France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
FOOTNOTES:
[155] Charlevoix, i. 459; La Potherie, ii. 140; La Hontan, _Memoir on
the Fur-Trade of Canada_. I am indebted for a copy of this paper to
Winthrop Sargent, Esq., who purchased the original at the sale of the
library of the poet Southey. Like Hennepin, La Hontan went over to the
English; and this memoir is written in their interest.
[156] _Lettre de La Salle à La Barre, Chicagou, 4 Juin, 1683._ This is a
long letter, addressed to the successor of Frontenac in the government
of Canada. La Salle says that a young Indian belonging to him told him
that three years before he saw a white man, answering the description of
the pilot, a prisoner among a tribe beyond the Mississippi. He had been
captured with four others on that river, while making his way with
canoes, laden with goods, towards the Sioux. His companions had been
killed. Other circumstances, which La Salle details at great length,
convinced him that the white prisoner was no other than the pilot of the
"Griffin." The evidence, however, is not conclusive.
[157] _Relation des Découvertes et des Voyages du Sr. de la Salle,
Seigneur et Gouverneur du Fort de Frontenac, au delà des grands Lacs de
la Nouvelle France, faits par ordre de Monseigneur Colbert_, 1679, 80 et
81. Hennepin gives a story which is not essentially different, except
that he makes himself a conspicuous actor in it.
[158] All the above is from Hennepin; and it seems to be marked by his
characteristic egotism. It appears, from La Salle's letters, that Accau
was the real chief of the party; that their orders were to explore not
only the Illinois, but also a part of the Mississippi; and that Hennepin
volunteered to go with the others. Accau was chosen because he spoke
several Indian languages.
[159] An eminent writer has mistaken "Picard" for a personal name. Du
Gay was called "Le Picard," because he came from the province of
Picardy.
[160] (1683), 188. This commendation is suppressed in the later
editions.
[161] Tonty erroneously places their departure on the twenty-second.
[162] _Déclaration faite par Moyse Hillaret, charpentier de barque._
CHAPTER XIV.
1680.
HARDIHOOD OF LA SALLE.
The Winter Journey.--The Deserted Town.--Starved Rock.--Lake
Michigan.--The Wilderness.--War Parties.--La Salle's Men give
out.--Ill Tidings.--Mutiny.--Chastisement of the Mutineers.
La Salle well knew what was before him, and nothing but necessity
spurred him to this desperate journey. He says that he could trust
nobody else to go in his stead, and that unless the articles lost in the
"Griffin" were replaced without delay, the expedition would be retarded
a full year, and he and his associates consumed by its expenses.
"Therefore," he writes to one of them, "though the thaws of approaching
spring greatly increased the difficulty of the way, interrupted as it
was everywhere by marshes and rivers, to say nothing of the length of
the journey, which is about five hundred leagues in a direct line, and
the danger of meeting Indians of four or five different nations through
whose country we were to pass, as well as an Iroquois army which we knew
was coming that way; though we must suffer all the time from hunger;
sleep on the open ground, and often without food; watch by night and
march by day, loaded with baggage, such as blanket, clothing, kettle,
hatchet, gun, powder, lead, and skins to make moccasins; sometimes
pushing through thickets, sometimes climbing rocks covered with ice and
snow, sometimes wading whole days through marshes where the water was
waist-deep or even more, at a season when the snow was not entirely
melted,--though I knew all this, it did not prevent me from resolving to
go on foot to Fort Frontenac, to learn for myself what had become of my
vessel, and bring back the things we needed."[163]
The winter had been a severe one; and when, an hour after leaving the
fort, he and his companions reached the still water of Peoria Lake, they
found it sheeted with ice from shore to shore. They carried their canoes
up the bank, made two rude sledges, placed the light vessels upon them,
and dragged them to the upper end of the lake, where they encamped. In
the morning they found the river still covered with ice, too weak to
bear them and too strong to permit them to break a way for the canoes.
They spent the whole day in carrying them through the woods, toiling
knee-deep in saturated snow. Rain fell in floods, and they took shelter
at night in a deserted Indian hut.
In the morning, the third of March, they dragged their canoes half a
league farther; then launched them, and, breaking the ice with clubs and
hatchets, forced their way slowly up the stream. Again their progress
was barred, and again they took to the woods, toiling onward till a
tempest of moist, half-liquid snow forced them to bivouac for the night.
A sharp frost followed, and in the morning the white waste around them
was glazed with a dazzling crust. Now, for the first time, they could
use their snow-shoes. Bending to their work, dragging their canoes,
which glided smoothly over the polished surface, they journeyed on hour
after hour and league after league, till they reached at length the
great town of the Illinois, still void of its inhabitants.[164]
[Sidenote: THE DESERTED TOWN.]
It was a desolate and lonely scene,--the river gliding dark and cold
between its banks of rushes; the empty lodges, covered with crusted
snow; the vast white meadows; the distant cliffs, bearded with shining
icicles; and the hills wrapped in forests, which glittered from afar
with the icy incrustations that cased each frozen twig. Yet there was
life in the savage landscape. The men saw buffalo wading in the snow,
and they killed one of them. More than this: they discovered the tracks
of moccasins. They cut rushes by the edge of the river, piled them on
the bank, and set them on fire, that the smoke might attract the eyes of
savages roaming near.
On the following day, while the hunters were smoking the meat of the
buffalo, La Salle went out to reconnoitre, and presently met three
Indians, one of whom proved to be Chassagoac, the principal chief of the
Illinois.[165] La Salle brought them to his bivouac, feasted them, gave
them a red blanket, a kettle, and some knives and hatchets, made friends
with them, promised to restrain the Iroquois from attacking them, told
them that he was on his way to the settlements to bring arms and
ammunition to defend them against their enemies, and, as the result of
these advances, gained from the chief a promise that he would send
provisions to Tonty's party at Fort Crèvecoeur.
After several days spent at the deserted town, La Salle prepared to
resume his journey. Before his departure, his attention was attracted to
the remarkable cliff of yellow sandstone, now called Starved Rock, a
mile or more above the village,--a natural fortress, which a score of
resolute white men might make good against a host of savages; and he
soon afterwards sent Tonty an order to examine it, and make it his
stronghold in case of need.[166]
On the fifteenth the party set out again, carried their canoes along
the bank of the river as far as the rapids above Ottawa, then launched
them and pushed their way upward, battling with the floating ice, which,
loosened by a warm rain, drove down the swollen current in sheets. On
the eighteenth they reached a point some miles below the site of Joliet,
and here found the river once more completely closed. Despairing of
farther progress by water, they hid their canoes on an island, and
struck across the country for Lake Michigan.
[Sidenote: LA SALLE'S JOURNEY.]
It was the worst of all seasons for such a journey. The nights were
cold, but the sun was warm at noon, and the half-thawed prairie was one
vast tract of mud, water, and discolored, half-liquid snow. On the
twenty-second they crossed marshes and inundated meadows, wading to the
knee, till at noon they were stopped by a river, perhaps the Calumet.
They made a raft of hard-wood timber, for there was no other, and shoved
themselves across. On the next day they could see Lake Michigan dimly
glimmering beyond the waste of woods; and, after crossing three swollen
streams, they reached it at evening. On the twenty-fourth they followed
its shore, till, at nightfall, they arrived at the fort which they had
built in the autumn at the mouth of the St. Joseph. Here La Salle found
Chapelle and Leblanc, the two men whom he had sent from hence to
Michilimackinac, in search of the "Griffin."[167] They reported that
they had made the circuit of the lake, and had neither seen her nor
heard tidings of her. Assured of her fate, he ordered them to rejoin
Tonty at Fort Crèvecoeur; while he pushed onward with his party
through the unknown wild of Southern Michigan.
"The rain," says La Salle, "which lasted all day, and the raft we were
obliged to make to cross the river, stopped us till noon of the
twenty-fifth, when we continued our march through the woods, which was
so interlaced with thorns and brambles that in two days and a half our
clothes were all torn, and our faces so covered with blood that we
hardly knew each other. On the twenty-eighth we found the woods more
open, and began to fare better, meeting a good deal of game, which after
this rarely failed us; so that we no longer carried provisions with us,
but made a meal of roast meat wherever we happened to kill a deer, bear,
or turkey. These are the choicest feasts on a journey like this; and
till now we had generally gone without them, so that we had often walked
all day without breakfast.
[Sidenote: INDIAN ALARMS.]
"The Indians do not hunt in this region, which is debatable ground
between five or six nations who are at war, and, being afraid of each
other, do not venture into these parts except to surprise each other,
and always with the greatest precaution and all possible secrecy. The
reports of our guns and the carcasses of the animals we killed soon led
some of them to find our trail. In fact, on the evening of the
twenty-eighth, having made our fire by the edge of a prairie, we were
surrounded by them; but as the man on guard waked us, and we posted
ourselves behind trees with our guns, these savages, who are called
Wapoos, took us for Iroquois, and thinking that there must be a great
many of us because we did not travel secretly, as they do when in small
bands, they ran off without shooting their arrows, and gave the alarm to
their comrades, so that we were two days without meeting anybody."
La Salle guessed the cause of their fright; and, in order to confirm
their delusion, he drew with charcoal, on the trunks of trees from which
he had stripped the bark, the usual marks of an Iroquois war-party, with
signs for prisoners and for scalps, after the custom of those dreaded
warriors. This ingenious artifice, as will soon appear, was near proving
the destruction of the whole party. He also set fire to the dry grass of
the prairies over which he and his men had just passed, thus destroying
the traces of their passage. "We practised this device every night, and
it answered very well so long as we were passing over an open country;
but on the thirtieth we got into great marshes, flooded by the thaws,
and were obliged to cross them in mud or water up to the waist; so that
our tracks betrayed us to a band of Mascoutins who were out after
Iroquois. They followed us through these marshes during the three days
we were crossing them; but we made no fire at night, contenting
ourselves with taking off our wet clothes and wrapping ourselves in our
blankets on some dry knoll, where we slept till morning. At last, on
the night of the second of April, there came a hard frost, and our