French Pathfinders in North America Part 10

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Chapter XII

PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON AND MeDARD CHOUART EXPLORE LAKE SUPERIOR

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 cla.s.ses 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 ma.s.s and preached their {188} faith in the heart of the forest primeval and at lonely posts on the sh.o.r.es 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 cla.s.ses of men and their achievements we have had examples. We come now to speak of a fourth cla.s.s who exercised a powerful influence on the destinies of New France. If we remember that the material object of French activity in America was _furs_, 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 quant.i.ties 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 their {189} fires.

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 cla.s.s than these stationary traders were the so-called _coureurs 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 continent {190} to the white man's rule. Daring explorers, they penetrated remote regions, hobn.o.bbed 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 these _coureurs_, 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 the _coureurs de bois_.

To ill.u.s.trate 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 the _coureur's_ life, with all its vicissitudes. Withal, he {191} was 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 ma.n.u.script, 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, until {192} he 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 comfortably {193} between 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 fought {194} furiously, 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, and {195} she 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," he {196} replied. "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 sh.o.r.e 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.

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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 seeke {198} rootes, 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 pa.s.sed 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 and {199} shoes, and shipped him down the Hudson to "Menada"

(Manhattan, New York), whence he sailed for Amsterdam. From that port he took ship for La Roch.e.l.le, 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 mere _coureur de bois_. Now we shall see him in the more important role of a discoverer.

Probably he and his brother-in-law, Medard 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 sh.o.r.es 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. {200} 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 adventurous _voyageurs_. 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 cla.s.s. 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 attention {201} to the descriptions in the narrative was needed in order to identify them and determine his route. Thus it came to pa.s.s 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 to {202} overtake 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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, {203} the Iroquois meanwhile firing constantly, but doing little harm.

Darkness came on, and the a.s.sailants 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 a.s.sailants 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, a.s.sailants and a.s.sailed 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 our {204} hands." 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."