The
Mohawks were delighted with his spirit, but they feared to lose their
young warrior. Accepting his offer, they refused to let him accompany
them to Quebec, but assigned him to a band of young braves, who were to
raid the border-lands between the Huron country of the Upper Lakes and
the St. Lawrence. This was not what Radisson wanted, but he could not
draw back. There followed months of wild wanderings round the regions
of Niagara. The band of young braves passed dangerous places with
great precipices and a waterfall, where the river was a mile wide and
unfrozen. Radisson was constrained to witness many acts against the
Eries, which must have one of two effects on white blood,--either turn
the white man into a complete savage, or disgust him utterly with
savage life. Leaving the Mohawk village amid a blare of guns and
shouts, the young braves on their maiden venture passed successively
through the lodges of Oneidas, Onondagas, Senecas, and Cayugas, where
they were feasted almost to death by the Iroquois Confederacy.[11]
Then they marched to the vast wilderness of snow-padded forests and
heaped windfall between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.
Snow still lay in great drifts under the shadow of hemlock and spruce;
and the braves skimmed forward winged with the noiseless speed of
snow-shoes. When the snow became too soft from thaw for snow-shoes,
they paused to build themselves a skiff. It was too early to peel the
bark off the birch, so they made themselves a dugout of the walnut
tree.
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