France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
FOOTNOTES:
[67] _Lettre de Frontenac à Colbert, 13 Nov., 1673._ This rumor, it
appears, originated with the Jesuit Dablon. _Journal du Voyage du Comte
de Frontenac au lac Ontario_. The Jesuits were greatly opposed to the
establishment of forts and trading-posts in the upper country, for
reasons that will appear hereafter.
[68] _Lettre de Frontenac au Ministre, 13 Nov., 1673._
[69] Faillon, _Colonie Française_, iii. 497, and manuscript authorities
there cited. I have examined the principal of these. Faillon himself is
a priest of St. Sulpice. Compare H. Verreau, _Les Deux Abbés de
Fénelon_, chap. vii.
[70] _Information faicte par nous, Charles le Tardieu, Sieur de Tilly,
et Nicolas Dupont, etc., etc., contre le Sr. Abbé de Fénelon._ Tilly
and Dupont were sent by Frontenac to inquire into the affair. Among the
deponents is La Salle himself.
[71] In his despatch to the minister Colbert, of the fourteenth of
November, 1674, Frontenac speaks of La Salle as follows: "I cannot help,
Monseigneur, recommending to you the Sieur de la Salle, who is about to
go to France, and who is a man of intelligence and ability, more capable
than anybody else I know here to accomplish every kind of enterprise and
discovery which may be intrusted to him, as he has the most perfect
knowledge of the state of the country, as you will see, if you are
disposed to give him a few moments of audience."
[72] _Mémoire pour l'entretien du Fort Frontenac, par le Sr. de la
Salle, 1674. Petition du Sr. de la Salle au Roi. Lettres patentes de
concession, du Fort de Frontenac et terres adjacentes au profit du
Sr. de la Salle; données à Compiègne le 13 Mai, 1675. Arrêt qui
accepte les offres faites par Robert Cavelier Sr. de la Salle; à
Compiègne le 13 Mai, 1675. Lettres de noblesse pour le Sr. Cavelier
de la Salle; données à Compiègne le 13 Mai, 1675. Papiers de Famille.
Mémoire au Roi._
[73] This purpose is several times indicated in the _Relations_. For an
instance, see "The Jesuits in North America," 245.
[74] Compare Charlevoix, _Histoire de Paraguay_, with Robertson,
_Letters on Paraguay_.
CHAPTER VII.
1678.
PARTY STRIFE.
La Salle and his Reporter.--Jesuit Ascendency.--The Missions and
the Fur-trade.--Female Inquisitors.--Plots against La Salle: his
Brother the Priest.--Intrigues Of the Jesuits.--La Salle poisoned:
he exculpates the Jesuits.--Renewed Intrigues.
[Sidenote: LA SALLE'S MEMOIR.]
One of the most curious monuments of La Salle's time is a long memoir,
written by a person who made his acquaintance at Paris in the summer of
1678, when, as we shall soon see, he had returned to France in
prosecution of his plans. The writer knew the Sulpitian Galinée,[75]
who, as he says, had a very high opinion of La Salle; and he was also in
close relations with the discoverer's patron, the Prince de Conti.[76]
He says that he had ten or twelve interviews with La Salle; and,
becoming interested in him and in that which he communicated, he wrote
down the substance of his conversation. The paper is divided into two
parts: the first, called "Mémoire sur Mr. de la Salle," is devoted to
the state of affairs in Canada, and chiefly to the Jesuits; the second,
entitled "Histoire de Mr. de la Salle," is an account of the
discoverer's life, or as much of it as the writer had learned from
him.[77] Both parts bear throughout the internal evidence of being what
they profess to be; but they embody the statements of a man of intense
partisan feeling, transmitted through the mind of another person in
sympathy with him, and evidently sharing his prepossessions. In one
respect, however, the paper is of unquestionable historical value; for
it gives us a vivid and not an exaggerated picture of the bitter strife
of parties which then raged in Canada, and which was destined to tax to
the utmost the vast energy and fortitude of La Salle. At times, the
memoir is fully sustained by contemporary evidence; but often, again, it
rests on its own unsupported authority. I give an abstract of its
statements as I find them.
The following is the writer's account of La Salle: "All those among my
friends who have seen him find him a man of great intelligence and
sense. He rarely speaks of any subject except when questioned about it,
and his words are very few and very precise. He distinguishes perfectly
between that which he knows with certainly and that which he knows with
some mingling of doubt. When he does not know, he does not hesitate to
avow it; and though I have heard him say the same thing more than five
or six times, when persons were present who had not heard it before, he
always said it in the same manner. In short, I never heard anybody speak
whose words carried with them more marks of truth."[78]
[Sidenote: JESUIT ASCENDENCY.]
After mentioning that he is thirty-three or thirty-four years old, and
that he has been twelve years in America, the memoir declares that he
made the following statements: that the Jesuits are masters at Quebec;
that the bishop is their creature, and does nothing but in concert with
them;[79] that he is not well inclined towards the Récollets,[80] who
have little credit, but who are protected by Frontenac; that in Canada
the Jesuits think everybody an enemy to religion who is an enemy to
them; that, though they refused absolution to all who sold brandy to the
Indians, they sold it themselves, and that he, La Salle, had himself
detected them in it;[81] that the bishop laughs at the orders of the
King when they do not agree with the wishes of the Jesuits; that the
Jesuits dismissed one of their servants named Robert, because he told of
their trade in brandy; that Albanel,[82] in particular, carried on a
great fur-trade, and that the Jesuits have built their college in part
from the profits of this kind of traffic; that they admitted that they
carried on a trade, but denied that they gained so much by it as was
commonly supposed.[83]
[Sidenote: FEMALE INQUISITORS.]
The memoir proceeds to affirm that they trade largely with the Sioux at
Ste. Marie, and with other tribes at Michilimackinac, and that they are
masters of the trade of that region, where the forts are in their
possession.[84] An Indian said, in full council, at Quebec, that he had
prayed and been a Christian as long as the Jesuits would stay and teach
him, but since no more beaver were left in his country, the missionaries
were gone also. The Jesuits, pursues the memoir, will have no priests
but themselves in their missions, and call them all Jansenists, not
excepting the priests of St. Sulpice.
The bishop is next accused of harshness and intolerance, as well as of
growing rich by tithes, and even by trade, in which it is affirmed he
has a covert interest.[85] It is added that there exists in Quebec,
under the auspices of the Jesuits, an association called the Sainte
Famille, of which Madame Bourdon[86] is superior. They meet in the
cathedral every Thursday, with closed doors, where they relate to each
other--as they are bound by a vow to do--all they have learned, whether
good or evil, concerning other people, during the week. It is a sort of
female inquisition, for the benefit of the Jesuits, the secrets of whose
friends, it is said, are kept, while no such discretion is observed with
regard to persons not of their party.[87]
Here follow a series of statements which it is needless to repeat, as
they do not concern La Salle. They relate to abuse of the confessional,
hostility to other priests, hostility to civil authorities, and
over-hasty baptisms, in regard to which La Salle is reported to have
made a comparison, unfavorable to the Jesuits, between them and the
Récollets and Sulpitians.
[Sidenote: PLOTS AGAINST LA SALLE.]
We now come to the second part of the memoir, entitled "History of
Monsieur de la Salle." After stating that he left France at the age of
twenty-one or twenty-two, with the purpose of attempting some new
discovery, it makes the statements repeated in a former chapter,
concerning his discovery of the Ohio, the Illinois, and possibly the
Mississippi. It then mentions the building of Fort Frontenac, and says
that one object of it was to prevent the Jesuits from becoming
undisputed masters of the fur-trade.[88] Three years ago, it pursues, La
Salle came to France, and obtained a grant of the fort; and it proceeds
to give examples of the means used by the party opposed to him to injure
his good name and bring him within reach of the law. Once, when he was
at Quebec, the farmer of the King's revenue, one of the richest men in
the place, was extremely urgent in his proffers of hospitality, and at
length, though he knew La Salle but slightly, persuaded him to lodge in
his house. He had been here but a few days when his host's wife began to
enact the part of the wife of Potiphar, and this with so much vivacity
that on one occasion La Salle was forced to take an abrupt leave, in
order to avoid an infringement of the laws of hospitality. As he opened
the door, he found the husband on the watch, and saw that it was a plot
to entrap him.[89]
Another attack, of a different character, though in the same direction,
was soon after made. The remittances which La Salle received from the
various members and connections of his family were sent through the
hands of his brother, Abbé Cavelier, from whom his enemies were,
therefore, very eager to alienate him. To this end, a report was made to
reach the priest's ears that La Salle had seduced a young woman, with
whom he was living in an open and scandalous manner at Fort Frontenac.
The effect of this device exceeded the wishes of its contrivers; for the
priest, aghast at what he had heard, set out for the fort, to administer
his fraternal rebuke, but on arriving, in place of the expected
abomination, found his brother, assisted by two Récollet friars, ruling
with edifying propriety over a most exemplary household.
Thus far the memoir. From passages in some of La Salle's letters, it may
be gathered that Abbé Cavelier gave him at times no little annoyance. In
his double character of priest and elder brother, he seems to have
constituted himself the counsellor, monitor, and guide of a man who,
though many years his junior, was in all respects incomparably superior
to him, as the sequel will show. This must have been almost insufferable
to a nature like that of La Salle, who, nevertheless, was forced to arm
himself with patience, since his brother held the purse-strings. On one
occasion his forbearance was put to a severe proof, when, wishing to
marry a damsel of good connections in the colony, Abbé Cavelier saw fit
for some reason to interfere, and prevented the alliance.[90]
[Sidenote: INTRIGUES OF THE JESUITS.]
To resume the memoir. It declares that the Jesuits procured an ordinance
from the Supreme Council prohibiting traders from going into the Indian
country, in order that they, the Jesuits, being already established
there in their missions, might carry on trade without competition. But
La Salle induced a good number of the Iroquois to settle around his
fort; thus bringing the trade to his own door, without breaking the
ordinance. These Iroquois, he is further reported to have said, were
very fond of him, and aided him in rebuilding the fort with cut stone.
The Jesuits told the Iroquois on the south side of the lake, where they
were established as missionaries, that La Salle was strengthening his
defences with the view of making war on them. They and the intendant,
who was their creature, endeavored to embroil the Iroquois with the
French in order to ruin La Salle; writing to him at the same time that
he was the bulwark of the country, and that he ought to be always on his
guard. They also tried to persuade Frontenac that it was necessary to