1682-1683.
ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS.
LOUISIANA.--ILLNESS OF LA SALLE.--HIS COLONY ON THE ILLINOIS.--
TOUT ST. LOUIS.--RECALL OF FRONTENAC.--LE FÈVRE DE LA BARRE.
--CRITICAL POSITION OF LA SALLE.--HOSTILITY OF THE NEW GOVERNOR.
--TRIUMPH OF THE ADVERSE FACTION.--LA SALLE SAILS FOR FRANCE.
Louisiana was the name bestowed by La Salle on the new domain of the
French crown. The rule of the Bourbons in the West is a memory of the
past, but the name of the Great King still survives in a narrow corner of
their lost empire. The Louisiana of to-day is but a single State of the
American republic. The Louisiana of La Salle stretched from the
Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains; from the Rio Grande and the Gulf to
the farthest springs of the Missouri. [Footnote: The boundaries are laid
down on the great map of Franquelin, made in 1684, and preserved in the
Dépôt des Cartes of the Marine. The line runs along the south shore of
Lake Erie, and thence follows the heads of the streams flowing into Lake
Michigan. It then turns north-west, and is lost in the vast unknown of the
now British Territories. On the south it is drawn by the heads of the
streams flowing into the Gulf, as far west as Mobile, after which it
follows the shore of the Gulf to a little south of the Rio Grande, then
runs west, north-west, and finally north along the range of the Rocky
Mountains.]
La Salle had written his name in history; but his hard-earned success was
but the prelude of a harder task. Herculean labors lay before him, if he
would realize the schemes with which his brain was pregnant. Bent on
accomplishing them, he retraced his course, and urged his canoes upward
against the muddy current. The party were famished. They had little to
subsist on but the flesh of alligators. When they reached the Quinipissas,
who had proved hostile on their way down, they resolved to risk an
interview with them, in the hope of obtaining food. The treacherous
savages dissembled, brought them corn, and, on the following night, made
an attack upon them, but met with a bloody repulse. They next revisited
the Natchez, and found an unfavorable change in their disposition towards
them. They feasted them, indeed, but, during the repast, surrounded them
with an overwhelming force of warriors. The French, however, kept so well
on their guard, that their entertainers dared not make an attack, and
suffered them to depart unmolested. [Footnote: Tonty, _Mémoire_, MS.]
And now, in a career of unwonted success and anticipated triumph, La Salle
was sharply arrested by a foe against which the boldest heart avails
nothing. As he ascended the Mississippi, he was seized by a dangerous
illness. Unable to proceed, he sent forward Tonty to Michillimackinac,
whence, after despatching news of their discovery to Canada, he was to
return to the Illinois. La Salle himself lay helpless at Fort Prudhomme,
the palisade work which his men had built at the Chickasaw Bluffs on their
way down. Father Zenobe Membré attended him; and, at the end of July, he
was once more in a condition to advance by slow movements towards the
Miami, which he reached in about a month.
His descent of the Mississippi had been successful as an exploration, and
this was all. Could he have executed his original plan, have built a
vessel on the Illinois and descended in her to the Gulf of Mexico, he
would have been able to defray in some measure the costs of the
enterprise, by means of a cargo of buffalo hides collected from Indians on
the way, with which he would have sailed to the West Indies, or perhaps to
France. With a fleet of canoes, this was of course impossible; and there
was nothing to offset the enormous outlay which he and his family had
made. He proposed, as we have seen, to found, on the banks of the
Illinois, a colony of French and Indians, of which he should be the feudal
lord, and which should answer the double purpose of a bulwark against the
Iroquois and a depot for the furs of all the Western tribes; and he hoped,
in the following spring, to secure an outlet for this colony, and for all
the trade of the Mississippi and its tributaries, by occupying its mouth
with a fort and a dependent colony. [Footnote: "Monsieur de la Salle se
dispose de retourner sur ses pas à la mer au printemps prochain avec un
plus grand nombre de gens, et des familles, pour y faire des
établissemens." Membré, in Le Clercq, ii. 248. This was written in 1682,
immediately after the return from the mouth of the Mississippi.] Thus he
would control the valley of the great river of the West.
He rejoined Tonty at Michillimaekinac in September. It was his purpose to
go at once to France to provide means for establishing his projected post
at the mouth of the Mississippi; and he ordered Tonty, meanwhile, to
collect as many men as possible, return to the Illinois, build a fort, and
lay the foundations of the colony, the plan of which had been determined
the year before. La Salle was about to depart for Quebec, when news
reached him that changed his plans, and caused him to postpone his voyage
to France. He heard that those pests of the wilderness, the Iroquois, were
about to renew their attacks on the western tribes, and especially on
their former allies, the Miamis. [Footnote: _Lettre de La Barre au
Ministre_, 14 Nov. 1682, MS.] This would ruin his projected colony. His
presence was indispensable. He followed Tonty to the Illinois, and
rejoined him near the site of the great town.
The cliff called "Starved Rock," now pointed out to travellers as the
chief natural curiosity of the region, rises, steep on three sides as a
castle wall, to the height of a hundred and twenty-five feet above the
river. In front, it overhangs the water that washes its base; its western
brow looks down oil the tops of the forest trees below; and on the east
lies a wide gorge or ravine, choked with the mingled foliage of oaks,
walnuts, and elms; while in its rocky depths a little brook creeps down to
mingle with the river. From the rugged trunk of the stunted cedar that
leans forward from the brink, you may drop a plummet into the river below,
where the cat-fish and the turtles may plainly be seen gliding over the
wrinkled sands of the clear and shallow current. The cliff is accessible
only from behind, where a man may climb up, not without difficulty, by a
steep and narrow passage. The top is about an acre in extent. Here, in the
month of December, La Salle and Tonty began to entrench themselves. They
cut away the forest that crowned the rock, built storehouses and dwellings
of its remains, dragged timber up the rugged pathway, and encircled the
summit with a palisade. [Footnote: "Starved Rock" perfectly answers In
every respect to the indications of the contemporary maps and documents
concerning "Le Rocher," the site of La Salle's fort of St. Louis. It is
laid down on several contemporary maps, besides the great map of La
Salle's discoveries, made in 1684. They all place it on the south side of
the river; whereas Buffalo Rock, three miles above, which has been
supposed to be the site of the fort, is on the north. The rock fortified
by La Salle stood, we are told, at the edge of the water; while Buffalo
Rock is at some distance from the bank. The latter is crowned by a plateau
of great extent, is but sixty feet high, is accessible at many points, and
would require a large force to defend it; whereas La Salle chose "Le
Rocher," because a few men could hold it against a multitude. Charlevoix,
in 1721, describes both rocks, and says that the top of Buffalo Rock had
been occupied by the Miami village, so that it was known as _Le Fort des
Miamis_. This explains the Indian remains found here. He then speaks of
"Le Rocher," calling it by that name; says that it is about a league below
on the left or south side, forming a sheer cliff, very high, and looking
like a fortress on the border of the river. He saw remains of palisades at
the top which he thinks were made by the Illinois (_Journal Historique,
Let._ xxvii), though his countrymen had occupied it only three years
before. "The French reside on the Rock (Le Rocher), which is very lofty
and impregnable."--_Memoir on Western Indians_, 1718, in _N.Y. Col.
Docs._, ix. 890. St. Cosme, passing this way in 1699, mentions it as "Le
Vieux Fort," and says that it is "a rock about a hundred feet high at the
edge of the river, where M. de la Salle built a fort, since abandoned."--
_Journal de St. Cosme_, MS. Joutel, who was here in 1687, says, "Fort St.
Louis is on a steep rock, about two hundred feet high, with the river
running at its base." He adds, that its only defences were palisades. The
true height, as stated above, is about a hundred and twenty-five feet.
A traditional interest also attaches to this rock. It is said, that in the
Indian wars that followed the assassination of Pontiac, a few years after
the cession of Canada, a party of Illinois, assailed by the
Pottawattamies, here took refuge, defying attack. At length they were all
destroyed by starvation, and hence the name of "Starved Rock."
For other proofs concerning this locality, see _ante_, p. 221.]
Thus the winter was passed, and meanwhile the work of negotiation went
prosperously on. The minds of the Indians had been already prepared. In La
Salle they saw their champion against the Iroquois, the standing terror of
all this region. They gathered around his stronghold like the timorous
peasantry of the middle ages around the rock-built castle of their feudal
lord. From the wooden ramparts of St. Louis,--for so he named his fort,--
high and inaccessible as an eagle's nest, a strange scene lay before his
eye. The broad flat valley of the Illinois was spread beneath him like a
map, bounded in the distance by its low wall of woody hills. The river
wound at his feet in devious channels among islands bordered with lofty
trees; then, far on the left, flowed calmly westward through the vast
meadows, till its glimmering blue ribbon was lost in hazy distance.
There had been a time, and that not remote, when these fair meadows were a
waste of death and desolation, scathed with fire, and strewn with the
ghastly relics of an Iroquois victory. Now, all was changed. La Salle
looked down from his rock on a concourse of wild human life. Lodges of
bark and rushes, or cabins of logs, were clustered on the open plain, or
along the edges of the bordering forests. Squaws labored, warriors lounged
in the sun, naked children whooped and gambolled on the grass. Beyond the
river, a mile and a half on the left, the banks were studded once more
with the lodges of the Illinois, who, to the number of six thousand, had
returned, since their defeat, to this their favorite dwelling-place.
Scattered along the valley, among the adjacent hills, or over the
neighboring prairie, were the cantonments of a half-score of other tribes,
and fragments of tribes, gathered under the protecting aegis of the
French,--Shawanoes from the Ohio, Abenakis from Maine, Miamis from the
sources of the Kankakee, with others whose barbarous names are hardly
worth the record. [Footnote: This singular extemporized colony of La
Salle, on the banks of the Illinois, is laid down in detail on the great
map of La Salle's discoveries, by Jean Baptiste Franquelin, finished in
1684. There can be no doubt that this part of the work is composed from
authentic data. La Salle himself, besides others of his party, came down
from the Illinois in the autumn of 1683, and undoubtedly supplied the
young engineer with materials. The various Indian villages, or
cantonments, are all indicated, with the number of warriors belonging to
each, the aggregate corresponding very nearly with that of La Salle's
report to the minister. The Illinois, properly so called, are set down at
1,200 warriors; the Miamis, at 1,800; the Shawanoes, at 200; the
Ouiatenons (Weas), at 500; the Peanqhichia (Piankishaw) band, at 150; the
Pepikokia, at 160; the Kilatica, at 800; and the Ouabona, at 70; in all,
3,880 warriors. A few others, probably Abenakis, lived in the fort.
The Fort St. Louis is placed on the map at the exact site of Starved Rook,
and the Illinois village at the place where, as already mentioned, (see p.
221), Indian remains in great quantities are yearly ploughed up. The
Shawanoe camp, or village, is placed on the south side of the river,
behind the fort. The country is here hilly, broken, and now, as in La
Salle's time, covered with wood, which, however, soon ends in the open
prairie. A short time since, the remains of a low, irregular earthwork of
considerable extent were discovered at the intersection of two ravines,
about twenty-four hundred feet behind, or south of, Starved Rock. The
earthwork follows the line of the ravines on two sides. On the east, there
is an opening, or gateway, leading to the adjacent prairie. The work is
very irregular in form, and shows no trace of the civilized engineer. In
the stump of an oak-tree upon it, Dr. Paul counted a hundred and sixty
rings of annual growth. The village of the Shawanoes (Chaouenons), on
Franquelin's map, corresponds with the position of this earthwork. I am
indebted to the kindness of Dr. John Paul, and Colonel D. F. Hitt, the
proprietor of Starved Rock, for a plan of these curious remains, and a
survey of the neighboring district. I must also express my obligations to
Mr. W. E. Bowman, photographer at Ottawa, for views of Starved Rock, and
other features of the neighboring scenery.
An interesting relic of the early explorers of this region was found a few
years ago at Ottawa, six miles above Starved Rock, in the shape of a small
iron gun, buried several feet deep in the drift of the river. It consists
of a welded tube of iron, about an inch and a half in calibre,
strengthened by a series of thick iron rings, cooled on, after the most
ancient as well as the most recent method of making cannon. It is about
fourteen inches long, the part near the muzzle having been burst off. The
construction is very rude. Small field-pieces, on a similar principle,
were used in the fourteenth century. Several of them may be seen at the
Musée d'Artillerie at Paris. In the time of Louis XIV. the art of casting
cannon was carried to a high degree of perfection. The gun in question may
have been made by a French blacksmith on the spot. A far less probable
supposition is, that it is a relic of some unrecorded visit of the
Spaniards; but the pattern of the piece would have been antiquated even in
the time of De Soto.] Nor were these La Salle's only dependants. By the
terms of his patent, he held seigniorial rights over this wild domain; and
he now began to grant it out in parcels to his followers. These, however,
were as yet but a score; a lawless band, trained in forest license, and
marrying, as their detractors affirm, a new squaw every day in the week.
This was after their lord's departure, for his presence imposed a check on
these eccentricities.
La Salle, in a memoir addressed to the Minister of the Marine, reports the
total number of the Indians around Fort St. Louis at about four thousand
warriors, or twenty thousand souls. His diplomacy had been crowned with a
marvellous success, for which his thanks were due, first, to the Iroquois,
and the universal terror they inspired; next, to his own address and
unwearied energy. His colony had sprung up, as it were, in a night; but
might not a night suffice to disperse it?
The conditions of maintaining it were twofold. First, he must give
efficient aid to his savage colonists against the Iroquois; secondly, he
must supply them with French goods in exchange for their furs. The men,
arms, and ammunition for their defence, and the goods for trading with
them, must be brought from Canada, until a better and surer avenue of
supply could be provided through the entrepot which he meant to establish
at the mouth of the Mississippi. Canada was full of his enemies; but, as
long as Count Frontenac was in power, he was sure of support. Count
Frontenac was in power no longer. He had been recalled to France through
the intrigues of the party adverse to La Salle; and Le Fèvre de la Barre
reigned in his stead. [Footnote: La Barre had formerly held civil offices.
He had been Maître de Requêtes, and afterwards Intendant of the
Bourbonnais. He had gained no little reputation in the West Indies, as
governor and lieutenant-general of Cayenne, which he recovered from the
English, who had seized it, and whom he soon after defeated in a naval
fight. Sixteen years had elapsed since these exploits, and meanwhile he
had grown old.]
La Barre was an old naval officer of rank, advanced to a post for which he
proved himself notably unfit. If he was without the arbitrary passions
which had been the chief occasion of the recall of his predecessor, he was
no less without his energies and his talents. Frontenac's absence was not
to be permanent: dark days were in store for Canada. In her hour of need,
she was to hail with delight the return of the haughty nobleman; and all
his faults were to be forgotten in the splendor of his services to the
colony and the crown. La Barre showed a weakness and an avarice for which
his advanced age may have been in some measure answerable. He was no whit
less unscrupulous than his predecessor in his secret violation of the
royal ordinances regulating the fur-trade, which it was his duty to
enforce. Like Frontenac, he took advantage of his position to carry on an
illicit traffic with the Indians; but it was with different associates.
The late governor's friends were the new governor's enemies; and La Salle,
armed with his monopolies, was the object of his especial jealousy.
[Footnote: The royal instructions to La Barre, on his assuming the
government, dated at Versailles, 10 May, 1682, require him to give no
farther permission to make journeys of discovery towards the Sioux and the
Mississippi, as his Majesty thinks his subjects better employed in
cultivating the land. The letter adds, however, that La Salle is to be
allowed to continue his discoveries, if they appear to be useful. The same
instructions are repeated in a letter of the Minister of the Marine to the
new Intendant of Canada, De Meules.]
Meanwhile, La Salle, buried in the western wilderness, remained for the
time ignorant of La Barre's disposition towards him, and made an effort to
secure his good-will and countenance. He wrote to him from his Rock of St.
Louis, early in the spring of 1683, expressing the hope that he should
have from him the same support as from Count Frontenac; "although," he
says, "my enemies will try to influence you against me." His attachment to
Frontenac, he pursues, has been the cause of all the late governor's
enemies turning against him. He then recounts his voyage down the
Mississippi; says that, with twenty-two Frenchmen, he caused all the
tribes along the river to ask for peace; speaks of his right, under the
royal patent, to build forts anywhere along his route, and grant out lands
around them, as at Fort Frontenac.
"My losses in my enterprises," he continues, "have exceeded forty thousand
crowns. I am now going four hundred leagues south-south-west of this
place, to induce the Chickasaws to follow the Shawanoes, and other tribes,
and settle, like them, at St. Louis. It remained only to settle French
colonists here, and this I have already done. I hope you will not detain
them as _coureurs de bois_, when they come down to Montreal to make
necessary purchases. I am aware that I have no right to trade with the
tribes who descend to Montreal, and I shall not permit such trade to my
men; nor have I ever issued licenses to that effect, as my enemies say
that I have done." [Footnote: _Lettre de la Salle à La Barre, Fort St.
Louis, 2 Avril_, 1683, MS. The above is somewhat condensed from passages
in the original.]
Again, on the fourth of June following, he writes to La Barre, from the
Chicago portage, complaining that some of his colonists, going to Montreal
for necessary supplies, have been detained by his enemies, and begging
that they may be allowed to return, that his enterprise may not be ruined.
"The Iroquois," he pursues, "are again invading the country. Last year,
the Miamis were so alarmed by them that they abandoned their town and
fled; but, at my return, they came back, and have been induced to settle
with the Illinois at my fort of St. Louis. The Iroquois have lately
murdered some families of their nation, and they are all in terror again.
I am afraid they will take night, and so prevent the Missouries and
neighboring tribes from coming to settle at St. Louis, as they are about
to do.
"Some of the Hurons and French tell the Miamis that I am keeping them here
for the Iroquois to destroy. I pray that you will let me hear from you,
that I may give these people some assurances of protection before they are
destroyed in my sight. Do not suffer my men who have come down to the
settlements to be longer prevented from returning. There is great need
here of reinforcements. The Iroquois, as I have said, have lately entered
the country; and a great terror prevails. I have postponed going to
Michillimackinac, because, if the Iroquois strike any blow in my absence,
the Miamis will think that I am in league with them; whereas, if I and the
French stay among them, they will regard us as protectors. But, Monsieur,
it is in vain, that we risk our lives here, and that I exhaust my means in
order to fulfil the intentions of his Majesty, if all my measures are
crossed in the settlements below, and if those who go down to bring
munitions, without which we cannot defend ourselves, are detained under
pretexts trumped up for the occasion. If I am prevented from bringing up
men and supplies, as I am allowed to do by the permit of Count Frontenac,
then my patent from the king is useless. It would be very hard for us,
after having done what was required even before the time prescribed, and
after suffering severe losses, to have our efforts frustrated by obstacles
got up designedly.
"I trust that, as it lies with you alone to prevent or to permit the
return of the men whom I have sent down, you will not so act as to thwart
my plans. A part of the goods which I have sent by them belong not to me,
but to the Sieur de Tonty, and are a part of his pay. Others are to buy
munitions indispensable for our defence. Do not let my creditors seize
them. It is for their advantage that my fort, full as it is of goods,
should be held against the enemy. I have only twenty men, with scarcely a
hundred pounds of powder; and I cannot long hold the country without more.
The Illinois are very capricious and uncertain.... If I had men enough to
send out to reconnoitre the enemy, I would have done so before this; but I
have not enough. I trust you will put it in my power to obtain more, that
this important colony may be saved." [Footnote: _Lettre de la Salle, à La
Barre, Portage de Chicagou_, 4 _Juin_, 1683, MS. Portions of the above
extracts are condensed in the rendering. A long passage is omitted, in
which La Salle expresses his belief that his vessel, the "Griffin," had
been destroyed, not by Indians, but by the pilot, who, as he thinks, had
been induced to sink her, and then, with some of the crew, attempted to
join Du Lhut with their plunder, but were captured by Indians on the
Mississippi.]
While La Salle was thus writing to La Barre, La Barre was writing to
Seignelay, the Marine and Colonial Minister, decrying his correspondent's
discoveries, and pretending to doubt their reality. "The Iroquois," he
adds, "have sworn his [La Salle's] death. The imprudence of this man is
about to involve the colony in war." [Footnote: _Lettre de La Barre au
Ministre_, 14 _Nov_. 1682, MS.] And again he writes in the following
spring, to say that La Salle was with a score of vagabonds at Green Bay,
where he set himself up as a king, pillaged his countrymen, and put them
to ransom; exposed the tribes of the West to the incursions of the
Iroquois,--and all under pretence of a patent from his Majesty, the
provisions of which he grossly abused; but as his privileges would expire
on the twelfth of May ensuing, he would then be forced to come to Quebec,
where his creditors, to whom he owed more than thirty thousand crowns,
were anxiously awaiting him. [Footnote: _Lettre de La Barre au Ministre_,
30 _Avril_, 1683. La Salle had spent the winter, not at Green Bay, as this
slanderous letter declares, but in the Illinois country.]
Finally, when La Barre received the two letters from La Salle, of which
the substance is given above, he sent copies of them to the Minister
Seignelay, with the following comment: "By the copies of the Sieur de la
Salle's letters, you will perceive that his head is turned, and that he
has been bold enough to give you intelligence of a false discovery. He is
trying to build up an imaginary kingdom for himself by debauching all the
bankrupts and idlers of this country." [Footnote: _N.Y. Col Docs_., ix.
204. The letter is dated 4 Nov. 1683.] Such calumnies had their effect.
The enemies of La Salle had already gained the ear of the king; and he had
written in August from Fontainebleau to his new Governor of Canada: "I am
convinced, like you, that the discovery of the Sieur de la Salle is very
useless, and that such enterprises ought to be prevented in future, as
they tend only to debauch the inhabitants by the hope of gain, and to
dimmish the revenue from beaver-skins." [Footnote: _Lettre du Roy à La
Barre_, 5 _Aoûst_, 1683, MS.]
In order to understand the posture of affairs at this time, it must be
remembered that Dongan, the English Governor of New York, was urging on
the Iroquois to attack the Western tribes, with the object of gaining,
through their conquest, the control of the fur-trade of the interior, and
diverting it from Montreal to Albany. The scheme was full of danger to
Canada, which the loss of the trade would have ruined. La Barre and his
associates were greatly alarmed at it. Its complete success would have
been fatal to their hopes of profit; but they nevertheless wished it such
a measure of success as would ruin their rival. La Salle. Hence, no little
satisfaction mingled with their anxiety, when they heard that the Iroquois
were again threatening to invade the Miamis and the Illinois; and thus La
Barre, whose duty it was strenuously to oppose the intrigue of the
English, and use every effort to quiet the ferocious bands whom they were
hounding against the Indian allies of the French, was, in fact, but half-
hearted in the work. He cut off La Salle from all supplies; detained the
men whom he sent for succor; and, at a conference with the Iroquois, told
them that they were welcome to plunder and kill him. [Footnote: _Memoire
pour rendre compte à Monseigneur le Marquis de Seignelay de l'Etat où le
Sieur de Lasalle a laissé le Fort Frontenac pendant le temps de sa
découverte,_ MS. The Marquis de Denonville, La Barre's successor in the
government, says, in his memoir of Aug. 10, 1688, that La Barre had told
the Iroquois to plunder La Salle's canoes.
La Barre's course at this time was extremely indirect and equivocal. The
memoir to Seignelay, cited above, declares--and other documents sustain
it--that he was playing into the hands of the English, by sending furs, on
his own account and that of his associates, to Albany, where he could sell
them at a high rate, and at the same time avoid the payment of duties to
the French farmers of the revenue.
The merchants, La Chesnaye, Le Ber, and Le Moyne, were at the head of the
faction with which La Barre had identified himself; and their hatred of La
Salle knew no bounds. If we are to believe La Potherie, he himself had
formerly, in defence of his monopolies, told the Iroquois that they might
plunder the canoes of traders who had not a pass from him. The adverse
faction now retorted by adding the permission of murder to the permission
of pillage. Margry thinks that La Chesnaye was the prompter of this
villany.]
The old Governor, and the unscrupulous ring with which he was associated,
now took a step, to which he was doubtless emboldened by the tone of the
king's letter, in condemnation of La Salle's enterprise. He resolved to
seize Fort Frontenac, the property of La Salle, under the pretext that the
latter had not fulfilled the conditions of the grant, and had not
maintained a sufficient garrison. [Footnote: La Salle, when at Mackinaw,
on his way to Quebec, in 1682, had been recalled to the Illinois, as we
have seen, by a threatened Iroquois invasion. There is before me a copy of
a letter which he then wrote to Count Frontenac, begging him to send up
more soldiers to the fort at his (La Salle's) expense. Frontenac, being
about to sail for France, gave this letter to his newly arrived successor,
La Barre, who, far from complying with the request, withdrew La Salle's
soldiers already at the fort, and then made its defenceless state a
pretext for seizing it. This statement is made in the memoir addressed to
Seignelay, before cited.] Two of his associates, La Chesnaye and Le Ber,
armed with an order from him, went up and took possession, despite the
remonstrances of La Salle's creditors and mortgagees; lived on La Salle's
stores, sold for their own profit, and (it is said) that of La Barre, the
provisions sent by the king, and turned in the cattle to pasture on the
growing crops. La Forest, La Salle's lieutenant, was told that he might
retain the command of the fort, if he would join the associates; but he
refused, and sailed in the autumn for France. [Footnote: These are the
statements of the memorial, addressed in La Salle's behalf, to the
minister Seignelay.]
Meanwhile, La Salle remained at the Illinois in extreme embarrassment, cut
off from supplies, robbed of his men who had gone to seek them, and
disabled from fulfilling the pledges he had given to the surrounding
Indians. Such was his position, when reports came to Fort St. Louis that
the Iroquois were at hand. The Indian hamlets were wild with terror,
beseeching him for succor which he had no power to give. Happily, the
report proved false. No Iroquois appeared; the threatened attack was
postponed, and the summer passed away in peace. But La Salle's position,
with the Governor his declared enemy, was intolerable and untenable; and
there was no resource but in the protection of the court. Early in the
autumn, he left Tonty in command of the Rock, bade farewell to his savage
retainers, and descended to Quebec, intending to sail for France.
On his way, he met the Chevalier de Baugis, an officer of the king's
dragoons, commissioned by La Barre to take possession of Fort St. Louis,
and bearing letters from the Governor, ordering La Salle to come to
Quebec; a superfluous command, as he was then on his way thither. He
smothered his wrath, and wrote to Tonty to receive De Baugis well. The
Chevalier and his party proceeded to the Illinois, and took possession of
the fort; De Baugis commanding for the Governor, while Tonty remained as
representative of La Salle. The two officers spent the winter
harmoniously; and, with the return of spring, each found himself in sore
need of aid from the other. Towards the end of March, the Iroquois
attacked their citadel, and besieged it for six days, but at length
withdrew, discomfited, carrying with them a number of Indian prisoners,
most of whom escaped from their clutches. [Footnote: Tonty, Ménoire, MS.;
Lettre de La Barre, au Ministre, 5 Juin, 1684; Ibid., 9 Juillet, 1684,
MSS.]
Meanwhile, La Salle had sailed for France, and thither we will follow him.