Pathfinders of the West | Page 6

Montreal in 1760
Château St. Louis, Quebec, 1669
A Parley on the Plains
Martello Tower of Refuge in Time of Indian Wars--Three Rivers
Skin for Skin, Coat of Arms and Motto, Hudson's Bay Company
Hudson's Bay Company Coins, made of Lead melted from Tea-chests
at York Factory
Hudson Bay Dog Trains laden with Furs arriving at Lower Fort Garry,
Red River
Indians and Hunters spurring to the Fight
Fights at the Foothills of the Rockies, between Crows and Snakes
Each Man landed with Pack on his Back and trotted away over
Portages

A Cree Indian of the Minnesota Borderlands
A Group of Cree Indians
The Soldiers marched out from Mount Royal for the Western Sea
Traders' Boats running the Rapids of the Athabasca River
The Ragged Sky-line of the Mountains
Hungry Hall, 1870
A Monarch of the Plains
Fur Traders towed down the Saskatchewan in the Summer of 1900
Tepees dotted the Valley
An Eskimo Belle
Samuel Hearne
Eskimo using Double-bladed Paddle
Eskimo Family, taken by Light of Midnight Sun
Fort Garry, Winnipeg, a Century Ago
Plan of Fort Prince of Wales, from Robson's drawing, 1733-1747
Fort Prince of Wales
Beaver Coin of the Hudson's Bay Company
Alexander Mackenzie
Eskimo trading his Pipe, carved from Walrus Tusk, for the Value of
Three Beaver Skins
Quill and Beadwork on Buckskin

Fort William, Headquarters Northwest Company, Lake Superior
Running a Rapid on Mackenzie River
Slave Lake Indians
Good Hope, Mackenzie River, Hudson's Bay Company Fort
The Mouth of the Mackenzie by the Light of the Midnight Sun
Captain Meriwether Lewis
Captain William Clark
Tracking up Stream
Typical Mountain Trapper
The Discovery of the Great Falls
Fighting a Grizzly
Packer carrying Goods across Portage
Spying on Enemy's Fort
Indian Camp at Foothills of Rockies
On Guard
Indians of the Up-country or Pays d'en Haut


PART I
PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON

ADVENTURES OF THE FIRST WHITE MAN TO EXPLORE THE
WEST, THE NORTHWEST, AND THE NORTH

[Illustration: Map of the Great Fur Company.]

Pathfinders of the West
CHAPTER I
1651-1653
RADISSON'S FIRST VOYAGE
The Boy Radisson is captured by the Iroquois and carried to the
Mohawk Valley--In League with Another Captive, he slays their
Guards and escapes--He is overtaken in Sight of Home--Tortured and
adopted in the Tribe, he visits Orange, where the Dutch offer to ransom
him--His Escape
Early one morning in the spring of 1652 three young men left the little
stockaded fort of Three Rivers, on the north bank of the St. Lawrence,
for a day's hunting in the marshes of Lake St. Peter. On one side were
the forested hills, purple with the mists of rising vapor and still streaked
with white patches of snow where the dense woods shut out the
sunlight. On the other lay the silver expanse of the St. Lawrence, more
like a lake than a river, with mile on mile southwestward of rush-grown
marshes, where plover and curlew and duck and wild geese flocked to
their favorite feeding-grounds three hundred years ago just as they do
to-day. Northeastward, the three mouths of the St. Maurice poured their
spring flood into the St. Lawrence.
The hunters were very young. Only hunters rash with the courage of
untried youth would have left the shelter of the fort walls when all the
world knew that the Iroquois had been lying in ambush round the little
settlement of Three Rivers day and night for the preceding year. Not a

week passed but some settler working on the outskirts of Three Rivers
was set upon and left dead in his fields by marauding Iroquois. The
tortures suffered by Jogues, the great Jesuit missionary who had been
captured by the Iroquois a few years before, were still fresh in the
memory of every man, woman, and child in New France. It was from
Three Rivers that Piescaret, the famous Algonquin chief who could
outrun a deer, had set out against the Iroquois, turning his snowshoes
back to front, so that the track seemed to lead north when he was really
going south, and then, having thrown his pursuers off the trail, coming
back on his own footsteps, slipping up stealthily on the Iroquois that
were following the false scent, and tomahawking the laggards.[1] It
was from Three Rivers that the Mohawks had captured the Algonquin
girl who escaped by slipping off the thongs that bound her. Stepping
over the prostrate forms of her sleeping guards, such a fury of revenge
possessed her that she seized an axe and brained the nearest sleeper,
then eluded her pursuers by first hiding in a hollow tree and afterward
diving under the debris of a beaver dam.
[Illustration: Three Rivers in 1757.]
These things were known to every inhabitant of Three Rivers. Farmers
had flocked into the little fort and could venture back to their fields