France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
to him, should buy it back again, with such improvements as he had made.
Queylus, the Superior, being favorably disposed towards him, consented,
and bought of him the greater part; while La Salle sold the remainder,
including the clearings, to one Jean Milot, an iron-monger, for
twenty-eight hundred livres.[11] With this he bought four canoes, with
the necessary supplies, and hired fourteen men.
Meanwhile, the Seminary itself was preparing a similar enterprise. The
Jesuits at this time not only held an ascendency over the other
ecclesiastics in Canada, but exercised an inordinate influence on the
civil government. The Seminary priests of Montreal were jealous of these
powerful rivals, and eager to emulate their zeal in the saving of souls
and the conquering of new domains for the Faith. Under this impulse,
they had, three years before, established a mission at Quinté, on the
north shore of Lake Ontario, in charge of two of their number, one of
whom was the Abbé Fénelon, elder brother of the celebrated Archbishop of
Cambray. Another of them, Dollier de Casson, had spent the winter in a
hunting-camp of the Nipissings, where an Indian prisoner, captured in
the Northwest, told him of populous tribes of that quarter living in
heathenish darkness. On this, the Seminary priests resolved to essay
their conversion; and an expedition, to be directed by Dollier, was
fitted out to this end.
[Sidenote: DEPARTURE.]
He was not ill suited to the purpose. He had been a soldier in his
youth, and had fought valiantly as an officer of cavalry under Turenne.
He was a man of great courage; of a tall, commanding person; and of
uncommon bodily strength, which he had notably proved in the campaign of
Courcelle against the Iroquois, three years before.[12] On going to
Quebec to procure the necessary outfit, he was urged by Courcelle to
modify his plans so far as to act in concert with La Salle in exploring
the mystery of the great unknown river of the West. Dollier and his
brother priests consented. One of them, Galinée, was joined with him as
a colleague, because he was skilled in surveying, and could make a map
of their route. Three canoes were procured, and seven hired men
completed the party. It was determined that La Salle's expedition and
that of the Seminary should be combined in one,--an arrangement ill
suited to the character of the young explorer, who was unfit for any
enterprise of which he was not the undisputed chief.
Midsummer was near, and there was no time to lose. Yet the moment was
most unpropitious, for a Seneca chief had lately been murdered by three
scoundrel soldiers of the fort of Montreal; and, while they were
undergoing their trial, it became known that three other Frenchmen had
treacherously put to death several Iroquois of the Oneida tribe, in
order to get possession of their furs. The whole colony trembled in
expectation of a new outbreak of the war. Happily, the event proved
otherwise. The authors of the last murder escaped; but the three
soldiers were shot at Montreal, in presence of a considerable number of
the Iroquois, who declared themselves satisfied with the atonement; and
on this same day, the sixth of July, the adventurers began their voyage.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The following is the _acte de naissance_, discovered by Margry in
the _registres de l'état civil_, Paroisse St. Herbland, Rouen: "Le
vingt-deuxième jour de novembre, 1643, a été baptisé Robert Cavelier,
fils de honorable homme Jean Cavelier et de Catherine Geest; ses parrain
et marraine honorables personnes Nicolas Geest et Marguerite Morice."
La Salle's name in full was René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. La
Salle was the name of an estate near Rouen, belonging to the Caveliers.
The wealthy French burghers often distinguished the various members of
their families by designations borrowed from landed estates. Thus,
François Marie Arouet, son of an ex-notary, received the name of
Voltaire, which he made famous.
[2] Margry, after investigations at Rouen, is satisfied of its truth
(_Journal Général de l'Instruction Publique_, xxxi. 571.) Family papers
of the Caveliers, examined by the Abbé Faillon, and copies of some of
which he has sent to me, lead to the same conclusion. We shall find
several allusions hereafter to La Salle's having in his youth taught in
a school, which, in his position, could only have been in connection
with some religious community. The doubts alluded to have proceeded from
the failure of Father Felix Martin, S. J., to find the name of La Salle
on the list of novices. If he had looked for the name of Robert
Cavelier, he would probably have found it. The companion of La Salle,
Hennepin, is very explicit with regard to this connection with the
Jesuits, a point on which he had no motive for falsehood.
[3] It does not appear what vows La Salle had taken. By a recent
ordinance (1666), persons entering religious orders could not take the
final vows before the age of twenty-five. By the family papers above
mentioned, it appears, however, that he had brought himself under the
operation of the law, which debarred those who, having entered religious
orders, afterwards withdrew, from claiming the inheritance of relatives
who had died after their entrance.
[4] The Jesuits in North America, chap. xv.
[5] _Transport de la Seigneurie de St. Sulpice_, cited by Faillon. La
Salle called his new domain as above. Two or three years later, it
received the name of La Chine, for a reason which will appear.
[6] A detailed plan of Montreal at this time is preserved in the
Archives de l'Empire, and has been reproduced by Faillon. There is
another, a few years later, and still more minute, of which a fac-simile
will be found in the Library of the Canadian Parliament.
[7] The above particulars have been unearthed by the indefatigable Abbé
Faillon. Some of La Salle's grants are still preserved in the ancient
records of Montreal.
[8] _Papiers de Famille._ He is said to have made several journeys into
the forests, towards the North, in the years 1667 and 1668, and to have
satisfied himself that little could be hoped from explorations in that
direction.
[9] According to Dollier de Casson, who had good opportunities of
knowing, the Iroquois always called the Mississippi the Ohio, while the
Algonquins gave it its present name.
[10] _Patoulet à Colbert, 11 Nov., 1669._
[11] _Cession de la Seigneurie; Contrat de Vente_ (Margry, i. 103, 104).
[12] He was the author of the very curious and valuable _Histoire de
Montréal_, preserved in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, of which a copy is in
my possession. The Historical Society of Montreal has recently resolved
to print it.
CHAPTER II.
1669-1671.
LA SALLE AND THE SULPITIANS.
The French in Western New York.--Louis Joliet.--The Sulpitians on
Lake Erie; at Detroit; at Saut Ste. Marie.--The Mystery of La
Salle: he discovers the Ohio; he descends the Illinois; did he
reach the Mississippi?
La Chine was the starting-point; and the combined parties, in all
twenty-four men with seven canoes, embarked on the Lake of St. Louis.
With them were two other canoes, bearing the party of Senecas who had
wintered at La Salle's settlement, and who were now to act as guides.
Father Galinée recounts the journey. He was no woodsman: the river, the
forests, the rapids, were all new to him, and he dilates on them with
the minuteness of a novice. Above all, he admired the Indian birch
canoes. "If God," he says, "grants me the grace of returning to France,
I shall try to carry one with me." Then he describes the bivouac: "Your
lodging is as extraordinary as your vessels; for, after paddling or
carrying the canoes all day, you find mother earth ready to receive your
wearied body. If the weather is fair, you make a fire and lie down to
sleep without further trouble; but if it rains, you must peel bark from
the trees, and make a shed by laying it on a frame of sticks. As for
your food, it is enough to make you burn all the cookery books that ever
were written; for in the woods of Canada one finds means to live well
without bread, wine, salt, pepper, or spice. The ordinary food is Indian
corn, or Turkey wheat as they call it in France, which is crushed
between two stones and boiled, seasoning it with meat or fish, when you
can get them. This sort of life seemed so strange to us that we all felt
the effects of it; and before we were a hundred leagues from Montreal,
not one of us was free from some malady or other. At last, after all our
misery, on the second of August, we discovered Lake Ontario, like a
great sea with no land beyond it."
[Sidenote: THE SENECA VILLAGES.]
Thirty-five days after leaving La Chine, they reached Irondequoit Bay,
on the south side of the lake. Here they were met by a number of Seneca
Indians, who professed friendship and invited them to their villages,
fifteen or twenty miles distant. As this was on their way to the upper
waters of the Ohio, and as they hoped to find guides at the villages to
conduct them, they accepted the invitation. Dollier, with most of the
men, remained to guard the canoes; while La Salle, with Galinée and
eight other Frenchmen, accompanied by a troop of Indians, set out on the
morning of the twelfth, and reached the principal village before
evening. It stood on a hill, in the midst of a clearing nearly two
leagues in compass.[13] A rude stockade surrounded it; and as the
visitors drew near they saw a band of old men seated on the grass,
waiting to receive them. One of these veterans, so feeble with age that
he could hardly stand, made them an harangue, in which he declared that
the Senecas were their brothers, and invited them to enter the village.
They did so, surrounded by a crowd of savages, and presently found
themselves in the midst of a disorderly cluster of large but filthy
abodes of bark, about a hundred and fifty in number, the most capacious
of which was assigned to their use. Here they made their quarters, and
were soon overwhelmed by Seneca hospitality. Children brought them
pumpkins and berries from the woods; and boy messengers came to summon
them to endless feasts, where they were regaled with the flesh of dogs
and with boiled maize seasoned with oil pressed from nuts and the seed
of sunflowers.
La Salle had flattered himself that he knew enough Iroquois to hold
communication with the Senecas; but he failed completely in the attempt.
The priests had a Dutch interpreter, who spoke Iroquois fluently, but
knew so little French, and was withal so obstinate, that he proved
useless; so that it was necessary to employ a man in the service of the
Jesuit Fremin, whose mission was at this village. What the party needed
was a guide to conduct them to the Ohio; and soon after their arrival a
party of warriors appeared, with a young prisoner belonging to one of
the tribes of that region. Galinée wanted to beg or buy him from his
captors; but the Senecas had other intentions. "I saw," writes the
priest, "the most miserable spectacle I ever beheld in my life." It was
the prisoner tied to a stake and tortured for six hours with diabolical
ingenuity, while the crowd danced and yelled with delight, and the
chiefs and elders sat in a row smoking their pipes and watching the
contortions of the victim with an air of serene enjoyment. The body was
at last cut up and eaten, and in the evening the whole population
occupied themselves in scaring away the angry ghost by beating with
sticks against the bark sides of the lodges.
La Salle and his companions began to fear for their own safety. Some of
their hosts wished to kill them in revenge for the chief murdered near
Montreal; and as these and others were at times in a frenzy of
drunkenness, the position of the French became critical. They suspected