First French Fooi-Prinis Beyond the Lakes. 99 



Perrot won golden opinions among the Oatagamies. After his de- 

 parture they declared in council with the governor of Canada, 

 that their fathers having gone they had no more any breath, or 

 soul. 



The French captivated the Indians and the Indians captivated, 

 them. For them, then, there was a fullness of fun — yes paradise 

 where John Bull would have felt himself in such a purgatory that 

 he could not fare worse by going farther. 



One Englishman who had been forced to make trial of savage 

 life, when asked how he liked it, answered : " The more I see In- 

 dians, the better I love dogs." But amid the same horrors a 

 Frenchman enjoyed, himself so well that he declares he was ready 

 to burn his cook books ! What could Frenchman do more ? 



In no long time most northwestern tribes were tinctured with 

 French blood. Perrot treats of French among fugitive Sauteurs 

 on the south shore of Lake Superior as early as 1661. The 

 first permanent settler in Wisconsin, Charles Langlade, was 

 a French half-breed. So was the first squatter at Madison — 

 (long before the Peck family), St. Cyr, the only saint we could 

 ever boast. In 1816, when the United States forces took posses- 

 sion of Wisconsin, the natives being assembled for treaties, said: 

 " Pray do not disturb our French brothers. 



Adventurers among western aborigines in time became fur- 

 traders or interpreters and factors for such traders, as well as mis- 

 sionaries or other officials both military and civil. But their 

 first impulse to plunge into the depth of the wilderness, and to 

 abide there, was because they liked it. To their imaginations 

 forest-life was as charming as the grand tour of Europe a genera- 

 tion ago to ours, or as is girdling the terraqueous globe at the 

 present day, or as roughing it on the Yellowstone to General 

 Sherman, or on the great divide to Lord Dufierin, or rounding 

 the world on horseback to Sir George Simpson, or Beltrami's sol- 

 itary scamper to the sources of the Mississippi, or the three years 

 cruise of the Challenger to Lord Campbell, whose Log Letters 

 skimming off the cream of all climes and finding no drop sour, 

 cry out in every line, " what Fun ! " It was much more than 

 all this, and can only be compared to the wild dedication of him- 



