num_pages: 320
description: Murderer. Salesman. Pirate. Adventurer. Cannibal. Co-founder of the Hudson's Bay Company.Known to some as the first European to explore the upper Mississippi and widely as the namesake of ships and hotel chains Pierre-Esprit Radisson is perhaps best described writes Mark Bourrie as an eager hustler with no known scruples. Kidnapped by Mohawk warriors at the age of fifteen Radisson assimilated and was adopted by a powerful family only to escape to New York City after less than a year. After being recaptured he defected from a raiding party to the Dutch and crossed the Atlantic to Hollandthus beginning a lifetime of seized opportunities and frustrated ambitions.A guest among First Nations communities French fur traders and royal courts; witness to Londons Great Plague and Great Fire; and unwitting agent of the Jesuits corporate espionage Radisson double-crossed the English French Dutch and his adoptive Mohawk family alike found himself marooned by pirates in Spain and lived through shipwreck on the reefs of Venezuela. His most lasting venture as an Artic fur trader led to the founding of the Hudsons Bay Company which operates today 350 years later as North Americas oldest corporation.Sourced from Radissons journals which are the best first-hand accounts of 17th century Canada Bush Runner tells the extraordinary true story of this protean 17th-century figure a man more trading partner than colonizer a peddler of goods and not worldviewand with it offers a fresh perspective on the world in which he lived.
language: English
title: Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson
publisher: Biblioasis