ut them to death without provocation, and of frightful
monsters (alligators) which would devour them and their canoes. The
voyagers thanked them and pushed on, up Fox River and across Lake
Winnebago.

At the approach to the lake are the Winnebago Rapids, which necessitate a
portage, or "carry." Our voyagers do not mention having any trouble
here. But, at a later time, according to a tradition related by Dr. R.
G. Thwaites, this was the scene of a tragic affair. When the growing
fur-trade made this route very important, the Fox Indians living here
made a good thing out of carrying goods over the trail and helping the
empty boats over the rapids. They eventually became obnoxious by taking
toll from passing traders. Thereupon the Governor of New France sent a
certain Captain Marin to chastise them. He came up the Fox River with a
large party of _voyageurs_ and half-breeds on snow-shoes, surprised the
natives in their village, and slaughtered them by hundreds.

At another time the same man led a summer expedition against the Foxes.
He kept his armed men lying down in the boats and covered with oilcloth
like goods. Hundreds of red-skins {174} were squatting on the beach,
awaiting the coming of the flotilla. The canoes ranged up along the
shore. Then, at a signal, the coverings were thrown off, and a rain of
bullets was poured into the defenceless savages, while a swivel-gun mowed
down the victims of this brutality. Hundreds were slaughtered, it is
said.

On to the lower Fox River their course led the explorers. This brought
them into the country of the Miamis, the Mascoutins, once a powerful
tribe, now extinct, and the Kickapoos, all Algonquins of the West.

A council was held, and the Indians readily granted their request for
guides to show them the way to the Wisconsin. Through the tortuous and
blind course of the little river, among lakes and marshes, they would
have had great difficulty in making their way unaided.[2]

When they came to the portage, where now stands the city of Portage,[3]
with its short canal {175} connecting the two rivers, they carried their
canoes across, and launched their little barks on the Wisconsin. Down
this river they would float to the great mysterious stream that would
carry them they knew not whither, perhaps to the Sea of Virginia (the
Atlantic), perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the Vermilion Sea
(the Gulf of California).

Whether they would ever return from th