Another worthy member declared, on a similar occasion that the tribes frequenting the Bay were more volatile than the Bedouins. "These are not men, but chameleons"—was the remark of another adventurer.
Confusion of tribes.
The chief cause of the confusion lay in the variations of spelling. More than a century was to elapse before a common orthography was adopted, and in the interval it was impossible to fix the tribes by name with certainty. The name of no tribe perhaps underwent such vicissitudes of spelling and pronunciation as that described by the earliest Jesuit pioneers as the Ossa-poiles, which in our own day are known as the Assiniboines. They were in process of time the Poeles, Poets, the Pedlas, the Semplars, Oss-Semplars, Essapoils and the Simpoils.[17]
At a general court held to consider the action of Governor Bailey, the majority of the adventurers professed themselves rejoiced at having been quit of the services of the Sieurs Groseilliers and Radisson; yet there were not wanting others to openly regret the treatment these two men had received. As may be supposed, the most fervent of their advocates and defenders was Sir John Kirke, whose daughter had married Radisson, and who himself had lately been knighted by the king. He predicted some disaster to the Company from having dismissed these two faithful servants, and he was loud and persistent in asserting the bad faith and unjust suspicions of Bailey.
While the affairs of the Company were proceeding tranquilly at home, the conduct and employment of one of these two bushrangers was more enlivening. Chouart was passing his time in inactivity at Three Rivers. But his brother-in-law, after several ineffectual endeavours to establish a northern rivalry to the Company, had offered his services to the French Navy. This career, which at that period must have been, even for him, sufficiently eventful and exciting, was cut short by ship-wreck in 1679. Losing all his property, even to his clothing, Radisson made his way first to Brest and then to Paris. The Vice-Admiral and Intendant of the Fleet having written in his favour, the Court was pleased to grant him a sum of one hundred crowns, and hope was also held out to him that he would be honoured by the command of a frigate. In the meantime he was accorded leave to go to England to fetch his wife.
Radisson in France.
Madame Radisson, otherwise Mistress Mary Kirke, appears to have caused her husband a great deal of mortification and numerous disappointments. There is no doubt that her continued residence in England, in spite of her husband's return to the French service, made him an object of suspicion to the French Court. Once when he endeavoured, in a memorable interview with Colbert, to press upon that Minister his scheme for ousting the English from Hudson's Bay, the Minister responded coldly:
"M. Radisson, you are suspected of being in league with the English, your father-in-law is one of the members of the English Company; and your wife resides under his roof."
"I made him understand," declared Radisson long afterwards, "that, though married, I was not master of my wife. Her father would by no means consent to my bringing her to France with me."
These rebuffs determined him to make an attempt to better his worldly condition elsewhere. A true soldier of fortune, patriotism appears to have had little weight with him; he was as ready to serve under the English as the French. He returned to find his father-in-law more placable. Sir John had at this time certain claims against the French; and he doubtless fancied that Radisson might assist him in preferring these at the French Court. He took occasion to ask his father-in-law what chance there remained to him of again securing employment under the Company. "None, sir," replied Kirke, "both Bailey, Lyddal and others are against you and have poisoned the minds of their employers. Prince Rupert is, however, your friend, and also Captain Gillam; but one dislikes to speak openly, and the other dare not."