France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
joiners, masons, soldiers, _voyageurs_ and laborers completed his
company, twenty-five men in all, with everything needful for the outfit
of the vessel.
His route, though difficult, was not so long as that which he had
followed the year before. He ascended the river Humber; crossed to Lake
Simcoe, and thence descended the Severn to the Georgian Bay of Lake
Huron; followed its eastern shore, coasted the Manitoulin Islands, and
at length reached Michilimackinac. Here, as usual, all was hostile; and
he had great difficulty in inducing the Indians, who had been excited
against him, to sell him provisions. Anxious to reach his destination,
he pushed forward with twelve men, leaving La Forest to bring on the
rest. On the fourth of November[173] he reached the ruined fort at the
mouth of the St. Joseph, and left five of his party, with the heavy
stores, to wait till La Forest should come up, while he himself hastened
forward with six Frenchmen and an Indian. A deep anxiety possessed him.
The rumor, current for months past, that the Iroquois, bent on
destroying the Illinois, were on the point of invading their country had
constantly gained strength. Here was a new disaster, which, if realized,
might involve him and his enterprise in irretrievable wreck.
He ascended the St. Joseph, crossed the portage to the Kankakee, and
followed its course downward till it joined the northern branch of the
Illinois. He had heard nothing of Tonty on the way, and neither here nor
elsewhere could he discover the smallest sign of the passage of white
men. His friend, therefore, if alive, was probably still at his post;
and he pursued his course with a mind lightened, in some small measure,
of its load of anxiety.
[Sidenote: BUFFALO.]
When last he had passed here, all was solitude; but now the scene was
changed. The boundless waste was thronged with life. He beheld that
wondrous spectacle, still to be seen at times on the plains of the
remotest West, and the memory of which can quicken the pulse and stir
the blood after the lapse of years: far and near, the prairie was alive
with buffalo; now like black specks dotting the distant swells; now
trampling by in ponderous columns, or filing in long lines, morning,
noon, and night, to drink at the river,--wading, plunging, and snorting
in the water; climbing the muddy shores, and staring with wild eyes at
the passing canoes. It was an opportunity not to be lost. The party
landed, and encamped for a hunt. Sometimes they hid under the shelving
bank, and shot them as they came to drink; sometimes, flat on their
faces, they dragged themselves through the long dead grass, till the
savage bulls, guardians of the herd, ceased their grazing, raised their
huge heads, and glared through tangled hair at the dangerous intruders.
The hunt was successful. In three days the hunters killed twelve
buffalo, besides deer, geese, and swans. They cut the meat into thin
flakes, and dried it in the sun or in the smoke of their fires. The men
were in high spirits,--delighting in the sport, and rejoicing in the
prospect of relieving Tonty and his hungry followers with a plentiful
supply.
They embarked again, and soon approached the great town of the Illinois.
The buffalo were far behind; and once more the canoes glided on their
way through a voiceless solitude. No hunters were seen; no saluting
whoop greeted their ears. They passed the cliff afterwards called the
Rock of St. Louis, where La Salle had ordered Tonty to build his
stronghold; but as he scanned its lofty top he saw no palisades, no
cabins, no sign of human hand, and still its primeval crest of forests
overhung the gliding river. Now the meadow opened before them where the
great town had stood. They gazed, astonished and confounded: all was
desolation. The town had vanished, and the meadow was black with fire.
They plied their paddles, hastened to the spot, landed; and as they
looked around their cheeks grew white, and the blood was frozen in their
veins.
[Sidenote: A NIGHT OF HORROR.]
Before them lay a plain once swarming with wild human life and covered
with Indian dwellings, now a waste of devastation and death, strewn with
heaps of ashes, and bristling with the charred poles and stakes which
had formed the framework of the lodges. At the points of most of them
were stuck human skulls, half picked by birds of prey.[174] Near at hand
was the burial-ground of the village. The travellers sickened with
horror as they entered its revolting precincts. Wolves in multitudes
fled at their approach; while clouds of crows or buzzards, rising from
the hideous repast, wheeled above their heads, or settled on the naked
branches of the neighboring forest. Every grave had been rifled, and the
bodies flung down from the scaffolds where, after the Illinois custom,
many of them had been placed. The field was strewn with broken bones and
torn and mangled corpses. A hyena warfare had been waged against the
dead. La Salle knew the handiwork of the Iroquois. The threatened blow
had fallen, and the wolfish hordes of the five cantons had fleshed their
rabid fangs in a new victim.[175]
Not far distant, the conquerors had made a rude fort of trunks, boughs,
and roots of trees laid together to form a circular enclosure; and this,
too, was garnished with skulls, stuck on the broken branches and
protruding sticks. The _caches_, or subterranean store-houses of the
villagers, had been broken open and the contents scattered. The
cornfields were laid waste, and much of the corn thrown into heaps and
half burned. As La Salle surveyed this scene of havoc, one thought
engrossed him: where were Tonty and his men? He searched the Iroquois
fort: there were abundant traces of its savage occupants, and, among
them, a few fragments of French clothing. He examined the skulls; but
the hair, portions of which clung to nearly all of them, was in every
case that of an Indian. Evening came on before he had finished the
search. The sun set, and the wilderness sank to its savage rest. Night
and silence brooded over the waste, where, far as the raven could wing
his flight, stretched the dark domain of solitude and horror.
Yet there was no silence at the spot where La Salle and his companions
made their bivouac. The howling of the wolves filled the air with fierce
and dreary dissonance. More dangerous foes were not far off, for before
nightfall they had seen fresh Indian tracks; "but, as it was very cold,"
says La Salle, "this did not prevent us from making a fire and lying
down by it, each of us keeping watch in turn. I spent the night in a
distress which you can imagine better than I can write it; and I did not
sleep a moment with trying to make up my mind as to what I ought to do.
My ignorance as to the position of those I was looking after, and my
uncertainty as to what would become of the men who were to follow me
with La Forest if they arrived at the ruined village and did not find me
there, made me apprehend every sort of trouble and disaster. At last, I
decided to keep on my way down the river, leaving some of my men behind
in charge of the goods, which it was not only useless but dangerous to
carry with me, because we should be forced to abandon them when the
winter fairly set in, which would be very soon."
[Sidenote: FEARS FOR TONTY.]
This resolution was due to a discovery he had made the evening before,
which offered, as he thought, a possible clew to the fate of Tonty and
the men with him. He thus describes it: "Near the garden of the Indians,
which was on the meadows, a league from the village and not far from the
river, I found six pointed stakes set in the ground and painted red. On
each of them was the figure of a man with bandaged eyes, drawn in black.
As the savages often set stakes of this sort where they have killed
people, I thought, by their number and position, that when the Iroquois
came, the Illinois, finding our men alone in the hut near their garden,
had either killed them or made them prisoners. And I was confirmed in
this, because, seeing no signs of a battle, I supposed that on hearing
of the approach of the Iroquois, the old men and other non-combatants
had fled, and that the young warriors had remained behind to cover their
flight, and afterwards followed, taking the French with them; while the
Iroquois, finding nobody to kill, had vented their fury on the corpses
in the graveyard."
Uncertain as was the basis of this conjecture, and feeble as was the
hope it afforded, it determined him to push forward, in order to learn
more. When daylight returned, he told his purpose to his followers, and
directed three of them to await his return near the ruined village. They
were to hide themselves on an island, conceal their fire at night, make
no smoke by day, fire no guns, and keep a close watch. Should the rest
of the party arrive, they, too, were to wait with similar precautions.
The baggage was placed in a hollow of the rocks, at a place difficult of
access; and, these arrangements made, La Salle set out on his perilous
journey with the four remaining men, Dautray, Hunaut, You, and the
Indian. Each was armed with two guns, a pistol, and a sword; and a
number of hatchets and other goods were placed in the canoe, as presents
for Indians whom they might meet.
Several leagues below the village they found, on their right hand close
to the river, a sort of island, made inaccessible by the marshes and
water which surrounded it. Here the flying Illinois had sought refuge
with their women and children, and the place was full of their deserted
huts. On the left bank, exactly opposite, was an abandoned camp of the
Iroquois. On the level meadow stood a hundred and thirteen huts, and on
the forest trees which covered the hills behind were carved the totems,
or insignia, of the chiefs, together with marks to show the number of
followers which each had led to the war. La Salle counted five hundred
and eighty-two warriors. He found marks, too, for the Illinois killed or
captured, but none to indicate that any of the Frenchmen had shared
their fate.
[Sidenote: SEARCH FOR TONTY.]
As they descended the river, they passed, on the same day, six abandoned
camps of the Illinois; and opposite to each was a camp of the invaders.
The former, it was clear, had retreated in a body; while the Iroquois
had followed their march, day by day, along the other bank. La Salle and
his men pushed rapidly onward, passed Peoria Lake, and soon reached Fort
Crèvecoeur, which they found, as they expected, demolished by the
deserters. The vessel on the stocks was still left entire, though the
Iroquois had found means to draw out the iron nails and spikes. On one
of the planks were written the words: "_Nous sommes tous sauvages: ce
15, 1680_,"--the work, no doubt, of the knaves who had pillaged and
destroyed the fort.
La Salle and his companions hastened on, and during the following day
passed four opposing camps of the savage armies. The silence of death
now reigned along the deserted river, whose lonely borders, wrapped deep
in forests, seemed lifeless as the grave. As they drew near the mouth of
the stream they saw a meadow on their right, and on its farthest verge
several human figures, erect, yet motionless. They landed, and
cautiously examined the place. The long grass was trampled down, and all
around were strewn the relics of the hideous orgies which formed the
ordinary sequel of an Iroquois victory. The figures they had seen were
the half-consumed bodies of women, still bound to the stakes where they
had been tortured. Other sights there were, too revolting for
record.[176] All the remains were those of women and children. The men,
it seemed, had fled, and left them to their fate.
Here, again, La Salle sought long and anxiously, without finding the