A Historical Geography of the British Colonies Part 16

Having secured this patent, La Salle raised funds in France for the furtherance of his enterprise; and in July, 1678, set sail from La Roch.e.l.le to Canada, taking with him an Italian officer, Tonty, who had been recommended to him by the Prince de Conti, and whose subsequent faithfulness to his leader became almost proverbial. A companion of a different kind joined him on his return to Canada, Father Hennepin, a Flemish friar, a brave and st.u.r.dy traveller, but a man of great personal vanity and convicted of telling more than travellers' tales. He published an account of his travels in La Salle's lifetime, and, after his death, put forth a new edition,[6]

claiming to have antic.i.p.ated La Salle in descending the Mississippi to the sea. The story has been proved to be an absolute imposture, the more discreditable that it was an attempt to rob a dead man of honour dearly bought.

[Footnote 6: The first book, published at Paris in 1683, was ent.i.tled _Description de la Louisiane nouvellement decouverte_. The second, published at Utrecht in 1697, was headed _Nouvelle decouverte d'un tres grand pays situe dans l'Amerique_.]

[Sidenote: _La Salle builds a fort at Niagara._]

On his return from France, La Salle dispatched a party of men in advance to Lake Michigan, to trade and to collect stores against his own arrival. He then set himself, taking Fort Frontenac as his basis, to plant a post at the mouth of the Niagara river below the falls; and, above the falls, to build a ship of some appreciable size for the navigation of the upper lakes. The plan was well thought out. He would hold both ends of Lake Ontario; and, the continuity of advance being broken by the falls of Niagara, he would have, above the {158} falls, an armed vessel plying for merchandise between Niagara and the end of Lake Michigan, where again there should be another fort or factory to safeguard the portage to the waters of the Mississippi.

[Sidenote: _Suspicions of the Senecas._]

It was specially necessary to hold both ends of Lake Ontario, for here was the land of the Senecas. Jealously and sullenly they watched the Frenchmen's work, through the winter of 1678-9, not wholly rea.s.sured by a visit from La Salle himself to the chief town of the tribe; but they attempted no armed opposition. Thus the beginning was made of the first Fort Niagara,[7] on the eastern bank of the river, in the angle formed by its junction with Lake Ontario; while on the same side of the water, five miles above the falls, where a stream called the Cayuga creek enters the main river, a ship was built bearing the name and the emblem of the _Griffin_, the appropriate arms of truculent Count Frontenac.

[Footnote 7: Denonville's fort, referred to above, p 111, was a later structure.]

[Sidenote: _The voyage of the 'Griffin' to Michillimackinac._]

[Sidenote: _Loss of the ship._]

On August 7, 1679, the _Griffin_ started on her voyage up Lake Erie.

On the tenth--the feast of Sainte Claire--she had pa.s.sed up the Detroit river and was in Lake St. Clair. Against the strong current of the St. Clair river, she found her way into Lake Huron, and, buffeted by storm and wind, reached in the course of the same month the mission of St. Ignace at Michillimackinac. Of the advanced party of traders sent there in the previous year, some had deserted; others, who remained true, were found at Green Bay with a rich store of furs; and on the eighteenth of September La Salle parted with his vessel, sending her to carry back the furs to the portage at Niagara.

He never saw the ship again, and her fate was never known.

Foundering, it would seem, in Lake Michigan, she left her owner to wait in vain for her return, in want of food, in want of stores for his onward march, with followers whom he could not trust, with Indian tribes to master or appease, with winter making the way harder and the wilderness more drear.

{159} [Sidenote: _La Salle builds a fort at the end of Lake Michigan._]

[Sidenote: _He descends the Illinois river._]

After dispatching the _Griffin_ homeward, La Salle pushed on in canoes to the south-eastern end of Lake Michigan. There, at the mouth of the St. Joseph river, which he called the Miami, he built a fort.

December came on, but forward he went, up the St. Joseph, across to the Kankakee, a tributary of the Illinois, and down that stream and the Illinois river to where the Illinois Indians were encamped for the time near the present town of Peoria. His plan had been to build another ship on the Illinois, and sail down that river and the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

[Sidenote: _He builds Fort Crevecoeur on the Illinois._]

[Sidenote: _He returns to Canada._]

The new year, 1680, opened badly for his enterprise. The Indians were suspicious, his men were deserting, no news had come of the ill-fated _Griffin_. Yet he held staunchly to his purpose. Again he reared a fort--Fort Crevecoeur--a little lower down the Illinois than the Indian camp, and again in the far-off wilds, in dead of winter, he turned his men to shipbuilding. Without fittings and supplies it was impossible to proceed, and, accordingly, he determined to go back himself and bring the needed stores. Leaving Tonty in charge of the fort, he retraced his steps to Lake Michigan. At Fort Miami he learnt beyond question the loss of the _Griffin_. Across the then unknown peninsula of Michigan he took his way, reached the Detroit river, struck Lake Erie, and, pa.s.sing by way of Niagara, arrived at Fort Frontenac in sixty-five days from leaving the Illinois, having in March and April achieved a feat of travel almost unparalleled even in the early history of Canada. Going down to Montreal, he obtained supplies, and again set his face undaunted to the West.

[Sidenote: _He goes back to the West._]

[Sidenote: _Iroquois raid on the Illinois._]

[Sidenote: _Tonty lost_]

As he came and went, he heard of nothing but disaster. The men left at Fort Crevecoeur under Tonty's command broke out in open mutiny, and some of them were intercepted on their way back to Fort Frontenac, having destroyed the forts on the Illinois and St. Joseph, looted their employer's property at Michillimackinac and Niagara, and being minded {160} to crown their villainy by killing La Salle himself. They met their fate--were shot or imprisoned--and La Salle pushed on to Tonty's succour. Towards the close of the year he was back on the Illinois river, only to find a scene of utter desolation.

In his absence, the Iroquois had invaded the land and swept all before them. Skeletons of men and women, empty huts, an abandoned fort, the hull of a half-built ship, all told a tale of brutish warfare and a ruined enterprise. Tonty was not to be found; and, after following the Illinois down to its confluence with the Mississippi, La Salle returned to Lake Michigan, and wintered on the St. Joseph river at Fort Miami, which had been destroyed by the mutineers but was again rebuilt.

[Sidenote: _and found._]

[Sidenote: _His adventures._]

With the spring of 1681 there came a gleam of hope. The western Indians, terror-stricken by the Iroquois--and Indian immigrants from the east, driven out by the English colonists--gathered for protection to the brave, enduring Frenchman, took him for their leader, and hearkened to his word. News came that Tonty was in safety at Green Bay; and at length, about the end of May, La Salle and he joined hands again at Michillimackinac. Tonty had a tale of heroism to tell. Left in charge of the garrison at Fort Crevecoeur, he had gone, according to his leader's instructions, to prospect a site for a fort a little higher up the river. When his back was turned, his followers destroyed the fort, carried off the stores, and left him with five other Frenchmen, two of whom were Recollet friars, among the Illinois Indians. True to his trust, he stayed among them, when the hordes of the Five Nations broke in, bent on destruction. Between the contending forces he held his life in the balance, vainly striving to stem the tide of ma.s.sacre; and, having done all that man could do, found his way back to the lakes, saved by his own fearless honesty and by respect for the French name.

[Sidenote: _Hennepin's travels on the upper Mississippi._]

[Sidenote: _Du Luth._]

Of the expedition which started in the ill-fated _Griffin_, there was still another prominent member to be accounted {161} for. This was Father Hennepin. Before La Salle turned home from Fort Crevecoeur in the spring of 1680, he sent two Frenchmen of his company, and with them Father Hennepin, to explore and to trade on the upper Mississippi. Hennepin and his companions went down the Illinois; and, ascending the Mississippi, fell among the Sioux or Dakota Indians.

Carried off to the Sioux lodges, in the present State of Minnesota, the Frenchmen sojourned among them for some months, half captives and half guests, until they were found by Du Luth, fur-trader and _coureur de bois_, who had already explored these regions, and had crossed from Lake Superior to the Mississippi by the line of the St.

Croix river. In his company, Hennepin returned up the Wisconsin; and, before the year 1680 ended, was safe at Michillimackinac. In the following year he went back to Montreal; and soon afterwards, returning to Europe, published the book to which reference has already been made. He was the first European to describe the upper Mississippi and its tributaries, and the Falls of St. Anthony preserve the name of his patron saint--St. Anthony of Padua.

[Sidenote: _La Salle descends the Mississippi._]

[Sidenote: _Fort Prudhomme built on the Mississippi._]

The descent to the sea, which in after years he falsely claimed to have made, was soon afterwards achieved by La Salle. After rejoining Tonty at Michillimackinac, he went back with him to Fort Frontenac and Montreal, and once more procured men and money to renew his enterprise. Again turning west, he reached Fort Miami late in the autumn of 1681, and on the shortest day his expedition left Lake Michigan. Crossing from the St. Joseph to the Chicago creek, and from the latter to the Des Plaines river, the northern tributary of the Illinois, they embarked--fifty-four Frenchmen and Indians, including thirteen women and children--in six canoes, and took their way steadily down stream. They joined the Mississippi, they pa.s.sed the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio. Halfway between the Ohio and the Arkansas, {162} on the east bank of the Mississippi, they built and manned a small wooden fort, naming it Fort Prudhomme after one of their number who for a while lost himself in the woods. Again holding on their course, under softer skies than those of Canada, they reached the mouth of the Arkansas river, whence Joliet and Marquette had turned back; and there, among friendly and wondering Indians, they proclaimed the French King lord of the land. Below the Arkansas they came to other Indian tribes, such as the Spaniards had known, who, under dome-shaped roofs, worshipped the sun. At length the river parted into three channels, as it neared the sea; and, dividing into three parties, the bold voyagers soon met again on the sh.o.r.e of the Gulf of Mexico.

[Sidenote: _La Salle reaches the Gulf of Mexico._]

[Sidenote: _Louisiana._]

It was April 9, 1682, when, on the southernmost edge of the new domain, a column was reared inscribed with the arms of France and with the name of _Louis le Grand_. The secret of the great river was won at last, from its source to its mouth; and, claiming all the lands which it watered for the Crown of France,[8] La Salle called them by the name 'Louisiana.'

[Footnote 8: In La Salle's proclamation the basin of the Ohio was excluded from Louisiana, as the words are 'from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, otherwise called the Ohio' (Parkman's _La Salle_, 12th ed., p. 286).]

[Sidenote: _He returns up stream._]

[Sidenote: _The colony on the Illinois._]

[Sidenote: _Fort St. Louis._]

His canoes could not face the open sea, so the explorers retraced their course up stream. They suffered from want of food, the natives attacked them, and La Salle himself was sorely stricken by fever, which kept him many weeks at Fort Prudhomme. It was not till September that he reached Michillimackinac, and rejoined Tonty, who had gone on before him. The winter of 1682-3 was spent in establishing a colony of French and Indians on the Illinois. The place selected for the purpose was on the southern bank of the river, some distance above the site of Fort Crevecoeur, where a high precipitous cliff towered over wood and stream. The rock had been marked by La Salle in his former sojourn on {163} the river, and it was during Tonty's visit to the spot[9] that Fort Crevecoeur was looted and left. Had the Illinois river been the Rhine, the rock would in mediaeval times have been crowned by the castle of a border n.o.ble; and on its summit was now built a wooden fort, Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Round the fort the Indians gathered for protection and for trade, the peasantry as it were of the western wilderness, cl.u.s.tering under the shelter of a feudal stronghold; for in virtue of the royal patent, La Salle was the Seignior of the place. It promised to be a strong outpost of French dominion, if its connexion with Canada was kept intact.

[Footnote 9: See above, p. 160. A full description of the rock, known afterwards as 'Starved Rock,' is given in Parkman's _La Salle_ (12th ed.), pp. 293-4, and note.]

[Sidenote: _Opposition to La Salle in Canada._]

[Sidenote: _He returns to France._]

New France was made by a few individual men, of whom La Salle was one. Their work was perpetually undone by want of efficient co-operation, or rather by efficient antagonism, on the part of their fellow countrymen. Fort Frontenac, Niagara, armed and trading vessels on the upper lakes, Fort Miami, where the lakes end, a fort on the Illinois--const.i.tuted the basis of a scheme worthy of support, but support was wanting. Frontenac had been recalled in 1682; and his successor, La Barre, leagued with the enemies of La Salle, cut off his supplies, detained his men, maligned him to the King, seized his Seigniory at Fort Frontenac, and sent an officer to take possession of the fort on the Illinois. La Salle had but one remedy left, to appeal to the King in person; and with that object he sailed for France in 1683, never to see Canada again. His troubled fighting life was soon to end, and its closing scenes were crowded with disaster.

He seems to some extent to have lost his balance, to have acted with insufficient knowledge, and to have changed hardihood into recklessness. Yet in all that he attempted there was continuity of aim from first to last, and his final wild adventure, as it seemed to be, had its bearing on the story of the Canadian Dominion.

{164} The patent, which had been given to him in 1678, authorized discovery, trade, and the building of forts, but said nothing of founding colonies. The policy of the French Government was always in the main a forward policy; but the French King and his ministers had the good sense to discourage proposals for colonizing the backwoods, because they saw the obvious danger of dispersing through a large area the scanty population of New France. It was therefore easy for La Salle's enemies to denounce his schemes as opposed to the royal will, as drawing off colonists from the St. Lawrence, where they were sorely needed, and teaching the able-bodied men of Canada to become not _habitans_ but _coureurs de bois_. These were the charges which La Salle had to rebut. He met them by propounding a still bolder plan than his former ventures, and he induced the King to give his sanction to an enterprise for French colonization on the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Mexico.

[Sidenote: _His schemes for colonization on the Gulf of Mexico._]

It happened that, at the date when he arrived in Paris, there was bad blood between France and Spain, resulting for a short s.p.a.ce in open war. The Spaniards claimed to exclude French ships from the Gulf of Mexico, and King Louis, with his minister Seignelay, Colbert's son, contemplated meeting these claims by taking and holding a post on the Gulf. Some scheme of the kind had already been submitted to them by a Spanish refugee from Peru, Count Penalossa by name; and when La Salle advanced similar proposals, suggesting the establishment of a French colony on or near the mouth of the Mississippi, to be connected with Canada, and to be the basis for attacking and conquering the northern province of Mexico, New Biscay, his words fell on willing ears. He spoke with authority. Alone among Frenchmen at the Court of France, he had reached the mouth of the great river, and could tell to a King, with l.u.s.t of conquest, a story of lands to be won for France, and of peoples ready to follow her lead.

{165} [Sidenote: _The plan accepted, and La Salle reinstated in favour._]