st; and the
Viceroy, magnificent in red cloak faced with velvet and ornamented with
gold braid, came up from Quebec {118} for the occasion and occupied a
chair of state under a marquee erected near the Indian tents. Wigwams
then went up like mushrooms, the Huron and Iroquois tents of sewed bark
hung in the shape of a square from four poles, the tepees of the Upper
Indians made of birch and buffalo hides, hung on poles crisscrossed at
the top to a peak, spreading in wide circle to the ground. Usually the
Fur Fair occupied a great common between St. Paul Street and the river.
Furs unpacked, there stalked among the tents great sachems glorious in
robes of painted buckskin garnished with wampum, Indian children stark
naked, young braves flaunting and boastful, wearing headdresses with
strings of eagle quills reaching to the ground, each quill signifying an
enemy taken. Then came "the peddlers,"--the fur merchants,--unpacking
their goods to tempt the Indians, men of the colonial noblesse famous in
history, the Forests and Le Chesnays and Le Bers. Here, too, gorgeous in
finery, bristling with firearms, were the bushrovers, the interpreters,
the French voyageurs, who had to come out of the wilds once every two
years to renew their licenses to trade. There was Charles Le Moyne, son
of an innkeeper of Dieppe, who had come to Montreal as interpreter and
won such wealth as trader that his family became members of the French
aristocracy. Two of his descendants became governors of Canada; and the
history of his sons is the history of Canada's most heroic age. There
was Louis Jolliet, who had studied for the Jesuit priesthood but turned
fur trader among the tribes of Lake Michigan. There was Daniel Greysolon
Duluth, a man of good birth, ample means, and with the finest house in
Montreal, who had turned bushrover, gathered round him a band of three or
four hundred lawless, dare-devil French hunters, and now roamed the woods
from Detroit halfway to Hudson Bay, swaying the Indians in favor of
France and ruling the wilds, sole lord of the wilderness. There were
Groseillers and Radisson and a shy young man of twenty-five who had
obtained a seigniory from the Sulpicians at Lachine--Robert Cavelier de
La Salle. Sometimes, too, Father Marquette came down with his Indians
from the missions on Lake Superior. Maisonneuve, {119} too, was there,
grieving, no doubt, to see this Kingdom of Heaven, which he had set up on
earth, becoming mor