A brighter day dawned at last. In 1660 some Lake Superior Indians arrived at Quebec in their canoes. When they were ready to go back, they offered to take a missionary home to live with them. It was a terrible journey, but the offer could not be neglected. Accordingly one was sent back in their company, but died in no long time after reaching their country, of misery and want. The Indians then asked for another missionary. The next to go was Father Allouez,[10] who set out in the summer of 1665 in company with some returning savages. Nothing was heard of him for nearly two years. He had about been given up for lost when he appeared at Quebec bringing strange tidings indeed. On the southern shore of Lake Superior, in the forest, among savage hordes, he had set up a mission. He had been much among the neighbor tribes, and had seen and talked with the dreaded Sioux, who proudly told him their country reached to the end of the world. They also told him of a great river, which he supposed must "fall into the sea by Virginia." The father wrote down the name as the Sioux pronounced it,—Messipi.[11] Following in the footsteps of Allouez (1668), Fathers Dablon[12] and Marquette[13] were sent to the mission at the foot of Lake Superior. Afterward Dablon founded that at Sault St. Marie. With Dablon, Allouez (1670) made a journey from Green Bay up Fox River to Winnebago Lake, which they crossed. Going still farther on, they reached the head waters of the Wisconsin, which was then found to be a tributary of the Mississippi. [Illustration: FOX RIVER.] Thus, in the course of a few years, the Jesuits had planted missions at La Pointe, on Lake Superior, at Sault St. Marie, its outlet, at the Straits of Michilimackinac, and Green Bay. All were first fishing-places, next missions, and then outposts of civilization in the western world. In the spring of 1671, with much ceremony, the French took formal possession of Sault St. Marie, the lakes Huron and Superior, and all the country as far as the western sea. In token of sovereignty a cross of wood was reared with the arms of France fixed upon it. Amid volleys of musketry, and shouts of "God save the king!" France thus proclaimed herself mistress of the Great West. FOOTNOTES [1] HURONS, or Wyandots, occupied the east shore of Lake Huron and contiguous country between this and Lake Simcoe. "Their women were their mules."—_Champlain._ The Wyandots now live in Kansas, and are civilized. [2] IROQUOIS, called so by the French; by the English, Five Nations, and subsequently Six Nations. The confederated Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Senecas, to whom the Tuscaroras of North Carolina being joined, made the sixth. They attributed their origin to five different handfuls of seed, sowed by the Creator.