1697-1741.
FRANCE IN THE FAR WEST.
French Explorers.--Le Sueur on the St. Peter.--Canadians on the
Missouri.--Juchereau de Saint-Denis.--Bénard de la Harpe on Red
River.--Adventures of Du Tisné.--Bourgmont visits the Comanches.--The
Brothers Mallet in Colorado and New Mexico.--Fabry de la Bruyère.
The occupation by France of the lower Mississippi gave a strong impulse
to the exploration of the West, by supplying a base for discovery,
stimulating enterprise by the longing to find gold mines, open trade
with New Mexico, and get a fast hold on the countries beyond the
Mississippi in anticipation of Spain; and to these motives was soon
added the hope of finding an overland way to the Pacific. It was the
Canadians, with their indomitable spirit of adventure, who led the way
in the path of discovery.
As a bold and hardy pioneer of the wilderness, the Frenchman in America
has rarely found his match. His civic virtues withered under the
despotism of Versailles, and his mind and conscience were kept in
leading-strings by an absolute Church; but the forest and the prairie
offered him an unbridled liberty, which, lawless as it was, gave scope
to his energies, till these savage wastes became the field of his most
noteworthy achievements.
Canada was divided between two opposing influences. On the one side were
the monarchy and the hierarchy, with their principles of order,
subordination, and obedience; substantially at one in purpose, since
both wished to keep the colony within manageable bounds, domesticate it,
and tame it to soberness, regularity, and obedience. On the other side
was the spirit of liberty, or license, which was in the very air of this
wilderness continent, reinforced in the chiefs of the colony by a spirit
of adventure inherited from the Middle Ages, and by a spirit of trade
born of present opportunities; for every official in Canada hoped to
make a profit, if not a fortune, out of beaver-skins. Kindred impulses,
in ruder forms, possessed the humbler colonists, drove them into the
forest, and made them hardy woodsmen and skilful bush-fighters, though
turbulent and lawless members of civilized society.
Time, the decline of the fur-trade, and the influence of the Canadian
Church gradually diminished this erratic spirit, and at the same time
impaired the qualities that were associated with it. The Canadian became
a more stable colonist and a steadier farmer; but for forest journeyings
and forest warfare he was scarcely his former self. At the middle of the
eighteenth century we find complaints that the race of _voyageurs_ is
growing scarce. The taming process was most apparent in the central and
lower parts of the colony, such as the Côte de Beaupré and the opposite
shore of the St. Lawrence, where the hands of the government and of the
Church were strong; while at the head of the colony,--that is, about
Montreal and its neighborhood,--which touched the primeval wilderness,
an uncontrollable spirit of adventure still held its own. Here, at the
beginning of the century, this spirit was as strong as it had ever been,
and achieved a series of explorations and discoveries which revealed the
plains of the Far West long before an Anglo-Saxon foot had pressed their
soil.
The expedition of one Le Sueur to what is now the State of Minnesota may
be taken as the starting-point of these enterprises. Le Sueur had
visited the country of the Sioux as early as 1683. He returned thither
in 1689 with the famous _voyageur_ Nicolas Perrot.[358] Four years
later, Count Frontenac sent him to the Sioux country again. The declared
purpose of the mission was to keep those fierce tribes at peace with
their neighbors; but the governor's enemies declared that a contraband
trade in beaver was the true object, and that Frontenac's secretary was
to have half the profits.[359] Le Sueur returned after two years,
bringing to Montreal a Sioux chief and his squaw,--the first of the
tribe ever seen there. He then went to France, and represented to the
court that he had built a fort at Lake Pepin, on the upper Mississippi;
that he was the only white man who knew the languages of that region;
and that if the French did not speedily seize upon it, the English, who
were already trading upon the Ohio, would be sure to do so. Thereupon he
asked for the command of the upper Mississippi, with all its tributary
waters, together with a monopoly of its fur-trade for ten years, and
permission to work its mines, promising that if his petition were
granted, he would secure the country to France without expense to the
King. The commission was given him. He bought an outfit and sailed for
Canada, but was captured by the English on the way. After the peace he
returned to France and begged for a renewal of his commission. Leave was
given him to work the copper and lead mines, but not to trade in
beaver-skins. He now formed a company to aid him in his enterprise, on
which a cry rose in Canada that under pretence of working mines he meant
to trade in beaver,--which is very likely, since to bring lead and
copper in bark canoes to Montreal from the Mississippi and Lake Superior
would cost far more than the metal was worth. In consequence of this
clamor his commission was revoked.
Perhaps it was to compensate him for the outlays into which he had been
drawn that the colonial minister presently authorized him to embark for
Louisiana and pursue his enterprise with that infant colony, instead of
Canada, as his base of operations. Thither, therefore, he went; and in
April, 1700, set out for the Sioux country with twenty-five men, in a
small vessel of the kind called a "felucca," still used in the
Mediterranean. Among the party was an adventurous youth named Penecaut,
a ship-carpenter by trade, who had come to Louisiana with Iberville two
years before, and who has left us an account of his voyage with Le
Sueur.[360]
The party slowly made their way, with sail and oar, against the muddy
current of the Mississippi, till they reached the Arkansas, where they
found an English trader from Carolina. On the tenth of June, spent with
rowing, and half starved, they stopped to rest at a point fifteen
leagues above the mouth of the Ohio. They had staved off famine with the
buds and leaves of trees; but now, by good luck, one of them killed a
bear, and, soon after, the Jesuit Limoges arrived from the neighboring
mission of the Illinois, in a canoe well stored with provisions. Thus
refreshed, they passed the mouth of the Missouri on the thirteenth of
July, and soon after were met by three Canadians, who brought them a
letter from the Jesuit Marest, warning them that the river was infested
by war-parties. In fact, they presently saw seven canoes of Sioux
warriors, bound against the Illinois; and not long after, five Canadians
appeared, one of whom had been badly wounded in a recent encounter with
a band of Outagamies, Sacs, and Winnebagoes bound against the Sioux. To
take one another's scalps had been for ages the absorbing business and
favorite recreation of all these Western tribes. At or near the
expansion of the Mississippi called Lake Pepin, the voyagers found a
fort called Fort Perrot, after its builder;[361] and on an island near
the upper end of the lake, another similar structure, built by Le Sueur
himself on his last visit to the place. These forts were mere stockades,
occupied from time to time by the roving fur-traders as their occasions
required.
Towards the end of September, Le Sueur and his followers reached the
mouth of the St. Peter, which they ascended to Blue Earth River. Pushing
a league up this stream, they found a spot well suited to their purpose,
and here they built a fort, of which there was great need, for they were
soon after joined by seven Canadian traders, plundered and stripped to
the skin by the neighboring Sioux. Le Sueur named the new post Fort
l'Huillier. It was a fence of pickets, enclosing cabins for the men. The
neighboring plains were black with buffalo, of which the party killed
four hundred, and cut them into quarters, which they placed to freeze
on scaffolds within the enclosure. Here they spent the winter,
subsisting on the frozen meat, without bread, vegetables, or salt, and,
according to Penecaut, thriving marvellously, though the surrounding
wilderness was buried five feet deep in snow.
Band after band of Sioux appeared, with their wolfish dogs and their
sturdy and all-enduring squaws burdened with the heavy hide coverings of
their teepees, or buffalo-skin tents. They professed friendship and
begged for arms. Those of one band had blackened their faces in mourning
for a dead chief, and calling on Le Sueur to share their sorrow, they
wept over him, and wiped their tears on his hair. Another party of
warriors arrived with yet deeper cause of grief, being the remnant of a
village half exterminated by their enemies. They, too, wept profusely
over the French commander, and then sang a dismal song, with heads
muffled in their buffalo-robes.[362] Le Sueur took the needful
precautions against his dangerous visitors, but got from them a large
supply of beaver-skins in exchange for his goods.
When spring opened, he set out in search of mines, and found, not far
above the fort, those beds of blue and green earth to which the stream
owes its name. Of this his men dug out a large quantity, and selecting
what seemed the best, stored it in their vessel as a precious commodity.
With this and good store of beaver-skins, Le Sueur now began his return
voyage for Louisiana, leaving a Canadian named D'Éraque and twelve men
to keep the fort till he should come back to reclaim it, promising to
send him a canoe-load of ammunition from the Illinois. But the canoe was
wrecked, and D'Éraque, discouraged, abandoned Fort l'Huillier, and
followed his commander down the Mississippi.[363]
Le Sueur, with no authority from government, had opened relations of
trade with the wild Sioux of the Plains, whose westward range stretched
to the Black Hills, and perhaps to the Rocky Mountains. He reached the
settlements of Louisiana in safety, and sailed for France with four
thousand pounds of his worthless blue earth.[364] Repairing at once to
Versailles, he begged for help to continue his enterprise. His petition
seems to have been granted. After long delay, he sailed again for
Louisiana, fell ill on the voyage, and died soon after landing.[365]
Before 1700, the year when Le Sueur visited the St. Peter, little or
nothing was known of the country west of the Mississippi, except from
the report of Indians. The romances of La Hontan and Mathieu Sâgean
were justly set down as impostures by all but the most credulous. In
this same year we find Le Moyne d'Iberville projecting journeys to the
upper Missouri, in hopes of finding a river flowing to the Western Sea.
In 1703, twenty Canadians tried to find their way from the Illinois to
New Mexico, in hope of opening trade with the Spaniards and discovering
mines.[366] In 1704 we find it reported that more than a hundred
Canadians are scattered in small parties along the Mississippi and the
Missouri;[367] and in 1705 one Laurain appeared at the Illinois,
declaring that he had been high up the Missouri and had visited many
tribes on its borders.[368] A few months later, two Canadians told
Bienville a similar story. In 1708 Nicolas de la Salle proposed an
expedition of a hundred men to explore the same mysterious river; and in
1717 one Hubert laid before the Council of Marine a scheme for following
the Missouri to its source, since, he says, "not only may we find the
mines worked by the Spaniards, but also discover the great river that is
said to rise in the mountains where the Missouri has its source, and is
believed to flow to the Western Sea." And he advises that a hundred and
fifty men be sent up the river in wooden canoes, since bark canoes
would be dangerous, by reason of the multitude of snags.[369]
In 1714 Juchereau de Saint-Denis was sent by La Mothe-Cadillac to
explore western Louisiana, and pushed up Red River to a point
sixty-eight leagues, as he reckons, above Natchitoches. In the next
year, journeying across country towards the Spanish settlements, with a
view to trade, he was seized near the Rio Grande and carried to the city
of Mexico. The Spaniards, jealous of French designs, now sent priests
and soldiers to occupy several points in Texas. Juchereau, however, was
well treated, and permitted to marry a Spanish girl with whom he had
fallen in love on the way; but when, in the autumn of 1716, he ventured
another journey to the Mexican borders, still hoping to be allowed to
trade, he and his goods were seized by order of the Mexican viceroy,
and, lest worse should befall him, he fled empty-handed, under cover of
night.[370]
In March, 1719, Bénard de la Harpe left the feeble little French post at
Natchitoches with six soldiers and a sergeant.[371] His errand was to
explore the country, open trade if possible with the Spaniards, and
establish another post high up Red River. He and his party soon came
upon that vast entanglement of driftwood, or rather of uprooted
forests, afterwards known as the Red River raft, which choked the stream
and forced them to make their way through the inundated jungle that
bordered it. As they pushed or dragged their canoes through the swamp,
they saw with disgust and alarm a good number of snakes, coiled about
twigs and boughs on the right and left, or sometimes over their heads.
These were probably the deadly water-moccason, which in warm weather is
accustomed to crawl out of its favorite element and bask itself in the
sun, precisely as described by La Harpe. Their nerves were further
discomposed by the splashing and plunging of alligators lately wakened
from their wintry torpor. Still, they pushed painfully on, till they
reached navigable water again, and at the end of the month were, as they
thought, a hundred and eight leagues above Natchitoches. In four days
more they reached the Nassonites.
These savages belonged to a group of stationary tribes, only one of
which, the Caddoes, survives to our day as a separate community. Their
enemies, the Chickasaws, Osages, Arkansas, and even the distant
Illinois, waged such deadly war against them that, according to La
Harpe, the unfortunate Nassonites were in the way of extinction, their
numbers having fallen, within ten years, from twenty-five hundred souls
to four hundred.[372]
La Harpe stopped among them to refresh his men, and build a house of
cypress-wood as a beginning of the post he was ordered to establish;
then, having heard that a war with Spain had ruined his hopes of trade
with New Mexico, he resolved to pursue his explorations.
With him went ten men, white, red, and black, with twenty-two horses
bought from the Indians, for his journeyings were henceforth to be by
land. The party moved in a northerly and westerly course, by hills,
forests, and prairies, passed two branches of the Wichita, and on the
third of September came to a river which La Harpe calls the southwest
branch of the Arkansas, but which, if his observation of latitude is
correct, must have been the main stream, not far from the site of Fort
Mann. Here he was met by seven Indian chiefs, mounted on excellent
horses saddled and bridled after the Spanish manner. They led him to
where, along the plateau of the low, treeless hills that bordered the
valley, he saw a string of Indian villages, extending for a league and
belonging to nine several bands, the names of which can no longer be
recognized, and most of which are no doubt extinct. He says that they
numbered in all six thousand souls; and their dwellings were high,
dome-shaped structures, built of clay mixed with reeds and straw,
resting, doubtless, on a frame of bent poles.[373] With them were also
some of the roving Indians of the plains, with their conical teepees of
dressed buffalo-skin.
The arrival of the strangers was a great and amazing event for these
savages, few of whom had ever seen a white man. On the day after their
arrival the whole multitude gathered to receive them and offer them the
calumet, with a profusion of songs and speeches. Then warrior after
warrior recounted his exploits and boasted of the scalps he had taken.
From eight in the morning till two hours after midnight the din of
drums, songs, harangues, and dances continued without relenting, with a
prospect of twelve hours more; and La Harpe, in desperation, withdrew to
rest himself on a buffalo-robe, begging another Frenchman to take his
place. His hosts left him in peace for a while; then the chiefs came to
find him, painted his face blue, as a tribute of respect, put a cap of
eagle-feathers on his head, and laid numerous gifts at his feet. When at
last the ceremony ended, some of the performers were so hoarse from
incessant singing that they could hardly speak.[374]
La Harpe was told by his hosts that the Spanish settlements could be
reached by ascending their river; but to do this was at present
impossible. He began his backward journey, fell desperately ill of a
fever, and nearly died before reaching Natchitoches.
Having recovered, he made an attempt, two years later, to explore the
Arkansas in canoes, from its mouth, but accomplished little besides
killing a good number of buffalo, bears, deer, and wild turkeys. He was
confirmed, however, in the belief that the Comanches and the Spaniards
of New Mexico might be reached by this route.
In the year of La Harpe's first exploration, one Du Tisné went up the
Missouri to a point six leagues above Grand River, where stood the
village of the Missouris. He wished to go farther, but they would not
let him. He then returned to the Illinois, whence he set out on
horseback with a few followers across what is now the State of Missouri,
till he reached the village of the Osages, which stood on a hill high up
the river Osage. At first he was well received; but when they found him
disposed to push on to a town of their enemies, the Pawnees, forty
leagues distant, they angrily refused to let him go. His firmness and
hardihood prevailed, and at last they gave him leave. A ride of a few
days over rich prairies brought him to the Pawnees, who, coming as he
did from the hated Osages, took him for an enemy and threatened to kill
him. Twice they raised the tomahawk over his head; but when the intrepid
traveller dared them to strike, they began to treat him as a friend.
When, however, he told them that he meant to go fifteen days' journey
farther, to the Padoucas, or Comanches, their deadly enemies, they
fiercely forbade him; and after planting a French flag in their
village, he returned as he had come, guiding his way by compass, and
reaching the Illinois in November, after extreme hardships.[375]
Early in 1721 two hundred mounted Spaniards, followed by a large body of
Comanche warriors, came from New Mexico to attack the French at the
Illinois, but were met and routed on the Missouri by tribes of that
region.[376] In the next year, Bienville was told that they meant to
return, punish those who had defeated them, and establish a post on the
river Kansas; whereupon he ordered Boisbriant, commandant at the
Illinois, to anticipate them by sending troops to build a French fort at
or near the same place. But the West India Company had already sent one
Bourgmont on a similar errand, the object being to trade with the
Spaniards in time of peace, and stop their incursions in time of
war.[377] It was hoped also that, in the interest of trade, peace might
be made between the Comanches and the tribes of the Missouri.[378]
Bourgmont was a man of some education, and well acquainted with these
tribes, among whom he had traded for years. In pursuance of his orders
he built a fort, which he named Fort Orléans, and which stood on the
Missouri not far above the mouth of Grand River. Having thus
accomplished one part of his mission, he addressed himself to the other,
and prepared to march for the Comanche villages.
Leaving a sufficient garrison at the fort, he sent his ensign,
Saint-Ange, with a party of soldiers and Canadians, in wooden canoes, to
the villages of the Kansas higher up the stream, and on the third of
July set out by land to join him, with a hundred and nine Missouri
Indians and sixty-eight Osages in his train. A ride of five days brought
him again to the banks of the Missouri, opposite a Kansas town.
Saint-Ange had not yet arrived, the angry and turbid current, joined to
fevers among his men, having retarded his progress. Meanwhile Bourgmont
drew from the Kansas a promise that their warriors should go with him to
the Comanches. Saint-Ange at last appeared, and at daybreak of the
twenty-fourth the tents were struck and the pack-horses loaded. At six
o'clock the party drew up in battle array on a hill above the Indian
town, and then, with drum beating and flag flying, began their march. "A
fine prairie country," writes Bourgmont, "with hills and dales and
clumps of trees to right and left." Sometimes the landscape quivered
under the sultry sun, and sometimes thunder bellowed over their heads,
and rain fell in floods on the steaming plains.
Renaudière, engineer of the party, one day stood by the side of the path
and watched the whole procession as it passed him. The white men were
about twenty in all. He counted about three hundred Indian warriors,
with as many squaws, some five hundred children, and a prodigious number
of dogs, the largest and strongest of which dragged heavy loads. The
squaws also served as beasts of burden; and, says the journal, "they
will carry as much as a dog will drag." Horses were less abundant among
these tribes than they afterwards became, so that their work fell
largely upon the women.
On the sixth day the party was within three leagues of the river Kansas,
at a considerable distance above its mouth. Bourgmont had suffered from
dysentery on the march, and an access of the malady made it impossible
for him to go farther. It is easy to conceive the regret with which he
saw himself compelled to return to Fort Orléans. The party retraced
their steps, carrying their helpless commander on a litter.
First, however, he sent one Gaillard on a perilous errand. Taking with
him two Comanche slaves bought for the purpose from the Kansas, Gaillard
was ordered to go to the Comanche villages with the message that
Bourgmont had been on his way to make them a friendly visit, and, though
stopped by illness, hoped soon to try again, with better success.
Early in September, Bourgmont, who had arrived safely at Fort Orléans,
received news that the mission of Gaillard had completely succeeded; on
which, though not wholly recovered from his illness, he set out again on
his errand of peace, accompanied by his young son, besides Renaudière, a
surgeon, and nine soldiers. On reaching the great village of the Kansas
he found there five Comanche chiefs and warriors, whom Gaillard had
induced to come thither with him. Seven chiefs of the Otoes presently
appeared, in accordance with an invitation of Bourgmont; then six chiefs
of the Iowas and the head chief of the Missouris. With these and the
Kansas chiefs a solemn council was held around a fire before Bourgmont's
tent; speeches were made, the pipe of peace was smoked, and presents
were distributed.
On the eighth of October the march began, the five Comanches and the
chiefs of several other tribes, including the Omahas, joining the
cavalcade. Gaillard and another Frenchman named Quesnel were sent in
advance to announce their approach to the Comanches, while Bourgmont and
his followers moved up the north side of the river Kansas till the
eleventh, when they forded it at a point twenty leagues from its mouth,
and took a westward and southwestward course, sometimes threading the
grassy valleys of little streams, sometimes crossing the dry upland
prairie, covered with the short, tufted dull-green herbage since known
as "buffalo grass." Wild turkeys clamored along every watercourse; deer
were seen on all sides, buffalo were without number, sometimes in
grazing droves, and sometimes dotting the endless plain as far as the
eye could reach. Ruffian wolves, white and gray, eyed the travellers
askance, keeping a safe distance by day, and howling about the camp all
night. Of the antelope and the elk the journal makes no mention.
Bourgmont chased a buffalo on horseback and shot him with a
pistol,--which is probably the first recorded example of that way of
hunting.
The stretches of high, rolling, treeless prairie grew more vast as the
travellers advanced. On the seventeenth, they found an abandoned
Comanche camp. On the next day as they stopped to dine, and had just
unsaddled their horses, they saw a distant smoke towards the west, on
which they set the dry grass on fire as an answering signal. Half an
hour later a body of wild horsemen came towards them at full speed, and
among them were their two couriers, Gaillard and Quesnel, waving a
French flag. The strangers were eighty Comanche warriors, with the grand
chief of the tribe at their head. They dashed up to Bourgmont's bivouac
and leaped from their horses, when a general shaking of hands ensued,
after which white men and red seated themselves on the ground and smoked
the pipe of peace. Then all rode together to the Comanche camp, three
leagues distant.[379]
Bourgmont pitched his tents at a pistol-shot from the Comanche lodges,
whence a crowd of warriors presently came to visit him. They spread
buffalo-robes on the ground, placed upon them the French commander, his
officers, and his young son; then lifted each, with its honored load,
and carried them all, with yells of joy and gratulation, to the lodge of
the Great Chief, where there was a feast of ceremony lasting till
nightfall.
On the next day Bourgmont displayed to his hosts the marvellous store of
gifts he had brought for them,--guns, swords, hatchets, kettles,
gunpowder, bullets, red cloth, blue cloth, hand-mirrors, knives, shirts,
awls, scissors, needles, hawks' bells, vermilion, beads, and other
enviable commodities, of the like of which they had never dreamed. Two
hundred savages gathered before the French tents, where Bourgmont, with
the gifts spread on the ground before him, stood with a French flag in
his hand, surrounded by his officers and the Indian chiefs of his party,
and harangued the admiring auditors.
He told them that he had come to bring them a message from the King, his
master, who was the Great Chief of all the nations of the earth, and
whose will it was that the Comanches should live in peace with his other
children,--the Missouris, Osages, Kansas, Otoes, Omahas, and
Pawnees,--with whom they had long been at war; that the chiefs of these
tribes were now present, ready to renounce their old enmities; that the
Comanches should henceforth regard them as friends, share with them the
blessing of alliance and trade with the French, and give to these last
free passage through their country to trade with the Spaniards of New
Mexico. Bourgmont then gave the French flag to the Great Chief, to be
kept forever as a pledge of that day's compact. The chief took the flag,
and promised in behalf of his people to keep peace inviolate with the
Indian children of the King. Then, with unspeakable delight, he and his
tribesmen took and divided the gifts.
The next two days were spent in feasts and rejoicings. "Is it true that
you are men?" asked the Great Chief. "I have heard wonders of the
French, but I never could have believed what I see this day." Then,
taking up a handful of earth, "The Spaniards are like this; but you are
like the sun." And he offered Bourgmont, in case of need, the aid of his
two thousand Comanche warriors. The pleasing manners of his visitors,
and their unparalleled generosity, had completely won his heart.
As the object of the expedition was accomplished, or seemed to be so,
the party set out on their return. A ride of ten days brought them again
to the Missouri; they descended in canoes to Fort Orléans, and sang Te
Deum in honor of the peace.[380]
No farther discovery in this direction was made for the next fifteen
years. Though the French had explored the Missouri as far as the site of
Fort Clark and the Mandan villages, they were possessed by the
idea--due, perhaps, to Indian reports concerning the great tributary
river, the Yellowstone--that in its upper course the main stream bent so
far southward as to form a waterway to New Mexico, with which it was the
constant desire of the authorities of Louisiana to open trade. A way
thither was at last made known by two brothers named Mallet, who with
six companions went up the Platte to its South Fork, which they called
River of the Padoucas,--a name given it on some maps down to the middle
of this century. They followed the South Fork for some distance, and
then, turning southward and southwestward, crossed the plains of
Colorado. Here the dried dung of the buffalo was their only fuel; and it
has continued to feed the camp-fire of the traveller in this treeless
region within the memory of many now living. They crossed the upper
Arkansas, and apparently the Cimarron, passed Taos, and on the
twenty-second of July reached Santa Fé, where they spent the winter. On
the first of May, 1740, they began their return journey, three of them
crossing the plains to the Pawnee villages, and the rest descending the
Arkansas to the Mississippi.[381]
The bold exploit of the brothers Mallet attracted great attention at New
Orleans, and Bienville resolved to renew it, find if possible a nearer
and better way to Santa Fé, determine the nature and extent of these
mysterious western regions, and satisfy a lingering doubt whether they
were not contiguous to China and Tartary.[382] A naval officer, Fabry de
la Bruyère, was sent on this errand, with the brothers Mallet and a few
soldiers and Canadians. He ascended the Canadian Fork of the Arkansas,
named by him the St. André, became entangled in the shallows and
quicksands of that difficult river, fell into disputes with his men,
and, after protracted efforts, returned unsuccessful.[383]
While French enterprise was unveiling the remote Southwest, two
indomitable Canadians were pushing still more noteworthy explorations
into more northern regions of the continent.
FOOTNOTES:
[358] _Journal historique de l'Établissement des Français à la
Louisiane_, 43.
[359] _Champigny au Ministre, 4 Novembre, 1693._
[360] _Relation de Penecaut._ In my possession is a contemporary
manuscript of this narrative, for which I am indebted to the kindness of
General J. Meredith Reade.
[361] Penecaut, _Journal_. _Procès-verbal de la Prise de Possession du
Pays des Nadouessioux, etc., par Nicolas Perrot, 1689._ Fort Perrot
seems to have been built in 1685, and to have stood near the outlet of
the lake, probably on the west side. Perrot afterwards built another
fort, called Fort St. Antoine, a little above, on the east bank. The
position of these forts has been the subject of much discussion, and
cannot be ascertained with precision. It appears by the _Prise de
Possession_, cited above, that there was also, in 1689, a temporary
French post near the mouth of the Wisconsin.
[362] This weeping over strangers was a custom with the Sioux of that
time mentioned by many early writers. La Mothe-Cadillac marvels that a
people so brave and warlike should have such a fountain of tears always
at command.
[363] In 1702 the geographer De l'Isle made a remarkable MS. map
entitled _Carte de la Rivière du Mississippi, dressée sur les Mémoires
de M. Le Sueur_.
[364] According to the geologist Featherstonhaugh, who examined the
locality, this earth owes its color to a bluish-green silicate of iron.
[365] Besides the long and circumstantial _Relation de Penecaut_, an
account of the earlier part of La Sueur's voyage up the Mississippi is
contained in the _Mémoire du Chevalier de Beaurain_, which, with other
papers relating to this explorer, including portions of his Journal,
will be found in Margry, vi. See also _Journal historique de
l'Établissement des Français à la Louisiane_, 38-71.
[366] _Iberville à ----, 15 Février, 1703_ (Margry, vi. 180).
[367] _Bienville au Ministre, 6 Septembre, 1704._
[368] Beaurain, _Journal historique_.
[369] Hubert, _Mémoire envoyé au Conseil de la Marine_.
[370] Penecaut, _Relation_, chaps. xvii., xviii. Le Page du Pratz,
_Histoire de la Louisiane_, i. 13-22. Various documents in Margry, vi.
193-202.
[371] For an interesting contemporary map of the French establishment at
Natchitoches, see Thomassy, _Géologie pratique de la Louisiane_.
[372] Bénard de la Harpe, in Margry, vi. 264.
[373] Beaurain says that each of these bands spoke a language of its
own. They had horses in abundance, descended from Spanish stock. Among
them appear to have been the Ouacos, or Huecos, and the Wichitas,--two
tribes better known as the Pawnee Picts. See Marcy, _Exploration of Red
River_.
[374] Compare the account of La Harpe with that of the Chevalier de
Beaurain; both are in Margry, vi. There is an abstract in _Journal
historique_.
[375] _Relation de Bénard de la Harpe._ _Autre Relation du même._ _Du
Tisné à Bienville._ Margry, vi. 309, 310, 313.
[376] _Bienville au Conseil de Régence, 20 Juillet, 1721._
[377] _Instructions au Sieur de Bourgmont, 17 Janvier, 1722._ Margry,
vi. 389.
[378] The French had at this time gained a knowledge of the tribes of
the Missouri as far up as the Arickaras, who were not, it seems, many
days' journey below the Yellowstone, and who told them of "prodigiously
high mountains,"--evidently the Rocky Mountains. _Mémoire de la
Renaudière_, 1723.
[379] This meeting took place a little north of the Arkansas, apparently
where that river makes a northward bend, near the twenty-second degree
of west longitude. The Comanche villages were several days' journey to
the southwest. This tribe is always mentioned in the early French
narratives as the Padoucas,--a name by which the Comanches are
occasionally known to this day. See Whipple and Turner, _Reports upon
Indian Tribes_, in _Explorations and Surveys for the Pacific Railroad_
(Senate Doc., 1853, 1854).
[380] _Relation du Voyage du Sieur de Bourgmont, Juin-Novembre, 1724_,
in Margry, vi. 398. Le Page du Pratz, iii. 141.
[381] _Journal du Voyage des Frères Mallet, présenté à MM. de Bienville
et Salmon._ This narrative is meagre and confused, but serves to
establish the main points. _Copie du Certificat donné à Santa Fé aux
sept _[huit]_ Français par le Général Hurtado, 24 Juillet, 1739._ _Père
Rébald au Père de Beaubois, sans date._ _Bienville et Salmon au
Ministre, 30 Avril, 1741_, in Margry, vi. 455-468.
[382] _Instructions données par Jean-Baptiste de Bienville à Fabry de la
Bruyère, 1 Juin, 1741._ Bienville was behind his time in geographical
knowledge. As early as 1724 Bénard de la Harpe knew that in ascending
the Missouri or the Arkansas one was moving towards the "Western
Sea,"--that is, the Pacific,--and might, perhaps, find some river
flowing into it. See _Routes qu'on peut tenir pour se rendre à la Mer de
l'Ouest_, in _Journal historique_, 387.
[383] _Extrait des Lettres du Sieur Fabry._