French Pathfinders in North America Part 13

Now the explorers shouldered their canoes and struck out across the frozen swamps. At last they came to a sluggish streamlet, the headwaters of the Kankakee. They launched their canoes on it and were carried, within a few days, into a prairie country strewn with the carca.s.ses of innumerable buffalo, for this was a favorite hunting-ground of the Indians. But not one of the animals was in sight. The men were nearly starving and, at the best, discontented and sullen. Two lean deer and a few geese, all the game that the hunters had been able to secure within several days, were short commons for thirty-three men with appet.i.tes sharpened by traveling in the keen {238} December air. It was a G.o.d-send when they found a buffalo-bull mired fast. The famished men quickly despatched him, and by the efforts of twelve of their number dragged the huge carca.s.s out of the slough.

Down the Illinois River the voyagers traveled until they came in sight of wigwams on both sides of the river. La Salle expected trouble, for his enemies had been busy among the Illinois, stirring them up against him by representing that he had incited the Iroquois to make war upon them. He ordered his men to take their arms. Then the eight canoes in line abreast drifted down between the two wings of the encampment.

There was great confusion on both banks. The women screeched, and the men yelled and seized their bows and war-clubs. La Salle knew well how to deal with Indians and that it was poor policy to show himself too eager for peace. He leaped ash.o.r.e, followed by his men, arms in hand.

The Indians were more frightened by his sudden appearance than disposed to attack him, as they at once showed by holding up a peace pipe. And soon they overwhelmed the strangers with lavish hospitality.

These people, who formed one of the largest {239} branches of the Algonquin stock, were particular objects of hatred to the Iroquois. At one time they were driven across the Mississippi by these ruthless foes, who had traveled five or six hundred miles to attack them.

There, probably, they encountered equally savage enemies, the Sioux.

At all events, they returned to their old abode on the Illinois River, where La Salle found them. The deadly enmity of the Iroquois toward them burst out again shortly afterward, as we shall see.

La Salle took advantage of the opportunity to a.s.sure his hosts that if the Iroquois attacked them, he would stand by them, give them guns, and fight for them. Then he shrewdly added that he intended building a fort among them and a big wooden canoe in which he would descend to the sea and bring goods for them. All this looked very plausible and won their hearts. The next day La Salle and his companions were invited to a feast and, of course, went. The host seized the opportunity of warning them against descending the Great Water. He told them that its banks were infested by ferocious tribes and its waters full of serpents, alligators, dangerous rocks, and whirlpools; in short, that they never would reach the ocean alive.

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This harangue was interpreted to La Salle's men by two _coureurs de bois_ who understood every word of it. La Salle saw dismay overspreading the faces of his already disheartened men. But when his turn came to speak, he gave the Indians a genuine surprise. "We were not asleep," he said, "when the messenger of my enemies told you that we were spies of the Iroquois. We know all his lies and that the presents he brought you are at this moment buried in the earth under this lodge." This proof of what seemed more than human sagacity overwhelmed the Indians, and they had nothing more to say, little dreaming that La Salle had received secret information from a friendly chief.

Nevertheless, the next morning, when La Salle looked about for his sentinels, not one of them was to be seen. Six of his men, including two of the best carpenters, upon whom he depended for building the vessel, had deserted.

To withdraw his men from the demoralizing influences of the Indian camp, La Salle chose a naturally strong position at some distance down the river, fortified it, and built lodgings for the men, together with a house for the friars. This, the first habitation reared by white men in the {241} territory now comprised in the State of Illinois, stood a little below the site of Peoria and was called Fort Crevecoeur. This name, Fort Break-Heart, was taken from that of a celebrated fortification in Europe. It was to be a heart-breaker to the enemy.

La Salle believed in the doctrine of work as the best preventive of low spirits, and he kept his men at it. No sooner was the fort finished than he began to build the vessel. Two of his carpenters, we remember, had deserted. "Seeing," he says, "that if I should wait to get others from Montreal, I should lose a whole year, I said one day before my people that I was so vexed to find that the absence of two sawyers would defeat my plans, that I was resolved to try to saw the planks myself, if I could find a single man who would help me with a will."

Two men stepped forward and said they would try what they could do.

The result was that the work was begun and was pushed along so successfully that within two weeks the hull of the vessel was half finished.

La Salle now felt free to make the unavoidable journey to Montreal, to look after his affairs. His men were in better heart, and the vessel was well on its way to completion. Leaving the {242} faithful Tonty in charge of the fort with its garrison, mostly of scoundrels, he set out with his trusty Mohegan and four Frenchmen.

A few days earlier he had sent off Father Hennepin with two Frenchmen, to explore the lower part of the Illinois. In another place we shall read the story of their adventures.

We shall not follow La Salle on his journey back to Canada. It was a terribly hard experience of sixty-five days' travel through a country beset with every form of difficulty and swarming with enemies, "the most arduous journey," says the chronicler, "ever made by Frenchmen in America." But there was a worse thing to come. When La Salle reached Niagara, he learned not only the certainty of the "Griffin's" loss, with her valuable cargo, but that a vessel from France freighted with indispensable goods for him had been wrecked at the mouth of the St.

Lawrence, and a party of twenty hired men on their way from Europe to join him had, on their arrival, been so disheartened by reports of his failure and death, that only four persisted in their purpose.

This was but the beginning of a series of disasters. His agents at Fort Frontenac had plundered him; his creditors had seized his property; {243} several of his canoes loaded with furs had been lost in the rapids of the St. Lawrence; and a letter from Tonty, brought to him by two _voyageurs_, told him that nearly all the men, after destroying Fort Crevecoeur, had deserted.

What a blow! Fort Crevecoeur, with its supplies, was the base of his great enterprise. Now it was destroyed, its garrison gone, and Tonty, with a few faithful men, alone remained of his costly expedition. But this lion-hearted man, whom no disasters could daunt, borrowed more money at ruinous rates of interest, captured a party of his deserters on Lake Ontario, killing two who resisted arrest and locking up the others at Fort Frontenac, and hastened off on the long journey to relieve Tonty in the Illinois country.

When the party reached the Illinois River they beheld a stirring sight.

Far and near, the prairie was alive with buffalo, while hundreds were plunging and snorting in the water. The opportunity was not to be lost. The voyagers landed and encamped for a hunt. For three days they gave themselves up to the excitement of the chase, killing twelve buffalo, besides deer, geese, and swans. Then, with an ample supply of dried and smoked meat, they re-embarked.

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When they reached the site of the populous Illinois town, the place was desolate, not a human being in sight. Only heaps of ashes and charred poles and stakes showed where the lodges had stood. The whole meadow was blackened by fire. Hundreds of wolves skulked about the burial ground of the village. The ground was strewn with broken bones and mangled corpses. Every grave had been rifled, and the bodies had been thrown down from the scaffolds where many of them had been placed.

It was evident what had happened. The Iroquois had made a descent, in some way had missed their prey, and had wreaked their vengeance on the dead. But where were Tonty and his men? There was no sign of their having been killed. Neither had any trace been observed of their pa.s.sing up the river. It must be that they had escaped down the river with the Illinois in their flight. La Salle promptly determined what to do. Leaving a part of his men, he hid his baggage and started down the stream with a few trusty men carrying little besides their arms.

When they reached the ruins of Fort Crevecoeur, they found the vessel on the stocks untouched.

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La Salle pushed on down to the mouth of the river, without finding a trace of his missing countrymen. Now the Great Water rolled before him. Once he had dreamed night and day of seeing it. But to see it under such circ.u.mstances as these,--what a mockery of his hopes! The one thought on his mind was to find and rescue Tonty. There was no sign of him here. To go further would have been useless, and La Salle turned back, paddling day and night, and rejoined his men whom he had left. Then all started northward. On their way down they had followed the Kankakee. Now they took the Des Plaines route. Near a bark cabin a bit of wood that had been cut with a saw showed that Tonty and his men had gone this way. If they had but left at the fork of the stream some sign of their pa.s.sage, La Salle's party would have seen it on their way down, and all this anxiety would have been obviated.

With his mind relieved, La Salle was glad to rest for a while at his little Fort Miami, situated at the mouth of the St. Joseph River.

Tonty had pa.s.sed through perilous straits. The desertion of the larger part of his men left him with but three fighting men and two friars.

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Next came a tremendous war-party of Iroquois to attack the Illinois, in the midst of whom he was. For various reasons, the Illinois suspected that the Frenchmen had brought this trouble upon them and, but for Tonty's coolness, would have mobbed and murdered the little handful of white men. When the Iroquois began the attack, Tonty went among them, at the peril of his life, actually receiving a wound from an infuriated young warrior, and succeeded in stopping the fighting by telling the Iroquois that the Illinois numbered twelve hundred, and that there were sixty armed Frenchmen, ready to back them.

The effect of this timely fabrication was magical. The Iroquois at once were for peace and employed Tonty to arrange a truce. That night the Illinois slipped away down the river. The Iroquois followed them, on the opposite sh.o.r.e, watching for an opportunity to attack. This did not offer itself, but they actually drove the Illinois out of their own country, after perpetrating a butchery of women and children.

Meanwhile they had discovered Tonty's deception and were enraged. He had robbed them of a prey for which they had marched hundreds of miles.

Only a wholesome fear of Count {247} Frontenac, of whom the Indians stood in great awe, kept them from falling on the little band. As it was, matters looked so stormy that the Frenchmen stood on the watch all night, expecting an attack. At daybreak the chiefs bade them begone.

Accordingly they embarked in a leaky canoe and started up the river.

At their first stop Father Ribourde strolled away. When he did not reappear his comrades became alarmed. Tonty and one of the men went in search of him. They followed his tracks until they came to the trail of a band of Indians who had apparently carried him off. They afterward learned that a roving band of Kickapoos, one of the worst specimens of the Algonquin stock, prowling around the Iroquois camp in search of scalps, had murdered the inoffensive old man and carried his scalp in triumph to their village.

Another of their party came near to meeting with an untimely end, but his ingenuity saved his life. They had abandoned their worthless canoe and were making their way on foot, living on acorns and roots, when the young Sieur de Boisrondet wandered off and was lost. The flint of his gun had dropped out, and he had no bullets. {248} But he cut a pewter porringer into slugs, discharged his gun with a fire-brand, and thus killed wild turkeys. After several days he was so fortunate as to rejoin his party.

The poor fellows suffered terribly from cold and hunger while making their way along the sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan, but finally found a hospitable refuge among the Pottawattamies, of Green Bay, a friendly Algonquin tribe.

La Salle's heart was as much as ever set on following the Great Water to the sea. But he had learned the difficulties in the way of building a vessel and had resolved to travel by canoe.

The winter at Fort Miami was spent by him in organizing the expedition.

With this view he gathered about him a number of Indians from the far East who had fled for safety to the western wilds after the disastrous issue of King Philip's War, chiefly Abenakis, from Maine, and Mohegans from the Hudson. These New England Indians, who had long been the deadly foes of the English Puritans, were happy in enrolling themselves under a Frenchman and were ready to go with La Salle anywhere. His plan was to form a great Indian confederation, like that of the Five Nations, and powerful enough to resist it. {249} With this powerful body of Indians, backed by a sufficient number of French guns, he could hold the Mississippi Valley against all enemies, white or red.

When he had opened the route to the Gulf of Mexico by pa.s.sing down the Great River and taking possession of its whole length in the name of the French King, there would be a new outlet for the immensely valuable fur-trade of all that vast area drained by it and its tributaries.

Instead of the long journey down the Lakes and the St. Lawrence, trade would take the shorter and easier route to the Gulf of Mexico.

But how could even La Salle fail to see the enormous difficulties in the way,--the hostility of remote tribes down the river; the sure opposition of Spain, which was supreme on and around the Gulf, and, most of all, the bitter enmity of the French in Canada? The scheme meant disaster to their interests, by turning a large part of their trade into another channel and setting up on the Mississippi a new and powerful rival of Canada, with La Salle at its head.

All commercial Canada and nearly all official Canada were already incensed against him on the mere suspicion of his purposes. If they saw {250} these taking actual form, would they not rage and move heaven and earth, that is to say, Louis the Great,[2] to crush them? A man of less than La Salle's superhuman audacity would not in his wildest moments have dreamed of such a thing. He deliberately cherished the scheme and set himself calmly to executing it.

On December 21, 1682, the expedition started from Fort Miami. It consisted of twenty-three white men, eighteen Indian warriors, and ten squaws, with three children. These New England savages had made a b.l.o.o.d.y record in their own country, knew well how to use guns, and were better adapted to the work in hand than raw Europeans, however brave, who had no experience of Indian warfare.

On February 6 the voyagers saw before them the broad current of the Mississippi, full of floating ice. For a long distance they paddled their canoes down the mighty current without adventure. As they fared on day by day, they realized that they were entering a summer land.

The warm air and hazy sunlight and opening flowers were in delightful contrast with the ice and snow from which they had emerged. Once {251} there seemed to be danger of an attack from Indians whose war-drum they could hear beating. A fog lifted, and the Indians, looking across the river, saw the Frenchmen at work building a fort. Peace signals were displayed from both sides, and soon the white men and their Indian allies from rugged New England were hobn.o.bbing in the friendliest way with these dusky denizens of the southwestern woods. These were a band of the Arkansas, the same people who had treated Joliet and Marquette so handsomely. They lavished every kind attention on their guests and kept them three days. The friar, Membre, who chronicled the expedition, describes them as "gay, civil, and free-hearted, exceedingly well-formed and with all so modest that not one of them would take the liberty to enter our hut, but all stood quietly at the door." He adds, "we did not lose the value of a pin while we were among them."

La Salle had now reached the furthest point of Joliet and Marquette's exploration. He reared a cross, took possession of the country in his master's name, and pushed on. On the western side of the river they visited the home of the Taensas Indians and were amazed at the degree {252} of social advancement which they found among them. There were square dwellings, built of sun-baked mud mixed with straw, and arranged in regular order around an open area; and the King was attended by a council of sixty grave old men wearing white cloaks of the fine inner fibre of mulberry bark. The temple was a large structure, full of a dim, mysterious gloom, within which burned a sacred fire, as an emblem of the sun, watched and kept up unceasingly by two aged priests.

Altogether, the customs and social condition of these people were more like those of the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans than those of the wild tribes with whom the explorers were familiar. When the chief visited La Salle he came in great state, preceded by women who bore white fans, and wearing a disk of burnished copper,--probably to indicate that he was a child of the Sun, for the royal family claimed this high lineage.

The next day the Frenchmen visited a kindred tribe, the Natchez, among whom they observed similar usages. They were hospitably entertained and spent the night in their villages. Their chief town was some miles distant, near the site of the {253} city of Natchez. Here again La Salle planted a cross, less as a symbol of Christianity than of French occupation.[3]

{254} Near the mouth of the Red River, in the neighborhood of the place where Soto had been buried, the voyagers, while attempting to follow some fleeing natives, received a shower of arrows from a canoe. La Salle, anxious to avoid a hostile encounter, drew his men off. No doubt the Indians of this region preserved proud traditions of their forefathers' pursuit of the escaping Spaniards, the remnant of Soto's expedition.

On April 6 with what elation must La Salle have beheld the waters of the Gulf sparkling in the rays of the southern sun! The dream of years was realized. His long struggle and his hopes and failures and renewed efforts were crowned with success. One hundred and ninety years after Columbus's discovery, at enormous expense, he had led a party from the great fresh-water seas to the southern ocean, and had opened, he fondly believed, a new route for trade. But long years were to elapse ere his vision should become a reality.

Proudly and hopefully, in full view of the sea, he reared a cross and a column bearing the arms {255} of France and, with the singing of hymns and volleys of musketry, solemnly proclaimed Louis, of France, to be the rightful sovereign "of this country of Louisiana," as he named it, "the seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the nations, peoples, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams, and rivers within the extent of the said Louisiana, and also to the mouth of the River of Palms" (the Rio Grande). A tremendous claim surely, the historian Parkman remarks, covering a region watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand war-like tribes, in short, an empire in itself, and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half a mile!

Alas! at that very time, La Salle's enemies in Canada had gained the upper hand and had secured the recall of his mainstay, Count Frontenac.