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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Meanwhile, a hideous scene was enacted at the ruined village of the
Illinois. Their savage foes, balked of a living prey, wreaked their fury
on the dead. They dug up the graves; they threw down the scaffolds. Some
of the bodies they burned; some they threw to the dogs; some, it is
affirmed, they ate. [Footnote: "Cependant les Iroquois, aussitot apres le
depart du Sr. de Tonty, exercerent leur rage sur les corps morts des
Ilinois, qu'ils deterrerent ou abbatterent de dessus les echafauds ou les
Ilinois les laissent longtemps exposes avant que de les mettre en terre.
Ils en brulerent la plus grande partie, ils en mangerent meme quelques
uns, et jetterent le reste aux chiens. Ils planterent les tetes de ces
cadavres a demi decharnes sur des pieux," etc.--_Relation des
Decouvertes_, MS.] Placing the skulls on stakes as trophies, they turned
to pursue the Illinois, who, when the French withdrew, had abandoned their
asylum and retreated down the river. The Iroquois, still, it seems, in awe
of them, followed them along the opposite bank, each night encamping face
to face with them; and thus the adverse bands moved slowly southward, till
they were near the mouth of the river. Hitherto, the compact array of the
Illinois had held their enemies in check; but now, suffering from hunger,
and lulled into security by the assurances of the Iroquois that their
object was not to destroy them, but only to drive them from the country,
they rashly separated into their several tribes. Some descended the
Mississippi; some, more prudent, crossed to the western side. One of their
principal tribes, the Tamaroas, more credulous than the rest, had the
fatuity to remain near the mouth of the Illinois, where they were speedily
assailed by all the force of the Iroquois. The men fled, and very few of
them were killed; but the women and children were captured to the number,
it is said, of seven hundred. [Footnote: _Relation des Decouvertes_, MS.
Frontenac to the King, N.Y. _Col. Docs_., ix. 147. A memoir of Duchesneau
makes the number twelve hundred.] Then followed that scene of torture, of
which, some two weeks later, La Salle saw the revolting traces. [Footnote:
"Ils [les Illinois] trouverent dans leur campement des carcasses de leurs
enfans que ces anthropophages avoient mangez, ne voulant meme d'autre
nourriture que la chair de ces infortunez."--La Potherie, ii. 145, 146.
Compare _note_, _ante_, p. 196.] Sated, at length, with horrors, the
conquerors withdrew, leading with them a host of captives, and exulting in
their triumphs over women, children, and the dead.

After the death of Father Ribourde, Tonty and his companions remained
searching for him till noon of the next day, and then, in despair of again
seeing him, resumed their journey. They ascended the river, leaving no
token of their passage at the junction of its northern and southern
branches. For food, they gathered acorns and dug roots in the meadows.
Their canoe proved utterly worthless; and, feeble as they were, they set
out on foot for Lake Michigan. Boisrondet wandered off, and was lost. He
had dropped the flint of his gun, and he had no bullets; but he cut a
pewter porringer into slugs with which he shot wild turkeys, by
discharging his piece with a firebrand; and after several days he had the
good fortune to rejoin the party. Their object was to reach the
Pottawattamies of Green Bay. Had they aimed at Michillimackinac, they
would have found an asylum with La Forest at the fort on the St. Joseph;
but unhappily they passed westward of that post, and, by way of Chicago,
followed the borders of Lake Michigan northward. The cold was intense, and
they had much ado to grub up wild onions from the frozen ground to save
themselves from starving. Tonty fell ill of a fever and a swelling of the
limbs, which disabled him from travelling, and hence ensued a long delay.
At length they neared Green Bay, where they would have starved had they
not gleaned a few ears of corn and frozen squashes in the fields of an
empty Indian town. It was the end of November before they found the
Pottawattamies, and were warmly greeted by their chief, who had befriended
La Salle the year before, and who, in his enthusiasm for the French, was
wont to say that he knew but three great captains in the world, Frontenac,
La Salle, and himself. [Footnote: Membre, in Le Clercq, ii. 199. Of the
three, or rather four narratives, on which this chapter mainly rests, the
best is that contained in the manuscript of 1681, entitled the _Relation
des Decouvertes_. This portion of it, which bears every evidence of
accuracy, was certainly supplied by Tonty himself or one of his
companions. The _Memoire_ of Tonty is wholly distinct. It is a modest and
simple statement, of which the chief fault is its brevity. He undoubtedly
wrote another and more detailed narrative, which has been used by the
editor of the _Dernieres Decouvertes_, printed with Tonty's name. The
editor seems to have taken less liberties with his original in this part
of the book than in many others. The narrative of Membre sustains that of
Tonty, except in one or two unimportant points, where the writer's vanity
seems to have gained the better of his veracity.]

While Tonty rests at Green Bay, and La Salle at the fort on the St.
Joseph, we will leave them for a time to trace the strange adventures of
the errant friar, Father Louis Hennepin.

THE ILLINOIS TOWN.

The site of the great Illinois town.--This has not till now been
determined, though there have been various conjectures concerning it. From
a study of the contemporary documents and maps, I became satisfied, first,
that the branch of the River Illinois, called the "Big Vermilion," was the
_Aramoni_ of the French explorers; and, secondly, that the cliff called
"Starved Rock" was that known to the French as _Le Rocher_, or the Rock of
St. Louis. If I was right in this conclusion, then the position of the
Great Village was established; for there is abundant proof that it was on
the north side of the river, above the Aramoni, and below Le Rocher. I
accordingly went to the village of Utica, which, as I judged by the map,
was very near the point in question, and mounted to the top of one of the
hills immediately behind it, whence I could see the valley of the Illinois
for miles, bounded on the farther side by a range of hills, in some parts
rocky and precipitous, and in others covered with forests. Far on the
right, was a gap in these hills, through which the Big Vermilion flowed to
join the Illinois; and somewhat towards the left, at the distance of a
mile and a half, was a huge cliff, rising perpendicularly from the
opposite margin of the river. This I assumed to be _Le Rocher_ of the
French, though from where I stood I was unable to discern the distinctive
features which I was prepared to find in it. In every other respect, the
scene before me was precisely what I had expected to see. There was a
meadow on the hither side of the river, on which stood a farm-house; and
this, as it seemed to me, by its relations with surrounding objects, might
be supposed to stand in the midst of the space once occupied by the
Illinois town.

On the way down from the hill, I met Mr. James Clark, the principal
inhabitant of Utica, and one of the earliest settlers of this region. I
accosted him, told him my objects, and requested a half hour's
conversation with him, at his leisure. He seemed interested in the
inquiry, and said he would visit me early in the evening at the inn,
where, accordingly, he soon appeared. The conversation took place in the
porch, where a number of farmers and others were gathered. I asked Mr.
Clark if any Indian remains were found in the neighborhood. "Yes," he
replied, "plenty of them." I then inquired if there was any one spot where
they were more numerous than elsewhere. "Yes," he answered again, pointing
towards the farm-house on the meadow: "on my farm down yonder by the
river, my tenant ploughs up teeth and bones by the peck every spring,
besides arrow-heads, beads, stone hatchets, and other things of that
sort." I replied that this was precisely what I had expected, as I had
been led to believe that the principal town of the Illinois Indians once
covered that very spot. "If," I added, "I am right in this belief, the
great rock beyond the river is the one which the first explorers occupied
as a fort, and I can describe it to you from their accounts of it, though
I have never seen it except from the top of the hill where the trees on
and around it prevented me from seeing any part but the front." The men
present now gathered around to listen. "The rock," I continued, "is nearly
a hundred and fifty feet high, and rises directly from the water. The
front and two sides are perpendicular and inaccessible, but there is one
place where it is possible for a man to climb up; though with difficulty.
The top is large enough and level enough for houses and fortifications."
Here several of the men exclaimed, "That's just it." "You've hit it
exactly." I then asked if there was any other rock on that side of the
river which could answer to the description. They all agreed that there
was no such rock on either side, along the whole length of the river. I
then said, "If the Indian town was in the place where I suppose it to have
been, I can tell you the nature of the country which lies behind the hills
on the farther side of the river, though I know nothing about it except
what I have learned from writings nearly two centuries old. From the top
of the hills you look out upon a great prairie reaching as far as you can
see, except that it is crossed by a belt of woods following the course of
a stream which enters the main river a few miles below." (See _ante_, p.
205, _note_.) "You are exactly right again," replied Mr. Clark, "we call
that belt of timber the 'Vermilion Woods,' and the stream is the Big
Vermilion." "Then," I said, "the Big Vermilion is the river which the
French called the Aramoni: 'Starved Rock' is the same on which they built
a fort called St. Louis, in the year 1682; and your farm is on the site of
the great town of the Illinois."

I spent the next day in examining these localities, and was fully
confirmed in my conclusions. Mr. Clark's tenant showed me the spot where
the human bones were ploughed up. It was no doubt the graveyard violated
by the Iroquois. The Illinois returned to the village after their defeat,
and long continued to occupy it. The scattered bones were probably
collected and restored to their place of burial.

CHAPTER XVIII.
1680.
THE ADVENTURES OF HENNEPIN.

HENNEPIN AN IMPOSTOR.--HIS PRETENDED DISCOVERY.--HIS ACTUAL
DISCOVERY.--CAPTURED BY THE SIOUX.--THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.

It was on the last day of the winter that preceded the invasion of the
Iroquois, that Father Hennepin, with his two companions, Accau and Du Gay,
had set out from Fort Crevecoeur to explore the Illinois to its mouth. It
appears from his own later statements, as well as from those of Tonty,
that more than this was expected of him, and that La Salle had instructed
him to explore, not alone the Illinois, but also the Upper Mississippi.
That he actually did so, there is no reasonable doubt; and, could he have
contented himself with telling the truth, his name would have stood high
as a bold and vigorous discoverer. But his vicious attempts to malign his
commander, and plunder him of his laurels, have wrapped his genuine merit
in a cloud.

Hennepin's first book was published soon after his return from his
travels, and while La Salle was still alive. In it, he relates the
accomplishment of the instructions given him, without the smallest
intimation that he did more, [Footnote: _Description de la Louisiane,
nouvellement decouverte, Paris_, 1683.] Fourteen years after, when La
Salle was dead, he published another edition of his travels, [Footnote:
_Nouvelle Decouverte d'un tres grand Pays situe dans l'Amerique, Utrecht_,
1697] in which he advanced a new and surprising pretension. Reasons
connected with his personal safety, he declares, before compelled him to
remain silent; but a time at length has come when the truth must be
revealed. And he proceeds to affirm that, before ascending the
Mississippi, he, with his two men, explored its whole course from the
Illinois to the sea, thus anticipating the discovery which forms the
crowning laurel of La Salle.

"I am resolved," he says, "to make known here to the whole world the
mystery of this discovery, which I have hitherto concealed, that I might
not offend the Sieur de la Salle, who wished to keep all the glory and all
the knowledge of it to himself. It is for this that he sacrificed many
persons whose lives he exposed, to prevent them from making known what
they had seen, and thereby crossing his secret plans.... I was certain
that if I went down the Mississippi, he would not fail to traduce me to my
superiors for not taking the northern route, which I was to have followed
in accordance with his desire and the plan we had made together. But I saw
myself on the point of dying of hunger, and knew not what to do; because
the two men who were with me threatened openly to leave me in the night,
and carry off the canoe, and every thing in it, if I prevented them from
going down the river to the nations below. Finding myself in this dilemma,
I thought that I ought not to hesitate, and that I ought to prefer my own.
safety to the violent passion which possessed the Sieur de la Salle of
enjoying alone the glory of this discovery. The two men, seeing that I had
made up my mind to follow them, promised me entire fidelity; so, after we
had shaken hands together as a mutual pledge, we set out on our voyage."
[Footnote: _Nouvelle Decouverte_, 248, 250, 251.]

He then proceeds to recount, at length, the particulars of his alleged
exploration. The story was distrusted from the first. [Footnote: See the
preface of the Spanish translation by Don Sebastian Fernandez de Medrano,
1699, and also the letter of Gravier, dated 1701, in Shea's _Early Voyages
on the Mississippi_. Barcia, Charlevoix, Kalm, and other early writers,
put a low value on Hennepin's veracity.] Why had he not told it before? An
excess of modesty, a lack of self-assertion, or a too sensitive reluctance
to wound the susceptibilities of others, had never been found among his
foibles. Yet some, perhaps, might have believed him, had he not, in the
first edition of his book, gratuitously and distinctly declared that he
did not make the voyage in question. "We had some designs," he says, "of
going down the River Colbert [Mississippi] as far as its mouth; but the
tribes that took us prisoners gave us no time to navigate this river both
up and down." [Footnote: _Description de la Louisiane_, 218.]

In declaring to the world the achievement which he had so long concealed
and so explicitly denied, the worthy missionary found himself in serious
embarrassment. In his first book, he had stated that, on the twelfth of
March, he left the mouth of the Illinois on his way northward, and that,
on the eleventh of April, he was captured by the Sioux, near the mouth of
the Wisconsin, five hundred miles above. This would give him only a month
to make his alleged canoe-voyage from the Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico,
and again upward to the place of his capture,--a distance of three
thousand two hundred and sixty miles. With his means of transportation,
three months would have been insufficient. [Footnote: La Salle, in the
following year, with a far better equipment, was more than three months
and a half in making the journey. A Mississippi trading-boat of the last
generation, with sails and oars, ascending against the current, was
thought to do remarkably well if it could make twenty miles a day.
Hennepin, if we believe his own statements, must have ascended at an
average rate of sixty miles, though his canoe was large and heavily
laden.] He saw the difficulty; but on the other hand, he saw that he could
not greatly change either date without confusing the parts of his
narrative which preceded and which followed. In this perplexity, he chose
a middle course, which only involved him in additional contradictions.
Having, as he affirms, gone down to the Gulf and returned to the mouth of
the Illinois, he set out thence to explore the river above; and he assigns
the twenty-fourth of April as the date of this departure. This gives him
forty-three days for his voyage to the mouth of the river and back.
Looking farther, we find that, having left the Illinois on the twenty-
fourth, he paddled his canoe two hundred leagues northward, and was then
captured by the Sioux on the twelfth of the same month. In short, he
ensnares himself in a hopeless confusion of dates. [Footnote: Hennepin
here falls into gratuitous inconsistencies. In the edition of 1697, in
order to gain a little time, he says that he left the Illinois on his
voyage southward on the eighth of March, 1680; and yet, in the preceding
chapter, he repeats the statement of the first edition, that he was
detained at the Illinois by floating ice till the twelfth. Again, he says
in the first edition, that he was captured by the Sioux on the eleventh of
April; and in the edition of 1697, he changes this date to the twelfth,
without gaining any advantage by doing so.]

Here, one would think, is sufficient reason, for rejecting his story; and
yet the general truth of the descriptions, and a certain verisimilitude
which marks it, might easily deceive a careless reader and perplex a
critical one. These, however, are easily explained. Six years before
Hennepin published his pretended discovery, his brother friar, Father
Chretien Le Clercq, published an account of the Recollet missions among
the Indians, under the title of "Etablissement de la Foi." This book was
suppressed by the French government; but a few copies fortunately
survived. One of these is now before me. It contains the journal of Father
Zenobe Membre, on his descent of the Mississippi in 1681, in company with
La Salle. The slightest comparison of his narrative with that of Hennepin
is sufficient to show that the latter framed his own story out of
incidents and descriptions furnished by his brother missionary, often
using his very words, and sometimes copying entire pages, with no other
alterations than such as were necessary to make himself, instead of La
Salle and his companions, the hero of the exploit. The records of literary
piracy may be searched in vain for an act of depredation more recklessly
impudent. [Footnote: Hennepin may have copied from the unpublished journal
of Membre, which the latter had placed in the hands of his superior, or he
may have compiled from Le Clercq's book, relying on the suppression of the
edition to prevent detection. He certainly saw and used it, for he
elsewhere borrows the exact words of the editor. He is so careless that he
steals from Membre passages which he might easily have written for
himself, as, for example, a description of the opossum and another of the
cougar, animals with which he was acquainted. Compare the following pages
of the _Nouvelle Decouverte_ with the corresponding pages of Le Clercq:
Hennepin, 252, Le Clercq, ii. 217; H. 253, Le C. ii. 218; H. 257, Le C.
ii. 221; H. 259, Le C. ii. 224; H. 262, Le C. ii. 226; H. 265, Le C. ii.
229; H. 267, Le C. ii. 283; H. 270, Le C. ii. 235; H. 280, Le C. ii. 240;
H. 295, Le C. ii. 249; H. 296, Le C. ii. 250; H. 297, Le C. ii. 253; H.
299, Le C. ii. 254; H. 301, Le C. ii. 257. Some of these parallel passages
will be found in Sparks's _Life of La Salle_, where this remarkable fraud
was first fully exposed. In Shea's _Discovery of the Mississippi_, there
is an excellent critical examination of Hennepin's works. His plagiarisms
from Le Clercq are not confined to the passages cited above; for, in his
later editions, he stole largely from other parts of the suppressed
_Etablissement de la Foi_.]

Such being the case, what faith can we put in the rest of Hennepin's
story? Fortunately, there are tests by which the earlier parts of his book
can be tried; and, on the whole, they square exceedingly well with
contemporary records of undoubted authenticity. Bating his exaggerations
respecting the Falls of Niagara, his local descriptions, and even his
estimates of distance, are generally accurate. He constantly, it is true,
magnifies his own acts, and thrusts himself forward as one of the chiefs
of an enterprise, to the costs of which he had contributed nothing, and to
which he was merely an appendage; and yet, till he reaches the
Mississippi, there can be no doubt that, in the main, he tells the truth.
As for his ascent of that river to the country of the Sioux, the general
statement is fully confirmed by allusions of Tonty, and other contemporary
writers. [Footnote: It is certain that persons having the best means of
information believed at the time in Hennepin's story of his journeys on
the Upper Mississippi. The compiler of the _Relation des Decouvertes_, who
was in close relations with La Salle and those who acted with him, does
not intimate a doubt of the truth of the report which Hennepin, on his
return, gave to the Provincial Commissary of his Order, and which is in
substance the same which he published two years later. The _Relation_, it
is to be observed, was written only a few months after the return of
Hennepin, and embodies the pith of his narrative of the Upper Mississippi,
no part of which had then been published.] For the details of the journey,
we must look on Hennepin alone; whose account of the company and of the
peculiar traits of its Indian occupation afford, as far as they go, good
evidence of truth. Indeed, this part of his narrative could only have been
written by one well versed in the savage life of this north-western
region. [Footnote: In this connection, it is well to examine the various
Sioux words which Hennepin uses incidentally, and which he must have
acquired by personal intercourse with the tribe, as no Frenchman then
understood the language. These words, as far as my information reaches,
are in every instance correct. Thus, he says that the Sioux called his
breviary a "bad spirit"--_Ouackanche_. _Wakanshe_, or _Wakansheclia_,
would express the same meaning in modern English spelling. He says
elsewhere that they called the guns of his companions _Manzaouackanche_,
which he translates, "iron possessed with a bad spirit." The western Sioux
to this day call a gun _Manzawakan_, "metal possessed with a spirit."
_Chonga (shonka)_, "a, dog," _Ouasi (wahsee)_, "a pine-tree," _Chinnen
(shinnan)_, "a robe," or "garment," and other words, are given correctly,
with their interpretations. The word _Louis_, affirmed by Hennepin to mean
"the sun," seems at first sight a wilful inaccuracy, as this is not the
word used in general by the Sioux. The Yankton band of this people,
however, call the sun _oouee_, which, it is evident, represents the French
pronunciation of Louis, omitting the initial letter. This, Hennepin would
be apt enough to supply, thereby conferring a compliment alike on himself,
Louis Hennepin, and on the King, Louis XIV., who, to the indignation of
his brother monarchs, had chosen the sun as his emblem.

A variety of trivial incidents touched upon by Hennepin, while recounting
his life among the Sioux, seem to me to afford a strong presumption of an
actual experience. I speak on this point with the more confidence, as the
Indians in whose lodges I was once domesticated for several weeks,
belonged to a western band of the same people.] Trusting, then, to his
guidance in the absence of better, let us follow in the wake of his
adventurous canoe.

It was laden deeply; with goods belonging to La Salle, and meant by
handing presents to Indians on the way, though the travelers, it appears,
proposed to use them in trading of their own account. The friar was still
wrapped in his gray capote and hood, shod with sandals, and decorated with
the cord of St. Francis. As for his two companions, Accau [Footnote:
Called Ako by Hennepin. In contemporary documents it is written Accau,
Acau, D'Accau Dacau, Dacan, and d'Accault.] and Du Gay, it is tolerably
clear that the former was the real leader of the party, though Hennepin,
after his custom, thrusts himself into the foremost place. Both were
somewhat above the station of ordinary hired hands; and Du Gay had an
uncle who was an ecclesiastic of good credit at Amiens, his native place.

In the forests that overhung the river, the buds were feebly swelling with
advancing spring. There was game enough. They killed buffalo, deer,
beavers, wild turkeys, and now and then a bear swimming in the river. With
these, and the fish which they caught in abundance, they fared
sumptuously, though it was the season of Lent. They were exemplary,
however, at their devotions. Hennepin said prayers at morning and night,
and the _angelus_ at noon, adding a petition to St. Anthony of Padua, that
he would save them from the peril that beset their way. In truth, there
was a lion in the path. The ferocious character of the Sioux, or Dacotah,
who occupied the region of the Upper Mississippi, was already known to the
French; and Hennepin, not without reason, prayed that it might be his
fortune to meet them, not by night, but by day.

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