1680, 1681.
HENNEPIN AMONG THE SIOUX.
SIGNS OP DANGER.--ADOPTION.--HENNEPIN AND HIS INDIAN RELATIVES.--THE
HUNTING PARTY.--THE SIOUX CAMP.--FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY.--A VAGABOND
FRIAR.--HIS ADVENTURES ON THE MISSISSIPPI.--GREYSOLON DU LHUT.--RETURN
TO CIVILIZATION.
As Hennepin entered the village, he beheld a sight which caused him to
invoke St. Anthony of Padua. In front of the lodges were certain stakes,
to which were attached bundles of straw, intended, as he supposed, for
burning him and his friends alive. His concern was redoubled when he saw
the condition of the Picard Du Gay, whose hair and face had been painted
with divers colors, and whose head was decorated with a tuft of white
feathers. In this guise, he was entering the village, followed by a crowd
of Sioux, who compelled him to sing and keep time to his own music by
rattling a dried gourd containing a number of pebbles. The omens, indeed,
were exceedingly threatening; for treatment like this was usually followed
by the speedy immolation of the captive. Hennepin ascribes it to the
effect of his invocations, that, being led into one of the lodges, among a
throng of staring squaws and children, he and his companions were seated
on the ground, and presented with large dishes of birch bark, containing a
mess of wild rice boiled with dried whortleberries; a repast which he
declares to have been the best that had fallen to his lot since the day of
his captivity. [Footnote: The Sioux, or Dacotah, as they call themselves,
were a numerous people, separated into three great divisions, which were
again subdivided into bands. Those among whom Hennepin was a prisoner
belonged to the division known as the Issanti, Issanyati, or, as he writes
it, Issati, of which the principal band was the Meddewakantonwan. The
other great divisions, the Yanktons and the Tintonwans, or Tetons, lived
west of the Mississippi, extending beyond the Missouri, and ranging as far
as the Rocky Mountains. The Issanti cultivated the soil, but the extreme
western bands subsisted on the buffalo alone. The former had two kinds of
dwelling,--the _teepee_ or skin lodge, and the bark lodge. The teepee,
which was used by all the Sioux, consists of a covering of dressed buffalo
hide stretched on a conical stack of poles. The bark lodge was peculiar to
the eastern Sioux, and examples of it might be seen until within a few
years among the bands, on the St. Peter's. In its general character it was
like the Huron and Iroquois houses, but was inferior in construction. It
had a ridge roof framed of poles extending from the posts which formed the
sides, and the whole was covered with elm-bark. The lodges in the villages
to which Hennepin was conducted were probably of this kind.
The name Sioux is an abbreviation of _Nadouessioux_, an Ojibwa word
meaning _enemies_. The Ojibwas used it to designate this people, and
occasionally also the Iroquois, being at deadly war with both.
Rev. Stephen R. Riggs, for many years a missionary among the Issanti
Sioux, says that this division consists of four distinct bands. They ceded
all their lands east of the Mississippi to the United States in 1837, and
lived on the St. Peter's till driven thence in consequence of the
massacres of 1862, 1863. The Yankton Sioux consist of two bands, which are
again subdivided. The Assiniboins, or Hohays, are an offshoot from the
Yanktons, with whom they are now at war. The Titonwan or Teton Sioux,
forming the most western division, and the largest, comprise seven bands,
and are among the bravest and fiercest tenants of the prairie.
The earliest French writers estimate the total number of the Sioux at
forty thousand. Mr. Riggs, in 1852, placed it at about twenty-five
thousand. Lake many other Indian tribes, they seem practically incapable
of civilization.]
This soothed his fears: but, as he allayed his famished appetite, he
listened with anxious interest to the vehement jargon of the chiefs and
warriors, who were disputing among themselves to whom the three captives
should respectively belong; for it seems that, as far as related to them,
the question of distribution had not yet been definitely settled. The
debate ended in the assigning of Hennepin to his old enemy Aquipaguetin;
who, however, far from persisting in his evil designs, adopted him on the
spot as his son. The three companions must now part company. Du Gay, not
yet quite reassured of his safety, hastened to confess himself to
Hennepin, but Accau proved refractory and refused the offices of religion,
which did not prevent the friar from embracing them both, as he says, with
an extreme tenderness. Tired as he was, he was forced to set out with his
self-styled father to his village, which was fortunately not far off. An
unpleasant walk of a few miles through woods and marshes brought them to
the borders of a sheet of water, apparently Lake Buade, where five of
Aquipaguetin's wives received the party in three canoes, and ferried them
to an island on which the village stood.
At the entrance of the chief's lodge, Hennepin was met by a decrepit old
Indian, withered with age, who offered him the peace-pipe, and placed him
on a bear-skin which was spread by the fire. Here, to relieve his fatigue,
for he was well-nigh spent, a small boy anointed his limbs with the fat of
a wild cat, supposed to be sovereign in these cases by reason of the great
agility of that animal. His new father gave him a bark platter of fish,
covered him with a buffalo robe, and showed him six or seven of his wives,
who were thenceforth, he was told, to regard him as a son. The chief's
household was numerous; and his allies and relations formed a considerable
clan, of which the missionary found himself an involuntary member. He was
scandalized when he saw one of his adopted brothers carrying on his back
the bones of a deceased friend, wrapped in the chasuble of brocade which
they had taken with other vestments from his box.
Seeing their new relative so enfeebled that he could scarcely stand, the
Indians made for him one of their sweating baths, [Footnote: These baths
consist of a small hut, covered closely with buffalo-skins, into which the
patient and his friends enter, carefully closing every aperture. A pile of
heated stones is placed in the middle, and water is poured upon them,
raising a dense vapor. They are still, 1868, in use among the Sioux and
some other tribes.] where they immersed him in steam three times a week; a
process from, which he thinks he derived great benefit. His strength
gradually returned, in spite of his meagre fare; for there was a dearth of
food, and the squaws were less attentive to his wants than to those of
their children. They respected him, however, as a person endowed with
occult powers, and stood in no little awe of a pocket compass which he had
with him, as well as of a small metal pot with feet moulded after the face
of a lion. This last seemed in their eyes a "medicine" of the most
formidable nature, and they would not touch it without first wrapping it
in a beaver-skin. For the rest, Hennepin made himself useful in various
ways. He shaved the heads of the children, as was the custom of the tribe,
bled certain asthmatic persons, and dosed others with orvietan, the famous
panacea of his time, of which he had brought with him a good supply. With
respect to his missionary functions, he seems to have given himself little
trouble, unless his attempt to make a Sioux vocabulary is to be regarded
as preparatory to a future apostleship. "I could gain nothing over them,"
he says, "in the way of their salvation, by reason of their natural
stupidity." Nevertheless, on one occasion he baptized a sick child, naming
it Antoinette in honor of St. Anthony of Padua. It seemed to revive after
the rite, but soon relapsed and presently died, "which," he writes, "gave
me great joy and satisfaction." In this, he was like the Jesuits, who
could find nothing but consolation in the death of a newly baptized
infant, since it was thus assured of a paradise which, had it lived, it
would probably have forfeited by sharing in the superstitions of its
parents.
With respect to Hennepin and his Indian father, there seems to have been
little love on either side; but Ouasicoude, the principal chief of the
Sioux of this region, was the fast friend of the three white men. He was
angry that they had been robbed, which he had been unable to prevent, as
the Sioux had no laws, and their chiefs little power; but he spoke his
mind freely, and told Aquipaguetin and the rest, in full council, that
they were like a dog who steals a piece of meat from a dish, and runs away
with it. When Hennepin complained of hunger, the Indians had always
promised him that early in the summer he should go with them on a buffalo
hunt, and have food in abundance. The time at length came, and the
inhabitants of all the neighboring villages prepared for departure, To
each several band was assigned its special hunting-ground, and he was
expected to accompany his Indian father. To this he demurred; for he
feared lest Aquipaguetin, angry at the words of the great chief, might
take this opportunity to revenge the insult put upon him. He therefore
gave out that he expected a party of "spirits," that is to say, Frenchmen,
to meet him at the mouth of the Wisconsin, bringing a supply of goods for
the Indians; and he declares that La Salle had in fact promised to send
traders to that place. Be this as it may, the Indians believed him; and,
true or false, the assertion, as will be seen, answered the purpose for
which it was made. The Indians set out in a body to the number of two
hundred and fifty warriors, with their women and children. The three
Frenchmen, who, though in different villages, had occasionally met during
the two months of their captivity, were all of the party. They descended
Rum River, which forms the outlet of Mille Lac, and which is called the
St. Francis, by Hennepin. None of the Indians had offered to give him
passage; and, fearing lest he should be abandoned, he stood on the bank,
hailing the passing canoes and begging to be taken in. Accau and Du Gay
presently appeared, paddling a small canoe which the Indians had given
them; but they would not listen to the missionary's call, and Accau, who
had no love for him, cried out that he, had paddled him long enough
already. Two Indians, however, took pity on him, and brought him to the
place of encampment, where Du Gay tried, to excuse himself for his
conduct, but Accau was sullen and kept aloof.
After reaching the Mississippi, the whole party encamped together opposite
to the mouth of Rum River, pitching their tents of skin, or building their
bark huts, on the slope of a hill by the side of the water. It was a wild
scene, this camp of savages among whom as yet no traders had come and no
handiwork of civilization had found its way; the tall warriors, some
nearly naked, some wrapped in buffalo robes, and some in shirts of dressed
deerskin fringed with hair and embroidered with dyed porcupine quills,
war-clubs of stone in their hands, and quivers at their backs filled with
stone-headed arrows; the squaws, cutting smoke-dried meat with knives of
flint, and boiling it in rude earthen pots of their own making, driving
away, meanwhile, with shrill cries, the troops of lean dogs, who disputed
the meal with a crew of hungry children. The whole camp, indeed, was
threatened with, starvation. The three white men could get no food but
unripe berries, from the effects of which Hennepin thinks they might all
have died, but for timely doses of his orvietan.
Being tired of the Indians, he became anxious to set out for the Wisconsin
to find the party of Frenchmen, real or imaginary, who were to meet him at
that place. That he was permitted to do so was due to the influence of the
great chief Ouasicoudé, who always befriended him, and who had soundly
berated his two companions for refusing him a seat in their canoe. Du Gay
wished to go with him; but Accau, who liked the Indian life as much as he
disliked Hennepin, preferred to remain with the hunters. A small birch
canoe was given to the two adventurers, together with an earthen pot; and
they had also between them a gun, a knife, and a robe of beaver-skin. Thus
equipped, they began their journey, and soon approached the Falls of St.
Anthony, so named by Hennepin in honor of the inevitable St. Anthony of
Padua. [Footnote: Hennepin's notice of the Falls of St. Anthony, though
brief, is sufficiently accurate. He says, in his first edition, that they
are forty or fifty feet high, but adds ten feet more in the edition of
1697. In 1821, according to Schoolcraft, the perpendicular fall measured
forty feet. Great changes, however, have taken place here and are still in
progress. The rock is a very soft, friable sandstone, overlaid by a
stratum of limestone; and it is crumbling with such rapidity under the
action of the water that the cataract will soon be little more than a
rapid. Other changes equally disastrous, in an artistic point of view, are
going on even more quickly. Beside the falls stands a city, which, by an
ingenious combination of the Greek and Sioux languages, has received the
name of Minneapolis, or City of the Waters, and which, in 1867, contained
ten thousand inhabitants, two national banks, and an opera-house, while
its rival city of St. Anthony, immediately opposite, boasted a gigantic
water-cure and a State university. In short, the great natural beauty of
the place is utterly spoiled.] As they were carrying their canoe by the
cataract, they saw five or six Indians, who had gone before, one of whom
had climbed into an oak-tree beside the principal fall, whence in a loud
and lamentable voice he was haranguing the spirit of the waters, as a
sacrifice to whom he had just hung a robe of beaver-skin among the
branches. [Footnote: Oanktayhee, the principal deity of the Sioux, was
supposed to live under these falls, though he manifested himself in the
form of a buffalo. It was he who created the earth, like the Algonquin
Manabozho, from mud brought to him in the paws of a musk-rat. Carver, in
1766, saw an Indian throw every thing he had about him into the cataract
as an offering to this deity.] Their attention was soon engrossed by
another object. Looking over the edge of the cliff which overhung the
river below the falls, Hennepin saw a snake, which, as he avers, was six
feet long, [Footnote: In the edition of 1683. In that of 1697 he has grown
to seven or eight feet. The bank-swallows still make their nests in these
cliffs, boring easily into the soft incohesive sandstone.] writhing upward
towards the holes of the swallows in the face of the precipice, in order
to devour their young. He pointed him out to Du Gay, and they pelted him
with stones, till he fell into the river, but not before his contortions
and the darting of his forked tongue had so affected the Picard's
imagination that he was haunted that night with a terrific incubus.
They paddled sixty leagues down the river in the heats of July, and killed
no large game but a single deer, the meat of which soon spoiled. Their
main resource was the turtles, whose shyness and watchfulness caused them
frequent disappointments, and many involuntary fasts. They once captured
one of more than common size; and, as they were endeavoring to cut off his
head, he was near avenging himself by snapping off Hennepin's finger.
There was a herd of buffalo in sight on the neighboring prairie; and Du
Gay went with his gun in pursuit of them, leaving the turtle in Hennepin's
custody. Scarcely was he gone when the friar, raising his eyes, saw that
their canoe, which they had left at the edge of the water, had floated out
into the current. Hastily turning the turtle on his back, he covered him
with his habit of St. Francis, on which, for greater security, he laid a
number of stones, and then, being a good swimmer, struck out in pursuit of
the canoe, which he at length overtook. Finding that it would overset if
he tried to climb into it, he pushed it before him to the shore, and then
paddled towards the place, at some distance above, where he had left the
turtle. He had no sooner reached it than he heard a strange sound, and
beheld a long file of buffalo,--bulls, cows, and calves,--entering the
water not far off, to cross to the western bank. Having no gun, as became
his apostolic vocation, he shouted to Du Gay, who presently appeared,
running in all haste; and they both paddled in pursuit of the game. Du Gay
aimed at a young cow, and shot her in the head. She fell in shallow water
near an island, where some of the herd had landed; and, being unable to
drag her out, they waded into the water and butchered her where she lay.
It was forty-eight hours since they had tasted food. Hennepin made a fire,
while Du Gay cut up the meat. They feasted so bountifully that they both
fell ill, and were forced to remain two days on the island, taking doses
of orvietan, before they were able to resume their journey.
Apparently they were not sufficiently versed in woodcraft to smoke the
meat of the cow; and the hot sun soon robbed them of it. They had a few
fish-hooks, but were not always successful in the use of them. On one
occasion, being nearly famished, they set their line, and lay watching it.
uttering prayers in turn. Suddenly, there was a great turmoil in the
water. Du Gay ran to the line, and, with the help of Hennepin, drew in two
large cat-fish. [Footnote: Hennepin speaks of their size with
astonishment, and says that the two together would weigh twenty-five
pounds. Cat-fish have been taken in the Mississippi weighing more than a
hundred and fifty pounds.] The eagles, or fish-hawks, now and then dropped
a newly caught fish, of which they gladly took possession; and once they
found a purveyor in an otter which they saw by the bank, devouring some
object of an appearance so wonderful that Du Gay cried out that he had a
devil between his paws. They scared him from his prey, which proved to be
a spade-fish, or, as Hennepin correctly describes it, a species of
sturgeon, with a bony projection from his snout in the shape of a paddle.
They broke their fast upon him, undeterred by this eccentric appendage.
If Hennepin had had an eye for scenery, he would have found in these his
vagabond rovings wherewith to console himself in some measure for his
frequent fasts. The young Mississippi, fresh from its northern springs,
unstained as yet by unhallowed union with the riotous Missouri, flowed
calmly on its way amid strange and unique beauties; a wilderness, clothed
with velvet grass; forest-shadowed valleys; lofty heights, whose smooth
slopes seemed levelled with the scythe; domes and pinnacles, ramparts and
ruined towers, the work of no human hand. The canoe of the voyagers, borne
on the tranquil current, glided in the shade of gray crags festooned with
blossoming honeysuckles; by trees mantled with wild grape-vines, dells
bright with, the flowers of the white euphorbia, the blue gentian, and the
purple balm; and matted forests, where the red squirrels leaped and
chattered. They passed the great cliff whence the Indian maiden threw
herself in her despair; [Footnote: The "Lover's Leap," or "Maiden's Rock,"
from which a Sioux girl, Winona, or the "Eldest Born," is said to have
thrown herself in the despair of disappointed affection. The story, which
seems founded in truth, will be found, not without embellishments, in Mrs.
Eastman's _Legends of the Sioux_.] and Lake Pepin lay before them,
slumbering in the July sun; the far-reaching sheets of sparkling water,
the woody slopes, the tower-like crags, the grassy heights basking in
sunlight or shadowed by the passing cloud; all the fair outline of its
graceful scenery, the finished and polished master work of Nature. And
when at evening they made their bivouac fire, and drew up their canoe,
while dim, sultry clouds veiled the west, and the flashes of the silent
heat-lightning gleamed on the leaden water, they could listen, as they
smoked their pipes, to the strange, mournful cry of the whippoorwills, and
the quavering scream of the owls.
Other thoughts than the study of the picturesque occupied the mind of
Hennepin, when one day he saw his Indian father, Aquipaguetin, whom he had
supposed five hundred miles distant, descending the river with ten
warriors in canoes. He was eager to be the first to meet the traders, who,
as Hennepin had given out, were to come with their goods to the mouth of
the Wisconsin. The two travellers trembled for the consequences of this
encounter; but the chief, after a short colloquy, passed on his way. In
three days he returned in ill-humor, having found no traders at the
appointed spot. The Picard was absent at the time, looking for game, and
Hennepin was sitting under the shade of his blanket, which he had
stretched on forked sticks to protect him from the sun, when he saw his
adopted father approaching with a threatening look and a war-club in his
hand. He attempted no violence, however, but suffered his wrath to exhale
in a severe scolding, after which he resumed his course up the river with
his warriors.
If Hennepin, as he avers, really expected a party of traders at the
Wisconsin, the course he now took is sufficiently explicable. If he did
not expect them, his obvious course was to rejoin Tonty on the Illinois,
for which he seems to have had no inclination; or to return to Canada by
way of the Wisconsin, an attempt which involved the risk of starvation, as
the two travellers had but ten charges of powder left. Assuming, then, his
hope of the traders to have been real, he and Du Gay resolved, in the mean
time, to join a large body of Sioux hunters, who, as Aquipaguetin had told
them, were on a stream which he calls Bull River, now the Chippeway,
entering the Mississippi near Lake Pepin. By so doing, they would gain a
supply of food, and save themselves from the danger of encountering
parties of roving warriors.
They found this band, among whom was their companion Accau, and followed
them on a grand hunt along the borders of the Mississippi. Du Gay was
separated for a time from Hennepin, who was placed in a canoe with a
withered squaw more than eighty years old. In spite of her age, she
handled her paddle with admirable address, and used it vigorously, as
occasion required, to repress the gambols of three children, who, to
Hennepin's great annoyance, occupied the middle of the canoe. The hunt was
successful. The Sioux warriors, active as deer, chased the buffalo on foot
with their stone-headed arrows, on the plains behind the heights that
bordered the river; while the old men stood sentinels at the top, watching
for the approach of enemies. One day an alarm was given. The warriors
rushed towards the supposed point of danger, but found nothing more
formidable than two squaws of their own nation, who brought strange news.
A war-party of Sioux, they said, had gone towards Lake Superior, and met
by the way five "Spirits;" that is to say, five Europeans. Hennepin was
full of curiosity to learn who the strangers might be; and they, on their
part, were said to have shown great anxiety to know the nationality of the
three white men who, as they were told, were on the river. The hunt was
over; and the hunters, with Hennepin and his companion, were on their way
northward to their towns, when they met the five "Spirits" at some
distance below the Falls of St. Anthony. They proved to be Daniel
Greysolon du Lhut, with four well-armed Frenchmen.
This bold and enterprising man, stigmatized by the Intendant Duchesneau as
a leader of _coureurs de bois_, was a cousin of Tonty, born at Lyons. He
belonged to that caste of the lesser nobles, whose name was legion, and
whose admirable military qualities shone forth so conspicuously in the
wars of Louis XIV. Though his enterprises were independent of those of La
Salle, they were, at this time, carried on in connection with Count
Frontenac and certain merchants in his interest, of whom Du Lhut's uncle,
Patron, was one; while Louvigny, his brother-in-law, was in alliance with
the Governor, and was an officer of his guard. Here, then, was a kind of
family league, countenanced by Frontenac, and acting conjointly with him,
in order, if the angry letters of the Intendant are to be believed, to
reap a clandestine profit under the shadow of the Governor's authority,
and in violation of the royal ordinances. The rudest part of the work fell
to the share of Du Lhut, who, with a persistent hardihood, not surpassed,
perhaps, even by La Salle, was continually in the forest, in the Indian
towns, or in remote wilderness outposts planted by himself, exploring,
trading, fighting, ruling lawless savages, and whites scarcely less
ungovernable, and, on one or more occasions, varying his life by crossing
the ocean, to gain interviews with the colonial minister, Seignelay, amid
the splendid vanities of Versailles. Strange to say, this man of hardy
enterprise was a martyr to the gout, which, for more than a quarter of a
century, grievously tormented him; though for a time he thought himself
cured by the intercession of the Iroquois saint, Catharine Tegahkouita, to
whom he had made a vow to that end. He was, without doubt, an habitual
breaker of the royal ordinances regulating the fur-trade; yet his services
were great to the colony and to the crown, and his name deserves a place
of honor among the pioneers of American civilization. [Footnote: The facts
concerning Du Lhut have been gleaned from a variety of contemporary
documents, chiefly the letters of his enemy, Duchesneau, who always puts
him in the worst light, especially in his despatch to Seignelay of 10 Nov.
1679, where he charges both him and the Governor with carrying on an
illicit trade with the English of New York, an example, which, if
followed, would ruin the colony by diverting the sources of its support to
its rival. Du Lhut built a trading fort on Lake Superior, called
Cananistigoyan (La Houtan), or Kamalastigouia (Perrot). It was on the
north side, at the mouth of a river entering Thunder Bay, where Fort
William now stands. In 1684, he caused two Indians, who had murdered
several Frenchmen on Lake Superior, to be shot. He displayed in this
affair great courage and coolness, undaunted by the crowd of excited
savages who surrounded him and his little band of Frenchmen. The long
letter, in which he recounts the capture and execution of the murderers,
is before me. Duchesneau makes his conduct on this occasion the ground of
a charge of rashness. In 1686, Denonville, then Governor of the colony,
ordered him to fortify the Detroit; that is, the strait between Lakes Erie
and Huron, He went thither with fifty men and built a palisade fort, which
he occupied for some time. In 1687, he, together with Tonty and Durantaye,
joined Denonville against the Senecas, with a body of Indians from the
Upper Lakes. In 1689, during the panic that followed the Iroquois invasion
of Montreal, Du Lhut, with twenty-eight Canadians, attacked twenty-two
Iroquois in canoes, received their fire without returning it, bore down
upon them, killed eighteen of them, and captured three, only one escaping.
In 1695, he was in command at Fort Frontenac. In 1697, he succeeded to the
command of a company of infantry, but was suffering wretchedly from the
gout at Fort Frontenac. In 1710, Vaudreuil, in a despatch to the minister,
Ponchartrain, announced his death as occurring in the previous winter, and
added the brief comment, "c'était un très-honnête homme." Other
contemporaries speak to the same effect. "Mr. Dulhut, Gentilhomme
Lionnois, qui a beaucoup de mérite et de capacité."--La Hontan, i. 103
(1703). "Le Sieur du Lut, homme d'esprit et d'expérience."--Le Clercq, ii.
137. Charlevoix calls him "one of the bravest officers the King has ever
had in this colony." His name is variously spelled Du Luc, Du Lud, Du
Lude, Du Lut, Du Luth, Du Lhut. For an account of the Iroquois virgin,
Tegahkouita, whose intercession is said to have cured him of the gout, see
Charlevoix, i. 572.
On a contemporary manuscript map by the Jesuit Raffeix, representing the
routes of Marquiette, La Salle, and Du Lhut, are the following words,
referring to the last-named discoverer, and interesting in connection with
Hennepin's statements: "Mr. du Lude le premier a esté chez les Sioux en
1678, et a esté proche la source du Mississippi, et ensuite vint retirer
le P. Louis (_Hennepin_) qui avoit esté fait prisonnier chez les Sioux."
Du Lhut here appears as the deliverer of Hennepin.]
When Hennepin met him, he had been about two years in the wilderness. In
September, 1678, he left Quebec for the purpose of exploring the region of
the Upper Mississippi, and establishing relations of friendship with the
Sioux and their kindred, the Assiniboins. In the summer of 1679, he
visited three large towns of the eastern division of the Sioux, including
those visited by Hennepin. in the following year, and planted the king's
arms in all of them. Early in the autumn, he was at the head of Lake
Superior, holding a council with the Assiniboins and the lake tribes, and
inducing them to live at peace with the Sioux. In all this, he acted in a
public capacity, under the authority of the Governor; but it is not to be
supposed that he forgot his own interests or those of his associates. The
Intendant angrily complains that he aided and abetted the _coureurs de
bois_ in their lawless courses, and sent down in their canoes great
quantities of beaver-skins consigned, to the merchants in league with him,
under cover of whose names the Governor reaped his share of the profits.
In June, 1680, while Hennepin was in the Sioux villages, Du Lhut set out
from the head of Lake Superior with two canoes, four Frenchmen, and an
Indian, to continue his explorations. [Footnote: Abstracts of letters in
_Memoir on the French Dominion in Canada, N. Y. Col. Docs_., ix. 781.] He
ascended a river, apparently the Burnt Wood, and reached from thence a
branch of the Mississippi which seems to have been the St. Croix. It was
now that, to his surprise, he learned that there were three Europeans on
the main river below; and, fearing that they might be Englishmen or
Spaniards, encroaching on the territories of the king, he eagerly pressed
forward to solve his doubts. When he saw Hennepin, his mind was set at
rest; and the travellers met with a mutual cordiality. They followed the
Indians to their villages of Mille Lac, where Hennepin had now no reason
to complain of their treatment of him. The Sioux gave him and Du Lhut a
grand feast of honor, at which were seated a hundred and twenty naked
guests; and the great chief Ouasicoudé, with his own hands, placed before
Hennepin a bark dish containing a mess of smoked meat and wild rice.
Autumn had come, and the travellers bethought them of going home. The
Sioux, consoled by their promises to return with goods for trade, did not
oppose their departure; and they set out together, eight white men in all.
As they passed St. Anthony's Falls, two of the men stole two buffalo robes
which were hung on trees as offerings to the spirit of the cataract. When
Du Lhut heard of it, he was very angry, telling the men that they had
endangered the lives of the whole party. Hennepin admitted that, in the
view of human prudence, he was right, but urged that the act was good and
praiseworthy, inasmuch as the offerings were made to a false god; while
the men, on their part, proved mutinous, declaring that they wanted the
robes and meant to keep them. The travellers continued their journey in
great ill humor, but were presently soothed by the excellent hunting which
they found on the way. As they approached the Wisconsin, they stopped to
dry the meat of the buffalo they had killed, when to their amazement they
saw a war-party of Sioux approaching in a fleet of canoes. Hennepin
represents himself as showing on this occasion an extraordinary courage,
going to meet the Indians with a peace-pipe, and instructing Du Lhut, who
knew more of these matters than he, how it behooved him to conduct
himself. The Sioux proved not unfriendly, and said nothing of the theft of
the buffalo robes. They soon went on their way to attack the Illinois and
Missouris, leaving the Frenchmen to ascend the Wisconsin unmolested.
After various adventures, they reached the station of the Jesuits at Green
Bay; but its existence is wholly ignored by Hennepin, whose zeal for his
own order will not permit him to allude to this establishment of the rival
missionaries. [Footnote: On the other hand, he sets down on his map of
1683 a mission of the Récollets at a point north of the farthest sources
of the Mississippi, to which no white man had ever penetrated.] He is
equally reticent with regard to the Jesuit mission at Michillimackinac,
where the party soon after arrived, and where they spent the winter. The
only intimation which he gives of its existence consists in the mention of
the Jesuit Pierson, who was a Fleming like himself, and who often skated
with him on the frozen lake, or kept him company in fishing through a hole
in the ice. [Footnote: He says that Pierson had come among the Indians to
learn their language; that he "retained the frankness and rectitude of our
country," and "a disposition always on the side of candor and sincerity.
In a word, he seemed to me to lie all that a Christian ought to be"
(1697), 433.] When the spring opened, Hennepin descended Lake Huron,
followed the Detroit to Lake Erie, and proceeded thence to Niagara. Here
he spent some time in making a fresh examination of the cataract, and then
resumed his voyage on Lake Ontario. He stopped, however, at the great town
of the Senecas, near the Genessee, where, with his usual spirit of
meddling, he took upon him the functions of the civil and military
authorities, convoked the chiefs to a council, and urged them to set at
liberty certain Ottawa prisoners whom they had captured in violation of
treaties. Having settled this affair to his satisfaction, he went to Fort
Frontenac, where his brother missionary, Buisset, received him with a
welcome rendered the warmer by a story which had reached him, that the
Indians had hanged Hennepin with his own cord of St. Francis.
From Fort Frontenac he went to Montreal; and leaving his two men on a
neighboring island, that they might escape the payment of duties on a
quantity of furs which they had with them, he paddled alone towards the
town. Count Frontenac chanced to be here; and, looking from the window of
a house near the river, he saw, approaching in a canoe, a Récollet father,
whose appearance indicated the extremity of hard service; for his face was
worn and sunburnt, and his tattered habit of St. Francis was abundantly
patched with scraps of buffalo skin. When at length he recognized the
long-lost Hennepin, he received him, as the father writes, "with all the
tenderness which a missionary could expect from a person of his rank and
quality." [Footnote: (1697), 471.] He kept him for twelve days in his own
house, and listened with interest to such of his adventures as the friar
saw fit to divulge.
And here we bid farewell to Father Hennepin. "Providence," he writes,
"preserved my life that I might make known my great discoveries to the
world." He soon after went to Europe, where the story of his travels found
a host of readers, but where he died at last in a deserved obscurity.
[Footnote: More than twenty editions of Hennepin's travels appeared, in
French, English, Dutch, German, Italian, and Spanish. Most of them include
the mendacious narrative of the pretended descent of the Mississippi. For
a list of them, see _Hist. Mag._, i. 346; ii. 24.
The following is from a letter of La Salle, dated at Fort Frontenac, 22
Aug. 1681. This, with one or two other passages of his letters, shows that
he understood the friar's character, though he could scarcely have
foreseen his scandalous attempts to defame him and rob him of his just
honors. "J'ai cru qu'il étoit à propos de vous faire le narré des
aventures de ce canot (du Picard et d'Accau) parce que je ne doute pas
qu'on n'en parle; et si vous souhaitez en conférer avec le P. Louis Hempin
(sic) Récollect qui est repassé en France, il faut un peu le connaitre,
car il ne manquera pas d'exagérer toutes choses, c'est son caractère, et à
moy mesme il m'a écrit comme s'il eust esté tout près d'estre brulé,
quoiqu'il n'en ait pas esté seulement en danger; mais il croit qu'il lui
est honorable de le faire de la sorte, et _il parle plus conformément à ce
qu'il veut qu'à ce qu'il fait_." I am indebted for the above to M. Margry.
In 1699, Hennepin wished to return to Canada; but, in a letter of that
year, Louis XIV. orders the Governor to seize him, should he appear, and
send him prisoner to Rochefort. This seems to have been in consequence of
his renouncing the service of the French crown and dedicating his edition
of 1697 to William III. of England.]