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 La Salle.
[Sidenote: LA SALLE'S ADVENTURE.]
On the third of December the party re-embarked, thirty-three in all, in
eight canoes,[140] and ascended the chill current of the St. Joseph,
bordered with dreary meadows and bare gray forests. When they approached
the site of the present village of South Bend, they looked anxiously
along the shore on their right to find the portage or path leading to
the headquarters of the Illinois. The Mohegan was absent, hunting; and,
unaided by his practised eye, they passed the path without seeing it. La
Salle landed to search the woods. Hours passed, and he did not return.
Hennepin and Tonty grew uneasy, disembarked, bivouacked, ordered guns to
be fired, and sent out men to scour the country. Night came, but not
their lost leader. Muffled in their blankets and powdered by the
thick-falling snow-flakes, they sat ruefully speculating as to what had
befallen him; nor was it till four o'clock of the next afternoon that
they saw him approaching along the margin of the river. His face and
hands were besmirched with charcoal; and he was further decorated with
two opossums which hung from his belt, and which he had killed with a
stick as they were swinging head downwards from the bough of a tree,
after the fashion of that singular beast. He had missed his way in the
forest, and had been forced to make a wide circuit around the edge of a
swamp; while the snow, of which the air was full, added to his
perplexities. Thus he pushed on through the rest of the day and the
greater part of the night, till, about two o'clock in the morning, he
reached the river again, and fired his gun as a signal to his party.
Hearing no answering shot, he pursued his way along the bank, when he
presently saw the gleam of a fire among the dense thickets close at
hand. Not doubting that he had found the bivouac of his party, he
hastened to the spot. To his surprise, no human being was to be seen.
Under a tree beside the fire was a heap of dry grass impressed with the
form of a man who must have fled but a moment before, for his couch was
still warm. It was no doubt an Indian, ambushed on the bank, watching to
kill some passing enemy. La Salle called out in several Indian
languages; but there was dead silence all around. He then, with
admirable coolness, took possession of the quarters he had found,
shouting to their invisible proprietor that he was about to sleep in
his bed; piled a barricade of bushes around the spot, rekindled the
dying fire, warmed his benumbed hands, stretched himself on the dried
grass, and slept undisturbed till morning.
The Mohegan had rejoined the party before La Salle's return, and with
his aid the portage was soon found. Here the party encamped. La Salle,
who was excessively fatigued, occupied, together with Hennepin, a wigwam
covered in the Indian manner with mats of reeds. The cold forced them to
kindle a fire, which before daybreak set the mats in a blaze; and the
two sleepers narrowly escaped being burned along with their hut.
[Sidenote: THE KANKAKEE.]
In the morning, the party shouldered their canoes and baggage and began
their march for the sources of the river Illinois, some five miles
distant. Around them stretched a desolate plain, half-covered with snow
and strewn with the skulls and bones of buffalo; while, on its farthest
verge, they could see the lodges of the Miami Indians, who had made this
place their abode. As they filed on their way, a man named Duplessis,
bearing a grudge against La Salle, who walked just before him, raised
his gun to shoot him through the back, but was prevented by one of his
comrades. They soon reached a spot where the oozy, saturated soil quaked
beneath their tread. All around were clumps of alder-bushes, tufts of
rank grass, and pools of glistening water. In the midst a dark and lazy
current, which a tall man might bestride, crept twisting like a snake
among the weeds and rushes. Here were the sources of the Kankakee, one
of the heads of the Illinois.[141] They set their canoes on this thread
of water, embarked their baggage and themselves, and pushed down the
sluggish streamlet, looking, at a little distance, like men who sailed
on land. Fed by an unceasing tribute of the spongy soil, it quickly
widened to a river; and they floated on their way through a voiceless,
lifeless solitude of dreary oak barrens, or boundless marshes overgrown
with reeds. At night, they built their fire on ground made firm by
frost, and bivouacked among the rushes. A few days brought them to a
more favored region. On the right hand and on the left stretched the
boundless prairie, dotted with leafless groves and bordered by gray
wintry forests, scorched by the fires kindled in the dried grass by
Indian hunters, and strewn with the carcasses and the bleached skulls of
innumerable buffalo. The plains were scored with their pathways, and the
muddy edges of the river were full of their hoof-prints. Yet not one was
to be seen. At night, the horizon glowed with distant fires; and by day
the savage hunters could be descried at times roaming on the verge of
the prairie. The men, discontented and half-starved, would have deserted
to them had they dared. La Salle's Mohegan could kill no game except two
lean deer, with a few wild geese and swans. At length, in their straits,
they made a happy discovery. It was a buffalo bull, fast mired in a
slough. They killed him, lashed a cable about him, and then twelve men
dragged out the shaggy monster, whose ponderous carcass demanded their
utmost efforts.
The scene changed again as they descended. On either hand ran ranges of
woody hills, following the course of the river; and when they mounted to
their tops, they saw beyond them a rolling sea of dull green prairie, a
boundless pasture of the buffalo and the deer, in our own day strangely
transformed,--yellow in harvest-time with ripened wheat, and dotted with
the roofs of a hardy and valiant yeomanry.[142]
[Sidenote: THE ILLINOIS TOWN.]
They passed the site of the future town of Ottawa, and saw on their
right the high plateau of Buffalo Rock, long a favorite dwelling-place
of Indians. A league below, the river glided among islands bordered with
stately woods. Close on their left towered a lofty cliff,[143] crested
with trees that overhung the rippling current; while before them spread
the valley of the Illinois, in broad low meadows, bordered on the right
by the graceful hills at whose foot now lies the village of Utica. A
population far more numerous then tenanted the valley. Along the right
bank of the river were clustered the lodges of a great Indian town.
Hennepin counted four hundred and sixty of them.[144] In shape, they
were somewhat like the arched top of a baggage-wagon. They were built
of a framework of poles, covered with mats of rushes closely interwoven;
and each contained three or four fires, of which the greater part served
for two families.
[Sidenote: HUNGER RELIEVED.]
Here, then, was the town; but where were the inhabitants? All was silent
as the desert. The lodges were empty, the fires dead, and the ashes
cold. La Salle had expected this; for he knew that in the autumn the
Illinois always left their towns for their winter hunting, and that the
time of their return had not yet come. Yet he was not the less
embarrassed, for he would fain have bought a supply of food to relieve
his famished followers. Some of them, searching the deserted town,
presently found the _caches_, or covered pits, in which the Indians hid
their stock of corn. This was precious beyond measure in their eyes, and
to touch it would be a deep offence. La Salle shrank from provoking
their anger, which might prove the ruin of his plans; but his necessity
overcame his prudence, and he took thirty _minots_ of corn, hoping to
appease the owners by presents. Thus provided, the party embarked again,
and resumed their downward voyage.
On New Year's Day, 1680, they landed and heard mass. Then Hennepin
wished a happy new year to La Salle first, and afterwards to all the
men, making them a speech, which, as he tells us, was "most
touching."[145] He and his two brethren next embraced the whole company
in turn, "in a manner," writes the father, "most tender and
affectionate," exhorting them, at the same time, to patience, faith, and
constancy. Four days after these solemnities, they reached the long
expansion of the river then called Pimitoui, and now known as Peoria
Lake, and leisurely made their way downward to the site of the city of
Peoria.[146] Here, as evening drew near, they saw a faint spire of
smoke curling above the gray forest, betokening that Indians were at
hand. La Salle, as we have seen, had been warned that these tribes had
been taught to regard him as their enemy; and when, in the morning, he
resumed his course, he was prepared alike for peace or war.
The shores now approached each other; and the Illinois was once more a
river, bordered on either hand with overhanging woods.[147]
At nine o'clock, doubling a point, he saw about eighty Illinois wigwams,
on both sides of the river. He instantly ordered the eight canoes to be
ranged in line, abreast, across the stream,--Tonty on the right, and he
himself on the left. The men laid down their paddles and seized their
weapons; while, in this warlike guise, the current bore them swiftly
into the midst of the surprised and astounded savages. The camps were in
a panic. Warriors whooped and howled; squaws and children screeched in
chorus. Some snatched their bows and war-clubs; some ran in terror; and,
in the midst of the hubbub, La Salle leaped ashore, followed by his men.
None knew better how to deal with Indians; and he made no sign of
friendship, knowing that it might be construed as a token of fear. His
little knot of Frenchmen stood, gun in hand, passive, yet prepared for
battle. The Indians, on their part, rallying a little from their
fright, made all haste to proffer peace. Two of their chiefs came
forward, holding out the calumet; while another began a loud harangue,
to check the young warriors who were aiming their arrows from the
farther bank. La Salle, responding to these friendly overtures,
displayed another calumet; while Hennepin caught several scared children
and soothed them with winning blandishments.[148] The uproar was
quelled; and the strangers were presently seated in the midst of the
camp, beset by a throng of wild and swarthy figures.
[Sidenote: ILLINOIS HOSPITALITY.]
Food was placed before them; and, as the Illinois code of courtesy
enjoined, their entertainers conveyed the morsels with their own hands
to the lips of these unenviable victims of their hospitality, while
others rubbed their feet with bear's grease. La Salle, on his part, made
them a gift of tobacco and hatchets; and when he had escaped from their
caresses, rose and harangued them. He told them that he had been forced
to take corn from their granaries, lest his men should die of hunger;
but he prayed them not to be offended, promising full restitution or
ample payment. He had come, he said, to protect them against their
enemies, and teach them to pray to the true God. As for the Iroquois,
they were subjects of the Great King, and therefore brethren of the
French; yet, nevertheless, should they begin a war and invade the
country of the Illinois, he would stand by them, give them guns, and
fight in their defence, if they would permit him to build a fort among
them for the security of his men. It was also, he added, his purpose to
build a great wooden canoe, in which to descend the Mississippi to the
sea, and then return, bringing them the goods of which they stood in
need; but if they would not consent to his plans and sell provisions to
his men, he would pass on to the Osages, who would then reap all the
benefits of intercourse with the French, while they were left destitute,
at the mercy of the Iroquois.[149]
This threat had its effect, for it touched their deep-rooted jealousy of
the Osages. They were lavish of promises, and feasts and dances consumed
the day. Yet La Salle soon learned that the intrigues of his enemies
were still pursuing him. That evening, unknown to him, a stranger
appeared in the Illinois camp. He was a Mascoutin chief, named Monso,
attended by five or six Miamis, and bringing a gift of knives, hatchets,
and kettles to the Illinois.[150] The chiefs assembled in a secret
nocturnal session, where, smoking their pipes, they listened with open
ears to the harangue of the envoys. Monso told them that he had come in
behalf of certain Frenchmen, whom he named, to warn his hearers against
the designs of La Salle, whom he denounced as a partisan and spy of the
Iroquois, affirming that he was now on his way to stir up the tribes
beyond the Mississippi to join in a war against the Illinois, who, thus
assailed from the east and from the west, would be utterly destroyed.
There was no hope for them, he added, but in checking the farther
progress of La Salle, or, at least, retarding it, thus causing his men
to desert him. Having thrown his fire-brand, Monso and his party left
the camp in haste, dreading to be confronted with the object of their
aspersions.[151]
[Sidenote: FRESH INTRIGUES.]
In the morning, La Salle saw a change in the behavior of his hosts. They
looked on him askance, cold, sullen, and suspicious. There was one
Omawha, a chief, whose favor he had won the day before by the politic
gift of two hatchets and three knives, and who now came to him in secret
to tell him what had taken place at the nocturnal council. La Salle at
once saw in it a device of his enemies; and this belief was confirmed,
when, in the afternoon, Nicanopé, brother of the head chief, sent to
invite the Frenchmen to a feast. They repaired to his lodge; but before
dinner was served,--that is to say, while the guests, white and red,
were seated on mats, each with his hunting-knife in his hand, and the
wooden bowl before him which was to receive his share of the bear's or
buffalo's meat, or the corn boiled in fat, with which he was to be
regaled,--while such was the posture of the company, their host arose
and began a long speech. He told the Frenchmen that he had invited them
to his lodge less to refresh their bodies with good cheer than to cure
their minds of the dangerous purpose which possessed them, of descending
the Mississippi. Its shores, he said, were beset by savage tribes,
against whose numbers and ferocity their valor would avail nothing; its
waters were infested by serpents, alligators, and unnatural monsters;
while the river itself, after raging among rocks and whirlpools, plunged
headlong at last into a fathomless gulf, which would swallow them and
their vessel forever.
[Sidenote: LA SALLE AND THE INDIANS.]
La Salle's men were for the most part raw hands, knowing nothing of the
wilderness, and easily alarmed at its dangers; but there were two among
them, old _coureurs de bois_, who unfortunately knew too much; for they
understood the Indian orator, and explained his speech to the rest. As
La Salle looked around on the circle of his followers, he read an augury
of fresh trouble in their disturbed and rueful visages. He waited
patiently, however, till the speaker had ended, and then answered him,
through his interpreter, with great composure. First, he thanked him for
the friendly warning which his affection had impelled him to utter; but,
he continued, the greater the danger, the greater the honor; and even
if the danger were real, Frenchmen would never flinch from it. But were
not the Illinois jealous? Had they not been deluded by lies? "We were
not asleep, my brother, when Monso came to tell you, under cover of
night, that we were spies of the Iroquois. The presents he gave you,
that you might believe his falsehoods, are at this moment buried in the
earth under this lodge. If he told the truth, why did he skulk away in
the dark? Why did he not show himself by day? Do you not see that when
we first came among you, and your camp was all in confusion, we could
have killed you without needing help from the Iroquois? And now, while I
am speaking, could we not put your old men to death, while your young
warriors are all gone away to hunt? If we meant to make war on you, we
should need no help from the Iroquois, who have so often felt the force
of our arms. Look at what we have brought you. It is not weapons to
destroy you, but merchandise and tools for your good. If you still
harbor evil thoughts of us, be frank as we are, and speak them boldly.
Go after this impostor Monso, and bring him back, that we may answer him
face to face; for he never saw either us or the Iroquois, and what can
he know of the plots that he pretends to reveal?"[152] Nicanopé had
nothing to reply, and, grunting assent in the depths of his throat,
made a sign that the feast should proceed.
The French were lodged in huts, near the Indian camp; and, fearing
treachery, La Salle placed a guard at night. On the morning after the
feast, he came out into the frosty air and looked about him for the
sentinels. Not one of them was to be seen. Vexed and alarmed, he entered
hut after hut and roused his drowsy followers. Six of the number,
including two of the best carpenters, were nowhere to be found.
Discontented and mutinous from the first, and now terrified by the
fictions of Nicanopé, they had deserted, preferring the hardships of the
midwinter forest to the mysterious terrors of the Mississippi. La Salle
mustered the rest before him, and inveighed sternly against the
cowardice and baseness of those who had thus abandoned him, regardless
of his many favors. If any here, he added, are afraid, let them but wait
till the spring, and they shall have free leave to return to Canada,
safely and without dishonor.[153]
[Sidenote: LA SALLE AGAIN POISONED.]
This desertion cut him to the heart. It showed him that he was leaning
on a broken reed; and he felt that, on an enterprise full of doubt and
peril, there were scarcely four men in his party whom he could trust.
Nor was desertion the worst he had to fear; for here, as at Fort
Frontenac, an attempt was made to kill him. Tonty tells us that poison
was placed in the pot in which their food was cooked, and that La Salle
was saved by an antidote which some of his friends had given him before
he left France. This, it will be remembered, was an epoch of poisoners.
It was in the following month that the notorious La Voisin was burned
alive, at Paris, for practices to which many of the highest nobility
were charged with being privy, not excepting some in whose veins ran the
blood of the gorgeous spendthrift who ruled the destinies of
France.[154]
In these early French enterprises in the West, it was to the last degree
difficult to hold men to their duty. Once fairly in the wilderness,
completely freed from the sharp restraints of authority in which they
had passed their lives, a spirit of lawlessness broke out among them
with a violence proportioned to the pressure which had hitherto
controlled it. Discipline had no resources and no guarantee; while those
outlaws of the forest, the _coureurs de bois_, were always before their
eyes, a standing example of unbridled license. La Salle, eminently
skilful in his dealings with Indians, was rarely so happy with his own
countrymen; and yet the desertions from which he was continually
suffering were due far more to the inevitable difficulty of his position
than to any want of conduct on his part.
FOOTNOTES:
[140] _Lettre de Duchesneau à----, 10 Nov., 1680._
[141] The Kankakee was called at this time the Theakiki, or Haukiki
(Marest); a name which, as Charlevoix says, was afterwards corrupted by
the French to Kiakiki whence, probably, its present form. In La Salle's
time, the name "Theakiki" was given to the river Illinois through all
its course. It was also called the Rivière Seignelay, the Rivière des
Macopins, and the Rivière Divine, or Rivière de la Divine. The latter
name, when Charlevoix visited the country in 1721, was confined to the
northern branch. He gives an interesting and somewhat graphic account of
the portage and the sources of the Kankakee, in his letter dated _De la
Source du Theakiki, ce dix-sept Septembre_, 1721.
Why the Illinois should ever have been called the "Divine," it is not
easy to see. The Memoirs of St. Simon suggest an explanation. Madame de
Frontenac and her friend Mademoiselle d'Outrelaise, he tells us, lived
together in apartments at the Arsenal, where they held their _salon_ and
exercised a great power in society. They were called at court _les
Divines_. (St. Simon, v. 335: Cheruel.) In compliment to Frontenac, the
river may have been named after his wife or her friend. The suggestion
is due to M. Margry. I have seen a map by Raudin, Frontenac's engineer,
on which the river is called "Rivière de la Divine ou l'Outrelaise."
[142] The change is very recent. Within the memory of men not yet old,
wolves and deer, besides wild swans, wild turkeys, cranes, and pelicans,
abounded in this region. In 1840, a friend of mine shot a deer from the
window of a farmhouse, near the present town of La Salle. Running wolves
on horseback was his favorite amusement in this part of the country. The
buffalo long ago disappeared; but the early settlers found frequent
remains of them. Mr. James Clark, of Utica, Ill., told me that he once
found a large quantity of their bones and skulls in one place, as if a
herd had perished in the snowdrifts.
[143] "Starved Rock." It will hold, hereafter, a conspicuous place in
the narrative.
[144] _La Louisiane_, 137. Allouez (_Relation_, 1673-79) found three
hundred and fifty-one lodges. This was in 1677. The population of this
town, which embraced five or six distinct tribes of the Illinois, was
continually changing. In 1675, Marquette addressed here an auditory
composed of five hundred chiefs and old men, and fifteen hundred young
men, besides women and children. He estimates the number of fires at
five or six hundred. (_Voyages du Père Marquette_, 98: Lenox.) Membré,
who was here in 1680, says that it then contained seven or eight
thousand souls. (Membré in Le Clerc, _Premier Établissement de la Foy_,
ii. 173.) On the remarkable manuscript map of Franquelin, 1684, it is
set down at twelve hundred warriors, or about six thousand souls. This
was after the destructive inroad of the Iroquois. Some years later,
Rasle reported upwards of twenty-four hundred families. (_Lettre à son
Frère, in Lettres Édifiantes._)
At times, nearly the whole Illinois population was gathered here. At
other times, the several tribes that composed it separated, some
dwelling apart from the rest; so that at one period the Illinois formed
eleven villages, while at others they were gathered into two, of which
this was much the larger. The meadows around it were extensively
cultivated, yielding large crops, chiefly of Indian corn. The lodges
were built along the river-bank for a distance of a mile, and sometimes
far more. In their shape, though not in their material, they resembled
those of the Hurons. There were no palisades or embankments.
This neighborhood abounds in Indian relics. The village graveyard
appears to have been on a rising ground, near the river immediately in
front of the town of Utica. This is the only part of the river bottom,
from this point to the Mississippi, not liable to inundation in the
spring floods. It now forms part of a farm occupied by a tenant of Mr.
James Clark. Both Mr. Clark and his tenant informed me that every year
great quantities of human bones and teeth were turned up here by the
plough. Many implements of stone are also found, together with beads and
other ornaments of Indian and European fabric.
[145] "Les paroles les plus touchantes."--_Hennepin_ (1683), 139. The
later editions add the modest qualification, "que je pus."
[146] Peoria was the name of one of the tribes of the Illinois.
Hennepin's dates here do not exactly agree with those of La Salle
(_Lettre du 29 Sept., 1680_), who says that they were at the Illinois
village on the first of January, and at Peoria Lake on the fifth.
[147] At least, it is so now at this place. Perhaps, in La Salle's time,
it was not wholly so; for there is evidence, in various parts of the
West, that the forest has made considerable encroachments on the open
country.
[148] Hennepin (1683), 142.
[149] Hennepin (1683), 144-149. The later editions omit a part of the
above.
[150] "Un sauvage, nommé Monso, qui veut dire Chevreuil_."--La Salle._
Probably Monso is a misprint for Mouso, as _mousoa_ is Illinois for
_chevreuil_, or deer.
[151] Hennepin (1683), 151, (1704), 205; Le Clerc, ii. 157; _Mémoire du
Voyage de M. de la Salle_. This is a paper appended to Frontenac's
Letter to the Minister, 9 Nov., 1680. Hennepin prints a translation of
it in the English edition of his later work. It charges the Jesuit
Allouez with being at the bottom of the intrigue. Compare _Lettre de La
Salle, 29 Sept., 1680_ (Margry, ii. 41), and _Mémoire de La Salle_, in
Thomassy, _Géologie Pratique de la Louisiane_, 203.
The account of the affair of Monso, in the spurious work bearing Tonty's
name, is mere romance.
[152] The above is a paraphrase, with some condensation, from Hennepin,
whose account is substantially identical with that of La Salle.
[153] Hennepin (1683), 162. _Déclaration faite par Moyse Hillaret,
charpentier de barque, cy devant au service du Sr. de la Salle._
[154] The equally noted Brinvilliers was burned four years before. An
account of both will be found in the Letters of Madame de Sévigné. The
memoirs of the time abound in evidence of the frightful prevalence of
these practices, and the commotion which they excited in all ranks of
society.