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great Basin covered with innumerable lakes and streams, from which the Mississippi, flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, and Red River, flowing into Hudson's Bay, take their rise, was first fully opened to the enterprise of the old northwestern fur traders, by John Baptiste Cadotte, a son of the Mons. Cadotte, who is so often mentioned in the earliest era of the white man's intercourse with the Ojibways, and who figures so prominently in the simple but truthful narrative of Alexander Henry.

John Baptiste Cadotte received a college education at Montreal. He was among the first individuals whose European, or white blood, became intermixed with the blood of the Ojibways. On leaving college, he became possessed of forty thousand francs which had been bequeathed to him by his father, and with this sum as a capital, he immediately launched into the northwestern