What
secrets lay in the Great Unknown? Year after year young Frenchmen,
fired with the zeal of the explorer, joined wandering tribes of
Algonquins going up the Ottawa, in the hope of being taken beyond the
Sault. In August, 1656, there came from Green Bay two young Frenchmen
with fifty canoes of Algonquins, who told of far-distant waters called
Lake "Ouinipeg," and tribes of wandering hunters called "Christinos"
(Crees), who spent their winters in a land bare of trees (the prairie),
and their summers on the North Sea (Hudson's Bay). They also told of
other tribes, who were great warriors, living to the south,--these were
the Sioux. But the two Frenchmen had not gone beyond the Great
Lakes.[2] These Algonquins were received at Chateau St. Louis, Quebec,
with pompous firing of cannon and other demonstrations of welcome. So
eager were the French to take possession of the new land that thirty
young men equipped themselves to go back with the Indians; and the
Jesuits sent out two priests, Leonard Gareau and Gabriel Dreuillettes,
with a lay helper, Louis Boesme. The sixty canoes left Quebec with
more firing of guns for a God-speed; but at Lake St. Peter the Mohawks
ambushed the flotilla. The enterprise of exploring the Great Beyond
was abandoned by all the French but two. Gareau, who was mortally
wounded on the Ottawa, probably by a Frenchman or renegade hunter, died
at Montreal; and Dreuillettes did not go farther than Lake Nipissing.
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