English ensign had been torn down and the French flag raised.[9] A

veteran Jesuit missionary of the Saguenay, Charles Albanel, two French

companions, and some Indian guides had ensconced themselves in the

empty houses.[10] The priest now presented Governor Bayly with letters

from Count Frontenac commending the French to the good offices of

Governor Bayly.[11]

France had not been idle.

When it was too late, the country awakened to the injustice done

Radisson and Groseillers. While Radisson was still in Boston, all

restrictions were taken from the beaver trade, except the tax of

one-fourth to the revenue. The Jesuit Dablon, who was near the western

end of Lake Superior, gathered all the information he could from the

Indians of the way to the Sea of the North. Father Marquette learned

of the Mississippi from the Indians. The Western tribes had been

summoned to the Sault, where Sieur de Saint-Lusson met them in treaty

for the French; and the French flag was raised in the presence of Père

Claude Allouez, who blessed the ceremony. M. Colbert sent instructions

to M. Talon, the intendant of New France, to grant titles of nobility

to Groseillers' nephew in order to keep him in the country.[12] On the

Saguenay was a Jesuit, Charles Albanel, loyal to the French and of

English birth, whose devotion to the Indians during the small-pox

scourge of 1670 had given him unbounded influence. Talon, the

intendant of New France, was keen to retrieve in the North what

D'Argenson's injustice had lost. Who could be better qualified to go

overland to Hudson Bay than the old missionary, loyal to France, of

English birth, and beloved by the Indians? Albanel was summoned to

Quebec and gladly accepted the commission. He chose for companions

Saint-Simon and young Couture, the son of the famous guide to the

Jesuits. The company left Quebec on August 6, 1671, and secured a

guide at Tadoussac. Embarking in canoes, they ascended the shadowy

cañon of the Saguenay to Lake St. John. On the 7th of September they

left the forest of Lake St. John and mounted the current of a winding

river, full of cataracts and rapids, toward Mistassini. On this stream

they met Indians who told them that two European vessels were on Hudson

Bay. The Indians showed Albanel tobacco which they had received from

the English.

It seemed futile to go on a voyage of discovery where English were

already in possession. The priest sent one of the Frenchmen and two

Indians back to Quebec for passports and instructions. What the

instructions were can only be guessed by subsequent developments. The

messengers left the depth of the forest on the 19th of September, and

had returned from Quebec by the 10th of October. Snow was falling.

The streams had frozen, and the Indians had gone into camp for the

winter. Going from wigwam to wigwam through the drifted forest. Father

Albanel passed the winter preaching to the savages. Skins of the chase

were laid on the wigwams. Against the pelts, snow was banked to close

up every chink. Inside, the air was blue with smoke and the steam of

the simmering kettle. Indian hunters lay on the moss floor round the

central fires. Children and dogs crouched heterogeneously against the

sloping tent walls. Squaws plodded through the forest, setting traps

and baiting the fish-lines that hung through airholes of the thick ice.

In these lodges Albanel wintered. He was among strange Indians and

suffered incredible hardships. Where there was room, he, too, sat

crouched under the crowded tent walls, scoffed at by the braves, teased

by the unrebuked children, eating when the squaws threw waste food to

him, going hungry when his French companions failed to bring in game.

Sometimes night overtook him on the trail. Shovelling a bed through

the snow to the moss with his snow-shoes, piling shrubs as a

wind-break, and kindling a roaring fire, the priest passed the night

under the stars.

When spring came, the Indians opposed his passage down the river. A

council was called. Albanel explained that his message was to bring

the Indians down to Quebec and keep them from going to the English for

trade. The Indians, who had acted as middlemen between Quebec traders

and the Northern tribes, saw the advantage of undermining the English

trade. Gifts were presented by the Frenchmen, and the friendship of

the Indians was secured. On June 1, 1672, sixteen savages embarked

with the three Frenchmen. For the next ten days, the difficulties were

almost insurmountable. The river tore through a deep gorge of sheer

precipices which the _voyageurs_ could pass only by clinging to the

rock walls with hands and feet. One _portage_ was twelve miles long

over a muskeg of quaking moss that floated on water. At every step the

travellers plunged through to their waists. Over this the long canoes

and baggage had to be carried. On the 10th of June they reached the

height of land that divides the waters of Hudson Bay from the St.

Lawrence. The watershed was a small plateau with two lakes, one of

which emptied north, the other, south. As they approached Lake

Mistassini, the Lake Indians again opposed their free passage down the

rivers.

"You must wait," they said, "till we notify the elders of your coming."

Shortly afterwards, the French met a score of canoes with the Indians

all painted for war. The idea of turning back never occurred to the

priest. By way of demonstrating his joy at meeting the warriors, he

had ten volleys of musketry fired off, which converted the war into a

council of peace. At the assemblage, Albanel distributed gifts to the

savages.

"Stop trading with the English at the sea," he cried; "they do not pray

to God; come to Lake St. John with your furs; there you will always

find a _robe noire_ to instruct you and baptize you."

The treaty was celebrated by a festival and a dance. In the morning,

after solemn religious services, the French embarked. On the 18th of

June they came to Lake Mistassini, an enormous body of water similar to

the Great Lakes.[13] From Mistassini, the course was down-stream and

easier. High water enabled them to run many of the rapids; and on the

28th of June, after a voyage of eight hundred leagues, four hundred

rapids, and two hundred waterfalls, they came to the deserted houses of

the English. The very next day they found the Indians and held

religious services, making solemn treaty, presenting presents, and

hoisting the French flag. For the first three weeks of July they

coasted along the shores of James Bay, taking possession of the country

in the name of the French king. Then they cruised back to King Charles

Fort on Rupert's River.[14] They were just in time to meet the

returned Englishmen.

Governor Bayly of the Hudson's Bay Company was astounded to find the

French at Rupert's River. Now he knew what had allured the Indians

from the bay, but he hardly relished finding foreigners in possession

of his own fort. The situation required delicate tact. Governor Bayly

was a bluff tradesman with an insular dislike of Frenchmen and

Catholics common in England at a time when bigoted fanaticism ran riot.

King Charles was on friendly terms with France. Therefore, the

Jesuit's passport must be respected; so Albanel was received with at

least a show of courtesy. But Bayly was the governor of a fur company;

and the rights of the company must be respected. To make matters

worse, the French voyageurs brought letters to Groseillers and Radisson

from their relatives in Quebec. Bayly, no doubt, wished the Jesuit

guest far enough. Albanel left in a few weeks. Then Bayly's

suspicions blazed out in open accusations that the two French explorers

had been playing a double game and acting against English interests.

In September came the company ship to the fort with Captain Gillam, who

had never agreed with Radisson from the time that they had quarrelled

about going from Port Royal to the straits of Hudson Bay. It has been

said that, at this stage, Radisson and Groseillers, feeling the

prejudice too strong against them, deserted and passed overland through

the forests to Quebec. The records of the Hudson's Bay Company do not

corroborate this report. Bayly in the heat of his wrath sent home

accusations with the returning ship. The ship that came out in 1674

requested Radisson to go to England and report. This he did, and so

completely refuted the charges of disloyalty that in 1675 the company

voted him 100 pounds a year; but Radisson would not sit quietly in

England on a pension. Owing to hostility toward him among the English

employees of the company, he could not go back to the bay. Meantime he

had wife and family and servants to maintain on 100 pounds a year. If

England had no more need of him, France realized the fact that she had.

Debts were accumulating. Restless as a caged tiger, Radisson found

himself baffled until a message came from the great Colbert of France,

offering to pay all his debts and give him a position in the French

navy. His pardon was signed and proclaimed. In 1676, France granted

him fishing privileges on the island of Anticosti; but the lodestar of

the fur trade still drew him, for that year he was called to Quebec to

meet a company of traders conferring on the price of beaver.[15] In

that meeting assembled, among others, Jolliet, La Salle, Groseillers,

and Radisson--men whose names were to become immortal.

It was plain that the two adventurers could not long rest.[16]

[1] Chailly-Bert.

[2] The Jesuit expeditions of Dablon and Dreuillettes in 1661 had

failed to reach the bay overland. Cabot had coasted Labrador in 1497;

Captain Davis had gone north of Hudson Bay in 1585-1587; Hudson had

lost his life there in 1610. Sir Thomas Button had explored Baffin's

Land, Nelson River, and the Button Islands in 1612; Munck, the Dane,

had found the mouth of the Churchill River in 1619, James and Fox had

explored the inland sea in 1631; Shapley had brought a ship up from

Boston in 1640; and Bourdon, the Frenchman, had gone up to the straits

in 1656-1657.

[3] George Carr, writing to Lord Arlington on December 14, 1665, says:

"Hearing some Frenchmen discourse in New England . . . of a great trade

of beaver, and afterward making proof of what they had said, he thought

them the best present he could possibly make his Majesty and persuaded

them to come to England."

[4] Colonel Richard Nicolls, writing on July 31, 1665, says he

"supposes Col. Geo. Cartwright is now at sea."

[5] It plainly could not have been written while _en route_ across the

Atlantic with Sir George Cartwright, for it records events after that

time.

[6] Robson's _Hudson Bay_.

[7] See Dr. N. E. Dionne, also Marie de l'Incarnation, but Sulte

discredits this granting of a title.

[8] See Robson's _Hudson Bay_, containing reference to the journal kept

by Gorst, Bayly's secretary, at Rupert Fort.

[9] See State Papers, Canadian Archives, 1676, January 26, Whitehall:

Memorial of the Hudson Bay Company complaining of Albanel, a Jesuit,

attempting to seduce Radisson and Groseillers from the company's

services; in absence of ships pulling down the British ensign and

tampering with the Indians.

[10] I am inclined to think that Albanel may not have been aware of the

documents which he carried from Quebec to the traders being practically

an offer to bribe Radisson and Groseillers to desert England. Some

accounts say that Albanel was accompanied by Groseillers' son, but I

find no authority for this. On the other hand, Albanel does not

mention the Englishmen being present. Just as Radisson and

Groseillers, ten years before, had taken possession of the old house

battered with bullets, so Albanel took possession of the deserted huts.

Here is what his account says (Cramoisy edition of the _Relations_):

"Le 28 June à peine avions nous avancé un quart de lieue, que nous

rencontrasmes à main gauche dans un petit ruisseau un heu avec ses

agrez de dix ou dou tonneaux, qui portoit le Pavilion Anglois et la

voile latine; delà à la portée du fusil, nous entrasmes dans deux

maisons desertes . . . nous rencontrasmes deux ou trois cabanes et un

chien abandonné. . . ." His tampering with the Indians was simply the

presentation of gifts to attract them to Quebec.

[11] See State Papers, Canadian Archives: M. Frontenac, the commander

of French (?) king's troops at Hudson Bay, introduces and recommends

Father Albanel.

[12] State Papers, Canadian Archives.

[13] For some years there were sensational reports that Mistassini was

larger than Lake Superior. Mr. Low, of the Canadian Geological Survey,

in a very exhaustive report, shows this is not so. Still, the lake

ranks with the large lakes of America. Mr. Low gives its dimensions as

one hundred miles long and twelve miles wide.

[14] There is a discrepancy in dates here which I leave savants to

worry out. _Albanel's Relation_ (Cramoisy) is of 1672. Thomas Gorst,

secretary to Governor Bayly, says that the quarrel took place in 1674.

Oldmixon, who wrote from hearsay, says in 1673. Robson, who had access

to Hudson's Bay records, says 1676; and I am inclined to think they all

agree. In a word, Radisson and Groseillers were on bad terms with the

local Hudson's Bay Company governor from the first, and the open

quarrel took place only in 1675. Considering the bigotry of the times,

the quarrel was only natural. Bayly was governor, but he could not

take precedence over Radisson and Groseillers. He was Protestant and

English. They were Catholics and French. Besides, they were really at

the English governor's mercy; for they could not go back to Canada

until publicly pardoned by the French king.

[15] State Papers, Canadian Archives, October 20, 1676, Quebec: Report

of proceedings regarding the price of beaver . . . by an ordinance,

October 19, 1676, M. Jacques Duchesneau, Intendant, had called a

meeting of the leading fur traders to consult about fixing the price of

beaver. There were present, among others, Robert, Cavelier de la

Salle, . . . Charles le Moyne, . . . two Godefroys of Three

Rivers, . . . Groseillers, . . . Jolliet, . . . Pierre Radisson.

[16] Mr. Low's geological report on Labrador contains interesting

particulars of the route followed by Father Albanel. He speaks of the

gorge and swamps and difficult _portages_ in precisely the same way as

the priest, though Albanel must have encountered the worst possible

difficulties on the route, for he went down so early in the spring.

CHAPTER VI

1682-1684

RADISSON GIVES UP A CAREER IN THE NAVY FOR THE FUR TRADE

Though opposed by the Monopolists of Quebec, he secures Ships for a

Voyage to Hudson Bay--Here he encounters a Pirate Ship from Boston and

an English Ship of the Hudson's Bay Company--How he plays his Cards to

win against Both Rivals

A clever man may be a dangerous rival. Both France and England

recognized this in Radisson. The Hudson's Bay Company distrusted him

because he was a foreigner. The fur traders of Quebec were jealous.

The Hudson's Bay Company had offered him a pension of 100 pounds a year

to do nothing. France had pardoned his secession to England, paid his

debts, and given him a position in the navy, and when the fleet was

wrecked returning from the campaign against Dutch possessions in the

West Indies, the French king advanced money for Radisson to refit

himself; but France distrusted the explorer because he had an English

wife. All that France and England wanted Radisson to do was to keep

quiet. What the haughty spirit of Radisson would _not_ do for all the

fortunes which two nations could offer to bribe him--was to keep quiet.

He cared more for the game than the winnings; and the game of sitting

still and drawing a pension for doing nothing was altogether too tame

for Radisson. Groseillers gave up the struggle and retired for the

time to his family at Three Rivers. At Quebec, in 1676, Radisson heard

of others everywhere reaping where he had sown. Jolliet and La Salle

were preparing to push the fur trade of New France westward of the

Great Lakes, where Radisson had penetrated twenty years previously.

Fur traders of Quebec, who organized under the name of the Company of

the North, yearly sent their canoes up the Ottawa, St. Maurice, and

Saguenay to the forests south of Hudson Bay, which Radisson had

traversed. On the bay itself the English company were entrenched.

North, northwest, and west, Radisson had been the explorer; but the

reward of his labor had been snatched by other hands.

[Illustration: "Skin for Skin," Coat of Arms and Motto, Hudson's Bay

Company.]

Radisson must have served meritoriously on the fleet, for after the

wreck he was offered the command of a man-of-war; but he asked for a

commission to New France. From this request there arose complications.

His wife's family, the Kirkes, had held claims against New France from

the days when the Kirkes of Boston had captured Quebec. These claims

now amounted to 40,000 pounds. M. Colbert, the great French statesman,

hesitated to give a commission to a man allied by marriage with the

enemies of New France. Radisson at last learned why preferment had

been denied him. It was on account of his wife. Twice Radisson

journeyed to London for Mary Kirke. Those were times of an easy change

in faith. Charles II was playing double with Catholics and

Protestants. The Kirkes were closely attached to the court; and it

was, perhaps, not difficult for the Huguenot wife to abjure

Protestantism and declare herself a convert to the religion of her

husband. But when Radisson proposed taking her back to France, that

was another matter. Sir John Kirke forbade his daughter's departure

till the claims of the Kirke family against New France had been paid.

When Radisson returned without his wife, he was reproached by M.

Colbert for disloyalty. The government refused its patronage to his

plans for the fur trade; but M. Colbert sent him to confer with La

Chesnaye, a prominent fur trader and member of the Council in New

France, who happened to be in Paris at that time. La Chesnaye had been

sent out to Canada to look after the affairs of a Rouen fur-trading

company. Soon he became a commissioner of the West Indies Company; and

when the merchants of Quebec organized the Company of the North, La

Chesnaye became a director. No one knew better than he how bitterly

the monopolists of Quebec would oppose Radisson's plans for a trip to

Hudson Bay; but the prospects were alluring. La Chesnaye was deeply

involved in the fur trade and snatched at the chance of profits to

stave off the bankruptcy that reduced him to beggary a few years later.

In defiance of the rival companies and independent of those with which

he was connected, he offered to furnish ships and share profits with

Radisson and Groseillers for a voyage to Hudson Bay.

M. Colbert did not give his patronage to the scheme; but he wished

Radisson a God-speed. The Jesuits advanced Radisson money to pay his

passage; and in the fall of 1681, he arrived in Quebec. La Chesnaye

met him, and Groseillers was summoned. The three then went to the

Château Saint-Louis to lay their plans before the governor. Though the

privileges of the West Indies Company had been curtailed, the fur trade

was again regulated by license.[1] Frontenac had granted a license to

the Company of the North for the fur trade of Hudson Bay. He could not

openly favor Radisson; but he winked at the expedition by granting

passports to the explorers, and the three men who were to accompany

him, Jean Baptiste, son of Groseillers, Pierre Allemand, the pilot who

was afterward given a commission to explore the Eskimo country, and

Jean Godefroy, an interpreter.[2] Jean Baptiste, Radisson's nephew,

invested 500 pounds in goods for barter. Others of Three Rivers and

Quebec advanced money, to provision the ship.[3] Ten days after

Radisson's arrival in Quebec, the explorers had left the high fortress

of the St. Lawrence to winter in Acadia. When spring came, they went

with the fishing fleets to Isle Percée, where La Chesnaye was to send

the ships. Radisson's ship, the _St. Pierre_,--named after

himself,--came first, a rickety sloop of fifty tons with a crew of

twelve mutinous, ill-fed men, a cargo of goods for barter, and scant

enough supply of provisions. Groseillers' ship, the _St. Anne_, was

smaller and better built, with a crew of fifteen. The explorers set

sail on the 11th of July. From the first there was trouble with the

crews. Fresh-water _voyageurs_ make bad ocean sailors. Food was

short. The voyage was to be long. It was to unknown waters, famous

for disaster. The sea was boisterous. In the months of June and July,

the North Atlantic is beset with fog and iceberg. The ice sweeps south

in mountainous bergs that have thawed and split before they reach the

temperate zones.[4] On the 30th of July the two ships passed the

Straits of Belle Isle. Fog-banks hung heavy on the blue of the far

watery horizon. Out of the fog, like ghosts in gloom, drifted the

shadowy ice-floes. The coast of Labrador consists of bare, domed,

lonely hills alternated with rock walls rising sheer from the sea as

some giant masonry. Here the rock is buttressed by a sharp angle

knife-edged in a precipice. There, the beetling walls are guarded by

long reefs like the teeth of a saw. Over these reefs, the drifting

tide breaks with multitudinous voices. The French _voyageurs_ had

never known such seafaring. In the wail of the white-foamed reefs,

their superstition heard the shriek of the demons. The explorers had

anchored in one of the sheltered harbors, which the sailors call

"holes-in-the-wall." The crews mutinied. They would go no farther

through ice-drift and fog to an unknown sea. Radisson never waited for

the contagion of fear to work. He ordered anchors up and headed for

open sea. Then he tried to encourage the sailors with promises. They

would not hear him; for the ship's galley was nearly empty of food.

Then Radisson threatened the first mutineer to show rebellion with such

severe punishment as the hard customs of the age permitted. The crew

sulked, biding its time. At that moment the lookout shouted "Sail ho!"

All hands discerned a ship with a strange sail, such as Dutch and

Spanish pirates carried, bearing down upon them shoreward. The lesser

fear was forgotten in the greater. The _St. Pierre's_ crew crowded

sail. Heading about, the two explorers' ships threaded the rock reefs

like pursued deer. The pirate came on full speed before the wind.

Night fell while Radisson was still hiding among the rocks.

Notwithstanding reefs and high seas, while the pirate ship hove to for

the night, Radisson stole out in the dark and gave his pursuer the

slip. The chase had saved him a mutiny.

As the vessels drove northward, the ice drifted past like a white world

afloat. When Radisson approached the entrance to Hudson Bay, he met

floes in impenetrable masses. So far the ships had avoided delay by

tacking along the edges of the ice-fields, from lake to lake of ocean

surrounded by ice. Now the ice began to crush together, driven by wind

and tide with furious enough force to snap the two ships like

egg-shells. Radisson watched for a free passage, and, with a wind to

rear, scudded for shelter of a hole-in-the-wall. Here he met the

Eskimo, and provisions were replenished; but the dangers of the

ice-fields had frightened the crews again. In two days Radisson put to

sea to avoid a second mutiny. The wind was landward, driving the ice

back from the straits, and they passed safely into Hudson Bay. The ice

again surrounded them; but it was useless for the men to mutiny. Ice

blocked up all retreat. Jammed among the floes, Groseillers was afraid

to carry sail, and fell behind. Radisson drove ahead, now skirting the

ice-floes, now pounded by breaking icebergs, now crashing into surface

brash or puddled ice to the fore. "We were like to have perished," he

writes, "but God was pleased to preserve us."

On the 26th of August, six weeks after sailing from Isle Percée,

Radisson rode triumphantly in on the tide to Hayes River, south of

Nelson River, where he had been with the English ships ten years

before. Two weeks later the _Ste. Anne_, with Groseillers, arrived.

The two ships cautiously ascended the river, seeking a harbor. Fifteen

miles from salt water, Radisson anchored. At last he was back in his

native element, the wilderness, where man must set himself to conquer

and take dominion over earth.

Groseillers was always the trader, Radisson the explorer. Leaving his

brother-in-law to build the fort, Radisson launched a canoe on Hayes

River to explore inland. Young Jean Groseillers accompanied him to

look after the trade with the Indians.[5] For eight days they paddled

up a river that was destined to be the path of countless traders and

pioneers for two centuries, and that may yet be destined to become the

path of a northern commerce. By September the floodtide of Hayes River

had subsided. In a week the _voyageurs_ had travelled probably three

hundred miles, and were within the region of Lake Winnipeg, where the

Cree hunters assemble in October for the winter. Radisson had come to

this region by way of Lake Superior with the Cree hunters twenty years

before, and his visit had become a tradition among the tribes. Beaver

are busy in October gnawing down young saplings for winter food.

Radisson observed chips floating past the canoe. Where there are

beaver, there should be Indians; so the _voyageurs_ paddled on. One

night, as they lay round the camp-fire, with canoes overturned, a deer,

startled from its evening drinking-place, bounded from the thicket. A

sharp whistle--and an Indian ran from the brush of an island opposite

the camp, signalling the white men to head the deer back; but when

Radisson called from the waterside, the savage took fright and dashed

for the woods.

All that night the _voyageurs_ kept sleepless guard. In the morning

they moved to the island and kindled a signal-fire to call the Indians.

In a little while canoes cautiously skirted the island, and the chief

of the band stood up, bow and arrow in hand. Pointing his arrows to

the deities of north, south, east, and west, he broke the shaft to

splinters, as a signal of peace, and chanted his welcome:--

"Ho, young men, be not afraid!

The sun is favorable to us!

Our enemies shall fear us!

This is the man we have wished

Since the days of our fathers!"

With a leap, the chief sprang into the water and swam ashore, followed

by all the canoes. Radisson called out to know who was commander. The

chief, with a sign as old and universal as humanity, bowed his head in

servility. Radisson took the Indian by the hand, and, seating him by

the fire, chanted an answer in Cree:--

"I know all the earth!

Your friends shall be my friends!

I come to bring you arms to destroy your enemies!

Nor wife nor child shall die of hunger!

For I have brought you merchandise!

Be of good cheer!

I will be thy son!

I have brought thee a father!

He is yonder below building a fort

Where I have two great ships!" [6]

The chief kept pace with the profuse compliments by vowing the life of

his tribe in service of the white man. Radisson presented pipes and

tobacco to the Indians. For the chief he reserved a fowling-piece with

powder and shot. White man and Indian then exchanged blankets.

Presents were sent for the absent wives. The savages were so grateful

that they cast all their furs at Radisson's feet, and promised to bring

their hunt to the fort in spring. In Paris and London Radisson had

been harassed by jealousy. In the wilderness he was master of

circumstance; but a surprise awaited him at Groseillers' fort.

The French habitation--called Fort Bourbon--had been built on the north

shore of Hayes or Ste. Therese River. Directly north, overland, was

another broad river with a gulflike entrance. This was the Nelson.

Between the two rivers ran a narrow neck of swampy, bush-grown land.

The day that Radisson returned to the newly erected fort, there rolled

across the marshes the ominous echo of cannon-firing. Who could the

newcomers be? A week's sail south at the head of the bay were the

English establishments of the Hudson's Bay Company. The season was far

advanced. Had English ships come to winter on Nelson River? Ordering

Jean Groseillers to go back inland to the Indians, Radisson launched

down Hayes River in search of the strange ship. He went to the salt

water, but saw nothing. Upon returning, he found that Jean Groseillers

had come back to the fort with news of more cannonading farther inland.

Radisson rightly guessed that the ship had sailed up Nelson River,

firing cannon as she went to notify Indians for trade. Picking out

three intrepid men, Radisson crossed the marsh by a creek which the

Indian canoes used, to go to Nelson River.[7] Through the brush the

scout spied a white tent on an island. All night the Frenchmen lay in

the woods, watching their rivals and hoping that some workman might

pass close enough to be seized and questioned. At noon, next day,

Radisson's patience was exhausted. He paddled round the island, and

showed himself a cannon-shot distant from the fort. Holding up a pole,

Radisson waved as if he were an Indian afraid to approach closer in

order to trade. The others hallooed a welcome and gabbled out Indian

words from a guide-book. Radisson paddled a length closer. The others

ran eagerly down to the water side away from their cannon. In signal

of friendship, they advanced unarmed. Radisson must have laughed to

see how well his ruse worked.

"Who are you?" he demanded in plain English, "and what do you want?"

The traders called back that they were Englishmen come for beaver.

Again the crafty Frenchman must have laughed; for he knew very well

that all English ships except those of the Hudson's Bay Company were

prohibited by law from coming here to trade.[8] Though the strange

ship displayed an English ensign, the flag did not show the magical

letters "H. B. C."