62 NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. 



attend the deputies of the Saulteurs ; and their voyage had 

 all the success that they could reasonably expect. They 

 were well received by the savages, who seemed to them to 

 be a very good people. 



Father Mesnard, a Jesuit missionary, it is related, was 

 with the Indians on Lake Superior in 1661, and in 1665 

 Alouez, a missionary of the same order, traversed the same, 

 and the other northern lakes ; and in 1668 he, with Dablon 

 and Marquette, formed a missionary settlement at Sault St. 

 Marie. I think this event is placed by Mr. Bancroft in 1669. 

 In the same year other missions were estabhshed by the 

 Jesuits in the country near the Lakes. 



These enterprises made know^n the country, and in 1671 Mr. 

 Talon, the king's lieutenant of Canada, took measures to 

 secure the dominion of France over all the northwest. For 

 this purpose he selected Nicholas Perrot, a man of good ca- 

 pacity and education, and having furnished him with a suffi- 

 cient force, and given him the proper instructions, sent him 

 forth on his expedition. Perrot went as far west as Chica- 

 go, at the bottom of the Lake Illinois, now called Lake 

 Michigan, where the Miamies were then residing, and visited 

 all the northern nations with whom the French at that time 

 had any trade, and invited them to meet him in the following 

 spring at the Sault St. Marie. At this Congress all the na- 

 tions of the north were present, by their delegates, except 

 the Mascoutins, Kickapous, and Illinois, to whom, for want 

 of time, notice of the meeting was not given. The Illinois 

 were then on the Missisippi. The Sieur St. Lusson arrived 

 at Sault St. Marie in May, charged with a special commis- 

 sion to take possession of all the country occupied by these 

 people, and to receive them under the protection of the king. 

 The ceremonies on the occasion were an address by Perrot, 

 the erection of a cedar post and a cross, with a declaration 



