gressive, prosperous, free life of the Great Northwest, was
founded and built and completed in two days.

The West had begun.[4]

It was a beginning which every Western pioneer was to repeat for the
next two hundred years: first, the log cabins; then, the fight with the
wilderness for food.

Radisson, being the younger, went into the woods to hunt, while
Groseillers kept house. Wild geese and ducks were whistling south, but
"the whistling that I made," writes Radisson, "was another music than
theirs; for I killed three and scared the rest." Strange Indians came
through the forest, but were not admitted to the tiny fort, lest
knowledge of the traders' weakness should tempt theft. Many a night
the explorers were roused by a sudden ringing of the bells or crashing
through the underbrush, to find that wild animals had been attracted by
the smell of meat, and wolverine or wildcat was attempting to tear
through the matted branches of the thatched roof. The desire for
firearms has tempted Indians to murder many a trader; so Radisson and
Groseillers _cached_ all the supplies that they did not need in a hole
across the river. News of the two white men alone in the northern
forest spread like wild-fire to the different Sautaux and Ojibway
encampments; and Radisson invented another protection in addition to
the bells. He rolled gunpowder in twisted tubes of birch bark, and ran
a circle of this round the fort. Putting a torch to the birch, he
surprised the Indians by displaying to them a circle of fire running
along the ground in a series of jumps. To the Indians it was magic.
The two white men were engirt with a mystery that defended them from
all harm. Thus white men passed their first winter in the Great
Northwest.

Toward winter four hundred Crees came to escort the explorers to the
wooded lake region yet farther west towards the land of the
Assiniboines, the modern Manitoba. "We were Caesars," writes Radisson.
"There was no one to contradict us. We went away free from any burden,
while those poor miserables thought themselves happy to carry our
equipage in the hope of getting a brass ring, or an awl, or a
needle. . . . They admired our actions more than the fools of Paris
their king. . . .[5] They made a great noise, calling us gods and
devils. We marched four days through the woods. The country was
beautiful with clear parks. At last we came within a league of the
Cree cabins, where we spent the night tha