Canada Part 8

{177}

XIII.

THE PERIOD OF EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY: FRANCE IN THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

(1672-1687.)

Sault St. Marie was the scene of a memorable episode in the history of New France during the summer of 1671. Simon Francois Daumont, Sieur St. Lusson, received a commission from the government of Quebec to proceed to Lake Superior to search for copper mines, and also to take formal possession of the basin of the lakes and its tributary rivers.

With him were two men, who became more famous than himself--Nicholas Perrot and Louis Jolliet, the noted explorers and rangers of the West.

On an elevation overlooking the rapids, around which modern enterprise has built two ship-ca.n.a.ls, St. Lusson erected a cross and post of cedar, with the arms of France, in the presence of priests in their black robes, Indians bedecked with tawdry finery, and bushrangers in motley dress. In the name of the "most high, mighty, and redoubted monarch, Louis XIV. of that name, most Christian King of France and of {178} Navarre," he declared France the owner of Sault Ste. Marie, Lakes Huron and Superior, and Isle of Mackinac, and "all of adjacent countries, rivers, and lakes, and contiguous streams." As far as boastful words and, priestly blessings could go, France was mistress of an empire in the great West.

Three names stand out in bold letters on the records of western discovery: Jolliet, the enterprising trader, Marquette, the faithful missionary, and La Salle, the bold explorer. The story of their adventures takes up many pages in the histories of this fascinating epoch. Talon may be fairly considered to have laid the foundations of western exploration, and it was left for Louis de Baude, Comte de Frontenac, who succeeded Courcelles as governor in 1672, to carry out the plans of the able intendant when he left the St. Lawrence.

Jolliet, a Canadian by birth, was wisely chosen by Talon--and Frontenac approved of the choice--to explore the West and find the "great water,"

of which vague stories were constantly brought back by traders and bushrangers. Jolliet was one of the best specimens of a trader and pioneer that Canadian history gives us. His roving inclinations were qualified by a cool, collected brain, which carried him safely through many a perilous adventure. He had for his companion Father Marquette, who was then stationed at the mission of St. Ignace, and had gathered from the Indians at his western missions--especially at La Pointe on Lake Superior--valuable information respecting the "great water" then {179} called the "Missipi." Both had many sympathies in common.

Jolliet had been educated by the Jesuits in Canada, but unlike La Salle, he was in full accord with their objects. Marquette possessed those qualities of self-sacrifice and religious devotion which ent.i.tle him to rank with Lalemant, Jogues, and Brebeuf. While Jolliet was inspired by purely ambitious and trading instincts, the missionary had no other hope or desire than to bring a great region and its savage communities under the benign influence of the divine being whose heavenly face seemed ever present, encouraging him to fresh efforts in her service. It was in the spring of 1673 that these two men started with five companions in two canoes on their journey through that wilderness, which stretched beyond Green Bay--an English corruption of Grande Baie. Like Nicolet, they ascended the Fox River to the country of the Mascoutins, Foxes, and Kickapoos, where they obtained guides to lead them across the portage to the Wisconsin. The adventurers had now reached the low "divide" between the valleys of the Lakes and the Mississippi. The Fox River and its affluents flowed tranquilly to the great reservoirs of the St. Lawrence, while the Wisconsin, on which they now launched their canoes, carried them to a mighty river, which ended they knew not where. A month after leaving St. Ignace they found themselves "with a great and inexpressible joy"--to quote Marquette's words--on the rapid current of a river which they recognised as the Missipi. As they proceeded they saw the low-lying natural meadows and prairies where herds {180} of buffalo were grazing, marshes with a luxuriant growth of wild rice, the ruined castles which nature had in the course of many centuries formed out of the rocks of the western sh.o.r.es, and the hideous manitous which Indian ingenuity had pictured on the time-worn cliffs. They had pleasant interviews with the Indians that were hunting the roebuck and buffalo in this land of rich gra.s.ses.

Their canoes struggled through the muddy current, which the Missouri gave as its tribute to the Missipi, pa.s.sed the low marshy sh.o.r.es of the Ohio, and at last came near the mouth of the Arkansas, where they landed at an Indian village which the natives called Akamsea. Here they gathered sufficient information to enable them to form the conclusion that the great river before their eyes found its way, not to the Atlantic or Pacific oceans, but to the Gulf of Mexico. Then they decided not to pursue their expeditions further at that time, but to return home and relate the story of their discovery. When they came to the mouth of the Illinois River, they took that route in preference to the one by which they had come, followed the Des Plaines River,--where a hill still bears Jolliet's name--crossed the Chicago portage, and at last found themselves at the southern extremity of Lake Michigan. It was then the end of September, and Jolliet did not reach Canada until the following summer. When nearly at his journey's end, Fate dealt him a cruel blow, his canoe was capsized after running the Lachine Rapids just above Montreal, and he lost all the original notes of his journey.

Frontenac, however, received from {181} him a full account of his explorations, and sent it to France.

Two centuries later than this memorable voyage of Jolliet, a French Canadian poet-laureate described it in verse fully worthy of the subject, as the following pa.s.sage and equally spirited translation[1]

go to show:

LA DeCOUVERTE DU THE DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. MISSISSIPPI.

Jolliet ... Jolliet ... O, Jolliet, what splendid faery quel spectacle feerique dream Dut frapper ton regard, quand Met thy regard, when on that ta nef historique mighty stream, Bondit sur les flots d'or du Bursting upon its lonely grand fleuve inconnu unknown flow, Quel eclair triomphant, a cet Thy keel historic cleft its instant de fievre, golden tide:-- Dut resplendir sur ton front Blossomed thy lip with what nu? ... stern smile of pride?

What conquering light shone on thy lofty brow?

Le voyez-vous la-bas, debout Behold him there, a prophet, comme un prophete, lifted high, L'oeil tout illumine d'audace Heart-satisfied, with bold, satisfaite, illumined eye, La main tendue au loin vers His hand outstretched toward l'Occident bronze. the sunset furled, Prendre possession de ce Taking possession of this domain domaine immense, immense, Au nom du Dieu vivant, au nom In the name of the living G.o.d, roi de France. in the name of the King Et du monde civilise? ... of France, And the mighty modern world.

Puis, berce par la houle, et Rocked by the tides, wrapt in berce par ses reves, his glorious moods, L'oreille ouverte aux bruits Breathing perfumes of lofty harmonieux des greves, odorous woods,

{182}

Humant l'acre parfum des Ears opened to the sh.o.r.es'

grands bois odorants, harmonious tunes, Rasant les ilots verts et les Following in their dreams and dunes d'opale, voices mellow, De meandre en meandre, au fil To wander and wander in the l'onde pale, thread of the pale billow, Suivre le cours des flots Past islands hushed and errants... . opalescent dunes.

A son aspect, du sein des Lo, as he comes, from out the flottantes ramures, waving boughs, Montait comme un concert de A rising concert of murmurous chants et de murmures; song upflows, Des vols d'oiseaux marins Of winging sea-fowl lifting s'elevaient des roseaux, from the reeds; Et, pour montrer la route a la Pointing the route to his swift pirogue frele. dripping blade, S'enfuyaient en avant, trainant Then skimming before, tracing leur ombre grele their slender shade Dans le pli lumineux des eaux. In luminous foldings of the watery meads.

Et, pendant qu'il allait voguant And as he journeys, drifting a la derive, with its flow, On aurait dit qu'au loin, les The forests lifting their glad arbres de la rive, roofs aglow, En arceaux parfumes penches sur In perfumed arches o'er his son chemin, keel's swift swell, Saluaient le heros dont Salute the hero, whose undaunted l'energique audace soul Venait d'inscrire encor le nom Had graved anew "LA FRANCE"

de notre race on that proud scroll Aux fastes de l'esprit humain. Of human genius, bright, imperishable.

Jolliet's companion, the Jesuit missionary, never realised his dream of many years of usefulness in new missions among the tribes of the immense region claimed by France. In the spring of 1675 he died by the side of a little stream which finds its outlet on the western sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan, soon after his return from a painful journey he had taken, while in a feeble state of health, to the Indian communities of Kaskaskia between the Illinois and {183} Wabash rivers. A few months later his remains were removed by some Ottawas, who knew and loved him well, and carried to St. Ignace, where they were buried beneath the little mission chapel. His memory has been perpetuated in the nomenclature of the western region, and his statue stands in the rotunda of that marble capitol which represents, not the power and greatness of that France which he loved only less than his Church, but the national development of those English colonies which, in his time, were only a narrow fringe on the Atlantic coast, separated from the great West by mountain ranges which none of the most venturesome of their people had yet dared to cross.

The work that was commenced by Jolliet and Marquette, of solving the mystery that had so long surrounded the Mississippi, was completed by Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, a native of Rouen, who came to Canada when quite a young man, and obtained a grant of land from the Sulpician proprietors of Montreal at the head of the rapids, then known as St. Louis. Like so many Canadians of those days he was soon carried away by a spirit of adventure. He had heard of the "great water" in the west, which he believed, in common with others, might lead to the Gulf of California. In the summer of 1669 he accompanied two Sulpician priests, of Montreal, Dollier de Ca.s.son and Gallinee, on an expedition they made, under the authority of Governor Courcelles, to the extreme western end of Ontario, where he met Jolliet, apparently for the first time, and probably had many conversations {184} with him respecting the west and south, and their unknown rivers. He decided to leave the party and attempt an exploration by a southerly route, while the priests went on to the upper lakes as far as the Sault. Of La Salle's movements for the next two years we are largely in the dark--in some respects entirely so. It has been claimed by some that he first discovered the Ohio, and even reached the Mississippi, but so careful an historian as Justin Winsor agrees with Shea's conclusion that La Salle "reached the Illinois or some other affluent of the Mississippi, but made no report and made no claim, having failed to reach the great river." It was on his return from these mysterious wanderings, that his seigniory is said to have received the name of La Chine as a derisive comment on his failure to find a road to China. In the course of years the name was very commonly given, not only to the lake but to the rapids of St. Louis.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle]

We now come to sure ground when we follow La Salle's later explorations, on which his fame entirely rests. Frontenac entered heartily into his plans of following the Mississippi to its mouth, and setting at rest the doubts that existed as to its course. He received from the King a grant of Fort Frontenac and its surrounding lands as a seigniory. This fort had been built by the governor in 1673 at Cataraqui, now Kingston, as an advanced trading and defensive post on Lake Ontario. La Salle considered it a most advantageous position for carrying on his ambitious projects of exploration. He visited France in 1677 and received from the King letters-patent {186} authorising him to build forts south and west in that region "through which it would seem a pa.s.sage to Mexico can be discovered." On his return to Canada he was accompanied by a Recollet friar, Father Louis Hennepin, and by Henry de Tonty, the son of an Italian resident of Paris, both of whom have a.s.sociated their names with western exploration. Of all his friends and followers, Tonty, who had a copper hand in the place of the one blown off in an Italian war, was the most faithful and honest, through the varying fortunes of the explorer's career from this time forward. To Father Hennepin I refer in another place.

Both Hennepin and Tonty accompanied La Salle on his expedition of 1678 to the Niagara district, where, above the great falls, near the mouth of Cayuga Creek, he built the first vessel that ever ventured on the lakes, and which he named the "Griffin" in honour of Frontenac, whose coat-of-arms bore such a heraldic device. The loss of this vessel, while returning with a cargo of furs from Green Bay to Niagara, was a great blow to La Salle, who, from this time until his death, suffered many misfortunes which might well have discouraged one of less indomitable will and fixity of purpose. On the banks of the Illinois River, a little below the present city of Peoria, he built Fort Crevecoeur, probably as a memorial of a famous fort in the Netherlands, not long before captured by the French. While on a visit to Canada, this post was destroyed by some of his own men in the absence of Tonty, who had been left in charge. These men were subsequently captured not far from Cataraqui, and severely punished.

{187}

In the meantime, three Frenchmen, Father Hennepin, Michel Accaut, and one Du Gay, in obedience to La Salle's orders, had ventured to the upper waters of the Mississippi, and were made prisoners by a wandering tribe of Sioux. Not far from the falls of St. Anthony Father Hennepin met with the famous forest ranger, Duluth, who was better acquainted with the Sioux country than any other living Frenchman, and was forming ambitious designs to explore the whole western region beyond Lake Superior. Father Hennepin, who had been adopted by an aged Sioux chief, was free to follow Duluth back to the French post at the Straits of Mackinac. This adventure of Father Hennepin is famous in history, not on account of any discoveries he actually made, but on account of the claim he attempted to establish some years after his journey, of having followed the Mississippi to the Gulf. In the first edition of his book, printed in 1683--_Description de la Louisiane_--no such claim was ever suggested, and it was only in 1697 that the same work appeared in an enlarged form,--_La Nouvelle Decouverte_--crediting Hennepin with having descended the great river to its outlet. It is not necessary here to puncture a falsehood which was long ago exposed by historical writers. His history of having reached the Gulf of Mexico is as visionary as the traveller's tales of Norumbega. Indeed, he could not even claim a gift of fertile invention in this case, as the very account of his alleged discovery was obviously plagiarised from Father Membre's narrative of La Salle's voyage of 1682, which appears in Le Clercq's _Premier etabliss.e.m.e.nt de la Foy_.

{188}

When La Salle was again able to venture into the west he found the villages of the Illinois only blackened heaps of ruins--sure evidence of the Iroquois having been on the warpath. During the winter of 1681 he remained at a post he had built on the banks of the St. Joseph in the Miami country, and heard no news of his faithful Tonty. It was not until the spring, whilst on his way to Canada for men and supplies, that he discovered his friend at Mackinac, after having pa.s.sed through some critical experiences among the Iroquois, who, in conjunction with the Miamis, had destroyed the villages of the Illinois, and killed a number of those Indians with their customary ferocity. Tonty had finally found rest and security in a village of the Pottawattomies at the head of Green Bay.

On the 6th of February, 1682, La Salle pa.s.sed down the swift current of the Mississippi on that memorable voyage which led him to the Gulf of Mexico. He was accompanied by Tonty, and Father Membre, one of the Recollet order, whom he always preferred to the Jesuits. The Indians of the expedition were Abenakis and Mohegans, who had left the far-off Atlantic coast and Acadian rivers, and wandered into the great west after the unsuccessful war in New England, which was waged by the Sachem Metacomet, better known as King Philip, and only ended with his death in 1676, and the destruction of many settlements in the colony of Plymouth.

They met with a kindly reception from the Indians encamped by the side of the river, and, for the first time, saw the villages of the Taensas and {189} Natchez, who were worshippers of the sun. At last on the 6th of April, La Salle, Tonty, and Dautray, went separately in canoes through the three channels of the Mississippi, and emerged on the bosom of the great Gulf. Not far from the mouth of the river where the ground was relatively high and dry, a column was raised with the inscription:

"_Louis le Grand, roy de France et de Navarre, regne; le neuviesme Avril, 1682._"

And La Salle took possession of the country with just such ceremonies as had distinguished a similar proceeding at Sault Ste. Marie eleven years before. It can be said that Frenchmen had at least fairly laid a basis for future empire from the Lakes to the Gulf. It was for France to show her appreciation of the enterprise of her sons and make good her claim to such a vast imperial domain. The future was to show that she was unequal to the task.

The few remaining years of La Salle's life were crowded with misfortunes. d.u.c.h.esneau, the intendant, who had succeeded Talon, was an enemy of both Frontenac and the explorer. The distinguished governor was recalled by his royal master, who was tired of the constant complaints of his enemies against him, and misled by their accusations. La Barre, the incompetent governor who followed Frontenac, took possession of Fort St. Louis, which La Salle had succeeded, after his return from the Gulf of Mexico, in erecting at Starved Rock on the banks of the Illinois not far from the present city of Ottawa, where a large number of Indians had {190} returned to their favourite home. In France, however, the importance of his discovery was fully recognised, and when he visited his native country in 1683-4 he met with a very cordial reception from the King, and Seignelay, who had succeeded his father, Colbert, when he resigned. The King ordered that La Salle's forts be restored to him, and gave him a commission to found colonies in Louisiana, as the new country through which the Mississippi flowed had been called since 1682. By a strange irony of Fate, the expedition of 1684 pa.s.sed the mouth of the Mississippi, and La Salle made the first French settlement on the Gulf somewhere in the vicinity of Matagorda Bay, in the present State of Texas. Misery was the lot of the little colony from the very first moment it landed on that lonely sh.o.r.e. When his misfortunes were most grievous, La Salle decided to make an effort to reach the Illinois country, but he was a.s.sa.s.sinated by two of his own men---Duhaut and Liotot--near a branch of the Trinity River. His nephew Moranget, Nika, a faithful Shawnee who had been by his side for years, and Sayet, his own servant, suffered the same fate. The leader of the murderers was killed soon afterwards by one of his accomplices, and the others found a refuge among the Indians; but of their subsequent fate we know nothing positively, except that they were never brought to justice, if any one of them returned to Canada or France. The few Frenchmen remaining in Texas were either killed or captured by unfriendly Indians, before the Spaniards could reach the place to expel these intruders on their domain. La Salle {191} himself never found a burial place, for his body was left to wolves and birds of prey. His name has not been perpetuated in Louisiana, though it has been given to a county of Texas as well as to a city and county of Illinois, which was originally included in French Louisiana. The most noteworthy tribute to his memory has been paid by the historian Parkman, who has elevated him almost to the dignity of a hero. La Salle's indomitable energy, his remarkable courage in the face of disaster, his inflexibility of purpose under the most adverse circ.u.mstances, must be always fully recognised, but at the same time one may think that more tact and skill in managing men, more readiness to bend and conciliate, might have spared him much bitterness and trouble, and even saved his life at the end. That he did good service for France all will admit, though his achievement in reaching the Mississippi was rendered relatively easy after the preliminary expedition of Jolliet and Marquette.

[1] Mr. W. Wilfrid Campbell, F.R.S.C., a well-known English-Canadian poet, has translated for "The Story of Canada" these verses of his French contemporary Frechette.

{192}

XIV.

CANADA AND ACADIA: FROM FRONTENAC TO THE TREATY OF UTRECHT.

(1672-1713.)

In the previous chapter I have shown the important part that the Count de Frontenac took in stimulating the enterprise of La Salle and other explorers, and it now remains for me to review those other features of the administration of that great governor, which more or less influenced the fortunes of the province committed to his charge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Frontenac, from Hebert's Statue at Quebec.]

A brave and bold soldier, a man of infinite resources in times of difficulty, as bold to conceive as he was quick to carry out a design, dignified and fascinating in his manner when it pleased him, arrogant and obstinate when others thwarted him, having a keen appreciation of the Indian character, selfish where his personal gain was concerned, and yet never losing sight of the substantial interests of France in America, the Count de Frontenac was able, for nineteen years, to administer the affairs of New France with remarkable ability, despite his {194} personal weaknesses, to stimulate and concentrate her energies and resources, and to make her when he died a power in America far beyond what her population or actual strength seemed to justify.

The Iroquois learned at last to tremble at his name, and the Indian allies of Canada, from the Abenakis of Acadia to the Illinois of the West, could trust in his desire and ability to a.s.sist them against their ferocious enemy. As is the case with all great men, his faults and virtues have been equally exaggerated. The Recollets, whom he always favoured, could never speak too well of him, whilst the Jesuits, whom he distrusted, did all they could to tarnish his reputation.

It is not profitable or necessary in this story of Canada to dwell on the details of Frontenac's administration of public affairs during the first years of his regime (1672-1682), which were chiefly noted for the display of his faults of character--especially his obstinacy and impatience of all opposition. He was constantly at conflict with the bishop, who was always a.s.serting the supremacy of his Church, with the intendant d.u.c.h.esneau, who was simply a spy on his actions, with the Jesuits, whom he disliked and accused of even being interested in the sale of brandy, and with traders like Governor Perrot of Montreal who eventually found himself in the Bastile for a few days for having defied the edict of the King against the _coureurs de bois_ who were under his influence and helped him in the fur trade.