Canada: the Empire of the North Part 12

When Dollier de Ca.s.son, the soldier who had become Sulpician priest, returned from the campaign against the Iroquois, he had been sent as a missionary to the Nip.i.s.sing Country. There he heard among the Indians of a shorter route to the Great River of the West--the Mississippi--than by the Ottawa and Sault Ste. Marie. The Indians told him if he would ascend the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, he could portage overland to the Beautiful River,--Ohio,--which would carry him down to the Mississippi.

The Sulpicians had been encouraged by Talon in order to eclipse and hold in check the Jesuits. They were eager to send their missionaries to the new realm of this Great River, and hurried Dollier de Ca.s.son down to Quebec to obtain Intendant Talon's permission.

There, curiously enough, Dollier de Ca.s.son met Cavalier de La Salle, the shy young seigneur of La Chine, intent on almost the same aim,--to explore the Great River. Where the Sulpicians had granted him his seigniory above Montreal he had built a fort, which soon won the nickname of La Chine,--China,--because its young master was continually entertaining Iroquois Indians within the walls, to question them of the Great River, which might lead to China.

Governor Courcelle and Intendant Talon ordered the priest and young seigneur to set out together on their explorations. The Sulpicians were to bear all expenses, buying back La Salle's lands to enable him to outfit canoes with the money. Father Galinee, who understood map making, accompanied Dollier de Ca.s.son, and the expedition of seven birch canoes, with three white men in each, and two dugouts with Seneca Indians, who had been visiting La Salle, set out from Montreal on July 6, 1669. Not a leader in the party was over thirty-five years of age. Dollier de Ca.s.son, the big priest, was only thirty-three and La Salle barely twenty-six. Corn meal was carried as food. For the rest, they were to depend on chance shots. With {129} numerous portages, keeping to the south sh.o.r.e of the St. Lawrence because that was best known to the Seneca guides, the canoes pa.s.sed up Lake St. Louis and Lake St. Francis and glided through the sylvan fairyland of the Thousand Islands, coming out in August on Lake Ontario, "which," says Galinee, "appeared to us like a great sea." Striking south, they appealed to the Seneca Iroquois for guides to the Ohio, but the Senecas were so intent on torturing some prisoners recently captured, that they paid no heed to the appeal. A month was wasted, and the white men proceeded with Indian slaves for guides, still along the south sh.o.r.e of the lake.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GALINeE'S MAP OF THE GREAT LAKES, 1669 (The next oldest chart to that of Champlain)]

At the mouth of Niagara River they could hear the far roar of the famous falls, which Indian legend said "fell over rocks twice the height of the highest pine tree." The turbulent torrent of the river could not be breasted, so they did not see the falls, but rounded on up Lake Ontario to the region now near the city of Hamilton. Here they had prepared to portage overland to some stream that would bring them down to Lake Erie, when, to their amazement, they learned from a pa.s.sing Indian camp that two Frenchmen were on their way down this very lake from searching copper mines on Lake Superior.

{130} The two Frenchmen were Louis Jolliet, yet in his early twenties, to become famous as an explorer of the Mississippi, and one Monsieur Jean Pere, soldier of fortune, who was to set France and England by the ears on Hudson Bay. September 24, as La Salle and Dollier were dragging their canoes through the autumn-colored sumacs of the swamp, there plunged from among the russet undergrowth the two wanderers from the north,--Jolliet and Pere, dumb with amazement to meet a score of men toiling through this tenantless wilderness. The two parties fell on each other's necks with delight and camped together. Jolliet told a story that set the missionaries' zeal on fire and inflamed La Salle with mad eagerness to pa.s.s on to the goal of his discoveries. Jolliet and Pere had not found the copper mine for Talon on Lake Superior, but they had learned two important secrets from the Indians. First, if Iroquois blocked the way up the Ottawa, there was clear, easy water way down to Quebec by Lake Huron and Lake Ste. Claire and Lake Erie. Jolliet's guide had brought them down this way, first of white men to traverse the Great Lakes, only leaving them as they reached Lake Erie and advising them to portage across up Grand River to avoid Niagara Falls. Second, the Indians told him the Ohio could be reached by way of Lake Erie.

Sitting round the camp fires near what is now Port Stanley, La Salle secretly resolved to go on down to Quebec with Jolliet and rearrange his plans independent of the missionaries. The portaging through swamps had affected La Salle's health, and he probably judged he could make quicker time unaccompanied by missionaries. As for Galinee and Dollier, when they knelt in prayer that night, they fervently besought Heaven to let them carry the Gospel of truth to those benighted heathen west of Lake Michigan, of whom Jolliet told. Dollier de Ca.s.son sent a letter by Jolliet to Montreal, begging the Sulpicians to establish a mission near what is now Toronto. Early next morning an altar was laid on the propped paddles of the canoes and solemn service held. La Salle and his four canoes went back to Montreal with Jolliet and Pere; Dollier and Galinee coasted along the sh.o.r.es of Lake Erie westward.

{131} It was October. The forests were leafless, the weather damp, the lake too stormy for the frail canoes. As game was plentiful, the priests decided to winter on a creek near Port Dover. Here log houses were knocked up, and the servants dispersed moose hunting for winter supplies.

Then followed the most beautiful season of the year in the peninsula of Ontario, Indian summer, dreamy warm days after the first cold, filling the forest with a shimmer of golden light, the hills with heat haze, while the air was odorous with smells of nuts and dried leaves and grapes hanging thick from wild vines. "It was," writes Galinee, "simply an Earthly Paradise, the most beautiful region that ever I have seen in my life, with open woods and meadows and rivers and game in plenty." In this Earthly Paradise the priests pa.s.sed the winter, holding services three times a week--"a winter that ought to be worth ten years of any other kind of life" Dollier calculated, counting up ma.s.ses and vespers and matins. Sometimes when the snow lay deep and the weird voices of the wind hallooed with bugle sound through the lonely forest, the priests listening inside fancied that they heard "the hunting of Arthur,"--unearthly huntsmen coursing the air after unearthly game.

March 23 (Sunday), 1670, the company paraded down to Lake Erie from their sheltered quarters, and, erecting a cross, took possession of this land for France. Then they launched their boats to ascend the other Sweet Water Seas. The preceding autumn the priests had lost some of their baggage, and now, in camp near Point Pelee, a sweeping wave carried off the packs in which were all the holy vessels and equipments for the mission chapel. They decided to go back to Montreal by way of Sault Ste.

Marie, and ascended to Lake Ste. Claire. Game had been scarce for some days, the weather tempestuous, and now the priests thought they had found the cause. On one of the rocks of Lake Ste. Claire was a stone, to which the Indians offered sacrifices for safe pa.s.sage on the lakes. To the priests the rude drawing of a face seemed graven images of paganism,--signs of Satan, who had baffled their hunting and caused loss {132} of their packs. "I consecrated one of my axes to break this G.o.d of stone, and, having yoked our canoes abreast, we carried the largest pieces to the middle of the river and cast them in. G.o.d immediately rewarded us, for we killed a deer." Following the east sh.o.r.e of Lake Huron, the priests came, on May 25, to Sault Ste. Marie, where the Jesuits Dablon and Marquette had a mission. Three days late, they embarked by way of the Ottawa for Montreal, where they arrived on June 18, 1670.

Meanwhile, what had become of Jolliet and Pere and La Salle?

They have no sooner reached Quebec with their report than Talon orders St. Lusson to go north and take possession at Sault Ste. Marie of all these unknown lands for France. Jolliet accompanies St. Lusson.

Nicholas Perrot, a famous bushrover, goes along to summon the Indians, and the ceremony takes place on June 14, 1671, in the presence of the Jesuits at the Sault, by which the King of France is p.r.o.nounced lord paramount of all these regions.

When Jolliet comes down again to Quebec, he finds Count Frontenac has come as governor, and Jean Talon, the Intendant, is sailing for France.

Before leaving, Talon has recommended Jolliet as a fit man to explore the Great River of the West. With him is commissioned Jacques Marquette, the Jesuit, who has labored among the Indians west of Lake Superior. The two men set out in birch canoes, with smoked meat for provisions, from Michilimackinac mission, May 17, 1673, for Green Bay, Lake Michigan.

Ascending Fox River on June 17, they induce the Mascoutin Indians, who had years ago conducted Radisson by this same route, to pilot them across the portage to the headwaters of the Wisconsin River.

Their way lies directly across that wooded lake region, which has in our generation become the resort first of the lumberman, then of the tourist,--a rolling, wooded region of rare sylvan beauty, park-like forests interspersed with sky-colored lakes. Six weeks from the time they had left the Sault, Wisconsin River carried their canoe out on the swift eddies of a mighty river {133} flowing south,--the Mississippi.

For the first time the boat of a Canadian voyageur glided down its waters.

Each night as the explorers landed to sleep under the stars, the tilted canoe inverted with end on a log as roof in case of rain, Marquette fell to knees and invoked the Virgin's aid on the expedition; and each morning as Jolliet launched the boat out on the waters through the early mist, he headed closely along sh.o.r.e on the watch for sign or footprint of Indian.

The river gathered volume as it rolled southward, carving the clay cliffs of its banks in a thousand fantastic forms. Where the bank was broken, the prairies were seen in heaving seas of gra.s.s billowing to the wind like water, herds of countless buffalo pasturing knee-deep. To Marquette and Jolliet, burning with enthusiasm, it seemed as if they were finding a new world for France half as large as all Europe. For two weeks not a sail, not a canoe, not a soul did they see. Then the river carried them into the country of the Illinois, past Illinois Indians who wore French clothing, and pictured rocks where the Indians had painted their sign language. There was no doubt now in the explorers' minds,--the Mississippi did not lead to China but emptied in the Gulf of Mexico. A furious torrent of boiling muddy water pouring in on the right forewarned the Missouri; and in a few more days they pa.s.sed on the left the clear current of Beautiful River,--the Ohio.

It was now midsummer. The heat was heavy and humid. Marquette's health began to suffer, and the two explorers spread an awning of sailcloth above the canoe as they glided with the current. Towards the Arkansas, Indians appeared on the banks, brandishing weapons of Spanish make.

Though Jolliet, with a peace pipe from the Illinois Indians, succeeded in rea.s.suring the hostiles, it was unsafe to go farther south. They had established the fact,--the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico,--and on July 17 turned back. It was harder going against stream, which did not mend Marquette's health; so when the Illinois Indians offered to show them a shorter way to Lake Michigan, they followed up Illinois River and crossed the Chicago portage {134} to Lake Michigan.

Jolliet went on down to Quebec with his report. Marquette remained half ill to establish missions in Michigan. Here, traveling with his Indians in 1675, the priest died of the malady contracted in the Mississippi heat, and was buried in a lonely grave of the wildwood wilderness where he had wandered. Louis Jolliet married and settled down on his seigniory of Anticosti Island.

Though he had as yet little to show for the La Chine estate, which he had sacrificed, La Salle had not been idle, but was busy pushing French dominion by another route to the Mississippi.

Count Frontenac had come to New France as all the viceroys came--penniless, to mend his fortunes; and as the salary of the Governor did not exceed $3000 a year, the only way to wealth was by the fur trade; but which way to look for fur trade! Hudson Bay, thanks to Radisson, was in the hands of England. Taudoussac was farmed out to the King. The merchants of Quebec and Three Rivers and Montreal absorbed all the furs of the tribes from the Ottawa; and New England drained the Iroquois land.

There remained but one avenue of new trade, and that was west of the Lakes, where Jolliet had been.

Taking only La Salle into his confidence, Frontenac issued a royal mandate commanding all the officers and people of New France to contribute a quota of men for the establishment of a fort on Lake Ontario. By June 28, 1673, the same year that Jolliet had been dispatched for the Mississippi, there had gathered at La Chine, La Salle's old seigniory near Montreal, four hundred armed men and one hundred and twenty canoes, which Frontenac ordered painted gaudily in red and blue. With these the Governor moved in stately array up the St.

Lawrence, setting the leafy avenues of the Thousand Islands ringing with trumpet and bugle, and sweeping across Lake Ontario in martial lines to the measured stroke of a hundred paddles.

Long since, La Salle's scouts had scurried from canton to canton, rallying the Iroquois to the council of great "Onontio." At break of day, July 13, while the sunrise was just bursting up {135} over the lake, Frontenac, with soldiers drawn up under arms, himself in velvet cloak laced with gold braid, met the chiefs of the Iroquois Confederacy at the place to be known for years as Fort Frontenac, now known as Kingston, a quiet little city at the entrance of Lake Ontario on the north sh.o.r.e.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT DE LA SALLE]

Ostensibly the powwow was to maintain peace. In reality, it was to attract the Iroquois, and all the tribes with whom they traded, away from the English, down to Frontenac's new fort with their furs. It is a question if all the military pomp deceived a living soul. Before the Governor had set his sappers to work on the foundations of a fort, the merchants of Montreal--the Le Bers and Le Moynes and Le Chesnayes and Le Forests--were furious with jealousy. Undoubtedly Fort Frontenac would be the most valuable fur post in America.

{136}

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD PLAN OF FORT FRONTENAC]

Determined to have the support of the Court, where his wife was in high favor, Count Frontenac dispatched La Salle to France in 1674 with letters of strongest recommendation, which, no doubt, Jean Talon, the former Intendant, indorsed on the spot. La Salle's case was a strong one. He was to offer to found a line of forts establishing French dominion from Lake Ontario to the valley of the Mississippi, which Jolliet had just explored. In return, he asked for patent of n.o.bility and the grant of a seigniory at Fort Frontenac; in other words, the monopoly of the furs there, which would easily clear him $20,000 a year. It has never been proved, but one may suspect that his profits were to be divided with Count Frontenac. Both requests were at once granted; and La Salle came back to a hornet's nest of enmity in Canada. s.p.a.ce forbids to tell of the means taken to defeat him; for, by promising to support Recollet friars at his fort instead of Jesuits, La Salle had added {137} to the enmity of the merchants, the hatred of the Jesuits. Poison was put in his food. Iroquois were stirred up to hostility against him.

Meanwhile no enmity checks his ardor. He has replaced the wooden walls of Fort Frontenac with stone, mounted ten cannon, manned the fort with twenty soldiers, maintained more than forty workmen, cleared one hundred acres for crops, and in 1677 is off again for France to ask permission to build another fort above Niagara. This time, when La Salle comes out, he is accompanied by a man famous in American annals, a soldier of fortune from Italy, cousin of Duluth the bushrover, one Henry Tonty, a man with a copper hand, his arm having been shattered in war, who presently comes to have repute among the Indians as a great "medicine man," because blows struck by that metal hand have a way of being effective. By 1678 the fort is built above Niagara. By 1679 a vessel of forty-five tons and ten cannon is launched on Lake Erie, the _Griffon_, the first vessel to plow the waters of the Great Lakes. As she slides off her skids, August 17, to go up to Michilimackinac for a cargo of furs, _Te Deum_ is chanted from the new fort, and Louis Hennepin, the Dutch friar, standing on deck in full vestments, asks Heaven's blessing on the ship's venture.

Scant is the courtesy of the Michilimackinac traders as the _Griffon's_ guns roar salute to the fort. Cold is the welcome of the Jesuits as La Salle enters their chapel dressed in scarlet mantle trimmed with gold.

And to be frank, though La Salle was backed by the King, he had no right to trade at Michilimackinac, for his monopoly explicitly states he shall not interfere with the trade of the north, but barter only with the tribes towards the Illinois. Never mind! he loads his ships to the water line with furs to pay his increasing debts, and sends the ship on down to Niagara with the cargo, while he and Tonty, with different parties, proceed to the south end of Lake Michigan to cross the Chicago portage leading to the Mississippi. Did the jealous traders bribe the pilot to sink the ship to bottom? Who knows? Certain it is when Tonty and La Salle went down the {138} Illinois early in the new year of 1680, news of disasters came thick and fast. The _Griffon_ had sunk with all her cargo. The ship from France with the year's supplies for La Salle at Fort Frontenac had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence; and worse than these losses, which meant financial ruin, here among the Illinois Indians were Mascoutin Indian spies bribed to stir up trouble for La Salle. Small wonder that he named the fort built here Fort Crevecoeur,--Fort Broken Heart.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BUILDING OF THE _GRIFFON_ (After the engraving in Father Hennepin's "Nouvelle Decouverte," Amsterdam, 1704)]

If La Salle had been fur trader only, as his enemies averred, and not patriot, one wonders why he did not sit still in his fort at Frontenac and draw his profits of $20,000 a year, instead of risking loss and poison and ruin and calumny and death by chasing the phantom of his great desire to found a New France on the Mississippi.

Never pausing to repine, he orders Hennepin, the friar, to take two voyageurs and descend Illinois River as far as the Mississippi. Tonty he leaves in charge of the Illinois fort. He {139} himself proceeds overland the width of half a continent, to Fort Frontenac and Montreal.

Friar Hennepin's adventures have been told in his own book of marvels, half truth, half lies. Jolliet, it will be remembered, had explored the Great River south of the Wisconsin. Hennepin struck up from the mouth of the Illinois, to explore north, and he found enough adventure to satisfy his marvel-loving soul. The Sioux captured him somewhere near the Wisconsin. In the wanderings of his captivity he went as far north as the Falls of St. Anthony, the site of Minnesota's Twin Cities, and he finally fell in with a band of Duluth's bushrovers from Kaministiquia (modern Fort William), Lake Superior.

The rest of the story of La Salle on the Mississippi is more the history of the United States than of Canada, and must be given in few words.

When La Salle returned from interviewing his creditors on the St.

Lawrence, he found the Illinois Indians dispersed by hostile Iroquois whom his enemies had hounded on. Fort Crevecoeur had been destroyed and plundered by mutineers among his own men. Only Tonty and two or three others had remained faithful, and they had fled for their lives to Lake Michigan. Not knowing where Tonty had taken refuge, La Salle pushed on down the Illinois River, and for the first time beheld the Mississippi, the goal of all his dreams; but anxiety for his lost men robbed the event of all jubilation. Once more united with Tonty at Michilimackinac, La Salle returned dauntlessly to the Illinois. Late in the fall of 1681 he set out with eighteen Indians and twenty Frenchmen from Lake Michigan for the Illinois. February of 1682 saw the canoes floating down the winter-swollen current of the Illinois River for the Mississippi, which was reached on the 6th. A week later the river had cleared of ice, and the voyageurs were camped amid the dense forests at the mouth of the Missouri. The weather became warmer. Trees were donning their bridal attire of spring and the air was heavy with the odor of blossoms.

Instead of high cliffs, carved fantastic by {140} the waters, came low-lying swamps, full of reeds, through which the canoes glided and lost themselves. Camp after camp of strange Indian tribes they visited, till finally they came to villages where the Indians were worshipers of the sun and wore clothing of Spanish make. By these signs La Salle guessed he was nearing the Gulf of Mexico. Fog lay longer on the river of mornings now. Ground was lower. They were nearing the sea. April 6 the river seemed to split into three channels. Different canoes followed each channel. The muddy river water became salty. Then the blue sky line opened to the fore through the leafy vista of the forest-grown banks. Another paddle stroke, and the canoes shot out on the Gulf of Mexico,--La Salle erect and silent and stern as was his wont. April 9, 1682, a cross is planted with claim to this domain for France. To fire of musketry and chant of Te Deum a new empire is created for King Louis of France. Louisiana is its name.

Take a map of North America. Look at it. What had the pathfinders of New France accomplished? Draw a line from Cape Breton to James Bay, from James Bay down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Gulf of Mexico across to Cape Breton. Inside the triangle lies the French empire of the New World,--in area the size of half Europe. That had the pathfinders accomplished for France.

La Salle was too ill to proceed at once from the Mississippi to Quebec.

As long as Frontenac remained governor, La Salle could rely on his hungry creditors and vicious enemies--now eager as wolves, to confiscate his furs and seize his seigniory at Fort Frontenac--being restrained by the strong hand of the Viceroy; but while La Salle lay ill at the Illinois fort, Frontenac was succeeded by La Barre as viceroy; and the new Governor was a weak, avaricious old man, ready to believe any evil tale carried to his ears. He at once sided with La Salle's enemies, and wrote the French King that the explorer's "_head was turned_"; that La Salle "_accomplished nothing, but spent his life leading bandits through the forests, pillaging Indians; {141} that all the story of discovering the Mississippi was a fabrication_." When La Salle came from the wilderness he found himself a ruined man. Fort Frontenac had been seized by his enemies. Supplies for the Mississippi had been stopped, and officers were on their way to seize the forts there.

Leaving Tonty in charge of his interests, La Salle sailed for France where he had a strong friend at court in Frontenac. As it happened, Spain and France were playing at the game of checkmating each other; and it pleased the French King to restore La Salle's forts and to give the Canadian explorer four ships to colonize the Mississippi by way of the Gulf of Mexico. This was to oust Spain from her ancient claim on the gulf; but Beaujeu, the naval commander of the expedition, was not in sympathy with La Salle. Beaujeu was a n.o.ble by birth; La Salle, only a n.o.ble of the merchant cla.s.ses. The two bickered and quarreled from the first. By some blunder, when the ships reached the Gulf of Mexico, laden with colonists, in December of 1684, they missed the mouth of the Mississippi and anch.o.r.ed off Texas. The main ship sailed back to France.

Two others were wrecked, and La Salle in desperation, after several trips seeking the Mississippi, resolved to go overland by way of the Mississippi valley and the Illinois to obtain aid in Canada for his colonists. All the world knows what happened. Near Trinity River in Texas some of his men mutinied. Early in the morning of the 19th of March, 1687, La Salle left camp with a friar and Indian to ascertain what was delaying the plotters, who had not returned from the hunt. Suddenly La Salle seemed overwhelmed by a great sadness. He spoke of death. A moment later, catching sight of one of the delinquents, he had called out. A shot rang from the underbush; another shot; and La Salle reeled forward dead, with a bullet wound gaping in his forehead. The body of the man who had won a new empire for France was stripped and left naked, a prey to the foxes and carrion birds. So perished Robert Cavelier de La Salle, aged forty-four.

Nor need the fate of the mutineers be told here. The fate of mutineers is the same the world over. Having slain their {142} commander, they fell on one another and perished, either at one another's hands or among the Indians. As for the colonists of men, women, and girls left in Texas, the few who were not ma.s.sacred by the Indians fell into the hands of the Spaniards. La Salle's debts at the time of his death were what would now be half a million dollars. His life had ended in what the world calls ruin, but France entered into his heritage.

With the pa.s.sing of Robert de La Salle pa.s.ses the heroic age of Canada,--its age of youth's dream. Now was to come its manhood,--its struggles, its wars, its nation building, working out a greater destiny than any dream of youth.