curiosity; and when, in or before the year 1639, he was sent as an
ambassador to the tribe in question, he would not have been surprised if
on arriving he had found a party of mandarins among them. Possibly it was
with a view to such a contingency that he provided himself, as a dress of
ceremony, with a robe of Chinese damask embroidered with birds and
flowers. The tribe to which he was sent was that of the Winnebagoes,
living near the head of the Green Bay of Lake Michigan. They had come to
blows with the Hurons, allies of the French; and Nicollet was charged to
negotiate a peace. When he approached the Winnebago town, he sent one of
his Indian attendants to announce his coming, put on his robe of damask,
and advanced to meet the expectant crowd with a pistol in each hand. The
squaws and children fled, screaming that it was a manito, or spirit, armed
with thunder and lightning; but the chiefs and warriors regaled him with
so bountiful a hospitality that a hundred and twenty beavers were devoured
at a single feast. From the Winnebagoes, he passed westward, ascended Fox
River, crossed to the Wisconsin, and descended it so far that, as he
reported on his return, in three days more he would have reached the sea.
The truth seems to be, that he mistook the meaning of his Indian guides,
and that the "great water" to which he was so near was not the sea, but
the Mississippi.

It has been affirmed that one Colonel Wood, of Virginia, reached a branch
of the Mississippi as early as the year 1654, and that, about 1670, a
certain Captain Bolton penetrated to the river itself. Neither statement
is improbable, but neither is sustained by sufficient evidence. Meanwhile,
French Jesuits and fur-traders pushed deeper and deeper into the
wilderness of the northern lakes. In 1641, Jogues and Raymbault preached
the

DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST.