astonishment. He had seen nothing like it in America: large square
dwellings, built of sun-baked mud mixed with straw, arched over with a
dome-shaped roof of canes, and placed in regular order around an open
area. Two of them were larger and better than the rest. One was the
lodge of the chief; the other was the temple, or house of the sun.
They entered the former, and found a single room, forty feet square,
where, in the dim light,--for there was no opening but the door,--the
chief sat awaiting them on a sort of bedstead, three of his wives at
his side, while sixty old men, wrapt in white cloaks woven of
mulberry-bark, formed his divan. When he spoke, his wives howled to do
him honor; and the assembled councilors listened with the reverence
due to a potentate for whom, at his death, a hundred victims were to
be sacrificed. He received the visitors graciously, and joyfully
accepted the gifts which Tonty laid before him. This interview over,
the Frenchmen repaired to the temple, wherein were kept the bones of
the departed chiefs. In construction, it was much like the royal
dwelling. Over it were rude wooden figures, representing three eagles
turned toward the east. A strong mud wall surrounded it, planted with
stakes, on which were stuck the skulls of enemies sacrificed to the
Sun; while before the door was a block of wood, on which lay a large
shell surrounded with the braided hair of the victims. The interior
was rude as a barn, dimly lighted from the doorway, and full of smoke.
There was a structure in the middle which Membré thinks was a kind of
altar; and before it burned a perpetual fire, fed with three logs laid
end to end, and watched by two old men devoted to this sacred office.
There was a mysterious recess, too, which the strangers were forbidden
to explore, but which, as Tonty was told, contained the riches of the
nation, consisting of pearls from the Gulf, and trinkets obtained,
probably through other tribes, from the Spaniards and other
Europeans....
On the next morning, as they descended the river, they saw a wooden
canoe full of Indians; and Tonty gave chase. He had nearly overtaken
it, when more than a hundred men appeared suddenly on the shore, with
bows bent to defend their countrymen. La Salle called out to Tonty to
withdraw. He obeyed; and the whole party encamped on the opposite
bank. Tonty offered to cross the river with a peace-pipe, and set out
accordingly with a small party of men. When he landed, the Indians
made signs of friendship by joining their hands,--a proceeding by
which Tonty, having but one hand, was somewhat embarrassed[3]; but he
directed his men to respond in his stead.
The Indians of this village were the Natchez; and their chief was
brother of the great chief, or Sun, of the whole nation. His town was
several leagues distant, near the site of the city of Natchez; and
thither the French repaired to visit him. They saw what they had
already seen among the Taensas,--a religious and political despotism,
a privileged caste descended from the sun, a temple, and a sacred
fire. La Salle planted a large cross, with the arms of France
attached, in the midst of the town; while the inhabitants looked on
with a satisfaction which they would hardly have displayed, had they
understood the meaning of the act....
And now they neared their journey's end. On the sixth of April, the
river divided itself into three broad channels. La Salle followed that
of the west, and D'Autray that of the east; while Tonty took the
middle passage. As he drifted down the turbid current, between the low
and marshy shores, the brackish water changed to brine, and the breeze
grew fresh with the salt breath of the sea. Then the broad bosom of
the great Gulf opened on his sight, tossing its restless billows,
limitless, voiceless, lonely as when born of chaos, without a sail,
without a sign of life.
La Salle, in a canoe, coasted the marshy borders of the sea; and then
the reunited parties assembled on a spot of dry ground, a short
distance above the mouth of the river. Here a column was made ready,
bearing the arms of France, and inscribed with the words,--"LOUIS LE
GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, REGNE; LE NEUVIEME 1682." ...
On that day, the realm of France received on parchment a stupendous
accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the
Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of
the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks
of the Rocky Mountains,--a region of savannas and forests, sun-cracked
deserts, and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by
a thousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan of
Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at
half a mile.
[1] From "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West." By
permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Co. Robert Cavelier,
Sieur de La Salle, was born in Rouen, in France, in 1643, and
assassinated in Texas in 1687. He was of burgher descent, had been
educated by the Jesuits, with whom for a time he was connected,
and first went to Canada in 1666, discovering the Ohio River in
1669, and the upper waters of the Illinois in 1671. In 1679 he
established a fort on the Illinois River, near the present Peoria,
intending it as a starting-point for an expedition down the
Mississippi. The expedition here described, organized in 1681,
comprized, beside La Salle and Tonti, thirty Frenchmen and a band
of Indians. It reached the Mississippi by way of the Chicago
portage and the Illinois River, and arrived at the mouth in 1682.
In 1684 La Salle attempted to found a settlement at the mouth of
the Mississippi. Starting from France, he made a landing in
Matagorda Bay, Texas, and near a branch of the Trinity River, in
Texas, was assassinated by some of his disaffected followers. His
patent of nobility dates from 1673.
[2] A reference to the loss of the _Griffin_, which he had built
at the mouth of Cayuga Creek, near Buffalo, the first vessel ever
built on the Great Lakes, and which was lost on Lake Michigan soon
afterward.
[3] Tony tells us he lost his hand in Sicily, where it was "shot
off by a grenade."
END OF VOL. I