During the winter of 1659-60, brothers-in-law Pierre Esprit Radisson and Medard Groseilliers camped with the Ottawa Indians two miles upstream from this point on Lac Court Oreilles, meaning "Lake of the Short Ears" in French, as early French explorers called the Ottawa Indians "Court Oreilles." Radisson's journal reports that among the gifts they brought were 2 ivory combs and 2 wooden ones, along with some red paint and 6 looking glasses of tin, with the combs and paint intended "to make themselves beautiful" and the looking glasses "to admire themselves." Radisson and Groseilliers were the first white men to discover and explore northwestern Wisconsin. After the French Governor General of Canada confiscated their rich cargo of furs on the grounds that they lacked proper credentials to trade with the Indians, they left the service of the French government, went to England, and were instrumental in the formation of the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada.