France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
we are best able to judge him; and at times, by those touches of nature
which make the whole world kin, they teach us to know him and to feel
for him.
[Sidenote: CHARGES AGAINST LA SALLE.]
The main charges against him were that he was a crack-brained schemer,
that he was harsh to his men, that he traded where he had no right to
trade, and that his discoveries were nothing but a pretence for making
money. No accusations appear that touch his integrity or his honor.
It was hard to convince those who were always losing by him. A
remittance of good dividends would have been his best answer, and would
have made any other answer needless; but, instead of bills of exchange,
he had nothing to give but excuses and explanations. In the autumn of
1680, he wrote to an associate who had demanded the long-deferred
profits: "I have had many misfortunes in the last two years. In the
autumn of '78, I lost a vessel by the fault of the pilot; in the next
summer, the deserters I told you about robbed me of eight or ten
thousand livres' worth of goods. In the autumn of '79, I lost a vessel
worth more than ten thousand crowns; in the next spring, five or six
rascals stole the value of five or six thousand livres in goods and
beaver-skins, at the Illinois, when I was absent. Two other men of mine,
carrying furs worth four or five thousand livres, were killed or drowned
in the St. Lawrence, and the furs were lost. Another robbed me of three
thousand livres in beaver-skins stored at Michilimackinac. This last
spring, I lost about seventeen hundred livres' worth of goods by the
upsetting of a canoe. Last winter, the fort and buildings at Niagara
were burned by the fault of the commander; and in the spring the
deserters, who passed that way, seized a part of the property that
remained, and escaped to New York. All this does not discourage me in
the least, and will only defer for a year or two the returns of profit
which you ask for this year. These losses are no more my fault than the
loss of the ship 'St. Joseph' was yours. I cannot be everywhere, and
cannot help making use of the people of the country."
He begs his correspondent to send out an agent of his own. "He need not
be very _savant_, but he must be faithful, patient of labor, and fond
neither of gambling, women, nor good cheer; for he will find none of
these with me. Trusting in what he will write you, you may close your
ears to what priests and Jesuits tell you.
[Sidenote: VEXATIONS OF HIS POSITION.]
"After having put matters in good trim for trade I mean to withdraw,
though I think it will be very profitable; for I am disgusted to find
that I must always be making excuses, which is a part I cannot play
successfully. I am utterly tired of this business; for I see that it is
not enough to put property and life in constant peril, but that it
requires more pains to answer envy and detraction than to overcome the
difficulties inseparable from my undertaking."
And he makes a variety of proposals, by which he hopes to get rid of a
part of his responsibility to his correspondent. He begs him again to
send out a confidential agent, saying that for his part he does not want
to have any account to render, except that which he owes to the court,
of his discoveries. He adds, strangely enough for a man burdened with
such liabilities, "I have neither the habit nor the inclination to keep
books, nor have I anybody with me who knows how." He says to another
correspondent, "I think, like you, that partnerships in business are
dangerous, on account of the little practice I have in these matters."
It is not surprising that he wanted to leave his associates to manage
business for themselves: "You know that this trade is good; and with a
trusty agent to conduct it for you, you run no risk. As for me, I will
keep the charge of the forts, the command of posts and of men, the
management of Indians and Frenchmen, and the establishment of the
colony, which will remain my property, leaving your agent and mine to
look after our interests, and drawing my half without having any hand in
what belongs to you."
La Salle was a very indifferent trader; and his heart was not in the
commercial part of his enterprise. He aimed at achievement, and thirsted
after greatness. His ambition was to found another France in the West;
and if he meant to govern it also,--as without doubt he did,--it is not
a matter of wonder or of blame. His misfortune was, that, in the pursuit
of a great design, he was drawn into complications of business with
which he was ill fitted to grapple. He had not the instinct of the
successful merchant. He dared too much, and often dared unwisely;
attempted more than he could grasp, and forgot, in his sanguine
anticipations, to reckon with enormous and incalculable risks.
Except in the narrative parts, his letters are rambling and
unconnected,--which is natural enough, written, as they were, at odd
moments, by camp-fires and among Indians. The style is crude; and being
well aware of this, he disliked writing, especially as the risk was
extreme that his letters would miss their destination. "There is too
little good faith in this country, and too many people on the watch, for
me to trust anybody with what I wish to send you. Even sealed letters
are not too safe. Not only are they liable to be lost or stopped by the
way, but even such as escape the curiosity of spies lie at Montreal,
waiting a long time to be forwarded."
[Sidenote: HIS LETTERS INTERCEPTED.]
Again, he writes: "I cannot pardon myself for the stoppage of my
letters, though I made every effort to make them reach you. I wrote to
you in '79 (in August), and sent my letters to M. de la Forest, who gave
them in good faith to my brother. I don't know what he has done with
them. I wrote you another, by the vessel that was lost last year. I sent
two canoes, by two different routes; but the wind and the rain were so
furious that they wintered on the way, and I found my letters at the
fort on my return. I now send you one of them, which I wrote last year
to M. Thouret, in which you will find a full account of what passed,
from the time when we left the outlet of Lake Erie down to the sixteenth
of August, 1680. What preceded was told at full length in the letters my
brother has seen fit to intercept."
This brother was the Sulpitian priest, Jean Cavelier, who had been
persuaded that La Salle's enterprise would be ruinous, and therefore set
himself sometimes to stop it altogether, and sometimes to manage it in
his own way. "His conduct towards me," says La Salle, "has always been
so strange, through the small love he bears me, that it was clear gain
for me when he went away; since while he stayed he did nothing but cross
all my plans, which I was forced to change every moment to suit his
caprice."
There was one point on which the interference of his brother and of his
correspondents was peculiarly annoying. They thought it for their
interest that he should remain a single man; whereas, it seems that his
devotion to his purpose was not so engrossing as to exclude more tender
subjects. He writes:--
"I am told that you have been uneasy about my pretended marriage. I had
not thought about it at that time; and I shall not make any engagement
of the sort till I have given you reason to be satisfied with me. It is
a little extraordinary that I must render account of a matter which is
free to all the world.
"In fine, Monsieur, it is only as an earnest of something more
substantial that I write to you so much at length. I do not doubt that
you will hereafter change the ideas about me which some persons wish to
give you, and that you will be relieved of the anxiety which all that
has happened reasonably causes you. I have written this letter at more
than twenty different times; and I am more than a hundred and fifty
leagues from where I began it. I have still two hundred more to get
over, before reaching the Illinois. I am taking with me twenty-five men
to the relief of the six or seven who remain with the Sieur de Tonty."
This was the journey which ended in that scene of horror at the ruined
town of the Illinois.
[Sidenote: CHARGED WITH OSTENTATION.]
To the same correspondent, pressing him for dividends, he says: "You
repeat continually that you will not be satisfied unless I make you
large returns of profit. Though I have reason to thank you for what you
have done for this enterprise, it seems to me that I have done still
more, since I have put everything at stake; and it would be hard to
reproach me either with foolish outlays or with the ostentation which is
falsely imputed to me. Let my accusers explain what they mean. Since I
have been in this country, I have had neither servants nor clothes nor
fare which did not savor more of meanness than of ostentation; and the
moment I see that there is anything with which either you or the court
find fault, I assure you that I will give it up,--for the life I am
leading has no other attraction for me than that of honor; and the more
danger and difficulty there is in undertakings of this sort, the more
worthy of honor I think they are."
His career attests the sincerity of these words. They are a momentary
betrayal of the deep enthusiasm of character which may be read in his
life, but to which he rarely allowed the faintest expression.
"Above all," he continues, "if you want me to keep on, do not compel me
to reply to all the questions and fancies of priests and Jesuits. They
have more leisure than I; and I am not subtle enough to anticipate all
their empty stories. I could easily give you the information you ask;
but I have a right to expect that you will not believe all you hear, nor
require me to prove to you that I am not a madman. That is the first
point to which you should have attended, before having business with me;
and in our long acquaintance, either you must have found me out, or else
I must have had long intervals of sanity."
To another correspondent he defends himself against the charge of
harshness to his men: "The facility I am said to want is out of place
with this sort of people, who are libertines for the most part; and to
indulge them means to tolerate blasphemy, drunkenness, lewdness, and a
license incompatible with any kind of order. It will not be found that I
have in any case whatever treated any man harshly, except for
blasphemies and other such crimes openly committed. These I cannot
tolerate: first, because such compliance would give grounds for another
accusation, much more just; secondly, because, if I allowed such
disorders to become habitual, it would be hard to keep the men in
subordination and obedience, as regards executing the work I am
commissioned to do; thirdly, because the debaucheries, too common with
this rabble, are the source of endless delays and frequent thieving;
and, finally, because I am a Christian, and do not want to bear the
burden of their crimes.
[Sidenote: INTRIGUES AGAINST HIM.]
"What is said about my servants has not even a show of truth; for I use
no servants here, and all my men are on the same footing. I grant that
as those who have lived with me are steadier and give me no reason to
complain of their behavior, I treat them as gently as I should treat the
others if they resembled them, and as those who were formerly my
servants are the only ones I can trust, I speak more openly to them than
to the rest, who are generally spies of my enemies. The twenty-two men
who deserted and robbed me are not to be believed on their word,
deserters and thieves as they are. They are ready enough to find some
pretext for their crime; and it needs as unjust a judge as the intendant
to prompt such rascals to enter complaints against a person to whom he