Page 241 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

EARLY HISTORY OB WISCONSIN. 237
The time of the Sauk emigration from the vicinity of
Quebec, according to BLACK HAWK, was soon after that city
fell into the hands of the British, which was in 1759. Thc
Jesuit relations place them between Lakes Huron and Erie
from 1676 to 1679, three years. This discrepancy is difficult
to reconcile. GRIGNON'S Recollections place then1 in alliance
with the Foxes, on Fox River in 1746, when they were driven
to the Wisconsin river, where CARVER found them in 1766.
Were it not that BLACK HAWK fixes the time of their migra-
tion from Quebec by a reference to the capture of that city,
we could more easily imagine that he was mistaken. But that
was so prominent an event, and so deeply interwoven with the
history of the Indians in Canada, by a change in the Govern-
ment, and its relations with those Indians, that without any
reference to their own calculations of time, dates, or years,
which, in general, is known to be defective, that event itself,
the date of which is well known to history, greatly outweighs
the mere casual reference to them of an earlier date, as bcing
in the country.
BLACK HAWK is 80 minute as to mention that the first his
people saw of a British Father (agent or o5cer) was at Macki-
naw, soon after the fall of Quebec, and while the Sauks were
fleeing from their pursuers, which was probably the next year
after the British ascendancy to power, and which corresponds
with the date of the British occupancy of the Lake country.
Allowing this to be correct, the Sauks had seven years from
the fall of Quebec to the time CARVER found them on the
Wisconsin river at Sauk Prairie.
On the other hand, the dates which placed the Sauks in this
country prior to the fall of Quebec have not the same certain-
ties attending them. The fall of Quebec was an era in the
Canadian history; a date that cannot be mistaken, and the
different names, by which they are called by different and
distant travelers, render it doubtful whether the same people
are always the subjects of narration. And in most of the
cases in which they are named previous to CARVER'S time they