Pushing beyond Lake Superior, after travelling six days in a southwesterly direction, these traders found the Tionnotantés, a band incorporated with the Hurons, called by the French Petuns, because they had raised tobacco. These people dwelt in the country between the sources of the Black and Chippeway Rivers in Wisconsin, where they had been wanderers for several years. Driven from their homes by the Iroquois, they migrated with the Ottawas to the isles of Lake Michigan, at the entrance of Green Bay. Hearing that the Iroquois had learned where they had retreated, they descended the Wisconsin River until they found the Mississippi, and, ascending this twelve leagues, they came to the Ayoes (Ioway) River, now known as the Upper Iowa, and followed it to its source, being kindly treated by the tribes. Although buffaloes were in abundance, they were disappointed when they found no forests, and retracing their steps to the Mississippi, ascended to a prairie island above Lake Pepin, about nine miles below the mouth of the River St. Croix, and here they often received friendly visits from the Sioux. Confident through the possession of firearms, the Ottawas and Hurons conspired to drive the Sioux away, and occupy their country. The attack was unsuccessful, and they were forced to look for another residence. Going down the Mississippi, they entered one of the mouths of the Black River, near the modern city La Crosse, and the Hurons established themselves about its sources, while their allies, the Ottawas, continued their journey to Lake Superior, and stopped at a point jutting out like a bone needle,—hence called Chagouamikon.
Groseilliers and Radisson, while sojourning with the Hurons, learned much of the deep, wide, and beautiful river, comparable in its grandeur to the St. Lawrence,[461] on an isle of which they had for a time resided. Proceeding northward, these explorers wintered with the Nadouechiouec, who hunted and fished among the “Mille Lacs” of Minnesota, between the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers. The Sioux, as these people were called by traders, were found to speak a language different from the Huron and Algonquin, and to have many strange customs. Women, for instance, were seen whose noses had been cut off as a penalty for adultery, giving them a ghastly look. Beyond, upon the northwest shore of Lake Superior, about the Grand Portage, and at the mouth of a river which upon early maps was called Groseilliers, there was met a separated warlike band of Sioux, called Poualak, who, as wood was scarce in the prairie region, made fire with coal (_charbon de terre_), and lived in skin lodges, although some of the more industrious built cabins of mud (_terre grasse_), as the swallows build their nests. The Assinepoualacs, or Assineboines, were feared by the Upper, as the Iroquois were dreaded by the Lower, Algonquins.