France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third

F >> Francis Parkman >> France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third

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In examining this and other localities on the Niagara, I have been greatly
aided by my friend, O. H. Marshall, Esq., of Buffalo, who is unrivalled in
his knowledge of the history and traditions of the Niagara frontier.]

Trees were felled, the place cleared, and the master-carpenter set his
ship-builders at work. Meanwhile two Mohegan hunters, attached to the
party, made bark wigwams to lodge the men. Hennepin had his chapel,
apparently of the same material, where he placed his altar, and on Sundays
and saints' days said mass, preached, and exhorted; while some of the men,
who knew the Gregorian chant, lent their aid at the service. When the
carpenters were ready to lay the keel of the vessel, La Salle asked the
friar to drive the first bolt; "but the modesty of my religious
profession," he says, "compelled me to decline this honor."

Fortunately, it was the hunting-season of the Iroquois, and most of the
Seneca warriors were in the forests south of Lake Erie; yet enough
remained to cause serious uneasiness. They loitered sullenly about the
place, expressing their displeasure at the proceedings of the French. One
of them, pretending to be drunk, attacked the blacksmith and tried to kill
him; but the Frenchman, brandishing a red-hot bar of iron, held him at bay
till Hennepin ran to the rescue, when, as he declares, the severity of his
rebuke caused the savage to desist. [Footnote: Hennepin (1704), 97. On a
paper drawn up at the instance of the Intendant Duchesneau, the names of
the greater number of La Salle's men are preserved. These agree with those
given by Hennepin: thus the master-carpenter, whom he calls Maitre Moyse,
appears as Moise Hillaret, and the blacksmith, whom he calls La Forge, is
mentioned as--(illegible) dit la Forge.] The work of the ship-builders
advanced rapidly; and when the Indian visitors beheld the vast ribs of the
wooden monster, their jealousy was redoubled. A squaw told the French that
they meant to burn the vessel on the stocks. All now stood anxiously on
the watch. Cold, hunger, and discontent found imperfect antidotes in
Tonty's energy and Hennepin's sermons.

La Salle was absent, and his lieutenant commanded in his place. Hennepin
says that Tonty was jealous because he, the friar, kept a journal, and
that he was forced to use all manner of just precautions to prevent the
Italian from seizing it. The men, being half-starved in consequence of the
loss of their provisions on Lake Ontario, were restless and moody; and
their discontent was fomented by one of their number, who had very
probably been tampered with by La Salle's enemies. [Footnote: "This bad
man" says Hennepin, "would infallibly have debauched our workmen, if I had
not reassured them by the exhortations which I made them on Fete Days and
Sundays, after divine service." (1704), 98.] The Senecas refused to supply
them with corn, and the frequent exhortations of the Recollet father
proved an insufficient substitute. In this extremity, the two Mohegans did
excellent service; bringing deer and other game, which relieved the most
pressing wants of the party and went far to restore their cheerfulness.

La Salle, meanwhile, was making his way back on foot to Fort Frontenac, a
distance of some two hundred and fifty miles, through the snow-encumbered
forests of the Iroquois and over the ice of Lake Ontario. The wreck of his
vessel made it necessary that fresh supplies should be sent to Niagara;
and the condition of his affairs, embarrassed by the great expenses of the
enterprise, demanded his presence at Fort Frontenac. Two men attended him,
and a dog dragged his baggage on a sledge. For food, they had only a bag
of parched corn, which failed them two days before they reached the fort;
and they made the rest of the journey fasting.

During his absence, Tonty finished the vessel, which was of about forty-
five tons burden. [Footnote: Hennepin (1683), 46. In the edition of 1697,
he says that it was of sixty tons. I prefer to follow the earlier and more
trustworthy narrative.] As spring opened, she was ready for launching. The
friar pronounced his blessing on her; the assembled company sang _Te
Deum_; cannon were fired; and French and Indians, warmed alike by a
generous gift of brandy, shouted and yelped in chorus as she glided into
the Niagara. Her builders towed her out and anchored her in the stream,
safe at last from incendiary hands, and then, swinging their hammocks
under her deck, slept in peace, beyond reach of the tomahawk. The Indians
gazed on her with amazement. Five small cannon looked out from her
portholes; and on her prow was carved a portentous monster, the Griffin,
whose name she bore, in honor of the armorial bearings of Frontenac. La
Salle had often been heard to say that he would make the griffin fly above
the crows, or, in other words, make Frontenac triumph over the Jesuits.

They now took her up the river, and made her fast below the swift current
at Black Rock. Here they finished her equipment, and waited for La Salle's
return; but the absent commander did not appear. The spring and more than
half of the summer had passed before they saw him again. At length, early
in August, he arrived at the mouth of the Niagara, bringing three more
friars; for, though no friend of the Jesuits, he was zealous for the
Faith, and was rarely without a missionary in his journeyings. Like
Hennepin, the three friars were all Flemings. One of them, Melithon
Watteau, was to remain at Niagara; the others, Zenobe Membre and Gabriel
Ribourde, were to preach the Faith among the tribes of the West. Ribourde
was a hale and cheerful old man of sixty-four. He went four times up and
down the Lewiston heights, while the men were climbing the steep pathway
with their loads. It required four of them, well stimulated with brandy,
to carry up the principal anchor destined for the "Griffin."

La Salle brought a tale of disaster. His enemies, bent on ruining the
enterprise, had given out that he was embarked on a harebrained venture,
from which he would never return. His creditors, excited by rumors set
afloat to that end, had seized on all his property in the settled parts of
Canada, though his seigniory of Fort Frontenac alone would have more than
sufficed to pay all his debts. There was no remedy. To defer the
enterprise would have been to give his adversaries the triumph that they
sought; and he hardened himself against the blow with his usual stoicism.

CHAPTER XII.
1679.
LA SALLE ON THE UPPER LAKES.

THE VOYAGE OF THE "GRIFFIN."--DETROIT.--A STORM.--ST. IGNACE OF
MICHILLIMACKINAC.--RIVALS AND ENEMIES.--LAKE MICHIGAN.--HARDSHIPS.
--A THREATENED FIGHT.--FORT MIAMI.--TONTY'S MISFORTUNES.--FOREBODINGS.

The "Griffin" had lain moored by the shore, so near that Hennepin could
preach on Sundays from the deck to the men encamped along the bank. She
was now forced up against the current with tow-ropes and sails, till she
reached the calm entrance of Lake Erie. On the seventh of August, the
voyagers, thirty-four in all, embarked, sang _Te Deum_, and fired their
cannon. A fresh breeze sprang up; and with swelling canvas the "Griffin"
ploughed the virgin waves of Lake Erie, where sail was never seen before.
For three days they held their course over these unknown waters, and on
the fourth turned northward into the strait of Detroit. Here, on the right
hand and on the left, lay verdant prairies, dotted with groves and
bordered with lofty forests. They saw walnut, chestnut, and wild plum
trees, and oaks festooned with grape-vines; herds of deer, and flocks of
swans and wild turkeys. The bulwarks of the "Griffin" were plentifully
hung with game which the men killed on shore, and among the rest with a
number of bears, much commended by Hennepin for their want of ferocity and
the excellence of their flesh. "Those," he says, "who will one day have
the happiness to possess this fertile and pleasant strait, will be very
much obliged to those who have shown them the way." They crossed Lake St.
Clair, [Footnote: They named it Sainte Claire, of which the present name
is a perversion.] and still sailed northward against the current, till
now, sparkling in the sun, Lake Huron spread before them like a sea.

For a time, they bore on prosperously. Then the wind died to a calm, then
freshened to a gale, then rose to a furious tempest; and the vessel tossed
wildly among the short, steep, perilous waves of the raging lake. Even La
Salle called on his followers to commend themselves to Heaven. All fell to
their prayers but the godless pilot, who was loud in complaint against his
commander for having brought him, after the honor he had won on the ocean,
to drown at last ignominiously in fresh water. The rest clamored to the
saints. St. Anthony of Padua was promised a chapel to be built in his
honor, if he would but save them from their jeopardy; while in the same
breath La Salle and the friars declared him patron of their great
enterprise. [Footnote: Hennepin (1683), 58.] The saint heard their
prayers. The obedient winds were tamed; and the "Griffin" plunged on her
way through foaming surges that still grew calmer as she advanced. Now the
sun shone forth on woody islands, Bois Blanc and Mackinaw and the distant
Manitoulins,--on the forest wastes of Michigan and the vast blue bosom of
the angry lake; and now her port was won, and she found her rest behind
the point of St. Ignace of Michillimackinac, floating in that tranquil
cove where crystal waters cover but cannot hide the pebbly depths beneath.
Before her rose the house and chapel of the Jesuits, enclosed with
palisades; on the right, the Huron village, with its bark cabins and its
fence of tall pickets; on the left, the square compact houses of the
French traders; and, not far off, the clustered wigwams of an Ottawa
village. [Footnote: There is a rude plan of the establishment in La
Hontan, though, in several editions, its value is destroyed by the
reversal of the plate.] Here was a centre of the Jesuit missions, and a
centre of the Indian trade; and here, under the shadow of the cross, was
much sharp practice in the service of Mammon. Keen traders, with or
without a license; and lawless _coureurs de bois_, whom a few years of
forest life had weaned from civilization, made St. Ignace their resort;
and here there were many of them when the "Griffin" came. They and their
employers hated and feared La Salle, who, sustained as he was by the
Governor, might set at nought the prohibition of the king, debarring him
from traffic with these tribes. Yet, while plotting against him, they took
pains to allay his distrust by a show of welcome.

The "Griffin" fired her cannon, and the Indians yelped in wonder and
amazement. The adventurers landed in state, and marched, under arms, to
the bark chapel of the Ottawa village, where they heard mass. La Salle
knelt before the altar, in a mantle of scarlet, bordered with gold.
Soldiers, sailors, and artisans knelt around him,--black Jesuits, gray
Recollets, swarthy _voyageurs_ and painted savages; a devout but motley
concourse.

As they left the chapel, the Ottawa chiefs came to bid them welcome, and
the Hurons saluted them with a volley of musketry. They saw the "Griffin"
at her anchorage, surrounded by more than a hundred bark canoes, like a
Triton among minnows. Yet it was with more wonder than good-will that the
Indians of the mission gazed on the floating fort, for so they called the
vessel. A deep jealousy of La Salle's designs had been, infused into them.
His own followers, too, had been tampered with. In the autumn before, it
may be remembered, he had sent fifteen men up the lakes, to trade for him,
with orders to go thence to the Illinois, and make preparation against his
coming. Early in the summer, Tonty had been despatched in a canoe, from
Niagara, to look after them. [Footnote: Tonty, _Memoire_, MS. He was
overtaken at the Detroit by the "Griffin."] It was high time. Most of the
men had been seduced from their duty, and had disobeyed their orders,
squandered the goods intrusted to them, or used them in trading on their
own account. La Salle found four of them at Michillimackinac. These he
arrested, and sent Tonty to the Falls of Ste. Marie, where two others were
captured, with their plunder. The rest were in the woods, and it was
useless to pursue them.

Early in September, long before Tonty had returned from Ste. Marie, La
Salle set sail again, and, passing westward into Lake Michigan, [Footnote:
Then usually known as Lac des Illinois, because it gave access to the
country of the tribes so called. Three years before, Allouez gave it the
name of Lac St. Joseph, by which it is often designated by the early
writers. Membre, Douay, and others, call it Lac Dauphin.] cast anchor near
one of the islands at the entrance of Green Bay. Here, for once, he found
a friend in the person of a Pottawattamie chief, who had been so wrought
upon by the politic kindness of Frontenac, that he declared himself ready
to die for the children of Onontio. [Footnote: "The Great Mountain," the
Iroquois name for the Governor of Canada. It was borrowed by other tribes
also.] Here, too, he found several of his advanced party, who had remained
faithful, and collected a large store of furs. It would have been better
had they proved false, like the rest. La Salle, who asked counsel of no
man, resolved, in spite of his followers, to send back the "Griffin,"
laden with these furs, and others collected on the way, to satisfy his
creditors. [Footnote: In the license of discovery, granted to La Salle, he
is expressly prohibited from trading with the Ottawas and others who
brought furs to Montreal. This traffic on the lakes was, therefore,
illicit. His enemy, the Intendant Duchesneau, afterwards used this against
him.--_Lettre de Duchesneau an Ministre_, 10 _Nov_. 1680, MS] She fired a
parting shot, and, on the eighteenth of September, spread her sails for
Niagara, in charge of the pilot, who had orders to return with her to the
Illinois as soon as he had discharged his cargo. La Salle, with the
fourteen men who remained, in four canoes, deeply laden with a forge,
tools, merchandise, and arms, put out from the island and resumed his
voyage.

The parting was not auspicious. The lake, glassy and calm in the
afternoon, was convulsed at night with a sudden storm, when the canoes
were midway between the island and the main shore. It was with much ado
that they could keep together, the men shouting to each other through the
darkness. Hennepin, who was in the smallest canoe, with a heavy load, and
a carpenter for a companion, who was awkward at the paddle, found himself
in jeopardy which demanded all his nerve. The voyagers thought themselves
happy when they gained at last the shelter of a little sandy cove, where
they dragged up their canoes, and made their cheerless bivouac in the
drenched and dripping forest. Here they spent five days, living on
pumpkins and Indian corn, the gift of their Pottawattamie friends, and on
a Canada porcupine, brought in by La Salle's Mohegan hunter. The gale
raged meanwhile with a relentless fury. They trembled when they thought of
the "Griffin." When at length the tempest lulled, they re-embarked, and
steered southward, along the shore of Wisconsin; but again the storm fell
upon them, and drove them, for safety, to a bare, rocky islet. Here they
made a fire of driftwood, crouched around it, drew their blankets over
their heads, and in this miserable plight, pelted with sleet and rain,
remained for two days.

At length they were afloat again; but their prosperity was brief. On the
twenty-eighth, a fierce squall drove them to a point of rocks, covered
with bushes, where they consumed the little that remained of their
provisions. On the first of October, they paddled about thirty miles,
without food, when they came to a village of Pottawattamies, who ran down
to the shore to help them to land; but La Salle, fearing that some of his
men would steal the merchandise and desert to the Indians, insisted on
going three leagues farther, to the great indignation of his followers.
The lake, swept by an easterly gale, was rolling its waves against the
beach, like the ocean in a storm. In the attempt to land, La Salle's canoe
was nearly swamped. He and his three canoe-men leaped into the water, and,
in spite of the surf, which nearly drowned them, dragged their vessel
ashore, with all its load. He then went to the rescue of Hennepin, who,
with his awkward companion, was in woful need of succor. Father Gabriel,
with his sixty-four years, was no match for the surf and the violent
undertow. Hennepin, finding himself safe, waded to his relief, and carried
him ashore on his sturdy shoulders; while the old friar, though drenched
to the skin, laughed gayly under his cowl, as his brother missionary
staggered with him up the beach. [Footnote: Hennepin (1683), 79.]

When all were safe ashore, La Salle, who distrusted the Indians they had
passed, took post on a hill, and ordered his followers to prepare their
guns for action. Nevertheless, as they were starving, an effort must be
risked to gain a supply of food; and he sent three men hack to the village
to purchase it. Well armed, but faint with toil and famine, they made
their way through the stormy forest, bearing a pipe of peace; but on
arriving saw that the scared inhabitants had fled. They found, however, a
stock of corn, of which they took a portion, leaving goods in exchange,
and then set out on their return.

Meanwhile, about twenty of the warriors, armed with bows and arrows,
approached the camp of the French, to reconnoitre. La Salle went to meet
them, with some of his men, opened a parley with them, and kept them
seated at the foot of the hill till his three messengers returned, when,
on seeing the peace-pipe, the warriors set up a cry of joy. In the
morning, they brought more corn to the camp, with a supply of fresh
venison, not a little cheering to the exhausted Frenchmen, who, in dread
of treachery, had stood under arms all night.

This was no journey of pleasure. The lake was ruffled with almost
ceaseless storms; clouds big with rain above; a turmoil of gray and gloomy
waves beneath. Every night the canoes must be shouldered through the
breakers and dragged up the steep banks, which, as they neared the site of
Milwaukee, became almost insurmountable. The men paddled all day, with no
other food than a handful of Indian corn. They were spent with toil, sick
with the haws and wild berries which they ravenously devoured, and
dejected at the prospect before them. Father Gabriel's good spirits began
to fail. He fainted several times, from famine and fatigue, but was
revived by a certain "confection of Hyacinth," administered by Hennepin,
who had a small box of this precious specific.

At length they descried, at a distance, on the stormy shore, two or three
eagles among a busy congregation of crows or turkey-buzzards. They paddled
in all haste to the spot. The feasters took flight; and the starved
travellers found the mangled body of a deer, lately killed by the wolves.
This good luck proved the inauguration of plenty. As they approached the
head of the lake, game grew abundant; and, with the aid of the Mohegan,
there was no lack of bear's meat and venison. They found wild grapes, too,
in the woods, and gathered them by cutting down the trees to which the
vines clung.

While thus employed, they were startled by a sight often so fearful in the
waste and the wilderness, the print of a human foot. It was clear that
Indians were not far off. A strict watch was kept, not, as it proved,
without cause; for that night, while the sentry thought of little but
screening himself and his gun from the floods of rain, a party of
Outagamies crept under the bank, where they lurked for some time before he
discovered them. Being challenged, they came forward, professing great
friendship, and pretending to have mistaken the French for Iroquois. In
the morning, however, there was an outcry from La Salle's servant, who
declared that the visitors had stolen his coat from under the inverted
canoe where he had placed it; while some of the carpenters also complained
of being robbed. La Salle well knew that if the theft were left
unpunished, worse would come of it. First, he posted his men at the woody
point of a peninsula, whose sandy neck was interposed between them and the
main forest. Then he went forth, pistol in hand, met a young Outagami,
seized him, and led him prisoner to his camp. This done, he again set out,
and soon found an Outagami chief,--for the wigwams were not far distant,--
to whom he told what he had done, adding that unless the stolen goods were
restored, the prisoner should be killed. The Indians were in perplexity,
for they had cut the coat to pieces and divided it. In this dilemma, they
resolved, being strong in numbers, to rescue their comrade by force.
Accordingly, they came down to the edge of the forest, or posted
themselves behind fallen trees on the banks, while La Salle's men in their
stronghold braced their nerves for the fight. Here three Flemish friars,
with their rosaries, and eleven Frenchmen, with their guns, confronted a
hundred and twenty screeching Outagamies. Hennepin, who had seen service,
and who had always an exhortation at his tongue's end, busied himself to
inspire the rest with a courage equal to his own. Neither party, however,
had an appetite for the fray. A parley ensued: full compensation was made
for the stolen goods, and the aggrieved Frenchmen were farther propitiated
with a gift of beaver-skins.

Their late enemies, now become friends, spent the next day in dances,
feasts, and speeches. They entreated La Salle not to advance further,
since the Illinois, through whose country he must pass, would be sure to
kill him; for, added these friendly counsellors, they hated the French
because they had been instigating the Iroquois to invade their country.
Here was a new subject of anxiety. La Salle thought that he saw in it
another device of his busy and unscrupulous enemies, intriguing among the
Illinois for his destruction.

He pushed on, however, circling around the southern shore of Lake
Michigan, till he reached the mouth of the St. Joseph, called by him the
Miamis. Here Tonty was to have rejoined him, with twenty men, making his
way from Michillimackinac, along the eastern shore of the lake: but the
rendezvous was a solitude; Tonty was nowhere to be seen. It was the first
of November. Winter was at hand, and the streams would soon be frozen. The
men clamored to go forward, urging that they should starve if they could
not reach the villages of the Illinois before the tribe scattered for the
winter hunt. La Salle was inexorable. If they should all desert, he said,
he, with his Mohegan hunter and the three friars, would still remain and
wait for Tonty. The men grumbled, but obeyed; and, to divert their
thoughts, he set them at building a fort of timber, on a rising ground at
the mouth of the river.

They had spent twenty days at this task, and their work was well advanced,
when at length Tonty appeared. He brought with him only half of his men.
Provisions had failed; and the rest of his party had been left thirty
leagues behind, to sustain themselves by hunting. La Salle told him to
return and hasten them forward. He set out with two men. A violent north
wind arose. He tried to run his canoe ashore through the breakers. The two
men could not manage their vessel, and he with his one hand could not help
them. She swamped, rolling over in the surf. Guns, baggage, and provisions
were lost; and the three voyagers returned to the Miamis, subsisting on
acorns by the way. Happily, the men left behind, excepting two deserters,
succeeded, a few days after, in rejoining the party. [Footnote: Hennepin
(1683), 112; Tonty, _Memoire_, MS.]

Thus was one heavy load lifted from the heart of La Salle. But where was
the "Griffin"? Time enough, and more than enough, had passed for her
voyage to Niagara and back again. He scanned the dreary horizon with an
anxious eye. No returning sail gladdened the watery solitude, and a dark
foreboding gathered on his heart. Yet farther delay was impossible. He
sent back two men to Michillimackinac to meet her, if she still existed,
and pilot her to his new fort of the Miamis, and then prepared to ascend
the river, whose weedy edges were already glassed with thin flakes of ice.

CHAPTER XIII.
1679-1680.
LA SALLE ON THE ILLINOIS.

THE ST. JOSEPH.--ADVENTURE OF LA SALLE.--THE PRAIRIES.--FAMINE.
--THE GREAT TOWN OF THE ILLINOIS.--INDIANS.--INTRIGUES.--
DIFFICULTIES.--POLICY OF LA SALLE.--DESERTION.--ANOTHER ATTEMPT
TO POISON HIM.

On the third of December, the party re-embarked, thirty-three in all, in
eight canoes, [Footnote: _Lettre de Duchesneau a_--, 10 _Nov_. 1680, MS.]
and ascended the chill current of the St. Joseph, bordered with dreary
meadows and bare gray forests. When they approached the site of the
present village of South Bend, they looked anxiously along the shore on
their right to find the portage or path leading to the headquarters of the
Illinois. The Mohegan was absent, hunting; and, unaided by his practised
eye, they passed the path without seeing it. La Salle landed to search the
woods. Hours passed, and he did not return. Hennepin and Tonty grew
uneasy, disembarked, bivouacked, ordered guns to be fired, and sent out
men to scour the country. Night came, but not their lost leader. Muffled
in their blankets and powdered by the thick-falling snowflakes, they sat
ruefully speculating as to what had befallen him; nor was it till four
o'clock of the next afternoon that they saw him approaching along the
margin of the river. His face and hands were besmirched with charcoal; and
he was farther decorated with two opossums which hung from his belt and
which he had killed with a stick as they were swinging head downwards from
the bough of a tree, after the fashion of that singular beast. He had
missed his way in the forest, and had been forced to make a wide circuit
around the edge of a swamp; while the snow, of which the air was full,
added to his perplexities. Thus he pushed on through the rest of the day
and the greater part of the night, till, about two o'clock in the morning,
he reached the river again and fired his gun as a signal to his party.
Hearing no answering shot, he pursued his way along the bank, when he
presently saw the gleam of a fire among the dense thickets close at hand.
Not doubting that he had found the bivouac of his party, he hastened to
the spot. To his surprise, no human being was to be seen. Under a tree
beside the fire was a heap of dry grass impressed with the form of a man
who must have fled but a moment before, for his couch was still warm. It
was no doubt an Indian, ambushed on the bank, watching to kill some
passing enemy. La Salle called out in several Indian languages; but there
was dead silence all around. He then, with admirable coolness, took
possession of the quarters he had found, shouting to their invisible
proprietor that he was about to sleep in his bed; piled a barricade of
bushes around the spot, rekindled the dying fire, warmed his benumbed
hands, stretched himself on the dried grass, and slept undisturbed till
morning.

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