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Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson by Pierre Esprit Radisson
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son Jean Baptiste, born July 25, 1654, can be found.] This brother, often
alluded to in Radisson's narratives as his companion on his journeys, was
Medard Chouart, "who was the son of Medard and Marie Poirier, of Charly St.
Cyr, France, and in 1641, when only sixteen years old, came to Canada."
[Footnote: Chouart's daughter Marie Antoinette, born June 7, 1661, married
first Jean Jalot in 1679. He was a surgeon, born in 1648, and killed by the
Iroquois, July 2, 1690. He was called Des Groseilliers. She had nine
children by Jalot, and there are descendants from them in Canada. On the
19th December, 1695, she married, secondly, Jean Bouchard, by whom she had
six children. The Bouchard-Dorval family of Montreal descends from this
marriage. Vide _Genealogical Dictionary of Canadian Families_, Quebec,
1881.] He was a pilot, and married, 3rd September, 1647, Helen, the
daughter of Abraham Martin, and widow of Claude Etienne. Abraham Martin
left his name to the celebrated Plains of Abraham, near Quebec. She dying
in 1651, Chouart married, secondly, at Quebec, August 23, 1653, the sister
of Radisson, Margaret Hayet, the widow of John Veron Grandmenil. In Canada,
Chouart acted as a donne, or lay assistant, in the Jesuit mission near Lake
Huron. He left the service of the mission about 1646, and commenced trading
with the Indians for furs, in which he was very successful. With his gains
he is supposed to have purchased some land in Canada, as he assumed the
seigneurial title of "Sieur des Groseilliers."

Radisson spent more than ten years trading with the Indians of Canada and
the far West, making long and perilous journeys of from two to three years
each, in company with his brother-in-law, Des Groseilliers. He carefully
made notes during his wanderings from 1652 to 1664, which he afterwards
copied out on his voyage to England in 1665. Between these years he made
four journeys, and heads his first narrative with this title: "The
Relation of my Voyage, being in Bondage in the Lands of the Irokoits, which
was the next year after my coming into Canada, in the yeare 1651, the 24th
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