spelling, in a narrative probably intended for the use of Charles II. of England. He and his companion made almost the entire circuit of Lake Huron. On one of the Manitoulin islands they aided the Hurons in a fight with the Iroquois. What followed Radisson thus describes: "The dead weare eaten and the living weare burned with a small fire to the rigour of cruelties." Invited by Pottawattomies who were then living on the islands at the mouth of Green Bay and the peninsula between the bay and the lake, our travelers spent the winter with that tribe. "I can assure you I liked noe country as I have that wherein we wintered," says Radisson, "ffor whatever a man desired was to be had in great plenty; viz., staggs, fishes in abundance, & all sorts of meat, corn enough." The aboriginal population of the Green Bay country was very large.

In the spring of the following year, 1659, they visited "an other nation called Escotecke [Mascoutins], which signified fire.”1 These people were living where Nicolet found them twenty-five years before. Here the Frenchmen

heard of "a nation called Nadoneceronon2 [Sioux] which is very strong." They were told also of the Christinos [Crees, now of British America]. "Their dwelling was on the side of the salt watter [Hudson's Bay] in summer time & in the land in the winter time, for it's cold in their country." The account of a great discovery is thus given;

"We weare 4 moneths without doing anything but goe from river to river. We mett several sorts of people. We conversed with them, being long time in alliance with them By persuasion of som of them we went into the great river that divides itself in 2." Radisson calls it the "forked river" and adds: "It is so called because it has 2 branches, the one toward the west, the other toward the South, which we believe runs toward Mexico by the tokens they gave us." How far south they went we do not know, but speaking of the barbarous punishments of a captive by some Indians whom they visited they remark: "So they doe with them that they take, and kill them with clubbs, & doe often eat them. They doe not burn their prisoners as those of the northern parts.”

The "forked river" is doubtless the Mississippi. "A beautiful river, grand, wide, deep and comparable to our own great river, the St. Lawrence,” says a description made at the time from Radisson's reports. To measure the greatness of this discovery we must remember that, with the possible exception of some wandering fur-traders like themselves, there were at that time,—summer of 1659,-probably, no other white men west of the Alleghany mountains.

1 Charlevoix, a Jesuit traveler and historian, states that the true name is "Mascoutenec," signifying "an open country." The Pottawattomies' word for fire was like their corruption of this name "Mascouten." From them, it is said, the French obtained the incorrect form and the untrue meaning.

Francis S. Drake, in his great work "The North American Indians," says: "Mushkoosi is grass or herbage in general. Ishkado means fire. The only difference in the root-form is that between ushko and ishko."

2 NADOWSIE, an Algonquin expression signifying enemy. It is derived from Nadowa, an Iroquois or a Dakota; the word was originally applied to a serpent. The termination in sie is from awasie, an animal or creature. This term is the root, it is apprehended, of the French soubriquet Sioux.-H. R. SCHOOLCRAFT.

3 'His arms & leggs weare turned outside."

For the missions,- -even those as far east as the Mohawk valley,—that the Jesuits had established among the Hurons, were utterly broken up in the destruction of the homes of that people.

Before our adventurers returned to the French settlements, they coasted along the eastward part of the southern shore of Lake Superior.1 Thus they were the discoverers not only of the upper Mississippi but probably also of our greatest North American lake. About the 1st of June, 1660, they came by way of the Ottawa to Three Rivers on the St. Lawrence. Thus ended what Radisson calls his third "voyage." 2

His

In August, 1661, Radisson began his next and fourth "voyage." brother-in-law again accompanied him. They intended to go by way of Lake Superior to the "salt watter" of which they had heard two years before. They coasted along the southern shore of Lake Superior, entered Chequamegon3 bay. by a portage across Oak Point, which is on the east side of the bay, and in the autumn or early winter, built what they call "a fort of stakes.”4 This was doubtless the first structure put up by civilized men in what is now Wisconsin. "There we stayed still full 12 days without any news. The 12 day we perceived afarr off some 50 yong men coming toward us, with some of our former compagnions. They stayed there three days." These "compagnions" were probably Hurons. Some of this tribe, driven westward by their relentless enemies the Iroquois, had first sought refuge on an island in the Mississippi above Lake Pepin. Driven thence by the Sioux, they came into the country about the head waters of the Chippewa. To one of their villages on "a little lake some 8 leagues in circuit,”—probably Namekagon in the southern part of

1 In the spring of 1660.

2 Radisson's first "voyage," in 1652, an individual experience, was in the character of prisoner, a party of Mohawks having captured him in the neighborhood of Three Rivers and carried him with them to their village, where he was adopted; but he ran away, October 29, 1653, went to the Dutch at Albany and from Manhattan sailed for Holland. In May, 1654, he was back again at Three Rivers. In July, 1657, he accompanied the Jesuit Fathers, Paul Ragueneau and Joseph Inbert Duperon, to their mission among the Onondagas, which was clandestinely abandoned on the night of March 20, 1658. This constituted Radisson's second "voyage."-REUBEN GOLD THWAITES.

Radisson's narrative was republished in this country by the Prince Society of Boston, an organization named in honor of Rev. Thomas Prince, so long pastor of the old South church of that city.

3 I use this conventional orthography, though I do not like it. In the opinion of Rev. Edward Payson Wheeler, of Ashland, a native of Madelaine island, it is peculiarly unfortunate that we get names used by the Indians under a Gallicized disguise. What seems to me evidence of the correctness of this opinion is found in the changing of "Ojibway" to "Chippeway," and also in the spelling of the name of the bay mentioned above. This, by William Whipple Warren in whose veins flowed honorably Ojibway blood, is written "Chagouamigon" ("History of the Ojibways" Minnesota Historical Collections, vol. V.). The meaning, "place of shallow water," is given by Mr. Wheeler (Sheh "the," gu "of," wah "shallow [wa ter]," mi a particle denoting specific place, kung "place"). The italicized syllables suggest also his pronunciation (u like oo in cool; other vowels short). "Shah-kah-wah-mee-kunk,” seems to represent the name as I heard it spoken by Rev. John Clark, the native pastor lately at Odanah. The last syllable receives the primary accent. Mr. Wheeler, whose boyhood was spent among the Ojibways, in the mission that Mr. Warren's father helped to found, thinks that the younger Warren's pronunciation of the name was like his own as given above.

4 This may have been at the mouth of Whittlesey creek, about three miles from Ashland and between that city and Washburn. See note on the place of Allouez's mission, page 11

what is now Bayfield county,- came the Frenchmen accompanied by friends who had visited the "fort." "The winter comes on, that warns us; the snow begins to fall, soe we must retire from the place to seeke our living in the woods. Soe away we goe, but not all to the same place. Butt let where we will, we can not escape the myghty hand of God, that disposes us as he pleases, and who chastes us a good & a common loving ffather, and not as our sins doe deserve." Among the Hurons with whom they were spending the winter there was distress for want of food. "To augment our misery we receive news of the Octanaks [Ottawas] "who weare abont a hundred and fifty with their families. They had [had] a quarrell with the hurrons in the Isle where we had come from some years before in the lake of the stairing hairs1 [Huron]. “But lett us see if they have brought anything to subsist withall. But they were worse provided than we; having no huntsmen they are reduced to famine."

Our travelers wandered westward and were the first white men to enter what is now Minnesota. Before winter was over they were in the country of the Dakotas, otherwise called Sioux, a little south-of-west from Lake Superior, in the Mille Lacs region, whose streams are tributary to the Mississippi. As to food, they were then in better condition than they had been. Yet there was still such a degree of famine that some of the company saved the snow upon which fell the blood of a half-starved dog which Radisson killed one night for foɔd, having previously stolen the wretched creature from two Sioux as they lay asleep. More than five hundred Hurons and Ottawas died that winter of starvation.

"Com

In the late winter or early spring, they visited "the nation of the beefe" [Bœuf, or Buffalo, Sioux]. Thence they went seven days' journey, apparently northward, and visited the Christinos. The ice was still in the lakes. ing back we passed a lake hardly frozen" [frozen hard]. They came again to Oak Point which they had crossed the autumn before. "Here we built a fort.". In August of the next year, 1662, they returned to Three Rivers, bringing with them furs to the value of 200,000 livres ($37,000). New France was burdened with a monopoly which sought to control the fur trade. Radisson and Groselliers, finding the governor intent upon plundering them, escaped to Boston. Thus the explorers of our Wisconsin streams and forests found refuge in the city of the Puritans. It would be interesting to know what they thought of the home of John Endecott and Increase Mather. From Boston they sailed to England. There Radisson married the daughter of a Sir John Kirk. 3 Here, after the fashion of a romance, we might leave our adventurers.

1 Probably, hair brushed or pushed up. Compare the speech of Brutus in Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar:"

Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil,

That mak'st my blood cold and my hair to stare?

2 Commonly spelled Endicott.

3 Sir John Kirk (or Kertk) was a zealous Huguenot. The daughter probably shared her father's faith. It is not unlikely that Radisson himself, with the change in his political allegiance, made a corresponding change in his religious connection. But I do not know that he did. Like many another he probably held, in a general way, the Christian faith without car

But they were yet to do some of their greatest achievements. They entered English service and, in 1667, led an expedition to the "salt watter" mentioned above. There they established trading-posts and thus became active agents in founding the Hudson's Bay company which virtually controlled for two hundred years the northern half of our continent, and more than once has vitally affected the history of the United States.1 Thinking themselves wronged by some officials of the company, they again entered French service, sailed in 1682 to Hudson's Bay, captured Port Nelson, which they themselves had founded, raised over it the lilies of France and changed its name to Port Bourbon. This action was of course made the subject of diplomatic correspondence. Lord Preston, the English ambassador at Paris, thus wrote home, under date of 1684, January 19: "Sent to know if the king had ordered any answer concerning the attack upon Nelson's post. I find the great support of Mons de la Barre, the present governor of Canada, is from the Jesuits of this court, which order hath always had a great number of missionaries in that region, who, besides the conversion of infidels, have had the address to engross the whole castor [beaver] trade from which they draw considerable advantage."

Presumably his lordship had no objection to "the conversion of infidels.” But that "the Jesuits of this court," whose "address" he probably somewhat exaggerated, or any other Frenchmen, should have a monopoly of the fur trade, was intolerable. To put an end to such a state of things, there were no better agents than Radisson and Groseilliers. By the persuasions of Lord Preston and their friend Sir James Hayes of the Hudson's Bay company, aided perhaps by the entreaties of Radisson's English wife, they again exchanged, this time for good, the land of their nativity for that of their adoption. A second time they aided in establishing English authority over the Hudson's Bay region. Thus these men who have so large a part in the history of the exploration of North America widened therein the domain of Saxon Protestantism. ing much for differences in doctrine or ritual.

1 Thus it is probable that but for its influence British Columbia would now be one of the states of our Union.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY MISSIONS.

In order of time, the brief, touching story of one who is often called Wisconsin's first missionary belongs between Radisson's third "voyage" and his fourth. On the 28th of August, 1660, Renahis (commonly written Rene) Menard, who had labored among the Hurons before their utter defeat by the Iroquois in 1649 and the blotting out of the missions in the same year, started from Three Rivers in search of the vanquished tribe, who were so broken in spirit that they hid even from their former teachers. He came on the 15th of October, St. Theresa's1 day, to the most prominent cape on the southern shore of Lake Superior, Keweenaw Point, in what is now Michigan. No Hurons there; only Ottawas, who seem, like most other Algonquians, 2 to have been friendly to the whites, with perhaps a partiality for the French. But these Ottawas treated Menard with a cruelty that might be expected from a tribe

1 Though not the discoverer of the adjacent bay, Menard gave it St. Theresa's name. We have here a suggestion, first recognized by the late eminent Roman Catholic historian J. G. Shea, that dates of discovery can, in some cases, be determined by the names that were given by the early explorers. This principle must, of course, be applied with caution. Thus of the Arched Rock, Lake Superior, Radisson writes: "I gave it the name of the portal of St. Peter, because my name is so called, and that I was the first Christian who ever saw it."

St. Theresa is known to some by the fact that an account of her vision of hell has been published under the sanction of Roman Catholic dignitaries. Many "visions" of some of the saints suggest that the subjects thereof would, with a slightly different religious training, have made first-class "spirit mediums." We shall not understand men like Menard and his compeers unless we remember that narratives of the sort indicated formed no small part of their reading and were regarded by them as almost on a parity with divine revelation. The "lesser devotion" paid to the saints was not only a matter of religious observance, it was a dictate of prudence as well. For their aid was almost indispensable in contests with Satan, whose dominion the missionaries were invading, whose subjects they were endeavoring to wrest from him, and who might be expected to appear in tangible presence under almost any guise, in almost any place and at almost any time.

2 The spelling given above is that used by the Bureau of Ethnology (Smithsonian Institution). For the entire Algonquian (Algonquin, Algonkin) family Schoolcraft suggested the term "Algics." Using this name, thus wrote W. W. Warren, of whom we have already heard, a descendant of a Mayflower pilgrim, as well as of Ojibways:

"The red men who first greeted our pilgrim fathers, and who are so vitally connected with their early history, were Algics. The people who treated with good William Penn [with whom good William Penn treated] for the site of the present city of Philadelphia, and who named him' me guon,' meaning, in the Ojibway language. ‘a pen' or 'a feather,' were of the Algic stock. The tribe over whom Pow-hat-tan (signifying 'a dream') ruled as chief belonged to this wide-spread family."

But J. Hammond Trumbull says that Powhat-hanne, or Powhau't-hanne, denotes " falls in a stream." Also that the famous chief and his people derived their name from the falls in the James river, near Richmond, Virginia.