Pathfinders of the West / Being the Thrilling Story of the Adventures of the Men Who / Discovered the Great Northwest: Radisson, La Vérendrye, / Lewis and Clark

by Agnes C. Laut

Pathfinders of the West

CHAPTER I

1651-1653

RADISSON'S FIRST VOYAGE

The Boy Radisson is captured by the Iroquois and carried to the Mohawk Valley—In League with Another Captive, he slays their Guards and escapes—He is overtaken in Sight of Home—Tortured and adopted in the Tribe, he visits Orange, where the Dutch offer to ransom him—His Escape

Early one morning in the spring of 1652 three young men left the little stockaded fort of Three Rivers, on the north bank of the St. Lawrence, for a day's hunting in the marshes of Lake St. Peter. On one side were the forested hills, purple with the mists of rising vapor and still streaked with white patches of snow where the dense woods shut out the sunlight. On the other lay the silver expanse of the St. Lawrence, more like a lake than a river, with mile on mile southwestward of rush-grown marshes, where plover and curlew and duck and wild geese flocked to their favorite feeding-grounds three hundred years ago just as they do to-day. Northeastward, the three mouths of the St. Maurice poured their spring flood into the St. Lawrence.

The hunters were very young. Only hunters rash with the courage of untried youth would have left the shelter of the fort walls when all the world knew that the Iroquois had been lying in ambush round the little settlement of Three Rivers day and night for the preceding year. Not a week passed but some settler working on the outskirts of Three Rivers was set upon and left dead in his fields by marauding Iroquois. The tortures suffered by Jogues, the great Jesuit missionary who had been captured by the Iroquois a few years before, were still fresh in the memory of every man, woman, and child in New France. It was from Three Rivers that Piescaret, the famous Algonquin chief who could outrun a deer, had set out against the Iroquois, turning his snowshoes back to front, so that the track seemed to lead north when he was really going south, and then, having thrown his pursuers off the trail, coming back on his own footsteps, slipping up stealthily on the Iroquois that were following the false scent, and tomahawking the laggards.[1] It was from Three Rivers that the Mohawks had captured the Algonquin girl who escaped by slipping off the thongs that bound her. Stepping over the prostrate forms of her sleeping guards, such a fury of revenge possessed her that she seized an axe and brained the nearest sleeper, then eluded her pursuers by first hiding in a hollow tree and afterward diving under the debris of a beaver dam.

[Illustration: Three Rivers in 1757.]

These things were known to every inhabitant of Three Rivers. Farmers had flocked into the little fort and could venture back to their fields only when armed with a musket.[2] Yet the three young hunters rashly left the shelter of the fort walls and took the very dangerous path that led between the forests and the water. One of the young men was barely in his seventeenth year.[3] This was Pierre Esprit Radisson, from St. Malo, the town of the famous Cartier. Young Radisson had only come to New France the year before, and therefore could not realize the dangers of Indian warfare. Like boys the world over, the three went along, boasting how they would fight if the Indians came. One skirted the forest, on the watch for Iroquois, the others kept to the water, on the lookout for game. About a mile from Three Rivers they encountered a herdsman who warned them to keep out from the foot of the hills. Things that looked like a multitude of heads had risen out of the earth back there, he said, pointing to the forests. That set the young hunters loading their pistols and priming muskets. It must also have chilled their zest; for, shooting some ducks, one of the young men presently declared that he had had enough—he was going back. With that daring which was to prove both the lodestar and the curse of his life, young Radisson laughed to scorn the sudden change of mind. Thereupon the first hunter was joined by the second, and the two went off in high dudgeon. With a laugh, Pierre Radisson marched along alone, foreshadowing his after life,—a type of every pathfinder facing the dangers of the unknown with dauntless scorn, an immortal type of the world-hero.

Shooting at every pace and hilarious over his luck, Radisson had wandered some nine miles from the fort, when he came to a stream too deep to ford and realized that he already had more game than he could possibly carry. Hiding in hollow trees what he could not bring back, he began trudging toward Three Rivers with a string of geese, ducks, and odd teal over his shoulders, Wading swollen brooks and scrambling over windfalls, he retraced his way without pause till he caught sight of the town chapel glimmering in the sunlight against the darkening horizon above the river. He was almost back where his comrades had left him; so he sat down to rest. The cowherd had driven his cattle back to Three Rivers.[4] The river came lapping through the rushes. There was a clacking of wild-fowl flocking down to their marsh nests; perhaps a crane flopped through the reeds; but Radisson, who had laughed the nervous fears of the others to scorn, suddenly gave a start at the lonely sounds of twilight. Then he noticed that his pistols were water-soaked. Emptying the charges, he at once reloaded, and with characteristic daring crept softly back to reconnoitre the woods. Dodging from tree to tree, he peered up and down the river. Great flocks of ducks were swimming on the water. That reassured him, for the bird is more alert to alarm than man. The fort was almost within call. Radisson determined to have a shot at such easy quarry; but as he crept through the grass toward the game, he almost stumbled over what rooted him to the spot with horror. Just as they had fallen, naked and scalped, with bullet and hatchet wounds all over their bodies, lay his comrades of the morning, dead among the rushes. Radisson was too far out to get back to the woods. Stooping, he tried to grope to the hiding of the rushes. As he bent, half a hundred heads rose from the grasses, peering which way he might go. They were behind, before, on all sides—his only hope was a dash for the cane-grown river, where he might hide by diving and wading, till darkness gave a chance for a rush to the fort. Slipping bullet and shot in his musket as he ran, and ramming down the paper, hoping against hope that he had not been seen, he dashed through the brushwood. A score of guns crashed from the forest.[5] Before he realized the penalty that the Iroquois might exact for such an act, he had fired back; but they were upon him. He was thrown down and disarmed. When he came giddily to his senses, he found himself being dragged back to the woods, where the Iroquois flaunted the fresh scalps of his dead friends. Half drawn, half driven, he was taken to the shore. Here, a flotilla of canoes lay concealed where he had been hunting wild-fowl but a few hours before. Fires were kindled, and the crotched sticks driven in the ground to boil the kettle for the evening meal. The young Frenchman was searched, stripped, and tied round the waist with a rope, the Indians yelling and howling like so many wolves all the while till a pause was given their jubilation by the alarm of a scout that the French and Algonquins were coming. In a trice, the fire was out and covered. A score of young braves set off to reconnoitre. Fifty remained at the boats; but if Radisson hoped for a rescue, he was doomed to disappointment. The warriors returned. Seventy Iroquois gathered round a second fire for the night. The one predominating passion of the savage nature is bravery. Lying in ambush, they had heard this French youth laugh at his comrades' fears. In defiance of danger, they had seen him go hunting alone. After he had heard an alarm, he had daringly come out to shoot at the ducks. And, then, boy as he was, when attacked he had instantly fired back at numerous enough enemies to have intimidated a score of grown men. There is not the slightest doubt it was Radisson's bravery that now saved him from the fate of his companions.

His clothes were returned. While the evening meal was boiling, young warriors dressed and combed the Frenchman's hair after the manner of braves. They daubed his cheeks with war-paint; and when they saw that their rancid meats turned him faint, they boiled meat in clean water and gave him meal browned on burning sand.[6] He did not struggle to escape, so he was now untied. That night he slept between two warriors under a common blanket, through which he counted the stars. For fifty years his home was to be under the stars. It is typically Radisson when he could add: "I slept a sound sleep; for they wakened me upon the breaking of the day." In the morning they embarked in thirty-seven canoes, two Indians in each boat, with Radisson tied to the cross-bar of one, the scalps lying at his feet. Spreading out on the river, they beat their paddles on the gunwales of the canoes, shot off guns, and uttered the shrill war-cry—"Ah-oh! Ah-oh! Ah-oh!" [7] Lest this were not sufficient defiance to the penned-up fort on the river bank, the chief stood up in his canoe, signalled silence, and gave three shouts. At once the whole company answered till the hills rang; and out swung the fleet of canoes with more shouting and singing and firing of guns, each paddle-stroke sounding the death knell to the young Frenchman's hopes.

By sunset they were among the islands at the mouth of the Richelieu, where muskrats scuttled through the rushes and wild-fowl clouded the air. The south shore of Lake St. Peter was heavily forested; the north, shallow. The lake was flooded with spring thaw, and the Mohawks could scarcely find camping-ground among the islands. The young prisoner was deathly sick from the rank food that he had eaten and heart-sick from the widening distance between himself and Three Rivers. Still, they treated him kindly, saying, "Chagon! Chagon!—Be merry! Cheer up!" The fourth day up the Richelieu, he was embarked without being fastened to the cross-bar, and he was given a paddle. Fresh to the work, Radisson made a labor of his oar. The Iroquois took the paddle and taught him how to give the light, deft, feather strokes of the Indian canoeman. On the river they met another band of warriors, and the prisoner was compelled to show himself a trophy of victory and to sing songs for his captors. That evening the united bands kindled an enormous campfire and with the scalps of the dead flaunting from spear heads danced the scalp dance, reënacting in pantomime all the episodes of the massacre to the monotonous chant-chant, of a recitative relating the foray. At the next camping-ground, Radisson's hair was shaved in front and decorated on top with the war-crest of a brave. Having translated the white man into a savage, they brought him one of the tin looking-glasses used by Indians to signal in the sun. "I, viewing myself all in a pickle," relates Radisson, "smeared with red and black, covered with such a top, … could not but fall in love with myself, if I had not had better instructions to shun the sin of pride."

Radisson saw that apparent compliance with the Mohawks might win him a chance to escape; so he was the first to arise in the morning, wakening the others and urging them that it was time to break camp. The stolid Indians were not to be moved by an audacious white boy. Watching the young prisoner, the keepers lay still, feigning sleep. Radisson rose. They made no protest. He wandered casually down to the water side. One can guess that the half-closed eyelids of his guards opened a trifle: was the mouse trying to get away from the cat? To the Indians' amusement, instead of trying to escape, Radisson picked up a spear and practised tossing it, till a Mohawk became so interested that he jumped up and taught the young Frenchman the proper throws. That day the Indians gave him the present of a hunting-knife. North of Lake Champlain, the river became so turbulent that they were forced to land and make a portage. Instead of lagging, as captives frequently did from very fear as they approached nearer and nearer what was almost certain to mean death-torture in the Iroquois villages—Radisson hurried over the rocks, helping the older warriors to carry their packs. At night he was the first to cut wood for the camp fire.

About a week from the time they had left Lake St. Peter, they entered Lake Champlain. On the shores of the former had been enacted the most hideous of all Indian customs—the scalp dance. On the shores of the latter was performed one of the most redeeming rites of Indian warfare. Round a small pool of water a coppice of branches was interlaced. Into the water were thrown hot stones till the enclosure was steaming. Here each warrior took a sweat-bath of purification to prepare for reunion with his family. Invoking the spirits as they bathed, the warriors emerged washed—as they thought—of all blood-guilt.[8]

[Illustration: Map of the Iroquois country in the days of Radisson.]

In the night shots sounded through the heavy silence of the forest, and the Mohawks embarked in alarm, compelling their white prisoner to lie flat in the bottom of the canoe. In the morning when he awakened, he found the entire band hidden among the rushes of the lake. They spent several days on Lake Champlain, then glided past wooded mountains down a calm river to Lake George, where canoes were abandoned and the warriors struck westward through dense forests to the country of the Iroquois. Two days from the lake slave women met the returning braves, and in Radisson's words, "loaded themselves like mules with baggage." On this woodland march Radisson won golden opinions for himself by two acts: struck by an insolent young brave, he thrashed the culprit soundly; seeing an old man staggering under too heavy a load, the white youth took the burden on his own shoulders.

The return of the warriors to their villages was always celebrated as a triumph. The tribe marched out to meet them, singing, firing guns, shouting a welcome, dancing as the Israelites danced of old when victors returned from battle. Men, women, and children lined up on each side armed with clubs and whips to scourge the captives. Well for Radisson that he had won the warriors' favor; for when the time came for him to run the gantlet of Iroquois diableries, instead of being slowly led, with trussed arms and shackled feet, he was stripped free and signalled to run so fast that his tormentors could not hit him. Shrieks of laughter from the women, shouts of applause from the men, always greeted the racer who reached the end of the line unscathed. A captive Huron woman, who had been adopted by the tribe, caught the white boy as he dashed free of a single blow clear through the lines of tormentors. Leading him to her cabin, she fed and clothed him. Presently a band of braves marched up, demanded the surrender of Radisson, and took him to the Council Lodge of the Iroquois for judgment.

Old men sat solemnly round a central fire, smoking their calumets in silence. Radisson was ordered to sit down. A coal of fire was put in the bowl of the great Council Pipe and passed reverently round the assemblage. Then the old Huron woman entered, gesticulating and pleading for the youth's life. The men smoked on silently with deep, guttural "ho-ho's," meaning "yes, yes, we are pleased." The woman was granted permission to adopt Radisson as a son. Radisson had won his end. Diplomacy and courage had saved his life. It now remained to await an opportunity for escape.

Radisson bent all his energies to become a great hunter. He was given firearms, and daily hunted with the family of his adoption. It so happened that the family had lost a son in the wars, whose name had signified the same as Radisson's—that is, "a stone"; so the Pierre of Three Rivers became the Orimha of the Mohawks. The Iroquois husband of the woman who had befriended him gave such a feast to the Mohawk braves as befitted the prestige of a warrior who had slain nineteen enemies with his own hand. Three hundred young Mohawks sat down to a collation of moose nose and beaver tails and bears' paws, served by slaves. To this banquet Radisson was led, decked out in colored blankets with garnished leggings and such a wealth of wampum strings hanging from wrists, neck, hair, and waist that he could scarcely walk. Wampum means more to the Indian than money to the white man. It represents not only wealth but social standing, and its value may be compared to the white man's estimate of pink pearls. Diamond-cutters seldom spend more than two weeks in polishing a good stone. An Indian would spend thirty days in perfecting a single bit of shell into fine wampum. Radisson's friends had ornamented him for the feast in order to win the respect of the Mohawks for the French boy. Striking his hatchet through a kettle of sagamite to signify thus would he break peace to all Radisson's foes, the old Iroquois warrior made a speech to the assembled guests. The guests clapped their hands and shouted, "Chagon, Orimha!—Be merry, Pierre!" The Frenchman had been formally adopted as a Mohawk.

The forests were now painted in all the glories of autumn. All the creatures of the woodlands shook off the drowsy laziness of summer and came down from the uplands seeking haunts for winter retreat. Moose and deer were on the move. Beaver came splashing down-stream to plaster up their wattled homes before frost. Bear and lynx and marten, all were restless as the autumn winds instinct with coming storm. This is the season when the Indian sets out to hunt and fight. Furnished with clothing, food, and firearms, Radisson left the Mohawk Valley with three hunters. By the middle of August, the rind of the birch is in perfect condition for peeling. The first thing the hunters did was to slit off the bark of a thick-girthed birch and with cedar linings make themselves a skiff. Then they prepared to lay up a store of meat for the winter's war-raids. Before ice forms a skim across the still pools, nibbled chips betray where a beaver colony is at work; so the hunters began setting beaver traps. One night as they were returning to their wigwam, there came through the leafy darkness the weird sound of a man singing. It was a solitary Algonquin captive, who called out that he had been on the track of a bear since daybreak. He probably belonged to some well-known Iroquois, for he was welcomed to the camp-fire. The sight of a face from Three Rivers roused the Algonquin's memories of his northern home. In the noise of the crackling fire, he succeeded in telling Radisson, without being overheard by the Iroquois, that he had been a captive for two years and longed to escape.

"Do you love the French?" the Algonquin asked Radisson.

"Do you love the Algonquin?" returned Radisson, knowing they were watched.

"As I do my own nation." Then leaning across to Radisson, "Brother—white man!—Let us escape! The Three Rivers—it is not far off! Will you live like a Huron in bondage, or have your liberty with the French?" Then, lowering his voice, "Let us kill all three this night when they are asleep!"

From such a way of escape, the French youth held back. The Algonquin continued to urge him. By this time, Radisson must have heard from returning Iroquois warriors that they had slain the governor of Three Rivers, Duplessis-Kerbodot, and eleven other Frenchmen, among whom was the husband of Radisson's eldest sister, Marguerite.[9]

While Radisson was still hesitating, the suspicious Iroquois demanded what so much whispering was about; but the alert Algonquin promptly quieted their fears by trumping up some hunting story. Wearied from their day's hunt, the three Mohawks slept heavily round the camp-fire. They had not the least suspicion of danger, for they had stacked their arms carelessly against the trees of the forest. Terrified lest the Algonquin should attempt to carry out his threat, Radisson pretended to be asleep. Rising noiselessly, the Algonquin sat down by the fire. The Mohawks slept on. The Algonquin gave Radisson a push. The French boy looked up to see the Algonquin studying the postures of the sleeping forms. The dying fire glimmered like a blotch of blood under the trees. Stepping stealthy as a cat over the sleeping men, the Indian took possession of their firearms. Drawn by a kind of horror, Radisson had risen. The Algonquin thrust one of the tomahawks into the French lad's hands and pointed without a word at the three sleeping Mohawks. Then the Indian began the black work. The Mohawk nearest the fire never knew that he had been struck, and died without a sound. Radisson tried to imitate the relentless Algonquin, but, unnerved with horror, he bungled the blow and lost hold of the hatchet just as it struck the Mohawk's head. The Iroquois sprang up with a shout that awakened the third man, but the Algonquin was ready. Radisson's blow proved fatal. The victim reeled back dead, and the third man was already despatched by the Algonquin.

Radisson was free. It was a black deed that freed him, but not half so black as the deeds perpetrated in civilized wars for less cause; and for that deed Radisson was to pay swift retribution.

Taking the scalps as trophies to attest his word, the Algonquin threw the bodies into the river. He seized all the belongings of the dead men but one gun and then launched out with Radisson on the river. The French youth was conscience-stricken. "I was sorry to have been in such an encounter," he writes, "but it was too late to repent." Under cover of the night mist and shore foliage, they slipped away with the current. At first dawn streak, while the mist still hid them, they landed, carried their canoe to a sequestered spot in the dense forest, and lay hidden under the upturned skiff all that day, tormented by swarms of mosquitoes and flies, but not daring to move from concealment. At nightfall, they again launched down-stream, keeping always in the shadows of the shore till mist and darkness shrouded them, then sheering off for mid-current, where they paddled for dear life. Where camp-fires glimmered on the banks, they glided past with motionless paddles. Across Lake Champlain, across the Richelieu, over long portages where every shadow took the shape of an ambushed Iroquois, for fourteen nights they travelled, when at last with many windings and false alarms they swept out on the wide surface of Lake St. Peter in the St. Lawrence.

Within a day's journey of Three Rivers, they were really in greater danger than they had been in the forests of Lake Champlain. Iroquois had infested that part of the St. Lawrence for more than a year. The forest of the south shore, the rush-grown marshes, the wooded islands, all afforded impenetrable hiding. It was four in the morning when they reached Lake St. Peter. Concealing their canoe, they withdrew to the woods, cooked their breakfast, covered the fire, and lay down to sleep. In a couple of hours the Algonquin impatiently wakened Radisson and urged him to cross the lake to the north shore on the Three Rivers side. Radisson warned the Indian that the Iroquois were ever lurking about Three Rivers. The Indian would not wait till sunset. "Let us go," he said. "We are past fear. Let us shake off the yoke of these whelps that have killed so many French and black robes (priests).… If you come not now that we are so near, I leave you, and will tell the governor you were afraid to come."

Radisson's judgment was overruled by the impatient Indian. They pushed their skiff out from the rushes. The water lay calm as a sea of silver. They paddled directly across to get into hiding on the north shore. Halfway across Radisson, who was at the bow, called out that he saw shadows on the water ahead. The Indian stood up and declared that the shadow was the reflection of a flying bird. Barely had they gone a boat length when the shadows multiplied. They were the reflections of Iroquois ambushed among the rushes. Heading the canoe back for the south shore, they raced for their lives. The Iroquois pursued in their own boats. About a mile from the shore, the strength of the fugitives fagged. Knowing that the Iroquois were gaining fast, Radisson threw out the loathsome scalps that the Algonquin had persisted in carrying. By that strange fatality which seems to follow crime, instead of sinking, the hairy scalps floated on the surface of the water back to the pursuing Iroquois. Shouts of rage broke from the warriors. Radisson's skiff was so near the south shore that he could see the pebbled bottom of the lake; but the water was too deep to wade and too clear for a dive, and there was no driftwood to afford hiding. Then a crash of musketry from the Iroquois knocked the bottom out of the canoe. The Algonquin fell dead with two bullet wounds in his head and the canoe gradually filled, settled, and sank, with the young Frenchman clinging to the cross-bar mute as stone. Just as it disappeared under water, Radisson was seized, and the dead Algonquin was thrown into the Mohawk boats.

Radisson alone remained to pay the penalty of a double crime; and he might well have prayed for the boat to sink. The victors shouted their triumph. Hurrying ashore, they kindled a great fire. They tore the heart from the dead Algonquin, transfixed the head on a pike, and cast the mutilated body into the flames for those cannibal rites in which savages thought they gained courage by eating the flesh of their enemies. Radisson was rifled of clothes and arms, trussed at the elbows, roped round the waist, and driven with blows back to the canoes. There were other captives among the Mohawks. As the canoes emerged from the islands, Radisson counted one hundred and fifty Iroquois warriors, with two French captives, one white woman, and seventeen Hurons. Flaunting from the canoe prows were the scalps of eleven Algonquins. The victors fired off their muskets and shouted defiance until the valley rang. As the seventy-five canoes turned up the Richelieu River for the country of the Iroquois, hope died in the captive Hurons and there mingled with the chant of the Mohawks' war-songs, the low monotonous dirge of the prisoners:—

"If I die, I die valiant!
I go without fear
To that land where brave men
Have gone long before me--
If I die, I die valiant."

Twelve miles up the Richelieu, the Iroquois landed to camp. The prisoners were pegged out on the sand, elbows trussed to knees, each captive tied to a post. In this fashion they lay every night of encampment, tortured by sand-flies that they were powerless to drive off. At the entrance to the Mohawk village, a yoke was fastened to the captives' necks by placing pairs of saplings one on each side down the line of prisoners. By the rope round the waist of the foremost prisoner, they were led slowly between the lines of tormentors. The captives were ordered to sing. If one refused or showed fear, a Mohawk struck off a finger with a hatchet, or tore the prisoners' nails out, or thrust red-hot irons into the muscles of the bound arms.[10] As Radisson appeared, he was recognized with shouts of rage by the friends of the murdered Mohawks. Men, women, and children armed with rods and skull-crackers—leather bags loaded with stones—rushed on the slowly moving file of prisoners.

"They began to cry from both sides," says Radisson; "we marching one after another, environed with people to witness that hideous sight, which seriously may be called the image of Hell in this world."

The prisoners moved mournfully on. The Hurons chanted their death dirge. The Mohawk women uttered screams of mockery. Suddenly there broke from the throng of onlookers the Iroquois family that had adopted Radisson. Pushing through the crew of torturers, the mother caught Radisson by the hair, calling him by the name of her dead son, "Orimha! Orimha!" She cut the thongs that bound him to the poles, and wresting him free shoved him to her husband, who led Radisson to their own lodge.

"Thou fool," cried the old chief, "thou wast my son! Thou makest thyself an enemy! Thou lovest us not, though we saved thy life! Wouldst kill me, too?" Then, with a rough push to a mat on the ground, "Chagon—now, be merry! It's a merry business you've got into! Give him something to eat!"

Trembling with fear, young Radisson put as bold a face on as he could and made a show of eating what the squaw placed before him. He was still relating his adventures when there came a roar of anger from the Mohawks outside, who had discovered his absence from the line. A moment later the rabble broke into the lodge. Jostling the friendly chief aside, the Mohawk warriors carried Radisson back to the orgies of the torture. The prisoners had been taken out of the stocks and placed on several scaffoldings. One poor Frenchman fell to the ground bruised and unable to rise. The Iroquois tore the scalp from his head and threw him into the fire. That was Radisson's first glimpse of what was in store for him. Then he, too, stood on the scaffolding among the other prisoners, who never ceased singing their death song. In the midst of these horrors—diableries, the Jesuits called them—as if the very elements had been moved with pity, there burst over the darkened forest a terrific hurricane of hail and rain. This put out the fires and drove all the tormentors away but a few impish children, who stayed to pluck nails from the hands and feet of the captives and shoot arrows with barbed points at the naked bodies. Every iniquity that cruelty could invent, these children practised on the captives. Red-hot spears were brought from the lodge fires and thrust into the prisoners. The mutilated finger ends were ground between stones. Thongs were twisted round wrists and ankles, by sticks put through a loop, till flesh was cut to the bone. As the rain ceased falling, a woman, who was probably the wife of one of the murdered Mohawks, brought her little boy to cut one of Radisson's fingers with a flint stone. The child was too young and ran away from the gruesome task.

Gathering darkness fell over the horrible spectacle. The exhausted captives, some in a delirium from pain, others unconscious, were led to separate lodges, or dragged over the ground, and left tied for the night. The next morning all were returned to the scaffolds, but the first day had glutted the Iroquois appetite for tortures. The friendly family was permitted to approach Radisson. The mother brought him food and told him that the Council Lodge had decided not to kill him for that day—they wanted the young white warrior for their own ranks; but even as the cheering hope was uttered, came a brave with a pipe of live coals, in which he thrust and held Radisson's thumb. No sooner had the tormentor left than the woman bound up the burn and oiled Radisson's wounds. He suffered no abuse that day till night, when the soles of both feet were burned. The majority of the captives were flung into a great bonfire. On the third day of torture he almost lost his life. First came a child to gnaw at his fingers. Then a man appeared armed for the ghastly work of mutilation. Both these the Iroquois father of Radisson sent away. Once, when none of the friendly family happened to be near, Radisson was seized and bound for burning, but by chance the lighted faggot scorched his executioner. A friendly hand slashed the thongs that bound him, and he was drawn back to the scaffold.

Past caring whether he lived or died, and in too great agony from the burns of his feet to realize where he was going, Radisson was conducted to the Great Council. Sixty old men sat on a circle of mats, smoking, round the central fire. Before them stood seven other captives. Radisson only was still bound. A gust of wind from the opening lodge door cleared the smoke for an instant and there entered Radisson's Indian father, clad in the regalia of a mighty chief. Tomahawk and calumet and medicine-bag were in his hands. He took his place in the circle of councillors. Judgment was to be given on the remaining prisoners.

After passing the Council Pipe from hand to hand in solemn silence, the sachems prepared to give their views. One arose, and offering the smoke of incense to the four winds of heaven to invoke witness to the justice of the trial, gave his opinion on the matter of life or death. Each of the chiefs in succession spoke. Without any warning whatever, one chief rose and summarily tomahawked three of the captives. That had been the sentence. The rest were driven, like sheep for the shambles, to life-long slavery.

Radisson was left last. His case was important. He had sanctioned the murder of three Mohawks. Not for a moment since he was recaptured had they dared to untie the hands of so dangerous a prisoner. Amid deathly silence, the Iroquois father stood up. Flinging down medicine-bag, fur robe, wampum belts, and tomahawk, he pointed to the nineteen scars upon his side, each of which signified an enemy slain by his own hand. Then the old Mohawk broke into one of those impassioned rhapsodies of eloquence which delighted the savage nature, calling back to each of the warriors recollection of victories for the Iroquois. His eyes took fire from memory of heroic battle. The councillors shook off their imperturbable gravity and shouted "Ho, ho!" Each man of them had a memory of his part in those past glories. And as they applauded, there glided into the wigwam the mother, singing some battle-song of valor, dancing and gesticulating round and round the lodge in dizzy, serpentine circlings, that illustrated in pantomime those battles of long ago. Gliding ghostily from the camp-fire to the outer dark, she suddenly stopped, stood erect, advanced a step, and with all her might threw one belt of priceless wampum at the councillors' feet, one necklace over the prisoner's head.

Before the applause could cease or the councillors' ardor cool, the adopted brother sprang up, hatchet in hand, and sang of other victories. Then, with a delicacy of etiquette which white pleaders do not always observe, father and son withdrew from the Council Lodge to let the jury deliberate. The old sachems were disturbed. They had been moved more than their wont. Twenty withdrew to confer. Dusk gathered deeper and deeper over the forests of the Mohawk Valley. Tawny faces came peering at the doors, waiting for the decision. Outsiders tore the skins from the walls of the lodge that they, too, might witness the memorable trial of the boy prisoner. Sachem after sachem rose and spoke. Tobacco was sacrificed to the fire-god. Would the relatives of the dead Mohawks consider the wampum belts full compensation? Could the Iroquois suffer a youth to live who had joined the murderers of the Mohawks? Could the Mohawks afford to offend the great Iroquois chief who was the French youth's friend? As they deliberated, the other councillors returned, accompanied by all the members of Radisson's friendly family. Again the father sang and spoke. This time when he finished, instead of sitting down, he caught the necklace of wampum from Radisson's neck, threw it at the feet of the oldest sachem, cut the captive's bonds, and, amid shouts of applause, set the white youth free.

One of the incomprehensible things to civilization is how a white man can degenerate to savagery. Young Radisson's life is an illustration. In the first transports of his freedom, with the Mohawk women dancing and singing around him, the men shouting, he leaped up, oblivious of pain; but when the flush of ecstasy had passed, he sank to the mat of the Iroquois lodge, and he was unable to use his burned feet for more than a month. During this time the Iroquois dressed his wounds, brought him the choice portions of the hunt, gave him clean clothing purchased at Orange (Albany), and attended to his wants as if he had been a prince. No doubt the bright eyes of the swarthy young French boy moved to pity the hearts of the Mohawk mothers, and his courage had won him favor among the warriors. He was treated like a king. The women waited upon him like slaves, and the men gave him presents of firearms and ammunition—the Indian's most precious possessions. Between flattered vanity and indolence, other white men, similarly treated, have lost their self-respect. Beckworth, of the Missouri, became to all intents and purposes a savage; and Bird, of the Blackfeet, degenerated lower than the Indians. Other Frenchmen captured from the St. Lawrence, and white women taken from the New England colonies, became so enamored of savage life that they refused to leave the Indian lodges when peace had liberated them. Not so Radisson. Though only seventeen, flattered vanity never caused him to forget the gratitude he owed the Mohawk family. Though he relates his life with a frankness that leaves nothing untold, he never at any time returned treachery for kindness. The very chivalry of the French nature endangered him all the more. Would he forget his manhood, his birthright of a superior race, his inheritance of nobility from a family that stood foremost among the noblesse of New France?

[Illustration: Albany, from an Old Print.]

The spring of 1653 came with unloosening of the rivers and stirring of the forest sap and fret of the warrior blood. Radisson's Iroquois father held great feasts in which he heaved up the hatchet to break the kettle of sagamite against all enemies. Would Radisson go on the war-path with the braves, or stay at home with the women and so lose the respect of the tribe? In the hope of coming again within reach of Three Rivers, he offered to join the Iroquois in their wars. The Mohawks were delighted with his spirit, but they feared to lose their young warrior. Accepting his offer, they refused to let him accompany them to Quebec, but assigned him to a band of young braves, who were to raid the border-lands between the Huron country of the Upper Lakes and the St. Lawrence. This was not what Radisson wanted, but he could not draw back. There followed months of wild wanderings round the regions of Niagara. The band of young braves passed dangerous places with great precipices and a waterfall, where the river was a mile wide and unfrozen. Radisson was constrained to witness many acts against the Eries, which must have one of two effects on white blood,—either turn the white man into a complete savage, or disgust him utterly with savage life. Leaving the Mohawk village amid a blare of guns and shouts, the young braves on their maiden venture passed successively through the lodges of Oneidas, Onondagas, Senecas, and Cayugas, where they were feasted almost to death by the Iroquois Confederacy.[11] Then they marched to the vast wilderness of snow-padded forests and heaped windfall between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.

Snow still lay in great drifts under the shadow of hemlock and spruce; and the braves skimmed forward winged with the noiseless speed of snow-shoes. When the snow became too soft from thaw for snow-shoes, they paused to build themselves a skiff. It was too early to peel the bark off the birch, so they made themselves a dugout of the walnut tree. The wind changed from north to south, clearing the lakes of ice and filling the air with the earthy smells of up-bursting growth. "There was such a thawing," writes Radisson, "ye little brookes flowed like rivers, which made us embark to wander over that sweet sea." Lounging in their skiff all day, carried from shore to shore with the waves, and sleeping round camp-fires on the sand each night, the young braves luxuriated in all the delights of sunny idleness and spring life. But this was not war. It was play, and play of the sort that weans the white man from civilization to savagery.

One day a scout, who had climbed to the top of a tree, espied two strange squaws. They were of a hostile tribe. The Mohawk bloodthirst was up as a wolf's at the sight of lambs. In vain Radisson tried to save the women by warning the Iroquois that if there were women, there must be men, too, who would exact vengeance for the squaws' death. The young braves only laid their plans the more carefully for his warning and massacred the entire encampment. Prisoners were taken, but when food became scarce they were brutally knocked on the head. These tribes had never heard guns before, and at the sound of shots fled as from diabolical enemies. It was an easy matter for the young braves in the course of a few weeks to take a score of scalps and a dozen prisoners. At one place more than two hundred beaver were trapped. At the end of the raid, the booty was equally divided. Radisson asked that the woman prisoner be given to him; and he saved her from torture and death on the return to the Mohawks by presenting her as a slave to his Indian mother. All his other share of booty he gave to the friendly family. The raid was over. He had failed of his main object in joining it. He had not escaped. But he had made one important gain. His valor had reëstablished the confidence of the Indians so that when they went on a free-booting expedition against the whites of the Dutch settlements at Orange (Albany), Radisson was taken with them. Orange, or Albany, consisted at that time of some fifty thatched log-houses surrounded by a settlement of perhaps a hundred and fifty farmers. This raid was bloodless. The warriors looted the farmers' cabins, emptied their cupboards, and drank their beer cellars dry to the last drop. Once more Radisson kept his head. While the braves entered Fort Orange roaring drunk, Radisson was alert and sober. A drunk Indian falls an easy prey in the bartering of pelts. The Iroquois wanted guns. The Dutch wanted pelts. The whites treated the savages like kings; and the Mohawks marched from house to house feasting of the best. Radisson was dressed in garnished buckskin and had been painted like a Mohawk. Suspecting some design to escape, his Iroquois friends never left him. The young Frenchman now saw white men for the first time in almost two years; but the speech that he heard was in a strange tongue. As Radisson went into the fort, he noticed a soldier among the Dutch. At the same instant the soldier recognized him as a Frenchman, and oblivious of the Mohawks' presence blurted out his discovery in Iroquois dialect, vowing that for all the paint and grease, this youth was a white man below. The fellow's blundering might have cost Radisson's life; but the youth had not been a captive among crafty Mohawks for nothing. Radisson feigned surprise at the accusation. That quieted the Mohawk suspicions and they were presently deep in the beer pots of the Dutch. Again the soldier spoke, this time in French. It was the first time that Radisson had heard his native tongue for months. He answered in French. At that the soldier emitted shouts of delight, for he, too, was French, and these strangers in an alien land threw their arms about each other like a pair of long-lost brothers with exclamations of joy too great for words.

[Illustration: The Battery, New York, in Radisson's Time.]

From that moment Radisson became the lion of Fort Orange. The women dragged him to their houses and forced more dainties on him than he could eat. He was conducted from house to house in triumph, to the amazed delight of the Indians. The Dutch offered to ransom him at any price; but that would have exposed the Dutch settlement to the resentment of the Mohawks and placed Radisson under heavy obligation to people who were the enemies of New France. Besides, his honor was pledged to return to his Indian parents; and it was a long way home to have to sail to Europe and back again to Quebec. Perhaps, too, there was deep in his heart what he did not realize—a rooted love for the wilds that was to follow him all through life. By the devious course of captivity, he had tasted of a new freedom and could not give it up. He declined the offer of the Dutch. In two days he was back among the Mohawks ten times more a hero than he had ever been. Mother and sisters were his slaves.

But between love of the wilds and love of barbarism is a wide difference. He had not been back for two weeks when that glimpse of crude civilization at Orange recalled torturing memories of the French home in Three Rivers. The filthy food, the smoky lodges, the cruelties of the Mohawks, filled him with loathing. The nature of the white man, which had been hidden under the grease and paint of the savage—and in danger of total eclipse—now came upper-most. With Radisson, to think was to act. He determined to escape if it cost him his life.

Taking only a hatchet as if he were going to cut wood, Radisson left the Indian lodge early one morning in the fall of 1653. Once out of sight from the village, he broke into a run, following the trail through the dense forests of the Mohawk Valley toward Fort Orange. On and on he ran, all that day, without pause to rest or eat, without backward glance, with eye ever piercing through the long leafy vistas of the forest on the watch for the fresh-chipped bark of the trees that guided his course, or the narrow indurated path over the spongy mould worn by running warriors. And when night filled the forest with the hoot of owl, and the far, weird cries of wild creatures on the rove, there sped through the aisled columns of star light and shadow, the ghostly figure of the French boy slim, and lithe as a willow, with muscles tense as ironwood, and step silent as the mountain-cat. All that night he ran without a single stop. Chill daybreak found him still staggering on, over rocks slippery with the night frost, over windfall tree on tree in a barricade, through brawling mountain brooks where his moccasins broke the skim of ice at the edge, past rivers where he half waded, half swam. He was now faint from want of food; but fear spurred him on. The morning air was so cold that he found it better to run than rest. By four of the afternoon he came to a clearing in the forest, where was the cabin of a settler. A man was chopping wood. Radisson ascertained that there were no Iroquois in the cabin, and, hiding in it, persuaded the settler to carry a message to Fort Orange, two miles farther on. While he waited Indians passed the cabin, singing and shouting. The settler's wife concealed him behind sacks of wheat and put out all lights. Within an hour came a rescue party from Orange, who conducted him safely to the fort. For three days Radisson hid in Orange, while the Mohawks wandered through the fort, calling him by name.

Gifts of money from the Jesuit, Poncet, and from a Dutch merchant, enabled Radisson to take ship from Orange to New York, and from New York to Europe.

[Illustration: Fort Amsterdam, from an ancient engraving executed in
Holland. This view of Fort Amsterdam on the Manhattan is copied from
an ancient engraving executed in Holland. The fort was erected in 1623
but finished upon the above model by Governor Van Twiller in 1635.]

Père Poncet had been captured by the Mohawks the preceding summer, but had escaped to Orange.[12] Embarking on a small sloop, Radisson sailed down the Hudson to New York, which then consisted of some five hundred houses, with stores, barracks, a stone church, and a dilapidated fort. Central Park was a forest; goats and cows pastured on what is now Wall Street; and to east and west was a howling wilderness of marsh and woods. After a stay of three weeks, Radisson embarked for Amsterdam, which he reached in January, 1654.

[1] Benjamin Sulte in Chronique Trifluvienne.

[2] It was in August of this same year, 1652, that the governor of Three Rivers was slain by the Iroquois. Parkman gives this date, 1653, Garneau, 1651, L'Abbé Tanguay, 1651; Dollier de Casson, 1651, Belmont, 1653. Sulte gives the name of the governor Duplessis-Kerbodot, not Bochart, as given in Parkman.

[3] Dr. Bryce has unearthed the fact that in a petition to the House of Commons, 1698, Radisson sets down his age as sixty-two. This gives the year of his birth as 1636. On the other hand, Sulte has record of a Pierre Radisson registered at Quebec in 1681, aged fifty-one, which would make him slightly older, if it is the same Radisson. Mr. Sulte's explanation is as follows: Sébastien Hayet of St. Malo married Madeline Hénault. Their daughter Marguerite married Chouart, known as Groseillers. Madeline Hénault then married Pierre Esprit Radisson of Paris, whose children were Pierre, our hero, and two daughters.

[4] A despatch from M. Talon in 1666 shows there were 461 families in Three Rivers. State papers from the Minister to M. Frontenac in 1674 show there were only 6705 French in all the colony. Averaging five a family, there must have been 2000 people at Three Rivers. Fear of the Iroquois must have driven the country people inside the fort, so that the population enrolled was larger than the real population of Three Rivers. Sulte gives the normal population of Three Rivers in 1654 as 38 married couples, 13 bachelors, 38 boys, 26 girls—in all not 200.

[5] At first flush, this seems a slip in Radisson's Relation. Where did the Mohawks get their guns? New York Colonial Documents show that between 1640 and 1650 the Dutch at Fort Orange had supplied the Mohawks alone with four hundred guns.

[6] One of many instances of Radisson's accuracy in detail. All tribes have a trick of browning food on hot stones or sand that has been taken from fire. The Assiniboines gained their name from this practice: they were the users of "boiling stones."

[7] I have asked both natives and old fur-traders what combination of sounds in English most closely resembles the Indian war-cry, and they have all given the words that I have quoted. One daughter of a chief factor, who went through a six weeks' siege by hostiles in her father's fort, gave a still more graphic description. She said: "you can imagine the snarls of a pack of furiously vicious dogs saying 'ah-oh' with a whoop, you have it; and you will not forget it!"

[8] This practice was a binding law on many tribes. Catlin relates it of the Mandans, and Hearne of the Chipewyans. The latter considered it a crime to kiss wives and children after a massacre without the bath of purification. Could one know where and when that universal custom of washing blood-guilt arose, one mystery of existence would be unlocked.

[9] I have throughout followed Mr. Sulte's correction of the name of this governor. The mistake followed by Parkman, Tanguay, and others—it seems—was first made in 1820, and has been faithfully copied since. Elsewhere will be found Mr. Sulte's complete elucidation of the hopeless dark in which all writers have involved Radisson's family.

[10] If there were not corroborative testimony, one might suspect the excited French lad of gross exaggeration in his account of Iroquois tortures; but the Jesuits more than confirm the worst that Radisson relates. Bad as these torments were, they were equalled by the deeds of white troops from civilized cities in the nineteenth century. A band of Montana scouts came on the body of a comrade horribly mutilated by the Indians. They caught the culprits a few days afterwards. Though the government report has no account of what happened, traders say the bodies of the guilty Indians were found skinned and scalped by the white troops.

[11] Radisson puts the Senecas before the Cayugas, which is different from the order given by the Jesuits.

[12] The fact that Radisson confessed his sins to this priest seems pretty well to prove that Pierre was a Catholic and not a Protestant, as has been so often stated.

CHAPTER II

1657-1658

RADISSON'S SECOND VOYAGE

Radisson returns to Quebec, where he joins the Jesuits to go to the Iroquois Mission—He witnesses the Massacre of the Hurons among the Thousand Islands—Besieged by the Iroquois, they pass the Winter as Prisoners of War—Conspiracy to massacre the French foiled by Radisson.

From Amsterdam Radisson took ship to Rochelle. Here he found himself a stranger in his native land. All his kin of whom there is any record—Pierre Radisson, his father, Madeline Hénault, his mother, Marguerite and Françoise, his elder and younger sisters, his uncle and aunt, with their daughter, Elizabeth—were now living at Three Rivers in New France.[1] Embarking with the fishing fleet that yearly left France for the Grand Banks, Radisson came early in the spring of 1654 to Isle Percée at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. He was still a week's journey from Three Rivers, but chance befriended him. Algonquin canoes were on the way up the river to war on the Iroquois. Joining the Indian canoes, he slipped past the hilly shores of the St. Lawrence and in five days was between the main bank on the north side and the muddy shallows of the Isle of Orleans. Sheering out where the Montmorency roars over a precipice in a shining cataract, the canoes glided across St. Charles River among the forests of masts heaving to the tide below the beetling heights of Cape Diamond, Quebec.

[Illustration: One of the earliest maps of the Great Lakes.]

It was May, 1651, when he had first seen the turrets and spires of Quebec glittering on the hillside in the sun; it was May, 1652, that the Iroquois had carried him off from Three Rivers; and it was May, 1654, when he came again to his own. He was welcomed back as from the dead. Changes had taken place in the interval of his captivity. A truce had been arranged between the Iroquois and the French. Now that the Huron missions had been wiped out by Iroquois wars, the Jesuits regarded the truce as a Divine provision for a mission among the Iroquois. The year that Radisson escaped from the Mohawks, Jesuit priests had gone among them. A still greater change that was to affect his life more vitally had taken place in the Radisson family. The year that Radisson had been captured, the outraged people of Three Rivers had seized a Mohawk chief and burned him to death. In revenge, the Mohawks murdered the governor of Three Rivers and a company of Frenchmen. Among the slain was the husband of Radisson's sister, Marguerite. When Radisson returned, he found that his widowed sister had married Médard Chouart Groseillers, a famous fur trader of New France, who had passed his youth as a lay helper to the Jesuit missions of Lake Huron.[2] Radisson was now doubly bound to the Jesuits by gratitude and family ties. Never did pagan heart hear an evangel more gladly than the Mohawks heard the Jesuits. The priests were welcomed with acclaim, led to the Council Lodge, and presented with belts of wampum. Not a suspicion of foul play seems to have entered the Jesuits' mind. When the Iroquois proposed to incorporate into the Confederacy the remnants of the Hurons, the Jesuits discerned nothing in the plan but the most excellent means to convert pagan Iroquois by Christian Hurons. Having gained an inch, the Iroquois demanded the proverbial ell. They asked that a French settlement be made in the Iroquois country. The Indians wanted a supply of firearms to war against all enemies; and with a French settlement miles away from help, the Iroquois could wage what war they pleased against the Algonquins without fear of reprisals from Quebec—the settlement of white men among hostiles would be hostage of generous treatment from New France. Of these designs, neither priests nor governor had the slightest suspicion. The Jesuits were thinking only of the Iroquois' soul; the French, of peace with the Iroquois at any cost.

In 1656 Major Dupuis and fifty Frenchmen had established a French colony among the Iroquois.[3] The hardships of these pioneers form no part of Radisson's life, and are, therefore, not set down here. Peace not bought by a victory is an unstable foundation for Indian treaty. The Mohawks were jealous that their confederates, the Onondagas, had obtained the French settlement. In 1657, eighty Iroquois came to Quebec to escort one hundred Huron refugees back to Onondaga for adoption into the Confederacy. These Hurons were Christians, and the two Jesuits, Paul Ragueneau and François du Péron, were appointed to accompany them to their new abode. Twenty young Frenchmen joined the party to seek their fortunes at the new settlement; but a man was needed who could speak Iroquois. Glad to repay his debt to the Jesuits, young Radisson volunteered to go as a donné, that is, a lay helper vowed to gratuitous services.

It was midsummer before all preparations had been made. On July 26, the party of two hundred, made up of twenty Frenchmen, eighty Iroquois, and a hundred Hurons, filed out of the gates of Montreal, and winding round the foot of the mountain followed a trail through the forest that took them past the Lachine Rapids. The Onondaga voyageurs carried the long birch canoes inverted on their shoulders, two Indians at each end; and the other Iroquois trotted over the rocks with the Frenchmen's baggage on their backs. The day was hot, the portage long and slippery with dank moisture. The Huron children fagged and fell behind. At nightfall, thirty of the haughty Iroquois lost patience, and throwing down their bundles made off for Quebec with the avowed purpose of raiding the Algonquins. On the way, they paused to scalp three Frenchmen at Montreal, cynically explaining that if the French persisted in taking Algonquins into their arms, the white men need not be surprised if the blow aimed at an Algonquin sometimes struck a Frenchman. That act opened the eyes of the French to the real meaning of the peace made with the Iroquois; but the little colony was beyond recall. To insure the safety of the French among the Onondagas, the French governor at Quebec seized a dozen Iroquois and kept them as hostages of good conduct.

Meanwhile, all was confusion on Lake St. Louis, where the last band of colonists had encamped. The Iroquois had cast the Frenchmen's baggage on the rocks and refused to carry it farther. Leaving the whites all embarrassed, the Onondagas hurriedly embarked the Hurons and paddled quickly out of sight. The act was too suddenly unanimous not to have been premeditated. Why had the Iroquois carried the Hurons away from the Frenchmen? Father Ragueneau at once suspected some sinister purpose. Taking only a single sack of flour for food, he called for volunteers among the twenty Frenchmen to embark in a leaky, old canoe and follow the treacherous Onondagas. Young Radisson was one of the first to offer himself. Six others followed his example; and the seven Frenchmen led by the priest struck across the lake, leaving the others to gather up the scattered baggage.

The Onondagas were too deep to reveal their plots with seven armed Frenchmen in pursuit. The Indians permitted the French boats to come up with the main band. All camped together in the most friendly fashion that night; but the next morning one Iroquois offered passage in his canoe to one Frenchman, another Iroquois to another of the whites, and by the third day, when they came to Lake St. Francis, the old canoe had been abandoned. The French were scattered promiscuously among the Iroquois, with no two whites in one boat. The Hurons were quicker to read the signs of treachery than the French. There were rumors of one hundred Mohawks lying in ambush at the Thousand Islands to massacre the coming Hurons. On the morning of August 3 four Huron warriors and two women seized a canoe, and to the great astonishment of the encampment launched out before they could be stopped. Heading the canoe back for Montreal, they broke out in a war chant of defiance to the Iroquois.

The Onondagas made no sign, but they evidently took council to delay no longer. Again, when they embarked, they allowed no two whites in one canoe. The boats spread out. Nothing was said to indicate anything unusual. The lake lay like a silver mirror in the August sun. The water was so clear that the Indians frequently paused to spear fish lying below on the stones. At places the canoes skirted close to the wood-fringed shore, and braves landed to shoot wild-fowl. Radisson and Ragueneau seemed simultaneously to have noticed the same thing. Without any signal, at about four in the afternoon, the Onondagas steered their canoes for a wooded island in the middle of the St. Lawrence. With Radisson were three Iroquois and a Huron. As the canoe grated shore, the bowman loaded his musket and sprang into the thicket. Naturally, the Huron turned to gaze after the disappearing hunter. Instantly, the Onondaga standing directly behind buried his hatchet in the Huron's head. The victim fell quivering across Radisson's feet and was hacked to pieces by the other Iroquois. Not far along the shore from Radisson, the priest was landing. He noticed an Iroquois chief approach a Christian Huron girl. If the Huron had not been a convert, she might have saved her life by becoming one of the chief's many slaves; but she had repulsed the Onondaga pagan. As Ragueneau looked, the girl fell dead with her skull split by the chief's war-axe. The Hurons on the lake now knew what awaited them; and a cry of terror arose from the children. Then a silence of numb horror settled over the incoming canoes. The women were driven ashore like lambs before wolves; but the valiant Hurons would not die without striking one blow at their inveterate and treacherous enemies. They threw themselves together back to back, prepared to fight. For a moment this show of resistance drove off the Iroquois. Then the Onondaga chieftain rushed forward, protesting that the two murders had been a personal quarrel. Striking back his own warriors with a great show of sincerity, he bade the Hurons run for refuge to the top of the hill. No sooner had the Hurons broken rank, than there rushed from the woods scores of Iroquois, daubed in war-paint and shouting their war-cry. This was the hunt to which the young braves had dashed from the canoes to be in readiness behind the thicket. Before the scattered Hurons could get together for defence, the Onondagas had closed around the hilltop in a cordon. The priest ran here, there, everywhere,—comforting the dying, stopping mutilation, defending the women. All the Hurons were massacred but one man, and the bodies were thrown into the river. With blankets drawn over their heads that they might not see, the women huddled together, dumb with terror. When the Onondagas turned toward the women, the Frenchmen stood with muskets levelled. The Onondagas halted, conferred, and drew off.

[Illustration: Paddling past Hostiles.]

The fight lasted for four hours. Darkness and the valor of the little French band saved the women for the time. The Iroquois kindled a fire and gathered to celebrate their victory. Then the old priest took his life in his hands. Borrowing three belts of wampum, he left the huddling group of Huron women and Frenchmen and marched boldly into the circle of hostiles. The lives of all the French and Hurons hung by a thread. Ragueneau had been the spiritual guide of the murdered tribe for twenty years; and he was now sobbing like a child. The Iroquois regarded his grief with sardonic scorn; but they misjudged the manhood below the old priest's tears. Ragueneau asked leave to speak. They grunted permission. Springing up, he broke into impassioned, fearless reproaches of the Iroquois for their treachery. Casting one belt of wampum at the Onondaga chief's feet, the priest demanded pledges that the massacre cease. A second belt was given to register the Onondaga's vow to conduct the women and children safely to the Iroquois country. The third belt was for the safety of the French at Onondaga.

The Iroquois were astonished. They had looked for womanish pleadings. They had heard stern demands coupled with fearless threats of punishment. When Ragueneau sat down, the Onondaga chief bestirred himself to counteract the priest's powerful impression. Lounging to his feet, the Onondaga impudently declared that the governor of Quebec had instigated the massacre. Ragueneau leaped up with a denial that took the lie from the scoundrel's teeth. The chief sat down abashed. The Council grunted "Ho, ho!" accepting the wampum and promising all that the Jesuit had asked.

Among the Thousand Islands, the French who had remained behind to gather up the baggage again joined the Onondagas. They brought with them from the Isle of Massacres a poor Huron woman, whom they had found lying insensible on a rock. During the massacre she had hidden in a hollow tree, where she remained for three days. In this region, Radisson almost lost his life by hoisting a blanket sail to his canoe. The wind drifted the boat so far out that Radisson had to throw all ballast overboard to keep from being swamped. As they turned from the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario up the Oswego River for Onondaga, they met other warriors of the Iroquois nation. In spite of pledges to the priest, the meeting was celebrated by torturing the Huron women to entertain the newcomers. Not the sufferings of the early Christians in Rome exceeded the martyrdom of the Christian Hurons among the Onondagas. As her mother mounted the scaffold of tortures, a little girl who had been educated by the Ursulines of Quebec broke out with loud weeping. The Huron mother turned calmly to the child:—

"Weep not my death, my little daughter! We shall this day be in heaven," said she; "God will pity us to all eternity. The Iroquois cannot rob us of that."

As the flames crept about her, her voice was heard chanting in the crooning monotone of Indian death dirge: "Jesu—have pity on us! Jesu—have pity on us!" The next moment the child was thrown into the flames, repeating the same words.

The Iroquois recognized Radisson. He sent presents to his Mohawk parents, who afterwards played an important part in saving the French of Onondaga. Having passed the falls, they came to the French fort situated on the crest of a hill above a lake. Two high towers loopholed for musketry occupied the centre of the courtyard. Double walls, trenched between, ran round a space large enough to enable the French to keep their cattle inside the fort. The voyageurs were welcomed to Onondaga by Major Dupuis, fifty Frenchmen, and several Jesuits.

The pilgrims had scarcely settled at Onondaga before signs of the dangers that were gathering became too plain for the blind zeal of the Jesuits to ignore. Cayugas, Onondagas, and Senecas, togged out in war-gear, swarmed outside the palisades. There was no more dissembling of hunger for the Jesuits' evangel. The warriors spoke no more soft words, but spent their time feasting, chanting war-songs, heaving up the war-hatchet against the kettle of sagamite—which meant the rupture of peace. Then came four hundred Mohawks, who not only shouted their war-songs, but built their wigwams before the fort gates and established themselves for the winter like a besieging army. That the intent of the entire Confederacy was hostile to Onondaga could not be mistaken; but what was holding the Indians back? Why did they delay the massacre? Then Huron slaves brought word to the besieged fort of the twelve Iroquois hostages held at Quebec. The fort understood what stayed the Iroquois blow. The Confederacy dared not attack the isolated fort lest Quebec should take terrible vengeance on the hostages.

[Illustration: Jogues, the Jesuit missionary, who was tortured by the Mohawks.
From a painting in Château de Ramezay, Montreal.]

The French decided to send messengers to Quebec for instructions before closing navigation cut them off for the winter. Thirteen men and one Jesuit left the fort the first week of September. Mohawk spies knew of the departure and lay in ambush at each side of the narrow river to intercept the party; but the messengers eluded the trap by striking through the forests back from the river directly to the St. Lawrence. Then the little fort closed its gates and awaited an answer from Quebec. Winter settled over the land, blocking the rivers with ice and the forest trails with drifts of snow; but no messengers came back from Quebec. The Mohawks had missed the outgoing scouts: but they caught the return coureurs and destroyed the letters. Not a soul could leave the fort but spies dogged his steps. The Jesuits continued going from lodge to lodge, and in this way Onondaga gained vague knowledge of the plots outside the fort. The French could venture out only at the risk of their lives, and spent the winter as closely confined as prisoners of war. Of the ten drilled soldiers, nine threatened to desert. One night an unseen hand plunged through the dark, seized the sentry, and dragged him from the gate. The sentry drew his sword and shouted, "To arms!" A band of Frenchmen sallied from the gates with swords and muskets. In the tussle the sentry was rescued, and gifts were sent out in the morning to pacify the wounded Mohawks. Fortunately the besieged had plenty of food inside the stockades; but the Iroquois knew there could be no escape till the ice broke up in spring, and were quite willing to exchange ample supplies of corn for tobacco and firearms. The Huron slaves who carried the corn to the fort acted as spies among the Mohawks for the French.

In the month of February the vague rumors of conspiracy crystallized into terrible reality. A dying Mohawk confessed to a Jesuit that the Iroquois[4] Council had determined to massacre half the company of French and to hold the other half till their own Mohawk hostages were released from Quebec. Among the hostiles encamped before the gates was Radisson's Indian father. This Mohawk was still an influential member of the Great Council. He, too, reported that the warriors were bent on destroying Onondaga.[5] What was to be done? No answer had come from Quebec, and no aid could come till the spring. The rivers were still blocked with ice; and there were not sufficient boats in the fort to carry fifty men down to Quebec. "What could we do?" writes Radisson. "We were in their hands. It was as hard to get away from them as for a ship in full sea without a pilot."

They at once began constructing two large flat-bottomed boats of light enough draft to run the rapids in the flood-tide of spring. Carpenters worked hidden in an attic; but when the timbers were mortised together, the boats had to be brought downstairs, where one of the Huron slaves caught a glimpse of them. Boats of such a size he had never before seen. Each was capable of carrying fifteen passengers with full complement of baggage. Spring rains were falling in floods. The convert Huron had heard the Jesuits tell of Noah's ark in the deluge. Returning to the Mohawks, he spread a terrifying report of an impending flood and of strange arks of refuge built by the white men. Emissaries were appointed to visit the French fort; but the garrison had been forewarned. Radisson knew of the coming spies from his Indian father; and the Jesuits had learned of the Council from their converts. Before the spies arrived, the French had built a floor over their flatboats, and to cover the fresh floor had heaped up a dozen canoes. The spies left the fort satisfied that neither a deluge nor an escape was impending. Birch canoes would be crushed like egg-shells if they were run through the ice jams of spring floods. Certain that their victims were trapped, the Iroquois were in no haste to assault a double-walled fort, where musketry could mow them down as they rushed the hilltop. The Indian is bravest under cover; so the Mohawks spread themselves in ambush on each side of the narrow river and placed guards at the falls where any boats must be portaged.

Of what good were the boats? To allay suspicion of escape, the Jesuits continued to visit the wigwams.[6] The French were in despair. They consulted Radisson, who could go among the Mohawks as with a charmed life, and who knew the customs of the Confederacy so well. Radisson proposed a way to outwit the savages. With this plan the priests had nothing to do. To the harum-scarum Radisson belong the sole credit and discredit of the escapade. On his device hung the lives of fifty innocent men. These men must either escape or be massacred. Of bloodshed, Radisson had already seen too much; and the youth of twenty-one now no more proposed to stickle over the means of victory than generals who wear the Victoria cross stop to stickle over means to-day.

Radisson knew that the Indians had implicit faith in dreams; so Radisson had a dream.[7] He realized as critics of Indian customs fail to understand that the fearful privations of savage life teach the crime of waste. The Indian will eat the last morsel of food set before him if he dies for it. He believes that the gods punish waste of food by famine. The belief is a religious principle and the feasts—festins à tout manger—are a religious act; so Radisson dreamed—whether sleeping or waking—that the white men were to give a great festival to the Iroquois. This dream he related to his Indian father. The Indian like his white brother can clothe a vice under religious mantle. The Iroquois were gluttonous on a religious principle. Radisson's dream was greeted with joy. Coureurs ran through the forest, bidding the Mohawks to the feast. Leaving ambush of forest and waterfall, the warriors hastened to the walls of Onondaga. To whet their appetite, they were kept waiting outside for two whole days. The French took turns in entertaining the waiting guests. Boisterous games, songs, dances, and music kept the Iroquois awake and hilarious to the evening of the second day. Inside the fort bedlam reigned. Boats were dragged from floors to a sally-port at the rear of the courtyard. Here firearms, ammunition, food, and baggage were placed in readiness. Guns which could not be taken were burned or broken. Ammunition was scattered in the snow. All the stock but one solitary pig, a few chickens, and the dogs was sacrificed for the feast, and in the barracks a score of men were laboring over enormous kettles of meat. Had an Indian spy climbed to the top of a tree and looked over the palisades, all would have been discovered; but the French entertainers outside kept their guests busy.

[Illustration: Château de Ramezay, Montreal, for years the residence of the governor,
and later the storehouse of the fur companies.]

On the evening of the second day a great fire was kindled in the outer enclosure, between the two walls. The trumpets blew a deafening blast. The Mohawks answered with a shout. The French clapped their hands. The outer gates were thrown wide open, and in trooped several hundred Mohawk warriors, seating themselves in a circle round the fire. Another blare of trumpets, and twelve enormous kettles of mincemeat were carried round the circle of guests. A Mohawk chief rose solemnly and gave his deities of earth, air, and fire profuse thanks for having brought such generous people as the French among the Iroquois. Other chiefs arose and declaimed to their hearers that earth did not contain such hosts as the French. Before they had finished speaking there came a second and a third and a fourth relay of kettles round the circle of feasters. Not one Iroquois dared to refuse the food heaped before him. By the time the kettles of salted fowl and venison and bear had passed round the circle, each Indian was glancing furtively sideways to see if his neighbor could still eat. He who was compelled to forsake the feast first was to become the butt of the company. All the while the French kept up a din of drums and trumpets and flageolets, dancing and singing and shouting to drive off sleep. The eyes of the gorging Indians began to roll. Never had they attempted to demolish such a banquet. Some shook their heads and drew back. Others fell over in the dead sleep that results from long fasting and overfeeding and fresh air. Radisson was everywhere, urging the Iroquois to "Cheer up! cheer up! If sleep overcomes you, you must awake! Beat the drum! Blow the trumpet! Cheer up! Cheer up!"

But the end of the repulsive scene was at hand. By midnight the Indians had—in the language of the white man—"gone under the mahogany." They lay sprawled on the ground in sodden sleep. Perhaps, too, something had been dropped in the fleshpots to make their sleep the sounder. Radisson does not say no, neither does the priest, and they two were the only whites present who have written of the episode.[8] But the French would hardly have been human if they had not assured their own safety by drugging the feasters. It was a common thing for the fur traders of a later period to prevent massacre and quell riot by administering a quietus to Indians with a few drops of laudanum.

The French now retired to the inner court. The main gate was bolted and chained. Through the loophole of this gate ran a rope attached to a bell that was used to summon the sentry. To this rope the mischievous Radisson tied the only remaining pig, so that when the Indians would pull the rope for admission, the noise of the disturbed pig would give the impression of a sentry's tramp-tramp on parade. Stuffed effigies of soldiers were then stuck about the barracks. If a spy climbed up to look over the palisades, he would see Frenchmen still in the fort. While Radisson was busy with these precautions to delay pursuit, the soldiers and priests, led by Major Dupuis, had broken open the sally-port, forced the boats through sideways, and launched out on the river. Speaking in whispers, they stowed the baggage in the flat-boats, then brought out skiffs—dugouts to withstand the ice jam—for the rest of the company. The night was raw and cold. A skim of ice had formed on the margins of the river. Through the pitchy darkness fell a sleet of rain and snow that washed out the footsteps of the fugitives. The current of mid-river ran a noisy mill-race of ice and log drift; and the voyageurs could not see one boat length ahead.

To men living in savagery come temptations that can neither be measured nor judged by civilization. To the French at Onondaga came such a temptation now. Their priests were busy launching the boats. The departing soldiers seemed simultaneously to have become conscious of a very black suggestion. Cooped up against the outer wall in the dead sleep of torpid gluttony lay the leading warriors of the Iroquois nation. Were these not the assassins of countless Frenchmen, the murderers of women, the torturers of children? Had Providence not placed the treacherous Iroquois in the hands of fifty Frenchmen? If these warriors were slain, it would be an easy matter to march to the villages of the Confederacy, kill the old men, and take prisoners the women. New France would be forever free of her most deadly enemy. Like the Indians, the white men were trying to justify a wrong under pretence of good. By chance, word of the conspiracy was carried to the Jesuits. With all the authority of the church, the priests forbade the crime. "Their answer was," relates Radisson, "that they were sent to instruct in the faith of Jesus Christ and not to destroy, and that the cross must be their sword."

Locking the sally-port, the company—as the Jesuit father records—"shook the dust of Onondaga from their feet," launched out on the swift-flowing, dark river and escaped "as the children of Israel escaped by night from the land of Egypt." They had not gone far through the darkness before the roar of waters told them of a cataract ahead. They were four hours carrying baggage and boats over this portage. Sleet beat upon their backs. The rocks were slippery with glazed ice; and through the rotten, half-thawed snow, the men sank to mid-waist. Navigation became worse on Lake Ontario; for the wind tossed the lake like a sea, and ice had whirled against the St. Lawrence in a jam. On the St. Lawrence, they had to wait for the current to carry the ice out. At places they cut a passage through the honeycombed ice with their hatchets, and again they were compelled to portage over the ice. The water was so high that the rapids were safely ridden by all the boats but one, which was shipwrecked, and three of the men were drowned.

They had left Onondaga on the 20th of March, 1658. On the evening of April 3d they came to Montreal, where they learned that New France had all winter suffered intolerable insolence from the Iroquois, lest punishment of the hostiles should endanger the French at Onondaga. The fleeing colonists waited twelve days at Montreal for the ice to clear, and were again held back by a jam at Three Rivers; but on April 23 they moored safely under the heights of Quebec.

Coureurs from Onondaga brought word that the Mohawks had been deceived by the pig and the ringing bell and the effigies for more than a week. Crowing came from the chicken yard, dogs bayed in their kennels, and when a Mohawk pulled the bell at the gate, he could hear the sentry's measured march. At the end of seven days not a white man had come from the fort. At first the Mohawks had thought the "black robes" were at prayers; but now suspicions of trickery flashed on the Iroquois. Warriors climbed the palisades and found the fort empty. Two hundred Mohawks set out in pursuit; but the bad weather held them back. And that was the way Radisson saved Onondaga.[9]

[1] The uncle, Pierre Esprit Radisson, is the one with whom careless writers have confused the young hero, owing to identity of name. Madeline Hénault has been described as the explorer's first wife, notwithstanding genealogical impossibilities which make the explorer's daughter thirty-six years old before he was seventeen. Even the infallible Tanguay trips on Radisson's genealogy. I have before me the complete record of the family taken from the parish registers of Three Rivers and Quebec, by the indefatigable Mr. Sulte, whose explanation of the case is this: that Radisson's mother, Madeline Hénault, first married Sébastien Hayet, of St. Malo, to whom was born Marguerite about 1630; that her second husband was Pierre Esprit Radisson of Paris, to whom were born our hero and the sisters Françoise and Elizabeth.

[2] I have throughout referred to Médard Chouart, Sieur des Groseillers, as simply "Groseillers," because that is the name referring to him most commonly used in the State Papers and old histories. He was from Charly-Saint-Cyr, near Meaux, and is supposed to have been born about 1621. His first wife was Helen Martin, daughter of Abraham Martin, who gave his name to the Plains of Abraham.

[3] This is the story of Onondaga which Parkman has told. Unfortunately, when Parkman's account was written, Radisson's Journals were unknown and Mr. Parkman had to rely entirely on the Letters of Marie de l'Incarnation and the Jesuit Relations. After the discovery of Radisson's Journals, Parkman added a footnote to his account of Onondaga, quoting Radisson in confirmation. If Radisson may be quoted to corroborate Parkman, Radisson may surely be accepted as authentic. At the same time, I have compared this journal with Father Ragueneau's of the same party, and the two tally in every detail.

[4] See Jesuit Relations, 1657-1658.

[5] Letters of Marie de l'Incarnation.

[6] See Ragueneau's account.

[7] See Marie de l'Incarnation and Dr. Dionne's modern monograph.

[8] This account is drawn mainly from Radisson's Journal, partly from Father Ragueneau, and in one detail from a letter of Marie de l'Incarnation. Garneau says the feasters were drugged, but I cannot find his authority for this, though from my knowledge of fur traders' escapes, I fancy it would hardly have been human nature not to add a sleeping potion to the kettles.

[9] The festins à tout manger must not be too sweepingly condemned by the self-righteous white man as long as drinking bouts are a part of civilized customs; and at least one civilized nation has the gross proverb, "Better burst than waste."

CHAPTER III

1658-1660

RADISSON'S THIRD VOYAGE

The Discovery of the Great Northwest—Radisson and his Brother-in-law, Groseillers, visit what are now Wisconsin, Minnesota, Dakota, and the Canadian Northwest—Radisson's Prophecy on first beholding the West—Twelve Years before Marquette and Jolliet, Radisson sees the Mississippi—The Terrible Remains of Dollard's Fight seen on the Way down the Ottawa—Why Radisson's Explorations have been ignored

While Radisson was among the Iroquois, the little world of New France had not been asleep. Before Radisson was born, Jean Nicolet of Three Rivers had passed westward through the straits of Mackinaw and coasted down Lake Michigan as far as Green Bay.[1] Some years later the great Jesuit martyr, Jogues, had preached to the Indians of Sault Ste. Marie; but beyond the Sault was an unknown world that beckoned the young adventurers of New France as with the hands of a siren. Of the great beyond—known to-day as the Great Northwest—nothing had been learned but this: from it came the priceless stores of beaver pelts yearly brought down the Ottawa to Three Rivers by the Algonquins, and in it dwelt strange, wild races whose territory extended northwest and north to unknown nameless seas.

The Great Beyond held the two things most coveted by ambitious young men of New France,—quick wealth by means of the fur trade and the immortal fame of being a first explorer. Nicolet had gone only as far as Green Bay and Fox River; Jogues not far beyond the Sault. What secrets lay in the Great Unknown? Year after year young Frenchmen, fired with the zeal of the explorer, joined wandering tribes of Algonquins going up the Ottawa, in the hope of being taken beyond the Sault. In August, 1656, there came from Green Bay two young Frenchmen with fifty canoes of Algonquins, who told of far-distant waters called Lake "Ouinipeg," and tribes of wandering hunters called "Christinos" (Crees), who spent their winters in a land bare of trees (the prairie), and their summers on the North Sea (Hudson's Bay). They also told of other tribes, who were great warriors, living to the south,—these were the Sioux. But the two Frenchmen had not gone beyond the Great Lakes.[2] These Algonquins were received at Château St. Louis, Quebec, with pompous firing of cannon and other demonstrations of welcome. So eager were the French to take possession of the new land that thirty young men equipped themselves to go back with the Indians; and the Jesuits sent out two priests, Leonard Gareau and Gabriel Dreuillettes, with a lay helper, Louis Boësme. The sixty canoes left Quebec with more firing of guns for a God-speed; but at Lake St. Peter the Mohawks ambushed the flotilla. The enterprise of exploring the Great Beyond was abandoned by all the French but two. Gareau, who was mortally wounded on the Ottawa, probably by a Frenchman or renegade hunter, died at Montreal; and Dreuillettes did not go farther than Lake Nipissing. Here, Dreuillettes learned much of the Unknown from an old Nipissing chief. He heard of six overland routes to the bay of the North, whence came such store of peltry.[3] He, too, like the two Frenchmen from Green Bay, heard of wandering tribes who had no settled lodge like the Hurons and Iroquois, but lived by the chase,—Crees and Sioux and Assiniboines of the prairie, at constant war round a lake called "Ouinipegouek."

[Illustration: A Cree brave, with the wampum string.]

By one of those curious coincidences of destiny which mark the lives of nations and men, the young Frenchman who had gone with the Jesuit, Dreuillettes, to Lake Nipissing when the other Frenchmen turned back, was Médard Chouart Groseillers, the fur trader married to Radisson's widowed sister, Marguerite.[4]

When Radisson came back from Onondaga, he found his brother-in-law, Groseillers, at Three Rivers, with ambitious designs of exploration in the unknown land of which he had heard at Green Bay and on Lake Nipissing. Jacques Cartier had discovered only one great river, had laid the foundations of only one small province; Champlain had only made the circuit of the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, and the Great Lakes; but here was a country—if the Indians spoke the truth—greater than all the empires of Europe together, a country bounded only by three great seas, the Sea of the North, the Sea of the South, and the Sea of Japan, a country so vast as to stagger the utmost conception of little New France.

It was unnecessary for Groseillers to say more. The ambition of young Radisson took fire. Long ago, when a captive among the Mohawks, he had cherished boyish dreams that it was to be his "destiny to discover many wild nations"; and here was that destiny opening the door for him, pointing the way, beckoning to the toils and dangers and glories of the discoverer's life. Radisson had been tortured among the Mohawks and besieged among the Onondagas. Groseillers had been among the Huron missions that were destroyed and among the Algonquin canoes that were attacked. Both explorers knew what perils awaited them; but what youthful blood ever chilled at prospect of danger when a single coup might win both wealth and fame? Radisson had not been home one month; but he had no sooner heard the plan than he "longed to see himself in a boat."

A hundred and fifty Algonquins had come down the Ottawa from the Great Beyond shortly after Radisson returned from Onondaga. Six of these Algonquins had brought their furs to Three Rivers. Some emissaries had gone to Quebec to meet the governor; but the majority of the Indians remained at Montreal to avoid the ambuscade of the Mohawks on Lake St. Peter. Radisson and Groseillers were not the only Frenchmen conspiring to wrest fame and fortune from the Upper Country. When the Indians came back from Quebec, they were accompanied by thirty young French adventurers, gay as boys out of school or gold hunters before the first check to their plans. There were also two Jesuits sent out to win the new domain for the cross.[5] As ignorant as children of the hardships ahead, the other treasure-seekers kept up nonchalant boasting that roused the irony of such seasoned men as Radisson and Groseillers. "What fairer bastion than a good tongue," Radisson demands cynically, "especially when one sees his own chimney smoke?… It is different when food is wanting, work necessary day and night, sleep taken on the bare ground or to mid-waist in water, with an empty stomach, weariness in the bones, and bad weather overhead."

Giving the slip to their noisy companions, Radisson and Groseillers stole out from Three Rivers late one night in June, accompanied by Algonquin guides. Travelling only at night to avoid Iroquois spies, they came to Montreal in three days. Here were gathered one hundred and forty Indians from the Upper Country, the thirty French, and the two priests. No gun was fired at Montreal, lest the Mohawks should get wind of the departure; and the flotilla of sixty canoes spread over Lake St. Louis for the far venture of the Pays d'en Haut. Three days of work had silenced the boasting of the gay adventurers; and the voyageurs, white and red, were now paddling in swift silence. Safety engendered carelessness. As the fleet seemed to be safe from Iroquois ambush, the canoes began to scatter. Some loitered behind. Hunters went ashore to shoot. The hills began to ring with shot and call. At the first portage many of the canoes were nine and ten miles apart. Enemies could have set on the Algonquins in some narrow defile and slaughtered the entire company like sheep in a pen. Radisson and Groseillers warned the Indians of the risk they were running. Many of these Algonquins had never before possessed firearms. With the muskets obtained in trade at Three Rivers, they thought themselves invincible and laughed all warning to scorn. Radisson and Groseillers were told that they were a pair of timid squaws; and the canoes spread apart till not twenty were within call. As they skirted the wooded shores, a man suddenly dashed from the forest with an upraised war-hatchet in one hand and a blanket streaming from his shoulders. He shouted for them to come to him. The Algonquins were panic-stricken. Was the man pursued by Mohawks, or laying a trap to lure them within shooting range? Seeing them hesitate, the Indian threw down blanket and hatchet to signify that he was defenceless, and rushed into the water to his armpits.

"I would save you," he shouted in Iroquois.

The Algonquins did not understand. They only knew that he spoke the tongue of the hated enemy and was unarmed. In a trice, the Algonquins in the nearest canoe had thrown out a well-aimed lasso, roped the man round the waist, and drawn him a captive into the canoe.

"Brothers," protested the captive, who seems to have been either a Huron slave or an Iroquois magician, "your enemies are spread up and down! Sleep not! They have heard your noise! They wait for you! They are sure of their prey! Believe me—keep together! Spend not your powder in vain to frighten your enemies by noise! See that the stones of your arrows be not bent! Bend your bows! Keep your hatchets sharp! Build a fort! Make haste!"

But the Algonquins, intoxicated with the new power of firearms, would hear no warning. They did not understand his words and refused to heed Radisson's interpretation. Beating paddles on their canoes and firing off guns, they shouted derisively that the man was "a dog and a hen." All the same, they did not land to encamp that night, but slept in midstream, with their boats tied to the rushes or on the lee side of floating trees. The French lost heart. If this were the beginning, what of the end? Daylight had scarcely broken when the paddles of the eager voyageurs were cutting the thick gray mist that rose from the river to get away from observation while the fog still hid the fleet. From afar came the dull, heavy rumble of a waterfall.[6]

There was a rush of the twelve foremost canoes to reach the landing and cross the portage before the thinning mist lifted entirely. Twelve boats had got ashore when the fog was cleft by a tremendous crashing of guns, and Iroquois ambushed in the bordering forest let go a salute of musketry. Everything was instantly in confusion. Abandoning their baggage to the enemy, the Algonquins and French rushed for the woods to erect a barricade. This would protect the landing of the other canoes. The Iroquois immediately threw up a defence of fallen logs likewise, and each canoe that came ashore was greeted with a cross fire between the two barricades. Four canoes were destroyed and thirteen of the Indians from the Upper Country killed. As day wore on, the Iroquois' shots ceased, and the Algonquins celebrated the truce by killing and devouring all the prisoners they had taken, among whom was the magician who had given them warning. Radisson and Groseillers wondered if the Iroquois were reserving their powder for a night raid. The Algonquins did not wait to know. As soon as darkness fell, there was a wild scramble for the shore. A long, low trumpet call, such as hunters use, signalled the Algonquins to rally and rush for the boats. The French embarked as best they could. The Indians swam and paddled for the opposite shore of the river. Here, in the dark, hurried council was taken. The most of the baggage had been lost. The Indians refused to help either the Jesuits or the French, and it was impossible for the white voyageurs to keep up the pace in the dash across an unknown portage through the dark. The French adventurers turned back for Montreal. Of the white men, Radisson and Groseillers alone went on.

Frightened into their senses by the encounter, the Algonquins now travelled only at night till they were far beyond range of the Iroquois. All day the fugitive band lay hidden in the woods. They could not hunt, lest Mohawk spies might hear the gunshots. Provisions dwindled. In a short time the food consisted of tripe de roche—a greenish moss boiled into a soup—and the few fish that might be caught during hurried nightly launch or morning landing. Sometimes they hid in a berry patch, when the fruit was gathered and boiled, but camp-fires were stamped out and covered. Turning westward, they crossed the barren region of iron-capped rocks and dwarf growth between the Upper Ottawa and the Great Lakes. Now they were farther from the Iroquois, and staved off famine by shooting an occasional bear in the berry patches. For a thousand miles they had travelled against stream, carrying their boats across sixty portages. Now they glided with the current westward to Lake Nipissing. On the lake, the Upper Indians always cached provisions. Fish, otter, and beaver were plentiful; but again they refrained from using firearms, for Iroquois footprints had been found on the sand.

From Lake Nipissing they passed to Lake Huron, where the fleet divided. Radisson and Groseillers went with the Indians, who crossed Lake Huron for Green Bay on Lake Michigan. The birch canoes could not venture across the lake in storms; so the boats rounded southward, keeping along the shore of Georgian Bay. Cedar forests clustered down the sandy reaches of the lake. Rivers dark as cathedral aisles rolled their brown tides through the woods to the blue waters of Lake Huron. At one point Groseillers recognized the site of the ruined Jesuit missions. The Indians waited the chance of a fair day, and paddled over to the straits at the entrance to Lake Michigan. At Manitoulin Island were Huron refugees, among whom were, doubtless, the waiting families of the Indians with Radisson. All struck south for Green Bay. So far Radisson and Groseillers had travelled over beaten ground. Now they were at the gateway of the Great Beyond, where no white man had yet gone.

The first thing done on taking up winter quarters on Green Bay was to appease the friends of those warriors slain by the Mohawks. A distribution of gifts had barely dried up the tears of mourning when news came of Iroquois on the war-path. Radisson did not wait for fear to unman the Algonquin warriors. Before making winter camp, he offered to lead a band of volunteers against the marauders. For two days he followed vague tracks through the autumn-tinted forests. Here were markings of the dead leaves turned freshly up; there a moccasin print on the sand; and now the ashes of a hidden camp-fire lying in almost imperceptible powder on fallen logs told where the Mohawks had bivouacked. On the third day Radisson caught the ambushed band unprepared, and fell upon the Iroquois so furiously that not one escaped.

After that the Indians of the Upper Country could not do too much for the white men. Radisson and Groseillers were conducted from camp to camp in triumph. Feasts were held. Ambassadors went ahead with gifts from the Frenchmen; and companies of women marched to meet the explorers, chanting songs of welcome. "But our mind was not to stay here," relates Radisson, "but to know the remotest people; and, because we had been willing to die in their defence, these Indians consented to conduct us."

Before the opening of spring, 1659, Radisson and Groseillers had been guided across what is now Wisconsin to "a mighty river, great, rushing, profound, and comparable to the St. Lawrence." [7] On the shores of the river they found a vast nation—"the people of the fire," prairie tribes, a branch of the Sioux, who received them well.[8] This river was undoubtedly the Upper Mississippi, now for the first time seen by white men. Radisson and Groseillers had discovered the Great Northwest.[9] They were standing on the threshold of the Great Beyond. They saw before them not the Sea of China, as speculators had dreamed, not kingdoms for conquest, which the princes of Europe coveted; not a short road to Asia, of which savants had spun a cobweb of theories. They saw what every Westerner sees to-day,—illimitable reaches of prairie and ravine, forested hills sloping to mighty rivers, and open meadow-lands watered by streams looped like a ribbon. They saw a land waiting for its people, wealth waiting for possessors, an empire waiting for the nation builders.

[Illustration: An Old-time Buffalo Hunt on the Plains among the Sioux.]

What were Radisson's thoughts? Did he realize the importance of his discovery? Could he have the vaguest premonition that he had opened a door of escape from stifled older lands to a higher type of manhood and freedom than the most sanguine dreamer had ever hoped?[10] After an act has come to fruition, it is easy to read into the actor's mind fuller purpose than he could have intended. Columbus could not have realized to what the discovery of America would lead. Did Radisson realize what the discovery of the Great Northwest meant?

Here is what he says, in that curious medley of idioms which so often results when a speaker knows many languages but is master of none:—

"The country was so pleasant, so beautiful, and so fruitful, that it grieved me to see that the world could not discover such inticing countries to live in. This, I say, because the Europeans fight for a rock in the sea against one another, or for a steril land … where the people by changement of air engender sickness and die.… Contrariwise, these kingdoms are so delicious and under so temperate a climate, plentiful of all things, and the earth brings forth its fruit twice a year, that the people live long and lusty and wise in their way. What a conquest would this be, at little or no cost? What pleasure should people have … instead of misery and poverty! Why should not men reap of the love of God here? Surely, more is to be gained converting souls here than in differences of creed, when wrongs are committed under pretence of religion!… It is true, I confess, … that access here is difficult … but nothing is to be gained without labor and pains." [11]

[Illustration: Father Marquette, from an old painting discovered in
Montreal by Mr. McNab. The date on the picture is 1669.]

Here Radisson foreshadows all the best gains that the West has accomplished for the human race. What are they? Mainly room,—room to live and room for opportunity; equal chances for all classes, high and low; plenty for all classes, high and low; the conquests not of war but of peace. The question arises,—when Radisson discovered the Great Northwest ten years before Marquette and Jolliet, twenty years before La Salle, a hundred years before De la Vérendrye, why has his name been slurred over and left in oblivion?[12] The reasons are plain. Radisson was a Christian, but he was not a slave to any creed. Such liberality did not commend itself to the annalists of an age that was still rioting in a very carnival of religious persecution. Radisson always invoked the blessing of Heaven on his enterprises and rendered thanks for his victories; but he was indifferent as to whether he was acting as lay helper with the Jesuits, or allied to the Huguenots of London and Boston. His discoveries were too important to be ignored by the missionaries. They related his discoveries, but refrained from mentioning his name, though twice referring to Groseillers. What hurt Radisson's fame even more than his indifference to creeds was his indifference to nationality. Like Columbus, he had little care what flag floated at the prow, provided only that the prow pushed on and on and on,—into the Unknown. He sold his services alternately to France and England till he had offended both governments; and, in addition to withstanding a conspiracy of silence on the part of the Church, his fame encountered the ill-will of state historians. He is mentioned as "the adventurer," "the hang-dog," "the renegade." Only in 1885, when the manuscript of his travels was rescued from oblivion, did it become evident that history must be rewritten. Here was a man whose discoveries were second only to those of Columbus, and whose explorations were more far-ranging and important than those of Champlain and La Salle and De la Vérendrye put together.

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. (l) 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 l 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."

"Whose commission have you?" pursued Radisson.

"No commission—New Englanders," answered the others.

"Contrabands," thought Radisson to himself. Then he announced that he had taken possession of all that country for France, had built a strong fort, and expected more ships. In a word, he advised the New Englanders to save themselves by instant flight; but his canoe had glided nearer. To Radisson's surprise, he discovered that the leader of the New England poachers was Ben Gillam of Boston, son of Captain Gillam, the trusted servant of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had opposed Radisson and Groseillers on Rupert's River. It looked as if the contraband might be a venture of the father as well as the son.[9] Radisson and young Gillam recognized each other with a show of friendliness, Gillam inviting Radisson to inspect the ship with much the same motive that the fabled spider invited the fly. Radisson took tactful precaution for his own liberty by graciously asking that two of the New England servants go down to the canoe with the three Frenchmen. No sooner had Radisson gone on the New England ship than young Gillam ordered cannon fired and English flags run up. Having made that brave show of strength, the young man proposed that the French and the New Englanders should divide the traffic between them for the winter. Radisson diplomatically suggested that such an important proposal be laid before his colleagues. In leaving, he advised Gillam to keep his men from wandering beyond the island, lest they suffer wrong at the hands of the French soldiers. Incidentally, that advice would also keep the New Englanders from learning how desperately weak the French really were. Neither leader was in the slightest deceived by the other; each played for time to take the other unawares, and each knew the game that was being played.

[Illustration: Hudson's Bay Company Coins, made of Lead melted from Tea Chests at York Factory, each Coin representing so many Beaver Skins.]

Instead of returning by the creek that cut athwart the neck of land between the two rivers, Radisson decided to go down Nelson River to the bay, round the point, and ascend Hayes River to the French quarters. Cogitating how to frighten young Gillam out of the country or else to seize him, Radisson glided down the swift current of Nelson River toward salt water. He had not gone nine miles from the New Englanders when he was astounded by the spectacle of a ship breasting with full-blown sails up the tide of the Nelson directly in front of the French canoe. The French dashed for the hiding of the brushwood on shore. From their concealment they saw that the ship was a Hudson's Bay Company vessel, armed with cannon and commission for lawful trade. If once the Hudson's Bay Company ship and the New Englanders united, the English would be strong enough to overpower the French.

The majority of leaders would have escaped the impending disaster by taking ingloriously to their heels. Radisson, with that adroit presence of mind which characterized his entire life, had provided for his followers' safety by landing them on the south shore, where the French could flee across the marsh to the ships if pursued. Then his only thought was how to keep the rivals apart. Instantly he had an enormous bonfire kindled. Then he posted his followers in ambush. The ship mistook the fire for an Indian signal, reefed its sails, and anchored. Usually natives paddled out to the traders' ships to barter. These Indians kept in hiding. The ship waited for them to come; and Radisson waited for the ship's hands to land. In the morning a gig boat was lowered to row ashore. In it were Captain Gillam, Radisson's personal enemy, John Bridgar,[10] the new governor of the Hudson's Bay Company for Nelson River, and six sailors. All were heavily armed, yet Radisson stood alone to receive them, with his three companions posted on the outskirts of the woods as if in command of ambushed forces. Fortune is said to favor the dauntless, and just as the boat came within gunshot of the shore, it ran aground. A sailor jumped out to drag the craft up the bank. They were all at Radisson's mercy—without cover. He at once levelled his gun with a shout of "Halt!" At the same moment his own men made as if to sally from the woods. The English imagined themselves ambushed, and called out that they were the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company. Radisson declared who he was and that he had taken possession of the country for France. His musket was still levelled. His men were ready to dash forward. The English put their heads together and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Governor Bridgar meekly requested permission to land and salute the commander of the French. Then followed a pompous melodrama of bravado, each side affecting sham strength. Radisson told the English all that he had told the New Englanders, going on board the Company's ship to dine, while English hostages remained with his French followers. For reasons which he did not reveal, he strongly advised Governor Bridgar not to go farther up Nelson River. Above all, he warned Captain Gillam not to permit the English sailors to wander inland. Having exchanged compliments, Radisson took gracious leave of his hosts, and with his three men slipped down the Nelson in their canoe. Past a bend in the river, he ordered the canoe ashore. The French then skirted back through the woods and lay watching the English till satisfied that the Hudson's Bay Company ship would go no nearer the island where Ben Gillam lay hidden.

Groseillers and his son looked after the trade that winter. Radisson had his hands full keeping the two English crews apart. Ten days after his return, he again left Hayes River to see what his rivals were doing. The Hudson's Bay Company ship had gone aground in the ooze a mile from the fort where Governor Bridgar had taken up quarters. That division of forces weakened the English fort. Introducing his man as captain of a French ship, Radisson entered the governor's house. The visitors drained a health to their host and fired off muskets to learn whether sentinels were on guard. No attention was paid to the unwonted noise. "I judged," writes Radisson, "that they were careless, and might easily be surprised." He then went across to the river flats, where the tide had left the vessel, and, calmly mounting the ladder, took a survey of Gillam's ship. When the irate old captain rushed up to know the meaning of the intrusion Radisson suavely proffered provisions, of which they were plainly in need.

The New Englanders had been more industrious. A stoutly palisaded fort had been completed on young Gillam's island, and cannon commanded all approach. Radisson fired a musket to notify the sentry, and took care to beach his canoe below the range of the guns. Young Gillam showed a less civil front than before. His lieutenant ironically congratulated Radisson on his "safe" return, and invited him to visit the fort if he would enter alone. When Radisson would have introduced his four followers, the lieutenant swore "if the four French were forty devils, they could not take the New Englanders' fort." The safety of the French habitation now hung by a hair. Everything depended on keeping the two English companies apart, and they were distant only nine miles. The scheme must have flashed on Radisson in an intuition; for he laid his plans as he listened to the boastings of the New Englanders. If father and son could be brought together through Radisson's favor, Captain Gillam would keep the English from coming to the New England fort lest his son should be seized for poaching on the trade of the Company; and Ben Gillam would keep his men from going near the English fort lest Governor Bridgar should learn of the contraband ship from Boston. Incidentally, both sides would be prevented from knowing the weakness of the French at Fort Bourbon. At once Radisson told young Gillam of his father's presence. Ben was eager to see his father and, as he thought, secure himself from detection in illegal trade. Radisson was to return to the old captain with the promised provisions. He offered to take young Gillam, disguised as a bush-ranger. In return, he demanded (1) that the New Englanders should not leave their fort; (2) that they should not betray themselves by discharging cannon; (3) that they shoot any Hudson's Bay Company people who tried to enter the New England fort. To young Gillam these terms seemed designed for his own protection. What they really accomplished was the complete protection of the French from united attack. Father and son would have put themselves in Radisson's power. A word of betrayal to Bridgar, the Hudson's Bay governor, and both the Gillams would be arrested for illegal trade. Ben Gillam's visit to his father was fraught with all the danger that Radisson's daring could have desired. A seaman half suspected the identity of the bush-ranger, and Governor Bridgar wanted to know how Radisson had returned so soon when the French fort was far away. "I told him, smiling," writes Radisson, "that I could fly when there was need to serve my friends."

Young Gillam had begun to suspect the weakness of the French. When the two were safely out of the Hudson's Bay Company fort, he offered to go home part of the way with Radisson. This was to learn where the French fort lay. Radisson declined the kindly service and deliberately set out from the New Englanders' island in the wrong direction, coming down the Nelson past young Gillam's fort at night. The delay of the trick nearly cost Radisson his life. Fall rains had set in, and the river was running a mill-race. Great floes of ice from the North were tossing on the bay at the mouth of the Nelson River in a maelstrom of tide and wind. In the dark Radisson did not see how swiftly his canoe had been carried down-stream. Before he knew it his boat shot out of the river among the tossing ice-floes of the bay. Surrounded by ice in a wild sea, he could not get back to land. The spray drove over the canoe till the Frenchman's clothes were stiff with ice. For four hours they lay jammed in the ice-drift till a sudden upheaval crushed the canoe to kindling wood and left the men stranded on the ice. Running from floe to floe, they gained the shore and beat their way for three days through a raging hurricane of sleet and snow toward the French habitation. They were on the side of the Hayes opposite the French fort. Four voyageurs crossed for them, and the little company at last gained the shelter of a roof.

Radisson now knew that young Gillam intended to spy upon the French; so he sent scouts to watch the New Englanders' fort. The scouts reported that the young captain had sent messengers to obtain additional men from his father; but the New England soldiers, remembering Radisson's orders to shoot any one approaching, had levelled muskets to fire at the reënforcements. The rebuffed men had gone back to Governor Bridgar with word of a fort and ship only nine miles up Nelson River. Bridgar thought this was the French establishment, and old Captain Gillam could not undeceive him. The Hudson's Bay Company governor had sent the two men back to spy on what he thought was a French fort. At once Radisson sent out men to capture Bridgar's scouts, who were found half dead with cold and hunger. The captives reported to Radisson that the English ship had been totally wrecked in the ice jam. Bridgar's people were starving. Many traders would have left their rivals to perish. Radisson supplied them with food for the winter. They were no longer to be feared; but there was still danger from young Gillam. He had wished to visit the French fort. Radisson decided to give him an opportunity. Ben Gillam was escorted down to Hayes River. A month passed quietly. The young captain had learned that the boasted forces of the French consisted of less than thirty men. His insolence knew no bounds. He struck a French servant, called Radisson a pirate, and gathering up his belongings prepared to go home. Radisson quietly barred the young man's way.

"You pitiful dog!" said the Frenchman, coolly. "You poor young fool! Why do you suppose you were brought to this fort? We brought you here because it suited us! We keep you here as long as it suits us! We take you back when it suits us!"

Ben Gillam was dumfounded to find that he had been trapped, when he had all the while thought that he was acting the part of a clever spy. He broke out in a storm of abuse. Radisson remanded the foolish young man to a French guard. At the mess-room table Radisson addressed his prisoner:—

"Gillam, to-day I set out to capture your fort."

At the table sat less than thirty men. Young Gillam gave one scornful glance at the French faces and laughed.

"If you had a hundred men instead of twenty," he jeered.

"How many have you, Ben?"

"Nine; and they'll kill you before you reach the palisades."

Radisson was not talking of killing.

"Gillam," he returned imperturbably, "pick out nine of my men, and I have your fort within forty-eight hours."

Gillam chose the company, and Radisson took one of the Hudson Bay captives as a witness. The thing was done as easily as a piece of farcical comedy. French hostages had been left among the New Englanders as guarantee of Gillam's safety in Radisson's fort. These hostages had been instructed to drop, as if by chance, blocks of wood across the doors of the guard-room and powder house and barracks. Even these precautions proved unnecessary. Two of Radisson's advance guard, who were met by the lieutenant of the New England fort, reported that "Gillam had remained behind." The lieutenant led the two Frenchmen into the fort. These two kept the gates open for Radisson, who marched in with his band, unopposed. The keys were delivered and Radisson was in possession. At midnight the watch-dogs raised an alarm, and the French sallied out to find that a New Englander had run to the Hudson's Bay Company for aid, and Governor Bridgar's men were attacking the ships. All of the assailants fled but four, whom Radisson caught ransacking the ship's cabin. Radisson now had more captives than he could guard, so he loaded the Hudson's Bay Company men with provisions and sent them back to their own starving fort.

Radisson left the New England fort in charge of his Frenchmen and returned to the French quarters. Strange news was carried to him there. Bridgar had forgotten all benefits, waited until Radisson's back was turned, and, with one last desperate cast of the die to retrieve all by capturing the New England fort and ship for the fur company, had marched against young Gillam's island. The French threw open the gates for the Hudson's Bay governor to enter. Then they turned the key and told Governor Bridgar that he was a prisoner. Their coup was a complete triumph for Radisson. Both of his rivals were prisoners, and the French flag flew undisputed over Port Nelson.

Spring brought the Indians down to the bay with the winter's hunt. The sight of threescore Englishmen captured by twenty Frenchmen roused the war spirit of the young braves. They offered Radisson two hundred beaver skins to be allowed to massacre the English. Radisson thanked the savages for their good will, but declined their offer. Floods had damaged the water-rotted timbers of the two old hulls in which the explorers voyaged north. It was agreed to return to Quebec in Ben Gillam's boat. A vessel was constructed on one of the hulls to send the English prisoners to the Hudson's Bay Company forts at the south end of the bay.[11] Young Jean Groseillers was left, with seven men, to hold the French post till boats came in the following year. On the 27th of July the ships weighed anchor for the homeward voyage. Young Gillam was given a free passage by way of Quebec. Bridgar was to have gone with his men to the Hudson's Bay Company forts at the south of the bay, but at the last moment a friendly Englishman warned Radisson that the governor's design was to wait till the large ship had left, head the bark back for Hayes River, capture the fort, and put the Frenchmen to the sword. To prevent this Bridgar, too, was carried to Quebec. Twenty miles out the ship was caught in ice-floes that held her for a month, and Bridgar again conspired to cut the throats of the Frenchmen. Henceforth young Gillam and Bridgar were out on parole during the day and kept under lock at night.

The same jealousy as of old awaited Radisson at Quebec. The Company of the North was furious that La Chesnaye had sent ships to Hudson Bay, which the shareholders considered to be their territory by license.[12] Farmers of the Revenue beset the ship to seize the cargo, because the explorers had gone North without a permit. La Chesnaye saved some of the furs by transshipping them for France before the vessel reached Quebec. Then followed an interminable lawsuit, that exhausted the profits of the voyage. La Barre had succeeded Frontenac as governor. The best friends of La Barre would scarcely deny that his sole ambition as governor was to amass a fortune from the fur trade of Canada. Inspired by the jealous Company of the North, he refused to grant Radisson prize money for the capture of the contraband ship, restored the vessel to Gillam, and gave him clearance to sail for Boston.[13] For this La Barre was sharply reprimanded from France; but the reprimand did not mend the broken fortunes of the two explorers, who had given their lives for the extension of the French domain.[14] M. Colbert summoned Radisson and Groseillers to return to France and give an account of all they had done; but when they arrived in Paris, on January 15, 1684, they learned that the great statesman had died. Lord Preston, the English envoy, had lodged such complaints against them for the defeat of the Englishmen in Hudson Bay, that France hesitated to extend public recognition of their services.

[1] Within ten years so many different regulations were promulgated on the fur trade that it is almost impossible to keep track of them. In 1673 orders came from Paris forbidding French settlers of New France from wandering in the woods for longer than twenty-four hours. In 1672 M. Frontenac forbade the selling of merchandise to coureurs du bois, or the purchase of furs from them. In 1675 a decree of the Council of State awarded to M. Jean Oudiette one-fourth of all beaver, with the exclusive right of buying and selling in Canada. In 1676 Frontenac withdrew from the Cie Indes Occidentales all the rights it had over Canada and other places. An ordinance of October 1, 1682, forbade all trade except under license. An ordinance in 1684 ordered all fur traders trading in Hudson Bay to pay one-fourth to Farmers of the Revenue.

[2] It is hard to tell who this Godefroy was. Of all the famous Godefroys of Three Rivers (according to Abbé Tanguay) there was only one, Jean Batiste, born 1658, who might have gone with Radisson; but I hardly think so. The Godefroys descended from the French nobility and themselves bore titles from the king, but in spite of this, were the best canoemen of New France, as ready—according to Mr. Sulte—to faire la cuisine as to command a fort. Radisson's Godefroy evidently went in the capacity of a servant, for his name is not mentioned in the official list of promoters. On the other hand, parish records do not give the date of Jean Batiste Godefroy's death; so that he may have gone as a servant and died in the North.

[3] State Papers, 1683, state that Dame Sorel, La Chesnaye, Chaujon, Gitton, Foret, and others advanced money for the goods.

[4] In 1898, when up the coast of Labrador, I was told by the superintendent of a northern whaling station—a man who has received royal decorations for his scientific research of ocean phenomena—that he has frequently seen icebergs off Labrador that were nine miles long.

[5] Jean was born in 1654 and was, therefore, twenty-eight.

[6] I have written both addresses as the Indians would chant them. To be sure, they will not scan according to the elephantine grace of the pedant's iambics; but then, neither will the Indian songs scan, though I know of nothing more subtly rhythmical. Rhythm is so much a part of the Indian that it is in his walk, in the intonation of his words, in the gesture of his hands. I think most Westerners will bear me out in saying that it is the exquisitely musical intonation of words that betrays Indian blood to the third and fourth generation.

[7] See Robson's map.

[8] State Papers: "The Governor of New England is ordered to seize all vessels trading in Hudson Bay contrary to charter—"

[9] Radisson's Journal, p. 277.

[10] Robson gives the commission to this governor.

[11] Later in Hudson Bay history, when another commander captured the forts, the prisoners were sold into slavery. Radisson's treatment of his rivals hardly substantiates all the accusations of rascality trumped up against him. Just how many prisoners he took in this coup, no two records agree.

[12] Archives, September 24, 1683: Ordinance of M. de Meulles regarding the claims of persons interested in the expedition to Hudson Bay, organized by M. de la Chesnaye, Gitton, Bruneau, Mme. Sorel.… In order to avoid difficulties with the Company of the North, they had placed a vessel at Isle Percée to receive the furs brought back … and convey them to Holland and Spain.… Joachims de Chalons, agent of the Company of the North, sent a bateau to Percée to defeat the project. De la Chesnaye, summoned to appear before the intendant, maintained that the company had no right to this trade, … that the enterprise involved so many risks that he could not consent to divide the profits, if he had any. The partners having been heard, M. de Meulles orders that the boats from Hudson Bay be anchored at Quebec.

[13] Archives, October 25, 1683: M. de la Barre grants Benjamin Gillam of Boston clearance for the ship Le Garçon, now in port at Quebec, although he had no license from his Britannic Majesty permitting him to enter Hudson Bay.

[14] Such foundationless accusations have been written against Radisson by historians who ought to have known better, about these furs, that I quote the final orders of the government on the subject: November 5, 1683, M. de la Barre forbids Chalons, agent of La Ferme du Canada, confiscating the furs brought from Hudson Bay; November 8 M. de la Chesnaye is to be paid for the furs seized.

CHAPTER VII

1684-1710

THE LAST VOYAGE OF RADISSON TO HUDSON BAY

France refuses to restore the Confiscated Furs and Radisson tries to redeem his Fortune—Reëngaged by England, he captures back Fort Nelson, but comes to Want in his Old Age—his Character

Radisson was now near his fiftieth year. He had spent his entire life exploring the wilds. He had saved New France from bankruptcy with cargoes of furs that in four years amounted to half a million of modern money. In ten years he had brought half a million dollars worth of furs to the English company.[1] Yet he was a poor man, threatened with the sponging-house by clamorous creditors and in the power of avaricious statesmen, who used him as a tool for their own schemes. La Chesnaye had saved his furs; but the half of the cargo that was the share of Radisson and Groseillers had been seized at Quebec.[2] On arriving in France, Groseillers presented a memorial of their wrong to the court.[3] Probably because England and France were allied by treaty at that time, the petition for redress was ignored. Groseillers was now an old man. He left the struggle to Radisson and retired to spend his days in quietness.[4] Radisson did not cease to press his claim for the return of confiscated furs. He had a wife and four children to support; but, in spite of all his services to England and France, he did not own a shilling's worth of property in the whole world. From January to May he waited for the tardy justice of the French court. When his suit became too urgent, he was told that he had offended the Most Christian King by attacking the fur posts under the protection of a friendly monarch, King Charles. The hollowness of that excuse became apparent when the French government sanctioned the fitting out of two vessels for Radisson to go to Hudson Bay in the spring. Lord Preston, the English ambassador, was also playing a double game. He never ceased to reproach the French for the destruction of the fur posts on Hudson Bay. At the same time he besieged Radisson with offers to return to the service of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Radisson was deadly tired of the farce. From first to last France had treated him with the blackest injustice. If he had wished to be rich, he could long ago have accumulated wealth by casting in his lot with the dishonest rulers of Quebec. In England a strong clique, headed by Bridgar, Gillam, and Bering opposed him; but King Charles and the Duke of York, Prince Rupert, when he was alive, Sir William Young, Sir James Hayes, and Sir John Kirke were in his favor. His heart yearned for his wife and children. Just then letters came from England urging him to return to the Hudson's Bay Company. Lord Preston plied the explorer with fair promises. Under threat of punishment for molesting the English of Hudson Bay, the French government tried to force him into a contract to sail on a second voyage to the North on the same terms as in 1682-1683—not to share the profits. England and France were both playing double. Radisson smiled a grim smile and took his resolution. Daily he conferred with the French Marine on details of the voyage. He permitted the date of sailing to be set for April 24. Sailors were enlisted, stores put on board, everything was in readiness. At the last moment, Radisson asked leave of absence to say good-by to his family. The request was granted. Without losing a moment, he sailed for England, where he arrived on the 10th of May and was at once taken in hand by Sir William Young and Sir James Hayes. He was honored as his explorations entitled him to be. King Charles and the Duke of York received him. Both royal brothers gave him gifts in token of appreciation. He took the oath of fealty and cast in his lot with the English for good. It was characteristic of the enthusiast that he was, when Radisson did not sign a strictly business contract with the Hudson's Bay Company. "I accepted their commission with the greatest pleasure in the world," he writes; ". . . without any precautions on my part for my own interests … since they had confidence in me, I wished to be generous towards them … in the hope they would render me all the justice due from gentlemen of honor and probity."

But to the troubles of the future Radisson always paid small heed. Glad to be off once more to the adventurous freedom of the wilds, he set sail from England on May 17, 1684, in the Happy Return, accompanied by two other vessels. No incident marked the voyage till the ships had passed through the straits and were driven apart by the ice-drift of the bay. About sixty miles out from Port Nelson, the Happy Return was held back by ice. Fearing trouble between young Jean Groseillers' men and the English of the other ships, Radisson embarked in a shallop with seven men in order to arrive at Hayes River before the other boats came. Rowing with might and main for forty-eight hours, they came to the site of the French fort.

The fort had been removed. Jean Groseillers had his own troubles during Radisson's absence. A few days after Radisson's departure in July, 1683, cannon announced the arrival of the annual English ships on Nelson River. Jean at once sent out scouts, who found a tribe of Indians on the way home from trading with the ships that had fired the cannon. The scouts brought the Indians back to the French fort. Young Groseillers admitted the savages only one at a time; but the cunning braves pretended to run back for things they had forgotten in the French house. Suspecting nothing, Jean had permitted his own men to leave the fort. On different pretexts, a dozen warriors had surrounded the young trader. Suddenly the mask was thrown off. Springing up, treacherous as a tiger cat, the chief of the band struck at Groseillers with a dagger. Jean parried the blow, grabbed the redskin by his collar of bears' claws strung on thongs, threw the assassin to the ground almost strangling him, and with one foot on the villain's throat and the sword point at his chest, demanded of the Indians what they meant. The savages would have fled, but French soldiers who had heard the noise dashed to Groseillers' aid. The Indians threw down their weapons and confessed all: the Englishmen of the ship had promised the band a barrel of powder to massacre the French. Jean took his foot from the Indian's throat and kicked him out of the fort. The English outnumbered the French; so Jean removed his fort farther from the bay, among the Indians, where the English could not follow. To keep the warriors about him, he offered to house and feed them for the winter. This protected him from the attacks of the English. In the spring Indians came to the French with pelts. Jean was short of firearms; so he bribed the Indians to trade their peltries to the English for guns, and to retrade the guns to him for other goods. It was a stroke worthy of Radisson himself, and saved the little French fort. The English must have suspected the young trader's straits, for they again paid warriors to attack the French; but Jean had forestalled assault by forming an alliance with the Assiniboines, who came down Hayes River from Lake Winnipeg four hundred strong, and encamped a body-guard around the fort. Affairs were at this stage when Radisson arrived with news that he had transferred his services to the English.

Young Groseillers was amazed.[5] Letters to his mother show that he surrendered his charge with a very ill grace. "Do not forget," Radisson urged him, "the injuries that France has inflicted on your father." Young Groseillers' mother, Marguerite Hayet, was in want at Three Rivers.[6] It was memory of her that now turned the scales with the young man. He would turn over the furs to Radisson for the English Company, if Radisson would take care of the far-away mother at Three Rivers. The bargain was made, and the two embraced. The surrender of the French furs to the English Company has been represented as Radisson's crowning treachery. Under that odium the great discoverer's name has rested for nearly three centuries; yet the accusation of theft is without a grain of truth. Radisson and Groseillers were to obtain half the proceeds of the voyage in 1682-1683. Neither the explorers nor Jean Groseillers, who had privately invested 500 pounds in the venture, ever received one sou. The furs at Port Nelson—or Fort Bourbon—belonged to the Frenchmen, to do what they pleased with them. The act of the enthusiast is often tainted with folly. That Radisson turned over twenty thousand beaver pelts to the English, without the slightest assurance that he would be given adequate return, was surely folly; but it was not theft.

The transfer of all possessions to the English was promptly made. Radisson then arranged a peace treaty between the Indians and the English. That peace treaty has endured between the Indians and the Hudson's Bay Company to this day. A new fort was built, the furs stored in the hold of the vessels, and the crews mustered for the return voyage. Radisson had been given a solemn promise by the Hudson's Bay Company that Jean Groseillers and his comrades should be well treated and reëngaged for the English at 100 pounds a year. Now he learned that the English intended to ship all the French out of Hudson Bay and to keep them out. The enthusiast had played his game with more zeal than discretion. The English had what they wanted—furs and fort. In return, Radisson had what had misled him like a will-o'-the-wisp all his life—vague promises. In vain Radisson protested that he had given his promise to the French before they surrendered the fort. The English distrusted foreigners. The Frenchmen had been mustered on the ships to receive last instructions. They were told that they were to be taken to England. No chance was given them to escape. Some of the French had gone inland with the Indians. Of Jean's colony, these alone remained. When Radisson realized the conspiracy, he advised his fellow-countrymen to make no resistance; for he feared that some of the English bitter against him might seize on the pretext of a scuffle to murder the French. His advice proved wise. He had strong friends at the English court, and atonement was made for the breach of faith to the French.

The ships set sail on the 4th of September and arrived in England on the 23d of October. Without waiting for the coach, Radisson hired a horse and spurred to London in order to give his version first of the quarrel on the bay. The Hudson's Bay Company was delighted with the success of Radisson. He was taken before the directors, given a present of a hundred guineas, and thanked for his services. He was once more presented to the King and the Duke of York. The company redeemed its promise to Radisson by employing the Frenchmen of the surrendered fort and offering to engage young Groseillers at 100 pounds a year.[7]

[Illustration: Hudson Bay Dog Trains laden with Furs arriving at Lower Fort Garry, Red River. (Courtesy of C. C. Chipman, Commissioner H. B. Company.)]

For five years the English kept faith with Radisson, and he made annual voyages to the bay; but war broke out with France. New France entered on a brilliant campaign against the English of Hudson Bay. The company's profits fell. Radisson, the Frenchman, was distrusted. France had set a price on his head, and one Martinière went to Port Nelson to seize him, but was unable to cope with the English. At no time did Radisson's salary with the company exceed 100 pounds; and now, when war stopped dividends on the small amount of stock which had been given to him, he fell into poverty and debt. In 1692 Sir William Young petitioned the company in his favor; but a man with a price on his head for treason could plainly not return to France.[8] The French were in possession of the bay. Radisson could do no harm to the English. Therefore the company ignored him till he sued them and received payment in full for arrears of salary and dividends on stock which he was not permitted to sell; but 50 pounds a year would not support a man who paid half that amount for rent, and had a wife, four children, and servants to support. In 1700 Radisson applied for the position of warehouse keeper for the company at London. Even this was denied.

The dauntless pathfinder was growing old; and the old cannot fight and lose and begin again as Radisson had done all his life. State Papers of Paris contain records of a Radisson with Tonty at Detroit![9] Was this his nephew, François Radisson's son, who took the name of the explorer, or Radisson's own son, or the game old warrior himself, come out to die on the frontier as he had lived?

History is silent. Until the year 1710 Radisson drew his allowance of 50 pounds a year from the English Company, then the payments stopped. Did the dauntless life stop too? Oblivion hides all record of his death, as it obscured the brilliant achievements of his life.

There is no need to point out Radisson's faults. They are written on his life without extenuation or excuse, so that all may read. There is less need to eulogize his virtues. They declare themselves in every act of his life. This, only, should be remembered. Like all enthusiasts, Radisson could not have been a hero, if he had not been a bit of a fool. If he had not had his faults, if he had not been as impulsive, as daring, as reckless, as inconstant, as improvident of the morrow, as a savage or a child, he would not have accomplished the exploration of half a continent. Men who weigh consequences are not of the stuff to win empires. Had Radisson haggled as to the means, he would have missed or muddled the end. He went ahead; and when the way did not open, he went round, or crawled over, or carved his way through.

There was an old saying among retired hunters of Three Rivers that "one learned more in the woods than was ever found in l' petee cat-ee-cheesm." Radisson's training was of the woods, rather than the curé's catechism; yet who that has been trained to the strictest code may boast of as dauntless faults and noble virtues? He was not faithful to any country, but he was faithful to his wife and children; and he was "faithful to his highest hope,"—that of becoming a discoverer,—which is more than common mortals are to their meanest aspirations. When statesmen played him a double game, he paid them back in their own coin with compound interest. Perhaps that is why they hated him so heartily and blackened his memory. But amid all the mad license of savage life, Radisson remained untainted. Other explorers and statesmen, too, have left a trail of blood to perpetuate their memory; Radisson never once spilled human blood needlessly, and was beloved by the savages.

Memorial tablets commemorate other discoverers. Radisson needs none. The Great Northwest is his monument for all time.

[1] Radisson's petition to the Hudson's Bay Company gives these amounts.

[2] See State Papers quoted in Chapter VI. I need scarcely add that Radisson did not steal a march on his patrons by secretly shipping furs to Europe. This is only another of the innumerable slanders against Radisson which State Papers disprove.

[3] It seems impossible that historians with the slightest regard for truth should have branded this part of Radisson's Relation as a fabrication, too. Yet such is the case, and of writers whose books are supposed to be reputable. Since parts of Radisson's life appeared in the magazines, among many letters I received one from a well-known historian which to put it mildly was furious at the acceptance of Radisson's Journal as authentic. In reply, I asked that historian how many documents contemporaneous with Radisson's life he had consulted before he branded so great an explorer as Radisson as a liar. Needless to say, that question was not answered. In corroboration of this part of Radisson's life, I have lying before me: (1) Chouart's letters—see Appendix. (2) A letter of Frontenac recording Radisson's first trip by boat for De la Chesnaye and the complications it would be likely to cause. (3) A complete official account sent from Quebec to France of Radisson's doings in the bay, which tallies in every respect with Radisson's Journal. (4) Report of M. de Meulles to the Minister on the whole affair with the English and New Englanders. (5) An official report on the release of Gillam's boat at Quebec. (6) The memorial presented by Groseillers to the French minister. (7) An official statement of the first discovery of the bay overland. (8) A complete statement (official) of the complications created by Radisson's wife being English. (9) A statement through a third party—presumably an official—by Radisson himself of these complications dated 1683. (10) A letter from the king to the governor at Quebec retailing the English complaints of Radisson at Nelson River.

In the face of this, what is to be said of the historian who calls Radisson's adventures "a fabrication"? Such misrepresentation betrays about equal amounts of impudence and ignorance.

[4] From Charlevoix to modern writers mention is made of the death of these two explorers. Different names are given as the places where they died. This is all pure supposition. Therefore I do not quote. No records exist to prove where Radisson and Groseillers died.

[5] See Appendix.

[6] State Papers record payment of money to her because she was in want.

[7] Dr. George Bryce, who is really the only scholar who has tried to unravel the mystery of Radisson's last days, supplies new facts about his dealings with the Company to 1710.

[8] Marquis de Denonville ordered the arrest of Radisson wherever he might be found.

[9] Appendix; see State Papers.