Pierre-Esprit Radisson: Captive, Renegade, Mercenary, and Translator

Among the major exploration narratives of seventeenth-century North America, Pierre-Esprit Radisson's remains enigmatic; rarely read, and poorly understood. This article seeks to build a more nuanced understanding of Radisson when he composed his voyages in 1665–9, as a multilingual, multi-cultural renegade, mercenary, and translator, the author of a deeply nuanced personal narrative. Radisson chose to self-translate into English tales he had told in other tongues, and his skills as an interpreter/translator were not literary but practical. He survived his adventures only by virtue of his linguistic self-transformation and self-possession. His voyages should be read as an inter-lingual document, as well as one of the earliest captivity narratives and most complex exploration memoirs of colonial North America.