1680.
HARDIHOOD OF LA SALLE.
THE WINTER JOURNEY.--THE DESERTED TOWN.--STARVED ROCK.--LAKE
MICHIGAN.--THE WILDERNESS.--WAR PARTIES.--LA SALLE'S MEN GIVE
OUT.--ILL TIDINGS.--MUTINY.--CHASTISEMENT OF THE MUTINEERS.
The winter had been a severe one. When La Salle and his five companions
reached Peoria Lake, they found it sheeted from shore to shore with ice
that stopped the progress of their canoes, but was too thin to bear the
weight of a man.
They dragged their light vessels up the bank and into the forest, where
the city of Peoria now stands; made two rude sledges, placed the canoes
and baggage upon them, and, toiling knee-deep in saturated snow, dragged
them four leagues through the woods, till they reached a point where the
motion of the current kept the water partially open. They were now on the
river above the lake. Masses of drift ice, wedged together, but full of
crevices and holes, soon barred the way again; and, carrying their canoes
ashore, they dragged them two leagues over a frozen marsh. Rain fell in
floods; and, when night came, they crouched for shelter in a deserted
Indian hut.
In the morning, the third of March, they dragged their canoes half a
league farther; then launched them, and, breaking the ice with clubs and
hatchets, forced their way slowly up the stream. Again their progress was
barred, and again they took to the woods, toiling onward till a tempest of
moist, half-liquid snow forced them to bivouac for the night. A sharp
frost followed, and in the morning the white waste around them was glazed
with a dazzling crust. Now, for the first time, they could use their snow-
shoes. Bending to their work, dragging their canoes which glided smoothly
over the polished surface, they journeyed on hour after hour and league
after league, till they reached at length the great town of the Illinois,
still void of its inhabitants. [Footnote: Membré says that he was in the
town at the time, but this could hardly have been the case. He was, in all
probability, among the Illinois in their camp near Fort Crèvecoeur.]
It was a desolate and lonely scene,--the river gliding dark and cold
between its banks of rushes; the empty lodges, covered with crusted snow;
the vast white meadows; the distant cliffs, bearded with shining icicles;
and the hills wrapped in forests, which glittered from afar with the icy
incrustations that cased each frozen twig. Yet there was life in the
savage landscape. The men saw buffalo wading in the snow, and they killed
one of them. More than this: they discovered the tracks of moccasons. They
cut rushes by the edge of the river, piled them on the bank, and set them
on fire, that the smoke might attract the eyes of savages roaming near.
On the following day, while the hunters were smoking the meat of the
buffalo, La Salle went out to reconnoitre, and presently met three
Indians, one of whom proved to be Chassagoac, the principal chief of the
Illinois. [Footnote: The same whom Hennepin calls Chassagouasse. He was
brother of the chief, Nicanopé, who, in his absence, had feasted the
French on the day after the nocturnal council with Monso. Chassagoac was
afterwards baptized by Membré or Ribourde, but soon relapsed into the
superstitions of his people, and died, as the former tells us, "doubly a
child of perdition." See Le Clercq, ii. 181.] La Salle brought them to his
bivouac, feasted them, gave them a red blanket, a kettle, and some knives
and hatchets, made friends with them, promised to restrain the Iroquois
from attacking them, told them that he was on his way to the settlements
to bring arms and ammunition to defend them against their enemies, and, as
the result of these advances, gained from the chief a promise that he
would send provisions to Tonty's party at Fort Crèvecoeur.
After several days spent at the deserted town, La Salle prepared to resume
his journey. Before his departure, his attention was attracted to the
remarkable cliff of yellow sandstone, now called Starved Rock, a mile or
more above the village,--a natural fortress, which a score of resolute
white men might make good against a host of savages; and he soon
afterwards sent Tonty an order to examine it, and make it his stronghold
in case of need. [Footnote: Tonty, _Mémoire_, MS. The order was sent by
two Frenchmen whom La Salle met on Lake Michigan.]
On the fifteenth, the party set out again, carried their canoes along the
bank of the river as far as the rapids above Ottawa; then launched them
and pushed their way upward, battling with the floating ice, which,
loosened by a warm rain, drove down the swollen current in sheets. On the
eighteenth, they reached a point some miles below the site of Joliet, and
here found the river once more completely closed. Despairing of farther
progress by water, they hid their canoes on an island, and struck across
the country for Lake Michigan. Each, besides his gun, carried a knife and
a hatchet at his belt, a blanket strapped at his back, and a piece of
dressed hide to make or mend his moccasons. A store of powder and lead,
and a kettle, completed the outfit of the party. [Footnote: Hennepin
(1683), 173.]
It was the worst of all seasons for such a journey. The nights were cold,
but the sun was warm at noon, and the half-thawed prairie was one vast
tract of mud, water, and discolored, half-liquid snow. On the twenty-
second, they crossed marshes and inundated meadows, wading to the knee,
till at noon they were stopped by a river, perhaps the Calumet. They made
a raft of hard wood timber, for there was no other, and shoved themselves
across. On the next day, they could see Lake Michigan, dimly glimmering
beyond the waste of woods; and, after crossing three swollen streams, they
reached it at evening. On the twenty-fourth, they followed its shore,
till, at nightfall, they arrived at the fort, which they had built in the
autumn at the mouth of the St. Joseph. Here La Salle found Chapelle and
Leblanc, the two men whom he had sent from hence to Michillimackinac, in
search of the "Griffin." [Footnote: _Déclaration de Moyse Hillaret_, MS.
_Relation des Découvertes_, MS.] They reported that they had made the
circuit of the lake, and had neither seen her nor heard tidings of her.
Assured of her fate, he ordered them to rejoin Tonty at Fort Crèvecoeur;
while he pushed onward with his party through the unknown wild of Southern
Michigan.
They were detained till noon of the twenty-fifth, in making a raft to
cross the St. Joseph. Then they resumed their march; and as they forced
their way through the brambly thickets, their clothes were torn, and their
faces so covered with blood, that, says the journal, they could hardly
know each other. Game was very scarce, and they grew faint with hunger. In
two or three days they reached a happier region. They shot deer, bears,
and turkeys in the forest, and fared sumptuously. But the reports of their
guns fell on hostile ears. This was a debatable ground, infested with war-
parties of several adverse tribes, and none could venture here without
risk of life. On the evening of the twenty-eighth, as they lay around
their fire under the shelter of a forest by the border of a prairie, the
man on guard shouted an alarm. They sprang to their feet; and each, gun in
hand, took his stand behind a tree, while yells and howlings filled the
surrounding darkness. A band of Indians were upon them; but, seeing them
prepared, the cowardly assailants did not wait to exchange a shot.
They crossed great meadows, overgrown with rank grass, and set it on fire
to hide the traces of their passage. La Salle bethought him of a device to
keep their skulking foes at a distance. On the trunks of trees from which
he had stripped the bark, he drew with charcoal the marks of an Iroquois
war-party, with the usual signs for prisoners, and for scalps, hoping to
delude his pursuers with the belief that he and his men were a band of
these dreaded warriors.
Thus, over snowy prairies and half-frozen marshes; wading sometimes to
their waists in mud, water, and bulrushes, they urged their way through
the spongy, saturated wilderness. During three successive days they were
aware that a party of savages was dogging their tracks. They dared, not
make a fire at night, lest the light should betray them; but, hanging
their wet clothes on the trees, they rolled themselves in their blankets,
and slept together among piles of spruce and pine boughs. But the night of
the second of April was excessively cold. Their clothes were hard frozen,
and they were forced to kindle a fire to thaw and dry them. Scarcely had
the light begun to glimmer through the gloom of evening, than it was
greeted from the distance by mingled yells; and a troop of Mascoutin
warriors rushed towards them. They were stopped by a deep stream, a
hundred paces from the bivouac of the French, and La Salle went forward to
meet them. No sooner did they see him, and learn that he was a Frenchman,
than they cried that they were friends and brothers, who had mistaken him
and his men for Iroquois; and, abandoning their hostile purpose, they
peacefully withdrew. Thus his device to avert danger had well-nigh proved
the destruction of the whole party.
Two days after this adventure, two of the men fell ill from fatigue, and
exposure, and sustained themselves with difficulty till they reached the
banks of a river, probably the Huron. Here, while the sick men rested,
their companions made a canoe. There were no birch-trees; and they were
forced to use elm bark, which at that early season would not slip freely
from the wood until they loosened it with hot water. Their canoe being
made, they embarked in it, and for a time floated prosperously down the
stream, when, at length the way was barred by a matted barricade of trees
fallen across the water. The sick men could now walk again; and, pushing
eastward through the forest, the party soon reached the banks of the
Detroit.
La Salle directed two of the men to make a canoe, and go to
Michillimackinac, the nearest harborage. With the remaining two, he
crossed the Detroit on a raft, and, striking a direct line across the
country, reached Lake Erie, not far from Point Pelée. Snow, sleet, and
rain pelted them with little intermission; and when, after a walk of about
thirty miles, they gained the lake, the Mohegan and one of the Frenchmen
were attacked with fever and spitting of blood. Only one man now remained
in health. With his aid, La Salle made another canoe, and, embarking the
invalids, pushed for Niagara. It was Easter Monday, when they landed at a
cabin of logs above the cataract, probably on the spot where the "Griffin"
was built. Here several of La Salle's men had been left the year before,
and here they still remained. They told him woful news. Not only had he
lost the "Griffin," and her lading of ten thousand crowns in value, but a
ship from France, freighted with his goods, valued at more than twenty-two
thousand livres, had been totally wrecked at the mouth of the St.
Lawrence; and of twenty hired men on their way from Europe to join him,
some had been detained by his enemy, the Intendant Duchesneau, while all
but four of the remainder, being told that he was dead, had found means to
return home.
His three followers were all unfit for travel: he alone retained his
strength and spirit. Taking with him three fresh men at Niagara, he
resumed his journey, and on the sixth of May descried, looming through
floods of rain, the familiar shores of his seigniory and the bastioned
walls of Fort Frontenac. During sixty-five days he had toiled almost
incessantly, travelling, by the course he took, about a thousand miles
through a country beset with every form of peril and obstruction; "the
most arduous journey," says the chronicler, "ever made by Frenchmen in
America." Such was Cavelier de la Salle. In him, an unconquerable mind
held at its service a frame of iron, and tasked it to the utmost of its
endurance. The pioneer of western pioneers was no rude son of toil, but a
man of thought, trained amid arts and letters. [Footnote: A Rocky Mountain
trapper, being complimented on the hardihood of himself and his
companions, once said to the writer, "That's so; but a gentleman of the
right sort will stand hardship better than anybody else." The history of
Arctic and African travel, and the military records of all time, are a
standing evidence that a trained and developed mind is not the enemy, but
the active and powerful ally, of constitutional hardihood. The culture
that enervates instead of strengthening is always a false or a partial
one.]
He had reached his goal; but for him there was neither rest nor peace. Man
and nature seemed in arms against him. His agents had plundered him; his
creditors had seized his property; and several of his canoes, richly
laden, had been lost in the rapids of the St. Lawrence. [Footnote: Zenobe
Membré in Le Clercq, ii. 202.] He hastened to Montreal, where his sudden
advent caused great astonishment; and where, despite his crippled
resources and damaged credit, he succeeded, within a week, in gaining the
supplies which he required, and the needful succors for the forlorn band
on the Illinois. He had returned to Fort Frontenac, and was on the point
of embarking for their relief, when a blow fell upon him more
disheartening than any that had preceded. On the twenty-second of July,
two _voyageurs_, Messier and Laurent, came to him with a letter from
Tonty; who wrote that soon after La Salle's departure, nearly all the men
had deserted, after destroying Fort Crèvecoeur, plundering the magazine,
and throwing into the river all the arms, goods, and stores which they
could not carry off. The messengers who brought this letter were speedily
followed by two of the _habitans_ of Fort Frontenac, who had been trading
on the lakes, and who, with a fidelity which the unhappy La Salle rarely
knew how to inspire, had travelled day and night to bring him their
tidings. They reported that they had met the deserters, and that having
been reinforced by recruits gained at Michillimackinac and Niagara, they
now numbered twenty men. [Footnote: When La Salle was at Niagara, in
April, he had ordered Dautray, the best of the men who had accompanied him
from the Illinois, to return thither as soon as he was able. Four men from
Niagara were to go with him, and he was to rejoin Tonty with such supplies
as that post could furnish. Dautray set out accordingly, but was met on
the lakes by the deserters, who told him that Tonty was dead, and seduced
his men.--_Relation des Découvertes_, MS. Dautray himself seems to have
remained true; at least he was in La Salle's service immediately after,
and was one of his most trusted followers. He was of good birth, being the
son of Jean Bourdon, a conspicuous personage in the early period of the
colony, and his name appears on official records as Jean Bourdon, Sieur
d'Autray.] They had destroyed the fort on the St. Joseph, seized a
quantity of furs belonging to La Salle at Michillimackinac, and plundered
the magazine at Niagara. Here they had separated, eight of them coasting
the south side of Lake Ontario to find harborage at Albany, a common
refuge at that time of this class of scoundrels; while the remaining
twelve, in three canoes, made for Fort Frontenac along the north shore,
intending to kill La Salle as the surest means of escaping punishment.
He lost no time in lamentation. Of the few men at his command, he chose
nine of the trustiest, embarked with them in canoes, and went to meet the
marauders. After passing the Bay of Quinté, he took his station with five
of his party at a point of land suited to his purpose, and detached the
remaining four to keep watch. In the morning two canoes were discovered,
approaching without suspicion, one of them far in advance of the other. As
the foremost drew near, La Salle's canoe darted out from under the leafy
shore; two of the men handling the paddles, while he with the remaining
two levelled their guns at the deserters, and called on them to surrender.
Astonished and dismayed, they yielded at once; while two more who were in
the second canoe hastened to follow their example. La Salle now returned
to the fort with his prisoners, placed them in custody, and again set
forth. He met the third canoe upon the lake at about six o'clock in the
evening. His men vainly plied their paddles in pursuit. The mutineers
reached the shore, took post among rocks and trees, levelled their guns,
and showed fight. Four of La Salle's men made a circuit to gain their rear
and dislodge them; on which they stole back to their canoe, and tried to
escape in the darkness. They were pursued, and summoned to yield; but they
replied by aiming their guns at their pursuers, who instantly gave them a
volley, killed two of them, and captured the remaining three. Like their
companions, they were placed in custody at the fort to await the arrival
of Count Frontenac. [Footnote: The story of La Salle's journey from Fort
Crèvecoeur to Fort Frontenac, with his subsequent encounter with the
mutineers, is given in great detail in the unpublished _Relation des
Découvertes_. This and other portions of it are compiled, with little
abridgment, from the letters of La Salle himself, some of which are still
in existence. They give the particulars of each day with a cool and
business-like simplicity, recounting facts without comment or the
slightest attempt at rhetorical embellishment. This is the authority for
the details of the journey: the general statement is confirmed by Membré,
Hennepin, and Tonty. The _Mémoire_ of Tonty, though too concise, is
excellent authority, and must by no means be confounded with the _Relation
de la Louisiane_, to which his name is falsely affixed.]