Jesuit martyr, Jogues, had preached to the Indians of Sault Ste. Marie;
but beyond the Sault was an unknown world that beckoned the young
adventurers of New France as with the hands of a siren. Of the great
beyond--known to-day as the Great Northwest--nothing had been learned
but this: from it came the priceless stores of beaver pelts yearly
brought down the Ottawa to Three Rivers by the Algonquins, and in it
dwelt strange, wild races whose territory extended northwest and north
to unknown nameless seas.

The Great Beyond held the two things most coveted by ambitious young
men of New France,--quick wealth by means of the fur trade and the
immortal fame of being a first explorer. Nicolet had gone only as far
as Green Bay and Fox River; Jogues not far beyond the Sault. What
secrets lay in the Great Unknown? Year after year young Frenchmen,
fired with the zeal of the explorer, joined wandering tribes of
Algonquins going up the Ottawa, in the hope of being taken beyond the
Sault. In August, 1656, there came from Green Bay two young Frenchmen
with fifty canoes of Algonquins, who told of far-distant waters called
Lake "Ouinipeg," and tribes of wandering hunters called "Christinos"
(Crees), who spent their winters in a land bare of trees (the prairie),
and their summers on the North Sea (Hudson's Bay). They also told of
other tribes, who were great warriors, living to the south,--these were
the Sioux. But the two Frenchmen had not gone beyond the Great
Lakes.[2] These Algonquins were received at Château St. Louis, Quebec,
with pompous firing of cannon and other demonstrations of welcome. So
eager were the French to take possession of the new land that thirty
young men equipped themselves to go back with the Indians; and the
Jesuits sent out two priests, Leonard Gareau and Gabriel Dreuillettes,
with a lay helper, Louis Boësme. The sixty canoes left Quebec with
more firing of guns for a God-speed; but at Lake St. Peter the Mohawks