that some members of Knutson's expedition returned to Norway in 1363 or 1364. Further confirming the inscription on the stone have been the finding of three battleaxes, a flint steel, and a spearhead, all of Scandinavian origin. 4 In spite of all this, however, the authenticity of the Kensington Stone, which has been on exhibit for thirty years, is still questioned.

Coming to documented history, the first regulations concerning this territory were made when the Virginia Colony was given a grant in 1609 to include what is now Minnesota in its jurisdiction. At about the same time, the Chippewa or Ojibwa Indians, who had already learned the rudiments of agriculture and warfare from the white man, began to move into the area from across the north and east shores of Lake Superior, pushing the Sioux tribes westward before them.

In the years between 1634 and 1756 numerous French traders, missionaries and explorers utilized the canoe routes from Lake Superior to the south and west. Their basic motivation was a threefold search for the water route to the Pacific and China, the procurement of furs, and a field for Jesuit missionary work.

In 1634, Samuel De Champlain sent Jean Nicolet from Ottawa to the Great Lakes to seek a water route across the new continent to China. Nicolet crossed Lake Huron, entered Lake Michigan and landed at Green Bay (Wisconsin.) Jesuits followed on the heels of the explorers and fur traders, and in 1961 two Jesuits, guided by Chippewa Indians, came to the rapids to which they gave the name Sault Ste. Marie. Father Claude Allouez arrived at the western end of Lake Superior in 1665, and he mapped the western and northern shores of the lake. In 1673, the Frenchman Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet started out from Mackinac down the waters of the Mississippi, while somewhat later Sieur du Luth (or: du Luht) came to Minnesota by way of Lake Superior, looking for a route to the Pacific and trying to bring peace to the Sioux and Chippewa tribes, whose warfare made life dangerous for the activities of the fur traders. This French nobleman, an officer of the King's Guard, left Montreal in 1678, spent the winter at Sault Ste. Marie, and then crossed Lake Superior into Minnesota. In the Mille Lac region he heard mention of a lake whose water was not fit to drink, and which he assumed to refer to the Pacific Ocean. Spending the following winter at the head of the lakes, he set out in 1690 to search for the salt water, travelling down

4. Esiraivaajien Muisto. A pamphlet published for the 20 August 1939 commemoration of the pioneer Finns of New York Mills, Sebeka, etc. and the pioneer work of the earliest Finnish immigrants. New York Mills, Minnesota, 1939. p. 34.

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