France and England in North America, Part III: The Discovery of the Great West (1870)
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Title: France and England in North America, Part III: The Discovery of the Great West (1870)
Author: Francis Parkman
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN NORTH AMERICA, PART III: THE DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST (1870) ***
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FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN NORTH AMERICA,
A SERIES OF HISTORICAL NARRATIVES, PART THIRD.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST
BY FRANCIS PARKMAN
1870
TO THE CLASS OF 1844,
HARVARD COLLEGE,
THIS BOOK IS CORDIALLY DEDICATED
BY ONE OF THEIR NUMBER.
PREFACE.
The discovery of the "Great West," or the valleys of the Mississippi and
the Lakes, is a portion of our history hitherto very obscure. Those
magnificent regions were revealed to the world through a series of daring
enterprises, of which the motives and even the incidents have been but
partially and superficially known. The chief actor in them wrote much, but
printed nothing; and the published writings of his associates stand
wofully in need of interpretation from the unpublished documents which
exist, but which have not heretofore been used as material for history.
This volume attempts to supply the defect. Of the large amount of wholly
new material employed in it, by far the greater part is drawn from the
various public archives of France, and the rest from private sources. The
discovery of many of these documents is due to the indefatigable research
of M. Pierre Margry, assistant custodian of the Archives of the Marine and
Colonies at Paris, whose labors, as an investigator of the maritime and
colonial history of France can be appreciated only by those who have seen
their results. In the department of American colonial history, these
results have been invaluable; for, besides several private collections
made by him, he rendered important service in the collection of the French
portion of the Brodhead documents, selected and arranged the two great
series of colonial papers ordered by the Canadian government, and
prepared, with vast labor, analytical indexes of these and of
supplementary documents in the French archives, as well as a copious index
of the mass of papers relating to Louisiana. It is to be hoped that the
valuable publications on the maritime history of France which have
appeared from his pen are an earnest of more extended contributions in
future.
The late President Sparks, some time after the publication of his life of
La Salle, caused a collection to be made of documents relating to that
explorer, with the intention of incorporating them in a future edition.
This intention was never carried into effect, and the documents were never
used. With the liberality which always distinguished him, he placed them
at my disposal, and this privilege has been, kindly continued by Mrs.
Sparks.
Abbé Faillon, the learned author of "La Colonie Française en Canada," has
sent me copies of various documents found by him, including family papers
of La Salle. Among others who in various ways have aided my inquiries, are
Dr. John Paul, of Ottawa, Ill.; Count Adolphe de Circourt and M. Jules
Marcou, of Paris; M. A. Gérin Lajoie, Assistant Librarian of the Canadian
Parliament; M. J. M. Le Moine, of Quebec; General Dix, Minister of the
United States at the Court of France; O. H. Marshall, of Buffalo; J. G.
Shea, of New York; Buckingham Smith, of St. Augustine; and Colonel Thomas
Aspinwall, of Boston.
The map contained in the book is a portion of the great manuscript map of
Franquelin, of which an account will be found in the Appendix.
The next volume of the series will be devoted to the efforts of Monarchy
and Feudalism under Louis XIV. to establish a permanent power on this
continent, and to the stormy career of Louis de Buade, Count of Frontenac.
BOSTON, 16 September, 1869.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I.
1643-1669.
CAVELIER DE LA SALLE.
The Youth of La Salle.--His Connection with the Jesuits.--He goes to
Canada.--His Character.--His Schemes.--His Seigniory at La
Chine.--His Expedition in Search of a Western Passage to India.
CHAPTER II.
1669-1671.
LA SALLE AND THE SULPITIANS.
The French in Western New York.--Louis Joliet.--The Sulpitians on
Lake Erie.--At Detroit.--At Saut Ste. Marie.--The Mystery of La
Salle.--He discovers the Ohio.--He descends the Illinois.--Did he
reach the Mississippi?
CHAPTER III.
1670-1672.
THE JESUITS ON THE LAKES.
The Old Missions and the New.--A Change of Spirit.--Lake Superior
and the Copper Mines.--Ste. Marie.--La Pointe.--Michillimackinac.--
Jesuits on Lake Michigan.--Allouez and Dablon.--The Jesuit
Fur-Trade.
CHAPTER IV.
1667-1672.
FRANCE TAKES POSSESSION OF THE WEST.
Talon.--St. Lusson.--Perrot.--The Ceremony at Saut Ste. Marie.--
The Speech of Allouez.--Count Frontenac.
CHAPTER V.
1672-1675.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
Joliet sent to find the Mississippi.--Jacques Marquette.--Departure.--
Green Bay.--The Wisconsin.--The Mississippi.--Indians.--Manitous.
--The Arkansas.--The Illinois.--Joliet's Misfortune.--Marquette
at Chicago.--His Illness.--His Death.
CHAPTER VI.
1673-1678.
LA SALLE AND FRONTENAC.
Objects of La Salle.--His Difficulties.--Official Corruption in Canada.--
The Governor of Montreal.--Projects of Frontenac.--Cataraqui.--
Frontenac on Lake Ontario.--Fort Frontenac.--Success of La Salle.
CHAPTER VII.
1674-1678.
LA SALLE AND THE JESUITS.
The Abbé Fénelon.--He attacks the Governor.--The Enemies of La
Salle.--Aims of the Jesuits.--Their Hostility to La Salle.
CHAPTER VIII.
1678.
PARTY STRIFE.
La Salle and his Reporter.--Jesuit Ascendancy.--The Missions and the
Fur-Trade.--Female Inquisitors.--Plots against La Salle.--His
Brother the Priest.--Intrigues of the Jesuits.--La Salle poisoned.--
He exculpates the Jesuits.--Renewed Intrigues.
CHAPTER IX.
1677-1678.
THE GRAND ENTERPRISE.
La Salle at Fort Frontenac.--La Salle at Court.--His Plans approved.--
Henri de Tonty.--Preparation for Departure.
CHAPTER X.
1678-1679.
LA SALLE AT NIAGARA.
Father Louis Hennepin.--His Past Life; His Character.--Embarkation.
--Niagara Falls.--Indian Jealousy.--La Motte and the Senecas.--
A Disaster.--La Salle and his Followers.
CHAPTER XI.
1679.
THE LAUNCH OF THE "GRIFFIN."
The Niagara Portage.--A Vessel on the Stocks.--Suffering and
Discontent.--La Salle's Winter Journey.--The Vessel launched.--Fresh
Disasters.
CHAPTER XII.
1679.
LA SALLE ON THE UPPER LAKES.
The Voyage of the "Griffin."--Detroit.--A Storm.--St. Ignace of
Michillimackinac.--Rivals and Enemies--Lake Michigan.--Hardships.
--A Threatened Fight.--Fort Miami.--Tonty's Misfortunes.--
Forebodings.
CHAPTER XIII.
1679-1680
LA SALLE ON THE ILLINOIS.
The St. Joseph.--Adventure of La Salle.--The Prairies.--Famine.--
The Great Town of the Illinois.--Indians.--Intrigues.--Difficulties.
--Policy of La Salle.--Desertion.--Another Attempt to poison him.
CHAPTER XIV.
1680.
FORT CRÈVECOEUR.
Building of the Fort.--Loss of the "Griffin."--A Bold Resolution.--
Another Vessel.--Hennepin sent to the Mississippi.--Departure of
La Salle.
CHAPTER XV.
1680.
HARDIHOOD OF LA SALLE.
The Winter Journey.--The Deserted Town.--Starved Rock.--Lake
Michigan.--The Wilderness.--War Parties.--La Salle's Men give
out.--Ill Tidings.--Mutiny.--Chastisement of the Mutineers.
CHAPTER XVI.
1680.
INDIAN CONQUERORS.
The Enterprise renewed.--Attempt to rescue Tonty.--Buffalo.--A
Frightful Discovery.--Iroquois Fury.--The Ruined Town.--A Night
of Horror.--Traces of the Invaders.--No News of Tonty.
CHAPTER XVII.
1680.
TONTY AND THE IROQUOIS.
The Deserters.--The Iroquois War.--The Great Town of the Illinois.--
The Alarm.--Onset of the Iroquois.--Peril of Tonty.--A Treacherous
Truce.--Intrepidity of Tonty.--Murder of Ribourde.--War upon
the Dead.
CHAPTER XVIII.
1680.
THE ADVENTURES OF HENNEPIN.
Hennepin an Impostor.--His Pretended Discovery.--His Actual Discovery.
--Captured by the Sioux.--The Upper Mississippi.
CHAPTER XIX.
1680, 1681.
HENNEPIN AMONG THE SIOUX.
Signs of Danger.--Adoption.--Hennepin and his Indian Relatives.--The
Hunting-Party.--The Sioux Camp.--Falls of St. Anthony.--A
Vagabond Friar.--His Adventures on the Mississippi.--Greysolon
Du Lhut.--Return to Civilization.
CHAPTER XX.
1681.
LA SALLE BEGINS ANEW.
His Constancy.--His Plans.--His Savage Allies.--He becomes Snow-blind.
--Negotiations.--Grand Council.--La Salle's Oratory.--Meeting
with Tonty.--Preparation.--Departure.
CHAPTER XXI.
1681-1682.
SUCCESS OF LA SALLE.
His Followers.--The Chicago Portage.--Descent of the Mississippi.--The
Lost Hunter.--The Arkansas.--The Taensas.--The Natchez.--Hostility.--The
Mouth of the Mississippi.--Louis XIV. proclaimed Sovereign of the Great
West.
CHAPTER XXII.
1682-1683.
ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS.
Louisiana.--Illness of La Salle.--His Colony on the Illinois.--Fort St.
Louis.--Recall of Frontenac.--Le Fèvre de la Barre.--Critical Position
of La Salle.--Hostility of the New Governor.--Triumph of the Adverse
Faction.--La Salle sails for France.
CHAPTER XXIII.
1684.
A NEW ENTERPRISE.
La Salle at Court.--His Proposals.--Occupation of Louisiana.--Invasion of
Mexico.--Royal Favor.--Preparation.--The Naval Commander.--His Jealousy of
La Salle.--Dissensions.
CHAPTER XXIV.
1684-1685.
LA SALLE IN TEXAS.
Departure.--Quarrels with Beaujeu.--St. Domingo.--La Salle attacked
with Fever.--His Desperate Condition.--The Gulf of Mexico.--A Fatal
Error.--Landing.--Wreck of the "Aimable."--Indian Attack.--Treachery
of Beaujeu.--Omens of Disaster.
CHAPTER XXV.
1685-1687.
ST. LOUIS OF TEXAS.
The Fort.--Misery and Dejection.--Energy of La Salle.--His Journey
of Exploration.--Duhaut.--Indian Massacre.--Return of La Salle.
--A New Calamity.--A Desperate Resolution.--Departure for
Canada.--Wreck of the "Belle."--Marriage.--Sedition.--Adventures
of La Salle's Party.--The Cenis.--The Camanches.--The Only Hope.--The
Last Farewell.
CHAPTER XXVI.
1687.
ASSASSINATION OF LA SALLE.
His Followers.--Prairie Travelling.--A Hunter's Quarrel.--The Murder
of Moranget.--The Conspiracy.--Death of La Salle.--His Character.
CHAPTER XXVII.
1687, 1688.
THE INNOCENT AND THE GUILTY.
Triumph of the Murderers.--Joutel among the Cenis.--White Savages.
--Insolence of Duhaut and his Accomplices.--Murder of Duhaut and
Liotot.--Hiens, the Buccaneer.--Joutel and his Party.--Their
Escape.--They reach the Arkansas.--Bravery and Devotion of
Tonty.--The Fugitives reach the Illinois.--Unworthy Conduct of
Cavelier.--He and his Companions return to France.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
1688-1689.
FATE OF THE TEXAN COLONY.
Tonty attempts to rescue the Colonists.--His Difficulties and Hardships.
--Spanish Hostility.--Expedition of Alonzo De Leon.--He reaches
Fort St. Louis.--A Scene of Havoc.--Destruction of the French.--The End.
APPENDIX.
I. Early unpublished Maps of the Mississippi and the Great Lakes.
II. The Eldorado of Mathieu Sâgean.
INDEX
[Illustration: LA SALLE'S COLONY on the Illinois FROM THE MAP OF
FRANQUELIN, 1684.]
INTRODUCTION.
The Spaniards discovered the Mississippi. De Soto was buried beneath its
waters; and it was down its muddy current that his followers fled from the
Eldorado of their dreams, transformed to a dismal wilderness of misery and
death. The discovery was never used, and was well-nigh forgotten. On early
Spanish maps, the Mississippi is often indistinguishable from other
affluents of the Gulf. A century passed after De Soto's journeyings in the
South, before a French explorer reached a northern tributary of the great
river.
This was Jean Nicollet, interpreter at Three Rivers on the St. Lawrence.
He had been some twenty years in Canada, had lived among the savage
Algonquins of Allumette Island, and spent eight or nine years among the
Nipissings, on the lake which bears their name. Here he became an Indian
in all his habits, but remained, nevertheless, a zealous Catholic, and
returned to civilization at last because he could not live without the
sacraments. Strange stories were current among the Nipissings of a people
without hair and without beards, who came from the West to trade with a
tribe beyond the Great Lakes. Who could doubt that these strangers were
Chinese or Japanese? Such tales may well have excited Nicollet's
curiosity; and when, in or before the year 1639, he was sent as an
ambassador to the tribe in question, he would not have been surprised if
on arriving he had found a party of mandarins among them. Possibly it was
with a view to such a contingency that he provided himself, as a dress of
ceremony, with a robe of Chinese damask embroidered with birds and
flowers. The tribe to which he was sent was that of the Winnebagoes,
living near the head of the Green Bay of Lake Michigan. They had come to
blows with the Hurons, allies of the French; and Nicollet was charged to
negotiate a peace. When he approached the Winnebago town, he sent one of
his Indian attendants to announce his coming, put on his robe of damask,
and advanced to meet the expectant crowd with a pistol in each hand. The
squaws and children fled, screaming that it was a manito, or spirit, armed
with thunder and lightning; but the chiefs and warriors regaled him with
so bountiful a hospitality that a hundred and twenty beavers were devoured
at a single feast. From the Winnebagoes, he passed westward, ascended Fox
River, crossed to the Wisconsin, and descended it so far that, as he
reported on his return, in three days more he would have reached the sea.
The truth seems to be, that he mistook the meaning of his Indian guides,
and that the "great water" to which he was so near was not the sea, but
the Mississippi.
It has been affirmed that one Colonel Wood, of Virginia, reached a branch
of the Mississippi as early as the year 1654, and that, about 1670, a
certain Captain Bolton penetrated to the river itself. Neither statement
is improbable, but neither is sustained by sufficient evidence. Meanwhile,
French Jesuits and fur-traders pushed deeper and deeper into the
wilderness of the northern lakes. In 1641, Jogues and Raymbault preached
the
DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST.
CHAPTER I.
1643-1669.
CAVELIER DE LA SALLE.
THE YOUTH OF LA SALLE.--HIS CONNECTION WITH THE JESUITS.--HE
GOES TO CANADA.--HIS CHARACTER.--HIS SCHEMES.--HIS SEIGNIORY
AT LA CHINE.--HIS EXPEDITION IN SEARCH OF A WESTERN PASSAGE
TO INDIA.
Among the burghers of Rouen was the old and rich family of the Caveliers.
Though citizens and not nobles, some of their connections held high
diplomatic posts and honorable employments at Court. They were destined to
find a better claim to distinction. In 1643 was born at Rouen Robert
Cavelier, better known by the designation of La Salle. [Footnote: The
following is the _acte de naissance_, discovered by Margry in the
_registres de l'état civil_, Paroisse St. Herbland, Rouen. "Le vingt-
deuxième jour de novembre 1643, a été baptisé Robert Cavelier, fils de
honorable homme Jean Cavelier et de Catherine Geest; ses parrain et
marraine honorables personnes Nicolas Geest et Marguerite Morice."]
La Salle's name in full was Réné-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. La
Salle was the name of an estate near Rouen, belonging to the Caveliers.
The wealthy French burghers often distinguished the various members of
their families by designations borrowed from landed estates. Thus,
François Marie Arouet, son of an ex-notary, received the name of Voltaire,
which he made famous.] His father Jean and his uncle Henri were wealthy
merchants, living more like nobles than like burghers; and the boy
received an education answering to the marked traits of intellect and
character which he soon, began to display. He showed an inclination for
the exact sciences, and especially for the mathematics, in which he made
great proficiency. At an early age, it is said, he became connected with
the Jesuits; and though doubt has been expressed of the statement, it is
probably true. [Footnote: Margry, after investigations at Rouen, is
satisfied of its truth.--_Journal Général de l'Instruction Publique_,
xxxi. 571. Family papers of the Caveliers, examined by the Abbé Faillon,
and copies of some of which he has sent to me, lead to the same
conclusion. We shall find several allusions hereafter to La Salle's having
in his youth taught in a school, which, in his position, could only have
been in connection with some religious community. The doubts alluded to
have proceeded from the failure of Father Felix Martin, S.J., to find the
name of _La Salle_ on the list of novices. If he had looked for the name
of _Robert Cavelier_, he would probably have found it. The companion of La
Salle, Hennepin, is very explicit with regard to this connection with the
Jesuits,--a point on which he had no motive for falsehood.]
La Salle was always an earnest Catholic; and yet, judging by the qualities
which his after life evinced, he was not very liable to religious
enthusiasm. It is nevertheless clear, that the Society of Jesus may have
had a powerful attraction for his youthful imagination. This great
organization, so complicated yet so harmonious, a mighty machine moved
from the centre by a single hand, was an image of regulated power, full of
fascination for a mind like his. But if it was likely that he would be
drawn into it, it was no less likely that he would soon wish to escape. To
find himself not at the centre of power, but at the circumference; not the
mover, but the moved; the passive instrument of another's will, taught to
walk in prescribed paths, to renounce his individuality and become a
component atom of a vast whole,--would have been intolerable to him.
Nature had shaped him for other uses than to teach a class of boys on the
benches of a Jesuit school. Nor, on his part, was he likely to please his
directors; for, self-controlled and self-contained as he was, he was far
too intractable a subject to serve their turn. A youth whose calm exterior
hid an inexhaustible fund of pride; whose inflexible purposes, nursed in
secret, the confessional and the "manifestation of conscience" could
hardly drag to the light; whose strong personality would not yield to the
shaping hand; and who, by a necessity of his nature, could obey no
initiative but his own,--was not after the model that Loyola had commended
to his followers.
La Salle left the Jesuits, parting with them, it is said, on good terms,
and with a reputation of excellent acquirements and unimpeachable morals.
This last is very credible. The cravings of a deep ambition, the hunger of
an insatiable intellect, the intense longing for action and achievement
subdued in him all other passions; and in his faults, the love of pleasure
had no part. He had an elder brother in Canada, the Abbé Jean Cavelier, a
priest of St. Sulpice. Apparently, it was this that shaped his destinies.
His connection with the Jesuits had deprived him, under the French law, of
the inheritance of his father, who had died not long before. An allowance
was made to him of three or, as is elsewhere stated, four hundred livres a
year, the capital of which was paid over to him, and with this pittance he
sailed for Canada, to seek his fortune, in the spring of 1666. [Footnote:
It does not appear what vows La Salle had taken. By a recent ordinance,
1666, persons entering religious orders could not take the final vows
before the age of twenty-five. By the family papers above mentioned, it
appears, however, that he had brought himself under the operation of the
law, which debarred those who, having entered religious orders, afterwards
withdrew, from claiming the inheritance of relatives who had died after
their entrance.]
Next, we find him at Montreal. In another volume, we have seen how an
association of enthusiastic devotees had made a settlement at this place.
[Footnote: "The Jesuits in North America," c. xv.] Having in some measure
accomplished its work, it was now dissolved; and the corporation of
priests, styled the Seminary of St. Sulpice, which had taken a prominent
part in the enterprise, and, indeed, had been created with a view to it,
was now the proprietor and the feudal lord of Montreal. It was destined to
retain its seignorial rights until the abolition of the feudal tenures of
Canada in our own day, and it still holds vast possessions in the city and
island. These worthy ecclesiastics, models of a discreet and sober
conservatism, were holding a post with which a band of veteran soldiers or
warlike frontiersmen would have been better matched. Montreal was perhaps
the most dangerous place in Canada. In time of war, which might have been
called the normal condition of the colony, it was exposed by its position
to incessant inroads of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, of New York; and no
man could venture into the forests or the fields without bearing his life
in his hand. The savage confederates had just received a sharp
chastisement at the hands of Courcelles, the governor; and the result was
a treaty of peace, which might at any moment be broken, but which was an
inexpressible relief while it lasted.
The priests of St. Sulpice were granting out their lands, on very easy
terms, to settlers. They wished to extend a thin line of settlements along
the front of their island, to form a sort of outpost, from which an alarm
could be given on any descent of the Iroquois. La Salle was the man for
such a purpose. Had the priests understood him,--which they evidently did
not, for some of them suspected him of levity, the last foible with which
he could be charged,--had they understood him, they would have seen in him
a young man in whom the fire of youth glowed not the less ardently for the
veil of reserve that covered it; who would shrink from no danger, but
would not court it in bravado; and who would cling with an invincible
tenacity of gripe to any purpose which he might espouse. There is good
reason to think that he had come to Canada with purposes already
conceived, and that he was ready to avail himself of any stepping-stone
which might help to realize them. Queylus, Superior of the Seminary, made
him a generous offer; and he accepted it. This was the gratuitous grant of
a large tract of land at the place now called La Chine, above the great
rapids of the same name, and eight or nine miles from Montreal. On one
hand, the place was greatly exposed to attack; and on the other, it was
favorably situated for the fur-trade. La Salle and his successors became
its feudal proprietors, on the sole condition of delivering to the
Seminary, on every change of ownership, a medal of fine silver, weighing
one mark. [Footnote: _Transport de la Seigneurie de St. Sulpice_, cited by
Faillon. La Salle called his new domain as above. Two or three years
later, it received the name of La Chine, for a reason which will appear.]
He entered on the improvement of his new domain, with what means he could
command, and began to grant out his land to such settlers as would join
him.
Approaching the shore where the city of Montreal now stands, one would
have seen a row of small compact dwellings, extending along a narrow
street, parallel to the river, and then, as now, called St. Paul Street.
On a hill at the right stood the windmill of the seigneurs, built of
stone, and pierced with loop-holes to serve, in time of need, as a place
of defence. On the left, in an angle formed by the junction of a rivulet
with the St. Lawrence, was a square bastioned fort of stone. Here lived
the military governor, appointed by the Seminary, and commanding a few
soldiers of the regiment of Carignan. In front, on the line of the street,
were the enclosure and buildings of the Seminary, and, nearly adjoining
them, those of the Hôtel-Dieu, or Hospital, both provided for defence in
case of an Indian attack. In the hospital enclosure was a small church,
opening on the street, and, in the absence of any other, serving for the
whole settlement. [Footnote: A detailed plan of Montreal at this time is
preserved in the Archives de l'Empire, and has been reproduced by Faillon.
There is another, a few years later, and still more minute, of which a
fac-simile will be found in the Library of the Canadian Parliament.]
Landing, passing the fort, and walking southward along the shore, one
would soon have left the rough clearings, and entered the primeval forest.
Here, mile after mile, he would have journeyed on in solitude, when the
hoarse roar of the rapids, foaming in fury on his left, would have reached
his listening ear; and, at length, after a walk of some three hours, he
would have found the rude beginnings of a settlement. It was where the St.
Lawrence widens into the broad expanse called the Lake of St. Louis. Here,
La Salle had traced out the circuit of a palisaded village, and assigned
to each settler half an arpent, or about a third of an acre, within the
enclosure, for which he was to render to the young seigneur a yearly
acknowledgment of three capons, besides six deniers--that is, half a sou--
in money. To each was assigned, moreover, sixty arpents of land beyond the
limits of the village, with the perpetual rent of half a sou for each
arpent. He also set apart a common, two hundred arpents in extent, for the
use of the settlers, on condition of the payment by each of five sous a
year. He reserved four hundred and twenty arpents for his own personal
domain, and on this he began to clear the ground and erect buildings.
Similar to this were the beginnings of all the Canadian seigniories formed
at this troubled period. [Footnote: The above particulars have been
unearthed by the indefatigable Abbé Faillon. Some of La Salle's grants are
still preserved in the ancient records of Montreal.]
That La Salle came to Canada with objects distinctly in view, is probable
from the fact that he at once began to study the Indian languages, and
with such success that he is said, within two or three years, to have
mastered the Iroquois and seven or eight other languages and dialects.
[Footnote: _Papiers de Famille_, MSS. He is said to have made several
journeys into the forests, towards the North, in the years 1667 and 1668,
and to have satisfied himself that little could be hoped from explorations
in that direction.] From the shore of his seigniory, he could gaze
westward over the broad breast of the Lake of St. Louis, bounded by the
dim forests of Chateauguay and Beauharnois; but his thoughts flew far
beyond, across the wild and lonely world that stretched towards the
sunset. Like Champlain and all the early explorers, he dreamed of a
passage to the South Sea, and a new road for commerce to the riches of
China and Japan. Indians often came to his secluded settlement; and, on
one occasion, he was visited by a band of the Seneca Iroquois, not long
before the scourge of the colony, but now, in virtue of the treaty,
wearing the semblance of friendship. The visitors spent the winter with
him, and told him of a river called the Ohio, rising in their country, and
flowing into the sea, but at such a distance that its mouth could only be
reached after a journey of eight or nine months. Evidently, the Ohio and
the Mississippi are here merged into one. [Footnote: According to Dollier
de Casson, who had good opportunities of knowing, the Iroquois always
called the Mississippi the Ohio, while the Algonquins gave it its present
name.] In accordance with geographical views then prevalent, he conceived
that this great river must needs flow into the "Vermilion Sea;" that is,
the Gulf of California. If so, it would give him what he sought,--a
western passage to China; while, in any case, the populous Indian tribes
said to inhabit its banks, might be made a source of great commercial
profit.
La Salle's imagination took fire. His resolution was soon formed; and he
descended the St. Lawrence to Quebec, to gain the countenance of the
Governor to his intended exploration. Few men were more skilled than he in
the art of clear and plausible statement. Both the Governor, Courcelles,
and the Intendant, Talon, were readily won over to his plan; for which,
however, they seem to have given him no more substantial aid than that of
the Governor's letters patent authorizing the enterprise. [Footnote:
Talon, in his letter to the king, of 10 Oct. 1670, expresses himself as if
the enterprise had originated with him.] The cost was to be his own; and
he had no money, having spent it all on his seigniory. He therefore
proposed that the Seminary, which had given it to him, should buy it back
again, with such improvements as he had made. Queylus, the Superior, being
favorably disposed towards him, consented, and bought of him the greater
part; while La Salle sold the remainder, including the clearings, to one
Jean Milot, an ironmonger, for twenty-eight hundred livres. [Footnote:
Faillon, _Colonie Française en Canada_, iii. 288.] With this he bought
four canoes, with the necessary supplies, and hired fourteen men.
Meanwhile, the Seminary itself was preparing a similar enterprise. The
Jesuits at this time not only held, an ascendency over the other
ecclesiastics in Canada, but exercised an inordinate influence on the
civil government. The Seminary priests of Montreal were jealous of these
powerful rivals, and eager to emulate their zeal in the saving of souls,
and the conquering of new domains for the Faith. Under this impulse, they
had, three years before, established a mission at Quinté, on the north
shore of Lake Ontario, in charge of two of their number, one of whom was
the Abbé Fénelon, elder brother of the celebrated Archbishop of Cambray.
Another of them, Dollier de Casson, had spent the winter in a hunting-camp
of the Nipissings, where an Indian prisoner, captured in the North-west,
told him of populous tribes of that quarter, living in heathenish
darkness. On this, the Seminary priests resolved to essay their
conversion; and an expedition, to be directed by Dollier, was fitted out
to this end.
He was not ill suited to the purpose. He had been a soldier in his youth,
and had fought valiantly as an officer of cavalry under Turenne. He was a
man of great courage; of a tall, commanding person; and uncommon bodily
strength, of which he had given striking proofs in the campaign of
Courcelles against the Iroquois, three years before. [Footnote: He was the
author of the very curious and valuable _Histoire de Montréal_, preserved
in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, of which a copy is in my possession. The
Historical Society of Montreal has recently resolved to print it.] On
going to Quebec, to procure the necessary outfit, he was urged by
Courcelles to modify his plans so far as to act in concert with La Salle
in exploring the mystery of the great unknown river of the West. Dollier
and his brother priests consented. One of them, Galinée, was joined with
him as a colleague, because he was skilled in surveying, and could make a
map of their route. Three canoes were procured, and seven hired men
completed the party. It was determined that La Salle's expedition, and
that of the Seminary, should be combined in one; an arrangement ill suited
to the character of the young explorer, who was unfit for any enterprise
of which he was not the undisputed chief.
Midsummer was near, and there was no time to lose. Yet the moment was most
unpropitious, for a Seneca chief had lately been murdered by three
scoundrel soldiers of the fort of Montreal; and, while they were
undergoing their trial, it became known that three other Frenchmen had
treacherously put to death several Iroquois of the Oneida tribe,--in order
to get possession of their furs. The whole colony trembled in expectation
of a new outbreak of the war. Happily, the event proved otherwise. The
authors of the last murder escaped: but the three soldiers were shot at
Montreal, in presence of a considerable number of the Iroquois, who
declared themselves satisfied with the atonement; and on this same day,
the sixth of July, the adventurers began their voyage.
CHAPTER II.
1669-1671.
LA SALLE AND THE SULPITIANS.
THE FRENCH IN WESTERN NEW YORK.--LOUIS JOLIET.--THE SULPITIANS
ON LAKE ERIE.--AT DETROIT.--AT SAUT STE. MARIE.--THE MYSTERY
OF LA SALLE.--HE DISCOVERS THE OHIO.--HE DESCENDS THE ILLINOIS.--DID
HE REACH THE MISSISSIPPI?
La Chine was the starting-point, and the combined parties, in all twenty-
four men with seven canoes, embarked on the Lake of St. Louis. With them
were two other canoes, bearing the party of Senecas who had wintered at La
Salle's settlement, and who were now to act as guides. They fought their
way upward against the perilous rapids of the St. Lawrence, then scarcely
known to the voyager, threaded the romantic channels of the Thousand
Islands, and issued on Lake Ontario. Thirty days of toil and exposure had
told upon them so severely that not a man of the party, except the
Indians, had escaped the attacks of disease in some form.
Their guides led them directly to the great village of the Senecas, near
the banks of the Genesee, flattering them with the hope that they would
here find other guides, to conduct them to the Ohio; and, in truth, the
Senecas had among them a prisoner of one of the western tribes, who would
have answered their purpose. The chiefs met in council: but La Salle had
not yet mastered the language sufficiently to serve as spokesman; and a
Dutch interpreter, brought by the priests, could not explain himself in
French. The Jesuit Fremin was stationed at the village, and his servant
came to their aid: but, as the two priests thought, wilfully
misinterpreted them; and they also conceived the suspicion, perhaps
uncharitable, that the Jesuits, jealous of their enterprise, had tampered
with the Senecas, to thwart it. Be this as it may, the Indians proved
impracticable, evaded their request for a guide, burned before their eyes
the unfortunate western prisoner, and assured them that if they went to
the Ohio the people of those parts would put them to death. As there were
many among the Senecas who wished to kill them in revenge for the chief
murdered near Montreal, and as these and others were at times in a frenzy
of drunkenness with brandy brought from Albany, the position of the French
was very hazardous. They remained, however, for a month; still clinging to
the hope of obtaining guides. At length, an Indian from a village called
Ganastogué, a kind of Iroquois colony at the head of Lake Ontario, offered
to conduct them thither, assuring them that they would find what they
sought. They left the Seneca town; coasted the south shore of the lake;
passed the mouth of the Niagara, where they heard the distant roar of the
cataract; and, five days after, reached Ganastogué. The inhabitants proved
friendly, and La Salle received the welcome present of a Shawnee prisoner,
who told them that the Ohio could he reached in six weeks, and that he
would guide them to it. Delighted at this good fortune, they were about to
set out; when they heard, to their astonishment, of the arrival of two
other Frenchmen at a neighboring village. One of the strangers proved to
be a man destined to hold a conspicuous place in the history of western
discovery. This was Louis Joliet, a young man of about the age of La
Salle. Like him, he had studied for the priesthood; but the world and the
wilderness had conquered his early inclinations, and changed him to an
active and adventurous fur-trader.
Talon had sent him to discover and explore the copper-mines of Lake
Superior. He had failed in the attempt, and was now returning. His Indian
guide, afraid of passing the Niagara portage lest he should meet enemies,
had led him from Lake Erie, by way of Grand River, towards the head of
Lake Ontario; and thus it was that he met La Salle and the Sulpitians.
This meeting caused a change of plan. Joliet showed the priests a map
which he had made, of such parts of the Upper Lakes as he had visited, and
gave them a copy of it; telling them, at the same time, of the
Pottawattamies, and other tribes of that region, in grievous need of
spiritual succor. The result was a determination on their part to follow
the route which he suggested, notwithstanding the remonstrances of La
Salle, who in vain reminded them that the Jesuits had pre-occupied the
field, and would regard them as intruders. They resolved that the
Pottawattamies should no longer sit in darkness; while, as for the
Mississippi, it could be reached, as they conceived, with less risk by
this northern route than by that of the south.
Since reaching the head of Lake Ontario, La Salle had been attacked by a
violent fever, from which he was not yet recovered. He now told his two
colleagues that he was in no condition to go forward, and should be forced
to part with them. The staple of La Salle's character, as his life will
attest, was an invincible determination of purpose, which set at naught
all risks and all sufferings. He had cast himself with all his resources
into this enterprise, and, while his faculties remained, he was not a man
to recoil from it. On the other hand, the masculine fibre of which he was
made did not always withhold him from the practice of the arts of address,
and the use of what Dollier de Casson styles _belles paroles_. He
respected the priesthood,--with the exception, it seems, of the Jesuits,--
and he was under obligations to the Sulpitians of Montreal. Hence there
can be no doubt that he used his illness as a pretext for escaping from
their company without ungraciousness, and following his own path in his
own way.
On the last day of September, the priests made an altar, supported by the
paddles of the canoes laid on forked sticks. Dollier said mass; La Salle
and his followers received the sacrament, as did also those of his late
colleagues; and thus they parted,--the Sulpitians and their party
descending the Grand River towards Lake Erie, while La Salle, as they
supposed, began his return to Montreal. What course he actually took, we
shall soon inquire; and meanwhile, for a few moments, we will follow the
priests. When they reached Lake Erie, they saw it tossing like an angry
ocean under a wild autumnal sky. They had no mind to tempt the dangerous
and unknown navigation, and encamped for the winter in the forest near the
peninsula called the Long Point. Here they gathered a good store of
chestnuts, hickory-nuts, plums, and grapes; and built themselves a log-
cabin, with a recess at the end for an altar. They passed the winter
unmolested, shooting game in abundance, and saying mass three times a
week. Early in spring, they planted a large cross, attached to it the arms
of France, and took formal possession of the country in the name of Louis
XIV. This done, they resumed their voyage, and, after many troubles,
landed one evening in a state of exhaustion on or near Point Pelée,
towards the western extremity of Lake Erie. A storm rose as they lay
asleep, and swept off a great part of their baggage, which, in their
fatigue, they had left at the edge of the water. Their altar-service was
lost with the rest,--a misfortune which they ascribed to the jealousy and
malice of the Devil. Debarred henceforth from saying mass, they resolved
to return to Montreal and leave the Pottawattamies uninstructed. They
presently entered the strait by which Lake Huron joins Lake Erie; and,
landing near where Detroit now stands, found a large stone, somewhat
suggestive of the human figure, which the Indians had bedaubed with paint,
and which they worshipped as a manito. In view of their late misfortune,
this device of the arch-enemy excited their utmost resentment. "After the
loss of our altar-service," writes Galinée, "and the hunger we had
suffered, there was not a man of us who was not filled with hatred against
this false deity. I devoted one of my axes to breaking him in pieces; and
then, having fastened our canoes side by side, we carried the largest
piece to the middle of the river, and threw it, with all the rest, into
the water, that he might never be heard of again."
This is the first recorded passage of white men through the Strait of
Detroit; though Joliet had, no doubt, passed this way on his return from
the Upper Lakes. [Footnote: The Jesuits and fur-traders, on their way to
the Upper Lakes, had followed the route of the Ottawa, or, more recently,
that of Toronto and the Georgian Bay. Iroquois hostility had long closed
the Niagara portage and Lake Erie against them.] The two missionaries took
this course, with the intention of proceeding to the Saut Sainte Marie,
and there joining the Ottawas, and other tribes of that region, in their
yearly descent to Montreal. They issued upon Lake Huron; followed its
eastern shores till they reached the Georgian Bay, near the head of which
the Jesuits had established their great mission of the Hurons, destroyed,
twenty years before, by the Iroquois; [Footnote: "Jesuits in North
America."] and, ignoring or slighting the labors of the rival
missionaries, held their way northward along the rocky archipelago that
edged those lonely coasts. They passed the Manatoulins, and, ascending the
strait by which Lake Superior discharges its waters, arrived on the
twenty-fifth of May at Ste. Marie du Saut. Here they found the two
Jesuits, Dablon and Marquette, in a square fort of cedar pickets, built by
their men within the past year, and enclosing a chapel and a house. Near
by, they had cleared a large tract of land, and sown it with wheat, Indian
corn, peas, and other crops. The new-comers were graciously received, and
invited to vespers in the chapel; but they very soon found La Salle's
prediction made good, and saw that the Jesuit fathers wanted no help from
St. Sulpice. Galinée, on his part, takes occasion to remark that, though
the Jesuits had baptized a few Indians at the Saut, not one of them was a
good enough Christian to receive the Eucharist; and he intimates, that the
case, by their own showing, was still worse at their mission of St.
Esprit. The two Sulpitians did not care to prolong their stay; and, three
days after their arrival, they left the Saut: not, as they expected, with
the Indians, but with a French guide, furnished by the Jesuits. Ascending
French River to Lake Nipissing, they crossed to the waters of the Ottawa,
and descended to Montreal, which they reached on the eighteenth of June.
They had made no discoveries and no converts; but Galinée, after his
arrival, made the earliest map of the Upper Lakes known to exist.
[Footnote: Galinée appears to have made use of the map given him by
Joliet. He says, in the narrative of his journey, that he has laid down on
his own map nothing but what he had himself seen; but this is disproved by
the map itself. Thus, he represents with minuteness the northern coast as
far west as the islands at the mouth of Green Bay; but that he never went
so far is evident not only from his own journal, but from the fact that he
was ignorant of the existence of the Straits of Michillimackinac and the
peninsula of Michigan; Lakes Huron and Michigan being by him merged into
one, under the name of "Michigané, ou Mer Douce des Hurons." The map, of
which a fac-simile is before me, measures four and a half feet by three
and a half. It is covered with descriptive remarks, which, oddly enough,
are all inverted, so that it must be turned with the north side down in
order to read them. Faillon has engraved it, but on a small scale, with
the omission of most of the inscriptions, and other changes. The well-
known Jesuit map of Lake Superior appeared the year after.
Besides making the map, Galinée wrote a very long and minute journal of
the expedition, which is preserved in the Bibliothèque Impériale.
Much of the substance of it is given by Faillon, _Colonie Française_, iii.
chap, vii., and Margry, _Journal Général de l'Instruction Publique_, xxxi.
No. 67. In the letters of Talon to Colbert are various allusions to the
journey of Dollier and Galinée.]
We return now to La Salle, only to find ourselves involved in mist and
obscurity. What did he do after he left the two priests? Unfortunately, a
definite answer is not possible; and the next two years of his life remain
in some measure an enigma. That he was busied in active exploration, and
that he made important discoveries, is certain; but the extent and
character of these discoveries remain wrapped in doubt. He is known to
have kept journals and made maps; and these were in existence, and in
possession of his niece, Madeleine Cavelier, then in advanced age, as late
as the year 1756; [Footnote: See Margry, in _Journal Général de
l'Instruction Publique_, xxxi. 659.] beyond which time the most diligent
inquiry has failed to trace them. The Abbé Faillon affirms, that some of
La Salle's men, refusing to follow him, returned to La Chine, and that the
place then received its name, in derision of the young adventurer's dream
of a westward passage to China. [Footnote: Dollier de Casson alludes to
this as "cette transmigration célèbre qui se fit de la Chine dans ces
quartiers."] As for himself, the only distinct record of his movements is
that contained in an unpublished paper, entitled, "Histoire de Monsieur de
la Salle." It is an account of his explorations, and of the state of
parties in Canada previous to the year 1678; taken from the lips of La
Salle himself, by a person whose name does not appear, but who declares
that he had ten or twelve conversations with him at Paris, whither he had
come with a petition to the Court. The writer himself had never been in
America, and was ignorant of its geography; hence blunders on his part
might reasonably be expected. His statements, however, are in some measure
intelligible; and the following is the substance of them. After leaving
the priests, La Salle went to Onondaga, where we are left to infer that he
succeeded better in getting a guide than he had before done among the
Senecas. Thence he made his way to a point six or seven leagues distant
from Lake Erie, where he reached a branch of the Ohio; and, descending it,
followed the river as far as the rapids at Louisville, or, as has been
maintained, beyond its confluence with the Mississippi. His men now
refused to go farther, and abandoned him, escaping to the English and the
Dutch; whereupon he retraced his steps alone. [Footnote: As no part of the
memoir referred to has been published, I extract the passage relating to
this journey. After recounting La Salle's visit with the Sulpitians to the
Seneca village, and stating that the intrigues of the Jesuit missionary
prevented them from obtaining a guide, it speaks of the separation of the
travellers and the journey of Galinée and his party to the Saut Ste.
Marie, where "les Jésuites les congédièrent." It then proceeds as follows:
"Cependant Mr. de la Salle continua son chemin par une rivière qui va de
l'est à l'ouest; et passe à Onontaqué (Onondaga), puis à six ou sept
lieues au-dessous du Lac Erié; et estant parvenu jusqu'au 280me ou 83me
degré de longitude, et jusqu'au 4lme degré de latitude, trouva un sault
qui tombe vers l'ouest dans un pays has, marescageux, tout couvert de
vielles souches, don't il y en a quelquesunes qui sont encore sur pied. Il
fut done contraint de prendre terre, et suivant une hauteur qui le pouvoit
mener loin, il trouva quelques sauvages qui luy dirent que fort loin de là
le mesme fleuve qui se perdoit dans cette terre basse et vaste se
réunnissoit en un lit. Il continua done son chemin, mais comme la fatigue
estoit grande, 23 ou 24 hommes qu'il avoit menez jusques là le quittèrent
tous en une nuit, regagnèrent le fleuve, et se sauvèrent, les uns à la
Nouvelle Hollande et les autres à la Nouvelle Angleterre. Il se vit done
seul a 400 lieues de chez luy, où il ne laisse pas de revenir, remontant
la rivière et vivant de chasse, d'herbes, et de ce que luy donnèrent les
sauvages qu'il rencontra en son chemin."] This must have been in the
winter of 1669-70, or in the following spring; unless there is an error of
date in the statement of Nicolas Perrot, the famous _voyageur_, who says
that he met him in the summer of 1670, hunting on the Ottawa with a party
of Iroquois. [Footnote: Perrot, _Mèmoires_, 119, 120.]
But how was La Salle employed in the following year? The same memoir has
its solution to the problem. By this it appears that the indefatigable
explorer embarked on Lake Erie, ascended the Detroit to Lake Huron,
coasted the unknown shores of Michigan, passed the Straits of
Michillimackinac, and leaving Green Bay behind him, entered what is
described as an incomparably larger bay, but which was evidently the
southern portion of Lake Michigan. Thence he crossed to a river flowing
westward,--evidently the Illinois,--and followed it until it was joined by
another river flowing from the northwest to the southeast. By this, the
Mississippi only can be meant; and he is reported to have said that he
descended it to the thirty-sixth degree of latitude; where he stopped,
assured that it discharged itself not into the Gulf of California, but
into the Gulf of Mexico; and resolved to follow it thither at a future
day, when better provided with men and supplies. [Footnote: The memoir,--
after stating, as above, that he entered Lake Huron, doubled the peninsula
of Michigan, and passed La Baye des Puants (Green Bay),--says, "Il
reconnut une baye incomparablement plus large; au fond de laquelle vers
l'ouest il trouva un trés-beau havre et au fond de ce havre un fleuve qui
va de l'est à l'ouest. Il suivit ce fleuve, et estant parvenu
jusqu'environ le 280me degré de longitude et le 39me de latitude, il
trouva un autre fleuve qui se joignant au premier coulait du nordouest au
sud-est, et il suivit ce fleuve jusqu'au 36me degré de latitude."
The "très-beau havre" may have been the entrance of the River Chicago,
whence, by an easy portage, he might have reached the Des Plaines branch
of the Illinois. We shall see that he took this course in his famous
exploration of 1682.
The Intendant Talon announces in his despatches of this year that he had
sent La Salle southward and westward to explore.]
The first of these statements,--that relating to the Ohio,--confused,
vague, and in great part incorrect as it certainly is, is nevertheless
well sustained as regards one essential point. La Salle himself, in a
memorial addressed to Count Frontenac in 1677, affirms that he discovered
the Ohio, and descended it as far as to a fall which obstructed it.
[Footnote: The following are his words (he speaks of himself in the third
person): "L'année 1667, et les suivantes, il fit divers voyages avec
beaucoup de dépenses, dans lesquels il découvrit le premier beaucoup de
pays au sud des grands lacs, et _entre autres la grande rivière d'Ohio_;
il la suivit jusqu'à un endroit ou elle tombe de fort haut dans de vastes
marais, a la hauteur de 37 degrés, après avoir été grossie par une autre
rivière fort large qui vient du nord; et toutes ces eaux se déchargent
selon toutes les apparences dans le Golfe du Mexique."
This "autre riviére," which, it seems, was above the fall, may have been
the Miami or the Scioto. There is but one fall on the river, that of
Louisville, which is not so high as to deserve to be described as "fort
haut," being only a strong rapid. The latitude, as will be seen, is
different in the two accounts, and incorrect in both.] Again, his rival,
Louis Joliet, whose testimony on this point cannot be suspected, made two
maps of the region of the Mississippi and the Great Lakes. The Ohio is
laid down on both of them, with an inscription to the effect that it had
been explored by La Salle. [Footnote: One of these maps is entitled _Carte
de la découverte du Sieur Joliet_, 1674. Over the lines representing the
Ohio are the words, "Route du sieur de la Salle pour aller dans le
Mexique." The other map of Joliet bears, also written over the Ohio, the
words, "Rivière par où descendit le sieur de la Salle au sortir du lac
Erié pour aller clans le Mexique." I have also another manuscript map,
made before the voyage of Joliet and Marquette, and apparently in the year
1673, on which the Ohio is represented as far as to a point a little below
Louisville, and over it is written, "Rivière Ohio, ainsy appellée par les
Iroquois à cause de sa beauté, par où le sieur de la Salle est descendu."
The Mississippi is not represented on this map; but--and this is very
significant, as indicating the extent of La Salle's exploration of the
following year--a small part of the upper Illinois is laid down.] That he
discovered the Ohio may then be regarded as established. That he descended
it to the Mississippi, he himself does not pretend; nor is there reason to
believe that he did so.
With regard to his alleged voyage down the Illinois, the case is
different. Here, he is reported to have made a statement which admits but
one interpretation,--that of the discovery by him of the Mississippi prior
to its discovery by Joliet and Marquette. This statement is attributed to
a man not prone to vaunt his own exploits, who never proclaimed them in
print, and whose testimony, even in his own case, must therefore have
weight. But it comes to us through the medium of a person, strongly biased
in favor of La Salle and against Marquette and the Jesuits.
Seven years had passed since the alleged discovery, and La Salle had not
before laid claim to it; although it was matter of notoriety that during
five years it had been claimed by Joliet, and that his claim was generally
admitted. The correspondence of the Governor and the Intendant is silent
as to La Salle's having penetrated to the Mississippi; though the attempt
was made under the auspices of the latter, as his own letters declare;
while both had the discovery of the great river earnestly at heart. The
governor, Frontenac, La Salle's ardent supporter and ally, believed in
1672, as his letters show, that the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of
California, and, two years later, he announces to the minister Colbert its
discovery by Joliet. [Footnote: _Lettre de Frontenac au Ministre_, 14
_Nov_. 1674. He here speaks of "la grande rivière qu'il (Joliet) a
trouvée, qui va du nord au sud, et qui est aussi large que celle du Saint-
Laurent vis-à-vis de Québec." Four years later, Frontenac speaks
slightingly of Joliet, but neither denies his discovery of the Mississippi
nor claims it for La Salle, in whose interest he writes.] After La Salle's
death, his brother, his nephew, and his niece addressed a memorial to the
King, petitioning for certain grants in consideration of the discoveries
of their relative, which they specify at some length; but they do not
pretend that he reached the Mississippi before his expeditions of 1679 to
1682. [Footnote: _Papiers de Famille_, MSS.; _Mémoire présenté au Roi_.
The following is an extract: "Il parvient ... jusqu'à la rivière des
Illinois. Il y construisit un fort situé à 350 lieues au-delà du fort de
Frontenac, et suivant ensuite le cours de cette rivière, il trouve qu'elle
se jettoit dans un grand fleuve appellé par ceux du pays Missisippi, c'est
à dire _grande eau_, environ cent lieues audessous du fort qu'il venoit de
construire." This fort was Fort Crêvecoeur, built in 1680, near the site of
Peoria. The memoir goes on to relate the descent of La Salle to the Gulf,
which concluded this expedition of 1679-82.] This silence is the more
significant, as it is this very niece who had possession of the papers in
which La Salle recounts the journeys of which the issues are in question.
[Footnote: The following is an extract, given by Margry, from a letter of
the aged Madeleine Cavelier, dated 21 Février, 1756, and addressed to her
nephew M. Le Baillif, who had applied for the papers in behalf of the
minister, Silhouette: "J'ay cherché une occasion sûre pour vous anvoyé les
papiers de M. de la Salle. Il y a des cartes que j'ay jointe à ces
papiers, qui doivent prouver que, en 1675, M. de Lasalle avet déja fet
deux voyages en ces decouverte, puisqu'il y avet une carte, que je vous
envoye, par laquelle il est fait mention de l'androit auquel M. de Lasalle
aborda près le fleuve de Mississipi." This, though brought forward to
support the claim of discovery prior to Joliet, seems to indicate that La
Salle had not reached the Mississippi, but only approached it, previous to
1675.
Margry, in a series of papers in the _Journal Général de l'Instruction
Publique_ for 1862, first took the position that La Salle reached the
Mississippi in 1670 and 1671, and has brought forward in defence of it all
the documents which his unwearied research enabled him to discover. Father
Tailhan, S.J., has replied at length, in the copious notes to his edition
of Nicolas Perrot, but without having seen the principal document cited by
Margry, and of which extracts have been given in the notes to this
chapter.] Had they led him to the Mississippi, it is reasonably certain
that she would have made it known in her memorial. La Salle discovered
the Ohio, and in all probability the Illinois also; but that he discovered
the Mississippi has not been proved, nor, in the light of the evidence we
have, is it likely.
CHAPTER III.
1670-1672.
THE JESUITS ON THE LAKES.
THE OLD MISSIONS AND THE NEW.--A CHANGE OF SPIRIT.--LAKE SUPERIOR
AND THE COPPER-MINES.--STE. MARIE.--LA POINTE.--MICHILLIMACKINAC.
--JESUITS ON LAKE MICHIGAN.--ALLOUEZ AND DABLON.--THE JESUIT FUR-TRADE.
What were the Jesuits doing? Since the ruin of their great mission of the
Hurons, a perceptible change had taken place in them. They had put forth
exertions almost superhuman, set at naught famine, disease, and death,
lived with the self-abnegation of saints and died with the devotion of
martyrs; and the result of all had been a disastrous failure. From no
short-coming on their part, but from the force of events beyond the sphere
of their influence, a very demon of havoc had crushed their incipient
churches, slaughtered their converts, uprooted the populous communities on
which their hopes had rested, and scattered them in bands of wretched
fugitives far and wide through the wilderness. [Footnote: See "The Jesuits
in North America."] They had devoted themselves in the fulness of faith to
the building up of a Christian and Jesuit empire on the conversion of the
great stationary tribes of the lakes; and of these none remained but the
Iroquois,--the destroyers of the rest, among whom, indeed, was a field
which might stimulate their zeal by an abundant promise of sufferings and
martyrdoms; but which, from its geographical position, was too much
exposed to Dutch and English influence to promise great and decisive
results. Their best hopes were now in the North and the West; and thither,
in great part, they had turned their energies.
We find them on Lake Huron, Lake Superior, and Lake Michigan, laboring
vigorously as of old, but in a spirit not quite the same. Now, as before,
two objects inspired their zeal, the "greater glory of God," and the
influence and credit of the order of Jesus. If the one motive had somewhat
lost in power, the other had gained. The epoch of the saints and martyrs
was passing away; and henceforth we find the Canadian Jesuit less and less
an apostle, more and more an explorer, a man of science, and a politician.
The yearly reports of the missions are still, for the edification of the
pious reader, stuffed with intolerably tedious stories of baptisms,
conversions, and the exemplary deportment of neophytes; for these have
become a part of the formula; but they are relieved abundantly by more
mundane topics. One finds observations on the winds, currents, and tides
of the Great Lakes; speculations on a subterranean outlet of Lake
Superior; accounts of its copper-mines, and how we, the Jesuit fathers,
are laboring to explore them for the profit of the colony; surmises
touching the North Sea, the South Sea, the Sea of China, which we hope ere
long to discover; and reports of that great mysterious river of which the
Indians tell us,--flowing southward, perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico,
perhaps to the Vermilion Sea,--and the secrets whereof, with the help of
the Virgin, we will soon reveal to the world.
The Jesuit was as often a fanatic for his order as for his faith; and
oftener yet, the two fanaticisms mingled in him inextricably. Ardently as
he burned for the saving of souls, he would have none saved on the Upper
Lakes except by his brethren and himself. He claimed a monopoly of
conversion, with its attendant monopoly of toil, hardship, and martyrdom.
Often disinterested for himself, he was inordinately ambitious for the
great corporate power in which he had merged his own personality; and here
lies one cause, among many, of the seeming contradictions which abound in
the annals of the order.
Prefixed to the _Relation_ of 1671 is that monument of Jesuit hardihood
and enterprise, the map of Lake Superior; a work of which, however, the
exactness has been exaggerated, as compared with other Canadian maps of
the day. While making surveys, the priests were diligently looking for
copper. Father Dablon reports that they had found it in greatest abundance
on Isle Minong, now Isle Royale. "A day's journey from the head of the
lake, on the south side, there is," he says, "a rock of copper weighing
from six hundred to eight hundred pounds, lying on the shore where any who
pass may see it;" and he farther speaks of great copper boulders in the
bed of the River Ontonagan.
[Footnote: He complains that the Indians were very averse to giving
information on the subject, so that the Jesuits had not as yet discovered
the metal _in situ_, though they hoped soon to do so. The Indians told him
that the copper had first been found by four hunters, who had landed on a
certain island, near the north shore of the lake. Wishing to boil their
food in a vessel of bark, they gathered stones on the shore, heated them
red hot and threw them in; but presently discovered them to be pure
copper. Their repast over, they hastened to re-embark, being afraid of the
lynxes and the hares; which, on this island, were as large as dogs, and
which would have devoured their provisions, and perhaps their canoe. They
took with them some of the wonderful stones; but scarcely had they left
the island, when a deep voice, like thunder, sounded in their ears, "Who
are these thieves who steal the toys of my children?" It was the God of
the Waters, or some other powerful manito. The four adventurers retreated
in great terror, but three of them soon died, and the fourth survived only
long enough to reach his village and tell the story. The island has no
foundation, but floats with the movement of the wind; and no Indian dares
land on its shores, dreading the wrath of the manito.--Dablon, _Relation_,
1670, 84.]
There were two principal missions on the Upper Lakes; which were, in a
certain sense, the parents of the rest. One of these was Ste. Marie du
Saut,--the same visited by Dollier and Galinée,--at the outlet of Lake
Superior. This was a noted fishing-place; for the rapids were full of
white-fish, and Indians came thither in crowds. The permanent residents
were an Ojibwa band, called by the French Sauteurs, whose bark lodges were
clustered at the foot of the rapids, near the fort of the Jesuits. Besides
these, a host of Algonquins, of various tribes, resorted thither in the
spring and summer; living in abundance on the fishery, and dispersing in
winter to wander and starve in scattered hunting-parties far and wide
through the forests.
The other chief mission was that of St. Esprit, at La Pointe, near the
western extremity of Lake Superior. Here were the Hurons,--fugitives
twenty years before from the slaughter of their countrymen; and the
Ottawas, who, like them, had sought an asylum from the rage of the
Iroquois. Many other tribes,--Illinois, Pottawattamies, Foxes, Menomonies,
Sioux, Assinneboins, Knisteneaux, and a multitude besides,--came hither
yearly to trade with the French. Here was a young Jesuit, Jacques
Marquette, lately arrived from the Saut Ste. Marie. His savage flock
disheartened him by its backslidings: and the best that he could report of
the Hurons, after all the toils and all the blood lavished in their
conversion, was, that they "still retain a little Christianity;" while the
Ottawas are "far removed from the kingdom of God, and addicted beyond all
other tribes to foulness, incantations, and sacrifices to evil spirits."
[Footnote: _Lettre du Père Jacques Marquette au R. P. Supérieur des
Missions_; in _Relation_, 1670, 87.]
Marquette heard from the Illinois,--yearly visitors at La Pointe,--of the
great river which they had crossed on their way, [Footnote: The Illinois
lived at this time beyond the Mississippi, thirty days' journey from La
Pointe; whither they had been driven by the Iroquois, from their former
abode near Lake Michigan. Dablon, (_Relation_, 1671; 24, 25,) says that
they lived seven days' journey beyond the Mississippi, in eight villages.
A few years later, most of them returned to the east side and made their
abode on the River Illinois.] and which, as he conjectured, flowed into
the Gulf of California. He heard marvels of it also from the Sioux, who
lived on its banks; and a strong desire possessed him, to explore the
mystery of its course. A sudden calamity dashed his hopes. The Sioux,--the
Iroquois of the West, as the Jesuits call them,--had hitherto kept the
peace with the expatriated tribes of La Pointe; but now, from some cause
not worth inquiry, they broke into open war, and so terrified the Hurons
and Ottawas that they abandoned their settlements and fled. Marquette
followed his panic-stricken flock; who, passing the Saut Ste. Marie, and
descending to Lake Huron, stopped, at length,--the Hurons at
Michillimackinac, and the Ottawas at the Great Manatoulin Island. Two
missions were now necessary to minister to the divided bands. That of
Michillimackinac was assigned to Marquette, and that of the Manatoulin
Island to Louis André. The former took post at Point St. Ignace, on the
north shore of the straits of Michillimackinac, while the latter began the
mission of St. Simon at the new abode of the Ottawas. When winter came,
scattering his flock to their hunting-grounds, André made a missionary
tour among the Nipissings and other neighboring tribes. The shores of Lake
Huron had long been an utter solitude, swept of their denizens by the
terror of the all-conquering Iroquois; but now that these tigers had felt
the power of the French, and learned for a time to leave their Indian
allies in peace, the fugitive hordes were returning to their ancient
abodes. André's experience among them was of the roughest. The staple of
his diet was acorns and _tripe de roche_,--a species of lichen, which,
being boiled, resolved itself into a black glue, nauseous, but not void of
nourishment. At times he was reduced to moss, the bark of trees, or
moccasins and old moose-skins cut into strips and boiled. His hosts
treated him very ill, and the worst of their fare was always his portion.
When spring came to his relief, he returned to his post of St. Simon, with
impaired digestion and unabated zeal.
Besides the Saut Ste. Marie and Michillimackinac,--both noted fishing-
places,--there was another spot, no less famous for game and fish, and
therefore a favorite resort of Indians. This was the head of the Green Bay
of Lake Michigan. [Footnote: The Baye des Puans of the early writers; or,
more correctly, La Baye des Eaux Puantes. The Winnebago Indians, living
near it, were called Lies Puans, apparently for no other reason than
because some portion of the bay was said to have an odor like the sea.
Lake Michigan, the Lac des Illinois of the French, was, according to a
letter of Father Allouez, called Machihiganing by the Indians. Dablon
writes the name, Mitchiganon.] Here and in adjacent districts several
distinct tribes had made their abode. The Menomonies were on the river
which bears their name; the Pottawattamies and Winnebagoes were near the
borders of the bay; the Sacs on Fox River; the Mascoutins, Miamis, and
Kickapoos, on the same river, above Lake Winnebago; and the Outagamies, or
Foxes, on a tributary of it flowing from the north. Green Bay was
manifestly suited for a mission; and, as early as the autumn of 1669,
Father Claude Allouez was sent thither to found one. After nearly
perishing by the way, he set out to explore the destined field of his
labors, and went as far as the town of the Mascoutins. Early in the autumn
of 1670, having been joined by Dablon, Superior of the missions on the
Upper Lakes, he made another journey; but not until the two fathers had
held a council with the congregated tribes at St. François Xavier,--for so
they named their mission of Green Bay. Here, as they harangued their naked
audience, their gravity was put to the proof; for a band of warriors,
anxious to do them honor, walked incessantly up and down, aping the
movements of the soldiers on guard before the Governor's tent at Montreal.
"We could hardly keep from laughing," writes Dablon, "though we were
discoursing on very important subjects; namely, the mysteries of our
religion, and the things necessary to escaping from eternal fire."
[Footnote: _Relation_, 1671, 43.]
The fathers were delighted with the country, which Dablon. calls an
earthly paradise; but he adds that the way to it is as hard as the path to
heaven. He alludes especially to the rapids of Fox River, which gave the
two travellers great trouble. Having safely passed them, they saw an
Indian idol on the bank, similar to that which Dollier and Galinée found
at Detroit; being merely a rock, bearing some resemblance to a man, and
hideously painted. With the help of their attendants, they threw it into
the river. Dablon expatiates on the buffalo; which he describes apparently
on the report of others, as his description is not very accurate. Crossing
Winnebago Lake, the two priests followed the river leading to the town of
the Mascoutins and Miamis, which they reached on the fifteenth of
September. [Footnote: This town was on the Neenah or Fox River, above Lake
Winnebago. The Mascoutins, Fire Nation, or Nation of the Prairie, are
extinct or merged in other tribes.--See "Jesuits in North America." The
Miamis soon removed to the banks of the River St. Joseph, near Lake
Michigan.] These two tribes lived together within the compass of the same
inclosure of palisades; to the number, it is said, of more than three
thousand souls. The missionaries, who had brought a highly-colored picture
of the Last Judgment, called the Indians to council and displayed it
before them; while Allouez, who spoke Algonquin, harangued them on hell,
demons, and eternal flames. They listened with open ears, beset him night
and day with questions, and invited him and his companion to unceasing
feasts. They were welcomed in every lodge, and followed everywhere with
eyes of curiosity, wonder, and awe. Dablon overflows with praises of the
Miami chief; who was honored by his subjects like a king, and whose
demeanor to wards his guests had no savor of the savage.
Their hosts told them of the great river Mississippi, rising far in the
north and flowing southward,--they knew not whither,--and of many tribes
that dwelt along its banks. When at length they took their departure, they
left behind them a reputation as medicine-men of transcendent power.
In the winter following, Allouez visited the Foxes, whom he found in
extreme ill-humor. They were incensed against the French by the ill-usage
which some of their tribe had lately met with when on a trading-visit to
Montreal; and they received the faith with shouts of derision. The priest
was horror-stricken at what he saw. Their lodges,--each, containing from
five to ten families,--seemed in his eyes like seraglios; for some of the
chiefs had eight wives. He armed himself with patience, and at length
gained a hearing. Nay, he succeeded so well, that when he showed them his
crucifix, they would throw tobacco on it as an offering; and, on another
visit, which he made them soon after, he taught the whole village to make
the sign of the cross. A war-party was going out against their enemies,
and he bethought him of telling them the story of the Cross and the
Emperor Constantine. This so wrought upon them that they all daubed the
figure of a cross on their shields of bull-hide, set out for the war, and
came back victorious, extolling the sacred symbol as a great war-medicine.
"Thus it is," writes Dablon, who chronicles the incident, "that our holy
faith is established among these people; and we have good hope that we
shall soon carry it to the famous river called the Mississippi, and
perhaps even to the South Sea." [Footnote: _Relation_, 1672, 42.] Most
things human have their phases of the ludicrous; and the heroism of these
untiring priests is no exception to the rule.
The various missionary stations were much alike. They consisted of a
chapel (commonly of logs) and one or more houses, with perhaps a
storehouse and a workshop,--the whole fenced with palisades, and forming,
in fact, a stockade fort, surrounded with clearings and cultivated fields.
It is evident that the priests had need of other hands than their own and
those of the few lay brothers attached to the mission. They required men
inured to labor, accustomed to the forest life, able to guide canoes and
handle tools and weapons. In the earlier epoch of the missions, when
enthusiasm was at its height, they were served in great measure by
volunteers, who joined them through devotion or penitence, and who were
known as _donnés_, or "given men." Of late, the number of these had much
diminished; and they now relied chiefly on hired men, or _engagés_. These
were employed in building, hunting, fishing, clearing and tilling the
ground, guiding canoes, and if faith is to be placed in reports current
throughout the colony in trading with the Indians for the profit of the
missions. This charge of trading--which, if the results were applied
exclusively to the support of the missions, does not of necessity involve
much censure--is vehemently reiterated in many quarters, including the
official despatches of the Governor of Canada; while, so far as I can
discover, the Jesuits never distinctly denied it; and, on several
occasions, they partially admitted its truth. [Footnote: This charge was
made from the first establishment of the missions. For remarks on it, see
"Jesuits in North America."]
CHAPTER IV.
1667-1672.
FRANCE TAKES POSSESSION OF THE WEST.
TALON.--ST. LUSSON.--PERROT.--THE CEREMONY AT SAUT STE. MARIE.--
THE SPEECH OF ALLOUEZ.--COUNT FRONTENAC.
Jean Talon, Intendant of Canada, was a man of no common stamp. Able,
vigorous, and patriotic,--he was the worthy lieutenant and disciple of the
great minister Colbert, the ill-requited founder of the prosperity of
Louis XIV. He cherished high hopes for the future of New France, and
labored strenuously to realize them. He urged upon the king a scheme
which, could it have been accomplished, would have wrought strange changes
on the American continent. This was, to gain possession of New York, by
treaty or conquest; [Footnote: _Lettre de Talon à Colbert_, 27 _Oct_.
1667. Twenty years after, the plan was again suggested by the Governor,
Denonville.] thus giving to Canada a southern access to the ocean, open at
all seasons, separating New England from Virginia, and controlling the
Iroquois, the most formidable enemy of the French colony. Louis XIV. held
the king of England in his pay; and, had the proposal been urged, the
result could not have been foretold. The scheme failed, and Talon prepared
to use his present advantages to the utmost. While laboring strenuously to
develop the industrial resources of the colony, he addressed himself to
discovering and occupying the interior of the continent; controlling the
rivers, which were its only highways; and securing it for France against
every other nation. On the east, England was to be hemmed within a narrow
strip of seaboard; while, on the south, Talon aimed at securing a port on
the Gulf of Mexico, to hold the Spaniards in check, and dispute with them
the possession of the vast regions which they claimed as their own. But
the interior of the continent was still an unknown world. It behooved him
to explore it; and to that end he availed himself of Jesuits, officers,
fur-traders, and enterprising schemers like La Salle. His efforts at
discovery seem to have been conducted with a singular economy of the
king's purse. La Salle paid all the expenses of his first expedition made
under Talon's auspices; and apparently of the second also, though the
Intendant announces it in his despatches as an expedition sent out by
himself. [Footnote: At all events, La Salle was in great need of money
about the time of his second journey. On the sixth of August, 1671, he had
received on credit, "dans son grand besoin et nécessité," from Branssat,
fiscal attorney of the Seminary, merchandise to the amount of four hundred
and fifty livres; and, on the eighteenth of December of the following
year, he gave his promise to pay the same sum, in money or furs, in the
August following. Faillon found the papers in the ancient records of
Montreal.] When, in 1670, he ordered Daumont de St. Lusson to search for
copper-mines on Lake Superior, and, at the same time, to take formal
possession of the whole interior for the king; it was arranged that he
should pay the costs of the journey by trading with the Indians.
[Footnote: In his despatch of 2d Nov. 1671, Talon writes to the king that
"St. Lusson's expedition will cost nothing, as he has received beaver
enough from the Indians to pay him."]
St. Lusson set out with a small party of men, and Nicolas Perrot as his
interpreter. Among Canadian _voyageurs_ few names are so conspicuous as
that of Perrot; not because there were not others who matched him in
achievement, but because he could write, and left behind him a tolerable
account of what he had seen. [Footnote: _Moeurs, Coustumes, et Relligion
des Sauvages de l'Amérique Septentrionale_. This work of Perrot, hitherto
unpublished, appeared in 1864, under the editorship of Father Tailhan,
S.J. A great part of it is incorporated in La Potherie.] He was at this
time twenty-six years old, and had formerly been an _engagé_ of the
Jesuits. He was a man of enterprise, courage, and address; the last being
especially shown in his dealings with Indians, over whom he had great
influence. He spoke Algonquin fluently, and was favorably known to many
tribes of that family. St. Lusson wintered at the Manatoulin Islands;
while Perrot--having first sent messages to the tribes of the north,
inviting them to meet the deputy of the Governor at the Saut Ste. Marie in
the following spring--proceeded to Green Bay, to urge the same invitation
upon the tribes of that quarter. They knew him well, and greeted him with
clamors of welcome. The Miamis, it is said, received him with a sham
battle, which was designed to do him honor, but by which nerves more
susceptible would have been severely shaken. [Footnote: See La Potherie,
ii. 125. Perrot himself does not mention it. Charlevoix erroneously places
this interview at Chicago. Perrot's narrative shows that he did not go
farther than the tribes of Green Bay; and the Miamis were then, as we have
seen, on the upper part of Fox River.] They entertained him also with a
grand game of _la crosse_, the Indian ball-play. Perrot gives a marvellous
account of the authority and state of the Miami chief; who, he says, was
attended day and night by a guard of warriors,--an assertion which would
be incredible were it not sustained by the account of the same chief given
by the Jesuit Dablon. Of the tribes of the Bay, the greater part promised
to send delegates to the Saut; but the Pottawattamies dissuaded the Miami
potentate from attempting so long a journey, lest the fatigue incident to
it might injure his health; and he therefore deputed them to represent him
and his tribesmen at the great meeting. Their principal chiefs, with those
of the Sacs, Winnebagoes, and Menomonies, embarked, and paddled for the
place of rendezvous; where they and Perrot arrived on the fifth of May.
[Footnote: Perrot, _Mémoires_, 127.]
St. Lusson was here with his men, fifteen in number, among whom was Louis
Joliet; [Footnote: _Procès Verbal de la Prise de Possession, etc._, 14
_Juin_, 1671. The names are attached to this instrument.] and Indians were
fast thronging in from their wintering grounds; attracted, as usual, by
the fishery of the rapids, or moved by the messages sent by Perrot,--
Crees, Monsonis, Amikoués, Nipissings, and many more. When fourteen
tribes, or their representatives, had arrived, St. Lusson prepared to
execute the commission with which he was charged.
At the foot of the rapids was the village of the Sauteurs, above the
village was a hill, and hard by stood the fort of the Jesuits. On the
morning of the fourteenth of June, St. Lusson led his followers to the top
of the hill, all fully equipped and under arms. Here, too, in the
vestments of their priestly office, were four Jesuits,--Claude Dablon,
Superior of the Missions of the Lakes, Gabriel Druilletes, Claude Allouez,
and Louis André. [Footnote: Marquette is said to have been present; but
the official act, just cited, proves the contrary. He was still at St.
Esprit.] All around, the great throng of Indians stood, or crouched, or
reclined at length, with eyes and ears intent. A large cross of wood had
been made ready. Dablon, in solemn form, pronounced his blessing on it;
and then it was reared and planted in the ground, while the Frenchmen,
uncovered, sang the _Vexilla Regis_. Then a post of cedar was planted
beside it, with a metal plate attached, engraven with the royal arms;
while St. Lusson's followers sang the _Exaudiat_ and one of the Jesuits
uttered a prayer for the king. St. Lusson now advanced, and, holding his
sword in one hand, and raising with the other a sod of earth, proclaimed
in a loud voice,--
"In the name of the Most High, Mighty, and Redoubted Monarch, Louis,
Fourteenth of that name, Most Christian King of France and of Navarre, I
take possession of this place, Sainte Marie du Saut, as also of Lakes
Huron and Superior, the Island of Manatoulin, and all countries, rivers,
lakes, and streams contiguous and adjacent thereunto; both those which
have been discovered and those which may be discovered hereafter, in all
their length and breadth, bounded on the one side by the seas of the North
and of the West, and on the other by the South Sea: declaring to the
nations thereof that from this time forth they are vassals of his Majesty,
bound to obey his laws and follow his customs: promising them on his part
all succor and protection against the incursions and invasions of their
enemies: declaring to all other potentates, princes, sovereigns, states
and republics,--to them and their subjects,--that they cannot and are not
to seize or settle upon any parts of the aforesaid countries, save only
under the good pleasure of His Most Christian Majesty, and of him who will
govern in his behalf; and this on pain of incurring his resentment and the
efforts of his arms. _Vive le Roi_." [Footnote: _Procès Verbal de la Prise
de Possession_.]
The Frenchmen fired their guns and shouted "_Vive le Roi_," and the yelps
of the astonished Indians mingled with the din.
What now remains of the sovereignty thus pompously proclaimed? Now and
then, the accents of France on the lips of some straggling boatman or
vagabond half-breed;--this, and nothing more.
When the uproar was over, Father Allouez addressed the Indians in a solemn
harangue; and these were his words: "It is a good work, my brothers, an
important work, a great work, that brings us together in council to-day.
Look up at the cross which rises so high above your heads. It was there
that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, after making himself a man for the love
of men, was nailed and died, to satisfy his Eternal Father for our sins.
He is the master of our lives; the ruler of Heaven, Earth, and Hell. It is
he of whom I am continually speaking to you, and whose name and word I
have borne through all your country. But look at this post to which are
fixed the arms of the great chief of France, whom we call King. He lives
across the sea. He is the chief of the greatest chiefs, and has no equal
on earth. All the chiefs whom you have ever seen are but children beside
him. He is like a great tree, and they are but the little herbs that one
walks over and tramples under foot. You know Onontio, [Footnote: The
Indian name of the Governor of Canada.] that famous chief at Quebec; you
know and you have seen that he is the terror of the Iroquois, and that his
very name makes them tremble, since he has laid their country waste and
burned their towns with fire. Across the sea there are ten thousand
Onontios like him, who are but the warriors of our great King, of whom I
have told you. When he says, 'I am going to war,' everybody obeys his
orders; and each of these ten thousand chiefs raises a troop of a hundred
warriors, some on sea and some on land. Some embark in great ships, such
as you have seen at Quebec. Your canoes carry only four or five men, or at
the most, ten or twelve; but our ships carry four or five hundred, and
sometimes a thousand. Others go to war by land, and in such numbers that
if they stood in a double file they would reach from here to
Mississaquenk, which is more than twenty leagues off. When our King
attacks his enemies, he is more terrible than the thunder: the earth
trembles; the air and the sea are all on fire with the blaze of his
cannon: he is seen in the midst of his warriors, covered over with the
blood of his enemies, whom he kills in such numbers, that he does not
reckon them by the scalps, but by the streams of blood which he causes to
flow. He takes so many prisoners that he holds them in no account, but
lets them go where they will, to show that he is not afraid of them. But
now nobody dares make war on him. All the nations beyond the sea have
submitted to him and begged humbly for peace. Men come from every quarter
of the earth to listen to him and admire him. All that is done in the
world is decided by him alone.
"But what shall I say of his riches? You think yourselves rich when you
have ten or twelve sacks of corn, a few hatchets, beads, kettles, and
other things of that sort. He has cities of his own, more than there are
of men in all this country for five hundred leagues around. In each city
there are store-houses where there are hatchets enough to cut down, all
your forests, kettles enough to cook all your moose, and beads enough to
fill all your lodges. His house is longer than from here to the top of the
Saut,--that is to say, more than half a league,--and higher than your
tallest trees; and it holds more families than the largest of your towns."
[Footnote: A close translation of Dablon's report of the speech. See
_Relation_, 1671, 27.] The Father added more in a similar strain; but the
peroration of his harangue is not on record.
Whatever impression this curious effort of Jesuit rhetoric may have
produced upon the hearers, it did not prevent them from stripping the
royal arms from the post to which they were nailed, as soon as St. Lusson
and his men had left the Saut; probably, not because they understood the
import of the symbol, but because they feared it as a charm. St. Lusson
proceeded to Lake Superior; where, however, he accomplished nothing,
except, perhaps, a traffic with the Indians on his own account; and he
soon after returned to Quebec. Talon was resolved to find the Mississippi,
the most interesting object of search, and seemingly the most attainable,
in the wild and vague domain which he had just claimed for the king. The
Indians had described it; the Jesuits were eager to discover it; and La
Salle, if he had not reached it, had explored two several avenues by which
it might be approached. Talon looked about him for a fit agent of the
enterprise, and made choice of Louis Joliet, who had returned from Lake
Superior. [Footnote: _Lettre de Frontenac au Ministre_, 2 _Nov_. 1672, MS.
In the Brodhead Collection, by a copyist's error, the name of the
Chevalier de Grandfontaine is substituted for that of Talon.] But the
Intendant was not to see the fulfilment of his design. His busy and useful
career in Canada was drawing to an end. A misunderstanding had arisen
between him and the Governor, Courcelles. Both were able and public-
spirited; but the relations between the two chiefs of the colony were of a
nature necessarily so critical, that a conflict of authority was scarcely
to be avoided. The Governor presided at the council, and held the military
command; the Intendant directed affairs of justice, finance, and commerce.
Each thought his functions encroached upon, and both asked for recall.
[Footnote: Courcelles returned home on the plea of ill health. Talon
remained a little longer; but soon asked leave to return to France, seeing
that he should fare worse with the new governor than with the old.]
Another governor succeeded; one who was to stamp his mark, broad, bold,
and ineffaceable, on the most memorable page of French-American History.
In the Church of Notre Dame, at Quebec, on a day in the early autumn of
1672, the priests were singing _Te Deum_ for the safe arrival of him whom
they were soon to wish beyond the sea again, or beneath it. Here you would
have seen the new governor surrounded by officers, and by the chief
inhabitants, anxious to pay their court; a tall man in the pompous garb of
a military noble of that gorgeous reign, well advanced in middle life, but
whose high keen features, full of intellect and fire, bespoke his prompt
undaunted nature,--Louis de Buade, Count of Palluau and Frontenac. He
belonged to the high nobility, had held important commands, and, if the
song-writers of his time speak true, had anticipated the king in the
favors of Madame de Montespan. [Footnote: See Brunet, in notes to
_Correspondance de la Duchesse d'Orléans_; Paulin, in notes to the
_Historiettes de Tallement des Reaux_; and Margry, in _Journal Général de
I'Instruction Publique_.] His wife, who could not endure him--and the
aversion seems to have been mutual--was a noted beauty of the court, and
held great influence in its brilliant and corrupt society. [Footnote: St.
Simon and Mademoiselle de Montpensier give very curious accounts of Madame
de Frontenac, who is also mentioned in the _Lettres de Madame de Sevigné_.
Her portrait will be found at Versailles.] Frontenac was full of faults;
but it is not through these that his memory has survived him. He was
domineering, arbitrary, intolerant of opposition, irascible, vehement in
prejudice, often wayward, perverse, and jealous: a persecutor of those who
crossed him; yet capable, by fits, of moderation, and a magnanimous
lenity; and gifted with a rare charm--not always exerted--to win the
attachment of men: versed in books, polished in courts and salons; without
fear, incapable of repose, keen and broad of sight, clear in judgment,
prompt in decision, fruitful in resources, unshaken when others despaired;
a sure breeder of storms in time of peace, but in time of calamity and
danger a tower of strength. His early career in America was beset with ire
and enmity; but admiration and gratitude hailed him at its close: for it
was he who saved the colony and led it triumphant from an abyss of ruin.
[Footnote: In the Library of the Seminary of Quebec is preserved the
funeral oration pronounced over the body of Frontenac by Olivier Goyer, a
Récollet friar. It is a blind and wholesale panegyric, but it is
interlined with notes and comments at great length, by some other
ecclesiastic, a bitter enemy of the Governor. He is vindictive and
acrimonious beyond measure; but, between the two, a good deal of truth is
struck out. Charlevoix's estimate of Frontenac is admirably candid, when
it is remembered that he writes of an enemy of his Order. The career of
Frontenac, his letters, and those of his enemies,--of which many are
preserved,--are, however, his best interpretation.]
CHAPTER V.
1672-1675.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
JOLIET SENT TO FIND THE MISSISSIPPI.--JACQUES MARQUETTE.--DEPARTURE.--
GREEN BAY.--THE WISCONSIN.--THE MISSISSIPPI.--INDIANS.--MANITOUS.--
THE ARKANSAS.--THE ILLINOIS.--JOLIET'S MISFORTUNE.--MARQUETTE
AT CHICAGO.--HIS ILLNESS.--HIS DEATH.
If Talon had remained in the colony, Frontenac would infallibly have
quarrelled with him; but he was too clear-sighted not to approve his plans
for the discovery and occupation of the interior. Before sailing for
France, Talon recommended Joliet as a suitable agent for the discovery of
the Mississippi, and the Governor accepted his counsel. [Footnote: _Lettre
de Frontenac au Ministre_, 2 _Nov_. 1672; Ibid 14 _Nov_. 1674. MSS]
Louis Joliet was the son of a wagon-maker in the service of the Company of
the Hundred Associates, [Footnote: See "Jesuits in North America."] then,
owners of Canada. He was born at Quebec in 1645, was educated by the
Jesuits; and, when still very young, he resolved to be a priest. He
received the tonsure and the minor orders at the age of seventeen. Four
years after, he is mentioned with especial honor for the part he bore in
the disputes in philosophy, at which the dignitaries of the colony were
present, and in which the Intendant himself took part. [Footnote: "Le 2
Juillet (1666) les premières disputes de philosophie se font dans la
congrégation avec succès. Toutes les puissances s'y trouvent; M.
l'Intendant entr'autres y a argumenté très-bien. M. Jolliet et Pierre
Francheville y ont très-bien répondu de toute la logique."--_Journal des
Jésuites_, MS.] Not long after, he renounced his clerical vocation, and
turned fur-trader. Talon sent him, with one Péré, to explore the copper-
mines of Lake Superior; and it was on his return from this expedition that
he met La Salle and the Sulpitians near the head of Lake Ontario.
[Footnote: Nothing was known of Joliet till Shea investigated his history.
Ferland, in his _Notes sur les Registres de Notre-Dame de Québec_;
Faillon, in his _Colonie Française en Canada_; and Margry, in a series of
papers in the _Journal Général de I'Instruction Publique_,--have thrown
much new light on his life. From journals of a voyage made by him at a
later period to the coast of Labrador,--given in substance by Margry,--he
seems to have been a man of close and intelligent observation. His
mathematical acquirements appear to have been very considerable.]
In what we know of Joliet, there is nothing that reveals any salient or
distinctive trait of character, any especial breadth of view or boldness
of design. He appears to have been simply a merchant, intelligent, well
educated, courageous, hardy, and enterprising. Though he had renounced the
priesthood, he retained his partiality for the Jesuits; and it is more
than probable that their influence had aided not a little to determine
Talon's choice. One of their number, Jacques Marquette, was chosen to
accompany him.
He passed up the lakes to Michillimackinac; and found his destined
companion at Point St. Ignace, on the north side of the strait; where, in
his palisaded mission-house and chapel, he had labored for two years past
to instruct the Huron refugees from St. Esprit, and a band of Ottawas who
had joined them. Marquette was born in 1637, of an old and honorable
family at Laon, in the north of France, and was now thirty-five years of
age. When about seventeen, he had joined the Jesuits, evidently from
motives purely religious; and in 1666 he was sent to the missions of
Canada. At first he was destined to the station of Tadoussac; and, to
prepare himself for it, he studied the Montagnais language under Gabriel
Druilletes. But his destination was changed, and he was sent to the Upper
Lakes in 1668, where he had since remained. His talents as a linguist must
have been great; for, within a few years, he learned to speak with ease
six Indian languages. The traits of his character are unmistakable. He was
of the brotherhood of the early Canadian missionaries, and the true
counterpart of Garnier or Jogues. He was a devout votary of the Virgin
Mary; who, imaged to his mind in shapes of the most transcendent
loveliness with which the pencil of human genius has ever informed the
canvas, was to him the object of an adoration not unmingled with a
sentiment of chivalrous devotion. The longings of a sensitive heart,
divorced from earth, sought solace in the skies. A subtile element of
romance was blended with the fervor of his worship, and hung like an
illumined cloud over the harsh and hard realities of his daily lot.
Kindled by the smile of his celestial mistress, his gentle and noble
nature knew no fear. For her he burned to dare and to suffer, discover new
lands and conquer new realms to her sway.
He begins the journal of his voyage thus: "The day of the Immaculate
Conception of the Holy Virgin; whom I had continually invoked, since I
came to this country of the Ottawas, to obtain from God the favor of being
enabled to visit the nations on the river Mississippi--this very day was
precisely that on which M. Joliet arrived with orders from Count
Frontenac, our Governor, and from M. Talon, our Intendant, to go with me
on this discovery. I was all the more delighted at this good news, because
I saw my plans about to be accomplished, and found myself in the happy
necessity of exposing my life for the salvation of all these tribes; and
especially of the Illinois, who, when I was at Point St. Esprit, had
begged me very earnestly to bring the word of God among them."
The outfit of the travellers was very simple. They provided themselves
with two birch canoes, and a supply of smoked meat and Indian corn;
embarked with five men; and began their voyage on the seventeenth of May.
They had obtained all possible information from the Indians, and had made,
by means of it, a species of map of their intended route. "Above all,"
writes Marquette, "I placed our voyage under the protection of the Holy
Virgin Immaculate, promising that if she granted us the favor of
discovering the great river, I would give it the name of the Conception."
[Footnote: The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, sanctioned in our
own time by the Pope, was always a favorite tenet of the Jesuits; and
Marquette was especially devoted to it.] Their course was westward; and,
plying their paddles, they passed the Straits of Michillimackinac, and
coasted the northern shores of Lake Michigan; landing at evening to build
their camp-fire at the edge of the forest, and draw up their canoes on the
strand. They soon reached the river Menomonie, and ascended it to the
village of the Menomonies, or Wild-rice Indians. [Footnote: The
Malhoumines, Malouminek, Oumalouminek, or Nation des Folles-Avoines, of
early French writers. The _folle-avoine_, wild oats or "wild rice,"--
_Zizania aquatica_,--was their ordinary food, as also of other tribes of
this region.] When they told them the object of their voyage, they were
filled with astonishment, and used their best ingenuity to dissuade them.
The banks of the Mississippi, they said, were inhabited by ferocious
tribes, who put every stranger to death, tomahawking all new-comers
without cause or provocation. They added that there was a demon in a
certain part of the river, whose roar could be heard at a great distance,
and who would engulf them in the abyss where he dwelt; that its waters
were full of frightful monsters, who would devour them and their canoe;
and, finally, that the heat was so great that they would perish
inevitably. Marquette set their counsel at naught, gave them a few words
of instruction in the mysteries of the Faith, taught them a prayer, and
bade them farewell.
The travellers soon reached the mission at the head of Green Bay; entered
the Fox River; with difficulty and labor dragged their canoes up the long
and tumultuous rapids; crossed Lake Winnebago; and followed the quiet
windings of the river beyond, where they glided through an endless growth
of wild rice, and scared the innumerable birds that fed upon it. On either
hand rolled the prairie, dotted with groves and trees, browsing elk and
deer. [Footnote: Dablon, on his journey with Allouez in 1670, was
delighted with the aspect of the country and the abundance of game along
this river. Carver, a century later, speaks to the same effect,--saying
the birds rose up in clouds from the wild-rice marshes.] On the seventh of
June, they reached the Mascoutins and Miamis, who, since the visit of
Dablon and Allouez, had been joined by the Kickapoos. Marquette, who had
an eye for natural beauty, was delighted with the situation of the town,
which he describes as standing on the crown of a hill; while, all around,
the prairie stretched beyond the sight, interspersed with groves and belts
of tall forest. But he was still more delighted when he saw a cross
planted in the midst of the place. The Indians had decorated it with a
number of dressed deer-skins, red girdles, and bows and arrows, which they
had hung upon it as an offering to the Great Manitou of the French,--a
sight by which, as Marquette says, he was "extremely consoled."
The travellers had no sooner reached the town than they called the chiefs
and elders to a council. Joliet told them that the Governor of Canada had
sent him to discover new countries, and that God had sent his companion to
teach the true faith to the inhabitants; and he prayed for guides to show
them the way to the waters of the Wisconsin. The council readily
consented; and on the tenth of June the Frenchmen embarked again, with two
Indians to conduct them. All the town came down to the shore to see their
departure. Here were the Miamis, with long locks of hair dangling over
each ear, after a fashion which Marquette thought very becoming; and here,
too, the Mascoutins and the Kickapoos, whom he describes as mere boors in
comparison with their Miami townsmen. All stared alike at the seven
adventurers, marvelling that men could be found to risk an enterprise so
hazardous.
The river twisted among lakes and marshes choked with wild rice; and, but
for their guides, they could scarcely have followed the perplexed and
narrow channel. It brought them at last to the portage; where, after
carrying their canoes a mile and a half over the prairie and through the
marsh, they launched them on the Wisconsin, bade farewell to the waters
that flowed to the St. Lawrence, and committed themselves to the current
that was to bear them they knew not whither,--perhaps to the Gulf of
Mexico, perhaps to the South Sea or the Gulf of California. They glided
calmly down the tranquil stream, by islands choked with trees and matted
with entangling grape-vines; by forests, groves, and prairies,--the parks
and pleasure-grounds of a prodigal nature; by thickets and marshes and
broad bare sand-bars; under the shadowing trees, between whose tops looked
down from afar the bold brow of some woody bluff. At night, the bivouac,--
the canoes inverted on the bank, the flickering fire, the meal of bison-
flesh or venison, the evening pipes, and slumber beneath the stars: and
when in the morning they embarked again, the mist hung on the river like a
bridal veil; then melted before the sun, till the glassy water and the
languid woods basked breathless in the sultry glare. [Footnote: The above
traits of the scenery of the Wisconsin are taken from personal observation
of the river during midsummer.]
On the 17th of June, they saw on their right the broad meadows, bounded in
the distance by rugged hills, where now stand the town and fort of Prairie
du Chien. Before them, a wide and rapid current coursed athwart their way,
by the foot of lofty heights wrapped thick in forests. They had found what
they sought, and "with a joy," writes Marquette, "which I cannot express,"
they steered forth their canoes on the eddies of the Mississippi.
Turning southward, they paddled down the stream, through a solitude
unrelieved by the faintest trace of man. A large fish, apparently one of
the huge cat-fish of the Mississippi, blundered against Marquette's canoe
with a force which seems to have startled him; and once, as they drew in
their net, they caught a "spade-fish," whose eccentric appearance greatly
astonished them. At length, the buffalo began to appear, grazing in herds
on the great prairies which then bordered the river; and Marquette
describes the fierce and stupid look of the old bulls, as they stared at
the intruders through the tangled mane which nearly blinded them.
They advanced with extreme caution, landed at night, and made a fire to
cook their evening meal; then extinguished it, embarked again, paddled
some way farther, and anchored in the stream, keeping a man on the watch
till morning. They had journeyed more than a fortnight without meeting a
human being; when, on the 25th, they discovered footprints of men in the
mud of the western bank, and a well-trodden path that led to the adjacent
prairie. Joliet and Marquette resolved to follow it; and, leaving the
canoes in charge of their men, they set out on their hazardous adventure.
The day was fair, and they walked two leagues in silence, following the
path through the forest and across the sunny prairie, till they discovered
an Indian village on the banks of a river, and two others on a hill half a
league distant. [Footnote: The Indian villages, under the names of
Peouaria (Peoria) and Moingouena, are represented in Marquette's map upon
a river corresponding in position with the Des Moines; though the distance
from the Wisconsin, as given by him, would indicate a river farther
north.] Now, with beating hearts, they invoked the aid of Heaven, and,
again advancing, came so near without being seen, that they could hear the
voices of the Indians among the wigwams. Then they stood forth in full
view, and shouted, to attract attention. There was great commotion in the
village. The inmates swarmed out of their huts, and four of their chief
men presently came forward to meet the strangers, advancing very
deliberately, and holding up toward the sun two calumets, or peace-pipes,
decorated with feathers. They stopped abruptly before the two Frenchmen,
and stood gazing at them with attention, without speaking a word.
Marquette was much relieved on seeing that they wore French cloth, whence
he judged that they must be friends and allies. He broke the silence, and
asked them who they were; whereupon they answered that they were Illinois,
and offered the pipe; which having been duly smoked, they all went
together to the village. Here the chief received the travellers after a
singular fashion, meant to do them honor. He stood stark naked at the door
of a large wigwam, holding up both hands as if to shield his eyes.
"Frenchmen, how bright the sun shines when you come to visit us! All our
village awaits you; and you shall enter our wigwams in peace." So saying,
he led them into his own; which was crowded to suffocation with savages,
staring at their guests in silence. Having smoked with the chiefs and old
men, they were invited to visit the great chief of all the Illinois, at
one of the villages they had seen in the distance; and thither they
proceeded, followed by a throng of warriors, squaws, and children. On
arriving, they were forced to smoke again, and listen to a speech of
welcome from the great chief; who delivered it, standing between two old
men, naked like himself. His lodge was crowded with the dignitaries of the
tribe; whom Marquette addressed in Algonquin, announcing himself as a
messenger sent by the God who had made them, and whom it behooved them to
recognize and obey. He added a few words touching the power and glory of
Count Frontenac, and concluded by asking information concerning the
Mississippi, and the tribes along its banks, whom he was on his way to
visit. The chief replied with a speech of compliment,--assuring his guests
that their presence added flavor to his tobacco, made the river more calm,
the sky more serene, and the earth more beautiful. In conclusion, he gave
them a young slave and a calumet, begging them at the same time to abandon
their purpose of descending the Mississippi.
A feast of four courses now followed. First, a wooden bowl full of a
porridge of Indian meal boiled with grease was set before the guests, and
the master of ceremonies fed them in turn, like infants, with a large
spoon. Then, appeared a platter of fish; and the same functionary,
carefully removing the bones with his fingers, and blowing on the morsels
to cool them, placed them in the mouths of the two Frenchmen. A large dog,
killed and cooked for the occasion, was next placed before them; but,
failing to tempt their fastidious appetites, was supplanted by a dish of
fat buffalo-meat, which concluded the entertainment. The crowd having
dispersed, buffalo-robes were spread on the ground, and Marquette and
Joliet spent the night on the scene of the late festivity. In the morning,
the chief, with some six hundred of his tribesmen, escorted them to their
canoes, and bade them, after their stolid fashion, a friendly farewell.
Again they were on their way, slowly drifting down the great river. They
passed the mouth of the Illinois, and glided beneath that line of rocks on
the eastern side, cut into fantastic forms by the elements, and marked as
"The Ruined Castles" on some of the early French maps. Presently they
beheld a sight which reminded them that the Devil was still lord paramount
of this wilderness. On the flat face of a high rock, were painted in red,
black, and green a pair of monsters,--each "as large as a calf, with horns
like a deer, red eyes, a beard like a tiger, and a frightful expression of
countenance. The face is something like that of a man, the body covered
with scales; and the tail so long that it passes entirely round the body,
over the head and between the legs, ending like that of a fish." Such is
the account which the worthy Jesuit gives of these _manitous_, or Indian
gods. [Footnote: The rock where these figures were painted is immediately
above the city of Alton. The tradition of their existence remains, though
they are entirely effaced by time. In 1867, when I passed the place, a
part of the rock had been quarried away, and, instead of Marquette's
monsters, it bore a huge advertisement of "Plantation Bitters." Some years
ago, certain persons, with more zeal than knowledge, proposed to restore
the figures, after conceptions of their own; but the idea was abandoned.
Marquette made a drawing of the two monsters, but it is lost. I have,
however, a fac-simile of a map made a few years later by order of the
Intendant Duchesneau; which is decorated with the portrait of one of them,
answering to Marquette's description, and probably copied from his
drawing. St. Cosme, who saw them in 1699, says that they were even then
almost effaced. Douay and Joutel also speak of them; the former, bitterly
hostile to his Jesuit contemporaries, charging Marquette with exaggeration
in his account of them. Joutel could see nothing terrifying in their
appearance; but he says that his Indians made sacrifices to them as they
passed.] He confesses that at first they frightened him; and his
imagination and that of his credulous companions were so wrought upon by
these unhallowed efforts of Indian art, that they continued for a long
time to talk of them as they plied their paddles. They were thus engaged,
when they were suddenly aroused by a real danger. A torrent of yellow mud
rushed furiously athwart the calm blue current of the Mississippi; boiling
and surging, and sweeping in its course logs, branches, and uprooted
trees. They had reached the mouth of the Missouri, where that savage
river, descending from its mad career through a vast unknown of barbarism,
poured its turbid floods into the bosom of its gentler sister. Their light
canoes whirled on the miry vortex like dry leaves on an angry brook. "I
never," writes Marquette, "saw any thing more terrific;" but they escaped
with their fright, and held their way down the turbulent and swollen
current of the now united rivers. [Footnote: The Missouri is called
Pekitanouï by Marquette. It also bears, on early French maps, the names of
Rivière des Osages, and Rivière des Emissourites, or Oumessourits. On
Marquette's map, a tribe of this name is placed near its banks, just above
the Osages. Judging by the course of the Mississippi that it discharged
into the Gulf of Mexico, he conceived the hope of one day reaching the
South Sea by way of the Missouri.] They passed the lonely forest that
covered the site of the destined city of St. Louis, and, a few days later,
saw on their left the mouth of the stream to which the Iroquois had given
the well-merited name of Ohio, or, the Beautiful River. [Footnote: Called
on Marquette's map, Ouabouskiaou. On some of the earliest maps, it is
called Ouabache (Wabash).] Soon they began to see the marshy shores buried
in a dense growth of the cane, with its tall straight stems and feathery
light-green foliage. The sun glowed through the hazy air with a languid
stifling heat, and, by day and night, mosquitoes in myriads left them no
peace. They floated slowly down the current, crouched in the shade of the
sails which they had spread as awnings, when suddenly they saw Indians on
the east bank. The surprise was mutual, and each party was as much
frightened as the other. Marquette hastened to display the calumet which
the Illinois had given him by way of passport; and the Indians,
recognizing the pacific symbol, replied with an invitation to land.
Evidently, they were in communication with Europeans, for they were armed
with guns, knives, and hatchets, wore garments of cloth, and carried their
gunpowder in small bottles of thick glass. They feasted the Frenchmen with
buffalo-meat, bear's oil, and white plums; and gave them a variety of
doubtful information, including the agreeable but delusive assurance that
they would reach the mouth of the river in ten days. It was, in fact, more
than a thousand miles distant.
They resumed their course, and again floated down the interminable
monotony of river, marsh and forest. Day after day passed on in solitude,
and they had paddled some three hundred miles since their meeting with the
Indians; when, as they neared the mouth of the Arkansas, they saw a
cluster of wigwams on the west bank. Their inmates were all astir, yelling
the war-whoop, snatching their weapons, and running to the shore to meet
the strangers, who, on their part, called for succor to the Virgin. In
truth they had need of her aid; for several large wooden canoes, filled
with savages, were putting out from the shore, above and below them, to
cut off their retreat, while a swarm of headlong young warriors waded into
the water to attack them. The current proved too strong; and, failing to
reach the canoes of the Frenchmen, one of them threw his war-club, which
flew over the heads of the startled travellers. Meanwhile, Marquette had
not ceased to hold up his calumet, to which the excited crowd gave no
heed, but strung their bows and notched their arrows for immediate action;
when at length the elders of the village arrived, saw the peace-pipe,
restrained the ardor of the youth, and urged the Frenchmen to come ashore.
Marquette and his companions complied, trembling, and found a better
reception than they had reason to expect. One of the Indians spoke a
little Illinois, and served as interpreter; a friendly conference was
followed by a feast of sagamite and fish; and the travellers, not without
sore misgivings, spent the night in the lodges of their entertainers.
[Footnote: This village, called Mitchigamea, is represented on several
contemporary maps.]
Early in the morning, they embarked again, and proceeded to a village of
the Arkansas tribe, about eight leagues below. Notice of their coming was
sent before them by their late hosts; and, as they drew near, they were
met by a canoe, in the prow of which stood a naked personage, holding a
calumet, singing, and making gestures of friendship. On reaching the
village, which was on the east side, [Footnote: A few years later, the
Arkansas were all on the west side.] opposite the mouth of the river
Arkansas, they were conducted to a sort of scaffold before the lodge of
the war-chief. The space beneath had been prepared for their reception,
the ground being neatly covered with rush mats. On these they were seated;
the warriors sat around them in a semi-circle; then the elders of the
tribe; and then the promiscuous crowd of villagers, standing, and staring
over the heads of the more dignified members of the assembly. All the men
were naked; but, to compensate for the lack of clothing, they wore strings
of beads in their noses and ears. The women were clothed in shabby skins,
and wore their hair clumped in a mass behind each ear. By good luck, there
was a young Indian in the village, who had an excellent knowledge of
Illinois; and through him Marquette endeavored to explain the mysteries of
Christianity, and to gain information concerning the river below. To this
end he gave his auditors the presents indispensable on such occasions, but
received very little in return. They told him that the Mississippi was
infested by hostile Indians, armed with guns procured from white men; and
that they, the Arkansas, stood in such fear of them that they dared not
hunt the buffalo, but were forced to live on Indian corn, of which they
raised three crops a year.
During the speeches on either side, food was brought in without ceasing;
sometimes a platter of sagamite or mush; sometimes of corn boiled whole;
sometimes a roasted dog. The villagers had large earthen pots and
platters, made by themselves with tolerable skill,--as well as hatchets,
knives, and beads, gained by traffic with the Illinois and other tribes in
contact with the French or Spaniards. All day there was feasting without
respite, after the merciless practice of Indian hospitality; but at night
some of their entertainers proposed to kill and plunder them,--a scheme
which was defeated by the vigilance of the chief, who visited their
quarters, and danced the calumet dance to reassure his guests.
The travellers now held counsel as to what course they should take. They
had gone far enough, as they thought, to establish one important point,--
that the Mississippi discharged its waters, not into the Atlantic or sea
of Virginia, nor into the Gulf of California or Vermilion Sea, but into
the Gulf of Mexico. They thought themselves nearer to its mouth than they
actually were,--the distance being still about seven hundred miles; and
they feared that, if they went farther, they might be killed by Indians or
captured by Spaniards, whereby the results of their discovery would be
lost. Therefore they resolved to return to Canada, and report what they
had seen.
They left the Arkansas village, and began their homeward voyage on the
seventeenth of July. It was no easy task to urge their way upward, in the
heat of midsummer, against the current of the dark and gloomy stream,
toiling all day under the parching sun, and sleeping at night in the
exhalations of the unwholesome shore, or in the narrow confines of their
birchen vessels, anchored on the river. Marquette was attacked with
dysentery. Languid and well-nigh spent, he invoked his celestial mistress.
as day after day, and week after week, they won their slow way northward.
At length they reached the Illinois, and, entering its mouth, followed its
course, charmed, as they went, with its placid waters, its shady forests,
and its rich plains, grazed by the bison and the deer. They stopped at a
spot soon to be made famous in the annals of western discovery. This was a
village of the Illinois, then called Kaskaskia,--a name afterwards
transferred to another locality. [Footnote: Marquette says that it
consisted at this time of seventy-four lodges. These, like the Huron and
Iroquois lodges, contained each several fires and several families. This
village was about seven miles below the site of the present town of
Ottawa.] A chief, with a band of young warriors, offered to guide them to
the Lake of the Illinois; that is to say, Lake Michigan. Thither they
repaired; and, coasting its shores, reached Green Bay at the end of
September, after an absence of about four months, during which they had
paddled their canoes somewhat more than two thousand five hundred miles.
[Footnote: The journal of Marquette, first published in an imperfect form
by Thevenot, in 1681, has been reprinted by Mr. Lenox, under the direction
of Mr. Shea, from the manuscript preserved in the archives of the Canadian
Jesuits. It will also be found in Shea's _Discovery and Exploration of the
Mississippi Valley_, and the _Relations Inédites_, of Martin. The true map
of Marquette accompanies all these publications. The map published by
Thevenot and reproduced by Bancroft is not Marquette's.
The original of this, of which I have a fac-simile, bears the title _Carte
de la Nouvelle Découverte que les Pères Jésuites out fait en l'année 1672,
et continuée par le Père Jacques Marquette, etc_. The return route of the
expedition is incorrectly laid down on it. A manuscript map of the Jesuit
Raffeix, preserved in the Bibliothèque Impériale, is more accurate in this
particular. I have also another contemporary manuscript map, indicating
the various Jesuit stations in the west at this time, and representing the
Mississippi, as discovered by Marquette. For these and other maps, see
Appendix.]
Marquette remained, to recruit his exhausted strength; but Joliet
descended to Quebec, to bear the report of his discovery to Count
Frontenac. Fortune had wonderfully favored him on his long and perilous
journey; but now she abandoned him on the very threshold of home. At the
foot of the rapids of La Chine, and immediately above Montreal, his canoe
was overset, two of his men and an Indian boy were drowned, all his papers
were lost, and he himself narrowly escaped. [Footnote: _Lettre de
Frontenac au Ministre, Québec_, 14 _Nov._ 1674, MS.] In a letter to
Frontenac, he speaks of the accident as follows: "I had escaped every
peril from the Indians; I had passed forty-two rapids; and was on the
point of disembarking, full of joy at the success of so long and difficult
an enterprise,--when my canoe capsized, after all the danger seemed over.
I lost two men, and my box of papers, within sight of the first French
settlements, which I had left almost two years before. Nothing remains to
me but my life, and the ardent desire to employ it on any service which
you may please to direct." [Footnote: This letter is appended to Joliet's
smaller map of his discoveries. See Appendix. Joliet applied for a grant
of the countries he had visited, but failed to obtain it, because the king
wished at this time to confine the inhabitants of Canada to productive
industry within the limits of the colony, and to restrain their tendency
to roam into the western wilderness. On the seventh of October, 1675,
Joliet married Claire Bissot, daughter of a wealthy Canadian merchant,
engaged in trade with the northern Indians. This drew Joliet's attention
to Hudson's Bay, and he made a journey thither in 1679, by way of the
Saguenay. He found three English forts on the bay, occupied by about sixty
men, who had also an armed vessel of twelve guns and several small
trading-craft. The English held out great inducements to Joliet to join
them; but he declined, and returned to Quebec, where he reported that,
unless these formidable rivals were dispossessed, the trade of Canada
would be ruined. In consequence of this report, some of the principal
merchants of the colony formed a company to compete with the English in
the trade of Hudson's Bay. In the year of this journey, Joliet received a
grant of the islands of Mignan; and in the following year, 1680, he
received another grant, of the great island of Anticosti in the lower St.
Lawrence. In 1681, he was established here with his wife and six servants.
He was engaged in fisheries; and, being a skilful navigator and surveyor,
he made about this time a chart of the St. Lawrence. In 1690, Sir William
Phips, on his way with an English fleet to attack Quebec, made a descent
on Joliet's establishment, burnt his buildings, and took prisoners his
wife and his mother-in-law. In 1694, Joliet explored the coasts of
Labrador under the auspices of a company formed for the whale and seal
fishery. On his return, Frontenac made him royal pilot for the St.
Lawrence; and at about the same time he received the appointment of
hydrographer at Quebec. He died, apparently poor, in 1699 or 1700, and was
buried on one of the islands of Mignan. The discovery of the above facts
is due in great part to the researches of Margry.]
Marquette spent the winter and the following summer at the mission of
Green Bay, still suffering from his malady. In the autumn, however, it
abated, and he was permitted by his superior to attempt the execution of a
plan to which he was devotedly attached,--the founding, at the principal
town of the Illinois, of a mission to be called the Immaculate Conception,
a name which he had already given to the river Mississippi; He set out on
this errand on the twenty-fifth of October, accompanied by two men, named
Pierre and Jacques, one of whom had been with him on his great journey of
discovery. A band of Pottawattamies and another band of Illinois also
joined him. The united parties--ten canoes in all--followed the east shore
of Green Bay as far as the inlet then called Sturgeon Cove, from the head
of which they crossed by a difficult portage through the forest to the
shore of Lake Michigan. November had come. The bright hues of the autumn
foliage were changed to rusty brown. The shore was desolate, and the lake
was stormy. They were more than a month in coasting its western border,
when at length they reached the river Chicago, entered it, and ascended
about two leagues. Marquette's disease had lately returned, and hemorrhage
now ensued. He told his two companions that this journey would be his
last. In the condition in which he was, it was impossible to go farther.
The two men built a log-hut by the river, and here they prepared to spend
the winter, while Marquette, feeble as he was, began the spiritual
exercises of Saint Ignatius, and confessed his two companions twice a
week.
Meadow, marsh, and forest were sheeted with snow, but game was abundant.
Pierre and Jacques killed buffalo and deer and shot wild turkeys close to
their hut. There was an encampment of Illinois within two days' journey;
and other Indians, passing by this well known thoroughfare, occasionally
visited them, treating the exiles kindly, and sometimes bringing them game
and Indian corn. Eighteen leagues distant was the camp of two adventurous
French traders,--one of them a noted _coureur de bois_, nicknamed La
Taupine, [Footnote: Pierre Moreau, _alias_ La Taupine, was afterwards
bitterly complained of by the Intendant Duchesneau for acting as the
Governor's agent in illicit trade with the Indians.] and the other a self-
styled surgeon. They also visited Marquette, and befriended him to the
best of their power.
Urged by a burning desire to lay, before he died, the foundation of his
new mission of the Immaculate Conception, Marquette begged his two
followers to join him in a _novena_, or nine days' devotion to the Virgin.
In consequence of this, as he believed, his disease relented; he began to
regain strength, and, in March, was able to resume the journey. On the
thirtieth of the month, they left their hut, which had been inundated by a
sudden rise of the river, and carried their canoe through mud and water
over the portage which led to the head of the Des Plaines. Marquette knew
the way, for he had passed by this route on his return from the
Mississippi. Amid the rains of opening spring, they floated down the
swollen current of the Des Plaines, by naked woods, and spongy, saturated
prairies, till they reached its junction with the main stream of the
Illinois, which they descended to their destination,--the Indian town
which Marquette calls Kaskaskia. Here, as we are told, he was received
"like an angel from Heaven." He passed from wigwam to wigwam, telling the
listening crowds of God and the Virgin, Paradise and Hell, angels and
demons; and, when he thought their minds prepared, he summoned them all to
a grand council.
It took place near the town, on the great meadow which lies between the
river and the modern village of Utica. Here five hundred chiefs and old
men were seated in a ring; behind stood fifteen hundred youths and
warriors, and behind these again all the women and children of the
village. Marquette, standing in the midst, displayed four large pictures
of the Virgin; harangued the assembly on the mysteries of the Faith, and
exhorted them to adopt it. The temper of his auditory met his utmost
wishes. They begged him to stay among them and continue his instructions;
but his life was fast ebbing away, and it behooved him to depart.
A few days after Easter he left the village, escorted by a crowd of
Indians, who followed him as far as Lake Michigan. Here he embarked with
his two companions. Their destination was Michillimackinac, and their
course lay along the eastern borders of the lake. As, in the freshness of
advancing spring, Pierre and Jacques urged their canoe along that lonely
and savage shore, the priest lay with dimmed sight and prostrated
strength, communing with the Virgin, and the angels. On the nineteenth of
May he felt that his hour was near; and, as they passed the mouth of a
small river, he requested his companions to land. They complied, built a
shed of bark on a rising ground near the bank, and carried thither the
dying Jesuit. With perfect cheerfulness and composure he gave directions
for his burial, asked their forgiveness for the trouble he had caused
them, administered to them the sacrament of penitence, and thanked God
that he was permitted to die in the wilderness, a missionary of the faith
and a member of the Jesuit brotherhood. At night, seeing that they were
fatigued, he told them to take rest,--saying that he would call them when
he felt his time approaching. Two or three hours after, they heard a
feeble voice, and, hastening to his side, found him at the point of death.
He expired calmly, murmuring the names of Jesus and Mary, with his eyes
fixed on the crucifix which one of his followers held before him. They dug
a grave beside the hut, and here they buried him according to the
directions which he had given them; then re-embarking, they made their way
to Michillimackinac, to bear the tidings to the priests at the mission of
St. Ignace. [Footnote: The contemporary _Relation_ tells us that a miracle
took place at the burial of Marquette. One of the two Frenchmen, overcome
with grief and colic, bethought him of applying a little earth from the
grave to the seat of pain. This at once restored him to health and
cheerfulness.]
In the winter of 1676, a party of Kiskakon Ottawas were hunting on Lake
Michigan; and when, in the following spring, they prepared to return home,
they bethought them, in accordance with an Indian custom, of taking with
them the bones of Marquette, who had been their instructor at the mission
of St. Esprit. They repaired to the spot, found the grave, opened it,
washed and dried the bones and placed them carefully in a box of birch-
bark. Then, in a procession of thirty canoes, they bore it, singing their
funeral songs, to St. Ignace of Michillimackinac. As they approached,
priests, Indians, and traders all thronged to the shore. The relics of
Marquette were received with solemn ceremony, and buried beneath the floor
of the little chapel of the mission. [Footnote: For Marquette's death, see
the contemporary _Relation_, published by Shea, Lenox, and Martin, with
the accompanying _Lettre et Journal_. The river where he died is a small
stream in the west of Michigan, some distance south of the promontory
called the "Sleeping Bear." It long bore his name, which is now borne by a
larger neighboring stream. Charlevoix's account of Marquette's death is
derived from tradition, and is not supported by the contemporary
narrative. The _voyageurs_ on Lake Michigan long continued to invoke the
intercession of the departed missionary in time of danger.
In 1847, the missionary of the Algonquins at the Lake of Two Mountains,
above Montreal, wrote down a tradition of the death of Marquette, from the
lips of an old Indian woman, born in 1777, at Michillimackinac. Her
ancestress had been baptized by the subject of the story. The tradition
has a resemblance to that related as fact by Charlevoix. The old squaw
said that the Jesuit was returning, very ill, to Michillimackinac, when a
storm forced him and his two men to land near a little river. Here he told
them that he should die, and directed them to ring a bell over his grave
and plant a cross. They all remained four days at the spot; and, though
without food, the men felt no hunger. On the night of the fourth day he
died, and the men buried him as he had directed. On waking in the morning,
they saw a sack of Indian corn, a quantity of lard, and some biscuits,
miraculously sent to them in accordance with the promise of Marquette, who
had told them that they should have food enough for their journey to
Michillimackinac. At the same instant, the stream began to rise, and in a
few moments encircled the grave of the Jesuit, which formed, thenceforth,
an islet in the waters. The tradition adds, that an Indian battle
afterwards took place on the banks of this stream, between Christians and
infidels; and that the former gained the victory in consequence of
invoking the name of Marquette. This story bears the attestation of the
priest of the Two Mountains, that it is a literal translation of the
tradition, as recounted by the old woman.
It has been asserted that the Illinois country was visited by two priests,
some time before the visit of Marquette. This assertion was first made by
M. Noiseux, late Grand Vicar of Quebec, who gives no authority for it. Not
the slightest indication of any such visit appears in any contemporary
document or map thus far discovered. The contemporary writers, down to the
time of Marquette and La Salle, all speak of the Illinois as an unknown
country. The entire groundlessness of Noiseux's assertion is shown by Shea
in a paper in the "Weekly Herald," of New York, April 21, 1855.]
CHAPTER VI.
1673-1678.
LA SALLE AND FRONTENAC.
OBJECTS OF LA SALLE.--HIS DIFFICULTIES.--OFFICIAL CORRUPTION IN CANADA.
--THE GOVERNOR OF MONTREAL.--PROJECTS OF FRONTENAC.--CATARAQUI.--FRONTENAC
ON LAKE ONTARIO.--FORT FRONTENAC.--SUCCESS OF LA SALLE.
We turn from the humble Marquette, thanking God with his last breath that
he died for his Order and his faith; and by our side stands the masculine
form of Cavelier de la Salle. Prodigious was the contrast between the two
discoverers: the one, with clasped hands and upturned eyes, seems a figure
evoked from some dim legend of mediaeval saintship; the other, with feet
firm planted on the hard earth, breathes the self-relying energies of
modern practical enterprise. Nevertheless, La Salle was a man wedded to
ideas, and urged by the steady and considerate enthusiasm, which is the
life-spring of heroic natures. Three thoughts, rapidly developing in his
mind, were mastering him, and engendering an invincible purpose. First, he
would achieve that which Champlain had vainly attempted, and of which our
own generation has but now seen the accomplishment,--the opening of a
passage to India and China across the American continent. Next, he would
occupy the Great West, develop its commercial resources, and anticipate
the Spaniards and the English in the possession of it. Thirdly,--for he
soon became convinced that the Mississippi discharged itself into the Gulf
of Mexico,--he would establish a fortified post at its mouth, thus
securing an outlet for the trade of the interior, checking the progress of
the Spaniards, and forming a base, whence, in time of war, their northern
provinces could be invaded and conquered.
Here were vast projects, projects perhaps beyond the scope of private
enterprise, conceived and nursed in the brain of a penniless young man.
Two conditions were indispensable to their achievement. The first was the
countenance of the Canadian authorities, and the second was money. There
was but one mode of securing either, to appeal to the love of gain of
those who could aid the enterprise. Count Frontenac had no money to give;
but he had what was no less to the purpose, the resources of an arbitrary
power, which he was always ready to use to the utmost. From the manner in
which he mentions La Salle in his despatches, it seems that the latter
succeeded in gaining his confidence very soon after he entered upon his
government. There was a certain similarity between the two men. Both were
able, resolute, and enterprising. The irascible and fiery pride of the
noble found its match in the reserved and seemingly cold pride of the
ambitious young burgher. Their temperaments were different, but the bases
of their characters were alike, and each could perfectly comprehend the
other. They had, moreover, strong prejudices and dislikes in common. With
his ruined fortune, his habits of expenditure, the exigent demands of his
rank and station, and the wretched pittance which he received from the
king of three thousand francs a year, Frontenac was not the man to let
slip any reasonable opportunity of bettering his condition. [Footnote:
That he engaged in the fur-trade, was notorious. In a letter to the
Minister Seignelay, 13 Oct. 1681, Duchesneau, Intendant of Canada,
declares that Frontenac used all the authority of his office to favor
those interested in trade with him, and that he would favor nobody else.
The Intendant himself had a rival interest in the same trade.] La Salle
seems to have laid his plans before him as far as he had at this time
formed them, and a complete understanding was established between them.
Here was a great point gained. The head of the colony was on his side. It
remained to raise money, and this was a harder task. La Salle's relations
were rich, evidently proud of him, and anxious for his advancement. As his
schemes developed, they supplied him with means to pursue them, and one of
them in particular, his cousin François Plet, became largely interested in
his enterprises. [Footnote: _Papiers de Famille_, MSS.] Believing
that his projects, if carried into effect, would prove a source of immense
wealth to all concerned in them, and gifted with a rare power of
persuasion when he chose to use it, La Salle addressed himself to various
merchants and officials of the colony, and induced some of them to become
partners in his adventure. But here we are anticipating. Clearly to
understand his position, we must revert to the first year of Frontenac's
government.
No sooner had that astute official set foot in the colony than, with an
eagle eye, he surveyed the situation, and quickly comprehended it. It was
somewhat peculiar. Canada lived on the fur-trade, a species of commerce
always liable to disorders, and which had produced, among other results, a
lawless body of men known as _coureurs de bois_, who followed the Indians
in their wanderings, and sometimes became as barbarous as their red
associates. The order-loving king who swayed the destinies of France,
taking umbrage at these irregularities, had issued mandates intended to
repress the evil, by prohibiting the inhabitants of Canada from leaving
the limits of the settled country; and requiring the trade to be carried
on, not in the distant wilderness, but within the bounds of the colony.
The civil and military officers of the crown, charged with the execution
of these ordinances, showed a sufficient zeal in enforcing them against
others, while they themselves habitually violated them; hence, a singular
confusion, with abundant outcries, complaint, and recrimination. Prominent
among these officials was Perrot, Governor of Montreal, who must not be
confounded with Nicolas Perrot, the _voyageur_. The Governor of Montreal,
though subordinate to the Governor-General, held great and arbitrary power
within his own jurisdiction. Perrot had married a niece of Talon, the late
Intendant, to whose influence he owed his place. Confiding in this
powerful protection, he gave free rein to his headstrong-temper, and
carried his government with a high hand, berating and abusing anybody who
ventured to remonstrate. The grave fathers of St. Sulpice, owners of
Montreal, were the more scandalized at the behavior of their military
chief, by reason of a certain burlesque and gasconading vein which often
appeared in him, and which they regarded as unseemly levity. [Footnote:
Perrot received his appointment from the Seminary of St. Sulpice, on
Talon's recommendation, but he afterwards applied for and gained a royal
commission, which, as he thought, made him independent of the priests.]
Perrot, through his wife's uncle, had obtained a grant of the Island above
Montreal, which still bears his name. Here he established a trading house
which he placed in charge of an agent, one Brucy, who, by a tempting
display of merchandise and liquors, intercepted the Indians on their
yearly descent to trade with the French, and thus got possession of their
furs, in anticipation of the market of Montreal. Not satisfied with this,
Perrot, in defiance of the royal order, sent men into the woods to trade
with the Indians in their villages, and it is said even used his soldiers
for this purpose, under cover of pretended desertion. [Footnote: The
original papers relating to the accusations against Perrot are still
preserved in the ancient records of Montreal.] The rage of the merchants
of Montreal may readily be conceived, and when Frontenac heard of the
behavior of his subordinate he was duly incensed.
It seems, however, to have occurred, or to have been suggested to him,
that he, the Governor-General might repeat the device of Perrot on a
larger scale and with more profitable results. By establishing a fortified
trading post on Lake Ontario, the whole trade of the upper country might
be engrossed, with the exception of that portion of it which descended by
the river Ottawa, and even this might in good part be diverted from its
former channel. At the same time, a plan of a fort on Lake Ontario might
be made to appear as of great importance to the welfare of the colony; and
in fact, from one point of view, it actually was so. Courcelles, the late
governor, had already pointed out its advantages. Such a fort would watch
and hold in check the Iroquois, the worst enemy of Canada; and, with the
aid of a few small vessels, it would intercept the trade which the upper
Indians were carrying on through the Iroquois country with the English and
Dutch of New York. Frontenac learned from La Salle that the English were
intriguing both with the Iroquois and with the tribes of the Upper Lakes,
to induce them to break the peace with the French, and bring their furs to
New York. [Footnote: _Lettre de Frontenac à Colbert_, 13 _Nov_. 1678.]
Hence the advantages, not to say the necessity, of a fort on Lake Ontario
were obvious. But, while it would turn a stream of wealth from the English
to the French colony, it was equally clear that the change might be made
to inure, not to the profit of Canada at large, but solely to that of
those who had control of the fort; or, in other words, that the new
establishment might become an instrument of a grievous monopoly. This
Frontenac and La Salle well understood, and there can be no reasonable
doubt that they aimed at securing such a monopoly: but the merchants of
Canada understood it, also; and hence they regarded with distrust any
scheme of a fort on Lake Ontario.
Frontenac, therefore, thought it expedient "to make use," as he expresses
it, "of address." He gave out merely that he intended to make a tour
through the upper parts of the colony with an armed force, in order to
inspire the Indians with respect, and secure a solid peace. He had neither
troops, money, munitions, nor means of transportation; yet there was no
time to lose, for should he delay the execution of his plan it might be
countermanded by the king. His only resource, therefore, was in a prompt
and hardy exertion of the royal authority; and he issued an order
requiring the inhabitants of Quebec, Montreal, Three Rivers, and other
settlements to furnish him, at their own cost, as soon as the spring
sowing should be over, with a certain number of armed men besides the
requisite canoes. At the same time, he invited the officers settled in the
country to join the expedition, an invitation which, anxious as they were
to gain his good graces, few of them cared to decline. Regardless of
murmurs and discontent, he pushed his preparation vigorously, and on the
third of June left Quebec with his guard, his staff, a part of the
garrison of the Castle of St. Louis, and a number of volunteers. He had
already sent to La Salle, who was then at Montreal, directing him to
repair to Onondaga, the political centre of the Iroquois, and invite their
sachems to meet the Governor in council at the Bay of Quinté on the north
of Lake Ontario. La Salle had set out on his mission, but first sent
Frontenac a map, which convinced him that the best site for his proposed
fort was the mouth of the Cataraqui, where Kingston now stands. Another
messenger was accordingly despatched, to change the rendezvous to this
point.
Meanwhile, the Governor proceeded, at his leisure, towards Montreal,
stopping by the way to visit the officers settled along the bank, who,
eager to pay their homage to the newly risen sun, received him with a
hospitality, which, under the roof of a log hut, was sometimes graced by
the polished courtesies of the salon and the boudoir. Reaching Montreal,
which he had never before seen, he gazed we may suppose with some interest
at the long row of humble dwellings which lined the bank, the massive
buildings of the seminary, and the spire of the church predominant over
all. It was a rude scene, but the greeting that awaited him savored
nothing of the rough simplicity of the wilderness. Perrot, the local
governor, was on the shore with his soldiers and the inhabitants, drawn up
under arms, and firing a salute, to welcome the representative of the
king. Frontenac was compelled to listen to a long harangue from the Judge
of the place, followed by another from the Syndic. Then there was a solemn
procession to the church, where he was forced to undergo a third effort of
oratory from one of the priests. _Te Deum_ followed, in thanks for his
arrival, and then he took refuge in the fort. Here he remained thirteen
days, busied with his preparations, organizing the militia, soothing their
mutual jealousies, and settling knotty questions of rank and precedence.
During this time every means, as he declares, was used to prevent him from
proceeding, and among other devices a rumor was set on foot that a Dutch
fleet, having just captured Boston, was on its way to attack Quebec.
[Footnote: _Lettre de Frontenac à Colbert_, 13 _Nov_. 1673, MS. This
rumor, it appears, originated with the Jesuit Dablon.--_Journal du Voyage
du Comte de Frontenac au Lac Ontario_. MS. The Jesuits were greatly
opposed to the establishment of forts and trading posts in the upper
country, for reasons that will appear hereafter.]
Having sent men, canoes, and baggage, by land, to La Salle's old
settlement of La Chine, Frontenac himself followed on the twenty-eighth of
June. He now had with him about four hundred men, including Indians from
the missions, and a hundred and twenty canoes, besides two large
flatboats, which he caused to be painted in red and blue, with strange
devices, intended to dazzle the Iroquois by a display of unwonted
splendor. Now their hard task began. Shouldering canoes through the
forest, dragging the flatboats along the shore, working like beavers,
sometimes in water to the knees, sometimes to the armpits, their feet cut
by the sharp stones, and they themselves well nigh swept down by the
furious current, they fought their way upward against the chain of mighty
rapids that break the navigation of the St. Lawrence. The Indians were of
the greatest service. Frontenac, like La Salle, showed from the first a
special faculty of managing them; for his keen, incisive spirit was
exactly to their liking, and they worked for him as they would have worked
for no man else. As they approached the Long Saut, rain fell in torrents,
and the Governor, without his cloak, and drenched to the skin, directed in
person the amphibious toil of his followers. Once, it is said, he lay
awake all night, in his anxiety lest the biscuit should be wet, which
would have ruined the expedition. No such mischance took place, and at
length the last rapid was passed, and smooth water awaited them to their
journey's end. Soon they reached the Thousand Islands, and their light
flotilla glided in long file among those watery labyrinths, by rocky
islets, where some lonely pine towered like a mast against the sky; by
sun-scorched crags, where the brown lichens crisped in the parching glare;
by deep dells, shady and cool, rich in rank ferns, and spongy, dark green
mosses; by still coves, where the water-lilies lay like snow-flakes on
their broad, flat leaves; till at length they neared their goal, and the
glistening bosom of Lake Ontario opened on their sight.
Frontenac, to impose respect on the Iroquois, now set his canoes in order
of battle. Four divisions formed the first line, then, came the two
flatboats; he himself, with his guards, his staff, and the gentlemen
volunteers, followed, with the canoes of Three Rivers on his right, and
those of the Indians on his left, while two remaining divisions formed a
rear line. Thus, with measured paddles, they advanced over the still lake,
till they saw a canoe approaching to meet them. It bore several Iroquois
chiefs, who told them that the dignitaries of their nation awaited them at
Cataraqui, and offered to guide them to the spot. They entered the wide
mouth of the river, and passed along the shore, now covered by the quiet
little city of Kingston, till they reached the point at present occupied
by the barracks, at the western end of Cataraqui bridge. Here they
stranded their canoes and disembarked. Baggage was landed, fires lighted,
tents pitched, and guards set. Close at hand, under the lee of the forest,
were the camping sheds of the Iroquois, who had come to the rendezvous in
considerable numbers.
At daybreak of the next morning, the thirteenth of July, the drums beat,
and the whole party were drawn up under arms. A double line of men
extended from the front of Frontenac's tent to the Indian camp, and
through the lane thus formed, the savage deputies, sixty in number,
advanced to the place of council. They could not hide their admiration at
the martial array of the French, many of whom were old soldiers of the
Regiment of Carignan, and when they reached the tent, they ejaculated
their astonishment at the uniforms of the Governor's guard who surrounded
it. Here the ground had been carpeted with the sails of the flatboats, on
which the deputies squatted themselves in a ring and smoked their pipes
for a time with their usual air of deliberate gravity, while Frontenac,
who sat surrounded by his officers, had full leisure to contemplate the
formidable adversaries whose mettle was hereafter to put his own to so
severe a test. A chief named Garakontié, a noted friend of the French, at
length opened the council, in behalf of all the five Iroquois nations,
with expressions of great respect and deference towards "Onontio"; that is
to say, the Governor of Canada. Whereupon Frontenac, whose native
arrogance, where Indians were concerned, always took a form which imposed
respect without exciting anger, replied in the following strain:--
"Children! Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. I am glad to
see you here, where I have had a fire lighted for you to smoke by, and for
me to talk to you. You have done well, my children, to obey the command of
your Father. Take courage; you will hear his word, which is full of peace
and tenderness. For do not think that I have come for war. My mind is full
of peace, and she walks by my side. Courage, then, children, and take
rest."
With that, he gave them six fathoms of tobacco, reiterated his assurances
of friendship, promised that he would be a kind father so long as they
should be obedient children, regretted that he was forced to speak through
an interpreter, and ended with a gift of guns to the men, and prunes and
raisins to their wives and children. Here closed this preliminary meeting,
the great council being postponed to another day.
During the meeting, Raudin, Frontenac's engineer, was tracing out the
lines of a fort, after a predetermined plan, and the whole party, under
the direction of their officers, now set themselves to construct it. Some
cut down trees, some dug the trenches, some hewed the palisades; and with
such order and alacrity was the work urged on, that the Indians were lost
in astonishment. Meanwhile, Frontenac spared no pains to make friends of
the chiefs, some of whom he had constantly at his table. He fondled the
Iroquois children, and gave them bread and sweetmeats, and, in the
evening, feasted the squaws, to make them dance. The Indians were
delighted with these attentions, and conceived a high opinion of the new
Onontio.
On the seventeenth, when the construction of the fort was well advanced,
Frontenac called the chiefs to a grand council, which was held with all
possible state and ceremony. His dealing with the Indians, on this and
other occasions, was truly admirable. Unacquainted as he was with them, he
seems to have had an instinctive perception of the treatment they
required. His predecessors had never ventured to address the Iroquois as
"Children," but had always styled them "Brothers"; and yet the assumption
of paternal authority on the part of Frontenac was not only taken in good
part, but was received with apparent gratitude. The martial nature of the
man, his clear decisive speech, and his frank and downright manner, backed
as they were by a display of force which in their eyes was formidable,
struck them with admiration, and gave tenfold effect to his words of
kindness. They thanked him for that which from another they would not have
endured.
Frontenac began by again expressing his satisfaction that they had obeyed
the commands of their Father, and come to Cataraqui to hear what he had to
say. Then he exhorted them to embrace Christianity; and on this theme he
dwelt at length, in words excellently adapted to produce the desired
effect; words which it would be most superfluous to tax as insincere,
though, doubtless, they lost nothing in emphasis, because in this instance
conscience and policy aimed alike. Then, changing his tone, he pointed to
his officers, his guard, the long files of the militia, and the two
flatboats, mounted with cannon, which lay in the river near by. "If," he
said, "your Father can come so far, with so great a force, through such
dangerous rapids, merely to make you a visit of pleasure and friendship,
what would he do, if you should awaken his anger, and make it necessary
for him to punish his disobedient children? He is the arbiter of peace and
war. Beware how you offend him." And he warned them not to molest the
Indian allies of the French, telling them, sharply, that he would chastise
them for the least infraction of the peace.
From threats he passed to blandishments, and urged them to confide in his
paternal kindness, saying that, in proof of his affection, he was building
a storehouse at Cataraqui, where they could be supplied with all the goods
they needed, without the necessity of a long and dangerous journey. He
warned them against listening to bad men, who might seek to delude them by
misrepresentations and falsehoods; and he urged them to give heed to none
but "men of character, like the Sieur de la Salle." He expressed a hope
that they would suffer their children to learn French from the
missionaries, in order that they and his nephews--meaning the French
colonists--might become one people; and he concluded by requesting them to
give him a number of their children to be educated in the French manner,
at Quebec.
This speech, every clause of which was reinforced by abundant presents,
was extremely well received; though one speaker reminded him that he had
forgotten one important point, inasmuch as he had not told them at what
prices they could obtain goods at Cataraqui. Frontenac evaded a precise
answer, but promised them that the goods should be as cheap as possible,
in view of the great difficulty of transportation. As to the request
concerning their children, they said that they could not accede to it till
they had talked the matter over in their villages; but it is a striking
proof of the influence which Frontenac had gained over them, that, in the
following year, they actually sent several of their children to Quebec to
be educated, the girls among the Ursulines, and the boys in the household
of the Governor.
Three days after the council, the Iroquois set out on their return; and,
as the palisades of the fort were now finished, and the barracks nearly
so, Frontenac began to send his party homeward by detachments. He himself
was detained, for a time, by the arrival of another band of Iroquois, from
the villages on the north side of Lake Ontario. He repeated to them the
speech he had made to the others; and, this final meeting over, embarked
with his guard, leaving a sufficient number to hold the fort, which was to
be provisioned for a year by means of a convoy, then on its way up the
river. Passing the rapids safely, he reached Montreal on the first of
August.
His enterprise had been a complete success. He had gained every point,
and, in spite of the dangerous navigation, had not lost a single canoe.
Thanks to the enforced and gratuitous assistance of the inhabitants, the
whole had cost the king only about ten thousand francs, which Frontenac
had advanced on his own credit. Though, in a commercial point of view, the
new establishment was of very questionable benefit to the colony at large,
the Governor had, nevertheless, conferred an inestimable blessing on all
Canada, by the assurance he had gained of a long respite from the fearful
scourge of Iroquois hostility. "Assuredly," he writes, "I may boast of
having impressed them at once with respect, fear, and good-will."
[Footnote: _Lettre de Frontenac au Ministre_, 13 Nov. 1673.] He adds, that
the fort at Cataraqui, with the aid of a vessel, now building, will
command Lake Ontario, keep the peace with the Iroquois, and cut off the
trade with the English. And he proceeds to say, that, by another fort at
the mouth of the Niagara, and another vessel on Lake Erie, we, the French,
can command all the upper lakes. This plan was an essential link in the
scheme of La Salle; and we shall soon find him employed in executing it.
It remained to determine what disposition should be made of the new fort.
For some time it was uncertain whether the king would not order its
demolition, as efforts had been made to influence him to that effect. It
was resolved, however, that, being once constructed, it should be allowed
to stand; and, after a considerable delay, a final arrangement was made
for its maintenance, in the manner following: In the autumn of 1674, La
Salle went to France, with letters of strong recommendation from
Frontenac. [Footnote: In his despatch to the minister Colbert, of the
fourteenth of November, 1674, Frontenac speaks of La Salle as follows: "I
cannot help, Monseigneur, recommending to you the Sieur de la Salle, who
is about to go to France, and who is a man of intelligence and ability,--
more capable than anybody else I know here, to accomplish every kind of
enterprise and discovery which may be entrusted to him,--as he has the
most perfect knowledge of the state of the country, as you will see if you
are disposed to give him a few moments of audience."] He was well received
at Court; and he made two petitions to the king; the one for a patent of
nobility, in consideration of his services as an explorer; and the other
for a grant in seigniory of Fort Frontenac, for so he called the new post,
in honor of his patron. On his part, he offered to pay back the ten
thousand francs which the fort had cost the king; to maintain it at his
own charge, with a garrison equal to that of Montreal, besides fifteen or
twenty laborers; to form a French colony around it; to build a church,
whenever the number of inhabitants should reach one hundred; and,
meanwhile, to support one or more Récollet friars; and, finally, to form a
settlement of domesticated Indians in the neighborhood. His offers were
accepted. He was raised to the rank of the untitled nobles; received a
grant of the fort, and lands adjacent, to the extent of four leagues in
front and half a league in depth, besides the neighboring islands; and was
invested with the government of the fort and settlement, subject to the
orders of the Governor-General. [Footnote: _Mémoire pour l'entretien du
Fort Frontenac, par le Sr. de la Salle, 1674. MS. Pétition du Sr. de la
Salle au Roi, MS. Lettres patentes de concession du Fort de Frontenac et
terres adjacentes au profit du Sr. de la Salle; données à Compiègne le 13
Mai, 1675, MS. Arrêt qui accepte les offres faites par Robert Cavelier Sr.
de la Salle; à Compiègne le 13 Mai, 1675, MS. Lettres de noblesse pour le
Sr. Cavelier de la Salle; données à Compiègne le 13 Mai, 1675, MS. Papiers
de Famille; Mémoire au Roi, MS._]
La Salle returned to Canada, proprietor of a seigniory, which, all things
considered, was one of the most valuable in the colony. It was now that
his family, rejoicing in his good fortune, and not unwilling to share it,
made him large advances of money, enabling him to pay the stipulated sum
to the king, to rebuild the fort in stone, maintain soldiers and laborers,
and procure in part, at least, the necessary outfit. Had La Salle been a
mere merchant, he was in a fair way to make a fortune, for he was in a
position to control the better part of the Canadian fur trade. But he was
not a mere merchant; and no commercial profit could content the broad
ambition that urged his scheming brain.
Those may believe, who will, that Frontenac did not expect a share in the
profits of the new post. That he did expect it, there is positive
evidence, for a deposition is extant, taken at the instance of his enemy,
the Intendant Duchesneau, in which three witnesses attest that the
Governor, La Salle, his lieutenant La Forest, and one Boisseau, had formed
a partnership to carry on the trade of Fort Frontenac.
CHAPTER VII.
1674-1678.
LA SALLE AND THE JESUITS.
THE ABBÉ FÉNELON.--HE ATTACKS THE GOVERNOR.--THE ENEMIES OF
LA SALLE.--AIMS OF THE JESUITS.--THEIR HOSTILITY TO LA SALLE.
A curious incident occurred soon, after the building of the fort on Lake
Ontario. A violent quarrel had taken place between Frontenac and Perrot,
the Governor of Montreal, whom, in view of his speculations in the fur-
trade, he seems to have regarded as a rival in business; but who, by his
folly and arrogance, would have justified any reasonable measure of
severity. Frontenac, however, was not reasonable. He arrested Perrot,
threw him into prison, and set up a man of his own as governor in his
place; and, as the judge of Montreal was not in his interest, he removed
him, and substituted another, on whom he could rely. Thus for a time he
had Montreal well in hand.
The priests of the Seminary, seigneurs of the island, regarded these
arbitrary proceedings with extreme uneasiness. They claimed the right of
nominating their own governor; and Perrot, though he held a commission
from the king, owed his place to their appointment. True, he had set them
at nought, and proved a veritable King Stork, yet nevertheless they
regarded his removal as an infringement of their rights.
During the quarrel with Perrot, La Salle chanced to be at Montreal, lodged
in the house of Jacques Le Ber; who, though one of the principal merchants
and most influential inhabitants of the settlement, was accustomed to sell
goods across his counter in person to white men and Indians, his wife
taking his place when he was absent. Such were the primitive manners of
the secluded little colony. Le Ber, at this time, was in the interest of
Frontenac and La Salle; though he afterwards became one of their most
determined opponents. Amid the excitement and discussion occasioned by
Perrot's arrest, La Salle declared himself an adherent of the Governor,
and warned all persons against speaking ill of him in his hearing.
The Abbé Fénelon, already mentioned as half-brother to the famous
Archbishop, had attempted to mediate between Frontenac and Perrot; and to
this end had made a journey to Quebec on the ice, in midwinter. Being of
an ardent temperament, and more courageous than prudent, he had spoken
somewhat indiscreetly, and had been very roughly treated by the stormy and
imperious Count. He returned to Montreal greatly excited, and not without
cause. It fell to his lot to preach the Easter sermon. The service was
held in the little church of the Hôtel-Dieu, which was crowded to the
porch, all the chief persons of the settlement being present. The curé of
the parish, whose name also was Perrot, said High Mass, assisted by La
Salle's brother, Cavelier, and two other priests. Then Fénelon mounted the
pulpit. Certain passages of his sermon were obviously levelled against
Frontenac. Speaking of the duties of those clothed with temporal
authority, he said that the magistrate, inspired with the spirit of
Christ, was as ready to pardon offences against himself as to punish those
against his prince; that he was full of respect for the ministers of the
altar, and never maltreated them when they attempted to reconcile enemies
and restore peace; that he never made favorites of those who flattered
him, nor under specious pretexts oppressed other persons in authority who
opposed his enterprises; that he used his power to serve his king, and not
to his own advantage; that he remained content with his salary, without
disturbing the commerce of the country, or abusing those who refused him a
share in their profits; and that he never troubled the people by
inordinate and unjust levies of men and material, using the name of his
prince as a cover to his own designs. [Footnote: Faillon, _Colonie
Française_, iii. 497, and manuscript authorities there cited. I have
examined the principal of these. Faillon himself is a priest of St.
Sulpice. Compare H. Verreau, _Les Deux Abbés de Fénelon_, chap. vii.]
La Salle sat near the door, but as the preacher proceeded, he suddenly
rose to his feet in such a manner as to attract the notice of the
congregation. As they turned their heads, he signed to the principal
persons among them, and by his angry looks and gesticulation called their
attention to the words of Fénelon. Then meeting the eye of the curé, who
sat beside the altar, he made the same signs to him, to which the curé
replied by a deprecating shrug of the shoulders. Fénelon changed color,
but continued his sermon. [Footnote: _Information faicte par nous, Charles
Le Tardieu, Sieur de Tilly, et Nicolas Dupont, etc. etc., contre le Sr.
Abbé de Fénelon_, MS. Tilly and Dupont were sent by Frontenac to inquire
into the affair. Among the deponents is La Salle himself.]
This indecent procedure of La Salle filled the priests with anxiety, for
they had no doubt that the sermon would speedily be reported to Frontenac.
Accordingly they made all haste to disavow it, and their letter to that
effect was the first information which the Governor received of the
affair. He summoned the offender to Quebec, to answer a charge of
seditious language, before the Supreme Council. Fénelon appeared
accordingly, but denied the jurisdiction of the Council; claiming that as
an ecclesiastic it was his right to be tried by the Bishop. By way of
asserting this right, he seated himself in presence of his judges, and put
on his hat; and being rebuked by Frontenac, who presided, he pushed it on
farther. [Footnote: The Council always held its session with hats on. It
seems that a priest, summoned before it as a witness, was also entitled to
wear his hat, and Fénelon maintained that it had no right to require him
to appear before it in any other character.] He was placed under arrest,
and soon after required to leave Canada; but the king accompanied the
recall with a sharp word of admonition to his too strenuous lieutenant.
[Footnote: _Lettre du Roi à Frontenac_, 22 _Avril_, 1675, MS.]
This affair gives us a glimpse of the distracted state of the colony,
racked by the discord of conflicting interests and passions. There were
the quarrels of rival traders, the quarrels of priests among themselves,
of priests with the civil authorities, and of the civil authorities among
themselves. Prominent, if not paramount, among the occasions of strife,
were the schemes of Cavelier de La Salle. All the traders not interested
with him leagued together to oppose him; and this with an acrimony easily
understood, when it is remembered that they depended for subsistence on
the fur-trade, while La Salle had engrossed a great part of it, and
threatened to engross far more. Duchesneau, Intendant of the colony, and
in that capacity almost as a matter of course on ill terms with the
Governor, was joined with this party of opposition, with whom he evidently
had commercial interests in common. La Chesnaye, Le Moyne, and ultimately
Le Ber, besides various others of more or less influence, were in the
league against La Salle. Among them was Louis Joliet, whom his partisans
put forward as a rival discoverer, and a foil to La Salle. Joliet, it will
be remembered, had applied for a grant of land in the countries he had
discovered, and had been refused. La Salle soon after made a similar
application, and with a different result, as will presently appear. His
adherents continually depreciated the merits of Joliet, and even expressed
doubt of the reality, or at least the extent, of his discoveries.
But there was another element of opposition to La Salle, less noisy, but
not less formidable, and this arose from the Jesuits. Frontenac hated
them; and they, under befitting forms of duty and courtesy, paid him back
in the same coin. Having no love for the Governor, they would naturally
have little for his partisan and _protégé_; but their opposition had
another and a deeper root, for the plans of the daring young schemer
jarred with their own.
We have seen the Canadian Jesuits in the early apostolic days of their
mission, when the flame of their zeal, fed by an ardent hope, burned
bright and high. This hope was doomed to disappointment. Their avowed
purpose of building another Paraguay on the borders of the Great Lakes
[Footnote: This purpose is several times indicated in the _Relations_. For
an instance, see "Jesuits in North America," 153.] was never accomplished,
and their missions and their converts were swept away in an avalanche of
ruin. Still, they would not despair. From the Lakes they turned their eyes
to the Valley of the Mississippi, in the hope to see it one day the seat
of their new empire of the Faith. But what did this new Paraguay mean? It
meant a little nation of converted and domesticated savages, docile as
children, under the paternal and absolute rule of Jesuit fathers, and
trained by them in industrial pursuits, the results of which were to
inure, not to the profit of the producers, but to the building of
churches, the founding of colleges, the establishment of warehouses and
magazines, and the construction of works of defence,--all controlled by
Jesuits, and forming a part of the vast possessions of the Order. Such was
the old Paraguay, [Footnote: Compare Charlevoix, _Histoire de Paraguay_,
with Robertson, _Letters on Paraguay_.] and such, we may suppose, would
have been the new, had the plans of those who designed it been realized.
I have said that since the middle of the century the religious exaltation
of the early missions had sensibly declined. In the nature of things, that
grand enthusiasm was too intense and fervent to be long sustained. But the
vital force of Jesuitism had suffered no diminution. That marvellous
_esprit de corps_, that extinction of self, and absorption of the
individual in the Order, which has marked the Jesuits from their first
existence as a body, was no whit changed or lessened; a principle, which,
though different, was no less strong than the self-devoted patriotism of
Sparta or the early Roman Republic.
The Jesuits were no longer supreme in Canada, or, in other words, Canada
was no longer simply a mission. It had become a colony. Temporal interests
and the civil power were constantly gaining ground; and the disciples of
Loyola felt that relatively, if not absolutely, they were losing it. They
struggled vigorously to maintain the ascendancy of their Order; or, as
they would have expressed it, the ascendancy of religion: but in the older
and more settled parts of the colony it was clear that the day of their
undivided rule was past. Therefore, they looked with redoubled solicitude
to their missions in the West. They had been among its first explorers;
and they hoped that here the Catholic Faith, as represented by Jesuits,
might reign with undisputed sway. In Paraguay, it was their constant aim
to exclude white men from their missions. It was the same in North
America. They dreaded fur-traders, partly because they interfered with
their teachings and perverted their converts, and partly for other
reasons. But La Salle was a fur-trader, and far worse than a fur-trader,--
he aimed at occupation, fortification, settlement. The scope and vigor of
his enterprises, and the powerful influence that aided them made him a
stumbling-block in their path. As they would have put the case, it was the
spirit of this world opposed to the spirit of religion; but I may perhaps
be pardoned if I am constrained to think that the spirit which inspired
these fathers was not uniformly celestial, notwithstanding the virtues
which sometimes illustrated it.
Frontenac, in his letters to the Court, is continually begging that more
Récollet friars may be sent to Canada. [Footnote: The Récollets, ejected
from Canada on the irruption of the English in 1629 (see "Pioneers of
France in the New World"), had not been allowed to return until 1669, when
their missions were begun anew.] Not that he had any peculiar fondness for
ecclesiastics of any kind, regular or secular, white, black, or gray; but
he wanted the Récollets to oppose to the Jesuits. He had no fear of these
mendicant disciples of St. Francis. Far less able and less ambitious than
the Jesuits, he knew that he could manage them, because they would need
his support against their formidable rivals. La Salle, too, wanted more
Récollets, and for the same reason; but in one point he differed from his
patron. He was a man, not only of regulated life, but of strong religious
feeling, and, bating his violent prepossession against the Jesuits, he
respected the Church and its ministers, as his letters and his life
attest. Thus, in replying to a charge of undue severity towards some of
his followers, he alleges in his justification the profane language of the
men in question, and adds, "I am a Christian; I will have no blasphemers
in my camp." [Footnote: Letter of La Salle in the hands of M. Margry.]
CHAPTER VIII.
1678.
PARTY STRIFE.
LA SALLE AND HIS REPORTER.--JESUIT ASCENDANCY.--THE MISSIONS
AND THE FUR-TRADE.--FEMALE INQUISITORS.--PLOTS AGAINST LA
SALLE.--HIS BROTHER THE PRIEST.--INTRIGUES OF THE JESUITS.--
LA SALLE POISONED.--HE EXCULPATES THE JESUITS.--RENEWED INTRIGUES.
One of the most curious monuments of La Salle's time is a long memoir,
written by a person who made his acquaintance at Paris, in the summer of
1678, when, as we shall soon see, he had returned to France, in
prosecution of his plans. The writer knew the Sulpitian Galinée,
[Footnote: _Ante_, p. 11.] who, as he says, had a very high opinion of La
Salle; and he was also in close relations with the discoverer's patron,
the Prince de Conti. [Footnote: Louis-Armand de Bourbon, second Prince de
Conti. I am strongly inclined to think that this nobleman himself is
author of the memoir.] He says that he had ten or twelve interviews with
La Salle, and becoming interested in him and in that which he
communicated, he wrote down the substance of his conversation. The paper
is divided into two parts,--the first, called "Mémoire sur Mr. de la
Salle," is devoted to the state of affairs in Canada, and chiefly to the
Jesuits; the second, entitled "Histoire de Mr. de la Salle," is an account
of the discoverer's life, or as much of it as the writer had learned from
him. [Footnote: Extracts from this have already been given in connection
with La Salle's supposed discovery of the Mississippi. _Ante_, p. 20.]
Both parts bear throughout the internal evidence of being what they
profess to be; but they embody the statements of a man of intense partisan
feeling, transmitted through the mind of another person, in sympathy with
him, and evidently sharing his prepossessions. In one respect, however,
the paper is of unquestionable historical value; for it gives us a vivid
and not an exaggerated picture of the bitter strife of parties which then
raged in Canada, and which was destined to tax to the utmost the vast
energy and fortitude of La Salle. At times the memoir is fully sustained
by contemporary evidence; but often, again, it rests on its own
unsupported authority. I give an abstract of its statements as I find
them.
The following is the writer's account of La Salle: "All those among my
friends who have seen him find in him a man of great intelligence and
sense. He rarely speaks of any subject except when questioned about it,
and his words are very few and very precise. He distinguishes perfectly
between that which he knows with certainty and that which he knows with
some mingling of doubt. When he does not know, he does not hesitate to
avow it, and though I have heard him say the same thing more than five or
six times, when persons were present who had not heard it before, he
always said it in the same manner. In short, I never heard anybody speak
whose words carried with them more marks of truth." [Footnote: "Tous ceux
de mes amis qui l'ont vu luy trouve beaucoup d'esprit et un très grand
sens; il ne parle guères que des choses sur lesquelles on l'interroge; il
les dit en très-peu de mots et très-bien circonstanciés; il distingue
parfaitement ce qu'il scait avec certitude, de ce qu'il scait avec quelque
mélange de doute. Il avoue sans aucune façon ne pas savoir ce qu'il ne
scait pas, et quoyque je lui aye ouy dire plus de cinq ou six fois les
mesme choses à l'occasion de quelques personnes qui ne les avaient point
encore entendues, je les luy ay toujours ouy dire de la mesme manière. En
un mot je n'ay jamais ouy parler personne dont les paroles portassent plus
de marques de vérité."]
After mentioning that he is thirty-three or thirty-four years old, and
that he has been twelve years in America, the memoir declares that he made
the following statements,--that the Jesuits are masters at Quebec; that
the Bishop is their creature, and does nothing but in concert with them;
[Footnote: "Il y a une autre chose qui me déplait, qui est l'entière
dépendence dans laquelle les Prêtres du Séminaire de Québec et le Grand
Vicaire de l'Evêque sont pour les Pères Jésuites, car il ne fait pas la
moindre chose sans leur ordre; ce qui fait qu'indirectement ils sont les
maîtres de ce qui regarde le spirituel, qui, comme vous savez, est une
grande machine pour remuer tout le reste."--_Lettre de Frontenac à
Colbert_, 2 Nov. 1672.] that he is not well inclined towards the
Récollets, [Footnote: "Ces réligieux (les Récollets) sont fort protégés
partout par le comte de Frontenac, gouverneur du pays, et à cause de cela
assez maltraités par l'évesque, parceque la doctrine de l'évesque et des
Jésuites est que les affaires de la Réligion chrestienne n'iront point
bien dans ce pays-là que quand le gouverneur sera créature des Jésuites,
ou que l'évesque sera gouverneur."--_Mémoire sur Mr. de la Salle_.] who
have little credit, but who are protected by Frontenac; that in Canada the
Jesuits think everybody an enemy to religion who is an enemy to them;
that, though they refused absolution to all who sold brandy to the
Indians, they sold it themselves, and that he, La Salle, had himself
detected them in it; [Footnote: "Ils (les Jésuites) réfusent l'absolution a
ceux qui ne veulent pas promettre de n'en plus vendre (de l'eau-de-vie),
et s'ils meurent en cet étât, ils les privent de la sépulture
ecclésiastique; au contraire ils se permettent à eux-memes sans aucune
difficulté ce mesme trafic quoique tout sorte de trafic soit interdit à
tous les ecclésiastiques par les ordonnances du Roy, et par une bulle
expresse du Pape. La Bulle et les ordonnances sont notoires, et quoyqu'ils
cachent le trafic qu'ils font d'eau-de-vie, M. de la Salle prétend qu'il
ne l'est pas moms; qu' outre la notoriété il en a des preuves certaines,
et qu'il les a surpris dans ce trafic, et qu'ils luy ont tendu des pièges
pour l'y surprendre ... Ils ont chasse leur valet Robert à cause qu'il
révéla qu'ils en traitaient jour et nuit."--_Ibid_. The writer says that
he makes this last statement, not on the authority of La Salle, but on
that of a memoir made at the time when the Intendant, Talon, with whom he
elsewhere says that he was well acquainted, returned to France. A great
number of particulars are added respecting the Jesuit trade in furs.] that
the Bishop laughs at the orders of the king when they do not agree with
the wishes of the Jesuits; that the Jesuits dismissed one of their
servants named Robert, because he told of their trade in brandy; that
Albanel, [Footnote: Albanel was prominent among the Jesuit explorers at
this time. He is best known by his journey up the Saguenay to Hudson's Bay
in 1672.] in particular, carried on a great fur-trade, and that the
Jesuits have built their college in part from the profits of this kind of
traffic; that they admitted that they carried on a trade, but denied that
they gained so much by it as was commonly supposed. [Footnote: "Pour vous
parler franchement, ils (les Jésuites) songent autant à la conversion du
Castor qu'à celle des âmes."--_Lettre de Frontenac à Colbert_, 2 Nov.
1672.
In his despatch of the next year, he says that the Jesuits ought to
content themselves with instructing the Indians in their old missions,
instead of neglecting them to make new ones, in countries where there are
"more beaver-skins to gain than souls to save."]
The memoir proceeds to affirm that they trade largely with the Sioux, at
Ste. Marie, and with other tribes at Michillimackinac, and that they are
masters of the trade of that region, where the forts are in their
possession. [Footnote: These forts were built by them, and were necessary
to the security of their missions.] An Indian said, in full council, at
Quebec, that he had prayed and been a Christian as long as the Jesuits
would stay and teach him, but since no more beaver were left in his
country, the missionaries were gone also. The Jesuits, pursues the memoir,
will have no priests but themselves in their missions, and call them all
Jansenists, not excepting the priests of St. Sulpice.
The bishop is next accused of harshness and intolerance, as well as of
growing rich by tithes, and even by trade, in which it is affirmed he has
a covert interest. [Footnote: François Xavier de Laval-Montmorency, first
bishop of Quebec, was a prelate of austere character. His memory is
cherished in Canada by adherents of the Jesuits and all ultramontane
Catholics.] It is added that there exists in Quebec, under the auspices of
the Jesuits, an association called the Sainte Famille, of which Madame
Bourdon [Footnote: This Madame Bourdon was the widow of Bourdon, the
engineer, (see "Jesuits in North America," 299). If we may credit the
letters of Marie de l'Incarnation, she had married him from a religious
motive, in order to charge herself with the care of his motherless
children; stipulating in advance that he should live with her, not as a
husband, but as a brother. As may be imagined, she was regarded as a most
devout and saint-like person.] is superior. They meet in the cathedral
every Thursday, with closed doors, where they relate to each other--as
they are bound by a vow to do--all they have learned, whether good or
evil, concerning other people, during the week. It is a sort of female
inquisition, for the benefit of the Jesuits, the secrets of whose friends,
it is said, are kept, while no such discretion is observed with regard to
persons not of their party. [Footnote: "Il y a dans Québec une
congrégation de femmes et de filles qu'ils [_les Jésuits_]
appellent la sainte famille, dans laquelle on fait voeu sur les Saints
Evangiles de dire tout ce qu'on sait de bien et de mal des personnes
qu'on connoist. La Supérieure de cette compagnie s'appelle Madame
Boudon; une Mde. D'Ailleboust est, je crois, l'assistante et une Mde.
Charron, la Trésorière. La Compagnie s'assemble tous les Jeudis dans la
Cathédrale, à porte fermée, et là elles se disent les unes aux autres
tout ce qu'elles on appris. C'est une espèce d'Inquisition contre toutes
les personnes qui ne sont pas unies avec les Jésuites. Ces personnes
sont accusées de tenir secret ce qu'elles apprennent de mal des
personnes de leur party et de n'avoir pas la mesme discretion pour les
autres."--_Mémoire sur Mr. de la Salle_.
The Madame d'Ailleboust mentioned above was a devotee like Madame
Bourdon, and, in one respect, her history was similar. See "The Jesuits
in North America," 360.
The association of the Sainte Famille was founded by the Jesuit
Chaumonot at Montreal in 1663. Laval, Bishop of Quebec, afterwards
encouraged its establishment at that place; and, as Chaumonot himself
writes, caused it to be attached to the cathedral. _Vie de
Chaumonot_, 83. For its establishment at Montreal, see Faillon,
_Vie de Mlle. Mance_, i. 233.
"Ils [_les Jésuites_] ont tous une si grande envie de savoir tout
ce qui se fait dans les familles qu'ils ont des Inspecteurs à gages dans
la Ville, qui leur rapportent tout ce qui se fait dans les maisons,"
etc., etc.--_Lettre de Frontenac au Ministre_, 13 Nov., 1673.
Here follow a series of statements which it is needless to repeat, as they
do not concern La Salle. They relate to abuse of the confessional,
hostility to other priests, hostility to civil authorities, and over-hasty
baptisms, in regard to which La Salle is reported to have made a
comparison, unfavorable to the Jesuits, between them and the Récollets
and Sulpitians.
We now come to the second part of the memoir, entitled "History of
Monsieur de la Salle." After stating that he left France at the age of
twenty-one or twenty-two, with the purpose of attempting some new
discovery, it makes the statements repeated in a former chapter,
concerning his discovery of the Ohio, the Illinois, and possibly the
Mississipi. It then mentions the building of Fort Frontenac, and says that
one object of it was to prevent the Jesuits from becoming undisputed
masters of the fur-trade. [Footnote: Mention has been made
of the report set on foot by the Jesuit Dablon, to prevent
the building of the fort.] Three years ago, it pursues, La
Salle came to France, and obtained a grant of the fort; and it
proceeds to give examples of the means used by the party opposed to him to
injure his good name, and bring him within reach of the law. Once, when he
was at Quebec, the farmer of the king's revenue, one of the richest men in
the place, was extremely urgent in his proffers of hospitality, and at
length, though he knew him but slightly, persuaded him to lodge in his
house. He had been here but a few days when his host's wife began to enact
the part of the wife of Potiphar, and this with so much vivacity, that on
one occasion La Salle was forced to take an abrupt leave, in order to
avoid an infringement of the laws of hospitality. As he opened the door,
he found the husband on the watch, and saw that it was a plot to entrap
him. [Footnote: This story is told at considerable length, and the
advances of the lady particularly described.]
Another attack, of a different character, though in the same direction,
was soon after made. The remittances which La Salle received from the
various members and connections of his family were sent through the hands
of his brother, the Abbé Cavelier, from whom his enemies were, therefore,
very eager to alienate him. To this end, a report was made to reach the
priest's ears, that La Salle had seduced a young woman, with whom he was
living, in an open and scandalous manner, at Fort Frontenac. The effect of
this device exceeded the wishes of its contrivers; for the priest, aghast
at what he had heard, set out for the fort, to administer his fraternal
rebuke; but, on arriving, in place of the expected abomination, found his
brother, assisted by two Récollet friars, ruling, with edifying propriety,
over a most exemplary household.
Thus far the memoir. From passages in some of La Salle's letters, it may
be gathered that the Abbé Cavelier gave him at times no little annoyance.
In his double character of priest and elder brother, he seems to have
constituted himself the counsellor, monitor, and guide of a man, who,
though many years his junior, was in all respects incomparably superior to
him, as the sequel will show. This must have been almost insufferable to a
nature like that of La Salle; who, nevertheless, was forced to arm himself
with patience, since his brother held the purse-strings. On one occasion,
his forbearance was put to a severe proof, when, wishing to marry a damsel
of good connections in the colony, the Abbé Cavelier saw fit, for some
reason, to interfere, and prevented the alliance. [Footnote: Letter of La
Salle in possession of M. Margry.]
To resume the memoir. It declares that the Jesuits procured an ordinance
from the Supreme Council, prohibiting traders from going into the Indian
country, in order that they, the Jesuits, being already established there
in their missions, might carry on trade without competition. But La Salle
induced a good number of the Iroquois to settle around his fort; thus
bringing the trade to his own door, without breaking the ordinance. These
Iroquois, he is farther reported to have said, were very fond of him, and
aided him in rebuilding the fort with cut stone. The Jesuits told the
Iroquois on the south side of the lake, where they were established as
missionaries, that La Salle was strengthening his defences, with the view
of making war on them. They and the Intendant, who was their creature,
endeavored to embroil the Iroquois with the French, in order to ruin La
Salle; writing to him at the same time that he was the bulwark of the
country, and that he ought to be always on his guard. They also tried to
persuade Frontenac that it was necessary to raise men and prepare for war.
La Salle suspected them, and, seeing that the Iroquois, in consequence of
their intrigues, were in an excited state, he induced the Governor to come
to Fort Frontenac, to pacify them. He accordingly did so, and a council
was held, which ended in a complete restoration of confidence on the part
of the Iroquois. [Footnote: Louis XIV. alludes to this visit, in a letter
to Frontenac, dated 28 April, 1677. "I cannot but approve," he writes, "of
what you have done in your voyage to Fort Frontenac, to reconcile the
minds of the Five Iroquois Nations, and to clear yourself from the
suspicions they had entertained, and from the motives that might induce
them to make war." Frontenac's despatches of this, as well as of the
preceding and following years, are missing from the archives.
In a memoir written in November, 1680, La Salle alludes to "le désir que
l'on avoit que Monseigneur le Comte de Frontenac fist la guerre aux
Iroquois." See Thomassy, _Géologie Pratique de la Louisiane_, 203.] At
this council they accused the two Jesuits, Bruyas and Pierron, [Footnote:
Bruyas was about this time stationed among the Onondagas. Pierron was
among the Senecas. He had lately removed to them from the Mohawk country.
--_Relation des Jésuites_, 1673-9, p. 140 (Shea). Bruyas was also for a
long time among the Mohawks.] of spreading reports that the French were
preparing to attack them. La Salle thought that the object of the intrigue
was to make the Iroquois jealous of him, and engage Frontenac in expenses
which would offend the king. After La Salle and the Governor had lost
credit by the rupture, the Jesuits would come forward as pacificators, in
the full assurance that they could restore quiet, and appear in the
attitude of saviors of the colony.
La Salle, pursues his reporter, went on to say, that about this time a
quantity of hemlock and verdigris was given him in a salad; and that the
guilty person was a man in his employ, named Nicolas Perrot, otherwise
called Solycoeur, who confessed the crime. [Footnote: This puts the
character of Perrot in a new light, for it is not likely that any other
can be meant than the famous _voyageur_. I have found no mention elsewhere
of the synonyme of Solycoeur. Poisoning was the current crime of the day;
and persons of the highest rank had repeatedly been charged with it. The
following is the passage:--
"Quoiqu'il en soit, Mr. de la Salle se sentit quelque temps aerés
empoissonné d'une salade dans laquelle on avoit meslé du ciguë, qui est
poison en ce pays là, et du verd de gris. Il en fut malade à l'extrémité,
vomissant presque continuellement 40 ou 50 jours après, et il ne réchappa
que par la force extrême de sa constitution. Celuy qui luy donna le poison
fut un nominé Nicolas Perrot, autrement Solycoeur, l'un de ses
domestiques.... Il pouvait faire mourir cet homme, qui a confessé son
crime, mais il s'est contenté de l'enfermer les fers aux pieds."--
_Histoire de Mr. de la Salle_.] The memoir adds that La Salle, who
recovered from the effects of the poison, wholly exculpates the Jesuits.
This attempt, which was not, as we shall see, the only one of the kind
made against La Salle, is alluded to by him, in a letter to the Prince de
Conti, written in Canada, when he was on the point of departure on his
great expedition to descend the Mississippi. The following is an extract
from it:
"I hope to give myself the honor of sending you a more particular account
of this enterprise when it shall have had the success which I hope for it;
but I have need of a strong protection for its support. It traverses the
commercial operations of certain persons, who will find it hard to endure
it. They intended to make a new Paraguay in these parts, and the route
which I close against them gave them facilities for an advantageous
correspondence with Mexico. This check will infallibly be a mortification
to them; and you know how they deal with whatever opposes them.
_Nevertheless, I am bound to render them the justice to say that the
poison which was given me was not at all of their instigation._ The person
who was conscious of the guilt, believing that I was their enemy because
he saw that our sentiments were opposed, thought to exculpate himself by
accusing them; and I confess that at the time I was not sorry to have this
indication of their ill-will: but having afterwards carefully examined the
affair, I clearly discovered the falsity of the accusation which this
rascal had made against them. I nevertheless pardoned him, in order not to
give notoriety to the affair; as the mere suspicion might sully their
reputation, to which I should scrupulously avoid doing the slightest
injury, unless I thought it necessary to the good of the public, and
unless the fact were fully proved. Therefore, Monsieur, if any one shared
the suspicion which I felt, oblige me by undeceiving him." [Footnote: The
following words are underlined in the original: "_Je suis pourtant obligé
de leur rendre une justice, que le poison qu'on m'avoit donné n'éstoit
point de leur instigation_."--_Lettre de la Salle au Prince de Conti_, 31
_Oct_. 1678.]
This letter, so honorable to La Salle, explains the statement made in the
memoir, that, notwithstanding his grounds of complaint against the Jesuits
he continued to live on terms of courtesy with them, entertained them at
his fort, and occasionally corresponded with them. The writer asserts,
however, that they intrigued with his men to induce them to desert;
employing for this purpose a young man named Deslauriers, whom they sent
to him with letters of recommendation. La Salle took him into his service;
but he soon after escaped, with several other men, and took refuge in the
Jesuit missions. [Footnote: In a letter to the king, Frontenac mentions
that several men who had been induced to desert from La Salle had gone to
Albany, where the English had received them well.--_Lettre de Frontenac au
Roy_, 6 _Nov_. 1679. MS. The Jesuits had a mission in the neighboring
tribe of the Mohawks, and elsewhere in New York.] The object of the
intrigue is said to have been the reduction of La Salle's garrison to a
number less than that which he was bound to maintain, thus exposing him to
a forfeiture of his title of possession.
He is also stated to have declared that Louis Joliet was an impostor,
[Footnote: This agrees with expressions used by La Salle in a memoir
addressed by him to Frontenac in November, 1680, and printed by Thomassy.
In this he plainly intimates his belief that Joliet went but little below
the mouth of the Illinois.] and a _donné_ of the Jesuits,--that is, a man
who worked for them without pay; and, farther, that when he, La Salle,
came to court to ask for privileges enabling him to pursue his
discoveries, the Jesuits represented in advance to the minister Colbert,
that his head was turned, and that he was fit for nothing but a mad-house.
It was only by the aid of influential friends that he was at length
enabled to gain an audience.
Here ends this remarkable memoir; which, criticise it as we may,
undoubtedly contains a great deal of truth.
CHAPTER IX.
1677-1678.
THE GRAND ENTERPRISE.
LA SALLE AT FORT FRONTENAC.--LA SALLE A
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