Note 14 — Chapter III

The entire account of the people on "the Forked River" is so exact an account of the Mandans that it might be a page from Catlin's descriptions two centuries later. The long hair, the two crops a year, the tobacco, the soap-stone calumets, the stationary villages, the knowledge of the Spaniards, the warm climate—all point to a region far south of the Northern States, to which so many historians have stupidly and with almost wilful ignorance insisted on limiting Radisson's travels. Parkman has been thoroughly honest in the matter. His La Salle had been written before the discovery of the Radisson Journals; but in subsequent editions he acknowledges in a footnote that Radisson had been to "the Forked River." Other writers (with the exception of five) have been content to quote from Radisson's enemies instead of going directly to his journals. Even Garneau slurs over Radisson's explorations; but Garneau, too, wrote before the discovery of the Radisson papers. Abbé Tanguay, who is almost infallible on French-Canadian matters, slips up on Radisson, because his writings preceded the publication of the Radisson Relations. The five writers who have attempted to redeem Radisson's memory from ignominy are: Dr. N. E. Dionne, of the Parliamentary Library, Quebec; Mr. Justice Prudhomme, of St. Boniface, Manitoba; Dr. George Bryce, of Winnepeg, Mr. Benjamin Sulte, of Ottawa; and Judge J. V. Brower, of St. Paul. It ever a monument be erected to Radisson—as one certainly ought in every province and state west of the Great Lakes—the names of these four champions should be engraved upon it.