Like Nicolet, our two adventurous explorers traveled by canoes, with Indians to do the paddling. Passing between the Manitoulin Islands, in the northern waters of Lake Huron, they visited and traded with the Huron Indians there, thence proceeded through the Straits of Mackinac, and across to the peninsula of Door county, which separates Green Bay from Lake Michigan. Here they spent the winter with the Pottawattomies; they held great feasts with them, at which dogs and beavers, boiled in kettles into a sort of thick soup, were the greatest delicacies; they smoked pipes of peace with them, at wordy councils which often lasted through several days; they hunted and fished with them, in a spirit of good fellowship; and, in general, they shared the fortunes of their forest friends, whether feasting or starving, after the manner of all these early French explorers and fur traders. In the curious journal afterward written in wretched but picturesque English by Radisson, he says, "We weare every where much made of; neither wanted victualls, for all the different nations that we mett conducted us & furnished us with all necessaries."
Springtime (1655) came at last, and the two traders proceeded merrily up the Fox River, still in the wake of Nicolet, past the sites of the present cities of Green Bay, De Pere, Kaukauna, Appleton, Neenah, and Menasha. They frequently had to carry their boats around the rapids and waterfalls, but after passing Doty's Island they had a smooth highway. Paddling through Lake Winnebago, and past the site of Oshkosh, then an Indian village, they pushed on through the winding reaches of the Upper Fox, and at last came to a broad prairie near Berlin, whereon was stationed the village of the Mascoutins, or Fire Nation.
The Mascoutins treated the strangers, as they had Nicolet, with great kindness. With this village as headquarters, the explorers made frequent expeditions, "anxious to be knowne with the remotest people." Radisson quaintly writes, "We ware 4 moneths in our voyage without doeing any thing but goe from river to river." The explorers cared little, we may suppose, except to have a good time and make a profitable trade with the Indians; they do not appear to have made any map. Writing about their travels, many years after, Radisson says, in one place, that they went into a "great river" which flowed southward, and journeyed to a land of continual warmth, finer than Italy, where he heard the Indians describe certain white men living to the south, who might be Spaniards. It is supposed by many historians that Radisson meant that he was on the Mississippi; if this supposition be true, then the two explorers undoubtedly found the great river by going up the Fox from the Mascoutin village, carrying their canoe over the mile and a half of intervening marsh at Portage, and gliding down the Wisconsin to its junction with the Mississippi at Prairie du Chien. This is important, for the credit of discovering the Upper Mississippi is usually given to Louis Joliet and Father Marquette, who took this very course in 1673, eighteen years later. But the whole question of what "great river" Radisson meant to describe is so involved in doubt, that very likely we shall never know the truth about it.
Leaving their Mascoutin friends at last, apparently in the autumn of 1655, the two adventurers returned down the Fox River to Green Bay; thence on to the large villages of Indians which clustered around the Sault Ste. Marie. Received there, as elsewhere, with much feasting and good will, Radisson and Groseilliers conducted trade with their hosts, and explored a long stretch of the southern coast of Lake Superior, but do not appear to have ventured so far as the Pictured Rocks. They also made long expeditions into the country, on snowshoes, to visit and trade with other tribes in the Michigan Peninsula and northern Wisconsin, and even as far off as Hudson Bay, at one time being accompanied by a hundred and fifty Indian hunters.
In this wild fashion they spent the winter of 1655-56, and finally reached Quebec in August, 1656. They had been absent from home for two years, and had experienced many singular adventures. It happened that during their absence the Iroquois had succeeded in keeping the Hurons and other friendly Indians from visiting Quebec, so that the fur trade, upon which New France depended, was now quite ruined; for this reason the arrival of Radisson and Groseilliers, with a great store of furs from far-away Wisconsin and Lake Superior, was hailed as a joyful event, and, despite their having departed without a license, they were made welcome at Quebec, the cannons being fired and the people flocking on the beach to meet them.
Men who love adventure cannot be kept out of it long, whatever the risk. Three years later, in the summer of 1659, Radisson and Groseilliers again set off for Lake Superior, up the old Ottawa and Georgian Bay routes. This time they were specially bidden by the king's officers at Quebec not to go, so that they were obliged to slip off secretly, and join a fleet of Indian canoes returning home after the annual trade at the French settlements.
At Sault Ste. Marie they spent a short time with their savage friends, and then paddled westward, along the southern shore of Lake Superior. In their company were several Huron and Ottawa Indians, who had recently been compelled to flee to Wisconsin because of Iroquois raids, which now extended as far west as Michigan. The travelers were obliged to carry their boats across Keweenaw Point, and at last found their way to Chequamegon Bay, a noble sheet of water, hemmed in by the beautiful Apostle Islands, and to-day a popular summer resort.
Not far to the west of where Ashland now lies, somewhere near Whittlesey's Creek, they built for themselves a rude hut, or fort, of logs. The place was a small point of land jutting out into the water, a triangle, Radisson describes it, with water on two sides and land at the base. The land side of the triangle was guarded with a palisade of pointed stakes, and to prevent surprises by night, for Indians were always prowling about looking for plunder, the traders surrounded their house with boughs of trees piled one upon the other, intertwined with a long cord hung with little bells.
After staying at their fort for a few weeks, they managed to cache (secretly bury) the greater part of their goods; and then set out on a hunt with their Huron neighbors upon the headwaters of the Chippewa River. Unusually severe weather set in, and a famine ensued, for there was no game to kill, and the snow was so deep that they could hardly travel.
In the following spring (1660) the Frenchmen went with their Hurons on a long search for provisions, getting as far west as the Sioux camps in northern Minnesota. Then they returned to Chequamegon Bay, where they built another little fort, and from which they visited some Indians on the northwest shore of Lake Superior. In August they returned home, again in a fleet of Huron canoes going down to Montreal to trade. But this time the officers of the colony punished them for being coureurs des bois, and confiscated most of their valuable furs, which meant the loss of nearly all the property they possessed.