THE MISSISSIPPI AND LOUISIANA
[Sidenote: _French and English views in North America._]
What were the French and English fighting for in North America? The
answer seems obvious, for North America itself. But what did North
America mean? It had a different meaning to different interests. The
New Englander cared for little but the New England colonies, and the
immediately adjacent lands and seas. To the Acadian settlers the
Acadian peninsula, to the Canadian _habitant_ the banks of the St.
Lawrence, were all in all. The inland colonists of New York had in
their minds not merely the safety of their colony, within its
ill-defined boundaries, but also paramount influence over the Five
Nations, and unrestricted trade with the western Indians. Longheaded
governors of New York and Massachusetts took a still wider view; but
the widest of all was held by the French Governors of Canada, and by
the roving Canadians, who, with restless spirit and undaunted
enterprise, claimed seas and rivers before they were reached or
known, magnifying tales of far-off lands and peoples, building in the
air and bringing down to earth a fabric of continental dominion. As a
rule, the English view was too circumscribed, the French view was too
diffuse. The strength of the English lay in effective occupation
within narrow limits; the French committed the blunder of perpetually
forcing competition upon rivals who had larger resources; but to them
belonged the great merit of grasping in some sort the true meaning of
North America, and never letting slip the problems of the future.
{148} [Sidenote: _The search for the Western sea._]
The explorers' aim was always to reach the further sea. That it must
be somewhere to the west, in the opposite direction to the homes from
whence they came, they knew or conjectured; but of the immense
distance at which it lay, and of the Rocky Mountain barrier which
must be surmounted to find it, they were wholly ignorant. They
followed the water, and, when they had gained some knowledge of the
great lakes, they reached the closely adjoining sources of the
tributaries of the Mississippi, the Wisconsin, the Ohio, and the
Illinois; and, borne with the stream, they came in due course not to
the west but to the south, not to the Pacific but to the Gulf of
Mexico.
[Sidenote: _The missionaries and Western discovery._]
There was the usual mixture of motives--love of adventure, love of
gain, political ambition, religious fervour. There was rivalry and
competition. One trader or band of traders was jealous of another.
One man or set of men was backed by the Governor for the time being,
another secured the favour of the Intendant. Missionaries played a
great part in exploration. At first they led the van of discovery;
they were always in or near the front rank; but, as years went on,
and as the simple desire of adding to geographical knowledge, of
opening new fields for France and for Christianity, became more and
more alloyed with commercial greed, the ministers of religion, when
heart-whole themselves, realized that the multiplication of trading
posts in the backwoods meant lawlessness of white men, deterioration
of natives; and they no longer gave hearty support to the bold French
adventurers whose enterprise opened up the West.
[Sidenote: _The gates of the waterways of Canada._]
It will be noticed, on reference to a map of Canada--or rather of
that part of the Dominion which was comprised in New France--not only
that there is water communication from end to end, from the extreme
west of Lake Superior to the Atlantic, but also that there are very
distinct points along the way, which are, so to speak, natural
toll-bars, {149} where the waters narrow, where the rivers or lakes
meet. Here the explorer must pass to reach a goal beyond; here the
trader could intercept traffic; here the missionary was sure to find
Indians to be converted, and _coureurs de bois_ to be reclaimed;
these were the places which must be occupied by the would-be
sovereigns of North America. Consequently, at these points of vantage
along the route, at one time and another, mission stations, trading
posts, and forts were planted.
Montreal itself, at the head of the colony, at the beginning of its
hinterland, commanded the junction of the Ottawa and the St.
Lawrence. At Cataraqui, where the St. Lawrence leaves Lake Ontario,
Fort Frontenac was built. A little above the outlet of the Niagara
river into Lake Ontario and below the falls, another French fort was
reared, Fort Niagara; while on the channel between Lakes Erie and
Huron was the fort of Detroit. The Iroquois, as we have seen, knew as
well as the French the value of these positions: they feared and
resented the building of the forts, as limiting the range of their
power, and taking from them the control of the fur trade. On the
upper lakes there were at least two posts of prime importance: one
was the Sault St. Marie at the junction of Lake Huron and Lake
Superior, the other was Michillimackinac at the junction of Lake
Huron and Lake Michigan. It must not be supposed that the points
mentioned were occupied in chronological order, as they have been
enumerated above; or that there was any regular series of occupants,
that the explorer came first, followed by the missionary, the trader,
and so forth: but the net result was that French enterprise and
French statesmanship took and kept the gateways on the highroad of
Upper Canada.
[Sidenote: _Lake Michigan._]
[Sidenote: _Michillimackinac._]
[Sidenote: _Green Bay._]
[Sidenote: _The route to the Mississippi from Green Bay,_]
Lake Michigan was known to the French as the 'Lac des Illinois.' The
narrows where it joins Lake Huron were the straits of
Michillimackinac, now Mackinac or Mackinaw; and on their northern
side stood the trading station of the {150} same name, and the
mission of St. Ignace. Within the straits on the western side, is a
large indentation, forming a sheet of water which runs south-west,
nearly parallel to the main lake. This was at first called, after
certain Indians who lived on its shores, the Baie des Puans; but it
was subsequently named the Grande Baie, and this title was corrupted
into Green Bay, its present name. The Fox river flows into the head
of Green Bay, and, if the upward course of this river is followed
through Lake Winnebago and beyond, a point is reached at which the
waters of the Wisconsin river are not more than a mile and a half
distant. The Wisconsin is a tributary of the Mississippi.
[Sidenote: _and from the end of Lake Michigan._]
A slightly longer portage was needed to reach the Mississippi basin
from the end of Lake Michigan. Still it was a matter of very few
miles to leave the lake, where the city of Chicago now stands, and to
strike one or other of the branches of the Illinois river, the
nearest being the stream known as Des Plaines. Canoes launched on
that stream were carried down into the Illinois, and so to the
Mississippi at a point far south of its confluence with the
Wisconsin.
[Sidenote: _The Ohio route._]
For adventurers bold enough to diverge from the line of lakes, and to
pass overland within reach of the dreaded Five Nations, there was yet
a third route, more direct than the other two, to the great river. It
was a route well known in after years, and followed the course of the
Ohio. The Ohio, the 'beautiful river,' for such is the meaning of its
name,[1] is formed by the junction of two rivers, the Alleghany and
the Monongahela. At their junction, in the middle of the eighteenth
century, the French founded Fort Duquesne, and where Fort Duquesne
stood is now the city of Pittsburg. The northern branch, the
Alleghany, takes its rise near the southern shore of Lake Erie. One
of its affluents flows out of Lake Chautauqua, about eight miles
south of Lake Erie, at the point where there is now the small town of
Portland; {151} another, the Riviere aux Boeufs, now called French
Creek, is very little further from the lake, over against Presque Ile
and the present town of Erie. A day's march through the forest would
therefore bring a traveller from Lake Erie to a stream which, when in
full volume, would carry his canoe into the Alleghany, the Ohio, and
so to the Mississippi far down its course. No wonder the line of the
Ohio became, when geographical knowledge had made some way, a central
feature in French politics and French strategy in North America.
[Footnote 1: The name was given it by the Iroquois.]
[Sidenote: _The head waters of the Mississippi closely adjoin the St.
Lawrence basin._]
From the above it will be seen how closely the head waters of the
Mississippi adjoin the St. Lawrence basin, how short the land journey
was from the one to the other. The natives of North America made
exploration difficult, but from a geographical point of view, the
discoverer's path was comparatively easy.
[Sidenote: _Early exploration on the upper lakes._]
The upper lakes, Lakes Huron and Superior, were visited and explored
before there was any adequate knowledge of Lakes Ontario and Erie,
and there is no record of white men passing from Lake Erie to Lake
Huron by the strait of Detroit before the year 1670. The Five Nations
barred the upper St. Lawrence, and the Niagara river and portage; but
they did not control to the same extent the alternative route from
Montreal to Lake Huron by the Ottawa river. Thus it was that the
Jesuits found their way to the Hurons, on Georgian Bay, long before
any mission enterprise was attempted on the lower lakes, and as early
as 1640 there were Jesuit missionaries at the outlet of Lake
Superior, the Sault St. Marie. Later, after the dispersion of the
Hurons, there was for a while a mission at the western end of Lake
Superior, the place being known as La Pointe, and the mission as the
mission of St. Esprit.
[Sidenote: _Jean Nicollet._]
The first white man to reach Lake Michigan was Jean Nicollet. He was
a native of Cherbourg, and had come to Canada as early as 1618.
Sojourning among the Nipissing {152} Indians, he heard from them of
the western tribes; and, listening to Indian tales, seems to have
conjectured that a people might be reached in the far West who could
be none other than Chinese. With these pictures in his mind, he went,
about 1635, as an ambassador of peace to the Puans or Winnebagos, who
dwelt on the Green Bay of Michigan, and arrived among them, so the
story goes, in an embroidered dress of Chinese damask, as being
appropriate to the people whom he hoped to find. He did not find
Chinamen, but came near finding the Mississippi; and a claim was made
in after years on his behalf that he actually was the first
discoverer of that river. The claim however must be disallowed, and
the honour of discovering the great river belongs to the two
Frenchmen, Joliet and Marquette, who did not reach it till 1673.
[Sidenote: _Promoters of discovery._]
After the destruction of the Huron missions, it was difficult enough
for some years to keep life in the struggling colony of New France;
and it was not until the King had taken Canada in hand, had sent out
soldiers and settlers, had commissioned Tracy and Courcelles to curb
the Iroquois, and the Intendant, Talon, to introduce order and
system, that progress was made in exploring and opening up the West.
The promoters of exploration were Talon himself, before he returned
to France; and subsequently the Governor, Frontenac; the Sulpician
and Jesuit missionaries, especially the latter; and laymen
adventurers, the foremost of whom was Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la
Salle. La Salle's name is for all time connected with the
Mississippi, but Joliet and Marquette were before him in reaching the
main river.
[Sidenote: _Joliet and Marquette._]
Of these two companions in travel, Louis Joliet was a layman, though
connected with the Jesuits by early training. Born in Canada, he had
been sent by Talon to look for copper by Lake Superior, and was
subsequently picked out to discover the mysterious river. Jacques
Marquette was a Jesuit priest, of the earlier and purer type--a
saintly man, {153} humble and single in mind, who early wore his life
away in labouring for his faith. He had come out from France in 1666,
and about the year 1668 was sent as a missionary to the upper lakes.
On the shores of Lake Superior he ministered to Huron and Ottawa
refugees at the mission of St. Esprit, where he heard from Illinois
visitors of the great river, and from which point, though he knew it
not, one feeder of the Mississippi, the St. Croix river, is at no
great distance. A Sioux raid broke up the mission, and with the
retreating Hurons he established himself at Michillimackinac, where,
about 1670, he founded the mission of St. Ignace. About the same
time, a mission was also established at the head of Green Bay, and
from this point the two travellers, at the end of May, 1673, went
forward to the Mississippi.
[Sidenote: _They reach the Mississippi._]
The course up the Fox river and across Lake Winnebago had already
been taken by other missionaries, who had not, however, gone as far
as the Wisconsin. That river was now reached, and on June 17 it
carried the explorers' canoes out into the Mississippi. Down stream
they went, past the mouths of the Illinois, the Missouri, and the
Ohio, until they came to the confluence of the Arkansas river. There
they turned, assured in their own minds that the outlet of the
Mississippi was in the Gulf of Mexico--not, as had been supposed, in
the Gulf of California--and fearing lest, if they lost their lives at
the hands of Indians or of Spaniards,[2] the tale of their discovery
might be lost also. They came back by way of the Illinois and Des
Plaines rivers, made the portage to Lake Michigan, and reached Green
Bay at the end of September, having made known to white men the great
river of the West.
[Footnote 2: The lower Mississippi had long been known to the
Spaniards.]
[Sidenote: _Their return._]
[Sidenote: _Marquette's second journey and death._]
Joliet went back to Quebec to report to the Governor, losing all his
papers by the way in the rapids of Lachine. He lived to visit Hudson
Bay and the coasts of Labrador. Marquette, in broken health, stayed
rather more than a year {154} at the Green Bay mission. Then, in the
winter of 1674-5, accompanied by two French _voyageurs_, he revisited
the Illinois river, carrying for the last time his message of
Christianity to savages, who heard him gladly, and followed him back,
a dying man, as far as Lake Michigan. In the month of May he embarked
on the lake, making for Michillimackinac; but, as he went, the end
came, and he was put on shore to die. His companions buried him at
the lonely spot where he died, but at a later date his bones were
brought to Michillimackinac by Indians who had loved him well, and
were laid to rest with all reverence in the chapel of his own
mission.
[Sidenote: _La Salle._]
[Sidenote: _His Seigniory at Lachine._]
Marquette, like David Livingstone at a later date, was a missionary
explorer. He was carried forward by a faith which could remove
mountains. La Salle was cast in another mould. His gift was not
religious enthusiasm, but the set purpose of a resolute, masterful
man, who made a life-study of his subject. He was born at Rouen, the
birthplace of much western enterprise, and went to Canada in the same
year as Marquette, the year 1666. An elder brother, who was a
Sulpician priest, had gone out before him; and from the Sulpicians,
as feudal lords of the island of Montreal, La Salle obtained a grant
of the Seigniory of Lachine, eight miles higher up the river than
Montreal itself. Here he laid out a settlement, but, as the name 'La
Chine' testifies,[3] his mind was set on finding a route to China and
the East, and in 1669 he gave up his grant, receiving compensation
for improvements, and spent what little money he had in beginning his
work of discovery.
[Footnote 3: See above, p. 53.]
[Sidenote: _He reaches the Ohio._]
His early wanderings have not been clearly traced, but there is no
reason to doubt that, in the years 1669-71, he found his way from
Lakes Ontario and Erie through the Iroquois country to the Ohio. It
was perhaps a more difficult feat to accomplish than the subsequent
discovery of {155} the Mississippi by way of the lakes. The land
journey was longer, and took the explorer well within range of the
Five Nations. His success proved his capacity for treating with
natives--a quality in which he resembled his staunch friend and
supporter Count Frontenac.
[Sidenote: _His character._]
Among white men he had, like Frontenac, many enemies, suspicious
priests and jealous merchants. The Jesuits had little love for a man
who had no love for them; and the Canadian merchants regarded him as
a dangerous rival, recognizing no doubt the element of tenacity in
his character. It was the character of one who could hold as well as
find, and who was not likely to rest content with the barren honours
of discovery. There were in him contradictory elements, and his
strength was balanced by failings, which became more conspicuous in
the later stages of his adventurous career. He was not in all points
a typical Frenchman. He had, it is true, address in dealing with
North American Indians; he could lay his case well before the Court
and the ministers of France. He enjoyed the friendship and
countenance of Count Frontenac, and from more than one of his
companions in travel, notably Henri de Tonty, he won unbounded
devotion. But he was wanting, as a leader, in tact and sympathy.
Solitary and self-contained, facing all dangers, enduring all
privations, he spared neither himself nor others. Mutiny and
desertion were in consequence rife amongst those who served him, and
in the end he lost his life at the hands of his own followers. He had
statesmanlike conceptions. He mapped out New France, in his own mind,
as extending from sea to sea, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to that
of Mexico. Like other Frenchmen, he went too far and tried to do too
much; but, if he made mistakes, he was at least no visionary. Until
the last stage of his career, his ends were clearly kept in view, and
he measured the means to attain them, though he did not always
measure aright.
[Sidenote: _La Salle at Fort Frontenac._]
He gave up one Seigniory to find the Ohio. It was not {156} long
before he obtained another. Count Frontenac came out to govern
Canada, for the first time, in 1672; and determined, as has been
told,[4] to build a fort at the outlet of Lake Ontario. Guided, it
would seem, by La Salle's advice, he built it in 1673, at the mouth
of the Cataraqui river. In 1675, La Salle, who had paid a visit to
France in the autumn of the previous year, became by royal grant
Seignior of the new fort and settlement, to which he gave the name of
Fort Frontenac. It was a strong position to hold, whether for making
money by trade or for prosecuting westward discovery; and bitter was
the jealousy against the young Frenchman, who, at thirty-two years of
age, and after no more than nine years' residence in Canada, had in
spite of strong opposition achieved so much.
[Footnote 4: See above, p. 108.]
[Sidenote: _His plans for Western discovery._]
Two years he remained at Cataraqui, rebuilding and strengthening the
fort, clearing the ground and constructing small vessels for trading
purposes on Lake Ontario: then, ready to move forward again, he went
back to France in 1677, and laid before the King and Colbert a
further memorial for permission to discover and colonize the
countries of the West. He asked to be confirmed in his Seigniory at
Fort Frontenac, to be allowed to establish two other stations, and to
be given rights as Seignior and Governor over whatever lands he might
discover and colonize within twenty years. He promised, if his
request were granted, to plant a colony at the outlet of Lake Erie,
and to waive all claim to any share in the trade between the Indians
of the western lakes and Canada.
[Sidenote: _He is given a royal patent._]
These conditions are worth special note. La Salle was prepared to
assure to France one more link in the chain of rivers and lakes: he
was prepared too to disarm trading jealousy by renouncing any plans
for intercepting the existing fur trade. He asked in return for a
free hand to the south-west, in the lands of the Ohio, the Illinois,
and the Mississippi. The answer of the King, given in May, 1678, was
permission 'to labour at the discovery of the western parts of New
France {157} ... through which to all appearance a way may be found
to Mexico,'[5] and for that purpose to build forts and enjoy
possession of them as at Fort Frontenac. The concession was limited
to five years; and, while a monopoly in buffalo skins was granted to
the petitioner, he was prohibited, as he had contemplated, from
trading with the tribes whose furs came down to Montreal.
[Footnote 5: Quoted by Parkman in his _La Salle_ (11th ed.), p. 112.]
[Sidenote: _Henri de Tonty._]
[Sidenote: _Father Hennepin._]
Having secured this patent, La Salle raised funds in France for the
furtherance of his enterprise; and in July, 1678, set sail from La
Rochelle to Canada, taking with him an Italian officer, Tonty, who
had been recommended to him by the Prince de Conti, and whose
subsequent faithfulness to his leader became almost proverbial. A
companion of a different kind joined him on his return to Canada,
Father Hennepin, a Flemish friar, a brave and sturdy traveller, but a
man of great personal vanity and convicted of telling more than
travellers' tales. He published an account of his travels in La
Salle's lifetime, and, after his death, put forth a new edition,[6]
claiming to have anticipated La Salle in descending the Mississippi
to the sea. The story has been proved to be an absolute imposture,
the more discreditable that it was an attempt to rob a dead man of
honour dearly bought.
[Footnote 6: The first book, published at Paris in 1683, was entitled
_Description de la Louisiane nouvellement decouverte_. The second,
published at Utrecht in 1697, was headed _Nouvelle decouverte d'un
tres grand pays situe dans l'Amerique_.]
[Sidenote: _La Salle builds a fort at Niagara._]
On his return from France, La Salle dispatched a party of men in
advance to Lake Michigan, to trade and to collect stores against his
own arrival. He then set himself, taking Fort Frontenac as his basis,
to plant a post at the mouth of the Niagara river below the falls;
and, above the falls, to build a ship of some appreciable size for
the navigation of the upper lakes. The plan was well thought out. He
would hold both ends of Lake Ontario; and, the continuity of advance
being broken by the falls of Niagara, he would have, above the {158}
falls, an armed vessel plying for merchandise between Niagara and the
end of Lake Michigan, where again there should be another fort or
factory to safeguard the portage to the waters of the Mississippi.
[Sidenote: _Suspicions of the Senecas._]
It was specially necessary to hold both ends of Lake Ontario, for
here was the land of the Senecas. Jealously and sullenly they watched
the Frenchmen's work, through the winter of 1678-9, not wholly
reassured by a visit from La Salle himself to the chief town of the
tribe; but they attempted no armed opposition. Thus the beginning was
made of the first Fort Niagara,[7] on the eastern bank of the river,
in the angle formed by its junction with Lake Ontario; while on the
same side of the water, five miles above the falls, where a stream
called the Cayuga creek enters the main river, a ship was built
bearing the name and the emblem of the _Griffin_, the appropriate
arms of truculent Count Frontenac.
[Footnote 7: Denonville's fort, referred to above, p 111, was a later
structure.]
[Sidenote: _The voyage of the 'Griffin' to Michillimackinac._]
[Sidenote: _Loss of the ship._]
On August 7, 1679, the _Griffin_ started on her voyage up Lake Erie.
On the tenth--the feast of Sainte Claire--she had passed up the
Detroit river and was in Lake St. Clair. Against the strong current
of the St. Clair river, she found her way into Lake Huron, and,
buffeted by storm and wind, reached in the course of the same month
the mission of St. Ignace at Michillimackinac. Of the advanced party
of traders sent there in the previous year, some had deserted;
others, who remained true, were found at Green Bay with a rich store
of furs; and on the eighteenth of September La Salle parted with his
vessel, sending her to carry back the furs to the portage at Niagara.
He never saw the ship again, and her fate was never known.
Foundering, it would seem, in Lake Michigan, she left her owner to
wait in vain for her return, in want of food, in want of stores for
his onward march, with followers whom he could not trust, with Indian
tribes to master or appease, with winter making the way harder and
the wilderness more drear.
{159} [Sidenote: _La Salle builds a fort at the end of Lake
Michigan._]
[Sidenote: _He descends the Illinois river._]
After dispatching the _Griffin_ homeward, La Salle pushed on in
canoes to the south-eastern end of Lake Michigan. There, at the mouth
of the St. Joseph river, which he called the Miami, he built a fort.
December came on, but forward he went, up the St. Joseph, across to
the Kankakee, a tributary of the Illinois, and down that stream and
the Illinois river to where the Illinois Indians were encamped for
the time near the present town of Peoria. His plan had been to build
another ship on the Illinois, and sail down that river and the
Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
[Sidenote: _He builds Fort Crevecoeur on the Illinois._]
[Sidenote: _He returns to Canada._]
The new year, 1680, opened badly for his enterprise. The Indians were
suspicious, his men were deserting, no news had come of the ill-fated
_Griffin_. Yet he held staunchly to his purpose. Again he reared a
fort--Fort Crevecoeur--a little lower down the Illinois than the
Indian camp, and again in the far-off wilds, in dead of winter, he
turned his men to shipbuilding. Without fittings and supplies it was
impossible to proceed, and, accordingly, he determined to go back
himself and bring the needed stores. Leaving Tonty in charge of the
fort, he retraced his steps to Lake Michigan. At Fort Miami he learnt
beyond question the loss of the _Griffin_. Across the then unknown
peninsula of Michigan he took his way, reached the Detroit river,
struck Lake Erie, and, passing by way of Niagara, arrived at Fort
Frontenac in sixty-five days from leaving the Illinois, having in
March and April achieved a feat of travel almost unparalleled even in
the early history of Canada. Going down to Montreal, he obtained
supplies, and again set his face undaunted to the West.
[Sidenote: _He goes back to the West._]
[Sidenote: _Iroquois raid on the Illinois._]
[Sidenote: _Tonty lost_]
As he came and went, he heard of nothing but disaster. The men left
at Fort Crevecoeur under Tonty's command broke out in open mutiny,
and some of them were intercepted on their way back to Fort
Frontenac, having destroyed the forts on the Illinois and St. Joseph,
looted their employer's property at Michillimackinac and Niagara, and
being minded {160} to crown their villainy by killing La Salle
himself. They met their fate--were shot or imprisoned--and La Salle
pushed on to Tonty's succour. Towards the close of the year he was
back on the Illinois river, only to find a scene of utter desolation.
In his absence, the Iroquois had invaded the land and swept all
before them. Skeletons of men and women, empty huts, an abandoned
fort, the hull of a half-built ship, all told a tale of brutish
warfare and a ruined enterprise. Tonty was not to be found; and,
after following the Illinois down to its confluence with the
Mississippi, La Salle returned to Lake Michigan, and wintered on the
St. Joseph river at Fort Miami, which had been destroyed by the
mutineers but was again rebuilt.
[Sidenote: _and found._]
[Sidenote: _His adventures._]
With the spring of 1681 there came a gleam of hope. The western
Indians, terror-stricken by the Iroquois--and Indian immigrants from
the east, driven out by the English colonists--gathered for
protection to the brave, enduring Frenchman, took him for their
leader, and hearkened to his word. News came that Tonty was in safety
at Green Bay; and at length, about the end of May, La Salle and he
joined hands again at Michillimackinac. Tonty had a tale of heroism
to tell. Left in charge of the garrison at Fort Crevecoeur, he had
gone, according to his leader's instructions, to prospect a site for
a fort a little higher up the river. When his back was turned, his
followers destroyed the fort, carried off the stores, and left him
with five other Frenchmen, two of whom were Recollet friars, among
the Illinois Indians. True to his trust, he stayed among them, when
the hordes of the Five Nations broke in, bent on destruction. Between
the contending forces he held his life in the balance, vainly
striving to stem the tide of massacre; and, having done all that man
could do, found his way back to the lakes, saved by his own fearless
honesty and by respect for the French name.
[Sidenote: _Hennepin's travels on the upper Mississippi._]
[Sidenote: _Du Luth._]
Of the expedition which started in the ill-fated _Griffin_, there was
still another prominent member to be accounted {161} for. This was
Father Hennepin. Before La Salle turned home from Fort Crevecoeur in
the spring of 1680, he sent two Frenchmen of his company, and with
them Father Hennepin, to explore and to trade on the upper
Mississippi. Hennepin and his companions went down the Illinois; and,
ascending the Mississippi, fell among the Sioux or Dakota Indians.
Carried off to the Sioux lodges, in the present State of Minnesota,
the Frenchmen sojourned among them for some months, half captives and
half guests, until they were found by Du Luth, fur-trader and
_coureur de bois_, who had already explored these regions, and had
crossed from Lake Superior to the Mississippi by the line of the St.
Croix river. In his company, Hennepin returned up the Wisconsin; and,
before the year 1680 ended, was safe at Michillimackinac. In the
following year he went back to Montreal; and soon afterwards,
returning to Europe, published the book to which reference has
already been made. He was the first European to describe the upper
Mississippi and its tributaries, and the Falls of St. Anthony
preserve the name of his patron saint--St. Anthony of Padua.
[Sidenote: _La Salle descends the Mississippi._]
[Sidenote: _Fort Prudhomme built on the Mississippi._]
The descent to the sea, which in after years he falsely claimed to
have made, was soon afterwards achieved by La Salle. After rejoining
Tonty at Michillimackinac, he went back with him to Fort Frontenac
and Montreal, and once more procured men and money to renew his
enterprise. Again turning west, he reached Fort Miami late in the
autumn of 1681, and on the shortest day his expedition left Lake
Michigan. Crossing from the St. Joseph to the Chicago creek, and from
the latter to the Des Plaines river, the northern tributary of the
Illinois, they embarked--fifty-four Frenchmen and Indians, including
thirteen women and children--in six canoes, and took their way
steadily down stream. They joined the Mississippi, they passed the
mouths of the Missouri and Ohio. Halfway between the Ohio and the
Arkansas, {162} on the east bank of the Mississippi, they built and
manned a small wooden fort, naming it Fort Prudhomme after one of
their number who for a while lost himself in the woods. Again holding
on their course, under softer skies than those of Canada, they
reached the mouth of the Arkansas river, whence Joliet and Marquette
had turned back; and there, among friendly and wondering Indians,
they proclaimed the French King lord of the land. Below the Arkansas
they came to other Indian tribes, such as the Spaniards had known,
who, under dome-shaped roofs, worshipped the sun. At length the river
parted into three channels, as it neared the sea; and, dividing into
three parties, the bold voyagers soon met again on the shore of the
Gulf of Mexico.
[Sidenote: _La Salle reaches the Gulf of Mexico._]
[Sidenote: _Louisiana._]
It was April 9, 1682, when, on the southernmost edge of the new
domain, a column was reared inscribed with the arms of France and
with the name of _Louis le Grand_. The secret of the great river was
won at last, from its source to its mouth; and, claiming all the
lands which it watered for the Crown of France,[8] La Salle called
them by the name 'Louisiana.'
[Footnote 8: In La Salle's proclamation the basin of the Ohio was
excluded from Louisiana, as the words are 'from the mouth of the
great river St. Louis, otherwise called the Ohio' (Parkman's _La
Salle_, 12th ed., p. 286).]
[Sidenote: _He returns up stream._]
[Sidenote: _The colony on the Illinois._]
[Sidenote: _Fort St. Louis._]
His canoes could not face the open sea, so the explorers retraced
their course up stream. They suffered from want of food, the natives
attacked them, and La Salle himself was sorely stricken by fever,
which kept him many weeks at Fort Prudhomme. It was not till
September that he reached Michillimackinac, and rejoined Tonty, who
had gone on before him. The winter of 1682-3 was spent in
establishing a colony of French and Indians on the Illinois. The
place selected for the purpose was on the southern bank of the river,
some distance above the site of Fort Crevecoeur, where a high
precipitous cliff towered over wood and stream. The rock had been
marked by La Salle in his former sojourn on {163} the river, and it
was during Tonty's visit to the spot[9] that Fort Crevecoeur was
looted and left. Had the Illinois river been the Rhine, the rock
would in mediaeval times have been crowned by the castle of a border
noble; and on its summit was now built a wooden fort, Fort St. Louis
of the Illinois. Round the fort the Indians gathered for protection
and for trade, the peasantry as it were of the western wilderness,
clustering under the shelter of a feudal stronghold; for in virtue of
the royal patent, La Salle was the Seignior of the place. It promised
to be a strong outpost of French dominion, if its connexion with
Canada was kept intact.
[Footnote 9: See above, p. 160. A full description of the rock, known
afterwards as 'Starved Rock,' is given in Parkman's _La Salle_ (12th
ed.), pp. 293-4, and note.]
[Sidenote: _Opposition to La Salle in Canada._]
[Sidenote: _He returns to France._]
New France was made by a few individual men, of whom La Salle was
one. Their work was perpetually undone by want of efficient
co-operation, or rather by efficient antagonism, on the part of their
fellow countrymen. Fort Frontenac, Niagara, armed and trading vessels
on the upper lakes, Fort Miami, where the lakes end, a fort on the
Illinois--constituted the basis of a scheme worthy of support, but
support was wanting. Frontenac had been recalled in 1682; and his
successor, La Barre, leagued with the enemies of La Salle, cut off
his supplies, detained his men, maligned him to the King, seized his
Seigniory at Fort Frontenac, and sent an officer to take possession
of the fort on the Illinois. La Salle had but one remedy left, to
appeal to the King in person; and with that object he sailed for
France in 1683, never to see Canada again. His troubled fighting life
was soon to end, and its closing scenes were crowded with disaster.
He seems to some extent to have lost his balance, to have acted with
insufficient knowledge, and to have changed hardihood into
recklessness. Yet in all that he attempted there was continuity of
aim from first to last, and his final wild adventure, as it seemed to
be, had its bearing on the story of the Canadian Dominion.
{164} The patent, which had been given to him in 1678, authorized
discovery, trade, and the building of forts, but said nothing of
founding colonies. The policy of the French Government was always in
the main a forward policy; but the French King and his ministers had
the good sense to discourage proposals for colonizing the backwoods,
because they saw the obvious danger of dispersing through a large
area the scanty population of New France. It was therefore easy for
La Salle's enemies to denounce his schemes as opposed to the royal
will, as drawing off colonists from the St. Lawrence, where they were
sorely needed, and teaching the able-bodied men of Canada to become
not _habitans_ but _coureurs de bois_. These were the charges which
La Salle had to rebut. He met them by propounding a still bolder plan
than his former ventures, and he induced the King to give his
sanction to an enterprise for French colonization on the shores of
the Gulf of Mexico.
[Sidenote: _His schemes for colonization on the Gulf of Mexico._]
It happened that, at the date when he arrived in Paris, there was bad
blood between France and Spain, resulting for a short space in open
war. The Spaniards claimed to exclude French ships from the Gulf of
Mexico, and King Louis, with his minister Seignelay, Colbert's son,
contemplated meeting these claims by taking and holding a post on the
Gulf. Some scheme of the kind had already been submitted to them by a
Spanish refugee from Peru, Count Penalossa by name; and when La Salle
advanced similar proposals, suggesting the establishment of a French
colony on or near the mouth of the Mississippi, to be connected with
Canada, and to be the basis for attacking and conquering the northern
province of Mexico, New Biscay, his words fell on willing ears. He
spoke with authority. Alone among Frenchmen at the Court of France,
he had reached the mouth of the great river, and could tell to a
King, with lust of conquest, a story of lands to be won for France,
and of peoples ready to follow her lead.
{165} [Sidenote: _The plan accepted, and La Salle reinstated in
favour._]
The result was that La Salle's rivals in Canada were discomfited, and
peremptory orders were sent to La Barre to restore his Seigniory at
Fort Frontenac and his station on the Illinois; while an expedition,
destined for the Gulf of Mexico, was fitted out at La Rochelle, and
eventually sailed on July 24, 1684.
[Sidenote: _La Salle's motives._]
What was in La Salle's mind in suggesting this southern adventure can
only be conjectured. Was it the last desperate stake of a ruined
gambler? Or was it an over-sanguine attempt to realize the great
object of his life, to master the far West by moving up instead of
down its waterways, by entering not through Canada, where every step
would be dogged by jealousy and intrigue, but through the mouths of
the Mississippi, where climate and natives would be less formidable
foes than the Governor of Canada and his unscrupulous clique of
confederates? If, as it is reasonable to suppose, he still clung with
the determination of his character to the western enterprise, in
which he had already achieved so much, he added to it a
highly-coloured picture of conquest in Mexico; and he drew his map of
Mexico as adjoining the lands on the Mississippi, omitting in
ignorance most of the wide area of intervening territory, now
included in the State of Texas.
[Sidenote: _The expedition sails._]
[Sidenote: _It reaches the West Indies and the Gulf of Mexico._]
[Sidenote: _Landing on the shores of Texas._]
Four vessels set sail, freighted with all things necessary to found a
colony, carrying soldiers, artisans, married women, and young girls.
They were a doomed company; from first to last all went wrong. There
was divided command, and Beaujeu, the admiral of the ships, a Norman
like La Salle, had with some reason little confidence in the
expedition or its leader. They made in the first instance for St.
Domingo, but one of the four ships which was carrying the stores was
cut off by Spanish buccaneers before reaching the island. At St.
Domingo, La Salle was laid low with fever; and, while he was between
life and death, his followers rioted and sickened on shore. After a
delay of two months, the {166} expedition started again, weakened by
desertion and disease. The ships entered the Gulf of Mexico,
passed--without knowing it--the mouths of the Mississippi, and on New
Year's Day, 1685, anchored off the coast of Texas. Somewhere on this
coast, in the vicinity either of Matagorda Bay or of Galveston Bay,
La Salle effected a landing, where a series of lagoons that lined the
shore concealed, as he thought, the main outlet of the Mississippi.
Disaster still attended the enterprise: one of the ships was wrecked
on the reefs, the natives of the land proved unfriendly; and when
Beaujeu, the admiral, having given what help he could, sailed away in
the middle of March, he left behind on desolate shores a despondent
band of French men and women groping for a river which could not be
found, in present trouble and without clear guidance for the future.
[Sidenote: _Founding of Fort St. Louis._]
[Sidenote: _Distress of the settlement._]
[Sidenote: _Attempt to reach Canada._]
Skirting the sea-line, the would-be colonists had reached a large
bay, into the head of which a river ran; and on the banks of this
stream La Salle formed a settlement, to which, as to his colony on
the Illinois, he gave the name of Fort St. Louis. Gathered within
palisades, the settlers worked and waited, dwindling in numbers,
while their leader explored, but explored in vain. Setting out at the
end of October, 1685, La Salle returned in the following March,
having accomplished nothing and having lost his last vessel, a small
frigate, the _Belle_. Again in a month's time, towards the end of
April, 1686, he set out to make his way to Canada; once more, in
October, he returned to the fort, baffled and disappointed. His
followers were sadly reduced in numbers: of some 180, no more than
forty-five were left; and of them he could trust but few. Return to
France was cut off, and from France time had shown that no help was
forthcoming. There was no alternative but to make one more attempt to
reach Canada, and thence to bring rescue to the fort in Texas.
[Sidenote: _Death of La Salle._]
It was a forlorn hope at best, but the attempt was made. {167} Half
of the company remained at the fort. The others, including La Salle's
brother, the Abbe Cavelier, and two young nephews, followed La Salle
himself on his northward journey. It was on January 7, 1687, that the
party set out to make their way painfully over prairies, across
rivers, through forest, thicket, and scrub. On March 19, near the
Trinity river, La Salle fell dead, ambushed and shot by his own men.
No career ever had a more squalid or pitiable ending. It ended in
commonplace mutiny and murder. Three or four scoundrels, discontented
and badly handled, nursed their personal grudges against a severe and
domineering leader, until, in an outbreak of irritation, they killed
three of his immediate following and the leader himself.
[Sidenote: _Fate of his company._]
The brother escaped; so did one of the nephews, and Joutel, a
gardener's son from Rouen--the most honest and capable of the
band--who afterwards told the unvarnished tale. They companied for a
while with the murderers, roaming among the Indians of the west,
until one and another of the guilty men fell by each other's hands or
strayed into savagery. In the end seven Frenchmen, with the help of
Indian guides, reached the Arkansas river, found an outpost
established there by Tonty, made their way thence to the Illinois,
and so to Canada and France. On the Illinois and in Canada they
concealed, from policy or fear, the fact of La Salle's death. In the
dead man's name his brother, the coward priest, obtained from Tonty
advances for his home journey; and it was not till after he was safe
in Europe, in the autumn of 1688, that the tragedy came to light.
[Sidenote: _Indifference in France as to La Salle's death._]
Few seemed to care. A man had gone, who by the age of forty-three had
achieved great deeds, had dared and suffered much; but he was a man
who had few friends and many enemies, and he served a Government in
whose eyes failure was a crime, and to which gratitude was unknown.
{168} An order was given that, if the murderers reappeared in Canada,
they should be arrested, and with that order the name of La Salle
passed out of official ken.
[Sidenote: _Extermination of the colony in Texas._]
[Sidenote: _Tonty's faithfulness._]
The Government made no attempt to relieve the hapless exiles in
Texas. They were left to perish, just as, many years before, the
Huguenot settlers in Florida had been abandoned and betrayed. Tonty
alone was mindful of his friend. Already, in 1686, before La Salle
had started on his last march, he had descended the Mississippi to
its mouth, and had searched the coast in vain, hoping to bring
succour and relief; and when, in the autumn of 1688, he knew the full
truth, again he started, to save if possible the remnant of the
expedition. He penetrated to the Red river and beyond, but could not
reach the fort in Texas; and it was from Spanish sources that the
fate of the last settlers was afterwards known. An expedition from
Mexico, sent to root out the intruders, found the fort a desolate
ruin. The Indians had been beforehand in the work of destruction, and
had butchered or carried off the inmates, two or three of whom
exchanged captivity among savages for Spanish prisons.
[Sidenote: _Importance of La Salle's work._]
Such was the end of La Salle's last venture--misery, ruin, death,
and, for the time, comparative oblivion. Yet his name lives in
history and deserves to live, and his work was not all undone. We
look back not merely on his hardihood and his sufferings. We see in
him not only an explorer of the boldest type; but he stands out
pre-eminently as the man, who, above all others, grasped the
conception of a North American dominion, which should be from sea to
sea--based on the great geographical factor in North America, its
nearly continuous water communication--and in which the natives of
North America should be banded together in war and peace, under the
leadership of France. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth
of the Mississippi, by river and lake, his vision was that Frenchmen
and their native subjects should come and go, carrying from fort to
{169} fort, from settlement to settlement, the produce of forest and
prairie, the wealth of the West.
It was a great conception, too great to be realized; but it
harmonized with the genius of the French people. Their gift was to be
ever moving, their strength was not to sit still. What success they
won was on the lines that La Salle marked out. With all his failures,
he knew the land and he knew his race.
[Sidenote: _Colonization of Louisiana by Iberville._]
The eighteenth century had not ended before the colonization of
Louisiana became more than a dream. Tonty continued to urge it. The
English threatened to take it in hand; Spain was reasserting her
claim to the ownership of the Gulf of Mexico; and, lest the French
should be excluded altogether, Le Moyne d'Iberville, best of Canadian
leaders, obtained permission to sail for the Mississippi. More
skilful than La Salle, or better informed, he reached its mouth in
March, 1699; but the first settlements were made to the east of the
river, at Biloxi in the present State of Mississippi, and on Mobile
Bay. It was not till the year 1718 that the city of New Orleans was
first founded by Bienville, Iberville's brother, who at intervals
governed Louisiana for many years. Bandied about from Crown to
company, and from company to Crown, the prey of speculators, the
scene, like Canada itself, of artificial settlement and regulated
colonization, Louisiana made but slow progress. Yet in time it became
a factor to be reckoned with in North American history, and to
connect it with Canada was in the eighteenth century the aim of the
rulers of New France.
[Sidenote: _The Illinois abandoned by the French._]
In 1702, Tonty left Fort St. Louis on the Illinois to join Iberville
in the south, and, except for a few years at a little later date,
that fort was abandoned. The Indians, too, who had gathered round it,
dispersed; some of them moved down to the Mississippi; and connexion
between Canada and Louisiana was afterwards sought not so much by the
Illinois river, as by the line of the Ohio, the earliest scene of La
Salle's discoveries.
{170}