St. Mary; and Saint Lusson had been ordered to explore the country, to discover its mineral resources, especially its mines of copper.* In 1670 and 1671 La Salle discovered the Illinois, and in this year the Jesuit missionaries made a complete map of the coast of Lake Superior.+ About this time Marquette learned from the Illinois Indians, who had been driven beyond the Mississippi by the Iroquois, and who came yearly to La Pointe to trade with the French, of the great river which they crossed in their journey. He purposed exploring it, but the sudden flight of the Hurons and Ottawas, in 1671, from that place, indefinitely postponed his project. 1 The early fur traders at Green Bay, or, as it was then called, Baye des Puans, discovered that many Indian tribes resorted thither as a favourite fishing station, and that for this reason it was well adapted to become a station for carrying on the fur trade. § The Jesuits also selected it as a missionary station, and Father Claude Alouez was sent hither in 1669 to found the mission of St. Xavier.2|| He was joined by Dablon the following year. They explored the surrounding country. They ascended the Fox River. They crossed Lake Winnebago. They visited the towns of the Mascoutins and the Miamis, whom they found living together. Here they again heard of the existence of the great river Mississippi. In 1671 they explored the country of the Foxes. T In 1673 Joliet was sent by Governor Frontenac to discover the Mississippi. Marquette was chosen to accompany him. Joliet went to Michillimackinac, and called at Point St. Ignace for Marquette, who had continued to reside there with the Hurons since their flight from La Pointe. With two canoes and five voyageurs, and with the necessary supply of smoked meat and Indian corn, they began their voyage on the 17th of May.* They passed up the Menomonie River, and down the Wisconsin, to the Mississippi, which they reached on the 17th of June, having been just one month in making the voyage. They explored the Mississippi as far as the mouth of the Arkansas. In 1674, Joliet returned to Quebec. He lost *See N. Y., Hist. Doc, Vol. IX, 63, 67, 70, 76, 88, 97, 803, 804. Procés Verbal which is given, Relation 1670, p. 2. Perrot. Memoires, 119, 120. La Salle's Memorial to Frontenac N. Y. Hist. Doc., vol. 9, 787, 789. 1 Marquette took the place of Alouez at La Pointe on September 13, 1669. He says: "I sent them (the Sioux) a present by an interpreter to tell them to recognise the Frenchman everywhere, and not to kill him or the Indians in his company; that the black gowns wish to pass to the country of the Assinipones, and tc that of Kilistinaux; that he was already with the Outagames (the Foxes), and that he was going this fall (1669) to the Illinois, to whom they should leave a free passage. Would that all these nations loved God as much as they feared the French. Smith's History of Wisconsin. 2 Baye des Puans always remained the centre of an extensive trade. Numerous bands of Indians assembled at this post. The French always kept a garrison here. At the time of its surrender to the English it contained forty or fifty French and half-breed families. It was at this point that Lieut. Gorell and his men were placed, and from which they escaped without loss of life during Pontiac's war. See Gorell's Journal in Wis. Hist. Col., vol. 1, pp. 24-48. the journal of his travels by the upsetting of his canoe at the foot of the Lachine Rapids, in sight of the French settlements upon the St. Lawrence.* In 1673, Frontenac built Fort Frontenac at Cataraqui, as a suitable point to carry on a traffic with the Iroquois Indians, and to prevent their interfering with the northern fur trade.+ Vessels were building to command Lake Ontario, and to inspire the Five Nations with respect and fear. In 1674, La Salle went to France to facilitate his western discoveries. In 1675, he obtained from the King a patent which gave him a monopoly of the hunting and fishing upon Lake Ontario. He was put in possession of Fort Frontenac. He was to maintain a garrison, build a church, and support a Franciscan missionary.§ A new fort of stone, having four bastions, was quickly erected by La Salle. 1n 1678, La Salle explored Western New York, and visited the Senecas to obtain their consent to the erection of a fort at Niagara and the building of a vessel upon Lake Erie. During this year he constructed a palisade fort at the mouth of Niagara River, and in the following year the Griffin was built above the Falls, for navigating the Upper Lakes. La Salle, in May, 1678, obtained a second patent from the King "to permit him to discover the western part of New France," and for the execution of his enterprise he was authorized to construct forts wherever he deemed it necessary. He had full powers given to him to accomplish his purpose. He was to complete his enterprise within five years. La Salle was to carry on no trade whatever with the savages who had been in the habit of taking their peltries to Montreal. The King was anxious for the discovery of a country through which it was probable a road might be found to penetrate to Mexico.|| The traders and coureurs des bois were in the habit of assembling at Michillimackinac. La Salle, at this time, had sent fifteen men with goods into the upper country to trade with those Indians who did not carry their peltries to Montreal. His engagés had orders, after completing their purchases, to go to the Illinois and make all necessary preparations for his coming. The majority of his men were seduced by the lawless traders of the districts into which they had been sent; they disobeyed his orders; squandered his goods; or used them in trading with the Indians on their own account. He failed in this effort to obtain the means by which he had hoped to prosecute his enterprise. T La Salle explored the western shore of Lake Michigan; and Tonty, his enterprising and trusty friend, explored the eastern shore. They built upon the south-east coast of the lake, a fort, at the mouth of the St. Joseph's River. They ascended this river to the carrying-place. They crossed to the Illinois, which they descended to the Indian town of Peoria, three miles below which, upon a hill, they erected a fort, which they called Fort Crevecoeur. At this place La Salle commenced the construction of a small vessel with which he hoped to navigate the Mississippi. But he had placed on board the Griffin the anchors and rigging for the vessel to be built here, and they were lost with her. In the winter of 1680, La Salle, with five companions, started from Fort Crevecœur, Letter of Joliet. + Letters of Frontenac. N. Y. His. Doc., vol. 9, pp. 91, 95, 96. § Patent is given in Falconer's Mississippi. N. Y. Hist. Doc., vol. 9, pp. 127. 795. See Falconer's Mississippi, and Spark's Life of La Salle. ¶Ibid; also, Parkman's Discoveries of the Great West. on an overland journey for Fort Frontenac. They passed up the Illinois and reached the fort which they had built upon the St. Joseph's; from this point they travelled across southern Michigan to the Detroit River, and crossing the river, they continued their journey through the South-Western Peninsular, to the point of Pelee on Lake Erie; and from thence they proceeded to Niagara, and from this place to Frontenac.* In 1680, Acceau, Hennepin, and Du Gay, were sent by La Salle from Fort Crevecœur to explore the Upper Mississippi. They went up as far as the St. Croix River, and they traversed the country northward as far as Mille Lac. They met, on their returning voyage, near the Falls of St. Anthony, Daniel Greysolou Du L'Hut, with four well armed Frenchmen. Du L'Hut had explored the country between Lake Superior and the sources of the Mississippi. Du L'Hut had left Quebec in the autumn of 1678 for the purpose of exploring the region about the head-waters of the Mississippi, and establishing friendly relations with the Sioux and the Assiniboines. In the following year he visited various villages of the Sioux, and took possession of the country on behalf of the King of France, under the authority of the Governor of Canada. In the autumn of 1679 he built a trading post and fort of pine logs on Lake Superior, at the mouth of the Kamanistiquia River, where he held a council with the Assiniboines, the Lake tribes, and the Sioux, with a view to establishing a peace amongst them. He wanted them to bring their peltries for sale to his new fort, and peace was necessary to his success. In the following year he explored the country as we have seen, to the westward, where he met Hennepin, and the two parties descended the Mississippi together as far as the junction of the Wisconsin, and thence they proceeded to Green Bay.+ In 1682, Le Salle, with Tonty, Membre, twenty-three Frenchmen, and eighteen Indians who insisted upon taking with them ten squaws and their children, set out on an expedition to explore the southern Mississippi. They reached the river on the 6th of February. On the 24th they encamped at the third Chickasaw bluffs. Here they built a fort, which they called Fort Prudhomme-named after one of La Salle's men, who was here lost in the forests for nine days. They left the fort in charge of a small garrison, and proceeded down the river. On the 13th of March, they reached the mouth of the river Arkansas, where they raised a cross, and attached to it the arms of France; and La Salle, in the King's name, took formal possession of the country. They visited many Indian tribes as they journeyed towards the Gulf. On the 6th of April they reached the mouth of the Mississippi, explored its estuaries, and on the 9th they took formal possession "of all the seas, harbours, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the nations, peoples, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams, and rivers, from the mouth of the Ohio, as also along the Mississippi and the rivers which discharge themselves therein, from its source beyond the country of the Sioux to the Gulf of Mexico." This, it will be observed, La Salle was authorized to do by his Letters Patent of 1678. It will be also observed, that the discoveries La Salle was authorised to make east of Mexico, were said to be in the western part of New France.‡ * Ibid. Hennepin's Nouveau Voyage; Parkman's Discoveries of the Great West, pp. 251-9; N. Y. Hist. Doc. vol. 9, p. 795. Tonty's Memoir: Falconer's Mississippi; Spark's life of La Salle; Parkman's Discoveries of the Great t; Albach's Annals. La Salle, upon his return, built a fort about a league below Le Fort des Miamis, aud upon the south side of the Illinois River. This fort was erected upon a very high rock, the top of which was well nigh inaccessible. It was long known as Fort St. Louis. Here La Salle sought to establish a confederacy of the Western tribes, in order that they might successfully resist the Iroquois invasions. He pointed out to them their present dangers, and the advantages of union. He succeeded in uniting the Miamis, the various sub-tribes of the Illinois, the Shawanese, and the scattered remnants of bands of Indians who had been driven from the colonies of New England and Virginia, and had recently come to the shores of Lake Michigan. Nearly 20,000 Indians had come to reside in the vicinity of Fort St. Louis. For the present, La Salle expected to carry on the fur trade of the west by the route of the St. Lawrence, but he looked forward to the establishment of a separate colony which should embrace the entire valley of the Mississippi. He considered himself entitled, by his patent from the King, to bring up his supplies and men from Quebec and Montreal, as it had, by the King's directions, received the express sanction of the Governor and Intendant.* La Barre, who had succeeded Frontenac, threw every possible difficulty in the way of La Salle. He represented La Salle as being the cause of the Iroquois incursions against the western tribes. He calunniated him in his letters to M. Seignelay. He pronounced his discoveries upon the Mississippi, imaginary. He declared that La Salle was building up in the west an imaginary kingdom for himself. + In 1682, La Salle addressed Count Frontenac a letter, asking him to send more soldiers to Fort Frontenac at his (La Salle's) expense. Frontenac, when he received the letter, was about sailing for France. He gave it to La Barre, who not only did not do as requested, but he withdrew the soldiers who were already at the fort, and he then seized it because it was defenceless. He then sent La Chesnaye and Le Ber, two of his own associates in the fur trade, who were two of La Salle's most implacable enemies, to take possession of Fort Frontenac, notwithstanding the remonstrances of La Salle's creditors. They lived on La Salle's stores, sold his goods for their own profit, and turned cattle to pasture upon his growing crops. La Barre, as already stated, had become the partner of certain merchants, the rivals and enemies of La Salle. The Governor of New York was urging on the Iroquois to undertake the conquest of the western tribes, in order to divert the fur trade from Montreal to Albany, and La Barre was scarcely less favourable to such an enterprise, as he sought the ruin and death of La Salle. He detained the men whom La Salle had sent to Montreal for supplies, and advised the Iroquois to plunder La Salle's canoes and to seize him as an enemy.‡ In the autumn of 1683, La Salle left Tonty in command at Fort St. Louis, and started for France, intending to sail from Quebec. On his way he met Chevalier de Baugis, an officer of the King's dragoons, whom La Barre had commissioned to take possession of Fort St. Louis, upon the Illinois River. De Baugis carried with him letters from the Governor, ordering La Salle to proceed to Quebec. Notwithstanding the outrage, La Salle wrote to Tonty * Ibid. +N. Y. Hist. Doc. Vol. III. pp. 447, 451. See note to Parkman's discoveries of the West, p. 299. Mémoire pour rendre compte à Monseigneur le Marquis de Seignelay de l'Etat, oû le Sieur de la Salle a laiseé le Fort Frontenac, pendant le temps de sa decouverte. Archives de Paris, l'ère Série. Vol. II. p. 305. Memoire par M. Denonville, 10 aut. 1688. to treat Chevalier de Baugis kindly. De Baugis reached Illinois, where he took possession of the fort on behalf of the Governor. Tonty remained as the representative of La Salle.* Upon reaching France, La Salle addressed to the Minister a memorial, recounting what he had done and what he had suffered to extend the dominions of the King. He recounted how that during five years he had made five journeys of more than 5,000 leagues in all; how that for the most part these journeys were made on foot, with extreme fatigue, through snow and through water, without an escort, without provisions, without bread, without wine, without recreation, without repose. He told how that he had traversed more than six hundred leagues of country hitherto unknown; that he did this among savage and cannibal nations, against whom he had to contend daily, though accompanied only by thirty-six men, and consoled by nothing save the hope of succeeding in an enterprise which he thought would be agreeable to His Majesty.+ The King condemned the conduct of La Barre. He wrote to La Barre, informing him of what he had heard, that he had improperly taken possession of Fort Frontenac ; had driven away La Salle's men; had suffered his lands to be laid waste; had told the Iroquois to seize him as an enemy to the colony; and had made a statement as to Fort Frontenac having been abandoned, at variance with truth. In April, 1684, La Salle rcceived a new Patent, § and he sailed on the 24th of July for the mouth of the Mississippi, with 280 colonists. Beaujeu was the naval officer in command. He was jealous of La Salle, and hostile to him. He declared that "it was disagreeable to him to be under the orders of La Salle, who had no military rank." They missed the mouth of the Mississippi River through the treachery of the pilot. They landed far to the west on the shore of Matagorda, or St. Bernard's Bay, near the mouth of the Colorado River, in what is now Southern Texas. Here they, for the time being, established a colony; many of them died of disease soon after landing. They had been treacherously deserted by Beaujeu, who carried away with him the ammunition and other necessary supplies. La Salle searched for the Mississippi, with a view to the removal of his colony. But in the meantime he purposed obtaining assistance from Illinois, and he started thither, but was murdered on the way by some of his own men, near the Trinity river, in Texas. The assassins quarrelled with and murdered each other. The survivors of the party, led by Joutal, continued their journey in a north-easterly direction, and, after having travelled for two months, reached the Arkansas, near its junction with the Mississippi. The colony suffered great hardships. The most of them perished; the few who survived of those that remained, were seized by the Spaniards as trespassers upon their dominions, and sent to the fleet and to the mines. || In the spring of 1683, Governor de la Barre sent Nicholas Perrot, with a command of twenty men, to establish alliances with the Iowas and the Sioux. He did so. He built a fort below the Wisconsin, on the east bank of the Mississippi, which was known as Fort *Tonty's Memoir in Falconer's Mississippi, pp. 74-75. +La Salle's Memoir to M. Seignelay given in Falconer's Mississippi. Archives de Paris, lère série, Vol. II. p. 334; 2ème série, Vol. IV. p. 420. Commission du Sieur de la Salle pour Commander dans tous les pays qui seront assujettis à la France, a l'Ouest du Canada. Archives de Paris, 1ère série, Vol. II. p. 350. Louisiana Hist. Col. Vol. I. Joutel's Journal. Parkman's Discoveries of the Great West. |