France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
was too small. As he always wanted to do everything on a grand scale, he
prepared to make a large one, and marked out the plan." This plan of the
large cellar, like more important undertakings of its unhappy projector,
proved too extensive for execution, the colonists being engrossed by the
daily care of keeping themselves alive.
[Sidenote: MATRIMONY.]
A gleam of hilarity shot for an instant out of the clouds. The young
Canadian, Barbier, usually conducted the hunting-parties; and some of
the women and girls often went out with them, to aid in cutting up the
meat. Barbier became enamoured of one of the girls; and as his devotion
to her was the subject of comment, he asked Joutel for leave to marry
her. The commandant, after due counsel with the priests and friars,
vouchsafed his consent, and the rite was duly solemnized; whereupon,
fired by the example, the Marquis de la Sablonnière begged leave to
marry another of the girls. Joutel, the gardener's son, concerned that a
marquis should so abase himself, and anxious at the same time for the
morals of the fort, which La Salle had especially commended to his care,
not only flatly refused, but, in the plenitude of his authority, forbade
the lovers all further intercourse.
Father Zenobe Membré, superior of the mission, gave unwilling occasion
for further merriment. These worthy friars were singularly unhappy in
their dealings with the buffalo, one of which, it may be remembered, had
already knocked down Father Anastase. Undeterred by his example, Father
Zenobe one day went out with the hunters, carrying a gun like the rest.
Joutel shot a buffalo, which was making off, badly wounded, when a
second shot stopped it, and it presently lay down. The father superior
thought it was dead; and, without heeding the warning shout of Joutel,
he approached, and pushed it with the butt of his gun. The bull sprang
up with an effort of expiring fury, and, in the words of Joutel,
"trampled on the father, took the skin off his face in several places,
and broke his gun, so that he could hardly manage to get away, and
remained in an almost helpless state for more than three months. Bad as
the accident was, he was laughed at nevertheless for his rashness."
The mishaps of the friars did not end here. Father Maxime Le Clerc was
set upon by a boar belonging to the colony. "I do not know," says
Joutel, "what spite the beast had against him, whether for a beating or
some other offence; but, however this may be, I saw the father running
and crying for help, and the boar running after him. I went to the
rescue, but could not come up in time. The father stooped as he ran, to
gather up his cassock from about his legs; and the boar, which ran
faster than he, struck him in the arm with his tusks, so that some of
the nerves were torn. Thus, all three of our good Récollet fathers were
near being the victims of animals."[315]
In spite of his efforts to encourage them, the followers of Joutel were
fast losing heart. Father Maxime Le Clerc kept a journal, in which he
set down various charges against La Salle. Joutel got possession of the
paper, and burned it on the urgent entreaty of the friars, who dreaded
what might ensue, should the absent commander become aware of the
aspersions cast upon him. The elder Duhaut fomented the rising
discontent of the colonists, played the demagogue, told them that La
Salle would never return, and tried to make himself their leader. Joutel
detected the mischief, and, with a lenity which he afterwards deeply
regretted, contented himself with a rebuke to the offender, and words
of reproof and encouragement to the dejected band.
[Sidenote: ADVENTURES OF THE TRAVELLERS.]
He had caused the grass to be cut near the fort, so as to form a sort of
playground; and here, one evening, he and some of the party were trying
to amuse themselves, when they heard shouts from beyond the river, and
Joutel recognized the voice of La Salle. Hastening to meet him in a
wooden canoe, he brought him and his party to the fort. Twenty men had
gone out with him, and eight had returned. Of the rest, four had
deserted, one had been lost, one had been devoured by an alligator; and
the others, giving out on the march, had probably perished in attempting
to regain the fort. The travellers told of a rich country, a wild and
beautiful landscape,--woods, rivers, groves, and prairies; but all
availed nothing, and the acquisition of five horses was but an
indifferent return for the loss of twelve men.
After leaving the fort, they had journeyed towards the northeast, over
plains green as an emerald with the young verdure of April, till at
length they saw, far as the eye could reach, the boundless prairie alive
with herds of buffalo. The animals were in one of their tame or stupid
moods; and they killed nine or ten of them without the least difficulty,
drying the best parts of the meat. They crossed the Colorado on a raft,
and reached the banks of another river, where one of the party, named
Hiens, a German of Würtemberg, and an old buccaneer, was mired and
nearly suffocated in a mud-hole. Unfortunately, as will soon appear, he
managed to crawl out; and, to console him, the river was christened with
his name. The party made a bridge of felled trees, on which they crossed
in safety. La Salle now changed their course, and journeyed eastward,
when the travellers soon found themselves in the midst of a numerous
Indian population, where they were feasted and caressed without measure.
At another village they were less fortunate. The inhabitants were
friendly by day and hostile by night. They came to attack the French in
their camp, but withdrew, daunted by the menacing voice of La Salle, who
had heard them approaching through the cane-brake.
La Salle's favorite Shawanoe hunter, Nika, who had followed him from
Canada to France, and from France to Texas, was bitten by a rattlesnake;
and, though he recovered, the accident detained the party for several
days. At length they resumed their journey, but were stopped by a river,
called by Douay, "La Rivière des Malheurs." La Salle and Cavelier, with
a few others, tried to cross on a raft, which, as it reached the
channel, was caught by a current of marvellous swiftness. Douay and
Moranget, watching the transit from the edge of the cane-brake, beheld
their commander swept down the stream, and vanishing, as it were, in an
instant. All that day they remained with their companions on the bank,
lamenting in despair for the loss of their guardian angel, for so Douay
calls La Salle.[316] It was fast growing dark, when, to their
unspeakable relief, they saw him advancing with his party along the
opposite bank, having succeeded, after great exertion, in guiding the
raft to land. How to rejoin him was now the question. Douay and his
companions, who had tasted no food that day, broke their fast on two
young eagles which they knocked out of their nest, and then spent the
night in rueful consultation as to the means of crossing the river. In
the morning they waded into the marsh, the friar with his breviary in
his hood to keep it dry, and hacked among the canes till they had
gathered enough to make another raft; on which, profiting by La Salle's
experience, they safely crossed, and rejoined him.
Next, they became entangled in a cane-brake, where La Salle, as usual
with him in such cases, took the lead, a hatchet in each hand, and hewed
out a path for his followers. They soon reached the villages of the
Cenis Indians, on and near the river Trinity,--a tribe then powerful,
but long since extinct. Nothing could surpass the friendliness of their
welcome. The chiefs came to meet them, bearing the calumet, and followed
by warriors in shirts of embroidered deer-skin. Then the whole village
swarmed out like bees, gathering around the visitors with offerings of
food and all that was precious in their eyes. La Salle was lodged with
the great chief; but he compelled his men to encamp at a distance, lest
the ardor of their gallantry might give occasion of offence. The lodges
of the Cenis, forty or fifty feet high, and covered with a thatch of
meadow-grass, looked like huge bee-hives. Each held several families,
whose fire was in the middle, and their beds around the circumference.
The spoil of the Spaniards was to be seen on all sides,--silver lamps
and spoons, swords, old muskets, money, clothing, and a bull of the Pope
dispensing the Spanish colonists of New Mexico from fasting during
summer.[317] These treasures, as well as their numerous horses, were
obtained by the Cenis from their neighbors and allies the Camanches,
that fierce prairie banditti who then, as now, scourged the Mexican
border with their bloody forays. A party of these wild horsemen was in
the village. Douay was edified at seeing them make the sign of the cross
in imitation of the neophytes of one of the Spanish missions. They
enacted, too, the ceremony of the mass; and one of them, in his rude
way, drew a sketch of a picture he had seen in some church which he had
pillaged, wherein the friar plainly recognized the Virgin weeping at the
foot of the cross. They invited the French to join them on a raid into
New Mexico; and they spoke with contempt, as their tribesmen will speak
to this day, of the Spanish creoles, saying that it would be easy to
conquer a nation of cowards who make people walk before them with fans
to cool them in hot weather.[318]
Soon after leaving the Cenis villages, both La Salle and his nephew
Moranget were attacked by fever. This caused a delay of more than two
months, during which the party seem to have remained encamped on the
Neches, or possibly the Sabine. When at length the invalids had
recovered sufficient strength to travel, the stock of ammunition was
nearly spent, some of the men had deserted, and the condition of the
travellers was such that there seemed no alternative but to return to
Fort St. Louis. This they accordingly did, greatly aided in their march
by the horses bought from the Cenis, and suffering no very serious
accident by the way,--excepting the loss of La Salle's servant,
Dumesnil, who was seized by an alligator while attempting to cross the
Colorado.
[Sidenote: DEJECTION.]
The temporary excitement caused among the colonists by their return soon
gave place to a dejection bordering on despair. "This pleasant land,"
writes Cavelier, "seemed to us an abode of weariness and a perpetual
prison." Flattering themselves with the delusion, common to exiles of
every kind, that they were objects of solicitude at home, they watched
daily, with straining eyes, for an approaching sail. Ships, indeed, had
ranged the coast to seek them, but with no friendly intent. Their
thoughts dwelt, with unspeakable yearning, on the France they had left
behind, which, to their longing fancy, was pictured as an unattainable
Eden. Well might they despond; for of a hundred and eighty colonists,
besides the crew of the "Belle," less than forty-five remained. The
weary precincts of Fort St. Louis, with its fence of rigid palisades,
its area of trampled earth, its buildings of weather-stained timber, and
its well-peopled graveyard without, were hateful to their sight. La
Salle had a heavy task to save them from despair. His composure, his
unfailing equanimity, his words of encouragement and cheer, were the
breath of life to this forlorn company; for though he could not impart
to minds of less adamantine temper the audacity of hope with which he
still clung to the final accomplishment of his purposes, the contagion
of his hardihood touched, nevertheless, the drooping spirits of his
followers.[319]
[Sidenote: TWELFTH NIGHT.]
The journey to Canada was clearly their only hope; and, after a brief
rest, La Salle prepared to renew the attempt. He proposed that Joutel