Médard des Groseilliers

After the Iroquois destroyed the Huron missions and forced the people to move further west in the late 1640s, Groseilliers worked to re-establish trade, especially in the Lake Superior region.

[5] In 1653, Groseilliers travelled to Acadia to meet with Claude de la Tour and returned to New France in July and established himself at Trois-Rivières.

There he married his second wife, Marguérite Hayet, (sometimes spelled Hayot) the widowed step-sister of Pierre-Esprit Radisson and from whom he inherited his lands in Trois-Rivières.

The voyage took two years to complete and upon returning in August 1656, they carried in their canoes reports of contact with several First Nations, among them the Sioux, Pottawattomi, Winnebago and Fox peoples and furs worth "14 to 15 thousand livres".

[9] Leaving in August 1659, Groseilliers and Radisson traveled west to the far end of Lake Superior and wintered at Lac Courte Oreilles in what is now known as Wisconsin.

According to Radisson's account of the voyage, they helped repel an Iroquois attack along the Ottawa River and that the idea for trading furs from Hudson Bay came to them at this time.

[10] This journey demonstrated that the French could find riches in the interior of the continent and this led more Frenchmen to go west, with seven heading to Lake Superior within the year.

[11] From Cree traders, the French men came to understand that the main source of furs lay northwest of the lake.

[12] Groseilliers and Radisson proposed creating a trading company for the furs to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the French minister of finance under King Louis XIV.

[14] In 1668 two ships left England for Hudson Bay: Nonsuch under the command of Zachariah Gillam with Groseilliers as his second and Eaglet with William Stannard as captain and Radisson as his second.

[19] Groseilliers joined the company and with Radisson, sailed north to the Hayes and Nelson Rivers to create a French trading post.

Similar expeditions from the Hudson's Bay Company and a group from Boston under the leadership of Benjamin Gillam arrived at the same time.

In order to cover the British losses the Compagnie du Nord was forced to pay taxes on their furs.

The French government found in favour of the British, whose leader the Duke of York was France's best chance to re-convert the English back to Catholicism.