France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
Teton Sioux, forming the most western division and the largest, comprise
seven bands, and are among the bravest and fiercest tenants of the
prairie.
The earliest French writers estimate the total number of the Sioux at
forty thousand; but this is little better than conjecture. Mr. Riggs, in
1852, placed it at about twenty-five thousand.
[213] These baths consist of a small hut, covered closely with
buffalo-skins, into which the patient and his friends enter, carefully
closing every aperture. A pile of heated stones is placed in the middle,
and water is poured upon them, raising a dense vapor. They are still
(1868) in use among the Sioux and some other tribes.
[214] Hennepin's notice of the falls of St. Anthony, though brief, is
sufficiently accurate. He says, in his first edition, that they are
forty or fifty feet high, but adds ten feet more in the edition of 1697.
In 1821, according to Schoolcraft, the perpendicular fall measured forty
feet. Great changes, however, have taken place here, and are still in
progress. The rock is a very soft, friable sandstone, overlaid by a
stratum of limestone; and it is crumbling with such rapidity under the
action of the water that the cataract will soon be little more than a
rapid. Other changes equally disastrous, in an artistic point of view,
are going on even more quickly. Beside the falls stands a city, which,
by an ingenious combination of the Greek and Sioux languages, has
received the name of Minneapolis, or City of the Waters, and which in
1867 contained ten thousand inhabitants, two national banks, and an
opera-house; while its rival city of St. Anthony, immediately opposite,
boasted a gigantic water-cure and a State university. In short, the
great natural beauty of the place is utterly spoiled.
[215] Oanktayhee, the principal deity of the Sioux, was supposed to live
under these falls, though he manifested himself in the form of a
buffalo. It was he who created the earth, like the Algonquin Manabozho,
from mud brought to him in the paws of a musk-rat. Carver, in 1766, saw
an Indian throw everything he had about him into the cataract as an
offering to this deity.
[216] In the edition of 1683. In that of 1697 he had grown to seven or
eight feet. The bank-swallows still make their nests in these cliffs,
boring easily into the soft sandstone.
[217] Hennepin speaks of their size with astonishment, and says that the
two together would weigh twenty-five pounds. Cat-fish have been taken in
the Mississippi, weighing more than a hundred and fifty pounds.
[218] The "Lover's Leap," or "Maiden's Rock" from which a Sioux girl,
Winona, or the "Eldest Born," is said to have thrown herself, in the
despair of disappointed affection. The story, which seems founded in
truth, will be found, not without embellishments, in Mrs. Eastman's
_Legends of the Sioux_.
[219] The facts concerning Du Lhut have been gleaned from a variety of
contemporary documents, chiefly the letters of his enemy Duchesneau, who
always puts him in the worst light, especially in his despatch to
Seignelay of 10 Nov., 1679, where he charges both him and the governor
with carrying on an illicit trade with the English of New York. Du Lhut
himself, in a memoir dated 1685 (see Harrisse, _Bibliographie_, 176),
strongly denies these charges. Du Lhut built a trading fort on Lake
Superior, called Cananistigoyan (La Hontan), or Kamalastigouia (Perrot).
It was on the north side, at the mouth of a river entering Thunder Bay,
where Fort William now stands. In 1684 he caused two Indians, who had
murdered several Frenchmen on Lake Superior, to be shot. He displayed in
this affair great courage and coolness, undaunted by the crowd of
excited savages who surrounded him and his little band of Frenchmen. The
long letter, in which he recounts the capture and execution of the
murderers, is before me. Duchesneau makes his conduct on this occasion
the ground of a charge of rashness. In 1686 Denonville, then governor of
the colony, ordered him to fortify the Detroit; that is, the strait
between Lakes Erie and Huron. He went thither with fifty men and built a
palisade fort, which he occupied for some time. In 1687 he, together
with Tonty and Durantaye, joined Denonville against the Senecas, with a
body of Indians from the Upper Lakes. In 1689, during the panic that
followed the Iroquois invasion of Montreal, Du Lhut, with twenty-eight
Canadians, attacked twenty-two Iroquois in canoes, received their fire
without returning it, bore down upon them, killed eighteen of them, and
captured three, only one escaping. In 1695 he was in command at Fort
Frontenac. In 1697 he succeeded to the command of a company of infantry,
but was suffering wretchedly from the gout at Fort Frontenac. In 1710
Vaudreuil, in a despatch to the minister Ponchartrain, announced his
death as occurring in the previous winter, and added the brief comment,
"c'était un très-honnête homme." Other contemporaries speak to the same
effect. "Mr. Dulhut, Gentilhomme Lionnois, qui a beaucoup de mérite
et de capacité."--_La Hontan_, i. 103 (1703). "Le Sieur du Lut, homme
d'esprit et d'expérience."--_Le Clerc_, ii. 137. Charlevoix calls him
"one of the bravest officers the King has ever had in this colony." His
name is variously spelled Du Luc, Du Lud, Du Lude, Du Lut, Du Luth, Du
Lhut. For an account of the Iroquois virgin, Tegahkouita, whose
intercession is said to have cured him of the gout, see Charlevoix, i.
572.
On a contemporary manuscript map by the Jesuit Raffeix, representing the
routes of Marquette, La Salle, and Du Lhut, are the following words,
referring to the last-named discoverer, and interesting in connection
with Hennepin's statements: "Mr. du Lude le premier a esté chez les
Sioux en 1678, et a esté proche la source du Mississippi, et ensuite
vint retirer le P. Louis [_Hennepin_] qui avoit esté fait prisonnier
chez les Sioux." Du Lhut here appears as the deliverer of Hennepin. One
of his men was named Pepin; hence, no doubt, the name of Lake Pepin.
[220] _Memoir on the French Dominion in Canada, N. Y. Col. Docs._, ix.
781.
[221] On the other hand, he sets down on his map of 1683 a mission of
the Récollets at a point north of the farthest sources of the
Mississippi, to which no white man had ever penetrated.
[222] He says that Pierson had come among the Indians to learn their
language; that he "retained the frankness and rectitude of our country"
and "a disposition always on the side of candor and sincerity. In a
word, he seemed to me to be all that a Christian ought to be" (1697),
433.
[223] Since the two preceding chapters were written, the letters of La
Salle have been brought to light by the researches of M. Margry. They
confirm, in nearly all points, the conclusions given above; though, as
before observed (_note_, 186), they show misstatements on the part of
Hennepin concerning his position at the outset of the expedition. La
Salle writes: "J'ay fait remonter le fleuve Colbert, nommé par les
Iroquois Gastacha, par les Outaouais Mississipy par un canot conduit par
deux de mes gens, l'un nommé Michel Accault et l'autre Picard, auxquels
le R. P. Hennepin se joignit pour ne perdre pas l'occasion de prescher
l'Évangile aux peuples qui habitent dessus et qui n'en avoient jamais
oui parler." In the same letter he recounts their voyage on the Upper
Mississippi, and their capture by the Sioux in accordance with the story
of Hennepin himself. Hennepin's assertion, that La Salle had promised to
send a number of men to meet him at the mouth of the Wisconsin, turns
out to be true. "Estans tous revenus en chasse avec les Nadouessioux
[_Sioux_] vers Ouisconsing [_Wisconsin_], le R. P. Louis Hempin
[_Hennepin_] et Picard prirent résolution de venir jusqu'à l'emboucheure
de la rivière où j'avois promis d'envoyer de mes nouvelles, comme
j'avois fait par six hommes que les Jésuistes desbauchèrent en leur
disant que le R. P. Louis et ses compagnons de voyage avoient esté
tuez."
It is clear that La Salle understood Hennepin; for, after speaking of
his journey, he adds: "J'ai cru qu'il estoit à propos de vous faire le
narré des aventures de ce canot parce que je ne doute pas qu'on en
parle; et si vous souhaitez en conférer avec le P. Louis Hempin,
Récollect, qui est repassé en France, il faut un peu le connoistre, car
il ne manquera pas d'exagérer toutes choses, c'est son caractère, et à
moy mesme il m'a escrit comme s'il eust esté tout près d'estre bruslé,
quoiqu'il n'en ait pas esté seulement en danger; mais il croit qu'il luy
est honorable de le faire de la sorte, et _il parle plus conformément à
ce qu'il veut qu'à ce qu'il scait_."--_Lettre de la Salle, 22 Août,
1682_ (1681?), Margry, ii. 259.
On his return to France, Hennepin got hold of the manuscript, _Relation
des Découvertes_, compiled for the government from La Salle's letters,
and, as already observed, made very free use of it in the first edition
of his book, printed in 1683. In 1699 he wished to return to Canada;
but, in a letter of that year, Louis XIV. orders the governor to seize
him, should he appear, and send him prisoner to Rochefort. This seems to
have been in consequence of his renouncing the service of the French
crown, and dedicating his edition of 1697 to William III. of England.
More than twenty editions of Hennepin's travels appeared, in French,
English, Dutch, German, Italian, and Spanish. Most of them include the
mendacious narrative of the pretended descent of the Mississippi. For a
list of them, see _Hist. Mag._, i. 346; ii. 24.
CHAPTER XIX.
1681.
LA SALLE BEGINS ANEW.
His Constancy; his Plans; his Savage Allies; he becomes
Snow-blind.--Negotiations.--Grand Council.--La Salle's
Oratory.--Meeting with Tonty.--Preparation.--Departure.
In tracing the adventures of Tonty and the rovings of Hennepin, we have
lost sight of La Salle, the pivot of the enterprise. Returning from the
desolation and horror in the valley of the Illinois, he had spent the
winter at Fort Miami, on the St. Joseph, by the borders of Lake
Michigan. Here he might have brooded on the redoubled ruin that had
befallen him,--the desponding friends, the exulting foes; the wasted
energies, the crushing load of debt, the stormy past, the black and
lowering future. But his mind was of a different temper. He had no
thought but to grapple with adversity, and out of the fragments of his
ruin to build up the fabric of success.
He would not recoil; but he modified his plans to meet the new
contingency. His white enemies had found, or rather perhaps had made, a
savage ally in the Iroquois. Their incursions must be stopped, or his
enterprise would come to nought; and he thought he saw the means by
which this new danger could be converted into a source of strength. The
tribes of the West, threatened by the common enemy, might be taught to
forget their mutual animosities and join in a defensive league, with La
Salle at its head. They might be colonized around his fort in the valley
of the Illinois, where in the shadow of the French flag, and with the
aid of French allies, they could hold the Iroquois in check, and acquire
in some measure the arts of a settled life. The Franciscan friars could
teach them the Faith; and La Salle and his associates could supply them
with goods, in exchange for the vast harvest of furs which their hunters
could gather in these boundless wilds. Meanwhile, he would seek out the
mouth of the Mississippi; and the furs gathered at his colony in the
Illinois would then find a ready passage to the markets of the world.
Thus might this ancient slaughter-field of warring savages be redeemed
to civilization and Christianity; and a stable settlement, half-feudal,
half-commercial, grow up in the heart of the western wilderness. This