" Indian summer lay on the land.
November found the explorers coasting the south shore of Lake Superior.
They passed the Island of Michilimackinac with its stone arches.
Radisson heard from the Indians of the copper mines. He saw the
pictured rocks that were to become famous for beauty. "I gave it the
name of St. Peter because that was my name and I was the first
Christian to see it," he writes of the stone arch. "There were in
these places very deep caves, caused by the violence of the waves."
Jesuits had been on the part of Lake Superior near the Sault, and poor
Menard perished in the forests of Lake Michigan; but Radisson and
Groseillers were the first white men to cruise from south to west and
west to north, where a chain of lakes and waterways leads from the
Minnesota lake country to the prairies now known as Manitoba. Before
the end of November the explorers rounded the western end of Lake
Superior and proceeded northwest. Radisson records that they came to
great winter encampments of the Crees; and the Crees did not venture
east for fear of Sautaux and Iroquois. He mentions a river of
Sturgeons, where was a great store of fish.
The Crees wished to conduct the two white men to the wooded lake
region, northwest towards the land of the Assiniboines, where Indian
families took refuge on islands from those tigers of the plains--the
Sioux--who were invincible on horseback but less skilful in canoes.
The rivers were beginning to freeze.
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