agers, and the Agent is in reality the associated charities of Davenport at the present time. In addition to the relief work done by the organization, laundry which has been successfully conducted has given employment to forty-six persons during the year 1903–04, paying $1,435.05 in wages to these people. Besides the relief given in this way the laundry affords a practical training to unskilled women. A nursery has also been very successfully conducted in connection with the organization, caring for forty-five different children during the year ending May 1, 1904. The Agent's annual report for 1904 shows 293 applicants for aid; 216 applicants for work; the number of pieces of second-hand clothing received, 2,894; and the number of new pieces of clothing received, 45. There were 259 baskets of provisions given out during the months of January, February, and March. The Relief Committee has expended about $100 in money during the year ending May 1, 1904. SOME OTHER EFFORTS The work of the Charity Organization Society of Dubuque is very unsatisfactory at the present time owing to the fact that the different charitable organizations of the city have been working along separate lines. The Humane Society is at present, perhaps, doing the most charity work outside of the two Catholic societies, which have been noted above.1 There is, however, a movement on foot at the present time looking toward a closer organization of the different societies which are doing charity work. 1 See page 92. There is also an attempt being made at Waterloo at the present time to coördinate the different churches and other charitable organizations of the city in order to secure investigation and more discrimination in the administration of charity. The people of Cedar Falls have a rather unique method of taking care of their poor. In the fall they organize and then appoint an Overseer for each ward, who together with the other officers of the Associated Charities constitute the Executive Committee. In this way the work is carried on during the winter months. In the spring the organization is disbanded. Nor would an article on organized charity in Iowa be complete without mention of the work at Fort Dodge, Grinnell, Oskaloosa, Clinton, Iowa Falls, and Mount Pleasant. Thus, it is seen that only a few of the larger cities of the State have made any attempt to organize the different charities of the city in order to avoid the overlapping of work. Without a systematic organization of the different societies and without coöperation in their work it is impossible to do justice not only to those who contribute to the cause of charity, but (more important) to that large number of persons who are every year being made permanent paupers by indiscriminate giving. THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA IOWA CITY CLARENCE W. WASSAM SOME PUBLICATIONS Groseilliers and Radisson, The First White Men in Minnesota. By WARREN UPHAM. Reprinted from Historical Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, Vol. x, Pt. II. 1905. Pp. iv, 146. The publication by the Prince Society of Boston, in 1885, of a manuscript narrative of the "voyages" of Radisson which had rested quietly for about one hundred and seventy-five years in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, brought the names and the exploits of this French Canadian adventurer and of his brother-in-law, Medard Chouart, Sieur de Groscilliers, prominently before students of American geographical history. Radisson's narrative describes four "voyages" in the following order: (i) As a captive of the Iroquois Indians to the Mohawk River in New York. From this captivity he escaped to Fort Orange (Albany), finally reaching Rochelle and returning thence to his home at Three Rivers on the St. Lawrence. (ii) To Onondaga in central New York, which he calls "the Second Voyage made in the Upper Country of the Iroquoits." (iii) To the great lakes Huron and Michigan and westward. (iv) To lake Superior and beyond. In the last two expeditions he was associated with Groseilliers. The author holds that it is quite impossible to reconcile the order of these journeys, as given above, with apparently well-established chronology. He has therefore taken the position that, in the preparation of his narrative, Radisson followed a logical rather than a chronological order and has assumed that the relief expedition to Onondaga, the date of which cannot be questioned, was undertaken after the return from the first westward journey, thus interchanging the order of "voyages" (ii) and (iii). This arrangement is based upon the supposed identity of two westward journeys mentioned in the Jesuit Relations and the Journal of the Jesuits with those under consideration. Other investigators accept the sequence of the four "voyages" as given in the narrative and assume the identity of the first westward journey (i. e., Radisson's third "voyage") with the second of those recorded by the Jesuits. Of equal importance and interest, however, and at the same time even more difficult to determine, are the itineraries followed by the explorers on these notable expeditions. The original narrative is in English, with which language Radisson was none too familiar, and is exasperatingly deficient in dates and directions and in recognizable descriptions of localities. Various routes have been assigned and others may still be proposed as almost if not quite equally probable. As regards the first westward journey, the date of which is assigned as 1654-56, the itinerary proposed is as follows:-Voyaging in birch bark canoes Groseilliers and Radisson, with a company of Huron and Ottawa Indians, passed from the St. Lawrence into the Ottawa River and thence by way of Lake Nipissing and French River into the Georgian Bay. Then, after parting with a portion of the Indian escort, they voyaged southward around Georgian Bay and across Lake Huron to Bois Blanc Island and the Straits of Mackinac. The winter of 1654-55 was spent in these northern regions visiting various Indian settlements from the Straits to Green Bay. It is from this last point that they are assumed to have "thwarted a land of almost fifty leagues before the snow was melted," as narrated by Radisson. Though the direction of this overland journey is in no wise indicated in the narrative it is quite natural to infer that the adventurers took a course somewhat parallel to the old portage route from Green Bay to the Wisconsin River and followed that stream to its junction with the Mississippi near Prairie du Chien. Here they "stayed three weeks making boats" and feasting "att a high rate." Then they ascended the river eight days to a point supposed by the author to be Winona, Minnesota, coming to "a nation called Pontonatinich & Matonenock," where they "got some Indian meale & corne from those 2 nations," which lasted until they came to the first landing Isle." This is understood to be Prairie Island in the Mississippi River, a short distance above the head of Lake Pepin. The argument presented in favor of this itinerary is plausible enough, though, in the nature of the case, it cannot be regarded as altogether conclusive. The Ottawa and Huron Indians with whom Groseilliers and Radisson were associated were merely refugees in this part of the country-remnants of those numerous and partially "sedentary" tribes who had inhabited the regions about the Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River until broken up and scattered, only a few years previ ously, by the far-ranging Iroquois. What is of special interest to Iowans is that, if their route was really as above indicated, there is little doubt that Groseilliers and Radisson were the first white men to set foot upon the soil of Iowa; for they would most naturally, while thus coasting our northeastern boundary, have made camp at the foot of at least some one of the magnificent bluffs shadowing the west bank of the Mississippi in this part of its course. This was, according to the chronology here adopted, eighteen years before Joliet and Marquette followed the course of the same great river from the mouth of the Wisconsin down stream, thus traversing the remaining and greater portion of our eastern boundary. During the summer immediately following the arrival at Prairie Island Radisson "went a hunting" for about four months, while his brother-in-law "stayed where he was welcome & putt up a great deal of Indian corne," his purpose being to supplement the usually scant supply of the "wildmen that weare to go down to the ffrench" with them the following spring. During this hunting expedition, according to the author, Radisson came in contact with the Illinois and other tribes of Indians from whom he learned at second hand many things about the interior of the continent, which he described in his narrative as though actually observed. It is further assumed that, in order to account for the time required for these far-reaching journeys the duration of the first western expedition was given by Radisson as three years; whereas the author contends, in deference |