[1] These Winnebagoes were the most eastern branch of the great Dakota-Sioux family. Their ancestors were the builders, it is believed, of the Wisconsin mounds.
[2] Carver says, "It is with difficulty that canoes can pass through the obstructions they meet with from the rice-stalks. This river is the greatest resort for wild fowl that I met with in the whole course of my travels; frequently the sun would be obscured by them for some minutes together."
[3] This spot has a remarkable interest as the place where, within a very short distance, rise the waters that flow away to the eastward, through the Great Lakes, into the North Atlantic, and those that now southward to the Mississippi and the Gulf. It is, however, according to Carver, most uninviting in appearance, "a morass overgrown with a kind of long grass, the rest of it a plain, with some few oak and pine trees growing thereon. I observed here," he says, "a great number of rattlesnakes."
[4] The following description of this very important article is taken from Father Hennepin:
"This Calumet is the most mysterious Thing in the World among the Savages of the Continent of the Northern America: for it is used in all their most important Transactions. However, it is nothing else but a large Tobacco-pipe made of Red, Black, or White Marble: The Head is finely polished, and the Quill, which is commonly two Foot and a half long, is made of a pretty strong Reed, or Cane, adorned with Feathers of all Colours, interlaced with Locks of Women's Hair. They tie to it two wings of the most curious Birds they find, which makes their Calumet not unlike Mercury's Wand.
"A Pipe, such as I have described it, is a Pass and Safe Conduct amongst all the Allies of the Nation who has given it; for the Savages are generally persuaded that a great Misfortune would befal 'em, if they violated the Publick Faith of the Calumet."
The French never wearied of extolling the wonderful influence of this symbol of brotherhood. Says Father Gravier, writing of his voyage down the Mississippi, in 1700: "No such honor is paid to the crowns and sceptres of kings as they pay to it. It seems to be the God of peace and war, the arbiter of life and death."
Who were the Coureurs de bois.—Radisson's Experiences as a Prisoner among the Iroquois.—He plays the Indian Warrior.—Escapes to the Dutch.—Makes his Way back to Canada.—He and his Brother-in-law set out for the Upper Lakes.—Fight with Iroquois.—Storm an Indian Fort.—Reach Lake Superior.—"The Pictured Rocks."—Keweenaw Point.—Long Overland Journey.—Summer and Feasting.—Winter and Famine.—Feasting again.—Fine Ducking.—Start for Home.—Reach Montreal with Great Fleet of Canoes.
The early history of New France owes its romantic interest to the activity of four classes of men. Daring explorers, such as Cartier, Champlain, Joliet, Marquette, La Salle, plunged into the wilderness, penetrated remote regions, made great discoveries, and extended French influence and French trade as far to the west as the Mississippi and to the northeast as far as Hudson Bay. French Catholic missionaries said mass and preached theirfaith in the heart of the forest primeval and at lonely posts on the shores of the Great Lakes. Able and brilliant Governors, such as Champlain and Frontenac, built forts at commanding points on the inland waters, and ruled, in a fashion, an area vastly greater than that of France itself.
Of these three classes of men and their achievements we have had examples. We come now to speak of a fourth class who exercised a powerful influence on the destinies of New France. If we remember that the material object of French activity in America wasfurs, we shall easily understand that the men who were busied in the fur-trade were a very important part of the scanty population. They were of two kinds. There were merchants who "kept store" at Quebec, Montreal, Three Rivers, and other trading-posts, bartering their goods to the Indians for peltries. These were brought to them in large quantities in the early summer, when the ice had broken up, and fleets of canoes descended the St. Lawrence laden with skins. Then there was amazing stir at the sleepy little posts on the great river. Painted savages, howling and screeching, mostly half-drunk, swarmed about the stations, and at night the sky was red with the glare of theirfires. There was an enormous profit in the traffic, for the Indians had no idea of the cheapness of the goods which they took in exchange for their furs, nor of the high prices which these brought in Europe. It is no wonder that governors and other high officials were charged with having a secret interest in this very lucrative trade, and, for that reason, winking at violations of the King's orders regulating it. Even Jesuit missionaries sometimes were thought by their opponents to be more eager to share this money-making traffic than to win souls.
But a more numerous class than these stationary traders were the so-calledcoureurs de bois, or wood-rangers. These were wild fellows whom the love of adventure lured into the wilderness not less strongly than the love of gain. They roamed the forests, paddled the streams and lakes, hunted and trapped, trafficked with the Indians wherever and whenever they pleased, often in violation of express orders, and smuggled their forbidden furs into the trading-posts. Sometimes they spent whole seasons, even years, among the savages, taking to wife red women. Lawless fellows as these were, they helped mightily to extend French influence and subdue the continentto the white man's rule. Daring explorers, they penetrated remote regions, hobnobbed with the natives, and brought back accounts of what they had seen.
One of their leaders, Daniel Greysolon du Lhut, whose name is borne by the city of Duluth, in Minnesota, was a conspicuous figure in the wild frontier life. He carried on a vast fur-trade, held his rough followers well in hand, led a small army of them in fighting the battles of his country, and even appeared at the French court at Versailles.
The half-breed children of thesecoureurs, growing up in Indian wigwams, but full of pride in their French blood, became a strong link binding together the two races in friendly alliance and deciding the Indians, in time of war, to paint themselves and put on their feathers for the French rather than for the English. Therefore any account of pioneer Frenchmen should include a sketch of thecoureurs de bois.
To illustrate this type, one is here taken as an example who was born in France, and who was a gentleman by birth and education, but whose insatiable love of adventure led him to take up thecoureur'slife, with all its vicissitudes. Withal, hewas a man of note in his day, played no inconsiderable part in opening up the wilderness, and suggested the formation of that vast monopoly, the Hudson Bay Fur Company. His journals, after lying for more than two hundred years in manuscript, have been published and have proved very interesting. They give such an inside picture of savage life, with its nastiness, its alternate gluttony and starving, and its ferocity, as it would be hard to find elsewhere, drawn in such English as the wildest humorist would not dream of inventing.
Pierre Esprit Radisson was born at St. Malo, in France, and came to Canada in May, 1651. His home was at Three Rivers, where his relatives were settled. One day he went out gunning with two friends. They were warned by a man whom they met that hostile Indians were lurking in the neighborhood. Still they went on, forgetting their danger in the enjoyment of shooting ducks. Finally, however, one of the party said he would not go further, and the other joined him. This led Radisson to banter them, saying that he would go ahead and kill game enough for all.
On he went, shooting again and again, untilhe had more geese and ducks than he could carry home. Finally, after hiding some of his game in a hollow tree, he started back. When he came near the place where he had left his companions, imagine his horror at finding their bodies, "one being shott through with three boulletts and two blowes of an hatchett on the head, and the other run through in several places with a sword and smitten with an hatchett."
Suddenly he was surrounded by Indians who rose, as it were, out of the ground and rushed upon him, yelling like fiends. He fired his gun, wounding two with the duck-shot, and his pistol, without hurting any one. The next moment he found himself thrown on the ground and disarmed, without a single blow.
His courage had impressed the Indians so favorably that they treated him very kindly. When they pitched their camp, they offered him some of their meat, which smelt so horribly that he could not touch it. Seeing this, they cooked a special dish for him. He says it was a nasty mess, but, to show his appreciation, he swallowed some of it. This pleased his captors, and they further showed their good-will by untying him and letting him lie down comfortablybetween two of them, covered with a red coverlet through which he "might have counted the starrs."
The Indians traveled homeward in very leisurely fashion, stopping by the way for days at a time and making merry with Radisson, to whom they evidently had taken a strong liking. When they tried to teach him to sing, and he turned the tables by singing to them in French, they were delighted. "Often," he says, "have I sunged in French, to which they gave eares with a deepe silence." They were bent on making a thorough savage of him. So they trimmed his hair after their most approved fashion and plastered it with grease.
He pleased his captors greatly by his good humor and his taking part in chopping wood, paddling, or whatever might be doing, and chiefly by his not making any attempt to escape. In truth, he simply was afraid of being caught and dealt with more severely.
They were traveling the familiar route to the Iroquois country, and in time they came to a fishing-station, the occupants of which greeted the returning warriors uproariously. One of them struck Radisson, who, at a sign from his "keeper," clinched with him. The two foughtfuriously, wrestling and "clawing one another with hands, tooth, and nails." The Frenchman was delighted that his captors encouraged him as much as their fellow tribesman. He came off best, and they seemed mightily pleased.
The two men whom he had wounded at the time of his capture, far from resenting it, showed him "as much charity as a Christian might have given."
Still things looked squally for Radisson, when he entered the native village of the party and saw men, women, and boys drawn up in a double row, armed with rods and sticks, evidently for the savage ordeal of running the gauntlet. He was on the point of starting, resolved to run his swiftest, when an old woman took him by the hand, led him away to her cabin, and set food before him. How different from being tortured and burned, which was the fate that he expected! When some of the warriors came and took him away to the council-fire, she followed and pleaded so successfully that he was given up to her, to be her adopted son, in the place of one who had been killed.
Now nothing was too good for Radisson. The poor old woman had taken him to her heart, andshe lavished kindness on him. Her daughters treated him as a brother, and her husband, a famous old warrior, gave a feast in his honor, presenting him to the company under the name of Orinha, which was that of his son who had been killed. He enjoyed the savage life for a time, having "all the pleasures imaginable," such as shooting partridges and "squerells."
But he soon grew home-sick and eager for an opportunity to escape. One offered itself unexpectedly. He had gone off on a hunt of several days with three Indians who invited him to join them. On the second day out, they picked up a man who was alone and invited him to go with them to their camp, which he gladly did. Imagine Radisson's surprise when this man, while the others were getting supper ready, spoke to him in Algonquin, that is, the language of the people who were allies of the French and mortal enemies of the Iroquois. Evidently he was a prisoner who had been spared and given his liberty.
"Do you love the French?" he asked in a low tone.
"Do you love the Algonquins?" Radisson returned.
"Indeed I do love my own people," hereplied. "Why, then, do we live among these people? Let us kill these three fellows to-night with their own hatchets. It can easily be done."
Radisson professes to have been greatly shocked. But in the end he fell in with the plan. The two treacherous villains, after eating a hearty supper with their intended victims, lay down beside them and pretended to sleep. When the three Iroquois were deep in slumber, they rose, killed them with tomahawks, loaded the canoe with guns, ammunition, provisions, and the victims' scalps, which the Algonquin had cut off as trophies, and started on the long journey to Three Rivers.
Fourteen nights they had journeyed stealthily, lying in hiding all the day, for fear of meeting Iroquois on the war-path, and had reached a point but a few miles from Three Rivers, when, venturing to cross Lake St. Peter, a wide expansion of the St. Lawrence, by daylight, they encountered a number of hostile canoes. In vain they turned and paddled their hardest for the shore they had left. The enemy gained on them rapidly and opened fire. At the first discharge the Indian was killed and the canoe was so riddled that it was sinking, when the Iroquois ranged alongside and took Radisson out.
Now he was in trouble indeed. No more junketing! No more singing of jolly French songs to amuse his captors, but doleful journeying along with nineteen prisoners, one Frenchman, one Frenchwoman, and seventeen Huron men and women, the latter constantly chanting their mournful death-song.
Through the day the poor wretches lay in the canoes, pinioned and trussed like fowls; and at night they were laid on the ground securely fastened to posts, so that they could not move hand or foot, while mosquitoes and flies swarmed about them. When the Iroquois country was reached, they furnished sport to the whole population, which turned out everywhere to greet them with tortures. This time Radisson did not wholly escape. But when, for the second time, he was on the point of running the gauntlet, for the second time his "mother" rescued him. His "father" lectured him roundly on the folly of running away from people who had made him one of the family. Still he exerted himself strenuously to save Radisson from the death penalty which hung over him, and succeeded in securing his release after he had been duly tortured.
"Then," he says, "my father goes to seekerootes, and my sister chaws them and my mother applyes them to my sores as a plaster." After a month of this primitive surgery, he was able to go about again, free.
The winter passed quietly and pleasantly. Then Radisson, anxious to show himself a thorough Iroquois, proposed to his "father" to let him go on a war-party. The old brave heartily approved, and the young renegade set off with a band for the Huron country.
Now follows a dreary account of the atrocities committed. In the end the party, after perpetrating several murders, encountered a considerable number of the enemy, with the loss of one of their men severely wounded. They burned him, to save him from falling into the enemy's hands, and then fled the country. Their arrival at home, with prisoners and scalps, mostly of women and children, was an occasion of great honor, and Radisson came in for his full share.
Being now allowed greater freedom, he improved it to run away to join the Dutch at Fort Orange (Albany). He tramped all the day and all the night without food, and at daylight found himself near a Dutch settler's cabin. The Dutch treated him with great kindness, gave him clothes andshoes, and shipped him down the Hudson to "Menada" (Manhattan, New York), whence he sailed for Amsterdam. From that port he took ship for La Rochelle, in France, and thence back to Canada.
To cover a distance of about two hundred and fifty miles, he had been obliged to travel about seven thousand!
Hitherto we have seen Pierre Radisson figure as a merecoureur de bois. Now we shall see him in the more important role of a discoverer.
Probably he and his brother-in-law, Médard Chouart, who styled himself the Sieur des Groseillers, in the course of their long trading journeys among the Indians, in 1658 reached the Mississippi. One important discovery they unquestionably made a few years later. That they were the first white men trading in the Lake Superior region is proved by Radisson's giving the first description of notable objects on the shores of the lake. His account of the memorable experiences of this journey, considerably abridged, fills the remainder of this chapter.
One cannot but wonder that, until a very recent time, the name of this interesting discoverer has not even been mentioned by historical writers.Here was a man who certainly was of considerable importance in his day, since he was one of two who suggested the formation of the famous Hudson Bay Fur Company, and yet who, until lately, never was spoken of by historians who recorded the achievements of Pathfinders in America. What was the cause of this singular neglect? Chiefly the fact that in his time Canada was full of adventurousvoyageurs. The fur-trade was the great and only avenue to wealth, and it attracted the most daring spirits. These hardy fellows penetrated the wilderness in all directions, and it was chiefly they who made the northern portion of our country known to white men. Radisson and his brother-in-law, who was his constant companion, belonged to this class. Their journeys were not made for scientific, but for commercial, purposes. They were simply in quest of furs, and whatever discoveries they made were accidental. Thus, little account was made of them at the time.
The chief reason, however, is that the importance of Radisson's journal escaped attention. It was mistaken for a mere record of wanderings. Places not being named—at that time they had no names but the Indian ones—close attentionto the descriptions in the narrative was needed in order to identify them and determine his route. Thus it came to pass that this singularly interesting journal remained unpublished, that is, practically unknown, for more than two hundred years. When, happily, the Prince Society of Boston recognized its value and printed it, in 1885, the writer at once took his rightful place among the Pathfinders.
Radisson and his brother-in-law, in the spring of 1661, applied to the Governor of Canada for permission to go on a trading journey up the lakes. On his refusing, except on the condition of their taking with them two of his servants and giving them half of the profits, they slipped away at midnight without leave, having made an agreement with some Indians, probably Ojibways, of the Sault (Sault Ste. Marie, between Lake Huron and Lake Superior), that these would wait for them at Lake St. Peter, some miles above Three Rivers.
The two parties met, as agreed, and began their long journey. After a few days they found traces of a party that had preceded them, their fires still burning. Judging from certain signs that these were not enemies, they exerted themselves toovertake them. They found them to be a party of Indians from Lake Superior who had been to Montreal and were returning. The two bands united and now formed a considerable force, in fourteen canoes. This union proved a happy circumstance, for the next day they were attacked by a war-party of Iroquois who were lying in wait for the Lake Superior Indians, having observed their passage down the river. The Iroquois, who had fortified themselves, were evidently surprised to find themselves confronted by a far larger force than they expected.
Radisson and an Indian were sent to scout and examine the fort. They found it to be a stockade surrounded by large rocks. The Iroquois made overtures for peace by throwing strings of wampum over the stockade, and that night they slipped away, leaving a free passage to Radisson's party.
The next day, however, there was a brush with Iroquois, in which three were killed, as well as one of Radisson's party. The enemy were not in sufficient force to make a fight in the open and fell back into an old fort—for this region, being on the route to the upper lakes, was a constant battleground. Radisson's party gathered to attack it,the Iroquois meanwhile firing constantly, but doing little harm. Darkness came on, and the assailants filled a barrel with gunpowder and, "having stoped the whole" (stopped the hole) and tied it to the end of a long pole, tried to push it over the stockade. It fell back, however, and exploded with so much force that three of the assailants themselves were killed.
Radisson then made a sort of hand-grenade by putting three or four pounds of powder into a "rind of a tree" (piece of bark) with "a fusey [fuse] to have time to throw the rind." This he flung into the fort, having directed his Indians to follow up the explosion by breaking in with hatchet and sword. Meanwhile the Iroquois were singing their death-song. The grenade fell among them and burst with terrible execution. Immediately Radisson's party broke in, and there was a scene of confusion, assailants and assailed unable in the darkness to distinguish friend from foe.
Suddenly there fell a tremendous downpour of rain, with pitchy darkness, which seemed so timely for the Iroquois that Radisson remarks, "To my thinking, the Devill himselfe made that storme to give those men leave to escape from ourhands." All sought shelter. When the storm was over the Iroquois had escaped. The victors found "11 of our ennemy slain'd and 2 only of ours, besides seaven wounded." There were also five prisoners secured. The bodies of their own dead were treated with great respect. "We bourned our comrades," says Radisson, "being their custome to reduce such into ashes being slained in batill. It is an honnour to give them such a buriall."
At daybreak the party resumed their journey, rejoicing in "10 heads and foure prisoners, whom we embarqued in hopes to bring them into our country, and there to burne them att our own leasures for the more satisfaction of our wives." Meanwhile they allowed themselves a little foretaste of that delight. "We plagued those infortunate. We plucked out their nailes one after another." Probably, when Radisson says "we," he means the Indians only, not his brother and himself.
Traveling on, the party espied a large force of Iroquois hovering near. Anticipating an attack, "we killed our foure prisoners, because they embarrassed us." "If ever blind wished the Light, we wished the obscurity of the night, which nosooner approached but we embarqued ourselves without any noise and went along." Radisson thinks the Iroquois must have been encumbered with prisoners and booty: else they would not have let his party get away so easily. Fearing, however, to be pursued, these plied their paddles desperately "from friday to tuesday without intermission," their "feete and leggs" all bloody from being cut in dragging the canoes over sharp rocks in the shallows. After this terrible strain, being "quite spent," they were fain to rest, so soon as they felt themselves safe from pursuit.
The party was following Champlain's old route, up the Ottawa River, across country to Lake Nipissing, then down its outlet, French River, to Lake Huron.
After a hard and perilous journey, having "wrought two and twenty dayes and as many nights, having slept not one houre on land all that while," they came out on Lake Huron. Still trouble beset them, in the form of dearth of food. Game was scarce along the shore, and they were glad of such berries as they found. Radisson records that the "wildmen," as he always calls the Indians, showed themselves "far gratfuller then many Christians even to theirowne relations," for whenever they found a good patch of berries they always called him and his brother to get a full share. In due time they reached a strait full of islands (the St. Mary's River), where an abundance of fish relieved their hunger, and came to "a rapid that makes the separation of the lake that we call Superior, or upper" (Sault Ste. Marie).[1]
Some of Radisson's Indian companions were now in their native region. They had promised the two Frenchmen that they "should make good cheare of a fish that they call Assickmack, wch signifieth a white fish," and so it proved.[2]
Game, also, was most abundant; and, after their long hardships and privations, the Frenchmen thought this country "like a terrestriall paradise." Having rested and enjoyed the abundance of food for a while, the party went on, "thwarted (crossed) in a pretty broad place and came to an isle most delightfull for the diversity of its fruits." Here they supped and enjoyed themselves until ten o'clock, when, the night being fine, they embarked again and before daylight reached the south shore of the lake. Here Radisson was shown a place where "many peeces of copper weare uncovered." He and his brother were about to take some specimens, when the Indians told them that they would find far larger quantities at a place to which they were going.
The next evidence that we encounter of the accuracy of Radisson's narrative is his description of the hills of shifting sand that form a striking feature of this part of the coast. One of the Indians climbed an especially high one, and, Radisson says, "being there, did shew no more then a crow." These are the sand-hills, which the Indian legend, in Longfellow's "Hiawatha," says were thrown up by Pau-puk-keewis when he blew up a whirlwind. The sight of so much sand reminded Radisson of"the wildernesses of Turkey land, as the Turques makes their pylgrimages" (the desert of Arabia).
Next the voyagers came to a very "remarquable place, a banke of Rocks that the wildmen made a sacrifice to. They fling much tobacco and other things in its veneration." Radisson thus describes this striking object. "It's like a great Portall, by reason of the beating of the waves. [He means that the dashing of the water against the mass of rock has worn it away in the shape of an arch.] The lower part of that oppening is as bigg as a tower and grows bigger in the going upp. A shipp of 500 tuns could passe, soe bigg is the arch. I gave it the name of the portall of St. Peter, because my name is so called, and that I was the first Christian that ever saw it." The latter statement seems unquestionably true. But Radisson's name did not stick—unfortunately, for "St. Peter's Portal" would be a better-sounding and more significant name than the meaningless "Pictured Rocks," which is the common designation of this famous object.
This natural arch affords a striking illustration of the wearing effect of water. The waves constantly washing and often beating in fury upon the line of sandstone cliffs has, in the course of ages,hollowed this arch at the point where the rock was softest. The immense amount of material thus washed from the face of the cliffs has been thrown ashore, blown along the coast, and heaped up in the sand-hills which Radisson describes, and which are reliably reported to vary from one hundred to three hundred feet in height.
A few days later the party came to a place where they made a portage of some miles, in order to save going around a peninsula jutting far out into the lake. "The way was well beaten," says Radisson, "because of the comers and goers, who by making that passage shortens their journey by 8 dayes." From this circumstance it is evident that our travelers were on a frequented route, and that the Indians knew enough of the geography of the country to avoid a canoe journey of several hundreds of miles, by carrying their light craft and their goods across the base of the peninsula, which is here very narrow, being almost cut in two by a chain of lakes and rivers.[3]
Radisson was told that "at the end of the point there is an isle all of copper." This is not very far from the truth, for this peninsula contains, about Keweenaw Point, the richest copper deposit in the world. In 1857 there was taken from one of the mines a mass of ore weighing 420 tons and containing more than ninety per cent of pure copper.
Traveling on, the party met with some Christinos, or Crees, who joined it "in hopes," says Radisson, "to gett knives from us, which they love better then we serve God, which should make us blush for shame." In time they came to "a cape very much elevated like piramides," probably the "Doric Rock." In a certain "channell" they took "sturgeons of a vast bignesse and Pycks of seaven foot long," probably the well-known muscalonge.[4]
Now the long canoe voyage had come to an end, and as the Indians said that five days' journey would be needed to bring them to their homes, and the two white men had heavy packs which they were loth to carry so long a distance, theydecided to remain where they were and let their red friends either come or send back for them. Then, being but two men, surrounded by wild tribes, they built themselves a little triangular log fort by the water-side, with its door opening toward the water. All around it, at a little distance, was stretched a long cord, to which were fastened some small bells, "which weare senteryes" (sentries), Radisson says.[5]
Having thus fortified themselves with a perfect armory within, namely, "5 guns, 2 musquetons, 3 fowling-peeces, 3 paire of great pistoletts, and 2 paire of pocket ons, and every one his sword and daggar," they might feel reasonably safe in a country in which the natives as yet stood in awe of fire-arms. They had some friendly visitors, but would never admit more than one person at a time. Radisson says, in his droll way, "During that time we had severall alarums in ye night. The squerels and other small beasts, as well as foxes, came in and assaulted us." For food there was an abundance of fish and of "bustards" (wild geese), of which Radisson shot a great number.
When, after twelve days, some of their traveling companions reappeared, they were astounded at the sight of the fort and complimented the two Frenchmen by calling them "every foot devills to have made such a machine." They had brought a quantity of provisions, imagining the two white men to be famishing. But, lo! here was a supply of game more than sufficient for the whole party. The Indians wondered how it chanced that the Frenchmen's baggage was so greatly reduced. These accounted for it by saying that, fearing lest the sight of so much wealth should lead to their being murdered, they had taken a great part of their merchandise and sunk it in the water, committing it to the care of their "devill," who was charged "not to lett them to be wett nor rusted, wch he promised faithlesse" that he would do; all of which the simple creatures believed "as ye Christians the Gospell." Radisson explains that he and his brother had really burled the goods across the river. "We told them that lye," he says, "that they should not have suspicion of us."
The two white men immensely enjoyed the profound deference paid them. When they started on their journey, "we went away," says Radisson,"free from any burden, whilst those poor miserables thought themselves happy to carry our Equipage, for the hope that they had that we should give them a brasse ring, or an awle, or an needle."
After traveling four days, our "2 poore adventurers for the honour of our countrey" were told that they were approaching their destination. Runners went ahead to warn the people of their coming. "Every one prepared to see what they never before have seene," that is, white men.
Their entry into the village was made with due pomp, and they "destinated 3 presents, one for the men, one for the women, other for the children, to the end," says Radisson, "that we should be spoaken of a hundred years after, if other Europeans should not come in those quarters." These gifts having been received with great rejoicing, there followed feasting, powwowing in council, and a scalp-dance, all of which occupied three days and consumed, in good Indian fashion, the provisions which should have helped them to get through the fast approaching winter. Accordingly, we soon read of the horrors of famine, amid the gloomy wintry forests, the trees laden and the ground deeply covered with snow. Radisson gives a moving description of it. "Itgrows wors and wors dayly.… Every one cryes out for hunger. Children, you must die. ffrench, you called yourselves Gods of the earth, that you should be feered; notwithstanding you shall tast of the bitternesse.… In the morning the husband looks upon his wife, the Brother his sister, the cozen the cozen, the Oncle the nevew, that weare for the most part found dead." So for two or three pages he goes on telling of the cruel suffering and of the various substitutes for nourishing food, such as bark ground and boiled; bones that had lain about the camp, picked clean by dogs and crows, now carefully gathered and boiled; then "the skins that weare reserved to make us shoose, cloath, and stokins," and at last even the skins of the tents that covered them.
Radisson and his brother had long since eaten their dogs. About this time "there came 2 men from a strange countrey who had a dogg" the sight of which was very tempting. "That dogge was very leane and as hungry as we weare." Still the sight of him was more than mortal could bear. In vain the two Frenchmen offered an extravagant price for the poor beast; his owners would not part with him. Then they resolvedto "catch him cunningly." So Radisson watches his opportunity, prowling at night near the visitors' cabin, and when the dog comes out, snatches him up, stabs him, and carries him to his party, where he is immediately cut up and "broyled like a pigge." Even the snow soaked with his blood goes into the kettles.
Radisson's description of the horrors of that fearful time will not fail to remind readers of Hiawatha of the poet Longfellow's picture of a famine in the same region in which Radisson was. The main features are the same. There is the bitter cold,
O the long and dreary winter!O the cold and cruel winter!
There is the gloomy, snow-laden forest,
Ever deeper, deeper, deeperFell the snow o'er all the landscape,Fell the covering snow, and driftedThrough the forest, round the village.
There are the pitiful cries of the helpless, starving ones,
O the wailing of the children!O the anguish of the women!
There is the hunter engaged in his bootless quest,
Vainly walked he through the forest,Sought for bird or beast and found none,Saw no track of deer or rabbit,In the snow beheld no footprints.
Then came the two dread visitors, Famine and Fever, and fixed their awful gaze on Minnehaha, who
Lay there trembling, freezing, burningAt the looks they cast upon her,At the fearful words they uttered.
Out into the forest rushes Hiawatha, crying frantically to Heaven,
"Give me food for Minnehaha,For my dying Minnehaha!"Through the far-resounding forest,Through the forest vast and vacantRang the cry of desolation,But there came no other answerThan the echo of the woodlands,"Minnehaha! Minnehaha!"
All the day he roamed the gloomy depths of the wintry woods, still vainly seeking food. When he came home empty-handed, heavy-hearted, lo! the spirit of Minnehaha had fled to the Islands of the Blessed. Her body they laid in the snow,
In the forest deep and darksome,Underneath the moaning hemlocks.
The singularly vivid descriptions of Indian life, with its alternations of human affection and fiendish cruelty, of daring and cowardice, of gorging and starving, make one of the most interesting features of Radisson's book. He lived the life himself and left such a picture of it as few white men could have drawn. Accordingly, he soon tells of feasting once more. What broke the famine was a storm of wind and rain that caused the snow to fall from the trees, cleared the forests, and formed, after a freeze, a crust on the snow that enabled the hunters to kill an abundance of game. Deer, with their sharp hoofs, broke through the crust "after they made 7 or 8 capers" (bounds), and were easily taken. There was other food, too, for there came a deputation of Indians to visit the white strangers, accompanied by their women "loaded of Oates, corne that growes in that country." He means wild rice, which formed the staple food of certain tribes. This was a gift, and at its presentation there were elaborate ceremonies, the account of which fills several pages. Still this was only the beginning, for the appointed time for a grand council was approaching, and soon there arrived deputations from eighteen different tribes, until five hundredwarriors were assembled. More feasting, more ceremonies, more honors to the white visitors, who received more beaver-skins than they could possibly carry away, and pledges of eternal friendship on both sides.
Hardly were these rites ended, when there came fresh troops of savages, and all began over again. "There weare," says Radisson, "playes, mirths, and bataills for sport. In the publick place the women danced with melody. The yong men that indeavoured to gett a pryse [prize] indeavored to clime up a great post, very smooth, and greased with oyle of beare."
Then followed a most interesting exhibition "in similitud of warrs," the young men going through the various motions of attack, retreat, and the like, without a word, all the commands being given by "nodding or gesture," the old men meanwhile beating furiously on drums made of "earthen potts full of water covered with staggs-skin." There followed a dance of women, "very modest, not lifting much their feete from the ground, making a sweet harmony."
Finally, after more feasting, more "renewing of alliances," more exchange of gifts, in which, of course, the Frenchmen received valuable furs inreturn for the merest trifles, the great assembly broke up, the red men filed off toward their distant villages, and the honored strangers started on their long homeward journey, with numerous sled-loads of peltry.
All that summer they traveled among the numerous islands on the north shore of the great lake, enjoying an abundance of ducks, fish, and fresh meat. Radisson was amazed at "the great number of ffowles that are so fatt by eating of this graine [wild rice] that heardly they will move from it." He saw "a wildman killing 3 ducks at once with one arrow."
When the final start was made for the French settlements, there were seven hundred Indians in 360 canoes, with a proportionately large quantity of beaver-skins. A stop was made at the River of Sturgeons, to lay in a store of food against the voyage. In a few days over a thousand of these fish were killed and dried.
After they had started again, Radisson came near to parting unwillingly with the splendid fleet of canoes that he was guiding down to the French settlements. One day they espied seven Iroquois. So great was the dread of these formidable savages, that, though these seven took to their heels anddiscarded their kettles, even their arms, in their flight, the sight of them threw the hundreds with Radisson into a panic. They were for breaking up and putting off their visit to Montreal for a year. Radisson pleaded hard, and, after twelve days of delay and powwowing, he succeeded in prevailing on all except the Crees to go on with him.
Down the St. Mary's River into Lake Huron the great fleet of canoes went in long procession. Then, the wind being favorable, everybody hoisted some kind of sail, and they were driven along merrily until they came to the portage. This passed, they went on down the Ottawa River without misadventure as far as the long rapids. Then another panic seized the Indian fleet, this time on more reasonable grounds, for the party discovered the evidences of a slaughter of Frenchmen. Seventeen of these, with about seventy Algonquins and Hurons, had laid an ambush here for Iroquois, whom they expected to pass this way. Instead, the biter was bitten. The Iroquois, when they came, numbered many hundreds, and they overwhelmed and, after a desperate resistance, destroyed the little band of Frenchmen, with their allies. The appallingevidences of this slaughter were terrible proof that the enemy were numerous in that neighborhood. Even Radisson and his brother were alarmed. They had much ado to persuade their Indian friends to go on with them. As last they succeeded and proudly led to Montreal the biggest canoe-fleet that had ever arrived there, "a number of boats that did almost cover ye whole River."
It was a great triumph for the two daringvoyageursto bring to market such a volume of trade and many Indians from distant tribes who never before had visited the French.
They expected that this service would be recognized. Instead, the Governor put Groseillers in prison and fined both an enormous sum for going away without his leave. Incensed at this injustice, they determined on going to London and offering their services to the English King. This was the reason of Radisson's translating the notes of his travels into a language that was foreign to him, with such queer results as we have seen in the extracts that have been given.
[1] Dr. Reuben G. Thwaites in his "Father Marquette" quotes the following description, written by a Jesuit missionary about eight years after Radisson's visit: "What is commonly called the Saut is not properly a Saut, or a very high water-fall, but a very violent current of waters from Lake Superior, which, finding themselves checked by a great number of rocks, form a dangerous cascade of half a league in width, all these waters descending and plunging headlong together."
[2] It is interesting to learn that the whitefish, so much prized today, was held in equally high esteem so long ago, and even before the coming of the white men. The same writer quoted above by Dr. Thwaites tells of throngs of Indians coming every summer to the rapids to take these fish, which were particularly abundant there, and describes the method. The fisherman, he says, stands upright in his canoe, and as he sees fish gliding between the rocks, thrusting down a pole on the end of which is a net in the shape of a pocket, sometimes catches six or seven at a haul.
[3] The great steamers of to-day follow this route, which the Indian's bark canoe frequented hundreds of years ago. This illustrates the interesting fact that, over all this continent, the Indians were the earliest pathmakers. Important railroads follow the lines of trails made by moccasined feet, and steamboats plough the waters of routes which the birch canoe skimmed for centuries.
[4] Undoubtedly it was one of these "sturgeons of a vast bignesse" that, according to the legend, swallowed both Hiawatha and his canoe. We are now in Hiawatha's country, and we are constantly reminded by Radisson's descriptions of passages in Longfellow's beautiful poem.
[5] This little structure has a peculiar interest, because of its being, in all probability, the first habitation of white men on the shores of Lake Superior. It seems to have stood on Chequamegon Bay.