to remain for any length of time disconsolate. Within a year of his wife's death, there arrived in the colony a brother and sister named Pierre and Marguerite Radisson, Huguenots of good family, who had been so persistently hounded in France by the persecution which sought to exterminate their community, that the one key to happiness had seemed to them to lie beyond the seas. No sooner had their father died than they bade farewell to France and sailed for Canada, there to start a new life amidst new and more tranquil surroundings.
With this couple young Groseilliers soon struck up an acquaintance; and so rapidly did the intimacy ripen that before long he was united, to the sister in matrimony, and to the brother in a partnership for the pursuit of commercial adventure. The double union proved doubly fortunate; for Marguerite seems to have made a well-suited wife, and Pierre, though in birth and education superior to Groseilliers, was no whit less hardy and adventurous, nor in any respect less fitted for the arduous tasks which their rough life imposed upon them. The two speedily became fast friends and associates in enterprise, and thus united they soon took their place as the leading spirits of the settlement at Three Rivers. Here, in 1656, Radisson married for the first time, his bride being a Mlle. Elizabeth Herault, one of the few Protestant young women in the whole of Canada. Groseilliers, who had been long disgusted at the priestly tyranny of which he had seen so much in Canada, probably needed but little inducement to embrace the Protestant religion, if indeed this had not been stipulated upon at the time of his marriage. At all events, we now find him reputed to be among the Protestants of the Colony; some of whom were, in spite of the bitter prejudice against them, the boldest and most successful spirits the fur-trading community of that period had to show.
Radisson.
(After an old print.)
Radisson weds Miss Kirke.
Radisson, like Groseilliers,[6] had the misfortune to lose his wife soon after their marriage; but, like his comrade, he too sought consolation in a fresh marriage. This time he allied himself with the daughter of a zealous English Protestant, who afterwards became Sir John Kirke. It was to the brothers of this Kirke that the great Champlain, thirty years before, had surrendered Quebec.
With this introduction to the characters of the two remarkable men whose fortunes were to become so closely entwined with that of the Hudson's Bay Company, we may pass to their early efforts to extend the fur-trade beyond those limits which the distracted and narrow-minded officers of the Compagnie des Cent Assocés, thought it necessary to observe.
Reaching the shore of Lake Superior in the early summer of 1659, Radisson and Groseilliers travelled for six days in a south-westerly direction, and then came upon a tribe of Indians incorporated with the Hurons, known as the Tionnontates, or the Tobacco Nation. These people dwelt in the territory between the sources of the Black and Chippeway rivers, in what is now the State of Wisconsin, whence, in terror of the bloody enmity of the Iroquois, they afterwards migrated to the small islands in Lake Michigan at the entrance of Green Bay.
During their temporary sojourn with this branch of the unhappy Hurons the two pioneering traders heard constant mention of a deep, wide, and beautiful river—comparable to the St. Lawrence—to the westward, and for a time they were half tempted by their ever-present thirst for novelty to proceed in that direction. Other counsels, however, seem to have prevailed; for instead of striking out for the unknown river of the west they journeyed northward, and wintered with the Nadouechiouecs or Sioux, who hunted and fished among the innumerable lakes of Minnesota. Soon afterwards they came upon a separate band of war-like Sioux, known as the Assiniboines, a prosperous and intelligent tribe, who lived in skin and clay lodges and were "familiar with the use of charcoal."
A Route to the Bay.
From these Assiniboines, Radisson and Groseilliers first heard of the character and extent of that great bay to the north, named by the English marine explorers "Hudson's Bay," which was to be the scene of their later labours; and not only did they glean news of its nature, but they also succeeded in obtaining information as to the means of reaching it.
In August, 1660, the two adventurers found their way back to Montreal, after over a year's absence. They were accompanied by three hundred Indians, and in possession of sixty canoes laden with furs, which they undertook to dispose of to the advantage of the savages and themselves. As they had anticipated, they found the little colony and its leaders deeply interested in their reports of the extent and richness of the fur-producing countries to the westward, as well as in their description of the unfamiliar tribes inhabiting that region. The sale of the furs having resulted in a handsome profit, Groseilliers announced to his brother-in-law his intention of making the journey on his own account. There was no dearth of volunteers eager to embark in the enterprise, and from those who offered their services he chose six Frenchmen—coureurs des bois or bushrangers; and having provided himself with an ample outfit, turned his footsteps once more to the prairies of the west, while Radisson went to rejoin his wife and sister at Three Rivers.
On the eve of his departure the Jesuit Fathers, distrusting Groseilliers' religious proclivities and suspecting that he might attempt to influence the Assiniboines, insisted upon one of their number accompanying him. The priest chosen for this arduous mission was the aged missionary Réné Ménard, who, in spite of his physical frailty was still undaunted by any prospect of peril; though he was, on this occasion, prevailed upon to allow his servant Guérin to accompany him. It was the priest's last journey. When Groseilliers again reached Montreal, after a season in the wilderness as prosperous as its forerunner, he bore the mournful news that Ménard had been massacred and his body, beyond question, devoured by a fierce band of Indians.
This voyage, besides showing lucrative results, also proved a memorable one for Groseilliers, inasmuch as it was during his winter's sojourn with the distant Assiniboines that he acquired information which affected his whole subsequent career. There can be no question that it was the knowledge he obtained from this tribe of a convenient route to Hudson's Bay, by way of Lake Superior, and of a system of trade with the tribes dwelling on or in proximity to that unknown sea, that caused him to set out once again in May, 1662, for the west. He was accompanied by ten men, all of whom were disaffected towards the powers which then controlled the fur-trade in New France, and the combination of good fortune and esprit de corps among his followers proved so successful that when, after a year's absence, he returned to the eastern colonies, the number of furs he brought back was sufficiently great to render a simultaneous disposal of all the packs inadvisable. He adopted the wise course of dividing them into three consignments, and these were sold respectively at Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec. Henceforward, but one idea possessed Groseilliers—a journey to the great fur-lands of the north. It should be his life's work to exploit the fur-trade of Hudson's Bay. Already he saw himself rich—richer even than the merchant-princes of old Rochelle.
A new fur Company.
But alas for his plans, the official laxity and dissensions which had made it possible for himself and others thus to infringe with impunity, the general monopoly granted by the King came to a sudden end. A fresh patent for a new Company was issued by the Crown; a new Governor, M. d'Avagour, entered upon the scene, and the rigorous measures enacted against private traders drove many of these over to the English and the Dutch.
A commission from M. d'Avagour, dated the 10th of May, 1663, conveyed permission to one M. Couture to remove with five men to the bottom of the Great Bay to the North of Canada, consequent upon the requisition of some Indians, who had returned to Quebec to ask for aid to conduct and assist them in their affairs. This same Couture afterwards certified, or the French Government certified in his stead, that he really undertook this voyage, and "erected anew upon the lands at the bottom of the said Bay a cross and the arms of the King engraved on copper, and placed between two plates of lead at the foot of a large tree." Much justifiable doubt has been cast upon this story, and at a much later period, when French and English interests were contesting hotly for the sovereignty of the territory surrounding Hudson's Bay, an expedition was sent in search of the boasted memorials, but no trace of the cross or the copper escutcheon could be found. There seems every probability