fur trade. He wintered on the Bay of Shag-a-waum-ik-ong, and made large returns of beaver skins to the market at Montreal. His careless and spendthrift habits, however, and open-handedness and generosity to his Indian relatives, soon caused him to run through with his capital and profits of his trade. Unable to raise an equipment on his own account, he applied for help to Alexander Henry, who had traded in partnership with his deceased father, and who still, from his establishment at Montreal, continued in the fur trade. Henry provided him with a large equipment for an expedition, which Cadotte proposed to make to the headwaters of the Mississippi, where beaver were reported to abound in great plenty.
The ferocity of the Naud-o-wa-se, or Dakotas, who still kept possession of this region of country, battling stoutly for it against the persevering pressure of the Ojibway hunters, was the theme of every lip at Montreal, Mackinaw, and Sault Ste. Marie, and deterred many an enterprising trader from proceeding to winter on these dangerous grounds. The few enterprising men who had risked these dangers from time to time, had been attacked by the Dakotas, and the pillage of the sick trader by the Ojibways, which has given the distinctive name of Pillagers to an important division of this tribe, also contributed greatly to shut up this, then almost unknown, region of country to the enterprise of the fur trader.
Cadotte, noted for courage and fearlessness, easily formed a large party, consisting of traders, "coureurs du bois," trappers, and a few Iroquois Indians, who had assumed the habits and learned to perform the labor, of Canadian "voyageurs," to accompany him on an expedition to these dangerous regions. Besides his own immediate engagees and servitors, the party consisted of the trader Reyaulm and his men; Pickette, Roberts, and Bell, with their men fully equipped for trading and trapping. Altogether they
