France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
them on a grand hunt along the borders of the Mississippi. Du Gay was
separated for a time from Hennepin, who was placed in a canoe with a
withered squaw more than eighty years old. In spite of her age, she
handled her paddle with great address, and used it vigorously, as
occasion required, to repress the gambols of three children, who, to
Hennepin's annoyance, occupied the middle of the canoe. The hunt was
successful. The Sioux warriors, active as deer, chased the buffalo on
foot with their stone-headed arrows, on the plains behind the heights
that bordered the river; while the old men stood sentinels at the top,
watching for the approach of enemies. One day an alarm was given. The
warriors rushed towards the supposed point of danger, but found nothing
more formidable than two squaws of their own nation, who brought strange
news. A war-party of Sioux, they said, had gone towards Lake Superior,
and had met by the way five "Spirits;" that is to say, five Europeans.
Hennepin was full of curiosity to learn who the strangers might be; and
they, on their part, were said to have shown great anxiety to know the
nationality of the three white men who, as they were told, were on the
river. The hunt was over; and the hunters, with Hennepin and his
companion, were on their way northward to their towns, when they met the
five "Spirits" at some distance below the Falls of St. Anthony. They
proved to be Daniel Greysolon du Lhut, with four well-armed Frenchmen.
[Sidenote: DE LHUT'S EXPLORATIONS.]
This bold and enterprising man, stigmatized by the Intendant Duchesneau
as a leader of _coureurs de bois_, was a cousin of Tonty, born at Lyons.
He belonged to that caste of the lesser nobles whose name was legion,
and whose admirable military qualities shone forth so conspicuously in
the wars of Louis XIV. Though his enterprises were independent of those
of La Salle, they were at this time carried on in connection with Count
Frontenac and certain merchants in his interest, of whom Du Lhut's
uncle, Patron, was one; while Louvigny, his brother-in-law, was in
alliance with the governor, and was an officer of his guard. Here, then,
was a kind of family league, countenanced by Frontenac, and acting
conjointly with him, in order, if the angry letters of the intendant are
to be believed, to reap a clandestine profit under the shadow of the
governor's authority, and in violation of the royal ordinances. The
rudest part of the work fell to the share of Du Lhut, who with a
persistent hardihood, not surpassed perhaps even by La Salle, was
continually in the forest, in the Indian towns, or in remote wilderness
outposts planted by himself, exploring, trading, fighting, ruling
lawless savages and whites scarcely less ungovernable, and on one or
more occasions varying his life by crossing the ocean to gain interviews
with the colonial minister Seignelay, amid the splendid vanities of
Versailles. Strange to say, this man of hardy enterprise was a martyr
to the gout, which for more than a quarter of a century grievously
tormented him; though for a time he thought himself cured by the
intercession of the Iroquois saint, Catharine Tegahkouita, to whom he
had made a vow to that end. He was, without doubt, an habitual breaker
of the royal ordinances regulating the fur-trade; yet his services were
great to the colony and to the crown, and his name deserves a place of
honor among the pioneers of American civilization.[219]
When Hennepin met him, he had been about two years in the wilderness. In
September, 1678, he left Quebec for the purpose of exploring the region
of the Upper Mississippi, and establishing relations of friendship with
the Sioux and their kindred the Assiniboins. In the summer of 1679 he
visited three large towns of the eastern division of the Sioux,
including those visited by Hennepin in the following year, and planted
the King's arms in all of them. Early in the autumn he was at the head
of Lake Superior, holding a council with the Assiniboins and the lake
tribes, and inducing them to live at peace with the Sioux. In all this,
he acted in a public capacity, under the authority of the governor; but
it is not to be supposed that he forgot his own interests or those of
his associates. The intendant angrily complains that he aided and
abetted the _coureurs de bois_ in their lawless courses, and sent down
in their canoes great quantities of beaver-skins consigned to the
merchants in league with him, under cover of whose names the governor
reaped his share of the profits.
In June, 1680, while Hennepin was in the Sioux villages, Du Lhut set out
from the head of Lake Superior, with two canoes, four Frenchmen, and an
Indian, to continue his explorations.[220] He ascended a river,
apparently the Burnt Wood, and reached from thence a branch of the
Mississippi, which seems to have been the St. Croix. It was now that, to
his surprise, he learned that there were three Europeans on the main
river below; and fearing that they might be Englishmen or Spaniards
encroaching on the territories of the King, he eagerly pressed forward
to solve his doubts. When he saw Hennepin, his mind was set at rest; and
the travellers met with mutual cordiality. They followed the Indians to
their villages of Mille Lac, where Hennepin had now no reason to
complain of their treatment of him. The Sioux gave him and Du Lhut a
grand feast of honor, at which were seated a hundred and twenty naked
guests; and the great chief Ouasicoudé, with his own hands, placed
before Hennepin a bark dish containing a mess of smoked meat and wild
rice.
Autumn had come, and the travellers bethought them of going home. The
Sioux, consoled by their promises to return with goods for trade, did
not oppose their departure; and they set out together, eight white men
in all. As they passed St. Anthony's Falls, two of the men stole two
buffalo-robes which were hung on trees as offerings to the spirit of the
cataract. When Du Lhut heard of it he was very angry, telling the men
that they had endangered the lives of the whole party. Hennepin admitted
that in the view of human prudence he was right, but urged that the act
was good and praiseworthy, inasmuch as the offerings were made to a
false god; while the men, on their part, proved mutinous, declaring that
they wanted the robes and meant to keep them. The travellers continued
their journey in great ill-humor, but were presently soothed by the
excellent hunting which they found on the way. As they approached the
Wisconsin, they stopped to dry the meat of the buffalo they had killed,
when to their amazement they saw a war-party of Sioux approaching in a
fleet of canoes. Hennepin represents himself as showing on this occasion
an extraordinary courage, going to meet the Indians with a peace-pipe,
and instructing Du Lhut, who knew more of these matters than he, how he
ought to behave. The Sioux proved not unfriendly, and said nothing of
the theft of the buffalo-robes. They soon went on their way to attack
the Illinois and Missouris, leaving the Frenchmen to ascend the
Wisconsin unmolested.
[Sidenote: THE RETURN.]
After various adventures, they reached the station of the Jesuits at
Green Bay; but its existence is wholly ignored by Hennepin, whose zeal
for his own Order will not permit him to allude to this establishment of
the rival missionaries.[221] He is equally reticent with regard to the
Jesuit mission at Michilimackinac, where the party soon after arrived,
and where they spent the winter. The only intimation which he gives of
its existence consists in the mention of the Jesuit Pierson, who was a
Fleming like himself, and who often skated with him on the frozen lake,
or kept him company in fishing through a hole in the ice.[222] When the
spring opened, Hennepin descended Lake Huron, followed the Detroit to
Lake Erie, and proceeded thence to Niagara. Here he spent some time in
making a fresh examination of the cataract, and then resumed his voyage
on Lake Ontario. He stopped, however, at the great town of the Senecas,
near the Genesee, where, with his usual spirit of meddling, he took upon
him the functions of the civil and military authorities, convoked the
chiefs to a council, and urged them to set at liberty certain Ottawa
prisoners whom they had captured in violation of treaties. Having
settled this affair to his satisfaction, he went to Fort Frontenac,
where his brother missionary, Buisset, received him with a welcome
rendered the warmer by a story which had reached him that the Indians
had hanged Hennepin with his own cord of St. Francis.
From Fort Frontenac he went to Montreal; and leaving his two men on a
neighboring island, that they might escape the payment of duties on a
quantity of furs which they had with them, he paddled alone towards the
town. Count Frontenac chanced to be here, and, looking from the window
of a house near the river, he saw approaching in a canoe a Récollet
father, whose appearance indicated the extremity of hard service; for
his face was worn and sunburnt, and his tattered habit of St. Francis
was abundantly patched with scraps of buffalo-skin. When at length he
recognized the long-lost Hennepin, he received him, as the father
writes, "with all the tenderness which a missionary could expect from a
person of his rank and quality." He kept him for twelve days in his own
house, and listened with interest to such of his adventures as the friar
saw fit to divulge.
[Sidenote: LA SALLE'S LETTERS.]
And here we bid farewell to Father Hennepin. "Providence," he writes,
"preserved my life that I might make known my great discoveries to the
world." He soon after went to Europe, where the story of his travels
found a host of readers, but where he died at last in a deserved
obscurity.[223]
FOOTNOTES:
[212] The Sioux, or Dacotah, as they call themselves, were a numerous
people, separated into three great divisions, which were again
subdivided into bands. Those among whom Hennepin was a prisoner belonged
to the division known as the Issanti, Issanyati, or, as he writes it,
_Issati_, of which the principal band was the Meddewakantonwan. The
other great divisions, the Yanktons and the Tintonwans, or Tetons, lived
west of the Mississippi, extending beyond the Missouri, and ranging as
far as the Rocky Mountains. The Issanti cultivated the soil; but the
extreme western bands subsisted on the buffalo alone. The former had two
kinds of dwelling,--the _teepee_, or skin-lodge, and the bark-lodge. The
teepee, which was used by all the Sioux, consists of a covering of
dressed buffalo-hide, stretched on a conical stack of poles. The
bark-lodge was peculiar to the Eastern Sioux; and examples of it might
be seen, until within a few years, among the bands on the St. Peter's.
In its general character, it was like the Huron and Iroquois houses, but
was inferior in construction. It had a ridge roof, framed of poles,
extending from the posts which formed the sides; and the whole was
covered with elm-bark. The lodges in the villages to which Hennepin was
conducted were probably of this kind.
The name Sioux is an abbreviation of _Nadouessioux_, an Ojibwa word,
meaning "enemies." The Ojibwas used it to designate this people, and
occasionally also the Iroquois, being at deadly war with both.
Rev. Stephen B. Riggs, for many years a missionary among the Issanti
Sioux, says that this division consists of four distinct bands. They
ceded all their lands east of the Mississippi to the United States in
1837, and lived on the St. Peter's till driven thence in consequence of
the massacres of 1862, 1863. The Yankton Sioux consist of two bands,
which are again subdivided. The Assiniboins, or Hohays, are an offshoot
from the Yanktons, with whom they are now at war. The Tintonwan, or