France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
surprise and regret when he heard of the death of his late commander. He
had deserted him but a few months before. That brief interval had
sufficed to transform him into a savage; and both he and his companion
found their present reckless and ungoverned way of life greatly to their
liking. He could tell nothing of the Mississippi; and on the next day he
went home, carrying with him a present of beads for his wives, of which
last he had made a large collection.
In a few days he reappeared, bringing Grollet with him. Each wore a
bunch of turkey-feathers dangling from his head, and each had wrapped
his naked body in a blanket. Three men soon after arrived from Duhaut's
camp, commissioned to receive the corn which Joutel had purchased. They
told him that Duhaut and Liotot, the tyrants of the party, had resolved
to return to Fort St. Louis, and build a vessel to escape to the West
Indies,--"a visionary scheme," writes Joutel, "for our carpenters were
all dead; and even if they had been alive, they were so ignorant that
they would not have known how to go about the work; besides, we had no
tools for it. Nevertheless, I was obliged to obey, and set out for the
camp with the provisions."
On arriving, he found a wretched state of affairs. Douay and the two
Caveliers, who had been treated by Duhaut with great harshness and
contempt, had been told to make their mess apart; and Joutel now joined
them. This separation restored them their freedom of speech, of which
they had hitherto been deprived; but it subjected them to incessant
hunger, as they were allowed only food enough to keep them from
famishing. Douay says that quarrels were rife among the assassins
themselves,--the malcontents being headed by Hiens, who was enraged that
Duhaut and Liotot should have engrossed all the plunder. Joutel was
helpless, for he had none to back him but two priests and a boy.
[Sidenote: SCHEMES OF ESCAPE.]
He and his companions talked of nothing around their solitary camp-fire
but the means of escaping from the villanous company into which they
were thrown. They saw no resource but to find the Mississippi, and thus
make their way to Canada,--a prodigious undertaking in their forlorn
condition; nor was there any probability that the assassins would permit
them to go. These, on their part, were beset with difficulties. They
could not return to civilization without manifest peril of a halter; and
their only safety was to turn buccaneers or savages. Duhaut, however,
still held to his plan of going back to Fort St. Louis; and Joutel and
his companions, who with good reason stood in daily fear of him, devised
among themselves a simple artifice to escape from his company. The elder
Cavelier was to tell him that they were too fatigued for the journey,
and wished to stay among the Cenis; and to beg him to allow them a
portion of the goods, for which Cavelier was to give his note of hand.
The old priest, whom a sacrifice of truth even on less important
occasions cost no great effort, accordingly opened the negotiation, and
to his own astonishment and that of his companions, gained the assent of
Duhaut. Their joy, however, was short; for Ruter, the French savage, to
whom Joutel had betrayed his intention, when inquiring the way to the
Mississippi, told it to Duhaut, who on this changed front and made the
ominous declaration that he and his men would also go to Canada. Joutel
and his companions were now filled with alarm; for there was no
likelihood that the assassins would permit them, the witnesses of their
crime, to reach the settlements alive. In the midst of their trouble,
the sky was cleared as by the crash of a thunderbolt.
[Sidenote: THE CRISIS.]
Hiens and several others had gone, some time before, to the Cenis
villages to purchase horses; and here they had been detained by the
charms of the Indian women. During their stay, Hiens heard of Duhaut's
new plan of going to Canada by the Mississippi; and he declared to those
with him that he would not consent. On a morning early in May he
appeared at Duhaut's camp, with Ruter and Grollet, the French savages,
and about twenty Indians. Duhaut and Liotot, it is said, were passing
the time by practising with bows and arrows in front of their hut. One
of them called to Hiens, "Good-morning;" but the buccaneer returned a
sullen answer. He then accosted Duhaut, telling him that he had no mind
to go up the Mississippi with him, and demanding a share of the goods.
Duhaut replied that the goods were his own, since La Salle had owed him
money. "So you will not give them to me?" returned Hiens. "No," was the
answer. "You are a wretch!" exclaimed Hiens; "you killed my
master."[334] And drawing a pistol from his belt he fired at Duhaut,
who staggered three or four paces and fell dead. Almost at the same
instant Ruter fired his gun at Liotot, shot three balls into his body,
and stretched him on the ground mortally wounded.
Douay and the two Caveliers stood in extreme terror, thinking that their
turn was to come next. Joutel, no less alarmed, snatched his gun to
defend himself; but Hiens called to him to fear nothing, declaring that
what he had done was only to avenge the death of La Salle,--to which,
nevertheless, he had been privy, though not an active sharer in the
crime. Liotot lived long enough to make his confession, after which
Ruter killed him by exploding a pistol loaded with a blank charge of
powder against his head. Duhaut's myrmidon, L'Archevêque, was absent,
hunting, and Hiens was for killing him on his return; but the two
priests and Joutel succeeded in dissuading him.
The Indian spectators beheld these murders with undisguised amazement,
and almost with horror. What manner of men were these who had pierced
the secret places of the wilderness to riot in mutual slaughter? Their
fiercest warriors might learn a lesson in ferocity from these heralds of
civilization. Joutel and his companions, who could not dispense with the
aid of the Cenis, were obliged to explain away, as they best might, the
atrocity of what they had witnessed.[335]
Hiens, and others of the French, had before promised to join the Cenis
on an expedition against a neighboring tribe with whom they were at war;
and the whole party having removed to the Indian village, the warriors
and their allies prepared to depart. Six Frenchmen went with Hiens; and
the rest, including Joutel, Douay, and the Caveliers, remained behind,
in the lodge where Joutel had been domesticated, and where none were now
left but women, children, and old men. Here they remained a week or
more, watched closely by the Cenis, who would not let them leave the
village; when news at length arrived of a great victory, and the
warriors soon after returned with forty-eight scalps. It was the French
guns that won the battle, but not the less did they glory in their
prowess; and several days were spent in ceremonies and feasts of
triumph.[336]
When all this hubbub of rejoicing had subsided, Joutel and his
companions broke to Hiens their plan of attempting to reach home by way
of the Mississippi. As they had expected, he opposed it vehemently,
declaring that for his own part he would not run such a risk of losing
his head; but at length he consented to their departure, on condition
that the elder Cavelier should give him a certificate of his entire
innocence of the murder of La Salle, which the priest did not hesitate
to do. For the rest, Hiens treated his departing fellow-travellers with
the generosity of a successful free-booter; for he gave them a good
share of the plunder he had won by his late crime, supplying them with
hatchets, knives, beads, and other articles of trade, besides several
horses. Meanwhile, adds Joutel, "we had the mortification and chagrin of
seeing this scoundrel walking about the camp in a scarlet coat laced
with gold which had belonged to the late Monsieur de la Salle, and which
he had seized upon, as also upon all the rest of his property." A
well-aimed shot would have avenged the wrong, but Joutel was clearly a
mild and moderate person; and the elder Cavelier had constantly opposed
all plans of violence. Therefore they stifled their emotions, and armed
themselves with patience.
[Sidenote: JOUTEL AND HIS PARTY.]
Joutel's party consisted, besides himself, of the Caveliers (uncle and
nephew), Anastase Douay, De Marle, Teissier, and a young Parisian named
Barthelemy. Teissier, an accomplice in the murders of Moranget and La
Salle, had obtained a pardon, in form, from the elder Cavelier. They had
six horses and three Cenis guides. Hiens embraced them at parting, as
did the ruffians who remained with him. Their course was northeast,
toward the mouth of the Arkansas,--a distant goal, the way to which was
beset with so many dangers that their chance of reaching it seemed
small. It was early in June, and the forests and prairies were green
with the verdure of opening summer.
They soon reached the Assonis, a tribe near the Sabine, who received
them well, and gave them guides to the nations dwelling towards Red
River. On the twenty-third, they approached a village, the inhabitants
of which, regarding them as curiosities of the first order, came out in
a body to see them; and, eager to do them honor, they required them to
mount on their backs, and thus make their entrance in procession.
Joutel, being large and heavy, weighed down his bearer, insomuch that
two of his countrymen were forced to sustain him, one on each side. On
arriving, an old chief washed their faces with warm water from an
earthen pan, and then invited them to mount on a scaffold of canes,
where they sat in the hot sun listening to four successive speeches of
welcome, of which they understood not a word.[337]
At the village of another tribe, farther on their way, they met with a
welcome still more oppressive. Cavelier, the unworthy successor of his
brother, being represented as the chief of the party, became the
principal victim of their attentions. They danced the calumet before
him; while an Indian, taking him, with an air of great respect, by the
shoulders as he sat, shook him in cadence with the thumping of the drum.
They then placed two girls close beside him, as his wives; while, at the
same time, an old chief tied a painted feather in his hair. These
proceedings so scandalized him that, pretending to be ill, he broke off
the ceremony; but they continued to sing all night, with so much zeal
that several of them were reduced to a state of complete exhaustion.
[Sidenote: ARRIVAL AT THE ARKANSAS.]
At length, after a journey of about two months, during which they lost
one of their number,--De Marle, accidentally drowned while bathing,--the
travellers approached the river Arkansas, at a point not far above its
junction with the Mississippi. Led by their Indian guides, they
traversed a rich district of plains and woods, and stood at length on
the borders of the stream. Nestled beneath the forests of the farther
shore, they saw the lodges of a large Indian town; and here, as they
gazed across the broad current, they presently descried an object which
nerved their spent limbs, and thrilled their homesick hearts with joy.
It was a tall, wooden cross; and near it was a small house, built
evidently by Christian hands. With one accord they fell on their knees,
and raised their hands to Heaven in thanksgiving. Two men, in European
dress, issued from the door of the house and fired their guns to salute
the excited travellers, who on their part replied with a volley. Canoes
put out from the farther shore and ferried them to the town, where they
were welcomed by Couture and De Launay, two followers of Henri de
Tonty.[338]
That brave, loyal, and generous man, always vigilant and always active,
beloved and feared alike by white men and by red,[339] had been