FROM THE GULF TO THE ILLINOIS
There were seventeen men who set out on foot, early in January, 1687, to
travel from Fort St. Louis on the Gulf of Mexico to the other Fort St.
Louis on the Illinois River—a journey of over a thousand miles. They
knew no trails which they could follow, nor were there bridges on which
to cross the rivers; and to a large extent they must gather their food
as they went. They must sleep where night found them; and they must
trust the Indians whose country they were crossing to treat them as
friends and give them guidance upon the way, for as far as they knew
there was no white man in all the distance between the two forts. Yet
forth they went bravely—La Salle and his brother and two nephews
(Moranget and the young Cavelier), Joutel, and Father Douay, Duhaut the
elder and his man L’Archevêque, whom he had picked up at the isle of
Santo Domingo, Liotot the surgeon and Hiens the buccaneer, a young boy
named Pierre Talon whom La Salle planned to leave at the Cenis village
to learn their language, and a half-dozen others.
Father Membré, full of grief, remained with Barbier and the party at the
fort and saw the slender band of explorers start off across the plains,
their five horses loaded with supplies for a long and arduous journey.
It being winter in the Southland, rains came upon them frequently and
swamps and swollen streams blocked their way. Sometimes for days they
walked drearily along the wet banks of rivers, looking for a place to
ford. Occasionally they used logs to cross upon, but finally they found
the streams so wide that they stopped and made portable boats out of
buffalo hides.
There was no lack of game; and the broad paths of the buffalo often
served as trails. Time and again the party came across Indians, with
whom La Salle almost invariably made friends. Sometimes he visited their
hunting-camps and smoked with them the pipe of peace. At other times he
called them into his own camp to smoke and eat, and then sent them away
happy with presents. They came upon Indian villages with round huts like
French ovens, and stopped to trade beads and hatchets for a horse or
provisions or deer-hide for fresh moccasins, listening meantime to the
tales of Indian wars or of the Spaniards from whom their horses first
came. They crossed the rivers now known as the Colorado and the Brazos
and drew near to the Trinity River.
Many were the adventures which Joutel and the Abbé related to Tonty at
Fort St. Louis on the Illinois. Before they reached the Cenis village,
they said, La Salle separated from them, but intended to follow them
soon. He was in good health when he left them. Without their leader they
had pushed on to the village of the Cenis, and from there they went with
guides to the Arkansas towns.
It was the 24th of July, 1687, three years to a day since they had
sailed out of the harbor of Rochelle, when they came at last to a
village on the shore of the Arkansas and saw on the river bank a house
built like the houses of Frenchmen and the blessed cross rising straight
to the sky. Out of the house on the shore came running two white men to
welcome them. They were Jean Couture and De Launay, two of the men whom
Tonty had left there on his return from his trip to the mouth of the
Mississippi the year before. At the village the Arkansas danced the
calumet dance before the Abbé. Later Couture accompanied the five men as
far as the village of the Kappas, from which place, with Arkansas guides
and an Indian canoe, they had come up the Mississippi and the Illinois
and reached Fort St. Louis in the month of September.
Such in brief was the tale that the two men—brother and companion of La
Salle—told to Tonty on the high rock of Fort St. Louis. The Man with the
Iron Hand listened to each word with intense feeling. Nearly ten years
before he had cast his lot with La Salle. With him and for him he had
literally hungered and suffered and bled. He had given what he had of
worldly goods, and his time, his strength, his whole self he had thrown
into the balance to uphold the plans of his chief. He knew him as few
men did—he knew his faults as well as his great abilities—and he loved
him. Often he had remonstrated with him over some actions or methods
that lost him favor with his men; but he also saw the breadth and power
of his leader’s vision.
Time and again he had thought his friend lost and dead—as he had been
told so stoutly in the days long before when he lived almost alone in
the Kaskaskia village. In despair he had hunted the Great River to its
mouth—little dreaming, when he gave the letter into the hands of the
Quinipissa chief, that La Salle was in the wilderness more than a
hundred leagues to the west.
But now had come news that La Salle was alive and in good health and
perhaps coming fast upon the heels of his men to the citadel on the high
rock where Tonty and Boisrondet and other faithful comrades had waited
and dreamed of his coming for four long years. Yes, he was on his way to
the Illinois country whose Indians never forgot him, but loved him as
one of their own great chiefs. He was coming back to the Kaskaskias
whose home he had restored, to the Shawnees whom he had gathered at the
foot of his great fort, to the Miamis whose chief he had raised from the
dead in his own person. It was like the coming back from the dead to
Tonty, too, after these years of despair. And so, in his joy, he paid
little heed to the quiet friar in the gray robe or the mariner Teissier,
who moved so silently among the buildings of the fort.
The entire colony on the Illinois River—Indian villages and French
garrison alike—buzzed with excitement that winter. Nothing was too good
for the men of La Salle’s party. Around the fires in the quarters of the
French, men gathered to sing songs and tell stories of adventure and
battle and strange countries, and to talk of him who was coming.
Especially among the Indian lodges was there great good cheer, for the
white father was alive and on his way back to their villages and
camp-fires. There was joy, too, among the tribes over the raids the
Illinois were making. It seemed as though the Iroquois scourge was being
driven out of the valley for good, as band after band of Illinois left
the lodges to the women and old men and struck out upon the trail of the
Iroquois. Scalps they brought home and captives, and many were the
burnings by which they paid interest upon their debt of vengeance. With
Tonty in New York they had laid waste the Iroquois fields, and now their
good fortune still continued. So white men and red together were glad.
The five men who had come to the fort in September were anxious to get
on with their journey, and Tonty promised them all the aid in his power
as soon as the spring should make travel possible. But with all their
hurry, there was one who seemed even more full of anxiety. The priest
Allouez, who had recovered from his sickness, did not lose his apparent
dread of the approach of La Salle. Spring, coming on apace, increased
his scarcely concealed restlessness; and when in March the way became
somewhat open, the black-robed Jesuit was the first to slip out of the
fort and up the valley to his friends on the Lake.
Then the Abbé with his four companions made ready to go. But they must
have means to buy food and transportation on their way to Canada and
France. So the Abbé showed to Tonty a letter from La Salle, asking Tonty
to furnish his brother, the Abbé, with money or furs. Tonty, with the
greatest content, supplied them with what they needed for the journey,
and late in March the five men of La Salle’s party, with guides to
accompany them, left the high rock on their long homeward journey.
After bidding the five men farewell, Tonty turned his attention to the
fort which must be put in readiness for the coming of the master. Month
after month passed and he hoped each day to see a canoe or canoes
cutting the water of the Illinois far downstream. Summer went by and no
La Salle. September came without bringing the leader. La Salle was now a
year behind his advance party. But one day there did appear a canoe on
the stream below the fort, and in it were a Frenchman and two Indians.
Tonty full of excitement made haste to welcome them. It was not La
Salle: it was Tonty’s man Couture from the Arkansas post. But surely he
came with news from La Salle; and so quick questions leaped at Couture
almost before he was in sound of Tonty’s voice.