approved of the choice--to explore the West and find the "great water,"
of which vague stories were constantly brought back by traders and
bushrangers. Jolliet was one of the best specimens of a trader and
pioneer that Canadian history gives us. His roving inclinations were
qualified by a cool, collected brain, which carried him safely through
many a perilous adventure. He had for his companion Father Marquette,
who was then stationed at the mission of St. Ignace, and had gathered
from the Indians at his western missions--especially at La Pointe on
Lake Superior--valuable information respecting the "great water" then
{179} called the "Missipi." Both had many sympathies in common.
Jolliet had been educated by the Jesuits in Canada, but unlike La
Salle, he was in full accord with their objects. Marquette possessed
those qualities of self-sacrifice and religious devotion which entitle
him to rank with Lalemant, Jogues, and Brebeuf. While Jolliet was
inspired by purely ambitious and trading instincts, the missionary had
no other hope or desire than to bring a great region and its savage
communities under the benign influence of the divine being whose
heavenly face seemed ever present, encouraging him to fresh efforts in
her service. It was in the spring of 1673 that these two men started
with five companions in two canoes on their journey through that
wilderness, which stretched beyond Green Bay--an English corruption of
Grande Baie. Like Nicolet, they ascended the Fox River to the country
of the Mascoutins, Foxes, and Kickapoos, where they obtained guides to
lead them across the portage to the Wisconsin. The adventurers had now
reached the low "divide" between the valleys of the Lakes and the
Mississippi. The Fox River and its affluents flowed tranquilly to the
great reservoirs of the St. Lawrence, while the Wisconsin, on which
they now launched their canoes, carried them to a mighty river, which
ended they knew not where. A month after leaving St. Ignace they found
themselves "with a great and inexpressible joy"--to quote Marquette's
words--on the rapid current of a river which they recognised as the
Missipi. As they proceeded they saw the low-lying natural meadows and
prairies where herds {180} of buffalo were grazing, marshes with a
luxuriant growth of wild rice, the ruined castles which nature had in
the course of many centuries formed out of the rocks of the western
shores, and the hideous manitous which Indian ingenuity had pictured on
the time-worn cliffs. They had pleasant interviews with the Indians
that were hunting the roebuck and buffalo in this land of rich grasses.
Their canoes struggled through the muddy current, which the Missouri
gave as its tribute to the Missipi, passed the low marshy shores of the
Ohio, and at last came near the mouth of the Arkansas, where they
landed at an Indian village which the natives called Akamsea. Here
they gathered sufficient information to enable them to form the
conclusion that the great river before their eyes found its way, not to
the Atlantic or Pacific oceans, but to the Gulf of Mexico. Then they
decided not to pursue their expeditions further at that time, but to
return home and relate the story of their discovery. When they came to
the mouth of the Illinois River, they took that route in preference to
the one by which they had come, followed the Des Plaines River,--where
a hill still bears Jolliet's name--crossed the Chicago portage, and at
last found themselves at the southern extremity of Lake Michigan. It
was then the end of September, and Jolliet did not reach Canada until
the following summer. When nearly at his journey's end, Fate dealt him
a cruel blow, his canoe was capsized after running the Lachine Rapids
just above Montreal, and he lost all the original notes of his journey.
Frontenac, however, received from {181} him a full account of his
explorations, and sent it to France.
Two centuries later than this memorable voyage of Jolliet, a French
Canadian poet-laureate described it in verse fully worthy of the
subject, as the following passage and equally spirited translation[1]
go to show:
LA DÉCOUVERTE DU THE DISCOVERY OF THE
MISSISSIPPI. MISSISSIPPI.
Jolliet . . . Jolliet . . . O, Jolliet, what splendid faery
quel spectacle féérique dream
Dut frapper ton regard, quand Met thy regard, when on that
ta nef historique mighty stream,
Bondit sur les flots d'or du Bursting upon its lonely
grand fleuve inconnu unknown flow,
Quel éclair triomphant, à cet Thy keel historic cleft its
instant de fièvre, golden tide:--
Dut resplendir sur ton front Blossomed thy lip with what
nu? . . . stern smile of pride?
What conquering light shone
on thy lofty brow?
Le voyez-vous là-bas, debout Behold him there, a prophet,
comme un prophète, lifted high,
L'oeil tout illuminé d'audace Heart-satisfied, with bold,
satisfaite, illumined eye,
La main tendue au loin vers His hand outstretched toward
l'Occident bronzé. the sunset furled,
Prendre possession de ce Taking possession of this domain
domaine immense, immense,
Au nom du Dieu vivant, au nom In the name of the living God,
roi de France. in the name of the King
Et du monde civilisé? . . . of France,
And the mighty modern world.
Puis, bercé par la houle, et Rocked by the tides, wrapt in
bercé par ses rêves, his glorious moods,
L'oreille ouverte aux bruits Breathing perfumes of lofty
harmonieux des grèves, odorous woods,
{182}
Humant l'acre parfum des Ears opened to the shores'
grands bois odorants, harmonious tunes,
Rasant les îlots verts et les Following in their dreams and
dunes d'opale, voices mellow,
De méandre en méandre, au fil To wander and wander in the
l'onde pâle, thread of the pale billow,
Suivre le cours des flots Past islands hushed and
errants. . . . opalescent dunes.
A son aspect, du sein des Lo, as he comes, from out the
flottantes ramures, waving boughs,
Montait comme un concert de A rising concert of murmurous
chants et de murmures; song upflows,
Des vols d'oiseaux marins Of winging sea-fowl lifting
s'élevaient des roseaux, from the reeds;
Et, pour montrer la route à la Pointing the route to his swift
pirogue frèle. dripping blade,
S'enfuyaient en avant, traînant Then skimming before, tracing
leur ombre grèle their slender shade
Dans le pli lumineux des eaux. In luminous foldings of the
watery meads.
Et, pendant qu'il allait voguant And as he journeys, drifting
à la dérive, with its flow,
On aurait dit qu'au loin, les The forests lifting their glad
arbres de la rive, roofs aglow,
En arceaux parfumés penchés sur In perfumed arches o'er his
son chemin, keel's swift swell,
Saluaient le héros dont Salute the hero, whose undaunted
l'énergique audace soul
Venait d'inscrire encor le nom Had graved anew "LA FRANCE"
de notre race on that proud scroll
Aux fastes de l'esprit humain. Of human genius, bright,
imperishable.
Jolliet's companion, the Jesuit missionary, never realised his dream of
many years of usefulness in new missions among the tribes of the
immense region claimed by France. In the spring of 1675 he died by the
side of a little stream which finds its outlet on the western shore of
Lake Michigan, soon after his return from a painful journey he had
taken, while in a feeble state of health, to the Indian communities of
Kaskaskia between the Illinois and {183} Wabash rivers. A few months
later his remains were removed by some Ottawas, who knew and loved him
well, and carried to St. Ignace, where they were buried beneath the
little mission chapel. His memory has been perpetuated in the
nomenclature of the western region, and his statue stands in the
rotunda of that marble capitol which represents, not the power and
greatness of that France which he loved only less than his Church, but
the national development of those English colonies which, in his time,
were only a narrow fringe on the Atlantic coast, separated from the
great West by mountain ranges which none of the most venturesome of
their people had yet dared to cross.
The work that was commenced by Jolliet and Marquette, of solving the
mystery that had so long surrounded the Mississippi, was completed by
Réné Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, a native of Rouen, who came to
Canada when quite a young man, and obtained a grant of land from the
Sulpician proprietors of Montreal at the head of the rapids, then known
as St. Louis. Like so many Canadians of those days he was soon carried
away by a spirit of adventure. He had heard of the "great water" in
the west, which he believed, in common with others, might lead to the
Gulf of California. In the summer of 1669 he accompanied two Sulpician
priests, of Montreal, Dollier de Casson and Gallinée, on an expedition
they made, under the authority of Governor Courcelles, to the extreme
western end of Ontario, where he met Jolliet, apparently for the first
time, and probably had many conversations {184} with him respecting the
west and south, and their unknown rivers. He decided to leave the
party and attempt an exploration by a southerly route, while the
priests went on to the upper lakes as far as the Sault. Of La Salle's
movements for the next two years we are largely in the dark--in some
respects entirely so. It has been claimed by some that he first
discovered the Ohio, and even reached the Mississippi, but so careful
an historian as Justin Winsor agrees with Shea's conclusion that La
Salle "reached the Illinois or some other affluent of the Mississippi,
but made no report and made no claim, having failed to reach the great
river." It was on his return from these mysterious wanderings, that
his seigniory is said to have received the name of La Chine as a
derisive comment on his failure to find a road to China. In the course
of years the name was very commonly given, not only to the lake but to
the rapids of St. Louis.
[Illustration: Réné Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle]
We now come to sure ground when we follow La Salle's later
explorations, on which his fame entirely rests. Frontenac entered
heartily into his plans of following the Mississippi to its mouth, and
setting at rest the doubts that existed as to its course. He received
from the King a grant of Fort Frontenac and its surrounding lands as a
seigniory. This fort had been built by the governor in 1673 at
Cataraqui, now Kingston, as an advanced trading and defensive post on
Lake Ontario. La Salle considered it a most advantageous position for
carrying on his ambitious projects of exploration. He visited France
in 1677 and received from the King letters-patent {186} authorising him
to build forts south and west in that region "through which it would
seem a passage to Mexico can be discovered." On his return to Canada
he was accompanied by a Recollet friar, Father Louis Hennepin, and by
Henry de Tonty, the son of an Italian resident of Paris, both of whom
have associated their names with western exploration. Of all his
friends and followers, Tonty, who had a copper hand in the place of the
one blown off in an Italian war, was the most faithful and honest,
through the varying fortunes of the explorer's career from this time
forward. To Father Hennepin I refer in another place.
Both Hennepin and Tonty accompanied La Salle on his expedition of 1678
to the Niagara district, where, above the great falls, near the mouth
of Cayuga Creek, he built the first vessel that ever ventured on the
lakes, and which he named the "Griffin" in honour of Frontenac, whose
coat-of-arms bore such a heraldic device. The loss of this vessel,
while returning with a cargo of furs from Green Bay to Niagara, was a
great blow to La Salle, who, from this time until his death, suffered
many misfortunes which might well have discouraged one of less
indomitable will and fixity of purpose. On the banks of the Illinois
River, a little below the present city of Peoria, he built Fort
Crèvecoeur, probably as a memorial of a famous fort in the Netherlands,
not long before captured by the French. While on a visit to Canada,
this post was destroyed by some of his own men in the absence of Tonty,
who had been left in charge. These men were subsequently captured not
far from Cataraqui, and severely punished.
{187}
In the meantime, three Frenchmen, Father Hennepin, Michel Accaut, and
one Du Gay, in obedience to La Salle's orders, had ventured to the
upper waters of the Mississippi, and were made prisoners by a wandering
tribe of Sioux. Not far from the falls of St. Anthony Father Hennepin
met with the famous forest ranger, Duluth, who was better acquainted
with the Sioux country than any other living Frenchman, and was forming
ambitious designs to explore the whole western region beyond Lake
Superior. Father Hennepin, who had been adopted by an aged Sioux
chief, was free to follow Duluth back to the French post at the Straits
of Mackinac. This adventure of Father Hennepin is famous in history,
not on account of any discoveries he actually made, but on account of
the claim he attempted to establish some years after his journey, of
having followed the Mississippi to the Gulf. In the first edition of
his book, printed in 1683--_Description de la Louisiane_--no such claim
was ever suggested, and it was only in 1697 that the same work appeared
in an enlarged form,--_La Nouvelle Découverte_--crediting Hennepin with
having descended the great river to its outlet. It is not necessary
here to puncture a falsehood which was long ago exposed by historical
writers. His history of having reached the Gulf of Mexico is as
visionary as the traveller's tales of Norumbega. Indeed, he could not
even claim a gift of fertile invention in this case, as the very
account of his alleged discovery was obviously plagiarised from Father
Membré's narrative of La Salle's voyage of 1682, which appears in Le
Clercq's _Premier Établissement de la Foy_.
{188}
When La Salle was again able to venture into the west he found the
villages of the Illinois only blackened heaps of ruins--sure evidence
of the Iroquois having been on the warpath. During the winter of 1681
he remained at a post he had built on the banks of the St. Joseph in
the Miami country, and heard no news of his faithful Tonty. It was not
until the spring, whilst on his way to Canada for men and supplies,
that he discovered his friend at Mackinac, after having passed through
some critical experiences among the Iroquois, who, in conjunction with
the Miamis, had destroyed the villages of the Illinois, and killed a
number of those Indians with their customary ferocity. Tonty had
finally found rest and security in a village of the Pottawattomies at
the head of Green Bay.
On the 6th of February, 1682, La Salle passed down the swift current of
the Mississippi on that memorable voyage which led him to the Gulf of
Mexico. He was accompanied by Tonty, and Father Membré, one of the
Recollet order, whom he always preferred to the Jesuits. The Indians
of the expedition were Abenakis and Mohegans, who had left the far-off
Atlantic coast and Acadian rivers, and wandered into the great west
after the unsuccessful war in New England, which was waged by the
Sachem Metacomet, better known as King Philip, and only ended with his
death in 1676, and the destruction of many settlements in the colony of
Plymouth.
They met with a kindly reception from the Indians encamped by the side
of the river, and, for the first time, saw the villages of the Taënsas
and {189} Natchez, who were worshippers of the sun. At last on the 6th
of April, La Salle, Tonty, and Dautray, went separately in canoes
through the three channels of the Mississippi, and emerged on the bosom
of the great Gulf. Not far from the mouth of the river where the
ground was relatively high and dry, a column was raised with the
inscription:
"_Louis le Grand, roy de France et de Navarre,
regne; le neuviesme Avril, 1682._"
And La Salle took possession of the country with just such ceremonies
as had distinguished a similar proceeding at Sault Ste. Marie eleven
years before. It can be said that Frenchmen had at least fairly laid a
basis for future empire from the Lakes to the Gulf. It was for France
to show her appreciation of the enterprise of her sons and make good
her claim to such a vast imperial domain. The future was to show that
she was unequal to the task.
The few remaining years of La Salle's life were crowded with
misfortunes. Duchesneau, the intendant, who had succeeded Talon, was
an enemy of both Frontenac and the explorer. The distinguished
governor was recalled by his royal master, who was tired of the
constant complaints of his enemies against him, and misled by their
accusations. La Barre, the incompetent governor who followed
Frontenac, took possession of Fort St. Louis, which La Salle had
succeeded, after his return from the Gulf of Mexico, in erecting at
Starved Rock on the banks of the Illinois not far from the present city
of Ottawa, where a large number of Indians had {190} returned to their
favourite home. In France, however, the importance of his discovery
was fully recognised, and when he visited his native country in 1683-4
he met with a very cordial reception from the King, and Seignelay, who
had succeeded his father, Colbert, when he resigned. The King ordered
that La Salle's forts be restored to him, and gave him a commission to
found colonies in Louisiana, as the new country through which the
Mississippi flowed had been called since 1682. By a strange irony of
Fate, the expedition of 1684 passed the mouth of the Mississippi, and
La Salle made the first French settlement on the Gulf somewhere in the
vicinity of Matagorda Bay, in the present State of Texas. Misery was
the lot of the little colony from the very first moment it landed on
that lonely shore. When his misfortunes were most grievous, La Salle
decided to make an effort to reach the Illinois country, but he was
assassinated by two of his own men---Duhaut and Liotot--near a branch
of the Trinity River. His nephew Moranget, Nika, a faithful Shawnee
who had been by his side for years, and Sayet, his own servant,
suffered the same fate. The leader of the murderers was killed soon
afterwards by one of his accomplices, and the others found a refuge
among the Indians; but of their subsequent fate we know nothing
positively, except that they were never brought to justice, if any one
of them returned to Canada or France. The few Frenchmen remaining in
Texas were either killed or captured by unfriendly Indians, before the
Spaniards could reach the place to expel these intruders on their
domain. La Salle {191} himself never found a burial place, for his
body was left to wolves and birds of prey. His name has not been
perpetuated in Louisiana, though it has been given to a county of Texas
as well as to a city and county of Illinois, which was originally
included in French Louisiana. The most noteworthy tribute to his
memory has been paid by the historian Parkman, who has elevated him
almost to the dignity of a hero. La Salle's indomitable energy, his
remarkable courage in the face of disaster, his inflexibility of
purpose under the most adverse circumstances, must be always fully
recognised, but at the same time one may think that more tact and skill
in managing men, more readiness to bend and conciliate, might have
spared him much bitterness and trouble, and even saved his life at the
end. That he did good service for France all will admit, though his
achievement in reaching the Mississippi was rendered relatively easy
after the preliminary expedition of Jolliet and Marquette.
[1] Mr. W. Wilfrid Campbell, F.R.S.C., a well-known English-Canadian
poet, has translated for "The Story of Canada" these verses of his
French contemporary Fréchette.
{192}
XIV.
CANADA AND ACADIA: FROM FRONTENAC TO THE TREATY OF UTRECHT.
(1672-1713.)
In the previous chapter I have shown the important part that the Count
de Frontenac took in stimulating the enterprise of La Salle and other
explorers, and it now remains for me to review those other features of
the administration of that great governor, which more or less
influenced the fortunes of the province committed to his charge.
[Illustration: Frontenac, from Hébert's Statue at Quebec.]
A brave and bold soldier, a man of infinite resources in times of
difficulty, as bold to conceive as he was quick to carry out a design,
dignified and fascinating in his manner when it pleased him, arrogant
and obstinate when others thwarted him, having a keen appreciation of
the Indian character, selfish where his personal gain was concerned,
and yet never losing sight of the substantial interests of France in
America, the Count de Frontenac was able, for nineteen years, to
administer the affairs of New France with remarkable ability, despite
his {194} personal weaknesses, to stimulate and concentrate her
energies and resources, and to make her when he died a power in America
far beyond what her population or actual strength seemed to justify.
The Iroquois learned at last to tremble at his name, and the Indian
allies of Canada, from the Abenakis of Acadia to the Illinois of the
West, could trust in his desire and ability to assist them against
their ferocious enemy. As is the case with all great men, his faults
and virtues have been equally exaggerated. The Recollets, whom he
always favoured, could never speak too well of him, whilst the Jesuits,
whom he distrusted, did all they could to tarnish his reputation.
It is not profitable or necessary in this story of Canada to dwell on
the details of Frontenac's administration of public affairs during the
first years of his régime (1672-1682), which were chiefly noted for the
display of his faults of character--especially his obstinacy and
impatience of all opposition. He was constantly at conflict with the
bishop, who was always asserting the supremacy of his Church, with the
intendant Duchesneau, who was simply a spy on his actions, with the
Jesuits, whom he disliked and accused of even being interested in the
sale of brandy, and with traders like Governor Perrot of Montreal who
eventually found himself in the Bastile for a few days for having
defied the edict of the King against the _coureurs de bois_ who were
under his influence and helped him in the fur trade.
The complaints against Frontenac from influential people in Canada at
last became so numerous that {195} he was recalled to France in 1682.
His successor, La Barre, proved himself thoroughly incapable. The
interests of the province were seriously threatened at that time by the
intention of the Iroquois to destroy the Illinois and divert the
western traffic to the Dutch and English, whose carriers they wished to
become. La Barre was well aware how much depended on the protection of
the Illinois and the fidelity of the Indians on the lakes. La Hontan,
a talkative but not always veracious writer, who was in Canada at this
time, gives us an insight into the weakness of the governor, whose
efforts to awe the Iroquois ended in an abortive expedition which was
attacked by disease and did not get beyond La Famine, now Salmon River,
in the Iroquois country. The famous "La Grande Gueule," or Big
Mouth,--so called on account of his eloquence,--made a mockery of the
French efforts to deceive him by a pretence of strength, and openly
declared the intention of the Iroquois to destroy the Illinois, while
La Barre dared not utter a defiant word in behalf of his allies. This
incapable governor was soon recalled and the Marquis de Denonville, an
officer of dragoons, sent in his place. One of the most notable
incidents of the new administration was the capture of the fortified
trading-posts belonging to the English Company of Hudson's Bay, by the
Chevalier de Troyes and a number of Canadians from Montreal, among whom
were the three famous sons of Charles Le Moyne, Iberville,
Sainte-Hélène, and Maricourt, the former of whom became ere long the
most distinguished French Canadian of his time. The next {196} event
of importance was the invasion of the country of the Senecas, and the
destruction of their villages and stores of provisions. This was a
most doubtful triumph, since it left the Senecas themselves unhurt.
How ineffectual it was even to awe the Iroquois, was evident from the
massacre of La Chine, near Montreal, in the August of 1689, when a
large band fell upon the village during a stormy night, burned the
houses, butchered two hundred men, women and children, and probably
carried off at least one hundred and twenty prisoners before they left
the island of Montreal, where the authorities and people seemed
paralysed for the moment. The whole history of Canada has no more
mournful story to tell than this massacre of this unhappy settlement by
the side of the beautiful lake of St. Louis. The Iroquois had never
forgiven the treachery of the governor during the winter of 1687, at
Fort Frontenac, where he had seized a large number of friendly Indians
of the Five Nations who had settled in the neutral villages of Kenté
(now Quinté) and Ganneious (now Gananoque), not many miles from the
fort. Some of the men were distributed among the missions of Quebec,
and others actually sent to labour in the royal galleys of France,
where they remained until the survivors were brought back by Frontenac,
when he and other Frenchmen recognised the enormity of the crime that
had been committed by Denonville, who is immediately responsible for
the massacre of La Chine. The Iroquois never forgot or forgave.