1680.
THE ADVENTURES OF HENNEPIN.
HENNEPIN AN IMPOSTOR.--HIS PRETENDED DISCOVERY.--HIS ACTUAL
DISCOVERY.--CAPTURED BY THE SIOUX.--THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.
It was on the last day of the winter that preceded the invasion of the
Iroquois, that Father Hennepin, with his two companions, Accau and Du Gay,
had set out from Fort Crèvecoeur to explore the Illinois to its mouth. It
appears from his own later statements, as well as from those of Tonty,
that more than this was expected of him, and that La Salle had instructed
him to explore, not alone the Illinois, but also the Upper Mississippi.
That he actually did so, there is no reasonable doubt; and, could he have
contented himself with telling the truth, his name would have stood high
as a bold and vigorous discoverer. But his vicious attempts to malign his
commander, and plunder him of his laurels, have wrapped his genuine merit
in a cloud.
Hennepin's first book was published soon after his return from his
travels, and while La Salle was still alive. In it, he relates the
accomplishment of the instructions given him, without the smallest
intimation that he did more, [Footnote: _Description de la Louisiane,
nouvellement découverte, Paris_, 1683.] Fourteen years after, when La
Salle was dead, he published another edition of his travels, [Footnote:
_Nouvelle Découverte d'un très grand Pays situé dans l'Amérique, Utrecht_,
1697] in which he advanced a new and surprising pretension. Reasons
connected with his personal safety, he declares, before compelled him to
remain silent; but a time at length has come when the truth must be
revealed. And he proceeds to affirm that, before ascending the
Mississippi, he, with his two men, explored its whole course from the
Illinois to the sea, thus anticipating the discovery which forms the
crowning laurel of La Salle.
"I am resolved," he says, "to make known here to the whole world the
mystery of this discovery, which I have hitherto concealed, that I might
not offend the Sieur de la Salle, who wished to keep all the glory and all
the knowledge of it to himself. It is for this that he sacrificed many
persons whose lives he exposed, to prevent them from making known what
they had seen, and thereby crossing his secret plans.... I was certain
that if I went down the Mississippi, he would not fail to traduce me to my
superiors for not taking the northern route, which I was to have followed
in accordance with his desire and the plan we had made together. But I saw
myself on the point of dying of hunger, and knew not what to do; because
the two men who were with me threatened openly to leave me in the night,
and carry off the canoe, and every thing in it, if I prevented them from
going down the river to the nations below. Finding myself in this dilemma,
I thought that I ought not to hesitate, and that I ought to prefer my own.
safety to the violent passion which possessed the Sieur de la Salle of
enjoying alone the glory of this discovery. The two men, seeing that I had
made up my mind to follow them, promised me entire fidelity; so, after we
had shaken hands together as a mutual pledge, we set out on our voyage."
[Footnote: _Nouvelle Découverte_, 248, 250, 251.]
He then proceeds to recount, at length, the particulars of his alleged
exploration. The story was distrusted from the first. [Footnote: See the
preface of the Spanish translation by Don Sebastian Fernandez de Medrano,
1699, and also the letter of Gravier, dated 1701, in Shea's _Early Voyages
on the Mississippi_. Barcia, Charlevoix, Kalm, and other early writers,
put a low value on Hennepin's veracity.] Why had he not told it before? An
excess of modesty, a lack of self-assertion, or a too sensitive reluctance
to wound the susceptibilities of others, had never been found among his
foibles. Yet some, perhaps, might have believed him, had he not, in the
first edition of his book, gratuitously and distinctly declared that he
did not make the voyage in question. "We had some designs," he says, "of
going down the River Colbert [Mississippi] as far as its mouth; but the
tribes that took us prisoners gave us no time to navigate this river both
up and down." [Footnote: _Description de la Louisiane_, 218.]
In declaring to the world the achievement which he had so long concealed
and so explicitly denied, the worthy missionary found himself in serious
embarrassment. In his first book, he had stated that, on the twelfth of
March, he left the mouth of the Illinois on his way northward, and that,
on the eleventh of April, he was captured by the Sioux, near the mouth of
the Wisconsin, five hundred miles above. This would give him only a month
to make his alleged canoe-voyage from the Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico,
and again upward to the place of his capture,--a distance of three
thousand two hundred and sixty miles. With his means of transportation,
three months would have been insufficient. [Footnote: La Salle, in the
following year, with a far better equipment, was more than three months
and a half in making the journey. A Mississippi trading-boat of the last
generation, with sails and oars, ascending against the current, was
thought to do remarkably well if it could make twenty miles a day.
Hennepin, if we believe his own statements, must have ascended at an
average rate of sixty miles, though his canoe was large and heavily
laden.] He saw the difficulty; but on the other hand, he saw that he could
not greatly change either date without confusing the parts of his
narrative which preceded and which followed. In this perplexity, he chose
a middle course, which only involved him in additional contradictions.
Having, as he affirms, gone down to the Gulf and returned to the mouth of
the Illinois, he set out thence to explore the river above; and he assigns
the twenty-fourth of April as the date of this departure. This gives him
forty-three days for his voyage to the mouth of the river and back.
Looking farther, we find that, having left the Illinois on the twenty-
fourth, he paddled his canoe two hundred leagues northward, and was then
captured by the Sioux on the twelfth of the same month. In short, he
ensnares himself in a hopeless confusion of dates. [Footnote: Hennepin
here falls into gratuitous inconsistencies. In the edition of 1697, in
order to gain a little time, he says that he left the Illinois on his
voyage southward on the eighth of March, 1680; and yet, in the preceding
chapter, he repeats the statement of the first edition, that he was
detained at the Illinois by floating ice till the twelfth. Again, he says
in the first edition, that he was captured by the Sioux on the eleventh of
April; and in the edition of 1697, he changes this date to the twelfth,
without gaining any advantage by doing so.]
Here, one would think, is sufficient reason, for rejecting his story; and
yet the general truth of the descriptions, and a certain verisimilitude
which marks it, might easily deceive a careless reader and perplex a
critical one. These, however, are easily explained. Six years before
Hennepin published his pretended discovery, his brother friar, Father
Chrétien Le Clercq, published an account of the Récollet missions among
the Indians, under the title of "Établissement de la Foi." This book was
suppressed by the French government; but a few copies fortunately
survived. One of these is now before me. It contains the journal of Father
Zenobe Membré, on his descent of the Mississippi in 1681, in company with
La Salle. The slightest comparison of his narrative with that of Hennepin
is sufficient to show that the latter framed his own story out of
incidents and descriptions furnished by his brother missionary, often
using his very words, and sometimes copying entire pages, with no other
alterations than such as were necessary to make himself, instead of La
Salle and his companions, the hero of the exploit. The records of literary
piracy may be searched in vain for an act of depredation more recklessly
impudent. [Footnote: Hennepin may have copied from the unpublished journal
of Membré, which the latter had placed in the hands of his superior, or he
may have compiled from Le Clercq's book, relying on the suppression of the
edition to prevent detection. He certainly saw and used it, for he
elsewhere borrows the exact words of the editor. He is so careless that he
steals from Membré passages which he might easily have written for
himself, as, for example, a description of the opossum and another of the
cougar, animals with which he was acquainted. Compare the following pages
of the _Nouvelle Découverte_ with the corresponding pages of Le Clercq:
Hennepin, 252, Le Clercq, ii. 217; H. 253, Le C. ii. 218; H. 257, Le C.
ii. 221; H. 259, Le C. ii. 224; H. 262, Le C. ii. 226; H. 265, Le C. ii.
229; H. 267, Le C. ii. 283; H. 270, Le C. ii. 235; H. 280, Le C. ii. 240;
H. 295, Le C. ii. 249; H. 296, Le C. ii. 250; H. 297, Le C. ii. 253; H.
299, Le C. ii. 254; H. 301, Le C. ii. 257. Some of these parallel passages
will be found in Sparks's _Life of La Salle_, where this remarkable fraud
was first fully exposed. In Shea's _Discovery of the Mississippi_, there
is an excellent critical examination of Hennepin's works. His plagiarisms
from Le Clercq are not confined to the passages cited above; for, in his
later editions, he stole largely from other parts of the suppressed
_Établissement de la Foi_.]
Such being the case, what faith can we put in the rest of Hennepin's
story? Fortunately, there are tests by which the earlier parts of his book
can be tried; and, on the whole, they square exceedingly well with
contemporary records of undoubted authenticity. Bating his exaggerations
respecting the Falls of Niagara, his local descriptions, and even his
estimates of distance, are generally accurate. He constantly, it is true,
magnifies his own acts, and thrusts himself forward as one of the chiefs
of an enterprise, to the costs of which he had contributed nothing, and to
which he was merely an appendage; and yet, till he reaches the
Mississippi, there can be no doubt that, in the main, he tells the truth.
As for his ascent of that river to the country of the Sioux, the general
statement is fully confirmed by allusions of Tonty, and other contemporary
writers. [Footnote: It is certain that persons having the best means of
information believed at the time in Hennepin's story of his journeys on
the Upper Mississippi. The compiler of the _Relation des Découvertes_, who
was in close relations with La Salle and those who acted with him, does
not intimate a doubt of the truth of the report which Hennepin, on his
return, gave to the Provincial Commissary of his Order, and which is in
substance the same which he published two years later. The _Relation_, it
is to be observed, was written only a few months after the return of
Hennepin, and embodies the pith of his narrative of the Upper Mississippi,
no part of which had then been published.] For the details of the journey,
we must look on Hennepin alone; whose account of the company and of the
peculiar traits of its Indian occupation afford, as far as they go, good
evidence of truth. Indeed, this part of his narrative could only have been
written by one well versed in the savage life of this north-western
region. [Footnote: In this connection, it is well to examine the various
Sioux words which Hennepin uses incidentally, and which he must have
acquired by personal intercourse with the tribe, as no Frenchman then
understood the language. These words, as far as my information reaches,
are in every instance correct. Thus, he says that the Sioux called his
breviary a "bad spirit"--_Ouackanché_. _Wakanshe_, or _Wakansheclia_,
would express the same meaning in modern English spelling. He says
elsewhere that they called the guns of his companions _Manzaouackanché_,
which he translates, "iron possessed with a bad spirit." The western Sioux
to this day call a gun _Manzawakan_, "metal possessed with a spirit."
_Chonga (shonka)_, "a, dog," _Ouasi (wahsee)_, "a pine-tree," _Chinnen
(shinnan)_, "a robe," or "garment," and other words, are given correctly,
with their interpretations. The word _Louis_, affirmed by Hennepin to mean
"the sun," seems at first sight a wilful inaccuracy, as this is not the
word used in general by the Sioux. The Yankton band of this people,
however, call the sun _oouee_, which, it is evident, represents the French
pronunciation of Louis, omitting the initial letter. This, Hennepin would
be apt enough to supply, thereby conferring a compliment alike on himself,
Louis Hennepin, and on the King, Louis XIV., who, to the indignation of
his brother monarchs, had chosen the sun as his emblem.
A variety of trivial incidents touched upon by Hennepin, while recounting
his life among the Sioux, seem to me to afford a strong presumption of an
actual experience. I speak on this point with the more confidence, as the
Indians in whose lodges I was once domesticated for several weeks,
belonged to a western band of the same people.] Trusting, then, to his
guidance in the absence of better, let us follow in the wake of his
adventurous canoe.
It was laden deeply; with goods belonging to La Salle, and meant by
handing presents to Indians on the way, though the travelers, it appears,
proposed to use them in trading of their own account. The friar was still
wrapped in his gray capote and hood, shod with sandals, and decorated with
the cord of St. Francis. As for his two companions, Accau [Footnote:
Called Ako by Hennepin. In contemporary documents it is written Accau,
Acau, D'Accau Dacau, Dacan, and d'Accault.] and Du Gay, it is tolerably
clear that the former was the real leader of the party, though Hennepin,
after his custom, thrusts himself into the foremost place. Both were
somewhat above the station of ordinary hired hands; and Du Gay had an
uncle who was an ecclesiastic of good credit at Amiens, his native place.
In the forests that overhung the river, the buds were feebly swelling with
advancing spring. There was game enough. They killed buffalo, deer,
beavers, wild turkeys, and now and then a bear swimming in the river. With
these, and the fish which they caught in abundance, they fared
sumptuously, though it was the season of Lent. They were exemplary,
however, at their devotions. Hennepin said prayers at morning and night,
and the _angelus_ at noon, adding a petition to St. Anthony of Padua, that
he would save them from the peril that beset their way. In truth, there
was a lion in the path. The ferocious character of the Sioux, or Dacotah,
who occupied the region of the Upper Mississippi, was already known to the
French; and Hennepin, not without reason, prayed that it might be his
fortune to meet them, not by night, but by day.
On the eleventh or twelfth of April, they stopped in the afternoon to
repair their canoe; and Hennepin busied himself in daubing it with pitch,
while the others cooked a turkey. Suddenly a fleet of Sioux canoes swept
into sight, bearing a war-party of a hundred and twenty naked savages,
who, on seeing the travellers, raised a hideous clamor; and some leaping
ashore and others into the water, they surrounded the astonished Frenchmen
in an instant. [Footnote: The edition of 1683 says that there were thirty-
three canoes: that of 1697 raises the number to fifty. The number of
Indians is the same in both. The later narrative is more in detail than
the former.] Hennepin held out the peace-pipe, but one of them snatched it
from him. Next, he hastened to proffer a gift of Martinique tobacco, which
was better received. Some of the old warriors repeated the name _Miamiha_,
giving him to understand that they were a war-party on the way to attack
the Miamis; on which Hennepin, with the help of signs and of marks which
he drew on the sand with a stick, explained that the Miamis had gone
across the Mississippi beyond their reach. Hereupon, he says that three or
four old men placed their hands on his head, and began a dismal wailing;
while he with his handkerchief wiped away their tears in order to evince
sympathy with their affliction, from whatever cause arising.
Notwithstanding this demonstration of tenderness, they refused to smoke
with him in his peace-pipe, and forced him and his companions to embark
and paddle across the river; while they all followed behind, uttering
yells and howlings which froze the missionary's blood.
On reaching the farther side, they made their camp-fires, and allowed
their prisoners to do the same. Accau and Du Gay slung their kettle; while
Hennepin, to propitiate the Sioux, carried to them two turkeys, of which
there were several in the canoe. The warriors had seated themselves in a
ring, to debate on the fate of the Frenchmen; and two chiefs presently
explained to the friar, by significant signs, that it had been resolved
that his head should be split with a war-club. This produced the effect
which was no doubt intended. Hennepin ran to the canoe, and quickly
returned with one of the men, both loaded with presents, which he threw
into the midst of the assembly; and then, bowing his head, offered them at
the same time a hatchet with which to kill him if they wished to do so.
His gifts and his submission seemed to appease them. They gave him and his
companions a dish of beaver's flesh; but, to his great concern, they
returned his peace-pipe, an act which he interpreted as a sign of danger.
That night, the Frenchmen slept little, expecting to be murdered before
morning. There was, in fact, a great division of opinion among the Sioux.
Some were for killing them, and taking their goods; while others, eager
above all things that French traders should come among them with the
knives, hatchets, and guns of which they had heard the value, contended
that it would be impolitic to discourage the trade by putting to death its
pioneers.
Scarcely had morning dawned on the anxious captives, when a young chief,
naked, and painted from head to foot, appeared before them, and asked for
the pipe, which the friar gladly gave him. He filled it, smoked it, made
the warriors do the same, and, having given this hopeful pledge of amity,
told the Frenchmen that, since the Miamis were out of reach, the war-party
would return home, and that they must accompany them. To this Hennepin
gladly agreed, having, as he declares, his great work of exploration so
much at heart that he rejoiced in the prospect of achieving it even in
their company.
He soon, however, had a foretaste of the affliction in store for him; for,
when he opened his breviary and began to mutter his morning devotion, his
new companions gathered about him with faces that betrayed their
superstitious terror, and gave him to understand that his book was a bad
spirit with which he must hold no more converse. They thought, indeed,
that he was muttering a charm for their destruction. Accau and Du Gay,
conscious of the danger, begged the friar to dispense with his devotions,
lest he and they alike should be tomahawked; but Hennepin says that his
sense of duty rose superior to his fears, and that he was resolved to
repeat his office at all hazards, though not until he had asked pardon of
his two friends for thus imperilling their lives. Fortunately, he
presently discovered a device by which his devotion and his prudence were
completely reconciled. He ceased the muttering which had alarmed the
Indians, and, with the breviary open on his knees, sang the service in
loud and cheerful tones. As this had no savor of sorcery, and as they now
imagined that the book was teaching its owner to sing for their amusement,
they conceived a favorable opinion of both alike.
These Sioux, it may be observed, were the ancestors of those who committed
the horrible but not unprovoked massacres of 1863, in the valley of the
St. Peter. Hennepin complains bitterly of their treatment of him, which,
however, seems to have been tolerably good. Afraid that he would lag
behind, as his canoe was heavy and slow, [Footnote: And yet it had, by his
account, made a distance of thirteen hundred and eighty miles from the
mouth of the Mississippi upward in twenty-four days.] they placed several
warriors in it, to aid him and his men in paddling. They kept on their way
from morning till night, building huts for their bivouac when it rained,
and sleeping on the open ground when the weather was fair, which, says
Hennepin, "gave us a good opportunity to contemplate the moon and stars."
The three Frenchmen took the precaution of sleeping at the side of the
young chief who had been the first to smoke the peacepipe, and who seemed
inclined to befriend them; but there was another chief, one Aquipaguetin,
a crafty old savage, who, having lost a son in war with the Miamis, was
angry that the party had abandoned their expedition, and thus deprived him
of his revenge. He therefore kept up a dismal lament through half the
night; while other old men, crouching over Hennepin as he lay trying to
sleep, stroked him with their hands, and uttered wailings so lugubrious
that he was forced to the belief that he had been doomed to death, and
that they were charitably bemoaning his fate. [Footnote: This weeping and
wailing over Hennepin once seemed to me an anomaly in his account of Sioux
manners, as I am not aware that such practices are to be found among them
at present. They are mentioned, however, by other early writers. Le Sueur,
who was among them in 1699-1700, was wept over no less than Hennepin. See
the abstract of his journal in La Harpe.]
One night, they were, for some reason, unable to bivouac near their
protector, and were forced to make their fire at the end of the camp. Here
they were soon beset by a crowd of Indians, who told them that
Aquipaguetin had at length resolved to tomahawk them. The malcontents
were gathered in a knot at a little distance, and Hennepin hastened to
appease them by another gift of knives and tobacco. This was but one of
the devices of the old chief to deprive them of their goods without
robbing them outright. He had with him the bones of a deceased relative,
which he was carrying home wrapped in skins prepared with smoke after the
Indian fashion, and gayly decorated with bands of dyed porcupine quills.
He would summon his warriors, and, placing these relics in the midst of
the assembly, call on all present to smoke in their honor; after which
Hennepin was required to offer a more substantial tribute in the shape of
cloth, beads, hatchets, tobacco, and the like, to be laid upon the bundle
of bones. The gifts thus acquired were then, in the name of the deceased,
distributed among the persons present.
On one occasion, Aquipaguetin killed a bear, and invited the chiefs and
warriors to feast upon it. They accordingly assembled on a prairie, west
of the river; and, the banquet over, they danced a "medicine-dance." They
were all painted from head to foot, with their hair oiled, garnished with
red and white feathers, and powdered with the down of birds. In this
guise, they set their arms akimbo, and fell to stamping with such fury
that the hard prairie was dented with the prints of their moccasons; while
the chief's son, crying at the top of his throat, gave to each in turn the
pipe of war. Meanwhile, the chief himself, singing in a loud and rueful
voice, placed his hands on the heads of the three Frenchmen, and from time
to time interrupted his music to utter a vehement harangue. Hennepin could
not understand the words, but his heart sank as the conviction grew strong
within him that these ceremonies tended to his destruction. It seems,
however, that, after all the chief's efforts, his party was in the
minority, the greater part being averse to either killing or robbing the
three strangers. Every morning, at daybreak, an old warrior shouted the
signal of departure; and the recumbent savages leaped up, manned their
birchen fleet, and plied their paddles against the current, often without
waiting to break their fast. Sometimes they stopped for a buffalo-hunt on
the neighboring prairies; and there was no lack of provisions. They passed
Lake Pepin, which Hennepin called the Lake of Tears, by reason of the
howlings and lamentations here uttered over him by Aquipaguetin; and,
nineteen days after his capture, landed near the site of St. Paul. The
father's sorrows now began in earnest. The Indians broke his canoe to
pieces, having first hidden their own among the alder-bushes. As they
belonged to different bands and different villages, their mutual jealousy
now overcame all their prudence, and each proceeded to claim his share of
the captives and the booty. Happily, they made an amicable distribution,
or it would have fared ill with the three Frenchmen; and each taking his
share, not forgetting the priestly vestments of Hennepin, the splendor of
which they could not sufficiently admire, they set out across the country
for their villages, which lay towards the north, in the neighborhood of
Lake Buade, now called Mille Lac.
Being, says Hennepin, exceedingly tall and active, they walked at a
prodigious speed, insomuch that no European could long keep pace with
them. Though the month of May had begun, there were frosts at night; and
the marshes and ponds were glazed with ice, which cut the missionary's
legs as he waded through. They swam the larger streams, and Hennepin
nearly perished with cold as be emerged from the icy current. His two
companions, who were smaller than he, and who could not swim, were carried
over on the backs of the Indians. They showed, however, no little
endurance; and he declares that he should have dropped by the way, but for
their support. Seeing him disposed to lag, the Indians, to spur him on,
set fire to the dry grass behind him, and then, taking him by the hands,
ran forward with him to escape the flames. To add to his misery, he was
nearly famished, as they gave him only a small piece of smoked meat, once
a day, though it does not appear that they themselves fared better. On the
fifth day, being by this time in extremity, he saw a crowd of squaws and
children approaching over the prairie, and presently descried the bark
lodges of an Indian town. The goal was reached. He was among the homes of
the Sioux.