The fort had been removed.  Jean Groseillers had his own troubles during Radisson’s absence.  A few days after Radisson’s departure in July, 1683, cannon announced the arrival of the annual English ships on Nelson River.  Jean at once sent out scouts, who found a tribe of Indians on the way home from trading with the ships that had fired the cannon.  The scouts brought the Indians back to the French fort.  Young Groseillers admitted the savages only one at a time; but the cunning braves pretended to run back for things they had forgotten in the French house.  Suspecting nothing, Jean had permitted his own men to leave the fort.  On different pretexts, a dozen warriors had surrounded the young trader.  Suddenly the mask was thrown off.  Springing up, treacherous as a tiger cat, the chief of the band struck at Groseillers with a dagger.  Jean parried the blow, grabbed the redskin by his collar of bears’ claws strung on thongs, threw the assassin to the ground almost strangling him, and with one foot on the villain’s throat and the sword point at his chest, demanded of the Indians what they meant.  The savages would have fled, but French soldiers who had heard the noise dashed to Groseillers’ aid.  The Indians threw down their weapons and confessed all:  the Englishmen of the ship had promised the band a barrel of powder to massacre the French.  Jean took his foot from the Indian’s throat and kicked him out of the fort.  The English outnumbered the French; so Jean removed his fort farther from the bay, among the Indians, where the English could not follow.  To keep the warriors about him, he offered to house and feed them for the winter.  This protected him from the attacks of the English.  In the spring Indians came to the French with pelts.  Jean was short of firearms; so he bribed the Indians to trade their peltries to the English for guns, and to retrade the guns to him for other goods.  It was a stroke worthy of Radisson himself, and saved the little French fort.  The English must have suspected the young trader’s straits, for they again paid warriors to attack the French; but Jean had forestalled assault by forming an alliance with the Assiniboines, who came down Hayes River from Lake Winnipeg four hundred strong, and encamped a body-guard around the fort.  Affairs were at this stage when Radisson arrived with news that he had transferred his services to the English.

Young Groseillers was amazed.[5] Letters to his mother show that he surrendered his charge with a very ill grace.  “Do not forget,” Radisson urged him, “the injuries that France has inflicted on your father.”  Young Groseillers’ mother, Marguerite Hayet, was in want at Three Rivers.[6] It was memory of her that now turned the scales with the young man.  He would turn over the furs to Radisson for the English Company, if Radisson would take care of the far-away mother at Three Rivers.  The bargain was made, and the two embraced.  The surrender of the French furs to the English Company