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In this way Kellsey penetrated into the country of the Assiniboines, and he finally reached a more distant tribe or nation called by the long name of Néwátamipoet. Kellsey first of all made for Split Lake, up the Nelson River, and thence paddled westwards in his canoe for a distance of 71 miles.
Kellsey was very near being sent to the other world to complete the sacrifice; but he arranged for "a feast of tobacco" in other words, a calm deliberation and the smoking of the pipe of peace.
In the middle of September he reached the country of the Néwátamipoets, and presented to their chief, on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company, a present of clothes, knives, awls, tobacco, and a gun, gunpowder, and shot. On this journey Kellsey encountered the grizzly bear, a more common denizen of the western regions of North America.
Stupid Governor Geyer not only objected to Kellsey picking up the Kri language, but punished him most severely for that and for his boyish tricks and jokes; so much so, that Kellsey, when he was about ten years old, ran away with the returning Indians, some of whom had grown very fond of him whilst they stayed at Fort Nelson.
Kellsey only wished to open up peaceful relations with them and create a great trade in furs with the Hudson's Bay Company, so he kept pleading with the Indians not to go to war with the Néwátamipoets. On this journey, however, one of the Kri Indians fell ill and died.
Six years afterwards an Indian brought to the governor of the fort a letter written by Kellsey in charcoal on a piece of white birch bark. In this he asked the governor's pardon for running away, and his permission to return to the fort. As a kind reply was sent, Kellsey appeared not long afterwards grown into a young man, accompanied by an Indian wife and attended by a party of Indians.
He was dressed exactly like them, but differed from them in the respect which he showed to his native wife. She attempted to accompany her husband into the factory or place of business, and the governor stopped her; but Kellsey at once told him in English that he would not enter himself if his wife was not suffered to go with him, and so the governor relented.
Four days afterwards, however, the attention of the whole party was concentrated on bison. Bison could now be seen in abundance. Kellsey was already acquainted with the musk ox, which he had seen in the colder regions near to Hudson Bay; but the bison seemed to him quite different, with horns growing like those of an English ox, black and short.
For this feat he was greatly reverenced by the Indians, and received the name of Mistopashish, or "little giant". Kellsey afterwards rose to be governor of York Fort, on the west coast of Hudson Bay. The next great explorer ranging westward from Hudson Bay was Anthony Hendry.
Soon after their first pioneers were established, in 1670, at Fort Nelson, on the west coast of Hudson Bay, near where York Factory now stands, there was born or brought out from England as an infant a little boy named Henry Kellsey, who as a child took a great fancy to the Amerindians who came to trade at Fort Nelson.
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