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Updated: June 16, 2025
When Le Moyne and the Jesuits had interpreted this speech La Barre 'retired to his tent and stormed and blustered. But Grangula favoured the spectators with an Iroquois dance, after which he entertained several of the Frenchmen at a banquet. 'Two days later, writes La Hontan, 'he and his warriors returned to their own country, and our army set out for Montreal.
The existence of a large lake of salt water somewhere amid the wilds west of the Rocky Mountains seems to have been vaguely known as long ago as two hundred years. As early as May, 1689, the Baron La Hontan, lord-lieutenant of the French colony at Placentia, in New Foundland, wrote an account of discoveries in this region, which was published in the English language in 1735.
But the Northwest was particularly the home of the fur trade, and having seen that this traffic was not an isolated or unimportant matter, we may now proceed to study it in detail with Wisconsin as the field of investigation. La Hontan says: "For you must know that Canada subsists only upon the trade of skins or furs, three-fourths of which come from the people that live around the Great Lakes."
Colls., V., 422; Id., V., 425. In 1731 M. La Ronde, having constructed at his own expense a bark of forty tons on Lake Superior, received the post of La Pointe de Chagouamigon as a gratuity to defray his expenses. See also the story of Verenderye's posts, in Parkman's article in Atlantic Monthly, June, 1887, and Margry, VI. See also 2 Penna. Archives, VI., 18; La Hontan, I., 53; N.Y. Col.
The chief orator of the Onondagas was a remarkable person, who either for his eloquence or aspect is called by La Hontan, Grangula, or Big Mouth. Having listened to La Barre's bellicose words and their interpretation, 'he rose, took five or six turns in the ring that the French and the savages formed, and returned to his place.
The camp of the French was on a low, damp plain near the fort; and here a malarious fever presently attacked them, killing many and disabling many more. La Hontan says that La Barre himself was brought by it to the brink of the grave. If he had ever entertained any other purpose than that of inducing the Senecas to agree to a temporary peace, he now completely abandoned it.
La Hontan knew the woods, and crept away before dawn to a hidden bivouac of Hurons and militia; wiry and venturesome in his age as he had been in his youth.
Even the sarcastic La Hontan, who had little to say in general praise of the colony and its institutions, accords the judicial system a modest tribute. 'I will not say, he writes, 'that the Goddess of Justice is more chaste here than in France, but at any rate, if she is sold, she is sold more cheaply.
Hasty as was their parting, their conduct on the whole had been creditable; and La Hontan, who was in Quebec at the time, says of them, "They fought vigorously, though as ill-disciplined as men gathered together at random could be; for they did not lack courage, and, if they failed, it was by reason of their entire ignorance of discipline, and because they were exhausted by the fatigues of the voyage."
Greysolon Du Lhut, the king of the voyageurs, for example, was a man of means and education, but his entire library, as disclosed by his will, consisted of a world atlas and a set of Josephus. The priests did not encourage the reading of secular books, and La Hontan recounts the troubles which he had in keeping one militant curé from tearing his precious volumes to pieces.
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