[355] The story is told in Snelling, _Tales of the Northwest_ (1830), under the title of _La Butte des Morts_, and afterwards, with variations, by the aged Augustus Grignon, in his _Recollections_, printed in the _Collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society_, iii.; also by Judge M. L. Martin and others. Grignon, like all the rest, was not born till after the time of the alleged event. The nearest approach to substantial evidence touching it is in a letter of Beauharnois, who writes in 1730 that the Sieur Dubuisson was to attack the Outagamies with fifty Frenchmen and five hundred and fifty Indians, and that Marin, commander at Green Bay, was to join him. _Beauharnois au Ministre, 25 Juin, 1730._ [356] _Memoire sur le Canada, 1736._ [357] Charles Bodmer was the artist who accompanied Prince Maximilian of Wied in his travels in the interior of North America. The name Outagamie is Algonquin for a fox. Hence the French called the tribe Renards, and the Americans, Foxes. They called themselves Musquawkies, which is said to mean "red earth," and to be derived from the color of the soil near one of their villages. CHAPTER XV. 1697-1741. FRANCE IN THE FAR WEST. French Explorers.--Le Sueur on the St. Peter.--Canadians on the Missouri.--Juchereau de Saint-Denis.--Benard de la Harpe on Red River.--Adventures of Du Tisne.--Bourgmont visits the Comanches.--The Brothers Mallet in Colorado and New Mexico.--Fabry de la Bruyere. The occupation by France of the lower Mississippi gave a strong impulse to the exploration of the West, by supplying a base for discovery, stimulating enterprise by the longing to find gold mines, open trade with New Mexico, and get a fast hold on the countries beyond the Mississippi in anticipation of Spain; and to these motives was soon added the hope of finding an overland way to the Pacific. It was the Canadians, with their indomitable spirit of adventure, who led the way in the path of discovery. As a bold and hardy pioneer of the wilderness, the Frenchman in America has rarely found his match. His civic virtues withered under the despotism of Versailles, and his mind and conscience were kept in leading-strings by an absolute Church; but the forest and the prairie offered him an unbridled liberty, which, lawless as it was, gave scope to his energies, till these savage wastes became the field of his most noteworthy achievements.