Huronia

So, in regard to the Ottawa country, the relations of the first two years are aglow with the spirit of confidence.

The missionaries were everywhere greeted by large audiences and much curiosity was exhibited concerning the ceremonies of the church, but as usual the wandering habits of the Indians made instruction difficult, and the result, while less tragic, was hardly more satisfactory than in Huronia.

The Jesuit fathers, with great toil and misery and subject to daily danger and insult, followed their people on long hunting and fishing expeditions, and even when the bands had returned to the squalid villages, life there was almost as comfortless as upon the trail.

The relation for 1668-69 thus hopefully refers to the work in the Lake Superior district.

To the shores of Chequamegon numerous Indian tribes habitually resorted, especially in the fishing seasons, partly because here, as at the Sioux, fish were unusually plentiful, but also because the bay was isolated and seemed to afford a secure refuge against the Iroquois of the east and the Sioux of the west.

Here, too, were portage trails leading over to the headwaters of several south-flowing streams, the St. Croix, Black, Chippewa, and Wisconsin rivers, and we shall see that at Chequamegon Bay Marquette met Indians from the Mississippi, which is not far distant to the southwest, and gained his first information regarding the great waterway with which his name will forever be associated.

When the Hurons fled before the Iroquois raids in Huronia, they first tarried at the Straits of Mackinac, but here the Iroquois discovered them, and with Ottawas and Ojibwas from the Sioux de Sainte-Marie, they dispersed as far northward as Point Keweenaw on Lake Superior.

Still fearing the Iroquois, who speedily ascertained their whereabouts, they retreated into Wisconsin, finally, after many adventures, settling upon an island in the Mississippi River a few miles above Lake Pepin, opposite the present Red Wing, Minnesota.

This present consisted of two little portraits, very ill done, tied together with a greasy piece of string.

Mademoiselle Kerkobon asked him if there were any painters in Huronia.

No, replied the ingenue.

i had this curiosity from my nurse her husband had obtained it by conquest in stripping some of the french of canada who had made war upon us this is all i know of the matter the prior looked attentively upon these pictures whilst he changed colour his hands trembled and he seemed much affected by our lady of the mountain he cried out i believe these to be the faces of the captain my brother and his lady mademoiselle after viewing them with the same emotion thought likewise they were both struck with astonishment and joy blended with grief they were melted they both wept their hearts throbbed and during their disorder the pictures were interchanged between them at least twenty times in a second They seemed to devour the Hurons' pictures with their eyes.