the end of November the explorers rounded the western end of Lake
Superior and proceeded northwest. Radisson records that they came to
great winter encampments of the Crees; and the Crees did not venture
east for fear of Sautaux and Iroquois. He mentions a river of
Sturgeons, where was a great store of fish.

The Crees wished to conduct the two white men to the wooded lake
region, northwest towards the land of the Assiniboines, where Indian
families took refuge on islands from those tigers of the plains--the
Sioux--who were invincible on horseback but less skilful in canoes.
The rivers were beginning to freeze. Boats were abandoned; but there
was no snow for snow-shoe travelling, and the explorers were unable to
transport the goods brought for trade. Bidding the Crees go to their
families and bring back slaves to carry the baggage, Radisson and
Groseillers built themselves the first fort and the first fur post
between the Missouri and the North Pole. It was evidently somewhere
west of Duluth in either what is now Minnesota or northwestern Ontario.


This fur post was the first habitation of civilization in all the Great
Northwest. Not the railway, not the cattle trail, not the path of
forward-marching empire purposely hewing a way through the wilderness,
opened the West. It was the fur trade that found the West. It was the
fur trade that explored the West. It was the fur trade that wrested
the West from savagery. The beginning was in the little fort built by
Radisson and Groseillers. No great factor in human progress ever had a
more insignificant beginning.

The fort was rushed up by two men almost starving for food. It was on
the side of a river, built in the shape of a triangle, with the base at