IV

WILDERNESS AND EMPIRE

We must now return to the lifetime of Champlain and note some of the principal steps by which the French acquired control of the central portion of North America. Among the young men whom Champlain selected to send among the Indians to fit themselves for the work of interpreters was a Norman named Jean Nicollet. This was in 1618, and for the next sixteen years Nicollet’s time was chiefly spent among the Ottawas and Nipissings, engaging in their various expeditions, and encountering with them the privations and hardships of the forest. In 1634 Champlain sent Nicollet upon a western expedition. The object was to find out, if possible, what was meant by the repeated stories of large bodies of water to the westward, and of a distant people without hair or beards who did all their journeying in enormous tower-like canoes. Nicollet thought that this must be an Oriental people, and in order that he might not present too strange an appearance when he should have arrived among them, he took along with him a

Chinese gown of rich brocade embroidered with flowers and birds.

Nicollet’s route lay up the Ottawa River to Lake Nipissing, and thence to the Georgian Bay. On that broad expanse of water the party launched their canoes for a journey to the Sault Ste. Marie and the Ojibway tribe which dwelt in its neighbourhood. It does not appear that Nicollet gained any positive knowledge of Lake Superior, but he entered Lake Michigan, and followed its western shores as far as Green Bay, where he met with Indians of strange speech who had never before set eyes upon a white man. These were Winnebagoes, belonging to the great Dacotah family, and in their presence the robe of brocade was put to uses quite different from those which its owner had intended. The amazed redskins beheld in its wearer a supernatural being, and were more than confirmed in this belief when they heard the report and saw the flash of his pistol.¹ From Green Bay our explorer pushed on up the Fox River, where he fell in with a tribe of Algonquins famous for their valour, under the name of Mascoutins. These Indians told him of the existence of a “great water” in the

neighbourhood, and inasmuch as their speech was Algonquin, the words which they used were in all probability Missi-Sippi. Whether Nicollet entered the Wisconsin River or not is uncertain, but it seems probable that he went further to the south than Green Bay, to reach the country belonging to the Algonquin tribe of the Illinois. He also established friendly relations with the Algonquin Pottawattamies. After this he retraced his course, and reached Three Rivers in July, 1635, just about one year from the time of starting.

Of course the “great water” to which Nicollet’s Indian informants alluded was the Mississippi River, but it was an easy and natural mistake to identify it with the western ocean, for which everybody had been so long and so eagerly looking. Many years elapsed before this and its kindred questions were correctly solved. The Jesuit influence, which after Champlain’s death was long supreme in the colony, was not especially favourable to western exploration. The scientific zeal of Champlain, which studied geography for its own sake, was not theirs, but their missionary zeal took them to great lengths, and in 1641 we find Father Jogues preaching the gospel to a concourse of red men hard by the outlet of Lake Superior.¹

It is possible that the movements in

that direction might have been more vigorously prosecuted but for the terrible Iroquois war resulting in the destruction of the Hurons in 1649. Ten years later the journey of two Frenchmen, Radisson and Groseilliers, is worthy of mention because they reached a stream which they called Forked River “because it has two branches, the one towards the west, the other towards the south, which we believe run towards Mexico.”¹ This, of course, might be meant for the Mississippi and Missouri. Within the next three or four years Ménard and Allouez explored portions of the Lake Superior coast, and again heard enticing stories about the “great water.”

About this time a marked change came over Canada. In 1661 the youthful Louis XIV. assumed personal control of the government of France, and it cannot be said of him that either then or at any later time he was at all neglectful of the interest of Canada. As our narrative will hereafter show, if Canada suffered at his hands, it was from excessive care rather than from neglect. In 1664 and the following year the king sent three very able men to America; the first was the Marquis de Tracy, to be military commander of New France, the Sieur de Courcelle, to be governor

of Canada, and Jean Baptiste Talon, to be intendant of Canada. The intendant was an officer charged with the duty of enforcing a minute system of regulations in the colony, and incidentally of keeping a watch upon the governor’s actions, according to the universal system of surveillance for which the old regime in France was so notable. With these men came as many as 2000 fresh colonists, together with 1200 veteran infantry, as fine as anything Europe had to show; so that there was now some hope that the Iroquois nuisance might be kept at arm’s length. Talon was a man of large views; he had an inkling of what might be accomplished by such extensive waterways as those of North America; and it was his settled intention to occupy the interior of the continent, and to use the mouths of its southern rivers as places from which to emerge in force and threaten the coast of Spanish Mexico. So aggressive was the mood of the French at this moment that Courcelle projected an invasion of the Long House, and in January and February, 1666, he proceeded as far as Schenectady, whence he retired on learning that the English had taken possession of New Netherland. In the ensuing autumn another expedition was undertaken, and Courcelle, accompanied by Tracy, penetrated the greater part of the Mohawk valley.

It was a singular spectacle, that of 600 French regulars in their uniforms, marching through the woodland trails to the sound of drum and trumpet. At a later period such boldness would have entailed disaster, but at that time white men and their ways were still sufficiently novel to inspire a great deal of wholesome terror. It is not easy to calculate the death-dealing capacity of the unknown, and accordingly our Mohawks, though thoroughly brave men, retired in confusion before the confident and resonant advance of the Gallic chivalry.¹ The moral impression thus produced was reinforced so effectively by Jesuit missionaries that the Long House was kept comparatively quiet for twenty years. Indeed, fears were entertained at times in New York that the French might succeed in winning over the Iroquois in spite of the past, but any such result was averted by the farsighted policy of Sir Edmund Andros and Thomas Dongan, and the ascendancy acquired over the Mohawks by the Schuylers at Albany.

The remotest western frontier of French missionary enterprise was now the northern portion of Lake Michigan from the Sault Ste. Marie to Green Bay. The French names dotted with

such profusion over that portion of the United States known as the Old Northwest preserve for us an eloquent record of the travels and toils of the old explorers. The New England colonies were more than twenty times as populous as Canada, yet their furthest inland reach was to the shores of the Connecticut River at Deerfield and Hadley, while the French outposts were more than a thousand miles from the Atlantic. This difference was partly due to the fact that the primary object of the English was to found homes, and reproduce in the wilderness the self-supporting and self-governing rural communities of the Old Country; whereas the primary object of the French was either to convert the heathen, or to trade for peltries, or to settle geographical questions, and all this was a more migratory kind of work than founding villages. In particular, the effects of Champlain’s policy in becoming a leader of the alliance against the Long House are conspicuously visible.¹ It will be observed that for more than half a century after Champlain’s attack upon the Onondaga fort, the route taken by Frenchmen toward the great West was up the Ottawa River and across the northern portion of Lake Huron. The French acquaintance with Lake Ontario was as yet but slight, while of Lake Erie they knew

nothing save by hearsay. It was impossible for them to use those southerly routes because of the Iroquois. But inasmuch as the Iroquois by sudden raids to the northward could cut off the current of the northwestern fur-trade at almost any point between Lake Ontario and the Sault Ste. Marie, it became very important for the French to maintain friendly relations with all the Algonquin tribes about the great lakes, from the Ottawas to the Ojibways and Pottawattamies. These were among the prime necessities which carried their activity so far to the west, and it so happened that side by side with the devoted missionaries a peculiar kind of population was developed in adaptation to the wild and lawless life of these woodland regions. Among the picturesque figures of New France are those of the coureurs de bois, which, literally rendered, would be “runners of the woods.” Many of these men were ne’er-do-weels brought over from France by a legislation which insisted rather upon quantity than quality for the settlers of the New World. Their ranks were reinforced by those who for whatever purpose were dissatisfied with steady work in a steady-going community. The paternal legislation of Louis XIV. would have had them marry French women of their own station, cultivate

their small farm, and comport themselves with sober dignity. In point of fact, they tramped off to the woods, took to themselves Indian wives, and hunted the moose, or speared the salmon, or set traps for every four-footed creature with fur on its back. We are told, with much probability, by Charlevoix, that these men did not do nearly so much to civilize the Indians as the Indians did to barbarize them.

It was certainly felt by Father Allouez that these wood rangers were as much in need of a missionary as the red men themselves, for early in 1670 he busied himself in preaching to them. At this time he reached the head of the Wisconsin River, and was told that six days’ journey from there it flowed into the Mississippi or “Great Water.” The “Jesuit Relation” for 1670 speaks of this “great water” as a very wide river, of which none of the Indians had ever seen the end, and it was not clear whether it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico or that of California.

The politic Frenchmen at the north of Lake Michigan had their hands quite full with the relations, peaceful or hostile, of the Indian tribes. Thither had retreated the Hurons and Ottawas to get out of the reach of the dreaded Long House, and by coming hither they had

given umbrage to the ferocious Dacotahs or Sioux, whom Father Marquette not inaptly termed the Iroquois of the West. But the chastisement wrought by Tracy in the Mohawk country was reported with savage exultation from red man to red man along the chain of lakes, until it encouraged the Ottawas with the remnant of Hurons to move backward as far as Mackinaw and the great Manitoulin Island.

In 1670, in accordance with the injunctions of the king, Talon despatched St. Lusson to take possession of the Northwest, and in the spring of 1671 the heights looking upon the Sault Ste. Marie witnessed a pageant such as none knew so well as Frenchmen how to prepare. Besides the tribes just mentioned, there were representatives from not less than a dozen others, Pottawattamies, Winnebagoes, Illinois, Shawnees, Ojibways, Nipissings, and others, a vast assemblage of grunting warriors hideous with every variety of lurid paint, and bedizened with feathers and wampum. Here were games of ball, mock fights, and whatever peaceful diversion the barbaric mind was capable of finding pleasure in. These festivities continued for some weeks, interspersed with feasts at which were served the wild fowl of the season and abundance of fish, with that pride of the red man’s menu, boiled dog. On the 14th of June, a great concourse

of people assembled in the bright sunshine at the top of a lofty hill, and there all the magnates present, white and red, affixed their signatures or made their marks to a document which practically claimed for Louis XIV. all the continent there was, from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the coast of Labrador as far west as land might go, which some bold spirits thought might be two or three hundred miles west of the Wisconsin River. These signatures were supposed to commit the Indian tribes as well as the Frenchmen to this extensive French claim. After the signing was over, an immense wooden cross was reared aloft and planted in the hole which had been dug to receive it, while the Frenchmen present, with uncovered heads, chanted an ancient Latin hymn. A post with the lilies of France was planted close by, while the French commander, Sieur de St. Lusson, held up a sod as symbolic of taking seizin of the land. It was felt, however, that all this pageant would be incomplete without a speech that would stir the hearts of the Indians, and Father Allouez, the orator of the day, knew how to tell them what they could appreciate. He informed the gaping red men that when it came to the business of massacre, their bloodiest chiefs were mere tyros compared with the most Christian king of France. He depicted

that monarch as wet with the blood of his enemies, and declared that he did not keep scalps as a record of the number slain simply because the carnage to which he was accustomed was so wholesale, that no such petty method of reckoning would be of any use. Having listened to this ensanguined rhetoric, the assemblage broke up, and with the usual choruses of yelps and grunts, the tawny audience separated into countless little groups and disappeared in the recesses of the forest.¹

At the time of this wild ceremony there had already entered upon the scene the man who in some respects must be counted the most remarkable among all these pioneers of France. In the city of Rouen there had dwelt for several generations a family by the name of Cavelier, wealthy and highly respected, whose members were often chosen as diplomats and judges, or for other positions entailing large responsibility. Although these people did not strictly belong to the noblesse, they were nevertheless lords of small landed estates, and the estate belonging to the Caveliers was known as La Salle. In the year 1643, Rouen witnessed the birth of René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. This boy seems to have been educated at a Jesuit school, but as he grew up,

feeling no inclination for the priesthood, he parted from his old friends and teachers with a reputation for excellent scholarship and unimpeachable character. He had shown unusual precocity in mathematics, and a strong love for such study of physical science as could be compassed in those days of small things. He was noted at an early age for a reserved and somewhat haughty demeanour, a Puritanic seriousness in his views of life, and a power of determination which nothing could shake. It so happened that his elder brother, Jean Cavelier, a priest of St. Sulpice, was in Canada, and that circumstance may perhaps have drawn him thither. His entrance into a religious order had cut him off from his inheritance, so that his resources were then and always extremely meagre. On arriving in Montreal, La Salle accepted the feudal grant of a tract of land at the place now called La Chine, above the rapids known by that name. That La Salle must have entertained some purpose of exploring the wilderness before his coming to America is highly probable, for the first two or three years at La Chine were spent by him in the diligent study of Indian languages; and he was not long in acquiring high proficiency both in Iroquois and in several dialects of Algonquin. One day he was visited by a party of Senecas, who spent some weeks at his house

and had much to tell him about a river that they called the Ohio, “which had its sources in their country and reached the ocean at a distance so great that many months would be required to traverse it. By the Ohio River, these Indians meant the Allegheny with the Ohio and the lower Mississippi, in which grouping their error was just as natural and no greater than we make in calling the upper and lower Mississippi by the same name; whereas in fact, the Missouri with the lower Mississippi is the main river, and the upper Mississippi is the tributary. From the Senecas’ account of the immense length of their Ohio River, La Salle concluded that it must fall into the Gulf of California, and hence afford the much-coveted passage to China.

La Salle therefore decided that he would visit the Seneca country and ascertain for himself the truth of what he had been told. He found no difficulty in obtaining the requisite authorization from Courcelles and Talon, but as he had no ready money he was obliged to sell his estate of La Chine in order to raise the necessary funds. Just at that moment the seminary of St. Sulpice was meditating a similar enterprise, but with a very different destination and purpose. They wished to go northwesterly to convert some Indians whom they had been told

surpassed all others for heathenish ignorance. To combine two such diverse expeditions into one was not an augury of success.

In July, 1669, seven canoes carrying twenty-four men started up the river from La Chine, and after a voyage of thirty-five days they reached Irondequoit Bay on the south side of Lake Ontario, from which a march of twenty miles brought them to one of the principal Seneca villages. There they found the people in great excitement because of the return of a small war party with one young captive warrior. One of the French priests tried to buy him from his captors, but the village found the season dull and was determined not to be deprived of its night’s pleasure. So the Frenchmen were obliged to look on for six weary hours while the young man was subjected to every torture that the red man’s ingenuity could devise. After the life had quite left his charred and writhing form, and after the body had been cut into fragments and passed about to be eaten as dainty morsels, the savage hosts were ready to inquire what service they could do to their guests. But when they heard what was wanted they became profuse in their warnings against the wicked Indians who dwelt on the banks of the Ohio. They would furnish no guides nor be in any way instrumental in leading their

beloved friends into such unseemly dangers. Our Frenchmen had long since learned the true meaning of such ironical expressions of solicitude on the part of the red men. Practically, they often amounted to a threat, as if to say, If you go down there we will kill you and lay the blame upon the Indians of that part. Why the Senecas did not wish the Frenchmen to pass through their country at that moment, unless it may have been the general Iroquois feeling toward Frenchmen, is not clear. At this juncture one of the Indians offered to guide the party by an entirely different route, from which they could reach the Ohio at a point lower down than originally contemplated. La Salle and the Sulpicians concluded to accept this offer, and were led back to the shore of Lake Ontario. They crossed the Niagara River just below the bluffs at Queenston and distinctly heard the magnificent sub-bass monotone of the great cataract, to which, perhaps, they were the first of Europeans to approach so near. At a village on the present site of Hamilton, La Salle was presented with a Shawnee prisoner who promised to take him across Lake Erie to the Ohio; but a new turn to events was suddenly given by the unexpected arrival of a couple of Frenchmen from the northwest. One of these was Louis Joliet, a man of about the same age as La Salle, who

had, like him, been educated by the Jesuits and taken orders, but had afterward come to devote himself to mercantile pursuits. Talon, the Intendant, had heard much of the copper mines on the shore of Lake Superior, the fame of which was very widespread in aboriginal America, and he had sent Joliet to discover and inspect them. In this quest the young Frenchman had not been successful, but he brought with him such a desperate account of the sinful condition of the Pottawattamies that the Sulpician priests decided to go at once and convert them, in spite of all that La Salle could say. So the exploring party was broken up, the Sulpicians went to Sault Ste. Marie, where they met with a rather cold reception from the Jesuits, and after a while concluded to return to Montreal without anything to show for their pains.

As for La Salle at that disappointing moment, he showed a quality for which he was ever afterward distinguished. When he had started to do a thing he never relinquished his purpose, although men and fortune forsook him. If he had been one of a Balaklava Six Hundred and the only survivor among them, he would have attacked the enemy, single-handed, with unabated courage. Unfortunately, our sources of information partially fail us at this point, so that

some uncertainty remains as to the route which La Salle took after the Sulpicians had left him. One account of his route —perhaps as probable as any — takes him by way of Lake Chautauqua into the Allegheny valley, and thence down the Ohio River as far as Louisville. In the following year he seems to have crossed Lake Erie from south to north, and ascended the Detroit River to Lake Huron; thence to have passed into Lake Michigan and ascended the Chicago River, from which he found his way across the brief portage to the river of the Illinois. According to some accounts, he reached the Mississippi River on both these trips, first from the Ohio, and afterward from the Illinois. But these conclusions are not well supported and have generally been pronounced improbable.

An interest in this remote “great water” continued strongly to agitate many minds, and Talon had already settled upon Louis Joliet as a fit man to undertake its discovery, when circumstances led to a change of governorship for New France. Courcelles and Talon were both recalled, and in place of them the affairs of Canada were managed by one of the most remarkable Frenchmen of his time, Louis de Buade, Count of Frontenac. This man was of the bluest blood

of France, a veteran soldier of no mean ability, and for executive capacity excelled by few. His talents for dealing with Indians were simply marvellous. He could almost direct the policy of an Indian tribe by a wave of the hand. If need be, he could smear his face with war paint and lead off the demon dance with a vigour and abandon that no chieftain could hope to rival. He could out-yell any warrior in the Long House, and when he put on a frown and spoke sternly, the boldest warriors shivered with fear. Among white men he was domineering and apt to be irascible. A man of very clear ideas, he well knew how to realize them, and cared little for the advice of those who seemed to him frivolous or stupid. It was hinted that sometimes in his management of money he was not above sundry slight peccadilloes, with which his enemies were fond of twitting him, but this was not always a safe game, since he was liable to retort upon his accusers with an utterly overwhelming tu quoque. On the whole, however, he must be called a man of public spirit, devoted to the interests of his country, and with fewer serious failings than most of the public men of his age. In his general view of things he was far-sighted and not petty. If Talon had remained in Canada, Frontenac would probably

have quarrelled with him, but as it was, he adopted most of that official’s intelligent plans; among other things he warmly espoused the ideas of La Salle, and he confirmed the choice of Joliet for the proposed expedition to the Mississippi. The mention of Joliet reminds us that New France was coming of age as a colony, for this explorer was, a native of the country, having been born at Quebec in 1645, ten years after the death of Champlain. It appears that Joliet was a well-educated man and showed considerable proficiency in the higher mathematics. It was said, too, that he was rather a formidable debater on questions of logic and metaphysics. There is nothing in his career that shows qualities of a lofty or transcendent order, but we get the impression of a prudent and painstaking man of sober judgment.

At Mackinaw Joliet was joined by a Jesuit priest named Jacques Marquette, a native of the old Carlovingian capital, Laon, born in 1637. He was distinguished for linguistic talents and for the deeply spiritual quality of his mind. He seems to have had a poetic temperament profoundly sensitive to the beauties of nature and of art, while his religion exercised upon him a transfiguring influence, so that all who met him became aware of

a heavenly presence. This gentle and exquisite creature was as brave as a paladin and capable of enduring the fiercest extremes of hardship.

It was on the 17th of May, 1673, that Joliet and Marquette started with five companions in two birch canoes well supplied with dried corn and smoked buffalo meat. From Green Bay they ascended the Fox River to Lake Winnebago, and after various adventures reached the portage from which they launched their canoes on the Wisconsin River. One month from the day of starting they passed the bluffs at Prairie du Chien and glided out upon the placid blue waters of the upper Mississippi. Their joy, as Marquette informs us, was too great for words. A fortnight passed while they floated down-stream without disclosing any trace of human beings, but at length they came to a village called Peoria, where they were treated with great civility and regaled with the usual Indian dishes, while the chief, in a more than usually florid speech, assured them that their visit to his village added serenity to the sky and new beauty to the landscape and a fresh zest to his tobacco, but he really, as a friend, could not advise them to pursue their course, as it abounded with dangerous enemies. Disregarding this caution, however, they kept on their way without any ill consequences. They did not fail to note the striking spectacle

below the cliffs at Alton where the furious Missouri, with its load of yellow mud accumulated during its 3000 miles’ course through the mountains, rushes through, swallows up and defiles the quiet blue waves of the Mississippi. Down the turbid and surging yellow river they kept on for hundreds of miles, until they encountered parties of Arkansas and narrowly escaped without a fight. Presently they stopped at an Arkansas village where they were feasted as usual, but after the hilarity was over the principal chief informed them that a foul conspiracy was on foot to murder them, — an infringement of the laws of hospitality which he felt himself unable to sanction. This incident seems to have had its effect in deciding them to retrace their course. They had gone so far southward as to convince themselves that the river must empty into the Gulf of Mexico and not into the Vermilion Sea, as the Gulf of California was then commonly called. This was the most important of the points which they had it in mind to establish, and it seemed to them better to return with the information already acquired than to run the risk of perishing and sending back no word. For such reasons they turned back on the 17th of July, just two months from their date of starting. After ascending to the mouth of the Illinois they went up to the head of that

stream, and there met some Indians who guided them to Lake Michigan. It was about the end of September when they reached Green Bay, after having wielded the paddles for more than 2500 miles. There the two friends parted. While Joliet made his way to Montreal with a report of what had been accomplished, Marquette lay ill at Green Bay for more than a year. A partial recovery of health led him to attempt the founding of a new mission at the principal town of the Illinois, to be called the Immaculate Conception, but his strength again gave out, and on the way to Mackinaw in the spring of 1675 this beautiful spirit passed away from the earth.¹

The immediate effect of the voyage of Marquette and Joliet was to revive in La Salle the spirit which had led him down the Ohio River some years before. The conception of New France as a great empire in the wilderness was taking a distinct shape in his mind. Among its comprehensive features were the extension of the fur-trade, the building up of French colonies with an extensive agriculture, the conversion of the Indians to Christianity, and the playing a controlling part in forest politics. Marquette and Joliet had

well-nigh demonstrated that the Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico. One might, perhaps, suppose that a reference to the expedition of Soto more than a century before would have sufficed to establish the identity of the river descended by Marquette and Joliet with the river where the great Spanish knight was buried. But the Frenchmen of the seventeenth century seem to have known nothing about Soto or his explorations. To them the problem was a new one. After once completely solving it, La Salle would be in a position to establish a town at the mouth of the great river. Such a town might become a commercial rival of the Spanish seaports in Mexico and the West Indies, while it would be a formidable menace to them in time of war. A chain of military posts might connect the town at the mouth of the Mississippi with the spot where the Illinois empties into that river, and similar chains might connect the Illinois on the one hand with the Sault Ste. Marie, and on the other hand with Lakes Erie and Ontario. It was the generally accepted French doctrine that the discovery of a great river gave an inchoate title to all the territory drained by the river, and this inchoate title could be completed by occupation. La Salle’s plan was to effect a military occupation of the whole Mississippi

valley as far eastward as the summit of the Appalachian range by means of military posts which should control the communications and sway the policy of the Indian tribes. Thus, the Alleghanies would become an impassable barrier to the English colonists slowly pressing westward from the Atlantic coast. This became the abiding policy of the French in North America. This was the policy in attempting to carry out which they fought and lost the Seven Years’ War. Of this policy such men as Talon, Frontenac, and La Salle were the originators, and in La Salle it found its most brilliant representative.

An obvious criticism upon such a scheme is its mere vastness. In a colony recruited so slowly as Canada there were not enough people to carry it into operation. Under the most favourable circumstances it could scarcely remain more than a sketch; but La Salle believed that the inducements held out by an increasing fur-trade and enlarged opportunities of agriculture and commerce in general would bring settlers to New France and greatly accelerate its rate of growth. There was perhaps nothing necessarily wild in his calculations, except that he entirely failed to understand the inherent weakness of colonization that was dependent upon government support.

When it came to performing his own part of the great scheme, the essential point of weakness was want of money, — a kind of weakness which has proved fatal to many a great scheme. In order to cure this want La Salle was inclined to resort to the agency which was chiefly in vogue in the seventeenth century, namely, that of monopoly. This at once enlisted against him the fur-traders as a class. His friendly relations with Frontenac made it seem probable that he could get whatever he wanted, and in whatsoever quarter he turned his attention the monopoly scare was excited and every possible device was adopted for hindering his success, — devices which went all the way from attaching his property to hiring desperadoes to murder him. Besides this, La Salle was regarded with coldness, if not hostility, by the Jesuits, whose service he had abandoned and whose schemes for civilizing the wilderness were often at variance with his. Moreover, with all his admirable qualities, La Salle was not exactly a lovable person. He was too deeply absorbed in his arduous work to be genial, and he was a stern disciplinarian against whom lawless spirits, familiar with the loose freedom of the wilderness, were liable to rebel. The history of his brief career of eight years after he had finally given himself up to his life work is a singular record of almost unintermitted disaster leading

to a tragic end, yet relieved by one glorious, though momentary, gleam of triumph.

One of Frontenac’s first steps for the protection of the fur-trade between Montreal and the northwestern wilderness was the erection of a strong wooden blockhouse at the outlet of Lake Ontario. Its site was about that of the present town of Kingston, and it was long known as Fort Frontenac. It served as a wholesome menace to the men of the Long House over across the lake. La Salle went to France and had an interview with Louis XIV., in which he obtained that monarch’s authority to conduct an exploring expedition, and he was placed in command of Fort Frontenac on his promise to rebuild and greatly strengthen it. This promise was amply fulfilled. The fortress was rebuilt of stone according to sound military principles, and was strong enough to defy the attempt of any force that was likely to be brought against it.

The next reach of La Salle’s arm was from the outlet of Ontario to the Niagara River above the Falls. For the prosecution of his enterprise canoe navigation seemed hardly to suffice, and on the Niagara River La Salle built and launched a schooner of some forty-five tons burden, armed with live small cannon, and carrying on her

prow a grotesque griffin, the name that was given to her in honour of Count Frontenac’s family arms. While these preparations were going on La Salle received a treacherous dose of poison, the effects of which his iron constitution threw off with rather surprising ease. He started out on his enterprise with about forty men, two of whom deserve especial mention for various reasons. Henri de Tonty was a native of Naples, son of the gentleman who invented the kind of life insurance for a long time popular as the Tontine. In his youthful days Tonty had one hand blown off in battle; he had it replaced by an iron hand over which he always wore a glove, and he was commonly known among the Indians as Iron Hand. He was a man of direct and simple nature, brave and resourceful, and in every emergency was absolutely faithful to La Salle.

A very different sort of person was Louis Hennepin, a native of Flanders, about thirty-seven years of age. He had early joined the Franciscan friars, and an irrepressible love for adventure brought him to Canada, where he found the wild solitudes about Fort Frontenac quite in harmony with his tastes. He was a capable man with many excellent qualities, and on most occasions truthful, although his reputation has greatly suffered

from one gigantic act of mendacity.¹ We shall have occasion to note his characteristics as we go on. He was one of the advance party sent by La Salle to the Niagara River, and was probably the first of Europeans to look at the Falls. It is certain that he was the first to make a sketch of them for publication. Such a sketch is engraved in his account of his journeys published in Utrecht in 1697, and is extremely interesting and valuable as enabling us to realize the changes which have since occurred in the contour of the Falls.²

It was in the autumn of 1678 that La Salle set sail in the Griffin. His departure was clouded by the news that impatient creditors had laid hands upon his Canadian estates, but nothing daunted, he pushed on through Lakes Erie and Huron, and after many disasters reached the southern extremity of Lake Michigan. The Griffin was now sent back with half the party to the Niagara River with a cargo of furs to appease the creditors and purchase

additional supplies for the remainder of the journey, while La Salle, with his diminished company, pushed on to the Illinois, where a fort was built and appropriately named Fort Crèvecœur. It was indeed at a heart-breaking moment that it was finished, for so much time had elapsed since the departure of their little ship that all had come to despair of her return. No word ever came from her. In that time of universal suspicion there were not wanting whispers that her crew had deserted and scuttled her, carrying off her goods to trade with on their own account. But perhaps she may simply have foundered in some violent gale on the lakes.

After a winter of misery it was evident that nothing could make up for the loss of the Griffin, except a journey on foot to Montreal. Accordingly, in March, 1680, La Salle started on this terrible walk of 1000 miles, leaving Fort Crèvecœur under command of the faithful Tonty. La Salle had with him a long-tried Indian guide, a Mohegan from Connecticut, who for many years had roamed over the country. He took with him also four Frenchmen; and these six fought their way eastward through the wilderness, now floundering through melting snow, now bivouacking in clothes stiff with frost, now stopping to make a bark canoe, now leaping across streams on floating ice-cakes, like the runaway

slave girl in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin;” in such plight did they make their way across Michigan and along the north shore of Lake Erie to the little blockhouse above Niagara Falls. All but La Salle had given out on reaching Lake Erie, and the five sick men were ferried across by him in a bark canoe to the blockhouse. We may see here how the sustaining power of wide-ranging thoughts and a lofty purpose enabled the scholar reared in luxury to surpass in endurance the Indian guide and the hunters inured to the hardships of the forest. He had need of all this sustaining power, for at Niagara he learned that a ship from France, freighted for him with a cargo worth about $30,000 in our modern money, had been wrecked in the St. Lawrence, and everything lost. He received this staggering news with his wonted iron composure, and taking three fresh men in place of his invalids, completed his march of 1000 miles to Montreal. There he collected supplies and reinforcements, and, returning as far as Fort Frontenac, was taking a moment’s rest preparatory to a fresh start when further ill tidings arrived. In July there came a message from the fort so well named Heart-break. The garrison had mutinied, and after driving away Tonty with such men as were faithful, they had pulled the blockhouse to pieces and

made their way eastward through Michigan. Recruiting their ranks with divers wood rangers of ill repute, they had plundered the station at Niagara, and their canoes were now cruising on Lake Ontario in the hope of crowning their work with the murder of La Salle. These wretches, however, fell into their own pit. Between hearing and acting, the interval with La Salle was not a long one. That indomitable commander’s canoes were soon upon the lake, and in a few days he had waylaid and captured the mutineers and sent them in chains to be dealt with by the viceroy. La Salle now kept on his way to the Illinois River, intending to rebuild his fort and hoping to rescue Tonty with the few faithful followers who had survived the mutiny. That little party had found shelter among the Illinois Indians; but during the summer of 1680 the great village of the Illinois was sacked by the Iroquois, and the hard-pressed Frenchman retreated up the western shore of Lake Michigan as far as Green Bay. When La Salle reached the Illinois village he found nothing but the horrible vestiges of fiery torments and cannibal feasts. The only thing to be done was without delay to utilize the situation by cementing a firmer alliance than before with the western Algonquins on the basis of their common

enmity to the Iroquois. After thus spending the winter to good purpose, he set out again for Canada in May, 1681, to arrange his affairs and once more obtain fresh resources. At Mackinaw his heart was rejoiced at meeting his friend Tonty, after all these wild vicissitudes, and together they paddled their canoes a thousand miles and came to Fort Frontenac.

La Salle’s enemies had begun to grow quite merry over his repeated discomfitures, but at length his stubborn courage for a time vanquished the adverse fates. On the next venture things went smoothly and according to the programme. In the autumn he started with a fleet of canoes, passed up the lakes from Ontario to the head of Michigan, crossed the narrow portage from the Chicago River to the Illinois, and thence coming out upon the Mississippi, glided down to its mouth. On the 9th of April, 1682, the fleurs-de-lis were duly planted, and all the country drained by the great river and its tributaries, a country far vaster than La Salle ever imagined, was solemnly declared to be the property of the king of France, and named for him Louisiana.¹

Returning up the Mississippi after this

triumph, La Salle established a small fortified post on the Illinois River which he called St. Louis of the Illinois. Leaving Tonty in command there, he lost no time in returning to France for means to complete his scheme. The time had arrived for founding a town at the mouth of the Mississippi and connecting it with Canada by a line of military posts. La Salle was well received by the king, and a fine expedition was fitted out, but once more the fates began to frown and everything was ruined by the ill fortune of the naval commander, Beaujeu, whom it was formerly customary to blame more than he seems really to have deserved. The intention was to sail directly to the mouth of the Mississippi, but the pilots missed it and passed beyond; some of the ships were wrecked on the coast of Texas; the captain, beset by foul weather and pirates, disappeared with the rest, and was seen no more. Two years of misery followed, and with the misery such quarrelling and mutual hatred as had scarcely been equalled since the days of the early Spanish explorers in South America. At last, in March, 1687, La Salle started on foot in search of the Mississippi, hoping to ascend it and find succour at Tonty’s fort; but he had scarcely set out with this forlorn hope when

two or three mutineers skulked in ambush and shot him dead. Thus was cut short at the early age of forty-two the career of the man whose personality is impressed in some respects more strongly than that of any other upon the history of New France. His schemes were too far-reaching to succeed. They required the strength and resources of half a dozen nations like the France of Louis XIV. Nevertheless, the lines upon which New France continued to develop were substantially those which La Salle had in mind, and the fabric of a wilderness-empire, of which he laid the foundations, grew with the general growth of colonization, and in the next century became truly formidable. It was not until Wolfe climbed the Heights of Abraham that the great ideal of La Salle was finally overthrown.