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Updated: May 23, 2025
Now that the Huron missions had been wiped out by Iroquois wars, the Jesuits regarded the truce as a Divine provision for a mission among the Iroquois. The year that Radisson escaped from the Mohawks, Jesuit priests had gone among them. A still greater change that was to affect his life more vitally had taken place in the Radisson family.
Taking only a single sack of flour for food, he called for volunteers among the twenty Frenchmen to embark in a leaky, old canoe and follow the treacherous Onondagas. Young Radisson was one of the first to offer himself. Six others followed his example; and the seven Frenchmen led by the priest struck across the lake, leaving the others to gather up the scattered baggage.
"That the gods have sent him a messenger to them; that the fire he brings " he was handing a musket to the chief "will smite the Indians' enemy from the earth; that the bullet is magic to outrace the fleetest runner" this as M. Radisson fired a shot into mid-air that sent the Indians into ecstasies of childish wonder "that the bottle in his hands contains death, and if the Indians bring their hunt to the white-man, the white-man will never take the cork out except to let death fly at the Indians' enemy" he lifted a little phial of poison as he spoke "that the Indian need never feel cold nor thirst, now that the white-man has brought fire-water!"
They may have been Pierre Radisson and his brother-in-law, Menard des Grosseilliers, who are alleged to have covered the long portage from Lake Superior to the Mississippi in or about 1665; but the matter rests entirely on how one interprets Radisson's vague account of their western perambulations.
James Kent, among his other qualities good and bad, possessed a merciless opinion of his own shortcomings, but never, in that opinion, had he fallen so low as in the interval which immediately followed the closing of his door behind the mysterious girl who had told him that her name was Marette Radisson.
Here they were upon a now hostile shore without food, fire, shelter, and weapons; their situation was desperate even yet. Radisson's ingenuity was not quite enough, so Gering solved the problem: there were the Frenchmen's canoes; they must be somewhere on the shore. Because Radisson was a Frenchman, he might be able to impose upon the watch guarding the canoes.
On June 29, 1674, the Governing Committee unanimously voted that 'there be allowed to Mr Radisson £100 per annum in consideration of services, out of which shall be deducted what hath already been paid him; and if it pleases God to bless the Company with good success, hereafter that they come to be in a prosperous condition, then they will reassume consideration. 'Prosperous condition! At this time the shareholders were receiving dividends of fifty and one hundred per cent.
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 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.
So Ben Gillam must take M. Radisson aboard the Susan, or Garden, as she was called when she sailed different colours, the young fellow with a wry face, the Frenchman, all gaiety. As the two leaders mounted the companion-ladder, hostages came towards the beach to join us.
Two days after Radisson's arrival, Sir James Hayes and Mr Young reported to the Company that Mr Radisson had tendered his services to the Company, that they 'have presented him to our Governor, His Royal Highness, who was pleased to advise he should again be received in service, under wage of £50 per annum and benefit of dividends on £200 capital stock during life, to receive £25 to set him out for this present expedition. On May 21 Sir James Hayes reported that he had presented Mr Radisson with 'a silver tankard, charged to the Company at £10 14. 0.
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