Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson | Page 2

Pierre and Claude, eldest sons, became priests.
Francoise died in infancy: Marguerite married Noel le Gardeur;
Francoise died in infancy; Etienne, born October 29, 1664, married in
1693 at Sorel, but seems to have had no issue. Jean Francois married
Marguerite Godfrey at Montreal in 1701. Nicholas, born in 1668,
married Genevieve Niel, July 30, 1696, and both died in 1703, leaving
two of their five sons surviving.
There are descendants of Noel le Gardeur who claim Radisson as their
ancestor, and also descendants of Claude Volant, apparently through
Nicholas. Among these descendants of the Volant family is the Rt. Rev.
Joseph Thomas Duhamel, who was consecrated Bishop of Ottawa,
Canada, October 28, 1874.
Of Medard Chouart's descendants, no account of any of the progeny of
his son Jean Baptiste, born July 25, 1654, can be found.] This brother,
often alluded to in Radisson's narratives as his companion on his
journeys, was Medard Chouart, "who was the son of Medard and Marie
Poirier, of Charly St. Cyr, France, and in 1641, when only sixteen years
old, came to Canada." [Footnote: Chouart's daughter Marie Antoinette,
born June 7, 1661, married first Jean Jalot in 1679. He was a surgeon,
born in 1648, and killed by the Iroquois, July 2, 1690. He was called
Des Groseilliers. She had nine children by Jalot, and there are
descendants from them in Canada. On the 19th December, 1695, she
married, secondly, Jean Bouchard, by whom she had six children. The
Bouchard-Dorval family of Montreal descends from this marriage.
Vide _Genealogical Dictionary of Canadian Families_, Quebec, 1881.]
He was a pilot, and married, 3rd September, 1647, Helen, the daughter
of Abraham Martin, and widow of Claude Etienne. Abraham Martin
left his name to the celebrated Plains of Abraham, near Quebec. She

dying in 1651, Chouart married, secondly, at Quebec, August 23, 1653,
the sister of Radisson, Margaret Hayet, the widow of John Veron
Grandmenil. In Canada, Chouart acted as a donne, or lay assistant, in
the Jesuit mission near Lake Huron. He left the service of the mission
about 1646, and commenced trading with the Indians for furs, in which
he was very successful. With his gains he is supposed to have
purchased some land in Canada, as he assumed the seigneurial title of
"Sieur des Groseilliers."
Radisson spent more than ten years trading with the Indians of Canada
and the far West, making long and perilous journeys of from two to
three years each, in company with his brother-in-law, Des Groseilliers.
He carefully made notes during his wanderings from 1652 to 1664,
which he afterwards copied out on his voyage to England in 1665.
Between these years he made four journeys, and heads his first
narrative with this title: "The Relation of my Voyage, being in Bondage
in the Lands of the Irokoits, which was the next year after my coming
into Canada, in the yeare 1651, the 24th day of May." In 1652 a roving
band of Iroquois, who had gone as far north as the Three Rivers, carried
our author as a captive into their country, on the banks of the Mohawk
River. He was adopted into the family of a "great captayne who had
killed nineteen men with his own hands, whereof he was marked on his
right thigh for as many as he had killed." In the autumn of 1653 he
accompanied the tribe in his village on a warlike incursion into the
Dutch territory. They arrived "the next day in a small brough of the
Hollanders," Rensselaerswyck, and on the fourth day came to Fort
Orange. Here they remained several days, and Radisson says: "Our
treaty's being done, overladened with bootyes abundantly, we putt
ourselves in the way that we came, to see again our village."
At Fort Orange Radisson met with the Jesuit Father, Joseph Noncet,
who had also been captured in Canada by the Mohawks and taken to
their country. In September he was taken down to Fort Orange by his
captors, and it is mentioned in the Jesuit "Relations" of 1653, chapter
iv., that he "found there a young man captured near Three Rivers, who
had been ransomed by the Dutch and acted as interpreter." A few
weeks after the return of the Indians to their village, Radisson made his
escape alone, and found his way again to Fort Orange, from whence he
was sent to New Amsterdam, or Menada, as he calls it. Here he

remained three weeks, and then embarked for Holland, where he
arrived after a six weeks' voyage, landing at Amsterdam "the 4/7 of
January, 1654. A few days after," he says, "I imbarqued myself for
France, and came to Rochelle well and safe." He remained until Spring,
waiting for "the transport of a shipp for New France."
The relation of the second journey is