24 Facts About Pierre-Esprit Radisson

Pierre-Esprit Radisson was a French coureur des bois and explorer in New France.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson is often linked to his brother-in-law Medard des Groseilliers.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson's career was particularly notable for its repeated transitions between serving Britain and France.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson should be considered in multiple contexts; for his achievement as a narrator of his own life, the range of his explorations, his experiences among the Indigenous peoples, and his social formation, both as a man of the early modern period for whom personal honour was an important value and as a working trader participating in the mercantile projects of the era.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson's birthplace is unclear, but was likely in France's lower Rhone region near the town Avignon.

In 1651 or 1652, while hunting fowl near his Trois-Rivieres home, Pierre-Esprit Radisson became separated from his hunting group.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson's fingernails were pulled out while he was forced to sing, one finger was cut to the bone, and he watched ten Huron Indians get tortured to death.

The next day, an old man burned Pierre-Esprit Radisson, tied to a scaffold, and a young man drove a red-hot dagger through his foot.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson recounts witnessing other torture: "They burned a Frenchwoman; they pulled out her breasts, and took a child out of her belly, with they broyled [broiled] and made the mother eat it, so in short she died".

Sometime after his own wounds healed, Pierre-Esprit Radisson spent some five months on a war-party expedition.

Later that year, 1654, Pierre-Esprit Radisson returned to Trois-Rivieres in New France.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson's biggest influence in Canadian history dates from the period of 1658 to 1684, when he was an active coureur-des-bois, fur trader, and explorer.

When Pierre-Esprit Radisson arrived at an Ojibwa village on the shores of Lake Superior, where he spent much of the winter, he later reported giving three types of presents: to the men, women and children of the village.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson reported on visiting one Ojibwa village in the spring of 1660, where there was a welcoming ceremony: "The women throw themselves backward on the ground, thinking to give us tokens of friendship and wellcome [welcome]".

Pierre-Esprit Radisson sought the support of a royal patron to secure a crown monopoly on trade within the Hudson's Bay region.

In 1672, Pierre-Esprit Radisson married Mary Kirke, the daughter of Sir John Kirke, one of the City investors in the HBC.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson failed to regain a position in the Hudson's Bay Company, as a further result of anti-French prejudice.

In 1681 Pierre-Esprit Radisson headed out to found a fort on the Nelson River under a French flag, albeit against the wishes of the French state.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson did so as a means of capturing the market, fearing the construction of a British fort on the same river and thus further dominance of the bay by the Hudson's Bay Company.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson recruited Grosseilliers the following year to build a more permanent base.

In 1684 Pierre-Esprit Radisson sailed for the Hayes River in the vessel Happy Return, where he found Groseilliers' son Jean-Baptiste conducting a brisk trade with the Indians.

In 1685 Pierre-Esprit Radisson was made "Superintendent and Chief Director of the Trade at Port Nelson", where he seems to have accomplished little.

Pierre-Esprit Radisson was portrayed by Paul Muni in the 1941 film Hudson's Bay.

The CBC Television series Pierre-Esprit Radisson was based on the explorer's life.