52 THE STORY O* 1 THE TRAPPER 



sissippi; Le Moyne d Iberville, ranging from Louisiana 

 to Hudson Bay ; La Mothe Cadillac in Michilimackinac, 

 Detroit, and Louisiana; La Verendrye exploring from 

 Lake Superior to the Rockies ; Radisson on Hudson 

 Bay all won their fame as explorers and discoverers 

 in pursuit of the fur trade. A hundred years before 

 any English mind knew of the Missouri, French voy- 

 ageurs had gone beyond the Yellowstone. Before the 

 regions now called Minnesota, Dakota, and Wisconsin 

 were known to New Englanders, the French were trap 

 ping about the head waters of the Mississippi; and two 

 centuries ago a company of daring French hunters went 

 to New Mexico to spy on Spanish trade. 



East of the Mississippi were two neighbours whom 

 the French trapper shunned the English colonists and 

 the Iroquois. North of the St. Lawrence was a power 

 that he shunned still more the French governor, who 

 had legal right to plunder the peltries of all who traded 

 and trapped without license. But between St. Louis 

 and MacKenzie River was a great unclaimed wilder 

 ness, whence came the best furs. 



Naturally, this became the hunting-ground of the 

 French trapper. 



There were four ways by which he entered his hunt 

 ing-ground: (1) Sailing from Quebec to the mouth of 

 the Mississippi, he ascended the river in pirogue or 

 dugout, but this route was only possible for a man with 

 means to pay for the ocean voyage. (2) From Detroit 

 overland to the Illinois, or Ohio, which he rafted down 

 to the Mississippi, and then taking to canoe turned 

 north. (3) From Michilimackinac, which was always 

 a grand rendezvous for the French and Indian hunters, 

 to Green Bay on Lake Michigan, thence up-stream to 



