France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
assailed from the east and from the west, would be utterly destroyed.
There was no hope for them, he added, but in checking the farther
progress of La Salle, or, at least, retarding it, thus causing his men
to desert him. Having thrown his fire-brand, Monso and his party left
the camp in haste, dreading to be confronted with the object of their
aspersions.[151]
[Sidenote: FRESH INTRIGUES.]
In the morning, La Salle saw a change in the behavior of his hosts. They
looked on him askance, cold, sullen, and suspicious. There was one
Omawha, a chief, whose favor he had won the day before by the politic
gift of two hatchets and three knives, and who now came to him in secret
to tell him what had taken place at the nocturnal council. La Salle at
once saw in it a device of his enemies; and this belief was confirmed,
when, in the afternoon, Nicanopé, brother of the head chief, sent to
invite the Frenchmen to a feast. They repaired to his lodge; but before
dinner was served,--that is to say, while the guests, white and red,
were seated on mats, each with his hunting-knife in his hand, and the
wooden bowl before him which was to receive his share of the bear's or
buffalo's meat, or the corn boiled in fat, with which he was to be
regaled,--while such was the posture of the company, their host arose
and began a long speech. He told the Frenchmen that he had invited them
to his lodge less to refresh their bodies with good cheer than to cure
their minds of the dangerous purpose which possessed them, of descending
the Mississippi. Its shores, he said, were beset by savage tribes,
against whose numbers and ferocity their valor would avail nothing; its
waters were infested by serpents, alligators, and unnatural monsters;
while the river itself, after raging among rocks and whirlpools, plunged
headlong at last into a fathomless gulf, which would swallow them and
their vessel forever.
[Sidenote: LA SALLE AND THE INDIANS.]
La Salle's men were for the most part raw hands, knowing nothing of the
wilderness, and easily alarmed at its dangers; but there were two among
them, old _coureurs de bois_, who unfortunately knew too much; for they
understood the Indian orator, and explained his speech to the rest. As
La Salle looked around on the circle of his followers, he read an augury
of fresh trouble in their disturbed and rueful visages. He waited
patiently, however, till the speaker had ended, and then answered him,
through his interpreter, with great composure. First, he thanked him for
the friendly warning which his affection had impelled him to utter; but,
he continued, the greater the danger, the greater the honor; and even
if the danger were real, Frenchmen would never flinch from it. But were
not the Illinois jealous? Had they not been deluded by lies? "We were
not asleep, my brother, when Monso came to tell you, under cover of
night, that we were spies of the Iroquois. The presents he gave you,
that you might believe his falsehoods, are at this moment buried in the
earth under this lodge. If he told the truth, why did he skulk away in
the dark? Why did he not show himself by day? Do you not see that when
we first came among you, and your camp was all in confusion, we could
have killed you without needing help from the Iroquois? And now, while I
am speaking, could we not put your old men to death, while your young
warriors are all gone away to hunt? If we meant to make war on you, we
should need no help from the Iroquois, who have so often felt the force
of our arms. Look at what we have brought you. It is not weapons to
destroy you, but merchandise and tools for your good. If you still
harbor evil thoughts of us, be frank as we are, and speak them boldly.
Go after this impostor Monso, and bring him back, that we may answer him
face to face; for he never saw either us or the Iroquois, and what can
he know of the plots that he pretends to reveal?"[152] Nicanopé had
nothing to reply, and, grunting assent in the depths of his throat,
made a sign that the feast should proceed.
The French were lodged in huts, near the Indian camp; and, fearing
treachery, La Salle placed a guard at night. On the morning after the
feast, he came out into the frosty air and looked about him for the
sentinels. Not one of them was to be seen. Vexed and alarmed, he entered
hut after hut and roused his drowsy followers. Six of the number,
including two of the best carpenters, were nowhere to be found.
Discontented and mutinous from the first, and now terrified by the
fictions of Nicanopé, they had deserted, preferring the hardships of the
midwinter forest to the mysterious terrors of the Mississippi. La Salle
mustered the rest before him, and inveighed sternly against the
cowardice and baseness of those who had thus abandoned him, regardless
of his many favors. If any here, he added, are afraid, let them but wait
till the spring, and they shall have free leave to return to Canada,
safely and without dishonor.[153]
[Sidenote: LA SALLE AGAIN POISONED.]
This desertion cut him to the heart. It showed him that he was leaning
on a broken reed; and he felt that, on an enterprise full of doubt and
peril, there were scarcely four men in his party whom he could trust.
Nor was desertion the worst he had to fear; for here, as at Fort
Frontenac, an attempt was made to kill him. Tonty tells us that poison
was placed in the pot in which their food was cooked, and that La Salle
was saved by an antidote which some of his friends had given him before
he left France. This, it will be remembered, was an epoch of poisoners.
It was in the following month that the notorious La Voisin was burned
alive, at Paris, for practices to which many of the highest nobility
were charged with being privy, not excepting some in whose veins ran the
blood of the gorgeous spendthrift who ruled the destinies of
France.[154]
In these early French enterprises in the West, it was to the last degree
difficult to hold men to their duty. Once fairly in the wilderness,
completely freed from the sharp restraints of authority in which they
had passed their lives, a spirit of lawlessness broke out among them
with a violence proportioned to the pressure which had hitherto
controlled it. Discipline had no resources and no guarantee; while those
outlaws of the forest, the _coureurs de bois_, were always before their
eyes, a standing example of unbridled license. La Salle, eminently
skilful in his dealings with Indians, was rarely so happy with his own
countrymen; and yet the desertions from which he was continually
suffering were due far more to the inevitable difficulty of his position
than to any want of conduct on his part.
FOOTNOTES:
[140] _Lettre de Duchesneau à----, 10 Nov., 1680._
[141] The Kankakee was called at this time the Theakiki, or Haukiki
(Marest); a name which, as Charlevoix says, was afterwards corrupted by
the French to Kiakiki whence, probably, its present form. In La Salle's
time, the name "Theakiki" was given to the river Illinois through all
its course. It was also called the Rivière Seignelay, the Rivière des
Macopins, and the Rivière Divine, or Rivière de la Divine. The latter
name, when Charlevoix visited the country in 1721, was confined to the
northern branch. He gives an interesting and somewhat graphic account of
the portage and the sources of the Kankakee, in his letter dated _De la
Source du Theakiki, ce dix-sept Septembre_, 1721.
Why the Illinois should ever have been called the "Divine," it is not
easy to see. The Memoirs of St. Simon suggest an explanation. Madame de
Frontenac and her friend Mademoiselle d'Outrelaise, he tells us, lived
together in apartments at the Arsenal, where they held their _salon_ and
exercised a great power in society. They were called at court _les
Divines_. (St. Simon, v. 335: Cheruel.) In compliment to Frontenac, the
river may have been named after his wife or her friend. The suggestion
is due to M. Margry. I have seen a map by Raudin, Frontenac's engineer,
on which the river is called "Rivière de la Divine ou l'Outrelaise."
[142] The change is very recent. Within the memory of men not yet old,
wolves and deer, besides wild swans, wild turkeys, cranes, and pelicans,
abounded in this region. In 1840, a friend of mine shot a deer from the
window of a farmhouse, near the present town of La Salle. Running wolves
on horseback was his favorite amusement in this part of the country. The
buffalo long ago disappeared; but the early settlers found frequent
remains of them. Mr. James Clark, of Utica, Ill., told me that he once
found a large quantity of their bones and skulls in one place, as if a
herd had perished in the snowdrifts.
[143] "Starved Rock." It will hold, hereafter, a conspicuous place in
the narrative.
[144] _La Louisiane_, 137. Allouez (_Relation_, 1673-79) found three
hundred and fifty-one lodges. This was in 1677. The population of this
town, which embraced five or six distinct tribes of the Illinois, was
continually changing. In 1675, Marquette addressed here an auditory
composed of five hundred chiefs and old men, and fifteen hundred young
men, besides women and children. He estimates the number of fires at
five or six hundred. (_Voyages du Père Marquette_, 98: Lenox.) Membré,
who was here in 1680, says that it then contained seven or eight
thousand souls. (Membré in Le Clerc, _Premier Établissement de la Foy_,
ii. 173.) On the remarkable manuscript map of Franquelin, 1684, it is
set down at twelve hundred warriors, or about six thousand souls. This
was after the destructive inroad of the Iroquois. Some years later,
Rasle reported upwards of twenty-four hundred families. (_Lettre à son
Frère, in Lettres Édifiantes._)
At times, nearly the whole Illinois population was gathered here. At
other times, the several tribes that composed it separated, some
dwelling apart from the rest; so that at one period the Illinois formed
eleven villages, while at others they were gathered into two, of which
this was much the larger. The meadows around it were extensively
cultivated, yielding large crops, chiefly of Indian corn. The lodges
were built along the river-bank for a distance of a mile, and sometimes
far more. In their shape, though not in their material, they resembled
those of the Hurons. There were no palisades or embankments.
This neighborhood abounds in Indian relics. The village graveyard
appears to have been on a rising ground, near the river immediately in
front of the town of Utica. This is the only part of the river bottom,
from this point to the Mississippi, not liable to inundation in the
spring floods. It now forms part of a farm occupied by a tenant of Mr.
James Clark. Both Mr. Clark and his tenant informed me that every year
great quantities of human bones and teeth were turned up here by the
plough. Many implements of stone are also found, together with beads and
other ornaments of Indian and European fabric.
[145] "Les paroles les plus touchantes."--_Hennepin_ (1683), 139. The
later editions add the modest qualification, "que je pus."
[146] Peoria was the name of one of the tribes of the Illinois.
Hennepin's dates here do not exactly agree with those of La Salle
(_Lettre du 29 Sept., 1680_), who says that they were at the Illinois
village on the first of January, and at Peoria Lake on the fifth.
[147] At least, it is so now at this place. Perhaps, in La Salle's time,
it was not wholly so; for there is evidence, in various parts of the
West, that the forest has made considerable encroachments on the open
country.
[148] Hennepin (1683), 142.
[149] Hennepin (1683), 144-149. The later editions omit a part of the
above.
[150] "Un sauvage, nommé Monso, qui veut dire Chevreuil_."--La Salle._
Probably Monso is a misprint for Mouso, as _mousoa_ is Illinois for
_chevreuil_, or deer.