ROBERT CAVELIER, SIEUR DE LA SALLE,
THE FIRST EXPLORER OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI
La Salle's Early Association with the Jesuits.--His Domain in
Canada.--He starts on an Exploring Expedition.--Disappears from
View.--The Favor of Frontenac.--La Salle's Extraordinary
Commission.--Niagara Falls.--The First Vessel ever launched on the
Upper Lakes.--Great Hardships of the Journey.--Arrival in the Country
of the Illinois.--Fort Crèvecoeur built.--Perilous Journey back to
Canada.--La Salle starts again for the Illinois Country.--Iroquois
Atrocities and Cannibalism.--La Salle goes as far as the Mississippi
and returns.--Tonty's Perilous Experiences.--Boisrondet's Ingenuity
saves his Life.--La Salle journeys down the Great River.--Interesting
Tribes of Indians.--The Ocean!--Louisiana named.--Hardships of the
Return Journey.--Fort St. Louis built.
Robert Cavelier, more generally known as La Salle, at the first was
connected with the Jesuits, but left the Society of Jesus and, at the
youthful age of twenty-three, came to Canada to seek his fortune. He
had an elder brother among the priests of St. Sulpice. These, being
anxious to have a fringe of settlements outside of their own {226} as a
sort of screen against Indian attacks, granted to La Salle a quite
considerable tract a few miles from Montreal. Here he laid out a
village surrounded by a palisade and let out his land to settlers for a
trifling rent.
With a view to exploration, he at once began to study the Indian
languages. Like Champlain and all the early explorers, he dreamed of a
passage to the Pacific and a new route for the commerce of China and
Japan. The name which to this day clings to the place which he
settled, La Chine (China), is said to have been bestowed by his
neighbors, in derision of what they considered his visionary schemes.
After two or three years La Salle, beginning his real life-work, sold
his domain and its improvements, equipped a party, and started out into
the wilderness. We trace his route as far as the Seneca country, in
western New York. Then for two years we lose sight of him altogether.
This time he passed among the Indians; and there is the best reason for
believing that he discovered the Ohio River and, quite probably, the
Illinois.
When Joliet and Marquette ascertained that the outlet of the Great
Water was in the Gulf of {227} Mexico, their discovery put an end to
the fond hope of establishing a new route to East India and China by
way of the Mississippi, but it inspired a brilliant thought in La
Salle's mind. Why should France be shut up in Canada, with its
poverty, its rigorous climate, its barren soil, covered with snow for
half the year? Why not reach out and seize the vast interior, with its
smiling prairies and thousands of miles of fertile soil, with the
glorious Mississippi for a waterway? She already held the approach at
one end, namely, through the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Let her
go forward on the path which lay open before her. To realize this
splendid dream became the purpose of his life.
The coming of Count Frontenac to Canada as its governor was a boon to
La Salle. Both were essentially men of the world, with ambitions of
their own. Both were strong men, daring, ardent, and resolute; and
both heartily hated the Jesuits and were hated by them with equal
fervor. Both, too, were men of small means who aimed at vast results.
In short, they were kindred spirits. But the one was Governor of
Canada, and the other was an almost penniless adventurer. This fact
determined their relations. La Salle {228} became a partisan of
Frontenac, siding with him against certain fur-traders and the Jesuits.
Frontenac became the protector of La Salle, backing his schemes with
his influence and giving him a strong recommendation to the King.
Now, Frontenac had built a fort near the lower end of Lake Ontario,
about the site of Kingston. It had the look of being a great public
benefit, for it would help to hold the Iroquois in check and it would
cut off trade from the English. On these grounds the expense of
building it was justified. But the Jesuits and the fur-traders were
opposed to it, the fur-traders because they foresaw the loss of a large
part of their trade. Indians bringing their annual canoe-loads of
peltry to market would not take the long trip to Montreal and Quebec,
if they could barter them off at a much nearer point. They suspected,
with good reason, that this new fort, erected ostensibly for the
defence of the country, was really meant to cut off from them the trade
that came down the Lakes and turn it into the hands of the Governor and
those who might be in secret league with him.
The feeling was very strong, and attempts were made to induce the King
to have the {229} obnoxious fort demolished. Just then La Salle sailed
for France with strong letters from Frontenac. Imagine the rage of his
opponents when he returned not only master of the fort, but a titled
man, the Sieur de La Salle, with the King's patent in his pocket giving
him a princely grant of many square miles on the mainland and the
adjacent islands!
But how was a needy adventurer to raise the money to pay for the fort
and to do all the high-sounding things that he had promised the King?
He counted on raising money on the strength of his great expectations.
He was not disappointed. His friends and relatives rejoicing in his
good fortune, which they naturally hoped to share, lent large sums of
money to enable him to carry out his agreement with his royal master.
Now he began piling up a mass of debts that alone would have crushed a
common man. He had, besides, a tremendous combination to fight, nearly
all the merchants of the colony, backed by the influence of the Jesuits.
Still La Salle might have settled down in his seigniory, commanded his
soldiers, lorded it over his colony, controlled the trade of the Lakes,
paid off his debts, and have grown enormously rich {230} within a few
years from the profits of the fur-trade. But he flew at higher game
than money, and cared for it only as it might serve his ambition. He
was dreaming of the Gulf of Mexico and in imagination ruling a
Southwestern New France many times larger than the old.
Therefore he took ship again for France. This time he went crowned
with success. He had done all and more than all that he had engaged to
do. He had torn down the wooden fort and replaced it with one of
stone, surmounted with nine cannon. He had erected a forge, a mill, a
bakery, barracks, and officers' quarters. He had gathered about him a
village of Iroquois, who were under the teaching of two Recollet
friars. Some French families had been settled on farms. Land had been
cleared and planted. Cattle, fowls, and swine had been brought up from
Montreal. Four small vessels had been built for use on the lake and
river. Altogether, French civilization was handsomely represented at
this lonely outpost; and La Salle had shown what he was capable of
doing as an organizer and ruler. Now he went to ask another grant.
Fancy the dismay of his opponents when he came back, in the following
year, with an {231} extraordinary commission that gave him authority to
"labor at the discovery of the western parts of New France, through
which, to all appearance, _a way may be found to Mexico_." The last
words show its true purpose. Louis aimed a blow at his enemy, Spain,
the mistress of Mexico, and La Salle was the arm through which he meant
to strike. The document gave him authority to build forts wherever he
saw fit, and to own and govern them under the same conditions as Fort
Frontenac. In short, he had a roving commission to go wherever he
pleased between the eastern end of Lake Ontario and the borders of
Mexico, and to exercise the authority of a royal governor anywhere in
all that vast region. But he must do all at his own expense, and he
must do it all within five years.
His most serious need was that of money. But, with his usual success
in drawing other men's means into his schemes, he obtained a large sum,
on which he was to pay interest at the rate of forty per cent. We can
see that he was piling up debts fast enough to meet the wishes of his
heartiest haters.
Now La Salle was in a position to enter on his grand undertaking, the
dream to which he {232} devoted his life. His first step was to send a
party of men ahead in canoes to Lake Michigan, to trade with the
Indians and collect provisions against his coming, while another party,
one of whom was the famous Father Hennepin, started in a small vessel
up Lake Ontario, to await La Salle's coming at Niagara. In due time
they reached the Niagara River, and the earliest published account of
the great cataract is Father Hennepin's.[1]
This advance party had orders to begin a fort on the Niagara River, but
the distrust of the Senecas proved to be an obstinate barrier. This
famous tribe, occupying the Genesee Valley northward to the shore of
Lake Ontario, while on the west its territory extended to Lake Erie,
was fiercely jealous of white men's coming to plant themselves in their
country.
When La Salle arrived, however, with his usual tact in managing
Indians, he succeeded in securing their consent to his putting up, not
a fort, but a fortified warehouse at the mouth of the Niagara River and
building a vessel above the Falls.
{233}
Now the first of a series of misfortunes befell him in the loss of the
little vessel that had brought him to Niagara. She was freighted with
the outfit for his great exploration and with goods for barter. But
everything was lost, except only the anchors and cables intended for
the vessel that was to be built. He bore the loss with his unvarying
fortitude.
At last all difficulties were so far overcome that the keel of the
little vessel was laid. While the work was going on, Indians were
hanging around watching it sullenly, and a squaw told the French that
her people meant to burn it. The weather was cold, and the men of the
party themselves had little heart in the enterprise. The loss of
provisions in the wrecked vessel had put them on short allowance. Only
the skill of two Mohegan hunters kept them supplied with food. It was
hard work, too, for the builders needed to bring loads from the other
vessel on their backs, a distance of some twelve miles.
In spite of all these difficulties, the little craft was finished, and,
at the opening of the ice in the spring, there glided down into the
Niagara the first keel that ever cut the water of the Upper Lakes, the
forerunner of to-day's enormous {234} tonnage. Her figure-head was a
mythical monster, and her name the "Griffin," both taken from
Frontenac's coat of arms.
On August 7, the "Griffin" fired her cannon, spread her sails, and bore
away up Lake Erie, carrying the expedition which La Salle hoped would
make him master of the Mississippi Valley. The plan was to sail to the
head of Lake Michigan, near the site of Chicago, then to march to the
Illinois River; there to build another vessel, and in the latter to
sail down the Mississippi, into the Gulf, and to the very West
Indies--an enterprise of Titanic audacity.
The first part of the voyage was delightful. We may wonder whether our
voyagers saw one amazing sight which Jonathan Carver describes. "There
are," he says, "several islands near the west end of it [Lake Erie] so
infested with rattlesnakes that it is very dangerous to land on them.
The lake is covered, near the banks of the islands, with the large
pond-lily, the leaves of which lie on the water so thick as to cover it
entirely for many acres together; and on each of these lay, when I
passed over it, wreaths of water-snakes basking in the sun, which
amounted to myriads!"
On the shore were verdant prairies and fine {235} forests. When the
voyagers entered Detroit River they saw herds of deer and flocks of
wild turkeys, and the hunters easily kept the party supplied with
venison and bear meat. On they sailed, across Lake St. Clair and out
upon Lake Huron, passed within sight of the Manitoulins, and finally
came to anchor in the cove of Mackinaw Strait, where were the famous
trading-post and mission-station of Michillimackinac.
At Green Bay La Salle found some of his men who had remained faithful
and had collected a large store of furs. This circumstance caused him
new perplexity. He had furs enough to satisfy his creditors, and he
was strongly moved to go back to the colony and settle with them. On
the other hand, he dreaded leaving his party, which would surely be
tampered with by his enemies. Should his strong hand be withdrawn, the
party probably would go to pieces. Finally he decided to remain with
the expedition and to send the "Griffin" back with her valuable cargo
to Fort Niagara and with orders to return immediately to the head of
Lake Michigan. It was an unfortunate decision. The vessel's pilot was
already under suspicion of having treacherously wrecked the vessel
which perished on Lake {236} Ontario. The "Griffin" sailed and never
was heard of again. Whether she foundered on the lake, was dashed on
the shore, or was plundered and scuttled, La Salle never knew. He
believed the latter to have been the case. Her loss was the breaking
of an indispensable link in the chain. But La Salle was still ignorant
of it, and he went on his way hopefully to the head of Lake Michigan.
A hard time the men had in paddling the heavily laden canoes,
subsisting on a scant ration of Indian corn, and at night dragging the
canoes up a steep bank and making their cheerless camp. By the time
that they reached the site of Milwaukee all were worn out.
They were glad enough when they saw two or three eagles among a great
gathering of crows or turkey-buzzards, and, hastening to the spot, they
found the torn carcass of a deer, lately killed by wolves. However, as
they neared the head of the lake, game became more abundant, and La
Salle's famous Mohegan hunters had no difficulty in providing bear's
meat and venison.
Winter was fast setting in, and La Salle was anxious to go on to the
Illinois towns before the warriors should go away on their usual winter
{237} hunting. But he was compelled to wait for Tonty, an Italian
officer of great courage and splendid loyalty who had come out to
America as his lieutenant. With twenty men, he was making his way by
land down the eastern shore. At last he appeared, with his men
half-starved, having been reduced to living on acorns. But where was
the "Griffin"? This was the place appointed for her meeting with the
expedition. But there were no tidings of her fate. After waiting as
long as he could, La Salle, with heavy forebodings, pushed on.
Now the explorers shouldered their canoes and struck out across the
frozen swamps. At last they came to a sluggish streamlet, the
headwaters of the Kankakee. They launched their canoes on it and were
carried, within a few days, into a prairie country strewn with the
carcasses of innumerable buffalo, for this was a favorite
hunting-ground of the Indians. But not one of the animals was in
sight. The men were nearly starving and, at the best, discontented and
sullen. Two lean deer and a few geese, all the game that the hunters
had been able to secure within several days, were short commons for
thirty-three men with appetites sharpened by traveling in the keen
{238} December air. It was a God-send when they found a buffalo-bull
mired fast. The famished men quickly despatched him, and by the
efforts of twelve of their number dragged the huge carcass out of the
slough.
Down the Illinois River the voyagers traveled until they came in sight
of wigwams on both sides of the river. La Salle expected trouble, for
his enemies had been busy among the Illinois, stirring them up against
him by representing that he had incited the Iroquois to make war upon
them. He ordered his men to take their arms. Then the eight canoes in
line abreast drifted down between the two wings of the encampment.
There was great confusion on both banks. The women screeched, and the
men yelled and seized their bows and war-clubs. La Salle knew well how
to deal with Indians and that it was poor policy to show himself too
eager for peace. He leaped ashore, followed by his men, arms in hand.
The Indians were more frightened by his sudden appearance than disposed
to attack him, as they at once showed by holding up a peace pipe. And
soon they overwhelmed the strangers with lavish hospitality.
These people, who formed one of the largest {239} branches of the
Algonquin stock, were particular objects of hatred to the Iroquois. At
one time they were driven across the Mississippi by these ruthless
foes, who had traveled five or six hundred miles to attack them.
There, probably, they encountered equally savage enemies, the Sioux.
At all events, they returned to their old abode on the Illinois River,
where La Salle found them. The deadly enmity of the Iroquois toward
them burst out again shortly afterward, as we shall see.
La Salle took advantage of the opportunity to assure his hosts that if
the Iroquois attacked them, he would stand by them, give them guns, and
fight for them. Then he shrewdly added that he intended building a
fort among them and a big wooden canoe in which he would descend to the
sea and bring goods for them. All this looked very plausible and won
their hearts. The next day La Salle and his companions were invited to
a feast and, of course, went. The host seized the opportunity of
warning them against descending the Great Water. He told them that its
banks were infested by ferocious tribes and its waters full of
serpents, alligators, dangerous rocks, and whirlpools; in short, that
they never would reach the ocean alive.
{240}
This harangue was interpreted to La Salle's men by two _coureurs de
bois_ who understood every word of it. La Salle saw dismay
overspreading the faces of his already disheartened men. But when his
turn came to speak, he gave the Indians a genuine surprise. "We were
not asleep," he said, "when the messenger of my enemies told you that
we were spies of the Iroquois. We know all his lies and that the
presents he brought you are at this moment buried in the earth under
this lodge." This proof of what seemed more than human sagacity
overwhelmed the Indians, and they had nothing more to say, little
dreaming that La Salle had received secret information from a friendly
chief.
Nevertheless, the next morning, when La Salle looked about for his
sentinels, not one of them was to be seen. Six of his men, including
two of the best carpenters, upon whom he depended for building the
vessel, had deserted.
To withdraw his men from the demoralizing influences of the Indian
camp, La Salle chose a naturally strong position at some distance down
the river, fortified it, and built lodgings for the men, together with
a house for the friars. This, the first habitation reared by white men
in the {241} territory now comprised in the State of Illinois, stood a
little below the site of Peoria and was called Fort Crèvecoeur. This
name, Fort Break-Heart, was taken from that of a celebrated
fortification in Europe. It was to be a heart-breaker to the enemy.
La Salle believed in the doctrine of work as the best preventive of low
spirits, and he kept his men at it. No sooner was the fort finished
than he began to build the vessel. Two of his carpenters, we remember,
had deserted. "Seeing," he says, "that if I should wait to get others
from Montreal, I should lose a whole year, I said one day before my
people that I was so vexed to find that the absence of two sawyers
would defeat my plans, that I was resolved to try to saw the planks
myself, if I could find a single man who would help me with a will."
Two men stepped forward and said they would try what they could do.
The result was that the work was begun and was pushed along so
successfully that within two weeks the hull of the vessel was half
finished.
La Salle now felt free to make the unavoidable journey to Montreal, to
look after his affairs. His men were in better heart, and the vessel
was well on its way to completion. Leaving the {242} faithful Tonty in
charge of the fort with its garrison, mostly of scoundrels, he set out
with his trusty Mohegan and four Frenchmen.
A few days earlier he had sent off Father Hennepin with two Frenchmen,
to explore the lower part of the Illinois. In another place we shall
read the story of their adventures.
We shall not follow La Salle on his journey back to Canada. It was a
terribly hard experience of sixty-five days' travel through a country
beset with every form of difficulty and swarming with enemies, "the
most arduous journey," says the chronicler, "ever made by Frenchmen in
America." But there was a worse thing to come. When La Salle reached
Niagara, he learned not only the certainty of the "Griffin's" loss,
with her valuable cargo, but that a vessel from France freighted with
indispensable goods for him had been wrecked at the mouth of the St.
Lawrence, and a party of twenty hired men on their way from Europe to
join him had, on their arrival, been so disheartened by reports of his
failure and death, that only four persisted in their purpose.
This was but the beginning of a series of disasters. His agents at
Fort Frontenac had plundered him; his creditors had seized his
property; {243} several of his canoes loaded with furs had been lost in
the rapids of the St. Lawrence; and a letter from Tonty, brought to him
by two _voyageurs_, told him that nearly all the men, after destroying
Fort Crèvecoeur, had deserted.
What a blow! Fort Crèvecoeur, with its supplies, was the base of his
great enterprise. Now it was destroyed, its garrison gone, and Tonty,
with a few faithful men, alone remained of his costly expedition. But
this lion-hearted man, whom no disasters could daunt, borrowed more
money at ruinous rates of interest, captured a party of his deserters
on Lake Ontario, killing two who resisted arrest and locking up the
others at Fort Frontenac, and hastened off on the long journey to
relieve Tonty in the Illinois country.
When the party reached the Illinois River they beheld a stirring sight.
Far and near, the prairie was alive with buffalo, while hundreds were
plunging and snorting in the water. The opportunity was not to be
lost. The voyagers landed and encamped for a hunt. For three days
they gave themselves up to the excitement of the chase, killing twelve
buffalo, besides deer, geese, and swans. Then, with an ample supply of
dried and smoked meat, they re-embarked.
{244}
When they reached the site of the populous Illinois town, the place was
desolate, not a human being in sight. Only heaps of ashes and charred
poles and stakes showed where the lodges had stood. The whole meadow
was blackened by fire. Hundreds of wolves skulked about the burial
ground of the village. The ground was strewn with broken bones and
mangled corpses. Every grave had been rifled, and the bodies had been
thrown down from the scaffolds where many of them had been placed.
It was evident what had happened. The Iroquois had made a descent, in
some way had missed their prey, and had wreaked their vengeance on the
dead. But where were Tonty and his men? There was no sign of their
having been killed. Neither had any trace been observed of their
passing up the river. It must be that they had escaped down the river
with the Illinois in their flight. La Salle promptly determined what
to do. Leaving a part of his men, he hid his baggage and started down
the stream with a few trusty men carrying little besides their arms.
When they reached the ruins of Fort Crèvecoeur, they found the vessel
on the stocks untouched.
{245}
La Salle pushed on down to the mouth of the river, without finding a
trace of his missing countrymen. Now the Great Water rolled before
him. Once he had dreamed night and day of seeing it. But to see it
under such circumstances as these,--what a mockery of his hopes! The
one thought on his mind was to find and rescue Tonty. There was no
sign of him here. To go further would have been useless, and La Salle
turned back, paddling day and night, and rejoined his men whom he had
left. Then all started northward. On their way down they had followed
the Kankakee. Now they took the Des Plaines route. Near a bark cabin
a bit of wood that had been cut with a saw showed that Tonty and his
men had gone this way. If they had but left at the fork of the stream
some sign of their passage, La Salle's party would have seen it on
their way down, and all this anxiety would have been obviated.
With his mind relieved, La Salle was glad to rest for a while at his
little Fort Miami, situated at the mouth of the St. Joseph River.
Tonty had passed through perilous straits. The desertion of the larger
part of his men left him with but three fighting men and two friars.
{246}
Next came a tremendous war-party of Iroquois to attack the Illinois, in
the midst of whom he was. For various reasons, the Illinois suspected
that the Frenchmen had brought this trouble upon them and, but for
Tonty's coolness, would have mobbed and murdered the little handful of
white men. When the Iroquois began the attack, Tonty went among them,
at the peril of his life, actually receiving a wound from an infuriated
young warrior, and succeeded in stopping the fighting by telling the
Iroquois that the Illinois numbered twelve hundred, and that there were
sixty armed Frenchmen, ready to back them.
The effect of this timely fabrication was magical. The Iroquois at
once were for peace and employed Tonty to arrange a truce. That night
the Illinois slipped away down the river. The Iroquois followed them,
on the opposite shore, watching for an opportunity to attack. This did
not offer itself, but they actually drove the Illinois out of their own
country, after perpetrating a butchery of women and children.
Meanwhile they had discovered Tonty's deception and were enraged. He
had robbed them of a prey for which they had marched hundreds of miles.
Only a wholesome fear of Count {247} Frontenac, of whom the Indians
stood in great awe, kept them from falling on the little band. As it
was, matters looked so stormy that the Frenchmen stood on the watch all
night, expecting an attack. At daybreak the chiefs bade them begone.
Accordingly they embarked in a leaky canoe and started up the river.
At their first stop Father Ribourde strolled away. When he did not
reappear his comrades became alarmed. Tonty and one of the men went in
search of him. They followed his tracks until they came to the trail
of a band of Indians who had apparently carried him off. They
afterward learned that a roving band of Kickapoos, one of the worst
specimens of the Algonquin stock, prowling around the Iroquois camp in
search of scalps, had murdered the inoffensive old man and carried his
scalp in triumph to their village.
Another of their party came near to meeting with an untimely end, but
his ingenuity saved his life. They had abandoned their worthless canoe
and were making their way on foot, living on acorns and roots, when the
young Sieur de Boisrondet wandered off and was lost. The flint of his
gun had dropped out, and he had no bullets. {248} But he cut a pewter
porringer into slugs, discharged his gun with a fire-brand, and thus
killed wild turkeys. After several days he was so fortunate as to
rejoin his party.
The poor fellows suffered terribly from cold and hunger while making
their way along the shore of Lake Michigan, but finally found a
hospitable refuge among the Pottawattamies, of Green Bay, a friendly
Algonquin tribe.
La Salle's heart was as much as ever set on following the Great Water
to the sea. But he had learned the difficulties in the way of building
a vessel and had resolved to travel by canoe.
The winter at Fort Miami was spent by him in organizing the expedition.
With this view he gathered about him a number of Indians from the far
East who had fled for safety to the western wilds after the disastrous
issue of King Philip's War, chiefly Abenakis, from Maine, and Mohegans
from the Hudson. These New England Indians, who had long been the
deadly foes of the English Puritans, were happy in enrolling themselves
under a Frenchman and were ready to go with La Salle anywhere. His
plan was to form a great Indian confederation, like that of the Five
Nations, and powerful enough to resist it. {249} With this powerful
body of Indians, backed by a sufficient number of French guns, he could
hold the Mississippi Valley against all enemies, white or red.
When he had opened the route to the Gulf of Mexico by passing down the
Great River and taking possession of its whole length in the name of
the French King, there would be a new outlet for the immensely valuable
fur-trade of all that vast area drained by it and its tributaries.
Instead of the long journey down the Lakes and the St. Lawrence, trade
would take the shorter and easier route to the Gulf of Mexico.
But how could even La Salle fail to see the enormous difficulties in
the way,--the hostility of remote tribes down the river; the sure
opposition of Spain, which was supreme on and around the Gulf, and,
most of all, the bitter enmity of the French in Canada? The scheme
meant disaster to their interests, by turning a large part of their
trade into another channel and setting up on the Mississippi a new and
powerful rival of Canada, with La Salle at its head.
All commercial Canada and nearly all official Canada were already
incensed against him on the mere suspicion of his purposes. If they
saw {250} these taking actual form, would they not rage and move heaven
and earth, that is to say, Louis the Great,[2] to crush them? A man of
less than La Salle's superhuman audacity would not in his wildest
moments have dreamed of such a thing. He deliberately cherished the
scheme and set himself calmly to executing it.
On December 21, 1682, the expedition started from Fort Miami. It
consisted of twenty-three white men, eighteen Indian warriors, and ten
squaws, with three children. These New England savages had made a
bloody record in their own country, knew well how to use guns, and were
better adapted to the work in hand than raw Europeans, however brave,
who had no experience of Indian warfare.
On February 6 the voyagers saw before them the broad current of the
Mississippi, full of floating ice. For a long distance they paddled
their canoes down the mighty current without adventure. As they fared
on day by day, they realized that they were entering a summer land.
The warm air and hazy sunlight and opening flowers were in delightful
contrast with the ice and snow from which they had emerged. Once {251}
there seemed to be danger of an attack from Indians whose war-drum they
could hear beating. A fog lifted, and the Indians, looking across the
river, saw the Frenchmen at work building a fort. Peace signals were
displayed from both sides, and soon the white men and their Indian
allies from rugged New England were hobnobbing in the friendliest way
with these dusky denizens of the southwestern woods. These were a band
of the Arkansas, the same people who had treated Joliet and Marquette
so handsomely. They lavished every kind attention on their guests and
kept them three days. The friar, Membré, who chronicled the
expedition, describes them as "gay, civil, and free-hearted,
exceedingly well-formed and with all so modest that not one of them
would take the liberty to enter our hut, but all stood quietly at the
door." He adds, "we did not lose the value of a pin while we were
among them."
La Salle had now reached the furthest point of Joliet and Marquette's
exploration. He reared a cross, took possession of the country in his
master's name, and pushed on. On the western side of the river they
visited the home of the Taensas Indians and were amazed at the degree
{252} of social advancement which they found among them. There were
square dwellings, built of sun-baked mud mixed with straw, and arranged
in regular order around an open area; and the King was attended by a
council of sixty grave old men wearing white cloaks of the fine inner
fibre of mulberry bark. The temple was a large structure, full of a
dim, mysterious gloom, within which burned a sacred fire, as an emblem
of the sun, watched and kept up unceasingly by two aged priests.
Altogether, the customs and social condition of these people were more
like those of the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans than those of the wild
tribes with whom the explorers were familiar. When the chief visited
La Salle he came in great state, preceded by women who bore white fans,
and wearing a disk of burnished copper,--probably to indicate that he
was a child of the Sun, for the royal family claimed this high lineage.
The next day the Frenchmen visited a kindred tribe, the Natchez, among
whom they observed similar usages. They were hospitably entertained
and spent the night in their villages. Their chief town was some miles
distant, near the site of the {253} city of Natchez. Here again La
Salle planted a cross, less as a symbol of Christianity than of French
occupation.[3]
{254} Near the mouth of the Red River, in the neighborhood of the place
where Soto had been buried, the voyagers, while attempting to follow
some fleeing natives, received a shower of arrows from a canoe. La
Salle, anxious to avoid a hostile encounter, drew his men off. No
doubt the Indians of this region preserved proud traditions of their
forefathers' pursuit of the escaping Spaniards, the remnant of Soto's
expedition.
On April 6 with what elation must La Salle have beheld the waters of
the Gulf sparkling in the rays of the southern sun! The dream of years
was realized. His long struggle and his hopes and failures and renewed
efforts were crowned with success. One hundred and ninety years after
Columbus's discovery, at enormous expense, he had led a party from the
great fresh-water seas to the southern ocean, and had opened, he fondly
believed, a new route for trade. But long years were to elapse ere his
vision should become a reality.
Proudly and hopefully, in full view of the sea, he reared a cross and a
column bearing the arms {255} of France and, with the singing of hymns
and volleys of musketry, solemnly proclaimed Louis, of France, to be
the rightful sovereign "of this country of Louisiana," as he named it,
"the seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the nations,
peoples, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals,
fisheries, streams, and rivers within the extent of the said Louisiana,
and also to the mouth of the River of Palms" (the Rio Grande). A
tremendous claim surely, the historian Parkman remarks, covering a
region watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand war-like
tribes, in short, an empire in itself, and all by virtue of a feeble
human voice, inaudible at half a mile!
Alas! at that very time, La Salle's enemies in Canada had gained the
upper hand and had secured the recall of his mainstay, Count Frontenac.
This meant that he could do nothing more from Canada as a base of
operations.
On the return voyage the party had a hard time. There was the labor of
paddling the canoes, day after day, against the strong current, under a
blazing sun. Their supplies were exhausted, and they had little to eat
but the flesh of alligators. In their extremity, they applied to {256}
the Quinipissas, a little above the site of New Orleans, for corn.
They got it, but had to repulse a treacherous attack at night. The
Coroas, too, who at the first had shown themselves very friendly, were
evidently bent on murdering the guests whom they entertained with
pretended hospitality. Only the watchfulness of the Frenchmen and the
terror inspired by their guns saved them from attack. Plainly these
natives had grown suspicious. Then La Salle was seized with sickness
which nearly cut him off, and which detained him for weeks. So soon as
he was able to travel, he moved on by slow stages and, about the end of
August, still weak and suffering, reached Fort Miami, from which he had
started eight months before. Of course, he had come back empty-handed,
and there was nothing substantial to show for the vast expense that had
been incurred. His associates in Canada, who had advanced the money,
must fain content themselves with the expectation that the future would
repay them.
In the meantime La Salle was carrying out his plan of founding a colony
of French and Indians on the banks of the Illinois. Here he built Fort
St. Louis on a cliff, probably the one now called {257} "Starved Rock,"
at the mouth of Vermilion River. Around its base, under its
protection, were clustered the lodges of various Indian bands, of
different tribes, while the Illinois, numbering several thousands, were
encamped on the other side of the river. But La Salle soon found that,
with the new governor, La Barre, inimical to him, he could get no
supplies from Canada. The men whom he sent for goods were detained,
and finally the Governor seized Fort Frontenac and put men in charge of
it.
La Salle had no resource but to appeal from the Governor's high-handed
injustice to the King. He left Tonty in command of Fort St. Louis and
departed for France.
[1] The famous falls are first mentioned in the Jesuit "Relations" of
1648. Their name is of Iroquois origin and in the Mohawk dialect is
pronounced Nyagarah.
[2] The chosen emblem of the "Grand Monarch" was the Sun.
[3] The Taensas and the Natchez were singularly interesting tribes.
Their social organization did not differ radically from that of other
Indians. But they had developed one peculiar feature: the principal
clan had become a ruling caste, and the chiefs were revered as
demi-gods and treated with extravagant honor, numerous human victims
being sacrificed at the death of one.
The following remarks about the Taensas and the Natchez are taken from
Father Gravier's account of his voyage, in 1700, down the
Mississippi:--"The Natchez and the Taensas practice polygamy, steal,
and are very vicious, the girls and women more than the men and boys.
The temple having been reduced to ashes last year by lightning, the old
man who sits guardian said that the spirit was incensed because no one
was put to death on the decease of the last chief, and that it was
necessary to appease him. Five women had the cruelty to cast their
children into the fire, in sight of the French who recounted it to me;
and but for the French there would have been a great many more children
burned."
At their first coming, the French found a warm welcome among the
Natchez, and Fort Rosalie in the Natchez country (built shortly after
the founding of New Orleans) was the scene for many years of constant
friendly reunions of the two races. But an arrogant and cruel
commandant, by his ill-judged severity, at a time when the warlike
Chickasaws were inciting the Natchez to rise, produced a fearful
explosion. One day a solitary soldier appeared in the hamlet of New
Orleans with fearful news. Fort Rosalie had been surprised, its
garrison of over two hundred men massacred, and two hundred and fifty
women and children taken prisoners. In the war that followed, the
Choctaws sided with the French, the Chickasaws and Yazoos with the
Natchez. Finally the French, under St. Dénis, won a complete victory,
the women and children taken at Fort Rosalie were recaptured and
brought to New Orleans, and the Natchez tribe was completely broken up.
The prisoners were sent to die in the cruel slavery of the San Domingo
sugar plantations, while a few who escaped the French were adopted into
the Chickasaw nation.
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