France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
days after, he went out again, with Father Anastase Douay; approached a
bull, fired, and broke his shoulder. The bull hobbled off on three legs.
Douay ran in his cassock to head him back, while Joutel reloaded his
gun; upon which the enraged beast butted at the missionary, and knocked
him down. He very narrowly escaped with his life. "There was another
missionary," pursues Joutel, "named Father Maxime Le Clerc, who was very
well fitted for such an undertaking as ours, because he was equal to
anything, even to butchering a buffalo; and as I said before that every
one of us must lend a hand, because we were too few for anybody to be
waited upon, I made the women, girls, and children do their part, as
well as him; for as they all wanted to eat, it was fair that they all
should work." He had a scaffolding built near the fort, and set them to
smoking buffalo meat, against a day of scarcity.[307]
[Sidenote: RETURN OF DUHAUT.]
Thus the time passed till the middle of January; when late one evening,
as all were gathered in the principal building, conversing perhaps, or
smoking, or playing at cards, or dozing by the fire in homesick dreams
of France, a man on guard came in to report that he had heard a voice
from the river. They all went down to the bank, and descried a man in a
canoe, who called out, "Dominic!" This was the name of the younger of
the two brothers Duhaut, who was one of Joutel's followers. As the
canoe approached, they recognized the elder, who had gone with La Salle
on his journey of discovery, and who was perhaps the greatest villain of
the company. Joutel was much perplexed. La Salle had ordered him to
admit nobody into the fort without a pass and a watchword. Duhaut, when
questioned, said that he had none, but told at the same time so
plausible a story that Joutel no longer hesitated to receive him. As La
Salle and his men were pursuing their march along the prairie, Duhaut,
who was in the rear, had stopped to mend his moccasins, and when he
tried to overtake the party, had lost his way, mistaking a buffalo-path
for the trail of his companions. At night he fired his gun as a signal,
but there was no answering shot. Seeing no hope of rejoining them, he
turned back for the fort, found one of the canoes which La Salle had
hidden at the shore, paddled by night and lay close by day, shot
turkeys, deer, and buffalo for food, and, having no knife, cut the meat
with a sharp flint, till after a month of excessive hardship he reached
his destination. As the inmates of Fort St. Louis gathered about the
weather-beaten wanderer, he told them dreary tidings. The pilot of the
"Belle," such was his story, had gone with five men to sound along the
shore, by order of La Salle, who was then encamped in the neighborhood
with his party of explorers. The boat's crew, being overtaken by the
night, had rashly bivouacked on the beach without setting a guard; and
as they slept, a band of Indians had rushed in upon them, and butchered
them all. La Salle, alarmed by their long absence, had searched along
the shore, and at length found their bodies scattered about the sands
and half-devoured by wolves.[308] Well would it have been, if Duhaut had
shared their fate.
Weeks and months dragged on, when, at the end of March, Joutel, chancing
to mount on the roof of one of the buildings, saw seven or eight men
approaching over the prairie. He went out to meet them with an equal
number, well armed; and as he drew near recognized, with mixed joy and
anxiety, La Salle and some of those who had gone with him. His brother
Cavelier was at his side, with his cassock so tattered that, says
Joutel, "there was hardly a piece left large enough to wrap a farthing's
worth of salt. He had an old cap on his head, having lost his hat by the
way. The rest were in no better plight, for their shirts were all in
rags. Some of them carried loads of meat, because M. de la Salle was
afraid that we might not have killed any buffalo. We met with great joy
and many embraces. After our greetings were over, M. de la Salle, seeing
Duhaut, asked me in an angry tone how it was that I had received this
man who had abandoned him. I told him how it had happened, and repeated
Duhaut's story. Duhaut defended himself, and M. de la Salle's anger was
soon over. We went into the house, and refreshed ourselves with some
bread and brandy, as there was no wine left."[309]
[Sidenote: LA SALLE'S ADVENTURES.]
La Salle and his companions told their story. They had wandered on
through various savage tribes, with whom they had more than one
encounter, scattering them like chaff by the terror of their fire-arms.
At length they found a more friendly band, and learned much touching the
Spaniards, who, they were told, were universally hated by the tribes of
that country. It would be easy, said their informants, to gather a host
of warriors and lead them over the Rio Grande; but La Salle was in no
condition for attempting conquests, and the tribes in whose alliance he
had trusted had, a few days before, been at blows with him. The invasion
of New Biscay must be postponed to a more propitious day. Still
advancing, he came to a large river, which he at first mistook for the
Mississippi; and building a fort of palisades, he left here several of
his men.[310] The fate of these unfortunates does not appear. He now
retraced his steps towards Fort St. Louis, and, as he approached it,
detached some of his men to look for his vessel, the "Belle," for whose
safety, since the loss of her pilot, he had become very anxious.
On the next day these men appeared at the fort, with downcast looks.
They had not found the "Belle" at the place where she had been ordered
to remain, nor were any tidings to be heard of her. From that hour, the
conviction that she was lost possessed the mind of La Salle. Surrounded
as he was, and had always been, with traitors, the belief now possessed
him that her crew had abandoned the colony, and made sail for the West
Indies or for France. The loss was incalculable. He had relied on this
vessel to transport the colonists to the Mississippi, as soon as its
exact position could be ascertained; and thinking her a safer place of
deposit than the fort, he had put on board of her all his papers and
personal baggage, besides a great quantity of stores, ammunition, and
tools.[311] In truth, she was of the last necessity to the unhappy
exiles, and their only resource for escape from a position which was
fast becoming desperate.
La Salle, as his brother tells us, now fell dangerously ill,--the
fatigues of his journey, joined to the effects upon his mind of this
last disaster, having overcome his strength, though not his fortitude.
"In truth," writes the priest, "after the loss of the vessel which
deprived us of our only means of returning to France, we had no resource
but in the firm guidance of my brother, whose death each of us would
have regarded as his own."[312]
[Sidenote: DEPARTURE FOR CANADA.]
La Salle no sooner recovered than he embraced a resolution which could
be the offspring only of a desperate necessity. He determined to make
his way by the Mississippi and the Illinois to Canada, whence he might
bring succor to the colonists, and send a report of their condition to
France. The attempt was beset with uncertainties and dangers. The
Mississippi was first to be found, then followed through all the
perilous monotony of its interminable windings to a goal which was to be
but the starting-point of a new and not less arduous journey. Cavelier
his brother, Moranget his nephew, the friar Anastase Douay, and others
to the number of twenty, were chosen to accompany him. Every corner of
the magazine was ransacked for an outfit. Joutel generously gave up the
better part of his wardrobe to La Salle and his two relatives. Duhaut,
who had saved his baggage from the wreck of the "Aimable," was
required to contribute to the necessities of the party; and the
scantily-furnished chests of those who had died were used to supply the
wants of the living. Each man labored with needle and awl to patch his
failing garments, or supply their place with buffalo or deer skins. On
the twenty-second of April, after mass and prayers in the chapel, they
issued from the gate, each bearing his pack and his weapons, some with
kettles slung at their backs, some with axes, some with gifts for
Indians. In this guise, they held their way in silence across the
prairie; while anxious eyes followed them from the palisades of St.
Louis, whose inmates, not excepting Joutel himself, seem to have been
ignorant of the extent and difficulty of the undertaking.[313]
[Sidenote: WRECK OF THE "BELLE."]
"On May Day," he writes, "at about two in the afternoon, as I was
walking near the house, I heard a voice from the river below, crying out
several times, _Qui vive?_ Knowing that the Sieur Barbier had gone that
way with two canoes to hunt buffalo, I thought that it might be one of
these canoes coming back with meat, and did not think much of the matter
till I heard the same voice again. I answered, _Versailles_, which was
the password I had given the Sieur Barbier, in case he should come back
in the night. But, as I was going towards the bank, I heard other voices
which I had not heard for a long time. I recognized among the rest that
of M. Chefdeville, which made me fear that some disaster had happened. I
ran down to the bank, and my first greeting was to ask what had become
of the 'Belle.' They answered that she was wrecked on the other side of
the bay, and that all on board were drowned except the six who were in
the canoe; namely, the Sieur Chefdeville, the Marquis de la Sablonnière,
the man named Teissier, a soldier, a girl, and a little boy."[314]
From the young priest Chefdeville, Joutel learned the particulars of the
disaster. Water had failed on board the "Belle"; a boat's crew of five
men had gone in quest of it; the wind rose, their boat was swamped, and
they were all drowned. Those who remained had now no means of going
ashore; but if they had no water, they had wine and brandy in abundance,
and Teissier, the master of the vessel, was drunk every day. After a
while they left their moorings, and tried to reach the fort; but they
were few, weak, and unskilful. A violent north wind drove them on a
sand-bar. Some of them were drowned in trying to reach land on a raft.
Others were more successful; and, after a long delay, they found a
stranded canoe, in which they made their way to St. Louis, bringing with
them some of La Salle's papers and baggage saved from the wreck.
These multiplied disasters bore hard on the spirits of the colonists;
and Joutel, like a good commander as he was, spared no pains to cheer
them. "We did what we could to amuse ourselves and drive away care. I
encouraged our people to dance and sing in the evenings; for when M. de
la Salle was among us, pleasure was often banished. Now, there is no
use in being melancholy on such occasions. It is true that M. de la
Salle had no great cause for merry-making, after all his losses and
disappointments; but his troubles made others suffer also. Though he had
ordered me to allow to each person only a certain quantity of meat at
every meal, I observed this rule only when meat was rare. The air here
is very keen, and one has a great appetite. One must eat and act, if he
wants good health and spirits. I speak from experience; for once, when I
had ague chills, and was obliged to keep the house with nothing to do, I
was dreary and down-hearted. On the contrary, if I was busy with hunting
or anything else, I was not so dull by half. So I tried to keep the
people as busy as possible. I set them to making a small cellar to keep
meat fresh in hot weather; but when M. de la Salle came back, he said it