Nicolet announced that he was a peacemaker, and that he desired that they should settle their quarrels and be on friendly terms with the French at Quebec. His words were well received, and one chief, at the conclusion of the conference, invited him to a feast, at which one hundred and twenty beaver were served. He came back to Three Rivers during the next summer, and renewed the interest in the discovery of a route to the Western Ocean, by the declaration that if he had paddled three days more on a large river (probably the Wisconsin), he would have found the sea. There was no design to deceive; but the great water at that distance was what has been called “the father of waters,” the Mississippi. Before December, 1635, he was appointed interpreter at the new trading-post of Three Rivers, and was there when, on Christmas Day, at the age of sixty-eight years, one who had been the life of the fur-trade and the Governor of New France, Samuel de Champlain, expired at Quebec. After the death of the fearless and enterprising Champlain, there was a lull in the zest for discovery, and then difficulties arose which for a time led to the abandonment of all the French trading-posts on the shores of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.
The Iroquois had for years longed to be revenged upon those who, with the aid of French arquebuses, had defeated them in battle. Friendly relations were established between them and the Dutch traders on the banks of the Hudson River; and for beaver skins, powder and firearms were received. With these they gratified their desire for revenge. They became a terror to the savage and civilized in Canada; and traders and missionaries, women and infants, fled from their scalping-knives.
The following graphic description of affairs was penned in 1653:—
“The war with the Iroquois has dried up all sources of prosperity. The beaver are allowed to build their dams in peace, none being able or willing to molest them. Crowds of Hurons no longer descend from their country with furs for trading. The Algonquin country is depopulated, and the nations beyond it are retiring farther away, fearing the musketry of the Iroquois. The keeper of the Company’s store here in Montreal has not bought a single beaver-skin for a year. At Three Rivers, the small means in hand have been used in fortifying the place, from fear of an inroad upon it. In the Quebec storehouse all is emptiness.”
At length, in the year 1654, peace was effected between the French and Iroquois, and traders again appeared on the upper lakes, and Indians from thence appeared at Montreal. In August, two Frenchmen accompanied some Ottawas to the region of the upper lakes; and in the latter part of August, 1656, these traders came back to Quebec with a party of Ottawas,[459] whose canoes were loaded with peltries; and about this time a trader told a Jesuit missionary that “he had seen three thousand men together, for the purpose of making a treaty of peace, in the country of the Gens de Mer.”
In 1659, while the new governor Argenson was experiencing the perplexities of administration at Quebec, the extremity of Lake Superior was reached by two energetic and intelligent traders,—Medard Chouart, known in history as Sieur des Groseilliers, and Pierre d’Esprit or Sieur Radisson. Chouart was born a few miles east of Meaux, and left France when he was about sixteen years of age, and became a trader among the Hurons. In 1647 he married the widow Étienne, of Quebec, the father of whom was the pilot Abraham Martin, whose baptismal name was given to the suburb of that city, the Plains of Abraham. She gave birth to a son in 1651, named after his father, and soon after died. Chouart, the Sieur des Groseilliers, then married Marguérite Hayet Radisson, and through her he became a sympathizer with the Huguenots.[460] His brother-in-law, Sieur Radisson, was born at St. Malo, France, and in 1656 married at Three Rivers, Canada, Elizabeth Herault; and after her death he espoused a daughter of the zealous Protestant, Sir David Kyrcke, to whose brothers Champlain had surrendered Quebec.
Pushing beyond Lake Superior, after travelling six days in a southwesterly direction, these traders found the Tionnotantés, a band incorporated with the Hurons, called by the French Petuns, because they had raised tobacco. These people dwelt in the country between the sources of the Black and Chippeway Rivers in Wisconsin, where they had been wanderers for several years. Driven from their homes by the Iroquois, they migrated with the Ottawas to the isles of Lake Michigan, at the entrance of Green Bay. Hearing that the Iroquois had learned where they had retreated, they descended the Wisconsin River until they found the Mississippi, and, ascending this twelve leagues, they came to the Ayoes (Ioway) River, now known as the Upper Iowa, and followed it to its source, being kindly treated by the tribes. Although buffaloes were in abundance, they were disappointed when they found no forests, and retracing their steps to the Mississippi, ascended to a prairie island above Lake Pepin, about nine miles below the mouth of the River St. Croix, and here they often received friendly visits from the Sioux. Confident through the possession of firearms, the Ottawas and Hurons conspired to drive the Sioux away, and occupy their country. The attack was unsuccessful, and they were forced to look for another residence. Going down the Mississippi, they entered one of the mouths of the Black River, near the modern city La Crosse, and the Hurons established themselves about its sources, while their allies, the Ottawas, continued their journey to Lake Superior, and stopped at a point jutting out like a bone needle,—hence called Chagouamikon.
Groseilliers and Radisson, while sojourning with the Hurons, learned much of the deep, wide, and beautiful river, comparable in its grandeur to the St. Lawrence,[461] on an isle of which they had for a time resided. Proceeding northward, these explorers wintered with the Nadouechiouec, who hunted and fished among the “Mille Lacs” of Minnesota, between the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers. The Sioux, as these people were called by traders, were found to speak a language different from the Huron and Algonquin, and to have many strange customs. Women, for instance, were seen whose noses had been cut off as a penalty for adultery, giving them a ghastly look. Beyond, upon the northwest shore of Lake Superior, about the Grand Portage, and at the mouth of a river which upon early maps was called Groseilliers, there was met a separated warlike band of Sioux, called Poualak, who, as wood was scarce in the prairie region, made fire with coal (charbon de terre), and lived in skin lodges, although some of the more industrious built cabins of mud (terre grasse), as the swallows build their nests. The Assinepoualacs, or Assineboines, were feared by the Upper, as the Iroquois were dreaded by the Lower, Algonquins.
After an absence of about a year, these traders, about the 19th of August, 1660, returned to Montreal with three hundred Indians and sixty canoes laden with a “wealth of skins,”—