Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/73

HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY 43 newly worked land, was small; but much corn would be needed for food duriug the loug journey thence to Quebec with beaver skins, which canoe voyage, requiring a month or more, Groseil- liers and Radisson wished to begin soon after their arrival on the island. They were obliged to remain till the next year, and Gro- seilliers spent the summer on Prairie Island and in its vicinity, one of his chief objects being to provide a large supply of corn for the return journey. Meanwhile Radisson went with hunting parties, and traveled four months 'without doing anything but go from river to river.' He w T as enamored of the beauty and fer- tility of the country and was astonished at its herds of buffaloes and antelopes, flocks of pelicans and the shovel-nosed sturgeon, all of which he particularly described. Such was the first year, 1655, of observations and exploration by white men in Minnesota and their earliest navigation of the upper part of the Mississippi river. Accompanied by several hundred Hurons and other Algon- quins. and carrying a most welcome freight of furs, Groseilliers and Radisson returned to Montreal and Quebec in August, 1656. Their stay on Prairie Island covered the period from April or May, 1655, to June, 1656, about fourteen months." Such is the new page which Mr. Upham would write on the pages of AVisconsin and Minnesota history, and in honor of which he would erect a monument on Prairie Island. While I person- ally would be very much pleased to have this region honored with a marble shaft as being the spot upon which the first white men in the state firs,t set foot, in view of the uncertainty and grave doubts I do not feel as though one should be erected to perpetu- ate a scarcely probable incident, when there are so many well authenticated and important events which actually happened within the borders of this county in the early days that could be so honored. To my mind there are several facts which preclude the possibility of this early settlement by two Frenchmen and a party of Hurons on Prairie Island for a long period of fourteen months. Briefly, the objections are as follows : The reputation given Radisson for veracity by such a distin- guished investigater as Mr. Upham is sufficient to cause us to view the writer's narrative with suspicion. I quote Mr. Upham in 'First White Men in Minnesota" (page 2). Speaking of Radisson he says: 'His narration, besides being very uncouth in style, is exceedingly deficient in dates, sometimes negligent as to the sequence of events, and even here and there discordant and demonstrably untruthful." Mr. Upham 's opinion of Radisson 's descriptive powers, as found on page 11 of the above work, is this: 'Lake Michigan, with its surrounding forests and prairies and Indian tribes, appeared even more fascinating to Radisson 's enraptured vision. He wrote of it in an ecstasy." Radisson must