Then Radisson rose and chanted a song, in which he declared that the French took the Crees for brethren and would defend them.  To prove his words, he threw powder in the fire and had twelve guns shot off, which frightened the Sioux almost out of their senses.  A slave girl placed a coal in the calumet.  Radisson then presented gifts; the first to testify that the French adopted the Sioux for friends; the second as a token that the French also took the Crees for friends; the third as a sign that the French “would reduce to powder with heavenly fire” any one who disturbed the peace between these tribes.  The fourth gift was in grateful recognition of the Sioux’ courtesy in granting free passage through their country.  The gifts consisted of kettles and hatchets and awls and needles and looking-glasses and bells and combs and paint, but not guns.  Radisson’s speech was received with “Ho, ho’s” of applause.  Sports began.  Radisson offered prizes for racing, jumping, shooting with the bow, and climbing a greased post.  All the while, musicians were singing and beating the tom-tom, a drum made of buffalo hide stretched on hoops and filled with water.

Fourteen days later Radisson and Groseillers set out for the Sioux country, or what are now known as the Northwestern states.[8] On the third voyage Radisson came to the Sioux from the south.  On this voyage, he came to them from the northeast.  He found that the tribe numbered seven thousand men of fighting age.  He remarked that the Sioux used a kind of coke or peat for fire instead of wood.  While he heard of the tribes that used coal for fire, he does not relate that he went to them on this trip.  Again he heard of the mountains far inland, where the Indians found copper and lead and a kind of stone that was transparent.[9] He remained six weeks with the Sioux, hunting buffalo and deer.  Between the Missouri and the Saskatchewan ran a well-beaten trail northeastward, which was used by the Crees and the Sioux in their wars.  It is probable that the Sioux escorted Radisson back to the Crees by this trail, till he was across what is now the boundary between Minnesota and Canada, and could strike directly eastward for the Lake of the Woods region, or the hinterland between James Bay and Lake Superior.

In spring the Crees went to the Bay of the North, which Radisson was seeking; and after leaving the Sioux, the two explorers struck for the little fort north of Lake Superior, where they had cached their goods.  Spring in the North was later than spring in the South; but the shore ice of the Northern lakes had already become soft.  To save time they cut across the lakes of Minnesota, dragging their sleighs on the ice.  Groseillers’ sleigh was loaded with pelts obtained from the Sioux, and the elder man began to fag.  Radisson took the heavy sleigh, giving Groseillers the lighter one.  About twelve miles out from the shore, on one of these lakes, the ice suddenly gave, and Radisson plunged