Famous Discoverers and Explorers of America: Their Voyages, Battles, and Hardships in Traversing and Conquering the Unknown Territories of a New WorldJohnston, Charles H. L. (Charles Haven Ladd)
History
Famous Discoverers and Explorers of America: Their Voyages, Battles, and Hardships in Traversing and Conquering the Unknown Territories of a New World
Johnston, Charles H. L. (Charles Haven Ladd)
America -- Discovery and exploration; Explorers
Piloted by the crafty Radisson, the French left Onondago on the 20th.
day of March, 1678. On the evening of April 3d. they came to Montreal,
where they learned that New France had suffered intolerable insolence
from the Iroquois all winter. On the 23d., they moored safely under the
walls of the citadel of Quebec, where all laughed heartily at the good
trick which they had worked upon the bloodthirsty Mohawks.
When Spring came and canoes could venture up the river, couriers
brought word that the Mohawks at Onondago had been greatly deceived
by the pig and the ringing bell. The stuffed figures had led them to
believe that the French were there, for more than a week. Crowing of
cocks had come from the chicken yard, dogs had bayed in the kennels,
and whenever a curious brave had yanked the bell at the gate, he could
hear the measured march of the sentry.
When seven days passed by, and not a white man came from the fort:
“The black robes must be at prayers,” whispered the Mohawks.
But they could not pray on for seven days. Suspicions of trickery
flashed on the minds of the Iroquois, and a warrior climbed to the top
of the palisade. It was empty, and the French had gone!
Two hundred Mohawks immediately set out in pursuit, but there was much
ice and snow, so that they had to return, cursing their stupidity, and
the cleverness of Pierre Radisson.
* * * * *
Radisson did more than this, he discovered the Great Northwest.
When a captive among the Mohawks, he had cherished boyish dreams
of discovering many wild nations; and, when his brother-in-law,
Groseillers, asked him to take a journey with him far to the westward,
he only too readily acquiesced. Late one night in June, Groseillers and
he stole out from Three Rivers, accompanied by Algonquin guides. They
went as far as Green Bay, spent the winter there, then, when the Spring
sun warmed the land, they traveled westward, passed across what is now
the State of Wisconsin, and reached a “mighty river rushing profound
and comparable to the St. Lawrence.” It was the upper Mississippi, now
seen for the first time by white men.
The Spring of 1679 found the explorers still among the prairie tribes
of the Mississippi, and from them Radisson learned 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 tribe to the north, the
Crees.
The two Frenchmen pressed westward, circled over the territory now
known as Wisconsin, eastern Iowa and Nebraska, South Dakota, and
Montana, and back over North Dakota and Minnesota to the north shore of
Lake Superior.
Then Radisson made a snow-shoe trip towards Hudson’s Bay and back
again, living on moose meat and the flesh of beaver and caribou.
Finally, after adventures exciting and hair-raising, he and Groseillers
found their way to Three Rivers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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