1680.
INDIAN CONQUERORS.
THE ENTERPRISE RENEWED.--ATTEMPT TO RESCUE TONTY.--BUFFALO.--
A FRIGHTFUL DISCOVERY.--IROQUOIS FURY.--THE RUINED TOWN.--A NIGHT
OF HORROR.--TRACES OF THE INVADERS.--NO NEWS OF TONTY.
And now La Salle's work must be begun afresh. He had staked all, and all
had seemingly been lost. In stern relentless effort he had touched the
limits of human endurance; and the harvest of his toils was
disappointment, disaster, and impending ruin. The shattered fabric of his
enterprise was prostrate in the dust. His friends desponded; his foes were
blatant and exultant. Did he bend before the storm? No human eye could
pierce the veiled depths of his reserved and haughty nature; but the
surface was calm, and no sign betrayed a shaken resolve or an altered
purpose. Where weaker men would have abandoned all in despairing apathy,
he turned anew to his work with the same vigor and the same apparent
confidence as if borne on the full tide of success.
His best hope was in Tonty. Could that brave and true-hearted officer, and
the three or four faithful men who had remained with him, make good their
foothold on the Illinois, and save from destruction the vessel on the
stocks, and the forge and tools so laboriously carried thither,--then,
indeed, a basis was left on which the ruined enterprise might be built up
once more. There was no time to lose. Tonty must be succored soon, or
succor would come too late. La Salle had already provided the necessary
material, and a few days sufficed to complete his preparations. On the
tenth of August, he embarked again for the Illinois. With him went his
lieutenant, La Forest, who held of him in fief an island, then called
Belle Isle, opposite Fort Frontenac. [Footnote: _Robert Cavelier, Sr. de
la Salle, à François Daupin, Sr. de la Forest,_ 10 _Juin, 1679,_ MS.] A
surgeon, ship-carpenters, joiners, masons, soldiers, _voyageurs_, and
laborers completed his company, twenty-five men in all, with every thing
needful for the outfit of the vessel.
His route, though difficult, was not so long as that which he had followed
the year before. He ascended the River Humber; crossed to Lake Simcoe, and
thence descended the Severn to the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron; followed
its eastern shore, coasted the Manitoulin Islands, and at length reached
Michillimackinac. Here, as usual, all was hostile; and he had great
difficulty in inducing the Indians, who had been excited against him, to
sell him provisions. Anxious to reach his destination, he pushed forward
with twelve men, leaving La Forest to bring on the rest. On the fourth of
November, [Footnote: This date is from the _Relation_. Membré says the
twenty-eighth; but he is wrong, by his own showing, as he says that the
party reached the Illinois village on the first of December,--an
impossibility.] he reached the ruined fort at the mouth of the St. Joseph,
and left five of his party, with the heavy stores, to wait till La Forest
should come up, while he himself hastened forward with six Frenchmen and
an Indian. A deep anxiety possessed him. For some time past, rumors had
been abroad that the Iroquois were preparing to invade the country of the
Illinois, bent on expelling or destroying them. Here was a new disaster,
which, if realized, might involve him and his enterprise in irretrievable
wreck.
He ascended the St. Joseph, crossed the portage to the Kankakee, and
followed its course downward till it joined the northern branch of the
Illinois. He had heard nothing of Tonty on the way, and neither here nor
elsewhere could he discover the smallest sign of the passage of white men.
His friend, therefore, if alive, was probably still at his post; and he
pursued his course with a mind lightened, in some small measure, of its
load of anxiety.
When last he had passed here, all was solitude; but how the scene was
changed. The boundless waste was thronged with life. He beheld that
wondrous spectacle, still to be seen at times on the plains of the
remotest West, and the memory of which can quicken the pulse and stir the
blood after the lapse of years. Far and near, the prairie was alive with
buffalo; now like black specks dotting the distant swells; now trampling
by in ponderous columns, or filing in long lines, morning, noon, and
night, to drink at the river,--wading, plunging, and snorting in the
water; climbing the muddy shores, and staring with wild eyes at the
passing canoes. It was an opportunity not to be lost. The party landed,
and encamped for a hunt. Sometimes they hid under the shelving bank, and
shot them as they came to drink; sometimes, flat on their faces, they
dragged themselves through the long dead grass, till the savage bulls,
guardians of the herd, ceased their grazing, raised their huge heads, and
glared through tangled hair at the dangerous intruders; their horns
splintered and their grim front scarred with battles, while their shaggy
mane, like a gigantic lion, well-nigh swept the ground. [Footnote: I have
a very vivid recollection of the appearance of an old buffalo bull under
such circumstances. When I was within a hundred yards of him, he came
towards me at a sharp trot as if to make a charge; but, as I remained
motionless, he stopped thirty paces off and stared fixedly for a long
time. At length, he slowly turned, and, in doing so, received a shot
behind the shoulder, which killed him. It is useless to fire at the
forehead of a buffalo bull, at least with an ordinary rifle, as the bullet
flattens against his skull. A shot at close quarters, just above the nose,
would probably turn him in a charge. The usual modes of hunting buffalo on
foot are those mentioned above. They are commonly successful; but at times
the animals are excessively shy and wary, while at other times they are
stupid beyond measure, and can be easily approached and killed. The hunter
must remain perfectly motionless after firing, as the wounded animal is
apt to make a rush at him if he moves. The most agreeable mode of hunting
buffalo is, however, on horseback, running alongside of them, and shooting
them behind the shoulder with a pistol or a short gun. A bow and arrow are
better for those who know how to use them; but white men very rarely have
the skill. I have seen, on different occasions, several hundred buffalo
killed with arrows, by Indians on horseback. This noble game, with the
tribes who live on it, will soon disappear from the earth.] The hunt was
successful. In three days, the hunters killed twelve buffalo, besides
deer, geese, and swans. They cut the meat into thin flakes, and dried it
in the sun, or in the smoke of their fires. The men were in high spirits;
delighting in the sport, and rejoicing in the prospect of relieving Tonty
and his hungry followers with a bounteous supply.
They embarked again, and soon approached the great town of the Illinois.
The buffalo were far behind; and once more the canoes glided on their way
through a voiceless solitude. No hunters were seen; no saluting whoop
greeted their ears. They passed the cliff afterwards called the Rock of
St. Louis, where La Salle had ordered Tonty to build his stronghold; but
as he scanned its lofty top, he saw no palisades, no cabins, no sign of
human hand, and still its primeval crest of forests overhung the gliding
river. Now the meadow opened before them where the great town had stood.
They gazed, astonished and confounded: all was desolation. The town had
vanished, and the meadow was black with fire. They plied their paddles,
hastened to the spot, landed; and, as they looked around, their cheeks
grew white, and the blood was frozen in their veins.
Before them lay a plain once swarming with wild human life, and covered
with Indian dwellings; now a waste of devastation and death, strewn with
heaps of ashes, and bristling with the charred poles and stakes which had
formed the framework of the lodges. At the points of most of them were
stuck human skulls, half picked by birds of prey. [Footnote: "Il ne
restoit que quelques bouts de perches brulées qui montroient quelle avoit
été l'étendue du village, et sur la plupart desquelles il y avait des
têtes de morts plantées et mangóes des corbeaux."--_Relation des
Découvertes du Sr. de la Salle_, MS.] Near at hand was the burial ground
of the village. The travellers sickened with horror as they entered its
revolting precincts. Wolves in multitudes fled at their approach; while
clouds of crows or buzzards, rising from the hideous repast, wheeled above
their heads, or settled on the naked branches of the neighboring forest.
Every grave had been rifled, and the bodies flung down from the scaffolds
where, after the Illinois custom, many of them had been placed. The field
was strewn with broken bones and torn and mangled corpses. A hyena warfare
had been waged against the dead. La Salle knew the handiwork of the
Iroquois. The threatened blow had fallen, and the wolfish hordes of the
five cantons had fleshed their rabid fangs in a new victim. [Footnote:
"Beaucoup de carcasses à demi rongées par les loups, les sepulchres
démolis, les os tirés de leurs fosses et épars par la campagne; ... enfin
les loups et les corbeaux augmentoient par leurs hurlemens et par leurs
cris l'horreur de ce spectacle."--_Ibid_.
The above may seem exaggerated, but it accords perfectly with what is well
established concerning the ferocious character of the Iroquois, and the
nature of their warfare. Many other tribes have frequently made war upon
the dead. I have myself known an instance in which five corpses of Sioux
Indians, placed in trees, after the practice of the western bands of that
people, were thrown down and kicked into fragments by a war party of the
Crows, who then held the muzzles of their guns against the skulls and blew
them to pieces. This happened near the head of the Platte, in the summer
of 1846. Yet the Crows are much less ferocious than were the Iroquois in
La Salle's time.]
Not far distant, the conquerors had made a rude fort of trunks, boughs,
and roots of trees laid together to form a circular enclosure; and this,
too, was garnished with, skulls, stuck on the broken branches, and
protruding sticks. The _caches_, or subterranean storehouses of the
villagers had been broken open, and the contents scattered. The cornfields
were laid waste, and much of the corn thrown into heaps and half burned.
As La Salle surveyed this scene of havoc, one thought engrossed him: where
were Tonty and his men? He searched the Iroquois fort; there were abundant
traces of its savage occupants, but none whatever of the presence of white
men. He examined the skulls; but the hair, portions of which clung to
nearly all of them, was in every case that of an Indian. Evening came on
before he had finished the search. The sun set, and the wilderness sank to
its savage rest. Night and silence brooded over the waste, where, far as
the raven could wing his flight, stretched the dark domain of solitude and
horror.
Yet there was no silence at the spot, where, crouched around their camp-
fire, La Salle and his companions kept their vigil. The howlings of the
wolves filled the frosty air with a fierce and dreary dissonance. More
deadly foes were not far off, for before nightfall they had seen fresh
Indian tracks. The cold, however, forced them to make a fire; and while
some tried to rest around it, the others stood on the watch. La Salle
could not sleep. Anxiety, anguish, fears for his friend, doubts as to what
course he should pursue, racked his firm mind with a painful indecision,
and lent redoubled gloom to the terrors that encompassed him. [Footnote:
_Relation des Découvertes_, MS.]
During the afternoon, he had made a discovery which offered, as he
thought, a possible clew to the fate of Tonty, and those with him. In one
of the Illinois cornfields, near the river, were planted six posts painted
red, on each of which was drawn in black a figure of a man with eyes
bandaged. La Salle supposed them to represent six Frenchmen, prisoners in
the hands of the Iroquois; and he resolved to push forward at all hazards,
in the hope of learning more. When daylight at length returned, he told
his followers that it was his purpose to descend the river, and directed
three of them to await his return near the ruined village. They were to
hide themselves on an island, conceal their fire at night, make no smoke
by day, fire no guns, and keep a close watch. Should the rest of the party
arrive, they, too, were to wait with similar precautions. The baggage was
placed in a hollow of the rocks, at a place difficult of access; and,
these arrangements made, La Salle set out on his perilous journey with the
four remaining men, Dautray, Hunaut, You, and the Indian. Each was armed
with two guns, a pistol, and a sword; and a number of hatchets and other
goods were placed in the canoe, as presents for Indians whom they might
meet.
Several leagues below the village they found, on their right hand close to
the river, a sort of island made inaccessible by the marshes and water
which surrounded it. Here the flying Illinois had sought refuge with their
women and children, and the place was full of their deserted huts. On the
left bank, exactly opposite, was an abandoned camp of the Iroquois. On the
level meadow stood a hundred and thirteen huts, and on the forest trees
which covered the hills behind were carved the totems, or insignia, of the
chiefs, together with marks to show the number of followers which each had
led to the war. La Salle counted five hundred and eighty-two warriors. He
found marks, too, for the Illinois killed or captured, but none to
indicate that any of the Frenchmen had shared their fate.
As they descended the river, they passed, on the same day, six abandoned
camps of the Illinois, and opposite to each was a camp of the invaders.
The former, it was clear, had retreated in a body; while the Iroquois had
followed their march, day by day, along the other bank. La Salle and his
men pushed rapidly onward, passed Peoria Lake, and soon reached Fort
Crèvecoeur, which they found, as they expected, demolished by the
deserters. The vessel on the stocks was still left entire, though the
Iroquois had found means to draw out the iron nails and spikes. On one of
the planks were written the words: "_Nous sommes tous sauvages: ce_ 19--
1680;" the work, no doubt, of the knaves who had pillaged and destroyed
the fort.
La Salle and his companions hastened on, and during the following day
passed four opposing camps of the savage armies. The silence of death now
reigned along the deserted river, whose lonely borders, wrapped deep in
forests, seemed lifeless as the grave. As they drew near the mouth of the
stream, they saw a meadow on their right, and, on its farthest verge,
several human figures, erect yet motionless. They landed, and cautiously
examined the place. The long grass was trampled down, and all around were
strewn the relics of the hideous orgies which formed the ordinary sequel
of an Iroquois victory. The figures they had seen were the half-consumed
bodies of women, still bound to the stakes where they had been tortured.
Other sights there were, too revolting for record. [Footnote: "On ne
sçàuroit exprimer la rage de ces furieux ni les tourmens qu'ils avoient
fait souffrir aux misérables Tamaroa (_a tribe of the Illinois_). Il y en
avoit encore dans des chaudières qu'ils avoient laissées pleines sur les
feux, qui depuis s'étoient éteints," etc., etc.--_Relation des
Découvertes_, MS.] All the remains were those of women and children. The
men, it seemed, had fled, and left them to their fate.
Here, again, La Salle sought long and anxiously, without finding the
smallest sign that could indicate the presence of Frenchmen. Once more
descending the river, they soon reached its mouth. Before them, a broad
eddying current rolled swiftly on its way; and La Salle beheld the
Mississippi, the object of his day-dreams, the destined avenue of his
ambition and his hopes. It was no time for reflections. The moment was too
engrossing, too heavily charged with anxieties and cares. From a rock on
the shore, he saw a tree stretched forward above the stream; and stripping
off its bark to make it more conspicuous, he hung upon it a board, on
which he had drawn the figures of himself and his men, seated in their
canoe, and bearing a pipe of peace. To this he tied a letter for Tonty,
informing him that he had returned up the river to the ruined village.
His four men had behaved admirably throughout, and they now offered to
continue the journey, if he saw fit, and follow him to the sea; but he
thought it useless to go farther, and was unwilling to abandon the three
men whom he had ordered to await his return. Accordingly they retraced
their course, and, paddling at times both day and night, urged their canoe
so swiftly, that they reached the village in the incredibly short space of
four days. [Footnote: The distance is about two hundred and fifty miles.
The _Relation des Découvertes_ says that they left the village on the
second of December, and returned to it on the eleventh, having left the
mouth of the river on the seventh. Very probably, there is an error of
date. In other particulars, this narrative is sustained by those of
Tonty.]
The sky was clear; and, as night came on, the travellers saw a prodigious
comet blazing above this scene of desolation. On that night, it was
chilling, with a superstitious awe, the hamlets of New England and the
gilded chambers of Versailles; but it is characteristic of La Salle, that,
beset as he was with perils, and surrounded with ghastly images of death,
he coolly notes down the phenomenon,--not as a portentous messenger of war
and woe, but rather as an object of scientific curiosity. [Footnote: This
was the "Great Comet of 1680.". Dr. B. A. Gould writes me: "It appeared in
December, 1680, and was visible until the latter part of February, 1681,
being especially brilliant in January." It was said to be the largest ever
seen. By observations upon it, Newton demonstrated the regular revolutions
of comets around the sun. "No comet," it is said, "has threatened the
earth with a nearer approach than that of 1680."--_Winthrop on Comets,
Lecture II_. p. 44. Increase Mather, in his _Discourse concerning Comets_,
printed at Boston in 1683, says of this one: "Its appearance was very
terrible, the Blaze ascended above 60 Degrees almost to its Zenith."
Mather thought it fraught with terrific portent to the nations of the
earth.]
He found his three men safely ensconced upon their island, where they were
anxiously looking for his return. After collecting a store of half-burnt
corn from the ravaged granaries of the Illinois, the whole party began to
ascend the river, and, on the sixth of January, reached the junction of
the Kankakee with the northern branch. On their way downward, they had
descended the former stream. They now chose the latter, and soon
discovered, by the margin of the water, a rude cabin of bark. La Salle
landed, and examined the spot, when an object met his eye which cheered
him with a bright gleam of hope. It was but a piece of wood, but the wood
had been cut with a saw. Tonty and his party, then, had passed this way,
escaping from the carnage behind them. Unhappily, they had left no token
of their passage at the fork of the two streams; and thus La Salle, on his
voyage downward, had believed them to be still on the river below.
With rekindled hope, the travellers pursued their journey, leaving their
canoes, and making their way overland towards the fort on the St. Joseph.
Snow fell in profusion, till the earth was deeply buried. So light and dry
was it, that to walk on snow-shoes was impossible; and La Salle, after his
custom, took the lead, to break the path and cheer on his followers.
Despite his tall stature, he often waded through drifts to the waist,
while the men toiled on behind; the snow, shaken from the burdened twigs,
showering them as they passed. After excessive fatigue, they reached their
goal, and found shelter and safety within the walls of Fort Miami. Here
was the party left in charge of La Forest; but, to his surprise and grief,
La Salle heard no tidings of Tonty. He found some amends for the
disappointment in the fidelity and zeal of La Forest's men, who had
restored the fort, cleared ground for planting, and even sawed the planks
and timber for a new vessel on the lake.
And now, while La Salle rests at Fort Miami, let us trace the adventures
which befell Tonty and his followers, after their chief's departure from
Fort Crèvecoeur.