France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
great Onondaga town, where the Indians were much amazed at their
hardihood. Thence they proceeded eastward to the Oneidas, and afterwards
to the Mohawks, who regaled them with small frogs, pounded up with a
porridge of Indian corn. Here Hennepin found the Jesuit Bruyas, who
permitted him to copy a dictionary of the Mohawk language[111] which he
had compiled; and here he presently met three Dutchmen, who urged him to
visit the neighboring settlement of Orange, or Albany,--an invitation
which he seems to have declined.[112]
They were pleased with him, he says, because he spoke Dutch. Bidding
them farewell, he tied on his snow-shoes again, and returned with his
companion to Fort Frontenac. Thus he inured himself to the hardships of
the woods, and prepared for the execution of the grand plan of discovery
which he calls his own,--"an enterprise," to borrow his own words,
"capable of terrifying anybody but me."[113] When the later editions of
his book appeared, doubts had been expressed of his veracity. "I here
protest to you, before God," he writes, addressing the reader, "that my
narrative is faithful and sincere, and that you may believe everything
related in it."[114] And yet, as we shall see, this reverend father was
the most impudent of liars; and the narrative of which he speaks is a
rare monument of brazen mendacity. Hennepin, however, had seen and dared
much; for among his many failings fear had no part, and where his
vanity or his spite was not involved, he often told the truth. His books
have their value, with all their enormous fabrications.[115]
La Motte and Hennepin, with sixteen men, went on board the little vessel
of ten tons, which lay at Fort Frontenac. The friar's two brethren,
Buisset and Ribourde, threw their arms about his neck as they bade him
farewell; while his Indian proselytes, learning whither he was bound,
stood with their hands pressed upon their mouths, in amazement at the
perils which awaited their ghostly instructor. La Salle, with the rest
of the party, was to follow as soon as he could finish his preparations.
It was a boisterous and gusty day, the eighteenth of November. The sails
were spread; the shore receded,--the stone walls of the fort, the huge
cross that the friar had reared, the wigwams, the settlers' cabins, the
group of staring Indians on the strand. The lake was rough; and the men,
crowded in so small a craft, grew nervous and uneasy. They hugged the
northern shore, to escape the fury of the wind, which blew savagely from
the northeast; while the long gray sweep of naked forests on their right
betokened that winter was fast closing in. On the twenty-sixth, they
reached the neighborhood of the Indian town of Taiaiagon,[116] not far
from Toronto, and ran their vessel, for safety, into the mouth of a
river,--probably the Humber,--where the ice closed about her, and they
were forced to cut her out with axes. On the fifth of December, they
attempted to cross to the mouth of the Niagara; but darkness overtook
them, and they spent a comfortless night, tossing on the troubled lake,
five or six miles from shore. In the morning, they entered the mouth of
the Niagara, and landed on the point at its eastern side, where now
stand the historic ramparts of Fort Niagara. Here they found a small
village of Senecas, attracted hither by the fisheries, who gazed with
curious eyes at the vessel, and listened in wonder as the voyagers sang
_Te Deum_ in gratitude for their safe arrival.
[Sidenote: NIAGARA FALLS.]
Hennepin, with several others, now ascended the river in a canoe to the
foot of the mountain ridge of Lewiston, which, stretching on the right
hand and on the left, forms the acclivity of a vast plateau, rent with
the mighty chasm, along which, from this point to the cataract, seven
miles above, rush, with the fury of an Alpine torrent, the gathered
waters of four inland oceans. To urge the canoe farther was impossible.
He landed, with his companions, on the west bank, near the foot of that
part of the ridge now called Queenstown Heights, climbed the steep
ascent, and pushed through the wintry forest on a tour of exploration.
On his left sank the cliffs, the furious river raging below; till at
length, in primeval solitudes unprofaned as yet by the pettiness of man,
the imperial cataract burst upon his sight.[117]
The explorers passed three miles beyond it, and encamped for the night
on the banks of Chippewa Creek, scraping away the snow, which was a foot
deep, in order to kindle a fire. In the morning they retraced their
steps, startling a number of deer and wild turkeys on their way, and
rejoined their companions at the mouth of the river.
[Sidenote: LA MOTTE AND THE SENECAS.]
La Motte now began the building of a fortified house, some two leagues
above the mouth of the Niagara.[118] Hot water was used to soften the
frozen ground; but frost was not the only obstacle. The Senecas of the
neighboring village betrayed a sullen jealousy at a design which,
indeed, boded them no good. Niagara was the key to the four great lakes
above; and whoever held possession of it could, in no small measure,
control the fur-trade of the interior. Occupied by the French, it would
in time of peace intercept the trade which the Iroquois carried on
between the western Indians and the Dutch and English at Albany, and in
time of war threaten them with serious danger. La Motte saw the
necessity of conciliating these formidable neighbors, and, if possible,
cajoling them to give their consent to the plan. La Salle, indeed, had
instructed him to that effect. He resolved on a journey to the great
village of the Senecas, and called on Hennepin, who was busied in
building a bark chapel for himself, to accompany him. They accordingly
set out with several men well armed and equipped, and bearing at their
backs presents of very considerable value. The village was beyond the
Genesee, southeast of the site of Rochester.[119] After a march of five
days, they reached it on the last day of December. They were conducted
to the lodge of the great chief, where they were beset by a staring
crowd of women and children. Two Jesuits, Raffeix and Julien Garnier,
were in the village; and their presence boded no good for the embassy.
La Motte, who seems to have had little love for priests of any kind, was
greatly annoyed at seeing them; and when the chiefs assembled to hear
what he had to say, he insisted that the two fathers should leave the
council-house. At this, Hennepin, out of respect for his cloth, thought
it befitting that he should retire also. The chiefs, forty-two in
number, squatted on the ground, arrayed in ceremonial robes of beaver,
wolf, or black-squirrel skin. "The senators of Venice," writes Hennepin,
"do not look more grave or speak more deliberately than the counsellors
of the Iroquois." La Motte's interpreter harangued the attentive
conclave, placed gift after gift at their feet,--coats, scarlet cloth,
hatchets, knives, and beads,--and used all his eloquence to persuade
them that the building of a fort on the banks of the Niagara, and a
vessel on Lake Erie, were measures vital to their interest. They gladly
took the gifts, but answered the interpreter's speech with evasive
generalities; and having been entertained with the burning of an Indian
prisoner, the discomfited embassy returned, half-famished, to Niagara.
Meanwhile, La Salle and Tonty were on their way from Fort Frontenac,
with men and supplies, to join La Motte and his advance party. They
were in a small vessel, with a pilot either unskilful or treacherous.
On Christmas eve, he was near wrecking them off the Bay of Quinté. On
the next day they crossed to the mouth of the Genesee; and La Salle,
after some delay, proceeded to the neighboring town of the Senecas,
where he appears to have arrived just after the departure of La Motte
and Hennepin. He, too, called them to a council, and tried to soothe the
extreme jealousy with which they regarded his proceedings. "I told them
my plan," he says, "and gave the best pretexts I could, and I succeeded
in my attempt."[120] More fortunate than La Motte, he persuaded them to
consent to his carrying arms and ammunition by the Niagara portage,
building a vessel above the cataract, and establishing a fortified
warehouse at the mouth of the river.
[Sidenote: JEALOUSIES.]
This success was followed by a calamity. La Salle had gone up the
Niagara to find a suitable place for a ship-yard, when he learned that
the pilot in charge of the vessel he had left had disobeyed his orders,
and ended by wrecking it on the coast. Little was saved except the
anchors and cables destined for the new vessel to be built above the
cataract. This loss threw him into extreme perplexity, and, as Hennepin
says, "would have made anybody but him give up the enterprise."[121] The
whole party were now gathered at the palisaded house which La Motte had
built, a little below the mountain ridge of Lewiston. They were a motley
crew of French, Flemings, and Italians, all mutually jealous. La Salle's
enemies had tampered with some of the men; and none of them seemed to
have had much heart for the enterprise. The fidelity even of La Motte
was doubtful. "He served me very ill," says La Salle; "and Messieurs de
Tonty and de la Forest knew that he did his best to debauch all my
men."[122] His health soon failed under the hardships of these winter
journeyings, and he returned to Fort Frontenac, half-blinded by an
inflammation of the eyes.[123] La Salle, seldom happy in the choice of
subordinates, had, perhaps, in all his company but one man whom he could
fully trust; and this was Tonty. He and Hennepin were on indifferent
terms. Men thrown together in a rugged enterprise like this quickly
learn to know each other; and the vain and assuming friar was not likely
to commend himself to La Salle's brave and loyal lieutenant. Hennepin
says that it was La Salle's policy to govern through the dissensions of
his followers; and, from whatever cause, it is certain that those
beneath him were rarely in perfect harmony.
FOOTNOTES:
[104] Hennepin, _Description de la Louisiane_ (1683), 19; Ibid., _Voyage
Curieux_ (1704), 66. Ribourde had lately arrived.
[105] _Lettre de La Motte de la Lussière, sans date; Relation de Henri
de Tonty écrite de Québec, le 14 Novembre, 1684_ (Margry, i. 573). This
paper, apparently addressed to Abbé Renaudot, is entirely distinct from
Tonty's memoir of 1693, addressed to the minister Ponchartrain.
[106] Hennepin, _Nouvelle Découverte_ (1697), 8.
[107] Ibid., _Avant Propos_, 5.
[108] Ibid., _Voyage Curieux_ (1704), 12.
[109] Hennepin, _Voyage Curieux_ (1704), 18.
[110] Ibid. _Avis au Lecteur._ He elsewhere represents himself as on
excellent terms with La Salle; with whom, he says, he used to read
histories of travels at Fort Frontenac, after which they discussed
together their plans of discovery.
[111] This was the _Racines Agnières_ of Bruyas. It was published by Mr.
Shea in 1862. Hennepin seems to have studied it carefully; for on
several occasions he makes use of words evidently borrowed from it,
putting them into the mouths of Indians speaking a dialect different
from that of the Agniers, or Mohawks.
[112] Compare Brodhead in _Hist. Mag._, x. 268.
[113] "Une enterprise capable d'épouvanter tout autre que
moi."--Hennepin, _Voyage Curieux, Avant Propos_ (1704).
[114] "Je vous proteste ici devant Dieu, que ma Relation est fidèle et
sincère," etc.--Ibid., _Avis au Lecteur_.
[115] The nature of these fabrications will be shown hereafter. They
occur, not in the early editions of Hennepin's narrative, which are
comparatively truthful, but in the edition of 1697 and those which
followed. La Salle was dead at the time of their publication.