1680.
THE ADVENTURES OF HENNEPIN.
Hennepin an Impostor: his Pretended Discovery; his Actual
Discovery; Captured by the Sioux.--The Upper Mississippi.
It was on the last day of the winter that preceded the invasion of the
Iroquois that Father Hennepin, with his two companions, Accau and Du
Gay, had set out from Fort Crèvecoeur to explore the Illinois to its
mouth. It appears from his own later statements, as well as from those
of Tonty, that more than this was expected of him, and that La Salle had
instructed him to explore, not alone the Illinois, but also the Upper
Mississippi. That he actually did so, there is no reasonable doubt; and
could he have contented himself with telling the truth, his name would
have stood high as a bold and vigorous discoverer. But his vicious
attempts to malign his commander and plunder him of his laurels have
wrapped his genuine merit in a cloud.
Hennepin's first book was published soon after his return from his
travels, and while La Salle was still alive. In it he relates the
accomplishment of the instructions given him, without the smallest
intimation that he did more.[197] Fourteen years after, when La Salle
was dead, he published another edition of his travels,[198] in which he
advanced a new and surprising pretension. Reasons connected with his
personal safety, he declares, before compelled him to remain silent; but
a time at length had come when the truth must be revealed. And he
proceeds to affirm, that, before ascending the Mississippi, he, with his
two men, explored its whole course from the Illinois to the sea,--thus
anticipating the discovery which forms the crowning laurel of La Salle.
[Sidenote: HENNEPIN'S RESOLUTION.]
"I am resolved," he says, "to make known here to the whole world the
mystery of this discovery, which I have hitherto concealed, that I might
not offend the Sieur de la Salle, who wished to keep all the glory and
all the knowledge of it to himself. It is for this that he sacrificed
many persons whose lives he exposed, to prevent them from making known
what they had seen, and thereby crossing his secret plans.... I was
certain that if I went down the Mississippi, he would not fail to
traduce me to my superiors for not taking the northern route, which I
was to have followed in accordance with his desire and the plan we had
made together. But I saw myself on the point of dying of hunger, and
knew not what to do; because the two men who were with me threatened
openly to leave me in the night, and carry off the canoe and everything
in it, if I prevented them from going down the river to the nations
below. Finding myself in this dilemma, I thought that I ought not to
hesitate, and that I ought to prefer my own safety to the violent
passion which possessed the Sieur de la Salle of enjoying alone the
glory of this discovery. The two men, seeing that I had made up my mind
to follow them, promised me entire fidelity; so, after we had shaken
hands together as a mutual pledge, we set out on our voyage."[199]
He then proceeds to recount at length the particulars of his alleged
exploration. The story was distrusted from the first.[200] Why had he
not told it before? An excess of modesty, a lack of self-assertion, or a
too sensitive reluctance to wound the susceptibilities of others, had
never been found among his foibles. Yet some, perhaps, might have
believed him, had he not in the first edition of his book gratuitously
and distinctly declared that he did not make the voyage in question. "We
had some designs," he says, "of going down the river Colbert
[Mississippi] as far as its mouth; but the tribes that took us prisoners
gave us no time to navigate this river both up and down."[201]
[Sidenote: HENNEPIN AN IMPOSTOR.]
In declaring to the world the achievement which he had so long concealed
and so explicitly denied, the worthy missionary found himself in serious
embarrassment. In his first book, he had stated that on the twelfth of
March he left the mouth of the Illinois on his way northward, and that
on the eleventh of April he was captured by the Sioux near the mouth of
the Wisconsin, five hundred miles above. This would give him only a
month to make his alleged canoe-voyage from the Illinois to the Gulf of
Mexico, and again upward to the place of his capture,--a distance of
three thousand two hundred and sixty miles. With his means of
transportation, three months would have been insufficient.[202] He saw
the difficulty; but, on the other hand, he saw that he could not greatly
change either date without confusing the parts of his narrative which
preceded and which followed. In this perplexity he chose a middle
course, which only involved him in additional contradictions. Having, as
he affirms, gone down to the Gulf and returned to the mouth of the
Illinois, he set out thence to explore the river above; and he assigns
the twenty-fourth of April as the date of this departure. This gives him
forty-three days for his voyage to the mouth of the river and back.
Looking further, we find that having left the Illinois on the
twenty-fourth he paddled his canoe two hundred leagues northward, and
was then captured by the Sioux on the twelfth of the same month. In
short, he ensnares himself in a hopeless confusion of dates.[203]
Here, one would think, is sufficient reason for rejecting his story; and
yet the general truth of the descriptions, and a certain verisimilitude
which marks it, might easily deceive a careless reader and perplex a
critical one. These, however, are easily explained. Six years before
Hennepin published his pretended discovery, his brother friar, Father
Chrétien Le Clerc, published an account of the Récollet missions among
the Indians, under the title of "Établissement de la Foi." This book,
offensive to the Jesuits, is said to have been suppressed by order of
government; but a few copies fortunately survive.[204] One of these is
now before me. It contains the journal of Father Zenobe Membré, on his
descent of the Mississippi in 1681, in company with La Salle. The
slightest comparison of his narrative with that of Hennepin is
sufficient to show that the latter framed his own story out of incidents
and descriptions furnished by his brother missionary, often using his
very words, and sometimes copying entire pages, with no other
alterations than such as were necessary to make himself, instead of La
Salle and his companions, the hero of the exploit. The records of
literary piracy may be searched in vain for an act of depredation more
recklessly impudent.[205]
Such being the case, what faith can we put in the rest of Hennepin's
story? Fortunately, there are tests by which the earlier parts of his
book can be tried; and, on the whole, they square exceedingly well with
contemporary records of undoubted authenticity. Bating his exaggerations
respecting the Falls of Niagara, his local descriptions, and even his
estimates of distance, are generally accurate. He constantly, it is
true, magnifies his own acts, and thrusts himself forward as one of the
chiefs of an enterprise to the costs of which he had contributed
nothing, and to which he was merely an appendage; and yet, till he
reaches the Mississippi, there can be no doubt that in the main he tells
the truth. As for his ascent of that river to the country of the Sioux,
the general statement is fully confirmed by La Salle, Tonty, and other
contemporary writers.[206] For the details of the journey we must rest
on Hennepin alone, whose account of the country and of the peculiar
traits of its Indian occupants afford, as far as they go, good evidence
of truth. Indeed, this part of his narrative could only have been
written by one well versed in the savage life of this northwestern
region.[207] Trusting, then, to his own guidance in the absence of
better, let us follow in the wake of his adventurous canoe.
[Sidenote: HIS VOYAGE NORTHWARD.]
It was laden deeply with goods belonging to La Salle, and meant by him
as presents to Indians on the way, though the travellers, it appears,
proposed to use them in trading on their own account. The friar was
still wrapped in his gray capote and hood, shod with sandals, and
decorated with the cord of St. Francis. As for his two companions,
Accau[208] and Du Gay, it is tolerably clear that the former was the
real leader of the party, though Hennepin, after his custom, thrusts
himself into the foremost place. Both were somewhat above the station of
ordinary hired hands; and Du Gay had an uncle who was an ecclesiastic of
good credit at Amiens, his native place.
In the forests that overhung the river the buds were feebly swelling
with advancing spring. There was game enough. They killed buffalo, deer,
beavers, wild turkeys, and now and then a bear swimming in the river.
With these, and the fish which they caught in abundance, they fared
sumptuously, though it was the season of Lent. They were exemplary,
however, at their devotions. Hennepin said prayers at morning and night,
and the _angelus_ at noon, adding a petition to Saint Anthony of Padua
that he would save them from the peril that beset their way. In truth,
there was a lion in the path. The ferocious character of the Sioux, or
Dacotah, who occupied the region of the Upper Mississippi, was already
known to the French; and Hennepin, with excellent reason, prayed that it
might be his fortune to meet them, not by night, but by day.
[Sidenote: CAPTURED BY THE SIOUX.]
On the eleventh or twelfth of April, they stopped in the afternoon to
repair their canoe; and Hennepin busied himself in daubing it with
pitch, while the others cooked a turkey. Suddenly, a fleet of Sioux
canoes swept into sight, bearing a war-party of a hundred and twenty
naked savages, who on seeing the travellers raised a hideous clamor;
and, some leaping ashore and others into the water, they surrounded the
astonished Frenchmen in an instant.[209] Hennepin held out the
peace-pipe; but one of them snatched it from him. Next, he hastened to
proffer a gift of Martinique tobacco, which was better received. Some of
the old warriors repeated the name _Miamiha_, giving him to understand
that they were a war-party, on the way to attack the Miamis; on which,
Hennepin, with the help of signs and of marks which he drew on the sand
with a stick, explained that the Miamis had gone across the Mississippi,
beyond their reach. Hereupon, he says that three or four old men placed
their hands on his head, and began a dismal wailing; while he with his
handkerchief wiped away their tears, in order to evince sympathy with
their affliction, from whatever cause arising. Notwithstanding this
demonstration of tenderness, they refused to smoke with him in his
peace-pipe, and forced him and his companions to embark and paddle
across the river; while they all followed behind, uttering yells and
howlings which froze the missionary's blood.
On reaching the farther side, they made their camp-fires, and allowed
their prisoners to do the same. Accau and Du Gay slung their kettle;
while Hennepin, to propitiate the Sioux, carried to them two turkeys,
of which there were several in the canoe. The warriors had seated
themselves in a ring, to debate on the fate of the Frenchmen; and two
chiefs presently explained to the friar, by significant signs, that it
had been resolved that his head should be split with a war-club. This
produced the effect which was no doubt intended. Hennepin ran to the
canoe, and quickly returned with one of the men, both loaded with
presents, which he threw into the midst of the assembly; and then,
bowing his head, offered them at the same time a hatchet with which to
kill him, if they wished to do so. His gifts and his submission seemed
to appease them. They gave him and his companions a dish of beaver's
flesh; but, to his great concern, they returned his peace-pipe,--an act
which he interpreted as a sign of danger. That night the Frenchmen slept
little, expecting to be murdered before morning. There was, in fact, a
great division of opinion among the Sioux. Some were for killing them
and taking their goods; while others, eager above all things that French
traders should come among them with the knives, hatchets, and guns of
which they had heard the value, contended that it would be impolitic to
discourage the trade by putting to death its pioneers.
Scarcely had morning dawned on the anxious captives, when a young chief,
naked, and painted from head to foot, appeared before them and asked for
the pipe, which the friar gladly gave him. He filled it, smoked it,
made the warriors do the same, and, having given this hopeful pledge of
amity, told the Frenchmen that, since the Miamis were out of reach, the
war-party would return home, and that they must accompany them. To this
Hennepin gladly agreed, having, as he declares, his great work of
exploration so much at heart that he rejoiced in the prospect of
achieving it even in their company.
[Sidenote: SUSPECTED OF SORCERY.]
He soon, however, had a foretaste of the affliction in store for him;
for when he opened his breviary and began to mutter his morning
devotion, his new companions gathered about him with faces that betrayed
their superstitious terror, and gave him to understand that his book was
a bad spirit with which he must hold no more converse. They thought,
indeed, that he was muttering a charm for their destruction. Accau and
Du Gay, conscious of the danger, begged the friar to dispense with his
devotions, lest he and they alike should be tomahawked; but Hennepin
says that his sense of duty rose superior to his fears, and that he was
resolved to repeat his office at all hazards, though not until he had
asked pardon of his two friends for thus imperilling their lives.
Fortunately, he presently discovered a device by which his devotion and
his prudence were completely reconciled. He ceased the muttering which
had alarmed the Indians, and, with the breviary open on his knees, sang
the service in loud and cheerful tones. As this had no savor of sorcery,
and as they now imagined that the book was teaching its owner to sing
for their amusement, they conceived a favorable opinion of both alike.
These Sioux, it may be observed, were the ancestors of those who
committed the horrible but not unprovoked massacres of 1862, in the
valley of the St. Peter. Hennepin complains bitterly of their treatment
of him, which, however, seems to have been tolerably good. Afraid that
he would lag behind, as his canoe was heavy and slow,[210] they placed
several warriors in it to aid him and his men in paddling. They kept on
their way from morning till night, building huts for their bivouac when
it rained, and sleeping on the open ground when the weather was
fair,--which, says Hennepin, "gave us a good opportunity to contemplate
the moon and stars." The three Frenchmen took the precaution of sleeping
at the side of the young chief who had been the first to smoke the
peace-pipe, and who seemed inclined to befriend them; but there was
another chief, one Aquipaguetin, a crafty old savage, who having lost a
son in war with the Miamis, was angry that the party had abandoned their
expedition, and thus deprived him of his revenge. He therefore kept up a
dismal lament through half the night; while other old men, crouching
over Hennepin as he lay trying to sleep, stroked him with their hands,
and uttered wailings so lugubrious that he was forced to the belief
that he had been doomed to death, and that they were charitably
bemoaning his fate.[211]
[Sidenote: THE CAPTIVE FRIAR.]
One night, the captives were, for some reason, unable to bivouac near
their protector, and were forced to make their fire at the end of the
camp. Here they were soon beset by a crowd of Indians, who told them
that Aquipaguetin had at length resolved to tomahawk them. The
malcontents were gathered in a knot at a little distance, and Hennepin
hastened to appease them by another gift of knives and tobacco. This was
but one of the devices of the old chief to deprive them of their goods
without robbing them outright. He had with him the bones of a deceased
relative, which he was carrying home wrapped in skins prepared with
smoke after the Indian fashion, and gayly decorated with bands of dyed
porcupine quills. He would summon his warriors, and placing these relics
in the midst of the assembly, call on all present to smoke in their
honor; after which, Hennepin was required to offer a more substantial
tribute in the shape of cloth, beads, hatchets, tobacco, and the like,
to be laid upon the bundle of bones. The gifts thus acquired were then,
in the name of the deceased, distributed among the persons present.
On one occasion, Aquipaguetin killed a bear, and invited the chiefs and
warriors to feast upon it. They accordingly assembled on a prairie, west
of the river, where, after the banquet, they danced a "medicine-dance."
They were all painted from head to foot, with their hair oiled,
garnished with red and white feathers, and powdered with the down of
birds. In this guise they set their arms akimbo, and fell to stamping
with such fury that the hard prairie was dented with the prints of their
moccasins; while the chief's son, crying at the top of his throat, gave
to each in turn the pipe of war. Meanwhile, the chief himself, singing
in a loud and rueful voice, placed his hands on the heads of the three
Frenchmen, and from time to time interrupted his music to utter a
vehement harangue. Hennepin could not understand the words, but his
heart sank as the conviction grew strong within him that these
ceremonies tended to his destruction. It seems, however, that, after all
the chief's efforts, his party was in the minority, the greater part
being adverse to either killing or robbing the three strangers.
Every morning, at daybreak, an old warrior shouted the signal of
departure; and the recumbent savages leaped up, manned their birchen
fleet, and plied their paddles against the current, often without
waiting to break their fast. Sometimes they stopped for a buffalo-hunt
on the neighboring prairies; and there was no lack of provisions. They
passed Lake Pepin, which Hennepin called the Lake of Tears, by reason
of the howlings and lamentations here uttered over him by Aquipaguetin,
and nineteen days after his capture landed near the site of St. Paul.
The father's sorrows now began in earnest. The Indians broke his canoe
to pieces, having first hidden their own among the alder-bushes. As they
belonged to different bands and different villages, their mutual
jealousy now overcame all their prudence; and each proceeded to claim
his share of the captives and the booty. Happily, they made an amicable
distribution, or it would have fared ill with the three Frenchmen; and
each taking his share, not forgetting the priestly vestments of
Hennepin, the splendor of which they could not sufficiently admire, they
set out across the country for their villages, which lay towards the
north in the neighborhood of Lake Buade, now called Mille Lac.
[Sidenote: A HARD JOURNEY.]
Being, says Hennepin, exceedingly tall and active, they walked at a
prodigious speed, insomuch that no European could long keep pace with
them. Though the month of May had begun, there were frosts at night; and
the marshes and ponds were glazed with ice, which cut the missionary's
legs as he waded through. They swam the larger streams, and Hennepin
nearly perished with cold as he emerged from the icy current. His two
companions, who were smaller than he, and who could not swim, were
carried over on the backs of the Indians. They showed, however, no
little endurance; and he declares that he should have dropped by the
way, but for their support. Seeing him disposed to lag, the Indians, to
spur him on, set fire to the dry grass behind him, and then, taking him
by the hands, ran forward with him to escape the flames. To add to his
misery, he was nearly famished, as they gave him only a small piece of
smoked meat once a day, though it does not appear that they themselves
fared better. On the fifth day, being by this time in extremity, he saw
a crowd of squaws and children approaching over the prairie, and
presently descried the bark lodges of an Indian town. The goal was
reached. He was among the homes of the Sioux.
FOOTNOTES:
[197] _Description de la Louisiane, nouvellement découverte_, Paris,
1683.
[198] _Nouvelle Découverte d'un très grand Pays situé dans l'Amérique_,
Utrecht, 1697.
[199] _Nouvelle Découverte_, 248, 250, 251.
[200] See the preface of the Spanish translation by Don Sebastian
Fernandez de Medrano, 1699, and also the letter of Gravier, dated 1701,
in Shea's _Early Voyages on the Mississippi_. Barcia, Charlevoix, Kalm,
and other early writers put a low value on Hennepin's veracity.
[201] _Description de la Louisiane_, 218.
[202] La Salle, in the following year, with a far better equipment, was
more than three months and a half in making the journey. A Mississippi
trading-boat of the last generation, with sails and oars, ascending
against the current, was thought to do remarkably well if it could make
twenty miles a day. Hennepin, if we believe his own statements, must
have ascended at an average rate of sixty miles, though his canoe was
large and heavily laden.
[203] Hennepin here falls into gratuitous inconsistencies. In the
edition of 1697, in order to gain a little time, he says that he left
the Illinois on his voyage southward on the eighth of March, 1680; and
yet in the preceding chapter he repeats the statement of the first
edition, that he was detained at the Illinois by floating ice till the
twelfth. Again, he says in the first edition that he was captured by the
Sioux on the eleventh of April; and in the edition of 1697 he changes
this date to the twelfth, without gaining any advantage by doing so.
[204] Le Clerc's book had been made the text of an attack on the
Jesuits. See _Reflexions sur un Livre intitulé Premier Établissement de
la Foi_. This piece is printed in the _Morale Pratique des Jésuites_.
[205] Hennepin may have copied from the unpublished journal of Membré,
which the latter had placed in the hands of his Superior; or he may have
compiled from Le Clerc's book, relying on the suppression of the edition
to prevent detection. He certainly saw and used it; for he elsewhere
borrows the exact words of the editor. He is so careless that he steals
from Membré passages which he might easily have written for himself; as,
for example, a description of the opossum and another of the
cougar,--animals with which he was acquainted. Compare the following
pages of the _Nouvelle Découverte_ with the corresponding pages of Le
Clerc: Hennepin, 252, Le Clerc, ii. 217; H. 253, Le C. ii. 218; H. 257,
Le C. ii. 221; H. 259, Le C. ii. 224; H. 262, Le C. ii. 226; H. 265, Le
C. ii. 229; H. 267, Le C. ii. 233; H. 270, Le C. ii. 235; H. 280, Le C.
ii. 240; H. 295, Le C. ii. 249; H. 296, Le C. ii. 250; H. 297, Le C. ii.
253; H. 299, Le C. ii. 254; H. 301, Le C. ii. 257. Some of these
parallel passages will be found in Sparks's _Life of La Salle_, where
this remarkable fraud was first fully exposed. In Shea's _Discovery of
the Mississippi_, there is an excellent critical examination of
Hennepin's works. His plagiarisms from Le Clerc are not confined to the
passages cited above; for in his later editions he stole largely from
other parts of the suppressed _Établissement de la Foi_.
[206] It is certain that persons having the best means of information
believed at the time in Hennepin's story of his journeys on the Upper
Mississippi. The compiler of the _Relation des Découvertes_, who was in
close relations with La Salle and those who acted with him, does not
intimate a doubt of the truth of the report which Hennepin on his return
gave to the Provincial Commissary of his Order, and which is in
substance the same which he published two years later. The _Relation_,
it is to be observed, was written only a few months after the return of
Hennepin, and embodies the pith of his narrative of the Upper
Mississippi, no part of which had then been published.
[207] In this connection, it is well to examine the various Sioux words
which Hennepin uses incidentally, and which he must have acquired by
personal intercourse with the tribe, as no Frenchman then understood the
language. These words, as far as my information reaches, are in every
instance correct. Thus, he says that the Sioux called his breviary a
"bad spirit,"--_Ouackanché_. _Wakanshe_, or _Wakanshecha_, would express
the same meaning in modern English spelling. He says elsewhere that they
called the guns of his companions _Manzaouackanché_, which he
translates, "iron possessed with a bad spirit." The western Sioux to
this day call a gun _Manzawakan_, "metal possessed with a spirit."
_Chonga (shonka)_, "a dog," _Ouasi (wahsee)_, "a pine-tree," _Chinnen
(shinnan)_, "a robe," or "garment," and other words, are given
correctly, with their interpretations. The word _Louis_, affirmed by
Hennepin to mean "the sun," seems at first sight a wilful inaccuracy, as
this is not the word used in general by the Sioux. The Yankton band of
this people, however, call the sun _oouee_, which, it is evident,
represents the French pronunciation of _Louis_, omitting the initial
letter. This Hennepin would be apt enough to supply, thereby conferring
a compliment alike on himself, Louis Hennepin, and on the King, Louis
XIV., who, to the indignation of his brother monarchs, had chosen the
sun as his emblem.
Various trivial incidents touched upon by Hennepin, while recounting his
life among the Sioux, seem to me to afford a strong presumption of an
actual experience. I speak on this point with the more confidence, as
the Indians in whose lodges I was once domesticated for several weeks
belonged to a western band of the same people.
[208] Called Ako by Hennepin. In contemporary documents, it is written
Accau, Acau, D'Accau, Dacau, Dacan, and D'Accault.
[209] The edition of 1683 says that there were thirty-three canoes; that
of 1697 raises the number to fifty. The number of Indians is the same in
both. The later narrative is more in detail than the former.
[210] And yet it had, by his account, made a distance of thirteen
hundred and eighty miles from the mouth of the Mississippi upward in
twenty-four days!
[211] This weeping and wailing over Hennepin once seemed to me an
anomaly in his account of Sioux manners, as I am not aware that such
practices are to be found among them at present. They are mentioned,
however, by other early writers. Le Sueur, who was among them in
1699-1700, was wept over no less than Hennepin. See the abstract of his
journal in La Harpe.