Heroes of the Middle West Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: La Salle at the Mouth of the Mississippi.]

In April La Salle reached his goal. He found that the Mississippi divided its current into three strands and entered the Gulf through three mouths. He separated his party; La Salle took the west pa.s.sage, and Tonty and another lieutenant the middle and the east. At the Gulf of Mexico they came together again, and with solemn ceremonies claimed for France all the country along the great river's entire length, and far eastward and westward, calling it Louisiana, in honor of King Louis XIV.

A metal plate, bearing the arms of France, the king's name, and the date of the discovery, was fixed on a pillar in the shifting soil.

Hardy as he was, La Salle sometimes fell ill from the great exposures he endured. And more than once he was poisoned by some revengeful voyageur. It was not until the December following his discovery of the Mississippi's mouth that he realized his plan of fortifying the rock on the Illinois River. He and Tonty delighted in it, calling it Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Storehouses and quarters for a garrison rose around its edges, protected by a palisade. A windla.s.s was rigged to draw water from the river below. On the northeast corner of the rock a low earthwork remains to this day.

Around this natural castle the Indian tribes gathered to La Salle, as to a sovereign,--Miamis, Abenakis, and Shawanoes, from countries eastward, and the Illinois returned to spread over their beloved meadow. Instead of one town, many towns of log, or rush, or bark lodges could be seen from the summit of the Rock. Years afterwards the French still spoke of this fortress as Le Rocher. A little princ.i.p.ality of twenty thousand inhabitants, strong enough to repel any attack of the Iroquois, thus helped to guard it. La Salle meant to supply his people with goods and give them a market for their furs. At this time he could almost see the success of his mighty enterprise a.s.sured; he could reasonably count on strengthening his stockades along the Mississippi, and on building near its mouth a city which would protect the entire west and give an outlet to the undeveloped wealth of the continent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Louis XIV., King of France.]

In the flush of his discovery and success La Salle went back to France, leaving Tonty in charge of the Rock and the gathering Indian nations, and laid his actual achievements before the king, asking for help. This was made necessary by the change in the colonial government, which had removed his friend Count Frontenac and left him at the mercy of enemies.

The king was not slow to see the capacity of this wonderful man, so shy of civilization that he lodged in a poor street, carrying with him the very breath of the wilderness. La Salle asked for two ships; the king gave him four; and many people and supplies were gathered to colonize and stock the west.

It was La Salle's intention to sail by way of the West Indies, cross the Gulf of Mexico, and enter the mouth of the Mississippi. But the Gulf of Mexico is rimmed with low marshy land, and he had never seen the mouth of the Mississippi from seaward. His unfamiliarity with the coast, or night, or fog cheated him of his destination, and the colony was landed four hundred miles west of it, in a place called Matagorda Bay, in Texas, which then belonged to the Spaniards. Although at the time of discovery he had taken the lat.i.tude of that exact spot where he set the post, he had been unable to determine the longitude; any lagoon might be an opening of the triple mouth he sought.

La Salle's brother, a priest, who sailed with him on this voyage, testified afterwards that the explorer died believing he was near the mouth of the Mississippi. Whatever may have been his thoughts, the undespairing Norman grappled with his troubles in the usual way.

One of his vessels had been captured by the Spanish. Another had been wrecked in the bay by seamen who were willing to injure him. These contained supplies most needed for the colony. The third sailed away and left him; and his own little ship, a gift of the king for his use along the coast, was sunk by careless men while he was absent searching northward for the Mississippi.

Many of the colonists fell sick and died. Men turned sullen and tried to desert. Some went hunting and were never seen again. Indians, who dare not openly attack, skulked near and set the prairie on fire; and that was a sight of magnificence, the earth seeming to burn like a furnace, or, far as the eye could follow them, billows of flame rushing as across a fire sea. But La Salle was wise, and cut the gra.s.s close around his powder and camp.

[Ill.u.s.tration: La Salle's Map of Texas.]

Water, plains, trees combined endlessly, like the pieces of a kaleidoscope, to confuse him in his search. Tonty was not at hand to take care of the colony while he groped for the lost river. He moved his wretched people from their camp, with all goods saved off the wreck in the bay, to a better site for a temporary fort, on rising ground. The carpenters proved good for nothing. La Salle himself planned buildings and marked out mortises on the logs. First a large house roofed with hides, and divided into apartments, was finished to shelter all.

Separate houses were afterwards built for the women and girls, and barracks or rougher cells for the men. A little chapel was finally added. And when high-pointed palisades surrounded the whole, La Salle, perhaps thinking of his invincible rock on the Illinois and the faithfulness of his copper-handed lieutenant guarding it, called this outpost also Fort St. Louis. Cannon were mounted at the four corners of the large house. As the b.a.l.l.s were lost, they were loaded with bullets in bags.

Behind, the prairies stretched away to forests. In front rolled the bay, with the restless ever-heaving motion of the Mexican Gulf. A delicious salty air, like the breath of perpetual spring, blew in, tingling the skin of the sulkiest adventurer with delight in this virgin world.

Fierce northers must beat upon the colonists, and the languors of summer must in time follow; and they were homesick, always watching for sails.

Yet they had no lack of food. Oysters were so plentiful in the bay that they could not wade without cutting their feet with the sh.e.l.ls. Though the alligator pushed his ugly snout and ridgy back out of lagoons, and horned frogs frightened the children, and the rattlesnake was to be avoided where it lay coiled in the gra.s.s, game of all kinds abounded.

Every man was obliged to hunt, and every woman and child to help smoke the meat. Even the priests took guns in their hands. Father Membre had brought some buffalo traditions from the Illinois country. He was of Father Hennepin's opinion that this wild creature might be trained to draw the plow, and he had faith that benevolence was concealed behind its wicked eyes.

As Father Membre stalked along the prairie with the hunters, his capote tucked up out of his way on its cord, one of the men shot a buffalo and it dropped. The buffaloes rarely fell at once, even when wounded to death, unless. .h.i.t in the spine. Father Membre approached it curiously.

"Come back, Father!" shouted the hunters.

Father Membre touched it gently with his gun.

"Run, Father, run!" cried the hunters.

"It is dead," a.s.serted Father Membre. "I will rest my gun across its carca.s.s to steady my aim at the other buffaloes."

He knelt to rest his gun across its back.

The great beast heaved convulsively to its feet and made a dash at the Recollet. It sent him revolving heels over head. But Father Membre got up, and, spreading his capote in both hands, danced in front of the buffalo to head it off from escaping. At that, with a bellow, the s.h.a.ggy creature charged over him across the prairie, dropping to its knees and dying before the frightened hunters could lift the friar from the ground.

"Are you hurt, Father?" they all asked, supporting him, and finding it impossible to keep from laughing as he sat up, with his reverend face skinned and his capote nearly torn off.

"Not unto death," responded Father Membre, brushing gra.s.s and dirty hoof prints from his garment. "But it hath been greatly impressed on my mind that this ox-savage is no fit beast for the plow. Nor will I longer counsel our women to coax the wild cows to a milking. It is well to adapt to our needs the beasts of a country," said Father Membre, wiping blood from his face. "But this buffalo creature hath disappointed me!"

La Salle was prostrated through the month of November. But by Christmas he was able to set out on a final search from which he did not intend to return until he found the Mississippi. All hands in the fort were busied on the outfit necessary for the party. Clothes were made of sails recovered from one of the wrecked vessels. Eighteen men were to follow La Salle, among them his elder brother, the Abbe Cavelier. Some had on the remains of garments they had worn in France, and others were dressed in deer or buffalo skins. He had bought five horses of the Indians to carry the baggage.

At midnight on Christmas Eve everybody crowded into the small fortress chapel. The priests, celebrating ma.s.s, moved before the altar in such gold-embroidered vestments as they had, and the light of torches illuminated the rough log walls. Those who were to stay and keep the outpost, literally lost in the wilderness, were on their knees weeping.

Those who were to go knelt also, with the dread of an awful uncertainty in their minds. The faithful ones foresaw worse than peril from forests and waters and savages, for La Salle could not leave behind all the villains with whom he was obliged to serve himself. He alone showed the composure of a man who never despairs. If he had positively known that he was setting out upon a fatal journey,--that he was undertaking his last march through the wilderness,--the ma.s.s lights would still have shown the firm face of a man who did not turn back from any enterprise.

The very existence of these people who had come out to the New World with him depended on his success. Whatever lay in the road he had to encounter it. The most splendid lives may progress and end through what we call tragedy; but it is better to die in the very stress of achievement than to stretch a poor existence through a century. The contagion of his hardihood stole out like the Christmas incense and spread through the chapel.

V.

FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.

"It was the establishment of military posts throughout this vast valley that eventually brought on a life struggle between the English and the French," says a historian.

At first the only spot of civilization in boundless wilderness was Tonty's little fort on the Illinois. Protected by it, the Indians went hunting and brought in buffalo skins and meat; their women planted and reaped maize; children were born; days came and went; autumn haze made the distances pearly; winter snow lay on the wigwams; men ran on snowshoes; and papooses shouted on the frozen river. Still no news came from La Salle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF THE FRENCH SETTLEMENTS.]

Tonty had made a journey to the mouth of the Mississippi to meet him, after he landed with his colony, searching thirty leagues in each direction along the coast. La Salle was at that time groping through a maze of lagoons in Texas. Tonty, with his men, waded swamps to their necks, enduring more suffering than he had ever endured in his life before. This was in February of the year 1686. Finding it impossible to reach La Salle, who must be wandering somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico, Tonty wrote a letter to him, intrusting it to the hands of an Indian chief, with directions that it be delivered when the explorer appeared.

He also left a couple of men who were willing to wait in the Arkansas villages to meet La Salle.

Two years pa.s.sed before those men brought positive proof of the undespairing Norman's fate. The remnant of the party that started with La Salle from Fort St. Louis of Texas spent one winter at Fort St. Louis of the Illinois, bringing word that they had left their leader in good health on the coast. The Abbe Cavelier even collected furs in his brother's name, and went on to France, carrying his secret with him.

La Salle had been a.s.sa.s.sinated on the Trinity River, soon after setting out on his last determined search for the Mississippi. The eighteenth day of March, 1687, some of his brutal voyageurs hid themselves in bushes and shot him.

So slowly did events move then, and so powerless was man, an atom in the wilderness, that the great-hearted Italian, weeping aloud in rage and grief, realized that La Salle's bones had been bleaching a year and a half before the news of his death reached his lieutenant. It was not known that La Salle received burial. The wretches who a.s.sa.s.sinated him threw him into some brush. It was a satisfaction to Tonty that they all perished miserably afterwards; those who survived quarrels among themselves being killed by the Indians.

The undespairing Norman died instantly, without feeling or admitting defeat. And he was not defeated. Though his colony--including Father Membre, who had been so long with him--perished by the hands of the Indians in Texas, in spite of Tonty's second journey to relieve them, his plan of settlements from the great lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi became a reality.

Down from Canada came two of the eleven Le Moyne brothers, D'Iberville and Bienville, fine fighting sons of a powerful colonial family, with royal permission to found near the great river's mouth that city which had been La Salle's dream. Fourteen years after La Salle's death, while D'Iberville was exploring for a site, the old chief, to whom Tonty had given a letter for La Salle, brought it carefully wrapped and delivered it into the hands of La Salle's more fortunate successor.

Tonty was a.s.sociated with Le Moyne D'Iberville in these labors around the Gulf.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph of Le Moyne D'Iberville.]

A long peninsula betwixt the Mississippi and Kaskaskia Rivers, known since as the American Bottom, lured away Indians from the great town on the Illinois. The new settlement founded on this peninsula was called Kaskaskia, for one of the tribes. As other posts sprung into existence, Fort St. Louis was less needed. "As early as 1712," we are told, "land t.i.tles were issued for a common field in Kaskaskia. Traders had already opened a commerce in skins and furs with the remote post of Isle Dauphine in Mobile Bay." Settlements were firmly established. By 1720 the luxuries of Europe came into the great tract taken by La Salle in the name of King Louis and called Louisiana.

Twelve years after La Salle's death a missionary named St. Cosme (Sant'

Come) journeyed from Canada in a party guided by Tonty. St. Cosme has left this record of the man with the copper hand:--

"He guided us as far as the Arkansas and gave us much pleasure on the way, winning friendship of some savages and intimidating others who from jealousy or desire to plunder opposed the voyage; not only doing the duty of a brave man but that of a missionary. He quieted the voyageurs, by whom he was generally loved, and supported us by his example in devotion."

On the Chicago portage a little boy, given to the missionary perhaps because he was an orphan and the western country offered him the best chances in life, started eagerly ahead, though he was told to wait. The rest of the party, having goods and canoes to carry from the Chicago River to the Desplaines, lost sight of him, and he was never seen again.

Autumn gra.s.s grew tall over the marshy portage, but they dared not set it afire, though his fate was doubtless hidden in that gra.s.s. The party divided and searched for him, calling and firing guns. Three days they searched, and daring to wait no longer, for it was November and the river ready to glaze with ice, they left him to some French people at the post of Chicago. But the child was not found. He disappeared and no one ever knew what became of him.

Like this is Henri de Tonty's disappearance from history. The records show him working with Le Moyne D'Iberville and Le Moyne de Bienville to found New Orleans and Mobile, pushing the enterprises which La Salle had begun. He has been blamed with the misbehavior of a relative of his, Alphonse de Tonty, who got into disgrace at the post of Detroit. Little justice has been done to the memory of this man, who should not be forgotten in the west. So quietly did he slip out of life that his burial place is unknown. Some people believe that he came back to the Rock long after its buildings were dismantled and it had ceased to be Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Others say he died in Mobile. But it is probable that both La Salle and Tonty left their bodies to the wilderness which their invincible spirits had conquered.