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Updated: June 16, 2025
Champlain, L'Escarbot, Denys, Biard, La Hontan, Cadillac and Charlevoix had described in glowing words the wealth of its attractions. It is worth while in this connection to quote the description which Lamothe Cadillac penned in 1693 just two hundred and ten years ago: River St. John. "The entrance of this river is very large.
Opposite to this rock, and on the east side of the river, says Hennepin, are three mountains, about two leagues below the cataract. Nouveau Voyage , 462, 466. To these "three mountains," as well as to the rock, he frequently alludes. They are also spoken of by La Hontan, who clearly indicates their position.
"If I enter with you, will you come out with me as soon as I make you a sign?" "Doubt it not," said La Hontan, and he eclipsed himself directly. Though Saint-Castin had been more than a year in Acadia, this was the first time he had ever seen Madockawando's daughter. He knew it was that elusive being, on her way from her winter retreat to the tribe's summer fishing station near the coast.
The young man restrained his guest from plunging into the wigwam with a headlong gesture recently learned and practiced with delight. "I never saw this lodge before." "Did you not have it set up here for the night?" "No; it is not mine. Our Abenaquis are going to build one for us nearer the river." "I stay here," observed La Hontan. "Supper is ready, and adventures are in the air."
La Hontan speaks of a Sac village on Fox river, as early as 1689; and Father Hennepin, in 1680, mentions the Ontagamies or Fox Indians, as residents on the bay of Puants, now Green Bay. From this place, the Sauks and Foxes, crossed over to the eastern bank of the Mississippi, and combining with other tribes, began to act on the offensive.
He would not on any account have had La Hontan see him thus gathering the light of the open woods on military finery. He felt ashamed of returning to it, and could not account for his own impulses; and when he saw Madockawando's daughter walking unconsciously toward him as toward a trap, he drew his bright surfaces entirely behind the column of the tree.
"Mademoiselle," said Baron La Hontan in very French Abenaqui, rising to one knee, and sweeping the twigs with the brim of his hat as he pulled it off, "the Baron de Saint-Castin of Pentegoet, the friend of your chief Madockawando, is at your lodge door, tired and chilled from a long hunt. Can you not permit him to warm at your fire?" The Abenaqui girl bowed her covered head.
And there is other evidence as to the size of this exodus to the woods. Nicholas Perrot, when he left Montreal for Green Bay in 1688, took with him one hundred and forty-three voyageurs. La Hontan found "thirty or forty coureurs-de-bois at every post in the Illinois country." Among the leaders of the coureurs-de-bois several names stand out prominently.
But La Hontan did not, like Hennepin, add slander and plagiarism to mendacity, or seek to appropriate to himself the credit of genuine discoveries made by others. Mathieu Sagean is a personage less known than Hennepin or La Hontan; for, though he surpassed them both in fertility of invention, he was illiterate, and never made a book.
"He is a gallant man," says La Hontan, "if ever there was one;" while Charlevoix declares that he was the ablest Indian the French ever knew in America, and that he had nothing of the savage but the name and the dress. In spite of the father's eulogy, the moral condition of the Rat savored strongly of the wigwam. "It is well," replied the Rat. He knew that for the Hurons it was not well.
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