France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
crowned with a marvellous success,--for which his thanks were due, first
to the Iroquois, and the universal terror they inspired; next, to his
own address and unwearied energy. His colony had sprung up, as it were,
in a night; but might not a night suffice to disperse it?
The conditions of maintaining it were twofold: first, he must give
efficient aid to his savage colonists against the Iroquois; secondly, he
must supply them with French goods in exchange for their furs. The men,
arms, and ammunition for their defence, and the goods for trading with
them, must be brought from Canada, until a better and surer avenue of
supply could be provided through the entrepôt which he meant to
establish at the mouth of the Mississippi. Canada was full of his
enemies; but as long as Count Frontenac was in power, he was sure of
support. Count Frontenac was in power no longer. He had been recalled to
France through the intrigues of the party adverse to La Salle; and Le
Febvre de la Barre reigned in his stead.
[Sidenote: LA SALLE AND LA BARRE.]
La Barre was an old naval officer of rank, advanced to a post for which
he proved himself notably unfit. If he was without the arbitrary
passions which had been the chief occasion of the recall of his
predecessor, he was no less without his energies and his talents. He
showed a weakness and an avarice for which his age may have been in some
measure answerable. He was no whit less unscrupulous than his
predecessor in his secret violation of the royal ordinances regulating
the fur-trade, which it was his duty to enforce. Like Frontenac, he took
advantage of his position to carry on an illicit traffic with the
Indians; but it was with different associates. The late governor's
friends were the new governor's enemies; and La Salle, armed with his
monopolies, was the object of his especial jealousy.[249]
Meanwhile, La Salle, buried in the western wilderness, remained for the
time ignorant of La Barre's disposition towards him, and made an effort
to secure his good-will and countenance. He wrote to him from his rock
of St. Louis, early in the spring of 1683, expressing the hope that he
should have from him the same support as from Count Frontenac;
"although," he says, "my enemies will try to influence you against me."
His attachment to Frontenac, he pursues, has been the cause of all the
late governor's enemies turning against him. He then recounts his voyage
down the Mississippi; says that, with twenty-two Frenchmen, he caused
all the tribes along the river to ask for peace; and speaks of his right
under the royal patent to build forts anywhere along his route, and
grant out lands around them, as at Fort Frontenac.
"My losses in my enterprises," he continues, "have exceeded forty
thousand crowns. I am now going four hundred leagues south-southwest of
this place, to induce the Chickasaws to follow the Shawanoes and other
tribes, and settle, like them, at St. Louis. It remained only to settle
French colonists here, and this I have already done. I hope you will not
detain them as _coureurs de bois_, when they come down to Montreal to
make necessary purchases. I am aware that I have no right to trade with
the tribes who descend to Montreal, and I shall not permit such trade to
my men; nor have I ever issued licenses to that effect, as my enemies
say that I have done."[250]
Again, on the fourth of June following, he writes to La Barre, from the
Chicago portage, complaining that some of his colonists, going to
Montreal for necessary supplies, have been detained by his enemies, and
begging that they may be allowed to return, that his enterprise may not
be ruined. "The Iroquois," he pursues, "are again invading the country.
Last year, the Miamis were so alarmed by them that they abandoned their
town and fled; but at my return they came back, and have been induced to
settle with the Illinois at my fort of St. Louis. The Iroquois have
lately murdered some families of their nation, and they are all in
terror again. I am afraid they will take flight, and so prevent the
Missouris and neighboring tribes from coming to settle at St. Louis, as
they are about to do.
"Some of the Hurons and French tell the Miamis that I am keeping them
here for the Iroquois to destroy. I pray that you will let me hear from
you, that I may give these people some assurances of protection before
they are destroyed in my sight. Do not suffer my men who have come down
to the settlements to be longer prevented from returning. There is great
need here of reinforcements. The Iroquois, as I have said, have lately
entered the country; and a great terror prevails. I have postponed going
to Michilimackinac, because, if the Iroquois strike any blow in my
absence, the Miamis will think that I am in league with them; whereas,
if I and the French stay among them, they will regard us as protectors.
But, Monsieur, it is in vain that we risk our lives here, and that I
exhaust my means in order to fulfil the intentions of his Majesty, if
all my measures are crossed in the settlements below, and if those who
go down to bring munitions, without which we cannot defend ourselves,
are detained under pretexts trumped up for the occasion. If I am
prevented from bringing up men and supplies, as I am allowed to do by
the permit of Count Frontenac, then my patent from the King is useless.
It would be very hard for us, after having done what was required, even
before the time prescribed, and after suffering severe losses, to have
our efforts frustrated by obstacles got up designedly.
"I trust that, as it lies with you alone to prevent or to permit the
return of the men whom I have sent down, you will not so act as to
thwart my plans. A part of the goods which I have sent by them belong
not to me, but to the Sieur de Tonty, and are a part of his pay. Others
are to buy munitions indispensable for our defence. Do not let my
creditors seize them. It is for their advantage that my fort, full as it
is of goods, should be held against the enemy. I have only twenty men,
with scarcely a hundred pounds of powder; and I cannot long hold the
country without more. The Illinois are very capricious and uncertain....
If I had men enough to send out to reconnoitre the enemy, I would have
done so before this; but I have not enough. I trust you will put it in
my power to obtain more, that this important colony may be saved."[251]
While La Salle was thus writing to La Barre, La Barre was writing to
Seignelay, the Marine and Colonial Minister, decrying his
correspondent's discoveries, and pretending to doubt their reality. "The
Iroquois," he adds, "have sworn his [La Salle's] death. The imprudence
of this man is about to involve the colony in war."[252] And again he
writes, in the following spring, to say that La Salle was with a score
of vagabonds at Green Bay, where he set himself up as a king, pillaged
his countrymen, and put them to ransom, exposed the tribes of the West
to the incursions of the Iroquois, and all under pretence of a patent
from his Majesty, the provisions of which he grossly abused; but, as his
privileges would expire on the twelfth of May ensuing, he would then be
forced to come to Quebec, where his creditors, to whom he owed more than
thirty thousand crowns, were anxiously awaiting him.[253]
Finally, when La Barre received the two letters from La Salle, of which
the substance is given above, he sent copies of them to the Minister
Seignelay, with the following comment: "By the copies of the Sieur de la
Salle's letters, you will perceive that his head is turned, and that he
has been bold enough to give you intelligence of a false discovery, and
that, instead of returning to the colony to learn what the King wishes
him to do, he does not come near me, but keeps in the backwoods, five
hundred leagues off, with the idea of attracting the inhabitants to him,
and building up an imaginary kingdom for himself, by debauching all the
bankrupts and idlers of this country. If you will look at the two
letters I had from him, you can judge the character of this personage
better than I can. Affairs with the Iroquois are in such a state that I
cannot allow him to muster all their enemies together and put himself at
their head. All the men who brought me news from him have abandoned him,
and say not a word about returning, _but sell the furs they have brought
as if they were their own_; so that he cannot hold his ground much
longer."[254] Such calumnies had their effect. The enemies of La Salle
had already gained the ear of the King; and he had written in August,
from Fontainebleau, to his new governor of Canada: "I am convinced, like
you, that the discovery of the Sieur de la Salle is very useless, and
that such enterprises ought to be prevented in future, as they tend only
to debauch the inhabitants by the hope of gain, and to diminish the
revenue from beaver-skins."[255]
In order to understand the posture of affairs at this time, it must be
remembered that Dutch and English traders of New York were urging on the
Iroquois to attack the western tribes, with the object of gaining,
through their conquest, the control of the fur-trade of the interior,
and diverting it from Montreal to Albany. The scheme was full of danger
to Canada, which the loss of the trade would have ruined. La Barre and
his associates were greatly alarmed at it. Its complete success would
have been fatal to their hopes of profit; but they nevertheless wished
it such a measure of success as would ruin their rival, La Salle. Hence,
no little satisfaction mingled with their anxiety when they heard that
the Iroquois were again threatening to invade the Miamis and the
Illinois; and thus La Barre, whose duty it was strenuously to oppose the
intrigue of the English, and use every effort to quiet the ferocious
bands whom they were hounding against the Indian allies of the French,
was, in fact, but half-hearted in the work. He cut off La Salle from all
supplies; detained the men whom he sent for succor; and, at a conference
with the Iroquois, told them that they were welcome to plunder and kill
him.[256]
[Sidenote: A NEW ALARM.]
The old governor, and the unscrupulous ring with which he was
associated, now took a step to which he was doubtless emboldened by the
tone of the King's letter, in condemnation of La Salle's enterprise. He
resolved to seize Fort Frontenac, the property of La Salle, under the
pretext that the latter had not fulfilled the conditions of the grant,
and had not maintained a sufficient garrison.[257] Two of his
associates, La Chesnaye and Le Ber, armed with an order from him, went
up and took possession, despite the remonstrances of La Salle's
creditors and mortgagees; lived on La Salle's stores, sold for their own
profit, and (it is said) that of La Barre, the provisions sent by the
King, and turned in the cattle to pasture on the growing crops. La
Forest, La Salle's lieutenant, was told that he might retain the command
of the fort if he would join the associates; but he refused, and sailed
in the autumn for France.[258]
Meanwhile La Salle remained at the Illinois in extreme embarrassment,
cut off from supplies, robbed of his men who had gone to seek them, and
disabled from fulfilling the pledges he had given to the surrounding
Indians. Such was his position, when reports came to Fort St. Louis that
the Iroquois were at hand. The Indian hamlets were wild with terror,
beseeching him for succor which he had no power to give. Happily, the
report proved false. No Iroquois appeared; the threatened attack was
postponed, and the summer passed away in peace. But La Salle's position,
with the governor his declared enemy, was intolerable and untenable; and
there was no resource but in the protection of the court. Early in the