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Updated: September 2, 2025
As they were about to embark, coureurs came in from the woods with news that more than a thousand Iroquois were on the war-path, boasting that they would exterminate the French. Somewhere along the Ottawa a small band of Hurons had been massacred. The Indians with Groseillers and Radisson were terrified. A council of the elders was called.
All that night Ben swore deliriously that he would do worse to Le Borgne's master than he had done to the supercargo; but he never by any chance let slip who Le Borgne's master might be, though M. Radisson, Chouart Groseillers, young Jean, and I kept watch by turns lest the drunken knave should run amuck of our Frenchmen.
Either Groseillers told his wife, or the Jesuits got wind of the news from the Indians; for it was announced from Quebec that two priests, young La Vallière, the son of the governor at Three Rivers, six other Frenchmen, and some Indians would set out for the Bay of the North up the Saguenay. Radisson was invited to join the company as a guide.
It was a beginning which every Western pioneer was to repeat for the next two hundred years: first, the log cabins; then, the fight with the wilderness for food. Radisson, being the younger, went into the woods to hunt, while Groseillers kept house.
Different names are given as the places where they died. This is all pure supposition. Therefore I do not quote. No records exist to prove where Radisson and Groseillers died. State Papers record payment of money to her because she was in want. Dr.
Surely this was the Sea of the North Hudson Bay of which the Nipissing chief had told Groseillers long ago. Then the Crees had great store of beaver pelts; and trade must not be forgotten. No sooner had peace been arranged between Sautaux and Crees, than Cree hunters flocked out of the northern forests to winter on Lake Superior.
Radisson had been given a solemn promise by the Hudson's Bay Company that Jean Groseillers and his comrades should be well treated and reëngaged for the English at 100 pounds a year. Now he learned that the English intended to ship all the French out of Hudson Bay and to keep them out. The enthusiast had played his game with more zeal than discretion.
Before the opening of spring, 1659, Radisson and Groseillers had been guided across what is now Wisconsin to "a mighty river, great, rushing, profound, and comparable to the St. Lawrence." On the shores of the river they found a vast nation "the people of the fire," prairie tribes, a branch of the Sioux, who received them well.
Before the spring five hundred Crees had died of famine. Radisson and Groseillers scarcely had strength to drag the dead from the tepees. The Indians thought that Groseillers had been fed by some fiend, for his heavy, black beard covered his thin face. Radisson they loved, because his beardless face looked as gaunt as theirs. Relief came with the breaking of the weather.
The desire for firearms has tempted Indians to murder many a trader; so Radisson and Groseillers cached all the supplies that they did not need in a hole across the river. News of the two white men alone in the northern forest spread like wild-fire to the different Sautaux and Ojibway encampments; and Radisson invented another protection in addition to the bells.
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