All the while,
musicians were singing and beating the tom-tom, a drum made of buffalo
hide stretched on hoops and filled with water.
Fourteen days later Radisson and Groseillers set out for the Sioux
country, or what are now known as the Northwestern states.[8] On the
third voyage Radisson came to the Sioux from the south. On this
voyage, he came to them from the northeast. He found that the tribe
numbered seven thousand men of fighting age. He remarked that the
Sioux used a kind of coke or peat for fire instead of wood. While he
heard of the tribes that used coal for fire, he does not relate that he
went to them on this trip. Again he heard of the mountains far inland,
where the Indians found copper and lead and a kind of stone that was
transparent.[9] He remained six weeks with the Sioux, hunting buffalo
and deer. Between the Missouri and the Saskatchewan ran a well-beaten
trail northeastward, which was used by the Crees and the Sioux in their
wars. It is probable that the Sioux escorted Radisson back to the
Crees by this trail, till he was across what is now the boundary
between Minnesota and Canada, and could strike directly eastward for
the Lake of the Woods region, or the hinterland between James Bay and
Lake Superior.
In spring the Crees went to the Bay of the North, which Radisson was
seeking; and after leaving the Sioux, the two explorers struck for the
little fort north of Lake Superior, where they had _cached_ their
goods.
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