Pathfinders of the West. Agnes C. Laut
the Indians came back from Quebec, they were accompanied by thirty young French adventurers, gay as boys out of school or gold hunters before the first check to their plans. There were also two Jesuits sent out to win the new domain for the cross.[5] As ignorant as children of the hardships ahead, the other treasure-seekers kept up nonchalant boasting that roused the irony of such seasoned men as Radisson and Groseillers. "What fairer bastion than a good tongue," Radisson demands cynically, "especially when one sees his own chimney smoke? … It is different when food is wanting, work necessary day and night, sleep taken on the bare ground or to mid-waist in water, with an empty stomach, weariness in the bones, and bad weather overhead."
Giving the slip to their noisy companions, Radisson and Groseillers stole out from Three Rivers late one night in June, accompanied by Algonquin guides. Travelling only at night to avoid Iroquois spies, they came to Montreal in three days. Here were gathered one hundred and forty Indians from the Upper Country, the thirty French, and the two priests. No gun was fired at Montreal, lest the Mohawks should get wind of the departure; and the flotilla of sixty canoes spread over Lake St. Louis for the far venture of the Pays d'en Haut. Three days of work had silenced the boasting of the gay adventurers; and the voyageurs, white and red, were now paddling in swift silence. Safety engendered carelessness. As the fleet seemed to be safe from Iroquois ambush, the canoes began to scatter. Some loitered behind. Hunters went ashore to shoot. The hills began to ring with shot and call. At the first portage many of the canoes were nine and ten miles apart. Enemies could have set on the Algonquins in some narrow defile and slaughtered the entire company like sheep in a pen. Radisson and Groseillers warned the Indians of the risk they were running. Many of these Algonquins had never before possessed firearms. With the muskets obtained in trade at Three Rivers, they thought themselves invincible and laughed all warning to scorn. Radisson and Groseillers were told that they were a pair of timid squaws; and the canoes spread apart till not twenty were within call. As they skirted the wooded shores, a man suddenly dashed from the forest with an upraised war-hatchet in one hand and a blanket streaming from his shoulders. He shouted for them to come to him. The Algonquins were panic-stricken. Was the man pursued by Mohawks, or laying a trap to lure them within shooting range? Seeing them hesitate, the Indian threw down blanket and hatchet to signify that he was defenceless, and rushed into the water to his armpits.
"I would save you," he shouted in Iroquois.
The Algonquins did not understand. They only knew that he spoke the tongue of the hated enemy and was unarmed. In a trice, the Algonquins in the nearest canoe had thrown out a well-aimed lasso, roped the man round the waist, and drawn him a captive into the canoe.
"Brothers," protested the captive, who seems to have been either a Huron slave or an Iroquois magician, "your enemies are spread up and down! Sleep not! They have heard your noise! They wait for you! They are sure of their prey! Believe me—keep together! Spend not your powder in vain to frighten your enemies by noise! See that the stones of your arrows be not bent! Bend your bows! Keep your hatchets sharp! Build a fort! Make haste!"
But the Algonquins, intoxicated with the new power of firearms, would hear no warning. They did not understand his words and refused to heed Radisson's interpretation. Beating paddles on their canoes and firing off guns, they shouted derisively that the man was "a dog and a hen." All the same, they did not land to encamp that night, but slept in midstream, with their boats tied to the rushes or on the lee side of floating trees. The French lost heart. If this were the beginning, what of the end? Daylight had scarcely broken when the paddles of the eager voyageurs were cutting the thick gray mist that rose from the river to get away from observation while the fog still hid the fleet. From afar came the dull, heavy rumble of a waterfall.[6]
There was a rush of the twelve foremost canoes to reach the landing and cross the portage before the thinning mist lifted entirely. Twelve boats had got ashore when the fog was cleft by a tremendous crashing of guns, and Iroquois ambushed in the bordering forest let go a salute of musketry. Everything was instantly in confusion. Abandoning their baggage to the enemy, the Algonquins and French rushed for the woods to erect a barricade. This would protect the landing of the other canoes. The Iroquois immediately threw up a defence of fallen logs likewise, and each canoe that came ashore was greeted with a cross fire between the two barricades. Four canoes were destroyed and thirteen of the Indians from the Upper Country killed. As day wore on, the Iroquois' shots ceased, and the Algonquins celebrated the truce by killing and devouring all the prisoners they had taken, among whom was the magician who had given them warning. Radisson and Groseillers wondered if the Iroquois were reserving their powder for a night raid. The Algonquins did not wait to know. As soon as darkness fell, there was a wild scramble for the shore. A long, low trumpet call, such as hunters use, signalled the Algonquins to rally and rush for the boats. The French embarked as best they could. The Indians swam and paddled for the opposite shore of the river. Here, in the dark, hurried council was taken. The most of the baggage had been lost. The Indians refused to help either the Jesuits or the French, and it was impossible for the white voyageurs to keep up the pace in the dash across an unknown portage through the dark. The French adventurers turned back for Montreal. Of the white men, Radisson and Groseillers alone went on.
Frightened into their senses by the encounter, the Algonquins now travelled only at night till they were far beyond range of the Iroquois. All day the fugitive band lay hidden in the woods. They could not hunt, lest Mohawk spies might hear the gunshots. Provisions dwindled. In a short time the food consisted of tripe de roche—a greenish moss boiled into a soup—and the few fish that might be caught during hurried nightly launch or morning landing. Sometimes they hid in a berry patch, when the fruit was gathered and boiled, but camp-fires were stamped out and covered. Turning westward, they crossed the barren region of iron-capped rocks and dwarf growth between the Upper Ottawa and the Great Lakes. Now they were farther from the Iroquois, and staved off famine by shooting an occasional bear in the berry patches. For a thousand miles they had travelled against stream, carrying their boats across sixty portages. Now they glided with the current westward to Lake Nipissing. On the lake, the Upper Indians always cached provisions. Fish, otter, and beaver were plentiful; but again they refrained from using firearms, for Iroquois footprints had been found on the sand.
From Lake Nipissing they passed to Lake Huron, where the fleet divided. Radisson and Groseillers went with the Indians, who crossed Lake Huron for Green Bay on Lake Michigan. The birch canoes could not venture across the lake in storms; so the boats rounded southward, keeping along the shore of Georgian Bay. Cedar forests clustered down the sandy reaches of the lake. Rivers dark as cathedral aisles rolled their brown tides through the woods to the blue waters of Lake Huron. At one point Groseillers recognized the site of the ruined Jesuit missions. The Indians waited the chance of a fair day, and paddled over to the straits at the entrance to Lake Michigan. At Manitoulin Island were Huron refugees, among whom were, doubtless, the waiting families of the Indians with Radisson. All struck south for Green Bay. So far Radisson and Groseillers had travelled over beaten ground. Now they were at the gateway of the Great Beyond, where no white man had yet gone.
The first thing done on taking up winter quarters on Green Bay was to appease the friends of those warriors slain by the Mohawks. A distribution of gifts had barely dried up the tears of mourning when news came of Iroquois on the war-path. Radisson did not wait for fear to unman the Algonquin warriors. Before making winter camp, he offered to lead a band of volunteers against the marauders. For two days he followed vague tracks through the autumn-tinted forests. Here were markings of the dead leaves turned freshly up; there a moccasin print on the sand; and now the ashes of a hidden camp-fire lying in almost imperceptible powder on fallen logs told where the Mohawks had bivouacked. On the third day Radisson caught the ambushed band unprepared, and fell upon the Iroquois so furiously that not one escaped.
After that the Indians of the Upper Country could not do too much for the white men. Radisson and Groseillers were conducted from camp to camp in triumph. Feasts were held. Ambassadors went ahead with gifts from the Frenchmen; and companies of women marched to meet the explorers, chanting songs of welcome. "But our mind was not to stay here," relates Radisson, "but to know the remotest people; and, because we had been willing to die in their defence, these Indians consented to conduct us."
Before the opening of spring,