self, and those immediately allied or related to me. Nevertheless I shall communicate your pleasure to all the Sauteurs, and in order that you may be satisfied of what I say, I will invite the French who are in my village to be witnesses of what I shall tell my people in your behalf."
Two days after this the Ojibways left for Lake Superior.[1]
FRENCH TRADERS PUSH WESTWARD.
Owing to the hostility of the Sacs and Foxes, for some time after the year 1700, the French had little intercourse with the Ojibways. By the Treaty of Utrecht, concluded in 1713, the French relinquished all posts on Hudson's Bay to the English, and it was necessary to check Indians disposed to go there to trade. In 1716, therefore, the Canadian authorities decided to open the Lake Superior trade, and seek for a sea toward the west. A dispatch of the 7th of December to the French governor uses the language:—
"MM. de Vaudreuil and Begon having written last year that the discovery of the Sea of the West would be advantageous to the colony, it was agreed that to reach it M. de Vaudreuil should establish three posts which he had proposed, and he was notified at the same time to have them established without any cost to the king, seeing that the commerce would indemnify those who founded them; and to send a detailed estimate of the cost of continuing the discovery. They stated in reply that M. Vaudreuil in the month of July last [1717] had caused Sieur de la Noüe, lieutenant, with eight canoes to carry out this project of discovery. He was ordered to establish the first post at the river of Kamanistiquoya, and the north part of Lake Superior, after which he was to go to Takamunigen, toward the lake of the Christineaux to build the second, and
- ↑ N. Y. Col. Docs. ix. 612.
