* 



« 



5 




Class. 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE HISTORY 



ILLINOIS AND LOUISIANA 



UNDER THE FRENCH RULE 



EMBRACING A GENERAL VIEW OF 



THE FRENCH DOMINION IN NORTH AMERICA 



WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE 



ENGLISH OCCUPATION OF ILLINOIS 



JOSEPH WALLACE 

Counselor at Law 
Author of " Life of Colonel Edward D. Baker," etc 



History recommends itself as the most profitable of studies. — T. Carlyle 



%P 23 1893 . 

CINCINNATI * *^ -■*'' 



ROBERT CLARKE & . CO \2'>'0fW^ 






COPYRTGHT, 1S9S, 

BY JOSEPH WALLACE. 






PREFACE. 



"No period in the history of one's owu country," says 
an elegant historian,* " can be considered altogether unin- 
teresting. Such transactions as tend to illustrate the pro- 
gress of its constitution, laws or manners, merit the utmost 
attention. Even remote and minute events are objects of 
a curiosity, which, being natural to the human mind, the 
gratification of it is attended with pleasure." 

With this conception of the interest and utility of his 
work, the author undertook to compose the following 
history. Much has been written and printed at diflerent 
times (in State, county and general histories), respecting 
the French in Illinois and Louisiana, but it is mostly in an 
abridged or detached form, and one rarely finds any con- 
nected and consecutive view of the French domination, 
from its commencement to its close. Although the territory 
comprised within the limits of the present State of Illinois 
was ruled by France for ninety years, it was never as a 
separate colony or province, but always as a dependency 
of either Canada or Louisiana. Hence, no history of Illi- 
nois, during that early period, can be considered complete, 
which does not embrace that of the Province of Louisiana, 
of which it so long formed a part. 

In the preparation of this volume the writer, without 
laying claim to what scholars call original research, has ex- 



* Robertson. (iii) 



iv Preface. 

amined every available source of information relating to 
his tlieme, so as to verify facts, reconcile or explain con- 
flicting dates and accounts, and render it as accurate and 
trustworthy as possible. No parade need here be made of 
the various authorities consulted and freely used by him, 
since they will be disclosed in the progress of the narrative 
itself. 

In writing Indian, French and Spanish proper names, 
the author has, as a rule, conformed to the received or- 
thography, though it is not always easy to determine just 
what that is, since standard writers still differ considerably 
in this particular. Among the early annalists there was no 
recognized rule, nor could well have been any, in regard to 
nomenclature, and therefore each writer was a law unto 
himself. This, together with the different geographical 
locations often assigned by them to the same aboriginal 
tribes, gave rise to more or less contradiction in their nar- 
ratives, which have been a source of perplexity to mod- 
ern historiographers. 

Although this work is primarily confined to the doings 
of the French in the Mississippi Valley, yet such a general 
view is taken of their transactions in other parts of the 
continent as to render it, in some measure, a compendious 
history of the French Dominion in ISTorth America. 
Without overlooking any important or familiar fact, 
the author has introduced much matter that will be 
new and curious to the general reader. In gleaning 
so wide a field, and in carrying the book through the 
press at a distance from his residence, he may have 
fallen into some errors and inaccuracies, but it is believed 
these will be found few in number and restricted to minor 
details. 

It might be thought superfluous, at this time and place, 



Preface. v 

to descant upon the absorbing interest that must ever at- 
tach to that pristine period of American history of which 
"we write, hackneyed as it is. But the new and strange ex- 
periences of the early explorers and colonizers of this con- 
tinent can never be repeated, and the record they made 
will stand unchanged for all future time. The Indians, too, 
who then peopled the solitudes of our forests and prairies, 
have vanished never more to return, leaving behind them, 
as the only enduring vestiges of their presence, the names 
which they gave to the physical features of the country. 

" Their names remain, but they are fled, 
For ever numbered with the dead." 

There are now no other new continents or large islands 
to be discovered ; all the habitable globe has been overrun ; 
and henceforth the business of civilized man upon it will 
be to possess, enjoy, cultivate and develop its marvelous re- 
sources. 

To the descendants of the pioneer French colonists in 
North America, and particularly to those residing within 
the great Basin of the Mississippi, the theme of this gen- 
eral narrative must have a peculiar and perennial attraction. 
In the daring and memorable achievements of their heroic 
predecessors, they may not only cherish a just and lauda- 
ble pride, but find solace and satisfaction for that inscruta- 
ble decree of fate, or Providence, whereby this vast, most 
fertile and favored region, was wrested from their grasp to 
ultimately become the geographical center of one of the 
mightiest, most enlightened and progressive empires on the 
face of the earth. 

In concluding these prefatory observations, it re- 
mains for the writer to acknowledge his obligations, in 
the prosecution of his laborious researches, to the repeated 
kind offices of the intelligent and efficient librarian of the 



vi Preface. 

Illinois (State) Historical Library, and also to the assistant 
librarian of the State Library. 

The copious and comprehensive index at the close of 
the work will be found very convenient for reference, and 
not without occasional use in elucidating the text of the 
history. 

Springfield, Illinois, Scptcmhcr, 1893. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Preface iii 

CHAPTER I. 

1497-1690. 

Introductory Narrative ; or, Discovery and Settlement of Can- 
ada 1 

CHAPTER II. 

1539-1671. 
Discovery of the Mississippi River, and of the North-wbst 24 

CHAPTER III. 

167S-1675. 

The Great River Voyage of Joliet and Marquette 45 

CHAPTER IV. 

1666-1680. 

La Salle and his Early Explorations 71 

CHAPTER V. 

1675-1701. 

Father Louis Hennepin 96 

CHAPTER VI. 

1680-1681. 

La Salle and Tonty 115 

CHAPTER VII. 

1681-1683. 

La Salle's Exploits Continued 130 



viii Contents. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

1684-1687. 

Last Great Enterpkise of La Salle 153 

CHAPTER IX. 

1687-1689. 

Survivors of La Salle's Texan Colony 175 

CHAPTER X. 

1689-1712. 

Illinois as a Dependency of Canada 194 

CHAPTER XI. 

1698-1711. 

Permanent Settlement of Lower Louisiana 212 

CHAPTER XII. 

1712-1717. 

Louisiana under M. Crozat — Demise of Louis XIV 233 

CHAPTER XIII. 

1717-1723. 
French Finances, and Law's Mississippi Company 249 

CHAPTER XIV. 

1718-1732. 

Lieutenant Boisbriant's Rule in the Illinois — The Natchez 

War 270 

CHAPTER XV. 

1732-1752. 
Louisiana Under the Direct Government of the Crown 288 

CHAPTER XVI. 

1742-1756. 

Progress of Events in the Dependency' of Illinois 304 



Contents. ix 

CHAPTER XVII. 

1753-1760. 

The Memorable Seven Years' War 319 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

1760-1765. 

Indian Conspiracy and War of Pontiac 342 

CHAPTER XIX. 

1764-1769. 

Occurrences in Lower Louisiana 363 

CHAPTER XX. 

1764-1778. 

Illinois under the British Domination 384 

CHAPTER XXI. 
General Description of the French Colonists 404 



HISTORY 

OF 

ILLINOIS AND LOUISIANA UNDER THE FRENCH RULE. 



CHAPTER I. 

1497-1690. 

INTRODUCTORY NARRATIVE ; OR DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT OP 

CANADA. 

The first Europeans to reach the shores of America 
were the Northmen, or Scandinavians, who, during the 
early middle ages, formed settlements in Iceland and 
southern Greenland. Those hardy and daring sea-rovers 
gradually extended their voyages westward from Green- 
land to the coasts of Labrador and jSTewfoundland, and, by 
the beginning of the eleventh century, appear to have es- 
tablished themselves on the rocky shores of New England, 
about Massachusetts and ISTarraganset bays. 

They named the new country Winlaiid, or Vinland, 
from the profusion of wild grapes found growing in its 
virgin forests. But the Northmen effected no large or du- 
rable settlements upon this continent; and when their 
colony of Vinland was eventually abandoned, or extermin- 
ated by the natives, it was, doubtless, soon forgotten. The 
only remaining traces of their presence on the New Eng- 
land coast are two or three rude monuments,* and a few 
doubtful Runic inscriptions. The fact of their primal dis- 
covery of the continent, however, is attested by the Sagas, 
or ancient historical records of Iceland. 

But the time was not then ripe for the opening of the 



'Notably, the old stone tower at Newport, Rhode Island, which is 
believed to be a relic of the Northmen. 



2 Early Voyages to North America. 

New World to European coK)iiizatlon and civilization ; nor 
were the people of western Europe sufficiently advanced in 
wealth, intelligence and nautical science, to profit by so im- 
portant a discovery. 

To Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus), must 
ever be accorded the imperishable honor, of having made 
known to the nations of the Old World the pathway to the 
Western Hemisphere ; yet it is b^^ no means certain that he 
ever touched the continent of North America, and he died 
in ignorance of the extent and transcendent value of his 
achievement. 

But the true and lasting discovery of Northern Amer- 
ica was made by Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), a Vene- 
tian navigator, who had become domiciled in the com- 
mercial city of Bristol, England, prior to the year 1493, 
and who afterward voyaged the North Atlantic under 
the patronage of King Henry VII. It is a singular 
fact, and worthy of remark here, that the maritime powers 
of Europe, with the exception, perhaps, of Portugal, should 
have owed their early possessions in America to the skill 
and daring of Italian navigators, although not a single 
American colony was ever established by the Italians them- 
Belves. 

Within one or two years after the return of Columbus 
to Spain, from his first renowned voyage of discovei-y, the 
adventurous spirit of John Cabot induced him to propose 
to Henry VII., of England, to undertake a similar voyage, 
with the two-fold object of discovering new lands, and of 
finding a northwest passage to the Indias. The proposal 
of the Venetian was received with favor and encourage- 
ment by that cautious, yet sagacious monarch. And on 
the fifth of March, 1496, he issued a commission to Cabot 
and his three sons (Louis, Sebastian and Sanchez), author- 
izing them to " sail to all parts of the east, west, and north, 
to discover countries of the Heathen, unknown to 
Christians; to set up the king's ensigns there; to occupy 
and possess, as his subjects, such places as they could sub- 
due, giving them the rule and jurisdiction — to be holden, 
on paying to the king, one-fifth part of their gains." 



Early Voyages to North America. 3 

Under this broad commission three ships were at length 
equipped for the enterprise — partly at the expense of his 
majesty, and the remainder by private persons. With 
these vessels, manned by some three hundred seamen, the 
elder Cabot, and his son Sebastian, sailed from Bristol, 
in May, 1497. Taking a westerly course over the track- 
less ocean, the bold commander, on the 24th of June, 
sighted a shore which he named Terra Primum Visa (land 
first seen), and which is supposed to have been some part 
of Newfoundland. He thence steered northward, parallel 
with the coast of Labrador, as far as to the entrance of 
Hudson's strait, when he was obliged to turn back on ac- 
count of the ice and the increasing discontent of his crew. 
After discovering many islands and coasting the mainland 
southward to the vicinity of Cape Hatteras, a mutiny is 
said to have broken out among his sailors, in consequence 
of which he returned to England. During the ensuing 
year (1498), Sebastian Cabot was sent out with two ships, 
on a second voyage of discovery. He again visited New- 
foundland, and other points on the eastern coast of North 
America, but did not attempt any conquest or settlement 
of tlie country. No authentic journal of these two voya- 
ges was ever published, nor were they soon followed up by 
other like enterprises on the part of the English govern- 
ment or people. Yet, it was upon the discoveries of the 
Cabots, and the subsequent attempts at colonization under 
the auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh (1584-1587), that Eng- 
land based her title to the principal part of the immense 
territory which she afterward acquired in North America. 

The Portuguese were the next to engage in this inviting 
maritime enterprise. In 1500, one Caspar de Cortereal sailed 
from Lisbon with two well-manned caravels. He visited Lab- 
rador, ranged along its inhospitable coast for six hundred 
miles, and entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Returning 
the same year to Portugal, he set sail on a second voyage 
of discovery in May, 1501, but was never again heard of. 
His brother Michael sailed with two ships in search of him, 
but he also failed to return. It is conjectured that both 
they and their unfortunate crews fell victims to the savage 



4 Early Voyages to North America. 

vengeance of the natives of Labrador, some of whom had 
been seized and carried off as slaves by Gaspar de Cortereal, 
in his first voyage. Upon the strength of these northwest- 
ern voyages, however, the Portuguese set up a claim to the 
discovery of the whole continent. 

The business of oceanic discovery in this part of the 
New World, was afterward taken up by the French gov- 
ernment. During the active reign of Francis I., an expe- 
dition was fitted out, the command of which was given to 
Juan Yerrazano, or Verrazani, a Florentine navigator of 
great skill, who had signalized himself by his successful 
cruises against the Spaniards. He sailed from France in 
January, 1524, with four vessels, but three of them be- 
coming disabled in a storm, he completed the voyage in a 
single ship. After touching at the Maderia Islands, he 
hel<l a due westerly course, and encountered heavy seas, 
but at length sighted land on the 7th of March, in the lati- 
tude of North Carolina. Finding no secure harbor, he 
anchored in the open sea, and sent his boats ashore to 
open traffic with the natives. He next sailed southward 
some distance, and then turned his course to the north, ex- 
ploring the eastern coast of the continent for six hundred 
leagues, and naming it New France, in compliment to his 
royal patron, When he reached the fog-laden banks ot 
Newfoundland, his provisions began to fail, and he bore 
away for home, whither he arrived late in July, 1524. Of 
the subsequent career of A^errazano, but little is known. 

It was not until the lapse of ten years that the French 
renewed these hazardous enterprises ; when Jacques Car- 
tier, or Quartier, a bold and experienced mariner of St. 
Malo, in Brittany, having proposed another expedition, 
was supplied by the vice-admiral of the king with two 
ships and one hundred and twenty seamen. Cartier put to 
sea from the port of St. Malo, on the 20th of April, 1534, 
and after four weeks of successful navigation reached tlie 
eastern shore of Newfoundland, which, though visited by 
fishermen, was still for the most part a terra incognita. He 
sailed nearly all round that great island, coasted the main- 
land for a long distance, discovered and named the Golfe 



Cartier's Voyages and Discoveries. 5 

de St. Lorent, or Gulf of St. Lawrence, and entered the 
Bay of Clialeurs. Bnt by this time the season was well 
advanced, and our navigator returned with his ships to 
France, without having ascended the St. Lawrence River, 
or even knowing that it was a river. He opened trade re- 
lations with the natives of the country, and carried home 
with him two young Indians, who afterward served a use- 
ful purpose as interpreters. 

The degree of success that attended this initial voyage 
encouraged the French monarch to further effort in the 
field of trans- Atlantic discovery. Three ships were now 
fitted out for a second expedition, which was joined by some 
of the young nobility, and Cartier was given the command 
thereof, with the designation of " captain and pilot to the 
king." On the 19th of May, 1535, after a solemn mass at 
the cathedral in St. Malo, the three vessels put to sea, but 
were soon separated by a tempest. After a boisterous and 
tedious passage they all arrived safely in the Strait of Belle 
Isle, to the north of ISTewfoundland, in the last week of July. 
From this point of rendezvous tlie captain took a south- 
westerly course, and, having navigated the channel between 
the south coast of Labrador and the large island of Anti- 
costi, sailed slowly up that long and broad estuary, afterward 
named St. Lawrence. By the 1st of September he reached 
the mouth of the Chicoutimi, orSaguenay, coming in from 
the northwest ; and on the 14th, after passing several low 
islands, including that of Orleans, dropped anchor near the 
entrance of a small river on his right, to which he gave the 
name of St. Croix, now St. Charles. 

This was immediately below that bold and striking 
promontory which rises in the angle formed by the conflu- 
ence of the two rivers, and which the natives of the country 
called Quelibec (Quebec), from the sudden contraction of 
the St. Lawrence at that point. While anchored in the river 
opposite the present village of Beauport, Cartier was visited 
on shipboard by one Donnacona, a neighboring Indian po- 
tentate, who resided at the village of Stadacona, on the 
peninsula of that name, and who came with a numerous 



6 Discovery and Settlement of Canada. 

retinue of his braves in pirogues.^ The French captain re- 
ceived his copper-colored visitors with due formality, and 
held converse with them through the two interpreters from 
the coast of Gaspe, whom he had taken with him to France 
in his voyage of the year before. 

Havino; moored his two lart^er vessels inside the mouth 
of the St. Croix, our brave and determined mariner, contrary 
to the entreaty of Donnacona not to go further, continued 
his voyage in the third vessel up the St. Lawrence. Ar- 
rived in that expansion of the river since known as Lake 
St. Peter, and tinding the further advance of his ship im- 
peded by obstructions in the channel, he quit it and pro- 
ceeded in a boat, rowed by three of his men. On the 2d 
of October he reached the Indian village of Hochelaga,t 
situate on the island of that name, which he denominated 
Mont. Koyal (Montreal), from the insulated mountain that 
rises from the plain two miles behind it. After spending 
a few days at Hochelaga, and opening an amicable inter- 
course with the inhabitants of the place, Cartier returned to 
his ship, and descending the river rejoined his other ships 
at the mouth of the St. Croix. Here, at the foot of the rug- 
ged promontory of Quebec, his sailors had already begun 
the erection of a temporary wooden structure, which was 
soon finished, and in which they passed the ensuing winter 
months, suffering greatly, not only from the rigor of the 
climate, but from the ravages of the scurvy. Twenty-five 
men died before the opening of spring, and out of one hun- 
dred and ten then remaining very few were free from that 
disease.! 

Before sailing on his return to France, Cartier, accord- 
ing to the custom of navigators in that age, took possession 
of the country of the St. Lawrence in the name of his sove- 



* Pirogue (Sp. Piragua), originally an Indian word, signifying a dug- 
out canoe. 

tThis was also the original Indian nanio of the 8t. Lawrence, and 
the French sometimes spoke of it as the Grand fl,euve da Hochelaga. 

t Upon the site of the temporary structure occupied hy Cartier and 
his men was long afterward huilt the church of Notre Dame des Victoirefi, 
which fronts the market place in the Lower Town of (iiu^bec. 



Cartier's Voyages and Discoveries. 7 

reign, by erecting a high wooden cross bearing the arms 
of France, with this Latin inscription, Franciscus -primus, 
Dei gratia Francorum rex, regna. Leaving one of his ships 
that had been shattered by the ice in the little liarbor of 
the St. Croix, he sailed for home with the other two on the 
6th of May, 1536, and arrived at St. Malo on the 16th of 
July. During the preceding winter Cartier's friendship 
with Donnacona had become strained, and on his departure 
he took with him that chief and several of his braves, whose 
persons he had seized partly by force and partly by strata- 
gem, and who subsequently died in captivity in France. 

Some five years later, a scheme of regular colonization 
was devised by the French government, in which Cartier was 
associated with Jean Francois de la Roque, Sieur de Roberval, 
who had been commissioned hj the crown lieutenant-general 
and viceroy of his American possessions. Accordingly, on 
May 1, 1541, Captain Cartier sailed with five ships on his 
third voyage to America, and arrived at his former winter 
quarters on the St. Lawrence early in August. Sending two 
of his ships home, he proceeded with the rest to search the 
neighboring shores for a better haven than that of the St. 
Croix, and found one to his liking nine miles above it, at 
the mouth of Cape Rouge River. Here he landed and built 
a fort which he named Charlesbourg Royal, and waited the 
coming of his coadjutor with colonists to begin a settlement. 
In the meantime he again ascended the St. Lawrence to 
Hochelaga, and examined the nature of the obstructions to 
navigation in the river above that place. Owing to the 
long delay in the arrival of Roberval, and to his impatience 
and jealousy of that officer, who outranked him, Cartier at 
length relinquished the attempt to make a settlement, and 
set sail on his return to France in May, 1542. Meeting 
with Roberval's ships at the harbor of I^ewfoundland, he 
avoided their commander and held on his homeward course. 
But, according to Lescarbot's history, he was sent back to 
Canada * in the autumn of that year, by King Henry II., to 

* The name of Canada is believed to have been derived from the 
Huron word Kan-na-ta, meaning a collection of wigwams. According 
to Cartier, it is an Indian word, signifying town. For he wrote : " J?'s 



8 Discovery and Settlement of Canada. 

bring home Roberval and liis colony. They appear to have 
wintered together on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and 
finally quitted it in June, 1543. 

Captain Gartier's services as a navigator and discoverer 
were recompensed by a patent of nobility, and also by a 
seignorial mansion at the village of Limoilou, near St. Malo. 
The latter years of his stirring life were mostly passed 
at his seat of Limoilou, where he died childless about anno 
1555, aged sixty. The printed journals of his American 
voyages are presei'ved by the Quebec Historical Society, 
but whether originally written by himself or not is unde- 
termined. It is said that he advised the first French col- 
onists in Canada to cultivate the good will of the natives 
by every means in their power, and even to form matri- 
monial alliances with them, in order to advance their mate- 
rial interests. It is evident that this last advice was subse- 
quently adopted, though with ephemeral rather than per- 
manent advantage. 

The discoveries made by Cartierand his associate mar- 
iners turned the attention of France to the extensive Valley 
of the St, Lawrence and its capabilities, and established her 
claim to the country according to that peculiar international 
code by which the maritime powers of Europe were wont 
to apportion among themselves the territories of the West- 
ern World. 

Although Canada exhibited scarcely any of that smiling 
and luxuriant aspect pertaining to the middle and southern 
sections of the continent, it opened into regions of indefinite 
extent, and the tracing of its vast chain of fresh-water seas 
to their distant fountains presented more than ordinary at- 
tractions to human curiosity and adventure. But for the 
next sixty years, owing to internal dissensions and factional 
and religious wars, French colonization in America was vir- 
tually abandoned. 

It is true that in the yeai's 1562 and 1564, Admiral Co- 



appellant tme rille Canada." Another early French authority makes 
the word mean terre, or land. The name seems to have been primarily 
applied only to the Valley of the St. Lawrence. 



The Huguenots in Florida. 9 

ligny undertook to plant some Huguenot colonies in East 
Florida ; but the two expeditions sent tliittier under the 
separate leadership of Jean Ribaut and Rene Laudoniere 
ended in utter failure. After suffering deeply from ship- 
wreck and sickness, their settlements at Port Royal and 
near the mouth of the St. John's River were attacked and 
destroyed by the Spaniards under the stern Don Pedro de 
Menendez.* Ribault and his followers were massacred, 
after a pledge of safety had been given them, and their 
bodies were treated with the most shocking indignities — 
" not," it was averred, " because they were Frenchmen, 
but because they were heretics and enemies of God." Two 
years later (1567), this barbarous massacre was fully avenged 
by a Huguenot soldier named Dominique de Gourgues, who 
sailed from Bordeaux with one hundred and lifty armed 
men for that purpose. Aided by some Florida Indians, he 
took and demolished the little Spanish forts on the river 
St. Johns, and hanged all of his prisoners, not because they 
were Spaniards, but that they were " traitors, robbers, and 
murderers." After accomplishing this deed of savage re- 
taliation, De Gourgues made no effort to retain his conquest? 
or to revive the French colony, but having secured all that 
was of value at the forts, he re-embarked his troops and sailed 
back to France. If the efforts of the French Protestants 
to form settlements in East Florida had been countenanced 
and sustained by the crown, it is believed that France might 
have had a flourishing colony there long before England 
effected a single permanent settlement in America. 

We come now to describe the first successful attempts 
of the French to form durable settlements in the cold and 
inclement districts of New France. The most conspicuous 
figure of his day in these arduous and uncertain enterprises 
was SaiQuel de Champlain. Born at Brouage, in the prov- 
ince of Saintonge, about the year 1567, he belonged to a 
noted family of mariners. His father was a sea captain, 
and he himself was early schooled in the art and practice 
of navigation. After spending several years in the military 



Who founded St. Augustine, Fla., in 1565. 



10 Discovery and Settlement of Canada. 

service of his country, he went with an uncle, who held a 
high post in the Spanish navy, on a long voyage to Mexico. 
Returning to France in 1601, he was urged by De Chastes, 
Governor of Dieppe, to explore and prepare to found a 
colony in the French possessions of JSTorth America, the 
governor having received a concession from the king for 
that purpose. This was an undertaking well suited to the 
enterprising genius of Champlain, and he accordingly em- 
barked at Honfleur on March 15, 1603, in a ship commanded 
by Captain Pontgrave, an experienced mariner of St. 
Malo. 

On the 24th of May, after a rough and protracted pas- 
sage, they dropped anchor at Tadousac, where the deep and 
dark waters of the Saguenay enter the estuary of the St. 
Lawrence. Leaving their large ship here, Pontgrave and 
Champlain, with five seamen, continued their voyage in a 
shallop up the St. Lawrence to the rapids, above Hochelaga. 
As they slowly retraced their course, Champlain examined 
and noted the rocky and wooded shores on both sides of 
the river down to Tadousac. He then drew up a map of 
the country, collected information about Acadia * (after- 
ward called by the British Nova Scotia), and in the follow- 
ing autumn returned to France, where he immediately pub- 
lished a narrative of his voyage and observations, entitled 
Dcs Sauvages. 

His patron, J)e Chastes, had meantime deceased, and 
the exclusive privileges that had been granted to him by 
Henry IV. were transferred to Pierre du Guast, Sieur de 
Monts, a gentleman of Saintonge, and an officer of the 
king's household. Letters-patent were issued to the latter 
in November, 1608, nominating liim vice-admiral and lieu- 
tenant-general of his majesty in the country of La Cadie 
(Acadia), with full and exclusive power to trade in peltries, 
and to make war and peace with the natives, from the 40th 
to the 46th parallel of north latitude ; also to make grants 
of land to French settlers. His patent embraced the whole 



■This old poetic name, written Acadie in r'rench, appears to be an 
abbreviation of the Imlian name for one of the rivers of that conntrv. 



French Settlement of Acadia. 11 

coast of N^ew England, no part of which had as yet been 
occupied by the English. The Sieur de Monts was a Cal- 
vinist, and had stipulated for the free exercise of his own 
form of religion, but this was inconsistently enough coupled 
with an agreement that the Indians of the country should 
be instructed in the mysteries of pure Catholicism. Having 
resolved to plant an extensive colony in his new domain, 
De Monts now engaged the active assistance of Champlain 
in his enterprise. They at once proceeded to hire and equip 
a number of vessels, large and small, with which they set 
sail from Havre de Grace on the 7th of April, 1604, carry- 
ing numerous colonists, traders, and stores. The commander 
arrived with a part of his fleet off Sable Island in the first 
week of May, and thence stood along the south and western 
shores of Acadia for several weeks, being undecided where 
to make a permanent landing. At length, after exploring 
the Bay of Fundy, he determined to begin a settlement on 
the Island of Sainte Croix, in the estuary of that name, 
lying between the present Maine and New Brunswick. But 
this location proved unfavorable from the lack of building 
timber and fresh water, and during the next summer the 
colony was removed across the bay to a place called Port 
Royal, now Annapolis. When this transfer had been ef- 
fected, De Monts found it necessary to return to France, 
leaving Pontgrave in charge of the new settlement. The 
cold, damp, and sterile peninsula of Acadia, or Nova Scotia, 
fulfilled none of those hopes of speedy wealth that had al- 
lured the French colonists hither. It yielded with difficulty 
the common necessaries of life, and the fur-trade was too 
limited to be profitable. Its mineral resources long re- 
mained unknown. 

In the meantime Champlain diligently explored the 
rock-bound coast to the southward, as far as the sandy beach 
of Cape Cod, making surveys and charts of the same, and in 
1607, re-embarked for France. His patron, De Monts, was 
accused of abusing his ample commission, by capturing and 
confiscating all vessels that approached the American coast 
within the bounds of his territorial jurisdiction, and of in- 
terfering with the rights and endangering the safety of the 



12 Discovery and Settlement of Canada. 

cod fishermen on the shores of Newfoundland.* Never- 
theless, he had sufficient influence at court to get his privi- 
leges renewed for a time, on condition that his company 
should form an establishment on the river St. Lawrence, 
As now reorganized, the company was composed principally 
of merchants, who had only the fur trade in view, and this 
led to a change in their plans and to the gradual abandon- 
ment of Acadia as the seat of their operations. 

In pursuance of this change of policy, the company 
caused to be fitted out two ships at Hpnfleur, and confided 
them to the charge of Messieurs Champlain and Pont- 
grave, with instructions to proceed to the St. Lawrence, 
and there establish a trading post. They accordingly 
sailed in the spring of 1608, taking out with them a suffi- 
cient number of soldiers, traders and adventurers to form a 
settlement. Arriving in the Lower St. Lawrence, about 
the middle of June, they first touched at Tadousac, and 
thence continued their course up the river. Having fixed 
upon Quebecf as the most eligible site for the projected es- 
tablishment, Champlain landed his company of advent- 
urers there on July 3, 1608. This was one year after the 
settlement of Jamestown, Va., by the English, and twelve 
years before the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth 
Rock. The spot thus chosen was on the north side of the 
St. Lawrence liiver, just above its junction with the St. 
Charles, and about one hundred and twenty leagues from 
the sea. No sooner had the commander begun to clear the 
ground for a settlement here, than he discovered a plot 
among five of the men to take his life ; but this was hap- 



* As early as the year 1504, the fishermen of Brittany and Nor- 
mandy began to ply their vocation on the banks of Newfoundland, and 
in 1517, upward of fifty vessels of different nations are said to have been 
employed in it. 

t " The Indians of the country i,'ave to this place the name of Quebio 
or Quelibec, which, in Algonquin and Abenaqui, means narr(n<;in(/, be- 
cause the river St. Lawrence here narrows till it is only a mile wide ; 
whereas, just below the hlc de Orleans, it still maintains a breadth of 
four or five leagues."— Charlevoix' Histane da la Nmivelle France. En- 
glish translation, edited by John Gilmary Shea (New York, 1866-1872), 
vol. I., p. 50. 



Quebec Founded by Cham-plain. 13 

pily frustrated by his vigilance, and the conspirators were 
dealt with by martial law. 

Mechanics and laborers were now put to work, and in 
the course of a few weeks a cluster of wooden buildings 
arose on the shelving bank of the river, under the shadow 
of that lofty precipice, since known as Cape Diamond, 
which towered above them. These rude edifices were sur- 
rounded by a stout palisade or wall, pierced by apertures 
for small cannon, and were thenceforth occupied as the 
headquarters of Champlain and his semi-military colony. 
Such was the inconsiderable beginning of the historical 
city and fortress of Quebec. Having thus provided a se- 
cure place for his men and munitions, the resolute leader 
pushed out into the circumjacent country, with a view to 
making it tributary to the French power. It was from 
about this time that Canada and Acadia began to be offi- 
cially designated as Noiivellc France j though this ambitious 
appellation had been long before applied to the coast of the 
country by the navigator Verrazano. 

In order to secure the friendship and support of the 
neighboring Montagnais and Algonquin Indians,* in fur- 
therance of his designs of interior exploration and inter- 
course, Champlain now undertook, with dubious propriety, 
to aid them in their ceaseless warfare with the Iroquois, or 
Five Kations,t who inhabited the region lying mostly within 
the limits of the present State ot New York. Victory, of 
course, attended his superior arms in the first encounters 
with them, but it intensified the hatred of those proud and 
fierce warriors for the Indian allies of Champlain; it led to 
an alliance of the Iroquois with the Dutch settlers, and af- 
terward with the English, and long prevented the French 
from advancing southward into the beautiful and fertile 
Valley of the Ohio. On the other hand, it is doubtful if the 



* The Algonquins, proper, dwelt on the Ottawa river, and hence 
were called Ottawas by the French ; but thej-^ gave name to the entire 
family of kindred tribes (about thirty-eight in all), known as Algonquins. 

TThe use of the word nation, as applied to a single Indian tribe, 
though sanctioned by the usage of the best writers, is, nevertheless, 
a misnomer. 



14 Discovery and Settlement of Canada. 

lirst French colonist could have maintained, for any con- 
siderable time, an attitude of strict neutrality between 
those ever-warring Indian nations ; so that the policy they 
adopted may have been the only feasible one open to them. 

In the early summer of 1609, Champlain, with a few 
armed men, joined a hunting and war party of their Mon- 
tagnais allies on an excursion into the territory of the 
Iroquois. Ascending the broad St. Lawrence to the mouth 
of the Richelieu, or Sorel River, and pushing up the latter 
to its source, he discovered and partially explored that 
beautiful lake whicli still bears his name. On its sylvan 
shores he found game exceedingly abundant, and particu- 
larly the fur-bearing beaver. While exploring the south 
part of the lake, our French and Indian party fell in with 
a band of Mohawk warriors, w^hen a sharp fight ensued, in 
which several of tlie latter were slain and others taken 
prisoners. Champlain had now to witness an exhibition 
of that protracted and cruel torture to which the savages 
often subjected their male captives, which filled him with 
such horror that he obtained permission of his allies to 
shoot the poor creature dead with his arquebuse, and thus 
ended his anguish. 

Leaving Pierre Chauvin in command at Quebec, Cham- 
plain returned with Captain Pontgrave to France in Sep- 
tember, 1609 ; but he came back the next spring, bringing 
fresh supplies, and a number of artisans for his embryo 
colony. In the autumn of this year (1610), the Montagnais 
again called on the French for military assistance against 
their enemies, which Champlain gave in order to secure 
the co-operation of the former in his own interior explora- 
tions. Moving with his Indian allies up the St. Lawrence 
and the river Sorel, he assaulted and captured a stronghold 
of the Iroquois, but received a severe wound in the action. 
If the French at this epoch could have forecast the future 
of their Canadian colony, they would no doubt have occu- 
pied the Iroquois country in force, and seized control of 
the Hudson River, so as to exclude the Dutch, and secure 
another and shorter outlet to the ocean. Such a course 



Advent of the Recollects. 15 

was recommeiuled l»y ^I. Tiilon at a subsequent })eri()cl, but 
it was then too late. 

In August, 1611, Champlain again crossed the Atlantic 
to France, where he shortly married a girl named Helene 
Boulle, who was only twelve years old, and wdio was called 
his " child wife." She had been reared a Protestant, but 
became a Catholic after her marriage. On the assassina- 
tion of Henry IV., in 1610, De Monts lost his influence at 
court, and the merchants of his company having become 
tired of the continual expense of the Canadian coloniza- 
tion scheme, it was about to l)e abandoned. At this junc- 
ture, Champlain induced the Count de Soissons to take 
hold of the matter; and on the 8th of October, 1612, that 
nobleman was commissioned governor and lieutenant-gen- 
eral of New France. Champlain was now appointed lieu- 
tenant under him, and continued to act in this capacity 
until after the rio:hts of De Soissons had been transferred 
to the Prince de Conde. Returning to Quebec in the 
spring of 1613, Champlain undertook to explore the Ot- 
tawa River, but did not proceed very far at this time. In 
the autumn of that year lie sailed to Old France, and 
organized a trading company for Canada. 

In 1615 he brought over four Recollects, or Recollets* 
(three priests and a lay brother), to attend to the spiritual 
needs of his colony. They embarked at Honfleur, and 
arrived in Quebec the 25th of May. The names of these 
first missionaries were, Fathers Denis Jamet, Jean d'Olbeau 
and Joseph le Caron, and Brother Pacificus de Plessis. It 
was with mingled curiosity and astonishment that the 
natives of the St. Lawrence Valley first beheld these gray 
friars, with their shaven crowns, sandaled feet, and long 
cassocks of coarse woolen cloth. Their first care, on ar- 
rival, was to select a site and begin the erection of a con- 
vent or religious house for tiieir use. The paramount 
object of these monks was the conversion of the pagan 
Indians to Christianity; and, undismayed by the many 



*The Recollects were a reformed branch of the old Franciscan 
order of friars. 



16 Discovery aiul Settlement of Canada. 

obstacles and perils that confronted them, they met in 
council and assigned to each his province in the wide field 
of their proposed labors. By patient and persevering 
effort, they established missions at various points among 
the Montagnais and Hurons in Canada, but at length, find- 
ing the task too great for their limited numbers and re- 
sources, they applied to the Jesuits for assistance. 

In 1616 Champlain accompanied his Indian allies in 
another expedition against the Iroquois, and afterward ex- 
plored the river and valley of the Ottawa. Journeying 
thence westward, he appears to have discovered Lake 
Nipissing, and the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, sleeping 
in their primeval solitudes, and engirt with dense forests 
of pine and cedar. By these different expeditions, our 
veteran explorer was enabled to form a more accurate idea 
of the geography of the Canadian country; inclosed by 
great lakes and rivers, and opening into vast interior re- 
gions, it seemed to him to atiord unlimited scope for both 
commerce and settlement. 

As early as 1611, the Jesuits, not without opposition 
and delay, had started a mission at Port Royal, in Acadia,* 
and when they received an invitation to enter Canada, they 
eagerly accepted it. But, owing to the prejudice existing 
against their order in the colony, it was not until 1625 that 
they gained a foothold on the banks of the St. Lawrence. 
During that year Fathers Charles Lalemant, Enemond, 
Masse, and Jean de Brebeuf, with two lay brothers, reached 
Quebec, where they were at first ill-received by the inhab- 
itants, but were generously lodged in the house of the Re- 
collets, on St. Chark^s River. In the following year (1626), 
three other Jesuits, to wit. Fathers Philibert, Noirot, and 
Ame de la None, with a lay brother, arrived at Quebec, and 
brought out with them several mechanics and hiborers.f 



■ It was on the 22d of May, 1611, that Pierre Biard and Enemond 
Masse, two Jesuit priests, landed in Aeadia. They had been ready to 
sail from France the year before, but were prevented from doinj^ so by 
the directors of the colony. See Charlevoix' Hist. New France, vol. 1, 
p. 263, note. 

tCharlevoix' Hist. New France, vol.2, pp. 35,37. 



First Appearance of the Jesuits. 17 

They were the first representatives in Canada of that cele- 
brated religious society, which was destined to play so im- 
portant a part in her ecclesiastical and civil afi'airs. The 
Jesuits had just fairly entered upon this chosen theater of la- 
bor, when they were interrupted and dispersed by the English 
invasion of the St. Lawrence Valley in 1629 ; but, four 
years later, they resumed their missionary work on a larger 
scale, and wrestled vigorously with heathenism in the north- 
ern wilderness. Cheerfully enduring every form of hard- 
ship, and confronting every extremity of personal danger, 
they penetrated the wildest recesses of the forest and lakes, 
and planted the cross, the symbol of their faith, among the 
most ignorant and savage tribes of the interior. 

Quebec continued from the beginning to be the center 
of their operations, trom whence missionary priests and 
teachers were dispatched far and wide. 

During the year 1627 Cardinal Richelieu organized a 
company of one hundred associates, called Le Compagnie 
(VNouveau France^ upon whom was conferred the possession 
and government of Canada, with a monopoly of its trade 
and commerce, and freedom from taxation for fifteen years. 
Under the restrictive regulations of this company, the col- 
onists were all required to be Frenchmen and Roman C-ath- 
olics, a short-sighted policy, which hampered the growth 
and material prosperity of the colony. At this epoch the 
village of Quebec did not contain above one hundred regu- 
lar inhabitants. It had in fact a fort, a church, a convent, 
and an hospital, before it contained a fixed population. 

In July, 1629, after being blockaded for some time, 
Quebec was taken by an English squadron under the com- 
mand of Sir David Kirk, a Huguenot refugee of Scotch 
parentage, who, with his two brothers, had been commis- 
sioned to ascend the St. Lawrence for that purpose. Cham- 
plain and his feeble garrison were now put on shipboard, 
and transported as prisoners of war to England. In pass- 
ing down the river and out to sea, they barely escaped being 
recaptured by a French squadron under Emeric de Caen, 
who was coming to the relief of Quebec. The Jesuit mis- 
sionaries on the St. Lawrence were also deported or driven 
2 



18 Discovery and Settlement of Canada. 

away, and their missions broken up. But by the treaty of 
St. Germain en Laye, March 29, 1632, Canada was restored 
to its former proprietor, and Champlain was soon thereafter 
commissioned anew by Richelieu as director-general of the 
colony. At that time there was considerable discussion at 
the French court as to whether Canada were worth repos- 
sessing, so little was it valued. 

On the 23d of May, 1633, the veteran Chami)lain, hav- 
ing sailed from Dieppe with three ships and two hundred 
new settlers, arrived once more at Quebec, and with him 
returned John de Brebeuf, the indefatigable Jesuit mis- 
sionary. No sooner had Champlain resumed command in 
the colony, than he addressed himself to the task of restor- 
ing order, and of repairing the waste occasioned by the 
English occupation of the country. One of his first cares 
was to restore and strengthen the defenses of Quebec, 
which his quick military discernment and experience had 
taught him was the key to the St. Lawrence River and 
connecting lakes. During the next two years he also 
erected a fort on Richelieu Island, in Lake St. Peter of the 
St. Lawrence, and founded the post of Trois Mivieres, or 
Three Rivers, between Quebec and Montreal. But Cham- 
plain had now attained to the age of sixty-eight, and was 
worn out in the laborious service of his country. After an 
illness lasting two months, he expired at his quarters in 
Quebec on Christmas day, 1635, just one hundred years 
from the time of Cartier's first visit to the spot. He died 
without issue, and his young wife soon afterward entered 
an Ursuline convent, in which she passed the remainder of 
her days. Champlain appointed M. de Chateaufort to di- 
rect the aifairs of the colony until the arrival of his suc- 
cessor, Charles Huault de Montmagny, a knight of Malta, 
who reached Canada in 1636, and remained eleven years. 

We may not pause here to enlarge upon the personal 
and general character of Samuel de Champlain. He was 
a many sided man, and in his time played many parts. 
He " presented the rare intermixture of the heroic quali- 
ties of past times, with the zeal for science and the prac- 
tical talents of modern ages," Apart from liis high merits 



Canada as a Royal Province. 19 

as a discoverer and scientilic explorer, he was an intrepid 
negotiator with the aboriginal tribes, and possessed execu- 
tive abilities of the first order. During a period of twenty- 
seven years (saving three years of enforced absence), he 
ably administered the affairs of the nascent colony, and 
devoted all his energies to the arduous duties of his posi- 
tion. Amid difficulties and discouragements that would 
have overwhelmed a less resolute and persevering man, he 
firmly fixed the authority of France upon the banks of the 
noble St. Lawrence, and thus achieved for himself a con- 
spicuous and enduring place in the Gallic history of the 
country. Although traffic with the Indians was quite 
lucrative in his day, he does not appear to have personally 
engaged in it, for his thoughts were intent on higher 
things. As a military commandant he w^as just and firm, 
according to the maxims of his age, though his justice was 
ever tempered with clemency. A devout Catholic, he was 
zealous in promoting the religious welfare of the colonists, 
and in the eftbrt to convert the aborigines to Chris- 
tianity. In his writings he is charged with credulity for 
repeating the absurd stories told him by the Indians ; but, 
though apparently fond of the marvelous, we are not to 
ijifer that he believed every thing he wrote, since much of 
it was related as hearsay. Charlevoix draws his character 
in flattering terms, and speaks of him as the "Father of 
New France." * 

For twenty-eight years after Champlain's death, the 
management of public afiairs in Canada was continued in 
the hands of the Hundred Associates, or partners, who 
ruled the colony arbitrarily in their own interests, and 
thereby restricted its normal growth and development. 
But in February, 1663, they voluntarily abandoned their 
charter to the king. In the following April, Louis XIV. 
issued an edict constituting a Sovereign Council, empow- 
ered to carry on the government of the province. New 
France thus became a royal province, with the laws and 
customs of the Parliament of Paris, and Quebec was con- 



Charlevoix' Now France, vol. II, p. 89. 



20 Discovery and Settlement of Canada. 

stituted a city. The white popuhxtion of Canada then num- 
bered but twenty-five hundred souls, of which eight hundred, 
including the garrison, were at Quebec* At this transition 
period, Augustine de Saffray de Mesy was commissioned 
governor of the new province, and M. Talon intendant. De 
Mesy arrived at Quebec in September, 1663, and otRciated 
until his death, which occurred May 5, 1665, He had been 
appointed on the recommendation of the Jesuits, but after- 
ward disagreed with them, and his administration was in- 
felicitous. At or before this time, however, the Marquis 
de Tracy was appointed viceroy, or lieutenant-general of 
New France, with Daniel de Remi, Sieur de Courcelles, 
as governor, and Jean Baptiste Talon intendant. They ar- 
rived in the St. Lawrence during the summer of 1665, and 
entered upon the duties of their respective offices. 

Under the new and more orderly system of government, 
the French-Canadians enjoyed domestic tranquillity and in- 
creased prosperity for a series of years. But this was in- 
terrupted toward the close of that century by border wars 
with tlie English settlers of ISTew England and Xew York. 
In 1690, hostilities then existing between France and En- 
gland, an army was raised in I^ew York and Connecticut to 
march against Montreal, though it did not advance beyond 
Lake Champlain. This army of militia was intended to co- 
operate with an expedition by sea, under the command of 
Sir William Phipps, who sailed from Boston with a fleet 
of some thirty vessels. Entering the St. Lawrence in the 
month of October, and ascending it to Quebec, he landed a 
part of his troops, and laid siege to the city both by land 
and water ; but he was repulsed and driven oft' by the 
French garrison under the veteran Count Frontenac. Sub- 
sequentl}^, in the year 1711, the attempt against Quebec was 
renewed by Sir llovenden Walker, with a fleet of thirty 
sail, and a large number of transports carrjang troops, under 
one General Hill. But, after having lost ten of his trans- 
ports by shipwreck at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, he 



'Kingsford's Hist, of Canada, vol. I. 



Quebec and Montreal. 21 

abandoned the expedition in disgust and returned to En- 
gland. 

By the treaty of Utrecht of April 11, 1713, Louis XIV. 
restored to England Hudson's Bay, ceded to her New Found- 
land and the larger part of Acadia, and renounced all claim 
to the Iroquois country, reserving to France the valleys ot 
the St. Lawrence and Mississippi, and the region of the 
Upper Lakes. Prior to that time New France embraced 
not only the Canadas and all of Acadia, but parts of North- 
ern New York and New England. 

It was not until after the English attack by Phipps in 
1690, that the French first attempted the construction of 
stone fortifications at Quebec, the town having been pre- 
viously protected by palisades and earthworks. Thus was 
begun on a small scale that elaborate and unique system of 
fortification, now covering with its ravelins about forty 
acres, which crowns the summit of Cape Diamond at an 
elevation of three hundred and twelve feet above the level 
of the St. Lawrence, and which has been not inaptly termed 
the Gribraltar of America. Whoever has stood upon the 
parapetted and breezy heights of this renowned fortress 
could not have failed to be impressed with its exceeding 
military strength, or charmed with the magnificent and un- 
rivaled view it commands of the surrounding rivers, valleys, 
villages, and distant mountains. The relative value and 
importance of the citadel as a place of defense, however, has 
been greatly diminished by the improved military science 
of the present age.* 

Before closing this preliminary chapter, it is fitting 
that we should concisely yet distinctly trace the origin 
and primordial history of Montreal, the sister city of Que- 
bec, and the great emporium of the Canadas. Montreal is 
situated on the southeastern side of the large, triangular 
island of the same name, at the head of ship navigation on 
the St. Lawrence River, and at the foot of that great chain 
of improved inland waters which stretch westward to the 



* It was during a visit to this historic citadel that Daniel Webster 
caught the inspiration of one of his finest strains of eloquence. 



22 Discovery and Settlement of Canada. 

extremity of Lake Superior. Within the extended limits 
of the present Canadian Dominion, no nobler site could 
well have been selected for a large commercial city. From 
this vantage point the majestic St. Lawrence, unbroken by 
any considerable rapids, flows on in one broad and deep 
channel for six hundred miles to the ocean, bearing upon 
its ample bosom the rich and varied products of an empire. 

Montreal was founded in 1641-42, on the site of the 
ancient Indian village of Hochelaga. It was officially 
christened Ville Marie, or City of Mary, and for many 
years was known by tliat as well as its present name. As 
early as the year 1636, Jean Jacques Olier de Verneuil had 
formed an association in France, for the purpose of colo- 
nizing the island of Montreal. These associates purchased 
the Island of Jean de Lauson, August 7, 1640, and, in 
order to remove all doubts about the title, obtained a grant 
of it from the Company of New France, on the 17th of 
December, in that year. In the summer of 1641, they sent 
out the Sieur de Maisonneuye, a gentleman of Champagne, 
with a company of about forty colonists, including some 
ecclesiastics, to make a settlement. Maisonneuve arrived 
at Quebec on the 20th of August, and thence proceeded up 
the river to Montreal, where he was duly installed governor 
of the island. After wintering his colonists in Quebec and 
Sainte Foy, he returned to Montreal in the spring of 1642, 
and, on the 17th of May, having heard solemn mass, he 
began an intrenchment around his encampment. Subse- 
quently, in 1656, the proprietorship of this company was 
transferred to the Society or Seminary of St. Sulpice, which 
had been founded by Father Olier, at Paris, in September, 
1645, for the special training of candidates for the priest- 
hood. The Sulpitians took possession of the island in 
1657, and established there a seminary and missionary es- 
tablishment, which has maintained its footing down to our 
time.* 

Although of a distinctively religious origin, and never 



*For a further account of the movement toward the first settlement 
of Montreal, see Charlevoix' Hist. New France. Vol. II, pp. 12') to 1150, 
and accompanying notes. 



Montreal. 23 

the political capital of Canada, under the French regime 
(except for a short time after the fall of Quebec, in 1759), 
Montreal early became the commercial metropolis of the 
colony, the repository of its wealth, and the center of its 
increasing fur-trade. The town was not regarded by the 
colonial authorities as a place of special military conse- 
quence, nor was it ever regularly fortified until 1758, and 
then under the stress of war and expected English invasion. 
While its history is hardly so thrilling, or distinguished by 
so many vicissitudes, as that of Quebec, it is still replete 
with events of deep and abiding interest. 

It was here, during the lengthened period of tlie Gal- 
lic rule, that most of those secular and missionary expedi- 
tions were finally equipped and sent out to the West, which 
first disclosed to European eyes the boundless extent and 
physical resources of the interior of I^orth America. Here, 
from time to time, were wont to rendezvous and go forth 
to explore and subdue the savage wilderness, those little 
bands of Recollet friars and Jesuit priests, those high-bred 
and intrepid soldiers of fortune, those hardy adventurers, 
voyageurs, traders and trappers, whose deeds of daring and 
discovery, of courage and constancy, of penance and piety, 
of sutfering and self-sacrifice, have been immortalized in 
prose and in verse. 



24 Spanish Discovery of the Mississippi. 



CHAPTER II. 

1539-1671. 
DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AND OF THE NORTHWEST. 

According to Spanish colonial chronicles, the Missis- 
sippi Kiver was discovered by Hernando de Soto,* an am- 
bitious soldier of fortune, who, after acquiring wealth and 
distinction under Pizarro in Peru, returned to Spain, and 
was commissioned by the emperor, Charles V., to be gov- 
ernor and captain -gen era! for life of Cuba and Florida. 
Having obtained the imperial permission and authority to 
undertake, at his own expense, the exploration and conquest 
of Florida,! De Soto raised and equipped a force of six hun- 
dred picked men, Spaniards and Portuguese, besides twenty 
officers and twenty-four ecclesiastics. With these he put 
to sea from San Lucar, Spain, on April 6, 1538, and before 
the end of May arrived at the port of St. Jago de Cuba, 
then the seat of government, in the southeastern corner of 
the island. Here lie tarried a few months to arrange his 
affiiirs of state, and then proceeded to Havana, where he 
was joined by his consort, Dona Isabella, and all of his 
troops. 

It was on the 18th of May, 1539, after fourteen months 
of busy preparation, that the captain-general and his splen- 
did armament, with nodding plumes and waving banners, 
embarked for the shallow and treacherous coast of West 
Florida. Before setting sail, however, he appointed one of 
his trusted friends in Havana to act with his wife in the 
government of Cuba during his absence. His Heet con- 
sisted of live large ships, two caravels, and two brigantiues. 



* Variously written by different authors Ferdinand, Fernando, and 
Hernando de Soto. 

tThis large peninsula had been discovered and named by Ponce de 
Leon in 1512, but little was known of the interior of the country. 



Soto's Expedition through Florida. 25 

carrying six hundred and twenty soldiers, and two hundred 
and twenty-three horses.* They also carried a numerous 
retinue of priests, servitors, and camp-followers, and a large 
herd of swine. The horsemen were all furnished with 
shirts of mail, steel caps and greaves, after the military 
fashion of that age. The fleet quit the harbor of Havana 
with a favorable wind, but was becalmed on entering the 
Gulf of Mexico, and did not reach its destination until the 
25th of May, when it came to anchor at the Bay of Espiritu 
Santo, now called Tampa Bay. On the 30th of that month 
De Soto debarked his troops, horses and baggage, and 
pitched his camp on the seashore. After some little skirm- 
ishing with hostile parties of the natives, in which several 
of his light-armed troops were wounded, he took possession 
of the deserted village of Ucita, situated about two leagues 
up the bay. This place he proceeded to fortify by throw- 
ing up intrenchments, etc., and made it his base of opera- 
tions. 

Learning from an Indian captive that a Spaniard 
was living not many leagues away, who had been a soldier 
in the unfortunate expedition of Pamphilio de Xarvaez, in 
1527 or '28, the governor sent an escort for him and had 
him brought to his headquarters. This Spaniard was a 
native of Seville, and his name was Juan Ortiz. He ap- 
peared at the Spanish camp with his face painted, and 
otherwise accoutered as a savage. On being interrogated 
' he stated that he had lived among the Florida Indians 
eleven years, and knew their language very well, but could 
not tell much about the country, only that there was no 
gold in it. Taking him for a guide and interpreter, De Soto 
now set out to penetrate the interior with all his army, ex- 
cept sixty foot soldiers and twenty-six horsemen, who were 
left behind to guard the fort.f 

After spending the remainder of that season in ram- 
bling through the tangled forests and everglades of the 



* Narrative of Luis Hernandez de Biedraa, or Biedura, factor of the 
expedition. 

t Biedma's Narrative. 



26 Spanish Discovery of the Mississippi. 

peninsula, he wintered in the territory of the Appalach- 
ians, near the northwestern coast, and during the next 
spring marched to the northeast, traversing what is now 
Georgia and a part of South CaroHna. Arriving early in 
May on the banks of a wide river,* near a large village of 
the Cofitachiqui, the Indian queen of that nation sent her 
sister with a present of a necklace of beads to De Soto, 
and canoes with which to cross the river. When he 
r'^ached the village, the queen gave him the use of one- 
half of it in which to lodge his men, and also sent him a 
present of many wild hens. Searching the graves of a dis- 
peopled town in that vicinity for treasure, the Spaniards 
discovered a great store of pearls, which, however, had 
been injured by being buried in the ground. They also 
found two Spanish axes, and some beads resembling those 
brought from Spain for the purpose of trading with the 
Indians. It was conjectured that these last articles had 
been obtained in trade from the companions of Vasquez de 
Ayllon, who, sailing from Hispaniola, had landed at a port 
on the coast of Carolina in the year 1525. 

Remaining at the village of the Indian princess sev- 
eral days, the Spanish governor next marched north- 
westward, crossing the southern spurs of the Blue Ridge 
Mountains, atid thence bent his general course southward 
through the present State of Alabama, inquiring every- 
where for the precious metals, often hearing of them, but 
finding little or none. The aborigines, living along this 
extended and tortuous route, were sometimes hostile, and 
at other times friendly, but nowhere oifered an}' effectual 
resistance to the progress of the invaders. The privations 
and sufferings of the Sjjaniards were often severe, and their 
adventures bordered closely on the marvelous. f 

About the middle of October, 1540, Soto and his 
army arrived at a large palisaded town called Mavila, or 
Mauvila (Mobile), which was situated on the Alabama 

* Supposed to be the Savannah River, and probably in the Chero- 
kee country. 

t Thomas' History of the U. S. 



Soto's Expedition through Florida. 27 

River, a short distance above its confluence with the Tom- 
bigbee. The natives of that southern locality had con- 
ceived a strong aversion toward the Spaniards on account 
of their reputed inhumanity, and this was intensified by 
the arbitrary action of the latter in seizing and holding as 
prisoner, for a time, the Indian cacique, Tuscalosa, for sus- 
pected treachery. This bitter state of feeling soon burst 
out into a bloody conflict, which lasted several days, and 
during which the Indian town was fired and reduced to 
ashes, together with a great many of its inhabitants, and a 
part of the baggage of the Spaniards. According to some 
Spanish accounts, twenty-five hundred of the natives either 
died in battle, or were sufibcated and burned to death, at 
Mavila. 

Having now lost about one hundred of his men and 
forty-two horses, since landing in Florida, De Soto went 
into camp for a few weeks to rest his little army, and care 
for the wounded. Any one but this proud and headstrong 
captain would have here renounced his scheme of barren 
conquest and fruitless search for mineral wealth, and joined 
his brigantines which had arrived at the harbor of Ochuse,*. 
only one hundred miles away. But still lured forward by 
the hope of finding some rich country, he broke up his 
camp and marched to the northwest. Fighting his way 
through the woods and across rivers into the heart of the 
Chickasaw country, he put his troops into winter quarters 
at the small village of Chicaca, on the upper waters (it is 
supposed) of the Yazoo River. Early in the following- 
March, Soto, as had been his custom, made a requisition 
upon the principal cacique of the neighborhood for two 
hundred men to carry his baggage to the banks of the 
Mississippi. To this unexpected demand the wily sachem 
gave an evasive answer, and, instead of complying with it, 
secretly collected his warriors at night, and attacked and 
set fire to the village in which the Spaniards were lodged; 
thus causing the destruction of the clothing and stores of 
the latter, as well as the loss of fifty-seven of their horses 



Pensaeola Bay, the Achusi of La Vega. 



28 Spanish Discovery of the Mississippi. 

and fourteen men, who perished in the fight and flames.* 
This frightful disaster occasioned the Spaniards a month's 
delay, during which time forges were erected, swords re- 
tempered, ashen lances made, and every efibrt put forth to 
repair their irreparable losses. 

At length, late in April, 1541, the indomitable com- 
mander again resumed his march, and, after struggling for 
a week or more through the intervening wilderness of for- 
est and swamp, and meeting and overcoming stubborn op- 
position from the natives, he reached the long sought Mis- 
sissippi! — the Eio Grande of De la Vega, and the Rio del 
Espiritu Santo of the Spaniards generally. The character 
of this mighty stream has not materially changed in the 
lapse of three and a half centuries. It was then described 
(at the place of crossing) as almost half a league wnde, and 
flowing with a swift current in a deep channel. The river 
was always muddy, and trees and timber were continually 
floating down it. The Indian town where Soto first 
struck the main river, was called Quizquiz, or Chisca,| 
names now incapable of identification. The actual ap- 
pearance of the Spanish captain, and of his tattered and 
battle-scarred followers, marshaled on the low banks of the 
Mississippi, was no doubt tame enough in contrast with the 
brilliantly pictured representatioYi of the scene on canvas. 

Here the resolute adventurers were detained nearly a 
month, constructing pirogues and barges to convey them- 
selves, horses and baggage, over the river. They appear to 
have crossed to the western side at the foot of the lowest 
Chickasaw bluft", a short distance below the site of the present 
city of Memphis. Such, at all events, is the generally re- 
ceived opinion, though a few modern writers endeavor to 



"•■■ See Biedma's Narrative. 

t " Tliere is probably no river that has had so many names as this 
great river. The name Mechisapa was afterward written Missisipi, and 
finally Mississippi. The Indians, according to their different localities 
and languages, had difierent names for it. Soto first knew it by the 
name of Chucagua. The French several times changed its name, call- 
ing it St. Louis, Colbert, etc." — Shipp's History DeSoto, p. 674. 

t The latter is the name given by La Vega. 



Soto's Expedition through Florida. 29 

fix the place of their crossing below the junction of the Ar- 
kansas.* 

After passing the Mississippi, Soto and his caravan 
moved in a northwesterly direction to the Indian village of 
Pacaha, situated not far to the west of the modern New 
Madrid, Missouri. Stopping there some twenty-seven days, 
he sent out small parties to explore the country, and after- 
ward marched north and west to the highlands of White 
River, the northern limit of his expedition. Still seeking 
the rich realm described by De Vaca,t the Spanish captain 
now changed his course to the southeast, and came to a 
large town of the people called Quigata. This is supposed 
to have been on the river Arkansas, near Little Ixock. But 
he was again tempted westward, up into the region of the 
Ozark mountains, and on his route may have passed by 
the Hot Springs, one of the fabled fountains of youth. He 
next wintered at the town of Vicanque, or Autiamque, 
which was probably on the Upper Arkansas, though some 
writers place it on the headwaters of the Washita. It was 
here that Juan Ortiz, the interpreter, died much regretted. 

In March, 1542, De Soto left Vicanque and descended 
the Valley of the Arkansas, to get information in regard to 
the sea. Returning to the banks of the Mississippi, he fixed 
his fortified camp at a village called Guachoya, or Guach- 
oyanque,^ which was probably situated not far below the 
confluence of the Arkansas. The commander now found 
his health and strength declining under the fatigues and 
anxieties of his disappointing enterprise, and his lofty pride 
gave way to a settled melancholy. This was accompanied 



■•■■'See the different opinions on this mooted question collected in a 
note to Bancroft's History of the U. S. (edition of 1875) vol I, p. 59. See 
also a lengthy note on the '" Route of DeSoto," in the appendix to B. 
Shipp's History of Soto and Florida (Philadelphia, 1881), pp. 070-681. 

tCabeca de Vaca was second in command of the expedition of Nar- 
vaez in 1528, and it is asserted or conjectured that he discovered one of 
the mouths of the Mississippi. 

t Some modern writers, including Bancroft, locate Guachoya near 
the mouth of Red River ; but we prefer to follow Mr. McCuUough, Mr. 
Shea, and others, who would confine De Soto's wanderings west of the 
Great River to the Valley of the Arkansas and its tributaries. 



30 Spanish Discovery of the Mississippi. 

by a malignant and wasting fever, of which he died on the 
5th of June, 1542, being aged about forty and six years. 
The knowledge of his death was kept a secret from the In- 
dians of the locality, who yet surmised the fact, and his 
body, wrapped in a mantle, was buried within the camp or 
town. But to eftectually guard the corpse against outrage 
by the superstitious savages, it was exhumed a few days 
after, and placed in the hollowed trunk of an oak, and then 
lowered at midnight into the deep bosom of the Father of 
Waters,* an appropriate resting-place for its daring discov- 
erer. It is related that his sympathetic and devoted wife 
expired at Havana within three days after hearing the sad 
tidings of his end. 

According to the more credible authorities, Hernando 
de Soto was born at Xeres de los Cabelleros, in the princi- 
pality of Estramadura, Spain, about the year 1496. He was 
the scion of a noble yet impoverished family, and was in- 
debted to one Pedrais d' Avila for the means of pursuing 
an university course. After this he went to the West In- 
dies, and joined Pizarro's expedition to Peru. In his ex- 
ploration and attempted conquest of Florida, he is said to 
have expended more than one hundred thousand ducats. 

Garcilasso de la Vega, in his " History of the Conquest 
of Florida," gives us this concise yet flattering delineation 
of De Soto's person and character: 

"He was a little above the medium height, had a cheer- 
ful countenance, though somewhat swarthy, and was an ex- 
cellent horseman. Fortunate in his enterprises, if death 
had not interrupted his designs ; vigilant, skillful, ambitious, 
patient under difliculties; severe to chastise ofteuses, but 
ready to pardon others ; charitable and liberal toward the 
soldiers ; brave and daring, as much so as any captain who 



*The Knight of Elvas states, in his narrative, that 8oto died on the 
2l6t of May, 1542, and also gives a different account of his final burial 
from that currently accepted. He says: " Luysde Moscoso commanded 
him (Soto) to be taken up, and to cast a great deal of sand into the, 
mantles in which he was wound, wherein he was carried in a canoe, 
and thrown into the river." 



Survivors of Soto's Expedition. 31 

had entered the new worhh So many rare qualities caused 
him to be regretted by all the troops."* 

By his last will, De Soto appointed Luis de Muscoso 
d'Alvarado, his favorite lieutenant, to succeed him in com- 
mand of the army, which had been reduced by disease and 
casualties to one-half its original number. The real pur- 
pose of the expedition was now abandoned, the only object 
of the survivors being to quit the country as best they 
might. Doubting his ability to lead the men back to Cuba 
by way of the Mississippi and the Gulf, the new commander 
set forth on a long and hazardous journey to the west and 
southwest in hopes of reaching the Spanish settlements in 
northern Mexico, as De Vaca claimed to have done after 
the failure of the expedition of Narvaez, to which allusion 
has been made. In the course of this arduous march, ex- 
tending over seven hundred miles, Muscoso and his troop 
traversed a considerable part of the Valley of Red River, 
and passed by some tribes wdio were found still inhabiting 
that country when it was hrst explored by the French, 
nearly a century and a half later. The most westerly town 
reached by our band of adventurers was named Nacachoz, 
or Nazachoz, in western Texas. Here they sa"\v pottery, 
turquoises, and cotton mantles from Mexico, and met with 
an Indian woman who had belonged to a Spanish expedi- 
tion sent eastward from the Pacific coast a few years before. 
Continuing to advance ten days longer, they crossed a con- 
siderable river,]: when they found themselves in a desert 
region peopled by roving and predatory tribes. 

Disheartened at the cheerless prospect, and fearing 
treachery from their native guides, the Spaniards now faced 
about and retraced their weary course to the Mississippi. 
Arrived once more at Guaehoya, where Soto had deceased, 
they determined to construct some vessels with which to 
descend to the sea and return to their own country. But 
not finding the requisite facilities for the work, they as- 

* See Shipp's History of De Soto and Florida, p. 438. 
t Supposed to have been the Pecos branch of the Rio Bravo del 
Norte. 



32 Spanish Discovery of the Mississippi. 

cended the river to the village of Minoya,* where they went 
into winter quarters and stayed six months. Here they set 
up a forge, and worked all their iron and chains into nails 
and spikes. They cut and dressed timbers, split boards, 
laid keels, and thus built seven light brigantines, in which 
they laid loose planks for decks, and afterward stretched 
rawhides and mats to protect themselves from the Indian 
arrows. 

It was on the 2d of July, 1543, that the shattered 
remnant of Soto's once proud array, now reckoned at only 
three hundred and twenty -two men, embarked in their 
slender brigantines, with a canoe attached to each, and 
began to drift down the great river. During the voyage, 
they suffered great annoyance and injury from the Indians 
along the Lower Mississippi, who were exasperated at the 
Spaniards on account of their cruelties, and who followed 
them in canoes for many days, and harassed tliem with re- 
peated attacks, both by land and water. In one of these 
encounters with the savages, according to the Knight of 
Elvas, the brave Juan de Guzman and ten soldiers were 
slain or drowned in the river. Escaping at length from 
their enemies, and having sailed as they computed two 
hundred and fifty leagues, Muscoso and his followers 
reached the Gulf of Mexico on the 18th of July. From 
thence, instead of venturing to cross the open sea in their 
weak craft, they coasted its low shores to the west and 
south for fifty-two days, and, after undergoing incredible 
hardships, finally arrived at the town of Panuco, in Mexico, 
on the 10th of September. "The inhabitants of Panuco," 
• says the old chronicler, Garcihisso de la Vega, "were all 
touched with pity at beholding this forlorn remnant of the 
gallant armament of the renowned Hernando de Soto. 
They were blackened, haggard, shriveled up, and half- 
naked, being clad only with the skins of deer, buffalo, 



*0r Aminyo. The precise location of this village, where the hrig- 
antines were built, can not now be settled, its Spanish-Indian name 
having left no trace, but it is supposed to have been on a small river 
that put into the Mississippi a few miles above the mouth of the Ar- 
kansas. 



Survivors of Soto's Expedition. 33 

bears and other animals, and looking more like wild beasts 
than human beings.* 

This wonderful yet di-sastrons expedition, covering a 
period of over four years, was practically the beginning of 
the history of the CTnited States of l^orth America ; for the 
migrations and wars of the savage tribes, who had hitherto 
occupied the whole country, are of hardly more historical 
value than the flights and skirmishes of so many hawks 
and crows. In this category we would not class the old 
Mound Builders, of whom and whose works so much has 
been learnedly written, while so little comparatively is 
really known. They, too, were probably Indians, though 
of a more intelligent and civilized type than those found 
here by the Europeans. 

Subsequently, in the year 1557, owing to the implaca- 
ble hostility of the natives, and to the loss of the crews of 
several Spanish ships that had been wrecked on the coasts 
of Florida, the King of Spain gave orders for the military 
reduction of tliat country. Accordingly, in 1559, an ex- 
pedition of fifteen hundred men was equipped and sailed 
from Vera Cruz, Mexico, under the command of the vet- 
eran Don Tristan de Luna. He landed with his army at 
St. Mary's Bay, now Pensacola, and advanced northward 
into the interior, and thence Avestward to the Mississippi, 
in the country of the Natchez Indians. In the meantime 
dissensions and revolts arose among his troops, which im- 
paired the success of the expedition, and necessitated a 
retrograde march to the coast, where vessels soon after 
arrived and carried the survivors back to Mexico. 

Henceforth the Mississippi River appears to have been 
neglected and forgotten by the Spaniards, although they 
had explored it for nearly a thousand miles, and were ac- 
quainted with at least two of its principal western tributa- 



*For full, if not always trustworthy accounts of De Soto's expedi- 
tion, see the contemporary chronicles of Biedma or Biedura, of the 
Gentleman of Elvas, and of Garcilasso de la Vega, several English ver- 
sions of which are in print. That of Biedma is the shortest, and per- 
haps the most authentic. 



34 French Discovery of the Northwest. 

ries. It was afterward laid down on their maps of WevSt 
Florida as a comparatively unimportant stream, and was 
not always distinguished by its original Spanish name ; nor 
is it certain that any ship of that nation had ever entered 
and ascended the great river from the sea. Spain thus 
abandoned the Valley of the Mississippi to its primitive 
wildness and savagery, partly because of the great difficulty 
of penetrating the country, l)ut chietly for the reason that 
no El Dorado, no glittering gold, was found in all that 
semi-tropical region to attract and satisfy Spanish cupidity. 

l^early a hundred years had elapsed after Soto's primal 
discovery, when Jean ISTicolet, an intrepid French voyagear, 
reached the vicinity of a northern affluent of the Mississippi. 
John Nicolet was a son of Thomas iSTicolet, of Cherbourg, 
France. He came to Canada as a youth in 1618, and was 
shortly after sent by Champlain to reside with the barbar- 
ous Algonquins on the Isle des Allumettes, situated in the 
Ottawa Kiver, above Chaudiere Falls. He stayed with them 
two years, following them in their periodical hunts, partak- 
ing of their fatigues and privations, and often suliering 
keenly from the pangs of hunger and the brutality of the 
savages. In the meantime, however, he acquired an inti- 
mate knowledge of the Algonquin language, then generally 
spoken on both the Ottawa River and the northern banks 
of the St. Lawrence. Nicolet afterward went to reside 
among the Nipissings, on the shores of the lake of that 
name, with whom he remained about nine years. Here he 
lived as an Indian, s})eaking their harsh tongue, having his 
own little cabin and estal)lishnient, and doing his own fish- 
ing and trading. But he still continued a Frenchman and 
a Catholic, and at length returned to the confines of civili- 
zation, because, as he said, "-he could not live without the 
sacraments," which were denied him in the depths of the 
wilderness. 

After the repossession of Canada by the French in July, 
1632, the Sieur Nicolet was employed as a commissary and 
Indian interpreter for the company that governed the col- 
ony. In 1634, or thereabouts, he was sent as an agent or 



Jean Nicolet. 35 

embassador to the Wiunebagoes, who dwelt near the head 
of Green Bay of Lake Michigan.* They had quarreled with 
the JSTez Perces, or Beaver Indians, whose hunting-grounds 
lay to the north of Lake Huron, and who were friendly to- 
ward the French. Nicolet was charged, among other 
things, to negotiate a peace with those discordant tribes. 
But the main object of his expedition appears to have been 
to solve the problem of a western and more direct route to 
China, which country was supposed to be situated not far 
beyond the most westerly of the great lakes. 

• Agreeably to the best accredited account of his cele- 
brated journey, Nicolet set out in a bark canoe, with seven 
Huron Indians for guides and huntsmen, and ascended 
the Ottawa River to a station above Allumette Island. 
Turning thence to the west, he traveled by way of Lake 
ISTipissing to the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, and followed 
its rugged and forbidding coast up to the Rapids of St. 
Mary, where he held interviews with the natives of those 
parts. Returning down the strait of that name, he next en- 
tered and passed through the Straits of Michilimackinac^ 
about three leagues in length — emerging on the watery ex- 
panse of Lake Michigan, or Lake of Illinois, as it was first 
known by the French, of which he was entitled to the 



*"In no record, contemporaneous or later," says Mr. Buttertield, 
" is the date of his journey thither given, except approximately. The 
fact of Nicolet having made the journey to the Winnebagoes is first no- 
ticed by (Father) Vimont, in the Relation of 1640, p. 35. He says : " Le 
visite ray tout maintenant le cote du md, ie diray ou jiassant, que le Sieur Ni- 
colet, interpreter en langue Algonquine et Huronne pour Messieurs de la Nouvellg 
France, m' a donne les noms de ces nations quHl a visitee luy mesme pour la 
plvpart dans leur pays, tons ces peuples entendant L' Algonquine, excepte les 
Huronns, que ont vue langue d part comme aussi les Ouinipigou ou gens de 
mer.' The year of Nicolet's visit, it will be noticed, is left undetermined.' 
The extract only shows that it must have been made in or before 1639." 
Mr. Butterfield then goes on to show, pretty conclusively, that Nicolet 
made his voyage to the northwest in 1634, returning thence the follow- 
ing year. Mr. Parkman, however, fixes the time of the journey be- 
tween 1635 and 1638, and Mr. Shea in 1639. To the last named scholar 
is ascribed the credit of having been the first to identify the " Ouinipi- 
gou, or Gens de Mer," of Father Vimont with the Winnebagoes. See 
" Nicolet's Discovery of the Northwest," by C. W. Butterfield (Cincinnati, 
1881), pp. 42-45, and accompanying notes. • '• 



36 French Discovery of the Northwest. 

honor of discovery. After boldly threading his course 
around its wild, northern shores to the Bay of iSToquet, an 
arm of Green Bay, he made his wa}^ over the latter to the 
mouth of a stream flowing in from the west, where he met 
a tribe of Indians called the Menominees. From thence he 
resumed his voyage up Green Bay toward the Winnebagoes, 
who, having received word of his coming, had sent a num- 
ber of their young braves to meet him and escort him to 
their villages. 

Nicolet found the Winnebagoes to be a numerous peo- 
ple, living in bark and skin covered lodges, and speaking a 
guttural language radically difierent from that of the Huron 
and Algonquin Indians. They belonged to the great fam- 
ily of the Sioux or Dakotas, and were the only branch of 
that stock who dwelt so far eastward of the Missis-^ 
sippi, Nicolet's arrival created a great sensation among 
the AYinnebagoes, for he was the first white man to visit 
them, and four or five thousand of the tribe assembled to 
greet him. Each of the principal chiefs gave a feast in 
his honor, at one of which a hundred and twenty beavers 
are said to have been served. On taking leave of the 
Winnebagoes, he journeyed for six days up Fox River, 
and thence passed through Lake Winnebago to the homes 
of the Maskoutens, or Mascoutins, who afterward became 
banded with the Miamis. It seems that the Sauks and 
Foxes had not as yet migrated fi-om the East to this sec- 
tion of the country. Hearing from the Mascoutins of a 
nation called the Illinois, we are told that he continued his 
progress southward and visited some of the villages of 
that people. While exploring the Fox River, he also 
heard of the Wisconsin ; but as the account given by him 
of this tributary of the Mississippi is vague and confused, 
it is by no means certain that he either saw or navigated 
any part of it. 

" It has been extensively published," says Mr. Butter- 
field, " that Nicolet did reach the Wisconsin, and float 
down its channel to within three days (sail) of the Missis- 
sippi. Now Nicolet, in speaking of a large river upon 
which he had sailed, evidently intended to convey the idea 



Jean Nicolet. 37 

of its being connected with the lake, that is, with Green 
Bay. Hence he must have spoken of Fox River. But 
Vimont (Relation, 1640, page 36) understood him as saying 
that had he sailed three more days on a great river which 
flows from that lake, he would have found the sea," or 
"great water" of the Indians. 

On his return trip, Nicolet stopped to form the 
acquaintance of the Poutouatamis (Pottawatomies), who 
occupied the islands in the mouth of Green Bay, and there 
met with a friendly reception. Shortly after arriving at 
Quebec from his tour to the far west, he was sent to the 
Three Rivers, where he resumed and continued his duties 
as commissary and Indian interpreter. 

On the 22d of October, 1637, Jean Nicolet was mar- 
ried in Quebec to Marguerite Couillard, a god-child of Sam- 
uel de Champlain, and by this union became the father of 
one child, a daughter. Four years later (1641), he was 
associated with Father Paul Ragueneau in making a treaty 
with a large band of the Iroquois, who, having entered 
Canada, were threatening the post of Three Rivers. 

"About the first of October, 1642, he was called down 
to Quebec to take the place of his brother-in-law, Olivier de 
Tardifi*, who was general commissary of the Hundred 
Partners or Associates, and who sailed on the 7th of that 
month to Old France. The change was very agreeable to 
Nicolet, but he did not enjoy it long; for in less than a 
month after his arrival, in endeavoring to make a trip to 
his former place of residence, to release an Indian prisoner 
in possession of a band of Algonquins who were slowly 
torturing him, his zeal and humanity cost him his life. 
On the 27th of October, he embarked at Quebec, near 7 
o'clock in the evening, in the launch of M. de Savigny, 
which was headed for Three Rivers. He had not yet 
reached Sillery (four miles above Quebec), when a north- 
east squall raised a terrible tempest on the St. Lawrence, 
and filled the boat. Those in it did not immediately 
drown. Nicolet had time to say to M. de Savigny, ' Save 
yourself, sir, you can swim ; I can not. I am going to 
God ; I recommend to you my wife and daughter.' The 



38 French Discovery of the Northwest. 

wild Avaves tore the men one after another from the boat, 
which had capsized and floated against a rock ; and four 
of the number, including Nicolet, sank to rise no more." * 

Thus was overwhelmed in the surging billows of the 
St. Lawrence, while on an errand of Christian charity, the 
Sieur Jean Nicolet, the first European, whose slender canoe 
cleaved the limpid waters of Lake Michigan, and the first who 
is known to have set foot in the level prairies of Southern 
Wisconsin. His untimely death was regretted in common 
by his countrymen and the red men. The story of his ad- 
venturous yet useful life has been worthily written, and his 
memory survives in the name of a county and town in 
Lower Canada. 

It may seem strange that the Mississippi River, drain- 
ing as it does the heart of the continent, should have re- 
mained so long unknown throughout its course to the 
English colonists on the Atlantic seaboard ; but they 
evinced no early disposition to venture beyond the moun- 
tains that walled them in on the west. The vague story of 
an English voyage up the great river in 1648, has found 
some advocates, though it is quite improbable, considering 
the fact that the Gulf of Mexico was then a closed sea to 
all European vessels save the Spanish. In a book, descrip- 
tive of the Province of Carolina, published by Dr. Daniel 
Coxe, in London, in 1727, it is alfirmed that a certain Col- 
onel Wood, residing at the Falls of James River, Virginia, 
discovered different branches of the Ohio and Mississippi 
Rivers between the years 1654 and 1664. " It is possible, 
however (says Col. R. T, Durrett, in his elaborate historical 
address on the anniversary of Kentucky's Centennial of State- 
hood), that Dr. Coxe has credited Col. Wood with an ex- 
ploration that was made by Captain Thomas Batts, at a little 
later date. In 1671, Gen. Abraham Wood, by the authority 
of Governor Berkeley, sent Captain Batts with a party of 
explorers to the west of the Ai)palachian Mountains, in 
search of a river that might lead across the continent to- 



*" Discovery of the Northwest by Jean Xicolet; with a Sketch of 
his Life and Explorations." By C. W. Butterfield, pp. 82-84. 



English Attempts to Reach the Mississippi. 39 

ward Chiua. The journal of their route is rendered ob- 
scure by meager descriptions, and the change of names 
since it was written ; but it is possible that they went to 
the Roanoke, and, ascending it to its headwaters, crossed 
over to the sources of the Kanawha, which they descended," 
probably to the Ohio. But it does not appear that either 
of those Virginia explorers ever penetrated beyond the re- 
gion of the Upper Ohio. 

In the meantime, however, the French Jesuits and fur- 
traders were pushing deeper and farther into the wilder- 
ness of the northern lakes. About the year 1634, three 
Jesuit priests, Brebeuf, Daniel and Lalemant, planted a 
mission among the Hurons on the shores of Lake Simcoe, 
and another on the southeastern border of Lake Huron. 
In 1641 the Fathers, Isaac Jogues and Charles Raymbault, 
embarked upon the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, for the 
Sault de Ste Marie, where they arrived after a tedious canoe 
passage of seventeen days. They were met there by a con- 
course of some two thousand natives (probably Ojibwas), 
who had been apprised of their coming, and to whom they 
proclaimed the mysteries of the Romish faith. Father 
Raymbault died in the wilderness in 1642, while pursuing 
his missionary labors and discoveries. The same year, 
Jogues and Bressani were captured and tortured by the In- 
dians. Then followed the havoc and destruction of an Iro- 
quois war, by which the Jesuit missions were broken up, 
and many of their priests were either tortured or put to 
death. "Literally did those zealous missionaries 'take 
their lives in their hands,' and lay them a willing sacrifice 
on the altar of their faith," 

For a number of years, therefore, all further French 
exploration was arrested. "At length, in 1658, two daring 
traders penetrated to Lake Superior, wintered there, and 
brought back tales of the ferocious Sioux, and of a great 
western river on which they dwelt. Two years later (1660), 
the aged Jesuit (Rene), Menard,* attempted to plant a mis- 

■ Recent publications," says the late .Tohn Gilmaiy Shea, "have 
placed a Jesuit mission on the lake (Superior), and even on the Missis- 
sippi, as early as 1653 ; but the Relations have not the sliijhtest allusion 



40 French Discoveri/ of the Northwest. 

sion on the southern shore of that lake, but perished in the 
forest by famine or the tomahawk. Allouez succeeded him, 
explored a part of Lake Superior, and heard in his turn of 
the Sioux and their great river, the ' Mesissipi.' More and 
more the thoughts of the Jesuits, and not of the Jesuits 
alone, dwelt on this mysterious stream. Through what re- 
gions did it flow, and whither would it lead them — to the 
South Sea, or the Sea of Virginia; to Mexico, Japan, or 
China? The problem was soon to be solved, and the mys- 
tery revealed."* 

The diiferent enterprises of the Jesuits and fur-traders 
having made known the country of the northwest, the 
French-Canadian ofhcials took steps to extend over it the 
jurisdiction and authority of the King of France. Pursu- 
ant to this end, on September 3, 1670, Jean Talon, f the ac- 
tive and able intendant of New France, selected and com- 
missioned Simon Francois Daumont, Sieur de St. Lusson, 
as his deputy to go in search of copper mines, and to hold 
a general conference witli the indigenous tribes about the 
outlet of Lake Superior. To avoid any pecuniary outlay 
on the part of the provincial government, the resources of 
which were rather limited, it was arranged that St. Lusson 
should remunerate himself for the expenses of his expedi- 
tion by trading with the Indians. He set out from Quebec 

to the fact, and speak of ]Meiiard as the first. The Jesuits named (Father 
Dug^rre and others) as being concerned are not mentioned in tlie jour- 
nal of the superior of the mission, nor in any printed Relation, nor in 
Ducreux, nor in Le Clercq. The fact of a mission at Tam^iroa i)rior to 
Marquette's is perfectly incompatible with the Relations, and if estab- 
lished would destroy their authority." — Shea's History of the Discovery 
and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley (N. Y., 1853), p. 23, note. 
* Parkman's Introduction to his " La Salle and the Great West." 
t Jean Baptiste Talon was the second intendant of New France, and 
the first, we believe, under the royal government of the country, which 
prospered under his administration. He was intendant, or rather su- 
perintendent of justice, police, and finance — the position being next in 
rank and dignity to that of governor. He was first appointed to this 
ottice in KUi.'j, and served till 1()()8, and again from 1()70 to U)72, when he 
returned to Old France and accepted the position of principal secretary 
in the king's household. Talon was born in Picardy in 1625, and died 
at Versailles in 1691. His portrait in oil is preserved in the Hotel-Dieu 
of Quebec, and presents him as a handsome and courtly gentleman. 



St. Lusson's Conference with Western Tribes, 41 

with a company of fifteen men, in several canoes, taking a 
full supply of goods and other needed articles, and was ac- 
companied by Nicholas Perrot as Indian interpreter. 

According to Parknian, few names are more conspicu- 
ous in the annals of the early Canadian voyageurs than that 
of Perrot ; not because of the superiority of his achieve- 
ments over those of many others, but for the reason that he 
could write, and left behind him a tolerable record of what 
he had seen and done. Like ISTicolet, Perrot was a man of 
undoubted courage and address, and exhibited both of these 
qualities in his dealings with the various tribes of red men. 
lie was now about twenty-six years of age, and had pre- 
viously been in- the employ of the Jesuits. 

The Sieur de St. Lusson and party wintered on or near 
the Manatoulin Islands, in the northern part of Huron Lake, 
and occupied the time in hunting and bartering with the 
natives for their furs. Meanwhile Perrot, after first send- 
ing messages to the tribes of the north, inviting them to 
meet the deputy of the Canadian intendant at Sault de Ste 
Marie in the ensuing spring, continued his voyage west- 
ward to Green Bay, and pressed the same invitation on the 
Indian nations inhabiting that ulterior region. Flattered 
by his visit and personal attentions, they all promised to 
send deputations as requested. Accordingly, in the spring 
of 1671, the principal chiefs of the Pottawatomies (who also 
undertook to represent the Miamis in the absence of their 
own old chief), the Menominees, Winnebagoes and Sacs, 
set ofi in their light canoes, and paddled their way over 
the watery plains to the Sault, whither they arrived about 
the 5th of May. St. Lusson and his. Frenchmen were there 
in advance to receive them. The Indians of the surround- 
ing country now came flocking in from their hunting 
grounds, attracted in part by the fisheries at the rapids, 
and partly by the polite messages of Perrot. They com- 
prised the Crees, Monsonies, Amikoues, ISTipissings, and 
sundry other petty tribes, with names too barbarous to be 
written. 

When the representatives of some fourteen tribes had 
arrived, and after the usual feasting and sleeps, St. Lusson 



42 French Discovery of the Northwest. 

prepared to execute the special commission with which he 
had been charged. Accordingly, on the 14th of June, in 
presence of the assembled Indians and Frenchmen, includ- 
ing four Jesuit priests* in the vestments of their office, he 
proceeded to take formal possession, in the king's name, of 
Sainte Marie du Sault, as also of Lakes Huron and Supe- 
rior, the Manatoulin Islands, and all the countries, lakes, 
rivers and streams, contiguous or adjacent thereto. A tall 
wooden cross was now erected, for the adoration of the 
natives, and close by its side was planted a stout cedar post, 
to which was affixed a metal plate engraven with the royal 
arms of the Bourbons. A hymn was then sung, and one 
of the Jesuit priests offered up a prayer for the King of 
France ; after which the Frenchmen discharged their mus- 
kets and cried vivc le roi. When these formalities were 
ended, Fatlier Allouez addressed the Indians in a solemn 
liarangue in their own language, to which they stolidly lis- 
tened while smoking their stone pipes. Soon after the 
French party had left the place of assembly, some of those 
copper-hued sons of the forest removed the metallic plate 
from the post to which it had been nailed, and appropriated 
it to their own use. This Avas done, says Mr. Parkman, 
not so much from any knowledge of the true import of the 
plate, as from their superstitious fear of its influence as a 
charm. But the general effect of this notable convocation 
and conference with the indigenous tribes of the northwest 
was favorable to the French commercial and political inter- 
ests, as well as to their designs for the future exploration 
of the great river and regions bej^ond. As a part of the 
history of this expedition, it is stated that the costly pres- 
ents made by St. Lusson to the Indian chiefs, and other 
necessary expenses, were more than repaid by the gifts of 
valuable furs which he received from them in return. 



•"The names of these priests were, Claude Dablon, superior of the 
missions on the upper lakes ; Gabriel Dreuilletes, Claude Allouez, and 
Louis Andr<i. Louis Joliet is mentioned as among the Frenchmen 
present on the occasion. Marquette was away at the Mission of St. 
Esprit, on Lake Superior, but was compelled to abandon it during that 
year. 



Other French Enterprises. 43 

It is deserving of mention here, that two years before 
this time, La Salle, then a young and little known man, 
had projected the discovery of the Mississippi. In July, 
1669, he undertook, at his own expense, a journey to the 
southwest for that purpose. Proceeding with a company 
from Moutreal up the St. Lawrence, and through Lake 
Ontario to Lake Erie, he thence rambled southward and 
discovered the Ohio River, which he followed down to the 
falls or rapids at what is now Louisville. A year or two 
after his return from this expedition, he is said to have 
ascended the great lakes, and, pushing on to and beyond 
the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, discovered the 
Illinois River, or one of its constituent branches. But of 
this, more hereafter. 

Such, in general, was the progress of French explora- 
tion in the interior of this continent, and such was still the 
limited state of their geographical knowledge in regard to 
the Mississippi River and its tributaries, down to the time 
of Joliet's and Marquette's voyage of discovery in 1673 ; 
prior to which it is not known that any " pale face " had 
ever reached, or looked upon, the main trunk of that liquid 
highway, above the mouth of the Ohio.* 



Father Claude Dablon, whose name ttnds repeated mention in these 
pages, merits something more than a passing notice. He came as a 
missionary to Canada in 1655, and was at once sent to Onondaga (New 
York), where he remained, with one short interval of absence, until the 
mission there was broken up in 1658. Three years later, he ami Gabriel 
Dreuilletes attempted to reach Hudson's Bay, by the Saguenay River, 
•but were stopped at the sources of the Nekouba by Iroquois war par- 
ties. In 1668, Dablon followed Father Marquette to the foot of Lake 
Superior, assisted in founding the mission of vSault de Ste. Marie, visited 
Green Bay, and, in company with Father Allouez, reached the sources 
of the Wisconsin. Returning thence to Quebec, he was made superior 
of all the Canadian missions, and held this office with intervals till 



* It is claimed that one Pierre Esprit Radison, a noted voyageur and 
trader, reached the Upper Mississippi in 1658-59 ; but, if so, he never 
gave the world the benefit of his discovery. An account of his alleged 
explorations has been published somewhat recently. 



44 Father Dahlon. 

about 1693. He was still alive in 1694, but the year of his death is 
unknown. 

As the head of the Jesuit missions, Father Dablon contributed in 
no small degree to their extension, and, above all, to the exploration of 
the Mississippi by Marquette and Joliet. He published the Relations 
of 1670-71, and 72, with their accompanying map of Lake Superior, 
and prepared for the press those of 1672-73, and 1673-79, which, to- 
gether with his narratives of Marquette and Allouez, remained a long 
while in manuscript, for the reason that the publication of the Rela- 
tions was interdicted in 1673. He was versed alike in the learning of 
the cloister and in the mysteries of the forest, and, according to Dr. 
Shea, bis writings comprise the most valuable collection of topography 
of the northwest, which have come down to our day. 



Talon and Front enac. 45 



CHAPTER III. 

1673-1675. 
THE GREAT RIVER VOYAGE OF JOLIET AND MARQUETTE. 

To Jean Talon, tlie able and enterprising intendant, 
already referred to, belongs the chief credit of having ini- 
tiated the movement for the French discovery of the Mis- 
sissippi. To effect this long desired object, he selected 
Louis Joliet, of Quebec, to conduct the expedition, with 
one of the Jesuit priests for his companion and assistant. 
But M. Talon did not remain in Canada long enough to 
witness the completion of the bold undertaking which he 
had projected, and which was prolific of such important 
and far-reaching results. Owing to repeated disagree- 
ments between himself and Governor Courcelles, in regard 
to the jurisdiction of their respective offices, both requested 
to be and were recalled. Failing health was also assigned 
as a reason for the governor's retirement. It is not im- 
probable that the intendant, as the more brainy and ener- 
getic man of the two, had trenched upon the governor's au- 
thority. 

Not long afterward, in the autumn of 1672, Louis de 
Buade, Comte de Palluau et Frontenac was sent out to Can- 
ada as the successor of Courcelles. Count Frontenac be- 
longed to the high noblesse, of France, and was the ninth 
governor of the colony after Champlain. He was now 
somewhat past middle life, and said to be broken in for- 
tune ; but he was a man of rare accomplishments, experi- 
enced in statecraft, and endowed with uncommon adminis- 
trative ability. Although haughty and intolerant toward 
his enemies, he was ardently devoted to his friends ; while 
his courtly manners and brilliant conversation made him a 
favorite and an ornament of the most cultivated circles. 
His powers, as chief executive, were derived directly from 



46 Louis Joliet. 

the crown, and were absolute within the sphere of his ju- 
risdiction, though parti}' checked by those of the intend- 
ant. His government was aggressive and stormy, and was 
beset by strong opposition and enmity, which eventuated, 
after ten years, in his recall by the king. But when the 
colony had been brought to the verge of ruin under the 
weak administrations of LaBarre and Del^onville, Fronte- 
nac was reinstated in 1689, and the closing term of his 
otificial life was crowned with success, and with the plaudits 
of his countrymen, He died in Quebec in 1698, at an ad- 
vanced age, and was interred in the Church of the RecoUet 
Fathers, to whom he was warmly attached. 

But to resume our principal theme. Upon the recom- 
mendation of Talon, before his final departure for France, 
Governor Frontenac charged Joliet with the conduct of 
the exploration of the Mississippi, " as Ijeing a man ex- 
perienced in this kind of discover}', and who had been al- 
ready very near that river." Apart from this official 
sanction of the enterprise, about all the aid aftbrded to Jo- 
liet by the provincial government, was one assistant and 
a bark canoe. 

Of Louis Joliet* himself, some account must needs be 
given before starting him on his great exploration. The 
son of Jean Joliet, an humble mechanic, he was born in 
Quebec, September 21, 1645. When of proper age, he was 
put to school at the Jesuit Seminary in his native town. 
Here he made excellent progress in his studies, and evinced 
a special taste for hydrography. Completing his curriculum 
at the seminary in 1666, he took some minor orders in 
the church, but soon discovered that he had no call to the 
priesthood, and therefore exchanged the cassock for the 
trader's garb. In October, 1667, he appears to have sailed 
to France, and remained there until the next year. Enter- 
ing upon his new career in the spring of 1669, he was sent 
by Intendant Talon, with a young companion, to look for 
copper mines in the wild, western region of Lake Supe- 
rior, ])ut returned without success from this mission. He 

-'This surname has several synonyms, as for example, Jollyet, 
Jolliet, and Joliette; but it is usually written Joliet. 



Father Marqueite. 47 

further appears to have been present at the grand council 
held by St. Lusson with the Northwestern tribes, in the 
spring of 1671 ; but whether as a member of his party is 
undetermined. 

The selection of Father Marquette, as tha companion 
of Joliet in the proposed exploration of the Mississippi, 
seems to have been made informally on the recommenda- 
tion of the superior general of the Jesuits at Quebec. He 
was doubtless chosen on account of his known zeal for the 
conversion of the western Indians, and his proficiency in 
the languages or dialects spoken by the dilferent tribes. 
Jacques, or James Marquette came of a family distin- 
guished in the walks of both civil and military life. He 
was cradled in the ancient town of Laon, in the depart- 
ment of Aisne, France, in the year 1637. From his pious 
mother {nee Rose de la Salle), he imbibed an ardent and 
generous temperament, predisposed alike to piety and be- 
nevolence. In 1654, at the youthful age of seventeen, he 
voluntarily joined the Society of Jesus, of which he was to 
become so eminent a member. After two years of studi- 
ous application, he was, in accordance with the custom of 
that society, employed a part of his time in teaching, and 
continued in the faithful performance of his unosten- 
tatious duties until 1666, when he was ordained to the 
Jesuit priesthood, ^o sooner had he been invested with 
this sacred character, than he showed an inclination to go 
upon a foreign mission ; but the ecclesiastical Province of 
Champagne, in which he was enrolled, embraced no such 
mission. He was therefore transferred to the Province of 
France, and in the summer of that same year (1666) sailed 
to Canada, arriving at Quebec on the 20th of September. 

Marquette was now twenty-nine years old, and buoy- 
ant with life, health and hope. At first he was destined 
by his superiors to the mission among the Montagnais 
Indians, in the Valley of the St. Lawrence; and on the 
10th of October he started from Quebec for Three Rivers, 
to begin the study of that language under the instruction, 
of Father Gabriel Dreuilletes. He remained there until 
April, 1668, when, his original destination having beeu: 



48 Great River Voyage. 

changed, he was ordered to prepare for the Ottawa mis- 
sion. In the meantime he had acquired a fair knowledge 
of the Algonquin tongue, and was thus qualified for enter- 
ing his new field of labor. While waiting at Montreal for 
the departure of the Ottawa flotilla, he met a party of the 
N^ez Perce or Beaver Indians, who were returning to their 
home in the northwest. Setting out with them, he jour- 
neyed up the river Ottawa, through Lake Nipissing and 
down French River to Lake Huron, and thence around its 
northern shore to the outlet of Lake Superior. Here, in 
company with Claude Dablon, a zealous and intrepid 
brother Jesuit, he founded the mission of St. Mary of the 
Falls, otherwise known as Sault de Ste Marie. After 
building a log house and chapel, and converting a number 
of the savages to an outward belief in Christianity, Mar- 
quette was directed to proceed to La Pointe St. Esprit, 
situated on the Bay of Chegoimegon, near the southwestei-n 
corner of Lake Superior, and arrived thither September 13, 
1669. At this far westerly point, Father Claude Allouez 
had establislied a Jesuit mission among the Chippewas in 
1665, and w^ith it was opened the usual French trading 
post. It was from representatives of the different south- 
western tribes, and particularly from the Illinois, who came 
hither to barter their furs and skins, that Father Marquette 
first learned of the grand river, of unknown length, which 
took its rise in several lakes in the country of the far north, 
and flowed southward past their hunting grounds, and 
which they called "Mechisipi," or "Mesissipi," meaning 
"Great River" or "Father of Waters." The information 
thus derived inspired the benevolent heart of the priest 
with an ardent desire to explore that mysterious river, and 
to promulgate the gospel to the pagan dwellers on its 
banks. 

But in the summer of 1671, he was obliged to with- 
draw, with the Huron portion of his flock, from his station 
at the head of what is now called Ashland Bay, in conse- 
quence of the increasing hostility of the Sioux, a fierce 
and roving people, who inhabited the grassy plains to the 
southwest of Lake Superior. Returning eastward along 



JoUet and Marquette. 49 

the southern border of that great lake, Marquette next 
proceeded to found the mission and Indian school of St. 
Ignatius,'-^ or Ignace, at the point or neck of land on the 
north side of tlie Straits of Michilimackinac, now called 
Mackinaw. f During the ensuing year, lie a})pears to have 
visited, with Fathers Allouez and Dahlon, the western 
shores of Lake Michigan, and to have pi'oclainied the 
Faith to the friendly tribes in that region. 

It was on the 8th of December, 1672, that the Sieur 
Joliet arrived from Quebec at the palisaded mission-house 
of Point de St. Ignace, with instructions from Gov. Fronte- 
nac to take Pere Marquette as a companion on his expedi- 
tion for discovering the Mississippi. The Father's journal 
of the same opens with the following pious reference to 
Joliet's arrival : 

"The day of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy 
Virgin; whom I had continually invoked, since coming to 
this country of the Ottawas, to obtain from God the favor 
of being enabled to visit the nations on the river Missis- 
sippi — this very day was precisely that on which M. Joliet 
arrived with orders from Count Frontenac, our governor, 
and M. Talon, our intendant, to go with him on this dis- 
covery. I was all the more delighted at this news, because 
I saw my plans about to be accomplished, and found my- 
self in the happ}^ necessity of exposing my life for the 
salvation of all those tribes, and especially the Illinois, 
who, when I was at St. Esprit, had begged me very earn- 
estly to bring the word of God among them." 

During the ensuing winter, Messieurs Joliet and Mar- 
quette made the necessarj^ preparations for their journey. 
" We took all possible precautions," writes Marquette, 
" that if our enterprise was hazardous, it should not be 
fool-hardy. For this reason we gathered all possible in- 
formation from the Indians who had frequented those 

*So named after the father of the Jesuit order. 

t Mackinac and Mackinaw are diminutives or contractions of the 
Indian word Missilimakinac, which, according to Lippincot's Gazetteer, 
should be pronounced Mish-il-e-mak-e-naw. 
4 



50 Great River Voyage of 

parts, and from their accounts traced a map of all the new 
country, marking down the rivers on winch we were to 
sail, the names of the nations through which we were to 
pass, the course of the great river, and what direction we 
sliould take when we got to it." This rude map was after- 
ward revised hy the priest, who also entered all facts of 
value in his note-book. 

On the 17th of May, 1673, according to the Gregorian 
calendar, the explorers set out from Saint Ignace on their 
perilous voyage. They embarked in two light yet strong 
and elastic bark canoes, with five French canoe-men and 
men of all work, whose names we are unable to give. For 
provisions, tliey carried a little Indian corn and some 
jerked meat. They also took a suitable assortment of 
goods for distribution as presents among the natives to be 
met on the way. After coasting around the northern 
curve of Lake Michigan — a wilderness region then, and 
practically a wilderness still — they entered the little river 
Menominee, which puts into Green Bay from the north- 
west, to visit a tribe called the Folle Avoine, from the wild 
oats or rice found growing along that stream, and upon which 
they largely subsisted. The Jesuit missionaries had preached 
the Faith to these Indians for three or four years, so that they 
were accounted " very good Christians.'' When informed 
of Marquette's design of going to discover distant tribes, to 
instruct them in the mysteries of his holy religion, tliey were 
much surprised, and did all they could to dissuade him. 

"They re[)resented," according to his journal, "that he 
would encounter those nations who never pardon strangers, 
but kill without remorse and without cause; that the wars 
which had broken out between different people, who 
would be upon our route, would expose us to the manifest 
danger of being carried off by some of the bands of war- 
riors who are always in the field; that the great river is 
very dangerous, wlien the channel is not known ; that it is 
full of hideous monsters, who devour altogethei" men and 
canoes; that there was also a demon, whom they could see 
from a great distance, who closed the passage of the river 
and destroyed those who dared to ai>})roach him ; and, in 



JoUet and Marquette. 51 

conclusion, that the heats were so excessive that we should 
meet death inevitably." 

In reply, Marquette thanked them for their good ad- 
vice, but said that he could not follow it, since the salvation 
of souls influenced him, for which he would gladly give up 
his life. He ridiculed their pretended demon, and told 
them that he and his companions could protect themselves 
from the marine monsters, and would keep on their guard 
to avoid the other dangers threatened. 

After praying with and giving these poor Indians some 
instructions, the good fatlier and his French companions 
separated from them and crossed the bay to the mission of 
St. Francis Xavier, which had been principally founded by 
Father Allouez in 1669, and was located on that narrow 
tongue of land running up between Green Bay * and Lake 
Michigan. Quitting this missionary station early in June, 
the voyagers proceeded southward to the mouth of Fox 
River, at the head of the ba}^ and thence up that river, the 
rapids of which were surmounted with considerable diffi- 
culty. They next crossed Lake Winnebago, and shortly 
came to a village of the Miamis, Mascoutins, and Kicka- 
poos, banded together, the firsjt named of whom were the 
most civil and liberal. This village was pleasantly seated 
on an eminence in the open prairie. It was then the limit 
of French exploration in that quarter, and all beyond it 
was a terra incognita. Father Marquette was rejoiced to 
lind standing in the village a handsome cross, adorned with 
skins, girdles, bows and arrows, which these simple natives 
had made as offerings to their Great Manitou,t "to thank him 
that he had had pity on them during the winter and given 
them a profitable hunt." 

" We had no sooner arrived," says Marquette's journal, 
•' than Mons, Joliet and I assembled the old men (of the 
village). I said to them|that he had been sent on the part 
of Monsieur, our governor, to discover new countries, and 



* The French first named this hirge arm of the lake Bale des Puans, 
or Stinking Bay, on account of the offensive vapors exhaled from its 
muddy and slimy shores. 

t A word used by the Algonquin tribes to signify a spirit, good or 
evil, having control of their destinies. 



52 Great River Voyage of 

I on the part of God to make clear to them the lights of 
the gospel, etc., . . . and that we had occasion for two 
guides to conduct us on our route. On asking them to ac- 
cord this to us, we made them a present, which made them 
very civil, and at the same time they voluntarily answered 
us by a present in return, which was a mat to serve as a 
bed during our voyage. The next day, which was the 10th 
of June, the two Miamis they gave us for guides embarked 
with us in sight of all the inhabitants, who could not but 
be astonished to see seven Frenchmen, alone in two canoes, 
daring to undertake an expedition so extraordinary and so 
hazardous." 

Taking a southwesterly course through the labyrinth 
of small lakes that intersected the flat surface of the coun- 
try, the explorers soon reached the water-shed dividing the 
waters flowing to Lake Michigan from those falling into the 
Mississippi. On their arrival at the portage to the Mascon- 
sin, Ouisconsing, or Wisconsin River, the two Miamis guides 
helped them to transport their canoes and luggage across it 
(a distance of about two miles), and then left them to re- 
turn to their own people. Having flrst invoked the protec- 
tion of the Blessed Virgin, as the special patroness of their ex- 
pedition, the Frenchmen re-entered their canoes and glided 
down the shallow channel of the Wisconsin, over shoals and 
through rapids, past islets covered with vines and under- 
brush, and along banks of alternating timber and prairie, 
where they saw many deer and bufi'aloes grazing. 

After a navigation of forty or more French leagues,* 
our explorers arrived, without accident, at the discharge of 
the Wisconsin ; and, on the 17th of efune (1673), they en- 
tered the Mississippi,! "with a joy," writes Marquette, "I 
can not express." They were now embarked on that mys- 
terious river, to which their thoughts had been so long 



♦The common French league is equal to only 2.7()-100 EngUsh or 
statute miles. 

tit was on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, about five mileg 
above the mouth of the Wisconsin, that the village of Prairie du Chien 
was established a century later by some French traders. It owed its 
name to a band of the Fox Indians, called the " Dog Band," that long 
resided there. 



Joliet and Marquette. 53 

turned, and which the pious priest named Rlciere de la 
Conception ; but they found it rather narrow at the point of 
emergence, and elsewhere of varying width. For the en- 
suing week, they somewhat leisurely descended the noble 
stream, attentively observing its high, bold and picturesque 
blutfs, its thickly wooded banks and islands, clothed in the 
full verdure of summer, and meeting with all manner of 
wild birds, beasts, fishes and creeping things, but seeing no 
human being. At night they went ashore and prepared 
their frugal repast, nuiking but little fire, and then moored 
their canoes out in the water, and some one of the party 
was always on guard for fear of a surprise. 

At length, on the 25th of June, having advanced over 
sixty leagues, and being in latitude below forty-one de- 
grees north, the voyagers discovered the foot-prints of men 
in the sand on the western shore, and a well-beaten path 
leading up to a prairie beyond. Here Joliet and Mar- 
quette left their canoes in the care of their men, and 
started out to reconnoiter. Following the path for nearly 
two leagues, they came in sight of an Indian village, on 
the banks of a small river (supposed to be the Des Moines), 
and beyond it, upon a hill, two other villages. Approach- 
ing the first, they piously commended themselves to God, 
and uttered a loud cry ; on hearing which the savages sal- 
lied out of their cabins, and, apparently recognizing the 
two Frenchmen by their dark robes, sent four of their eld- 
ers to meet them. The inhabitants of these villages called 
themselves lllinucek, or Illini, that is to say " men," or 
" superior men." They were otherwise known as Peou- 
areas (Peorias), and Moingwenas, and belonged to a loose 
confederation of five or six tribes, who went under the 
general appellation of the lUini, or Illinois,* and whose 
principal residence was on the river of that name, east of 
the Mississippi. Marquette had before met representatives 
of this nation at the mission of St. Esprit on Lake Supe- 
rior, and understood their language (a dialect of the Al- 
gonquin) sufficiently well to hold conversation with them. 



*The French added the tenninatiou " ois" for the sake of euphony. 



54 Great River Voyage of 

At the door of the wigwam, where he and Joliet were 
at first received, stood an old man, entirely naked, with his 
hands outstretched toward the sun, apparently to shade his 
eyes. When they drew near he greeted them with this 
friendly and fine salutation : " The sun is heautiful. French- 
men, when thou comest to visit us ; all our town awaits 
thee, and thou shalt enter in peace into all our cabins." 
And when they had entered therein, he softly said: "It is 
well, my brothers, that you visit us." 

After exchanging civilities and smoking the peace cal- 
umet here, the visitors were conducted to the village of the 
principal chief or sachem, who, assisted by two of his nude 
dignitaries, extended to them a ceremonious yet cordial 
welcome. In this gathering of the chiefs and people, whose 
curiosity was greatly excited by the presence of the white 
men among them, Marquette after first making them four 
presents, announced the mission of Mons. Joliet and him- 
self. He told them about the invisible God who created 
them, and who wished to reveal himself unto them. He 
then spoke of the great Chief of the French, who " would 
have them know that it was he who had produced peace 
throughout, and had subdued the Iroquois." Finally, he 
requested them to give him all the knowledge they possessed 
in regard to the sea, and of the nations through whose ter- 
ritories it would be necessary to pass before reaching it. 
In his reply, the Illinois chief could give his visitors but 
little information about the distant sea ; but he besought 
them not to go any further, because of the great dangers 
to which they Avould be exposed, Always at war with the 
surrounding nations, these Indians could not understand 
how it was })ossible for the Frenchmen to travel in safety 
from one section of the country to another. 

The council and speech-making were followed by a 
generous feast of four courses, viz : Sagamittee,* fish, boiled 
dog, and l)uftalo meat, served in large wooden platters. 
The boiled dog, although an Indian delicacy, was politely 



■•This was a common dish among the natives of the Mississippi 
Valley, and consisted of tiour of maize, boiled in water and seasoned 
with grease. 



Joliet and Marquette. 55 

declined by the two guests, and was removed from their 
presence. When the feast was ended, they Avere shown 
over the village, wliich was found to contain three hundred 
cabins. Before taking their departure, the head chief, 
as a special mark of consideration for Father Marquette, 
presented him with a mysterious calumet of peace, fanci- 
fully decorated with feathers, whicli was intended to serve 
him and his party as a safeguard on their voyage. 

After spending a couple of days with these hospitable 
children of nature, the explorers re-embarked on the after- 
noon of the second day in sight of all the villagers, who, 
to the number of over five hundred, escorted them to their 
canoes, which they greatly admired, having never seen the 
like before. Being again afloat on the mysterious river, 
our Frenchmen were soon borne by its swift current to 
and through the slight rapids at the entrance of the Des 
Moines, and thence on to the mouth of the Illinois, putting 
in from the northeast. They next passed, on their left, that 
gigantic and craggy wall of lime and sandstone rock, which 
abuts the northern shore for twenty miles below the Illi- 
nois, and which rises at some points to the heiglit of four 
hundred feet above the water, 

"As we coasted along the rocks, frightful from their 
height and vastness," says Marquette's journal, " we saw 
upon one of them two monsters painted, (so) that we were 
alarmed at first sight, and upon which some of the most 
courageous savages dare not for a long time fasten their 
eyes. They are as large as a calf, have horns upon the head 
like a deer, a frightful look, red eyes, a beard like a tiger; 
the face something like a man's, the body covered with 
scales, and the tail so long tliat it made the circuit of the 
body, passing over the head and returning under the legs, 
terminating like the tail of a fish. The colors that com- 
posed it were green, red, and black."* 



"•■■'The western Indians were not unacquainted with a rude kind of 
picture-writing. But it is supposed that these crude paintings, indis- 
tinctly representing men and beasts, though an object of idolatrous wor- 
ship to the savages, and long the wonder of the curious, were little more 
than the exudation of colored matter from the rock itself. They were 



56 Great River Voyage of 

Tins was near the month of Piasa Creek, and two miles 
above the modern city of Alton. A few miles farther on, 
while row^ing in smooth water, and still conversing about 
the " monsters," the voyagers were unexpectedly caught in 
, the muddy and impetuous current of the Pekitanoui (Mis- 
souri),-'" coming in from the northwest, and swept over to 
the Illinois side. Escaping this danger, they paused on 
their oars to view the outlet of that powerful stream which 
changes the character of the Mississippi, and doubtless took 
note of the fact that for several miles below the waters of 
the two rivers refused to coalesce. Continuing their course, 
they soon passed, on their right, the forest crowned site of 
St. Louis, and lower down, on their left, the mouth of the 
gentle Kaskaskia ; and then they approached that roundish 
pile of rock, since known as Grand Tower, against which 
the whole current of the river seemed to set. This was 
the demon or evil Manitou of which the northern Indians 
had warned them, but it did not prevent their passage 
and safe arrival at the Ouabouskigou, the Ohio, or Oua- 
bache of the French. ^'Tliis river," says Marquette's 
journal, " comes from the lands of the rising sun, where 
there is a great number of people called Chaounons." t 
The explorers now entered the low country — the region of 
the reed cane, the cotton tree, and the cypress — where they 
experienced no little annoyance from musquitoes. Not far 
below the confluence of the Ohio, they perceived Indians 
on the eastern bank, who stopped and waited for them to 
approach. Marquette immediately showed his decorated 
calumet, which was accepted by the savages as a token of 
peace ; and when the Frenchmen had put to shore, they 



placed about fifty feet above the base of the cliff; but through the combined 
action of the elements, and the work of the quarryman, they are now 
totally obliterated. 

*If we might credit the uncertain narrative of the Baron de la 
Honton, he first explored the Missouri River early in 1689, ascending it 
as far as the mouth of the Osage. See La Ilontoii's Voyages (English ed., 
London, 1785), vol. I., p. 130. 

t These were the Shawanoes, Shawanese, or Shawnees, who consti- 
tuted one of the most restless and migratory of the Algonquin tribes, 
and are celebrated as tlie tribe of Tecumseh. 



Joliet and Marquette. 57 

were feasted upon buffalo meat and bear's oil, with some 
white phims as a dessert. These Indians belonged to a 
tribe called the Monsoupelea, and were armed with fusees 
that had been procured from nations who traded with the 
English on the coast of Carolina. They told their visitors 
that the sea might be reached in ten days' sail, but this 
proved fallacious. 

Continuing their rapid descent of the grand river, the 
voyagers next approached, on their right, a village of the 
Metchigamea,* who showed themselves very hostile, and 
made ready to attack them both by land and water. While 
his companions put themselves in an attitude of defense. 
Father Marquette resolutely displayed his grand calumet, 
and made signs that they had not come for war; "when," 
he tells us, " God touched suddenly the hearts of the old 
men who were on the shore, occasioned doubtless by the 
sight of our calumet, and they arrested the ardor of their 
young men." The Frenchmen then went ashore, though 
not without trepidation, and held a parley with the savages. 
This was carried on at first by signs and gestures, for they 
did not understand any of the six Indian dialects that Mar- 
quette spoke. Fortunately an old man was soon found who 
could speak a little Illinois, and he acted as interpreter. 
After presents had been distributed among these people, 
they became more civil, and ofi'ered their guests sagamittee 
and fish, but declined to give them any information about 
the nations or country to the southward. 

Having passed the night in much uneasiness at this 
village, the voyagers re-embarked the next morning with 
their interpreter, and were piloted by a canoe carrying ten 
savages down the river, some eight leagues, to a large vil- 
lage of the Akamsca, or Akansea. When within half a 
league of the village, they perceived two canoes coming to 
meet them, in the first of which an Indian was standing up 
and holding in his hand a calumet, "with which he made 
many motions, according to the custom of the country." 



* The Metchigamea, or Michigamies, were a warlike tribe, who ap- 
pear to have subsequently fused with the Kaskaskias of Illinois. 



58 Great River Voyage of 

He approached, " siugiug very agreeably, and presented it 
to them to smoke, after which he gave them sagamittee, 
and bread made of Indian corn, and then, taking the ad- 
vance, made a sign to them to follow quietly after him." 

Arrived at the village of the Akansea,* the French- 
men were escorted to the platform, or scaffold of the war- 
chief, which was strongl}' built and covered with fine mats 
of rushes, upon which they were seated, having about them 
the old men next to whom stood the warriors, and after the 
latter a promiscuous crowd of squaws and children. Luck- 
ily, there was found here a young Indian who understood 
the Illinois language much better than the interpreter who 
had accompanied them from the Metchigamea. With his 
aid, Marquette talked to the whole assembly, at the same 
time making them some small presents, and told them about 
God and the mysteries of the Catholic faith and worship. 

When asked what they knew about the sea and the 
nations who lived upon its shores, " they answered . that 
we could be there in ten days ; that it was possible for 
us to make the journey in five days, but that they were 
not acquainted with the nations who dwelt u}X)n it, be- 
cause their enemies prevented them from having any 
intercourse with the Europeans ; that their tomahawks, 
knives, and glass beads, which we saw, had been sold to 
them in part by the nations to the east, and partly by a 
tribe of the Illinois living at the west, four days' journey 
from there ; that the savages whom we saw with fusees 
were their enemies, who shut up their passage to the sea, 
and prevented them from having a knowledge of the Euro- 
peans and any trade with them. As for the rest, we should 
expose ourselves very much by passing further on, for the 
reason that their enemies were making continual irruptions 
upon the river, which they cruised upon continually." f 

While this public talk was going on, the Indians 
brought to their guests, on platters or dishes of wood, 
sometimes sagamittee, then whole ears of corn, and then a 



* It is conjectured that this was what was afterward known as the 
Kappa village of the Arkansas. 

t Marquette's Journal du Voyage. 



Joliet and Marquette. 59 

piece of dog-meat. The people of this tribe are described 
as being very libei'al with what they possessed, but as liv- 
ing poorly in bark cabins, and not daring to go to hunt the 
wild cattle for fear of their enemies. They had, however, 
abundance of Indian corn, which they cooked in large 
earthen vessels, and pleiity of watermelons. The men 
went naked, wearing their hair short, and boring the nose ' 
and ears to put in them rings of glass beads. The women 
were inditierently clad in skins, and wore their liair ])laited 
in two braids, which fell behind the ears. 

Messieurs Joliet and Marquette now conferrred together 
as to whether they should continue their voyage, or con- 
tent themselves with the discoveries they had already made. 
Being persuaded that the Mississippi had its discharge in 
West Florida, at the Gulf of Mexico, and not to the east 
on the coast of Virginia, nor to the west in the Gulf of 
California, and being, moreover, apprehensive tliat if tliey 
went much farther south they might ftiU into the hands of 
the Spaniards, and thus lose the fruits of their long voyage, 
they discreetly decided to retrace their course. 

Accordingly, on the 17th of July,* after a day's rest, 
the explorers turned their canoes up the great river, and 
had much difficulty in stemming its powerful current. 



* Marquette's Journal here says: "After a month's navigation in 
descending the Mississippi, from the forty-second degree to the thirty- 
fourth and more, and after having published the Gospel to all the na- 
tions I had met, we left the village of the Akansea on the 17th of July 
to retrace our steps." 

Making allowance for their incorrect latitude, which was about one 
degree too low, or near the equator, it seems that the explorers de- 
scended below the 35th parallel to a village in the vicinity of the 
present town of Helena. Nor is it incredible, as argued by some writers, 
that they should have sailed so far to the south in thirty days' time. It' 
is apparent from Marquette's narrative that they were equipped with 
light canoes, oars, and sails for ra])id traveling; that, after quitting 
the Illinois, their stoppages were few and of short duration; and that 
going with the current, and favored by the anuual rise in the river, they 
could without difficulty have averaged thirty-six miles per day, includ- 
ing halts. This would have covered the distance of eleven hundred 
miles, by the windings of the river, from the mouth of the Wisconsin 
to that of the Arkansas. Charlevoix, in describing the birch-bark ca- 
noes, says that, " with a good wind, they can make twenty leagues in a 



60 Great River Voyage of 

But tew incidents are recorded of this tedious and toil- 
some homeward trip, which they made under the sweltering 
sun of midsummer, and exposed by night to the noxious 
exhalations from the bayous and morasses bordering the 
river. When they again approached the mouth of the Illi- 
nois, having been told by the Indians that this river afforded 
a more direct route to the great lakes than that of the Mis- 
sissippi and Wisconsin, they entered and followed it to the 
northeast. As the voyagers ascended its sluggish channel, 
they were delighted with the stream and the varied aspect 
of the adjacent country. 

" We had never seen any thing like this river," says 
the father in his journal, "for the richness of the soil, the 
prairies and woods, the buflaloes, the elks, the deer, the 
wild cats, the bustards, the swans (or wild geese), the ducks, 
the paroquets, and even the beavers. It is made up of 
little lakes and little rivers. That upon which we voyaged 
is wide, deep, and gentle for sixty-five leagues. During 
the spring and part of the summer, it is necessary to make 
a portage of half a league." f 

In ascending the Illinois River, their first stop of any 
length was at a village of the Peorias, the location of which 
is not mentioned, though it was probably on or near Peoria 
Lake. " Here," says Marquette's narrative, " I preached 
for three days to them the mysteries of our faith, in all their 
cabins, after which, as we were about to embark, they 
brought to me, at the edge of the water, a dying infant, 
which I baptized a little while before it died, for the salva- 
tion of its innocent soul." 

Higher up the stream, the voyagers found a village of 
the Illinois called Kachkaskia, containing seventy-four cab- 



day, but, without sails, they must be good canoe-men to make twelve 
leagues in dead water." 

It is true that La Salle, Tcnty, St. Cosrae, and others of the early 
voyageurs made no such quick time as that on the Mis8issii)pi. But their 
southern voyages were mostly undertaken in the winter or early spring, 
with heavier canoes and baggage, and they were otherwise encumbered 
or impeded in their progress by a following of Indians. 

TThis portage was from the -Des Plaines branch of the Illinois to 
the Chicagou, which em{)ties into Lake Michigan. 



Joliet and Marquette. 61 

ins, where thej were very kindly received by the inhabit- 
ants ; so well pleased were the latter with the teachings 
of the good priest, that they made him promise to return 
and further instruct them. One of the chiefs and a young 
brave of the tribe conducted the Frenchmen thence to the 
Lac (les Illinois (Lake Michigan), by which they at last 
returned to the mission of St. Francis Xavier on Green Bay, 
at the close of September. They had left this station four 
months before, and during that time had traveled a circuit 
of about twenty-seven hundred miles through regions 
hitherto unvisited by white men."* 

The two explorers now shortly separated, never to meet 
again on earth. When Father Marquette reached the mis- 
sion on Green Bay, his constitution was seriously impaired 
by the fatigues and hardsliips incident to his prolonged 
journey, and he was detained there by sickness during the 
ensuing year. In September, 1674, having partly regained 
his health, he completed his journal of the voyage down 
the Mississippi, and sent it to his superior at Quebec. An 
imperfect copy of this journal, it seems, soon found its way 
to Paris, and into the hands of Mons.Tlievenot, an enter- 
prising Parisian publisher. Appreciating the interest and 
importance of the narrative, he published it in 1681, in a 
volume styled Recuil de Voyages (Collection of Voy- 
ages), under the particular title of " Voyage et deeouverte de 
qulque pays et nations de L'Amerique SeptoJitrimiale" to- 
gether with a rude map of the Mississippi Valley ; sev- 
eral English translations of which are extant. 

When this journal of Father Marquette first appeared 

*The following table of the distances traveled over by M. Joliet and 

Father Marquette is taken from Sparks's Life of Marquette : 

Miles. 

From the Mission of St. Ignaee to Green Bay, about 218 

From Green Bay (Puaus) up Fox River to the portage 175 

From the portage down the Wisconsin to the Mississippi 175 

From the mouth of the Wisconsin to the mouth of the Arkansas. . 1 ,087 

From the mouth of the Arkansas to the Illinois River 547 

From the mouth of the Illinois to the Chicago (Creek) 305 

From the Chicago to Green Bay, by the lake shore 260 

Total 2,767 



62 Great River Voyage. 

in print, its authenticity was denied, especially by the 
writers in La Salle's interest, who aflected to treat it as a 
fiction, or narrative of a pretended voyage. " Indeed," 
writes Mr. Shea, " the services and narrative would hardly 
have escaped oblivion, had not Charlevoix brought them to 
light in his great work on New France." But the oppor- 
tune discovery in 1844 of the original manuscript of Mar- 
quette's journal and map,* in the keeping of the hospital 
nuns of the Hotel-Dieu at Quebec, to whose care it had been 
transferred, with other papers, from the old Jesuit College 
in that city shortly before the year 1800, has settled the 
question of its genuineness beyond dispute. f 

The narrative itself has a peculiar value, owing to the 
loss of Joliet's original papers of the journey. It is also note- 
worthy for the terseness, simplicity, and charm of its style, 
particularly in the descriptive passages. Aside from some pro- 
pensity on the part of its priestly author toward hyperbole,| 
and waiving the question as to how far he and Joliet actu- 
ally went below the junction of the Ohio River, his journal 
may be accepted as a true and striking picture of the Mis- 
sissippi Valley, and of its savage inliabitants, at that pris- 
tine period of the country's history. Marquette had an ob- 
servant eye for the various phenomena of nature, and his 
brief explanation of the lake tides has not been greatly im- 
proved upon by the deductions of modern scientists. 

Having at length received from the superior of his 
order at Quebec the requisite authority to establish a mis- 
sion on the Illinois liiver, and liis health now seeming to 
be restored. Father Marquette started for his new mission 
on the 25th of October, 1674. Leaving the station of St. 
Francis Xavier in a canoe, with two French attendants, he 



*No\v preserved amonf? the old records in St. Mary's College, Mon- 
treal. 

t Moses' Histor}' of 111., vol. 1, p. 59. 

J This tendency to exaggeration characterizes, in a greater or less de- 
gree, the writings of all the earl)' explorers of America. It was doubt- 
less natural to those men of impressible imaginations, in the continual 
presence of new and surprising objects; for their minds had not been 
trained to that accuracy of statement which is expected from reputable 
modern travelers. 



Marquette's Last VisU to the Illinois. 63 

coasted along the Green Bay Inlet to its southern terminus, 
and thence made a portage across the narrow peninsulato the 
western shore of Lake Michigan. En route, he overtook a 
party of the Pottawatomie and Illinois Indians, and jour- 
neyed with them up the lake. About the 23d of November, 
the missionary was again seized by his old malady, the dys- 
entery, accompanied with hemorrhage, but pushed on, un- 
daunted by disease and snowstorms, until the 4th of December, 
when he and his companions reached the mouth of Chicago 
Creek. Finding it In-idged with ice. they moved up its frozen 
surface about two leagues, following the south branch, and 
there stopped and built a cabin, which is believed to have 
been the tirst white liuman habitation erected on the site- 
of tlie metropolitan city of Chicago. 

Being unable to proceed farther, the sick priest and 
his two attendants wintered in this dreary abode. He 
passed his waking hours in prayer and meditation, and 
said mass every day. In the latter part of January, he was 
visited by a deputation of three Illinois Indians, who- 
brought him provisions and beaver skins, and wanted in 
return powder and merchandise ; but he gave them only 
the latter. During the winter he also received a visit from 
a French trader or trapper, who was stationed some fifty 
miles away, and who had heard of his illness. 

Again recovered somewhat, Father Marquette resumed 
his journey on the 29th of Marcli, 1675, and, going byway 
of Mud Lake and the rivers Des Plaines and Illinois, he ar- 
rived at the village of the Kaskaskias on the '8th of April. 
It was here, near the site of the present town of Utica, that 
he began his niission, to which he gave the name of the 
"Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin." But it 
was only for a little while that he was able to teach the 
benighted Indians ; for " continued illness soon obliged him 
to set forth on that return voyage, which brought him to a 
lonely grave in the wilderness." On the eve of his depar- 
ture from the village, he convened the inhabitants, to the 
number of two thousand, on a meadow hard by, and there 
on a rude altar, exliibited four pictures of the Vir- 
gin Mary, explained their significance, and exhorted the 



64 Great River Voyage. 

chiefs and people to embrace Christianity. It may be re- 
marked, en passant, that the doctrine (now dogma) of the 
Immaculate Conception of the Virgin was a favorite tenet 
of the Jesuits, and that Father Marquette was especially 
devoted to it. Quitting the Indian village a few days after 
Easter, lie was , escorted by a band of the Kaskaskias to 
Lake Michigan, and, on taking final leave of |them, he 
promised that either himself or some other missionary would 
return and resume his labors among them. 

"He seems to have taken the way by the mouth 
of St. Joseph's River, and reached the eastern shore of 
Lake Michigan, along which he had not as yet sailed. His 
strength now gradually failed, and he was at last so weak 
that he had to be lifted in and out of his canoe, when they 
landed each night. Calmly and cheerfully he saw the 
approach of death, for which he prepared by assiduous 
prayer; his office he regularly recited to the last day of his 
life; a meditation on death, which he had long prepared, 
he also made the subject of his thoughts. And as his kind 
but simple companions seemed overwhelmed at the pros- 
pect of their approaching loss, he blessed some water with 
the usual ceremonies, gave them directions how to act in 
his last moments, how to arrange his body, and how to 
commit it to the earth. He now seemed but to seek a 
grave; at last, perceiving the mouth of a river, he pointed 
to an eminence as the place of his burial. 

"His companions, Pierre Porteret and Jacques , 

still hoped to reach Mackinaw, but the wind drove them 
back, and they entered the river by the channel where it 
emptied then, for it has since changed. They erected a 
little bark cabin, and stretched the dying missionary be- 
neath it, as comfortably as they could. Still a priest, rather 
than a man, he thought of his ministry, and, for the last 
time, he heard the confessions of his coni[)anions, and en- 
couraged them to rely on the protection of God ; then sent 
them to take the repose they so much needed. When he 
felt his agony approaching, he called them, and, taking his 
crucifix from around his neck, he placed it in their hands, 
and, pronouncing in a firm voice his profession of faith, 



Death of Marquette. 65 

thanked the Almighty for the favor of permitting him to 
die a Jesuit, a missionary, and alone. Then he relapsed 
into silence, interrupted by pious aspirations, till at last, 
with the names of Jesus and Mary on his lips, with his 
eyes raised as if in ecstacy above his crucifix, with his face 
all radiant with joy, he passed from the scene of his labors 
to the God who was to be his reward. Such was the edify- 
ing and holy death of the illustrious explorer of the Miss- 
issippi, on Saturday the 18th of May, 1675." * 

Obedient to the instructions they had received, the 
two surviving attendants of the dead priest bore his body 
to the spot he had designated, committed it tenderly to the 
earth, and placed over it a rude cedar cross. Then, re- 
entering their canoe, they wended their way to Michili- 
mackinac, to carry the sad tidings to the Jesuit Fathers at 
St. Ignace. The river, at the mouth of which Marquette 
died, is a small stream, in the western part of Michigan, 
which, according to Parkman, long wore his name, but it 
is now changed to a larger neighboring stream. 

Two years later, in the spring of 1677, a party of 
Christianized Kiskakon Indians, from about Mackinac, 
who had been hunting in the vicinity of Marquette's grave, 
disinterred his remains, cleaned the bones after their cus- 
tom, put them into a birch bark box, and transported 
them to St. Ignace. On the passage thither, they were 
joined by other Indians in canoes, and the convoy moved 
in procession, singing their doleful funeral songs, until they 
reached the landing at the mission-station. Here the re- 
vered relics of the missionary were received by Fathers 
Nouvel and Pierson, the priests then in charge, in presence 
of all the Frenchmen and natives of the place, and were 
deposited, with solemn religious rites, in a vault under the 



■••■Life of Father Marquette, in Shea's " Discovery and Exploration 
of the Mississippi Valley," p. LXX, and seq. 

Note. — The account of this eminent missionary-explorer's death by 
Charlevoix, formerly so generally received, is inaccurate in many par- 
ticulars, because it was derived from tradition, and not from the con- 
temporary narrative of Father Claude Dablon, and others. 

5 



66 Great Biver Voyage. 

floor of the log chapel. In process of time (the mission 
being afterward abandoned) their resting place was utterly 
forgotten, but it was discovered by a clergyman of Michi- 
gan, in 1877, two centuries after the event. 

So lived and died, at the age of eight and thirty years, the 
meek and pious, yet fearless and self-sacrificing Pere Jacques 
Marquette. He was a model of the religious order to which he 
belonged, and deserved to have been beatified, if not canon- 
ized as a saint. His disposition was cheerful and happy, 
and his hold upon the hearts of those aborigines with whom 
he came in personal touch was something wonderful. This 
was doubtless owing to his uniform kindness toward 
them, to the purity of his private life, and to the grace and 
charm of his manner in the exercise of his priestly func- 
tions. Nor is it incredible, as related by a contemporary, 
that the Illinois Indians should have regarded him as a 
messenger sent to them from the Great Spirit. His name 
holds a conspicuous and honored place in the history of the 
Jesuit missionaries of North America, and is inseparably 
associated with the discovery of the Upper Mississippi. It 
is otherwise perpetuated in the appellations of several 
counties, towns and streams, in the different states of the 
northwest. Still, Illinois owes hini a monument suitable 
to his character and services. 

We must now resume and complete our skeleton sketch 
ot Joliet's active and diversified career. After returning 
with Marquette to Green Bay, in September, 1673, he did not 
immediately proceed to Canada to report his discoveries, as 
is commonly supposed, but spent the following winter and 
spring in the upper lake country (engaged, no doubt, in 
the fur trafiic), and duritig the next summer resumed his 
journey to Quebec. Passing down Lakes Huron, Erie and 
and Ontario, he made a brief halt at Fort Frontenac, 
which had been erected the year before, and was then com- 
manded by LaSalle. The latter was probably among the 
first to learn the result of Joliet's voyage of exploration on 
the Mississippi, and may, perhaps, have seen his map and 
journal, wliich were soon afterward lost. The Sieur Joliet, 
had thus far been highly favored by fortune, and it was not 



Subsequent Career of Joliet. 67 

until near the end of his long journey that he met with 
any serious mishap. But by the accidental upsetting 
of his canoe in the LaChine rapids, above Montreal, he 
lost his two canoe-men, and all of his valuable papers. In 
a letter penned shortly after to Governor Frontenac, he 
thus feelingly refers to his misfortune : 

"I had escaped every peril of the Indians; I had 
passed forty-two rapids, and was on the point of disem- 
barking, full of joy at the success of so long and difficult 
an enterprise, when my canoe capsized after all the danger 
seemed over. I lost my two men and box of papers 
within sight of the first French settlement, which I had 
left almost two years before. Nothing remains to me now 
but my life, and the ardent desire to employ it on any 
service you may direct." * 

M. Joliet finally reached Quebec in August, 1674, and 
reported in person to the governor. Being separated at a 
great distance from Marquette, and deprived of his papers 
by casualty, he drew up a short account of his discovery 
from recollection, and also sketched out a map of the Missis- 
sippi. Gov. Frontenac transmitted these papers to France 
during the ensuing November, and in a dispatch of the 14th 
of that month to Minister Colbert (inserted at the close of 
this chapter), he wrote about the "great river" as an indu- 
bitable fact.f Father Dablon, in his writings, also gives an 
account of the voyage, "describing Joliet as one who had 
been where no European had ever set foot." X No general 
publicity was given by the French government to the dis- 
covery of the Mississippi ; nor was Joliet entrusted with 
any new commission to execute in the West. It is averred 
that in April, 1677, he petitioned Colbert for permission to 
settle with a colony in the country of the Illinois, but it 

■■ This letter is inscribed on Joliet's map of his discoveries made in 1(574. 

t The papers have been preserved in the Archivea de la Marine at Paris. 
It has been suggested that the map published by Thevenot, in connec- 
tion with Marquette's Journal, was reproduced from the one made by 
Joliet and forwarded to Paris, as above stated. The latter shows the 
Mississippi to the Gulf, whereas Marquette's autograph map shows that 
river not quite to the Arkansas. 

tKingsford's History of Canada, I., p. 405. 



68 Great Biver Voyage. 

was refused him on the specious ground that " Canada 
ought first to be built up, strengthened, and maintained." * 
In truth, his modest merit seems to have been thrown 
into the shade by the rising pretensions of La Salle, who 
had won Frontenae's favor. 

On October 7, 1675, at the age of thirty, Louis Joliet 
was united in marriage to Claire Frances Bissot, daughter 
of a wealthy Quebec merchant, who was extensively en- 
gaged in trade with the northern Indians. In 1679 he 
made a journey of business and exploration to Hudson's 
Bay, going by way of the Lower St. Lawrence and the river 
Saguenay. During the next year, in tardy recognition of his 
valuable services to the provincial government, he received 
a grant of the large yet barren Isle of Anticosti, lying in 
the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Taking possession of his island 
domain in 1681, he erected a fortified house upon it, re- 
moved his family thither, and embarked in the fisheries. 
But in 1690 his establishment was destroyed by a naval 
force from New England, under the command of Sir Will- 
iam Phipps, who was on his way to attack Quebec ; and 
Joliet's wife and mother-in-law were made prisoners, and 
held for some months. In 1693 he was appointed royal 
pilot of the St. Lawrence River, and during the succeeding 
year explored and mapped the bleak coast of Labrador, a 
work involving great personal exposure. April 30, 1697, 
he was invested with the " Seigneury of Joliette," a large 
and since valuable estate, which lies on the north side of 
the St. Lawrence below Montreal, in Beauce count}^, and 
which is still possessed by some of his posterity. 

Louis Joliet died comparatively poor in May, 1700, 
being in his fifty-fifth year, and was buried, it is stated, on 
one of the Mignan islands in the St. Lawrence. Without 
possessing any very salient or bi'illiant qualities, he was an 
intelligent, well-educated man, ambitious and enterprising, 
undaunted by difificulty or danger, and faithful in the per- 
formance of every public duty. Few, if any, of his con- 
temporaries contributed more than he did to the geograph- 



■*Vide Margry, I., p. 330. 



Dispatch of Count Front enac. 69 

ical knowledge of this continent. His surname lias been 
fittingly preserved in the now flourishing city of Joliet, 
Illinois,* and in the nomenclature of other western locali- 
ties. His descendants appear to have inherited his virtues 
and talents; and several of them hold positions of high 
trust and responsibility, civil and ecclesiastical, in the 
modern Dominion of Canada. Among the number may 
be mentioned the Hon. Bartholomew Joliet, and the emi- 
nent archbishops Tache and Tachereau. 

We have nowhere met with any description of the per- 
sons of either Joliet or Marquette. Yet, in the absence of 
such word portraiture, we may well imagine the former to 
have been a man of medium stature, with a lithe, agile 
figure, black hair and eyes, sharply cut features, and a 
swarthy complexion — the same being physical character- 
istics of the average French-Canadian — while the latter 
(Marquette) was probably taller, and of a more dignified 
and commanding presence. 



Following is a translation of Count Frontenac's dis- 
patch to Minister Colbert in relation to the return of M. 
Joliet from his voyage to discover the Mississippi and the 

South Sea : 

Quebec, lAth November, 1674. 

The Sieur Joliet, whom M. Talon advised me when I arrived from 
France to send to discover the south sea, returned here three nionths 
since, and has discovered some admirable countries, and a navigation so 
easy by the fine rivers, that he found that from from Lake Ontario and 
Fort Frontenac they could go in barques to the Gulf of Mexico, having 
only to unload once, where Lake Erie falls into Lake Ontario. 

These are some of the enterprises they could work upon when peace 
is established, and it shall please the king to push these discoveries. 

He has been within ten days of the Gulf of Mexico, and believes 
that the rivers which from the west side empty into the great river 
which he has discovered, which runs north to south . . . , and that 



* The name, in this instance, was taken more immediately from 
" Mount Joliet," a large natural mound in the valley of the Des Plaines, 
one and a half miles southwest of the city. 



70 Dispatch of Count Frontenac. 

they will find some communication by waters which will lead to the 
Vermillion Sea and that of California. 

I send you by my secretary the map which he has made and the 
remarks which he is able to remember, having lost all his memoirs and 
journals in the shipwreck which he suffered in sight of Montreal, where, 
alter a voyage of twelve hundred leagues, he came near being drowned, 
and lost all his papers and a little Indian that he was bringing back 
with him. 

He had left at Lake Superior, with the Fathers at Sault Ste. INIarie, 
copies of his journals, which we can not obtain until next year ; through 
these you will learn more of the particulars of that discovery in which 
he acquitted himself very creditably. Frontenac. 



La Salle and His Eariy Explorations. 71 



CHAPTER IV. 

1(366-1680. 
LA SALLE AND HIS EARLY EXPLORATIONS. 

While to Joliet and Marquette are rightly accorded the 
honor of having first brought to the knowledge of the civil- 
ized world the immense extent and grandeur of the Missis- 
sippi Valley, yet the fortunes of the French in this part of 
Northern America were greatly advanced by the energy, 
enterprise, perseverance, and endurance of the Sieur de 
la Salle. If the former had discovered and navigated the 
Mississippi River from the Wisconsin to the Arkansas, it 
was reserved for the latter and his coadjutors to extend and 
perfect that discovery from the Falls of St. Anthony to 
the Mexican Sea. 

Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle,* whose remarkable 
career now claims our attention, was born at Rouen in 
Normandy, France, November 22, 1643. His father, Jean 
Cavelier, and his uncle Henri, were opulent merchants and 
burghers of that ancient and still stately city. The son re- 
ceived a liberal education, commensurate with the means 
of his parents, and with those marked traits of intellect and 
character which he early exhibited. As a school-boy, he 
evinced an inclination for the exact sciences, and particu- 
larly the mathematics, in which he appears to have made 
great proficiency. 

While still a minor, La Salle became a member of the 
Society of Jesus, and studied and taught for several years 
in their schools. But on attaining to man's estate, his 
growing ambition and love of independence impelled him 
to withdraw from that imperious and exacting order of re- 
ligionists. It is told by one of his biographers that " he 



* He is said to have been called La Salle from an estate of that name 
near Rouen, belonging to the Caveliers. 



72 La Salle's Early Life. 

parted from tliem on good terms, and with an excellent 
reputation for scholarship and strict morals," yet it is cer- 
tain that he never afterward cherished any liking for the 
order. In fact, his connection with the Jesuits caused 
him to forfeit, under the rigid French law, the inherit- 
ance to which he would otherwise have been entitled from 
his father, who died about that time. But an allow^ance 
was made to him of four hundred livres a year (about 
eighty dollars), the principal of which was advanced to 
him for the first year ; and, with this insignificant sum, 
he quitted his paternal home and sailed for Canada in the 
spring of 166(3. 

We next find onr young adventurer at Montreal, 
whither he had been preceded by his elder brother, the 
Abbe Jean Cavelier, who was a priest of the order of St. 
Sulpice, and whose presence there was an additional in- 
ducement for Robert to try his ow^n fortune in this newly 
opened country. As before stated, the superior and priests 
of the Seminary of St. Sulpice had become feudal proprie- 
tors of the large Island of Montreal, and wished to have 
it settled and improved. They now made young La Salle 
a liberal ofter, which, under the advice of his brother, 
he accepted. It was the grant, on easy conditions, of a 
larg-e tract of wild land on the north side of the St. Law- 
rence, about ten miles above the then village of Montreal, 
but still on the island of that name. The locality was ex- 
posed to incursions from the hostile Iroquois, but it was 
very conveniently situated for the fur-traffic. Taking pos- 
session of his new domain in the fall of 1667, he marked 
out the boundaries of a village, and began to dispose of his 
lands ill small parcels, after the French custom, to actual 
settlers, who were to pay him an annual rental therefor. 
The place subsequently took the name of La Chine, wdiich 
w^as given to it in derision of its proprietor's early schemes 
for the discovery of a western passage to China. Mean- 
while, to qualify himself for the stirring life before him, he 
commenced studying the Indian languages, and particularly 
the Iroquois, in which he made considerable proficiency. 

From his frontier post on the banks of the noble St. 



His First Appearance in Canada. 73 

Lawrence, the thoughts of La Salle often wandered over 
the distant and untrodden regions toward the setting sun, 
and, like other inquisitive and speculative minds of that 
age, he dreamed of a western water-way to the Pacific 
Ocean. While thus working and musing, he was one day 
visited by a small band of Senecas,* from the south of Lake 
Ontario, who told him of a river called the Ohio, which 
took its rise in their country, and flowed off to the sea, but 
at so great a distance that it took eight months to reach its 
mouth. In this exaggerated statement, the Alleghany, 
Ohio, and Mississippi were all considered as one stream, 
and, with the geographical ideas then prevalent, it was sup- 
posed to fall into the Sea of Cortes, or Gulf of California. 
The story of these Indians so kindled La Salle's imagination 
that he determined to make an expedition to verify it, and 
repaired to Quebec to obtain Gov. Courcelles' approval of 
the project. Both the governor and intendant promptly 
gave him the desired letters of authority. In fact, they 
stood prepared to sanction any enterprise that cost them 
nothing, and yet promised an extension of French traffic 
and intercourse among the western Indians. As no pecuni- 
ary aid was proffered by the Canadian officials, La Salle 
was under the necessity of selling his " concession " at La 
Chine to raise funds for his exploration. He accordingly 
disposed of his improvements there to the superior of the 
Seminary of St. Sulpice, and with the proceeds of the sale, 
amounting to twenty-eight hundred livres, purchased four 
canoes and the requisite supplies for the expedition. 

At the same time the Seminary was preparing for a 
similar undertaking. Emulating the example of the Jesu- 
its, the priests of this association had already founded a mis- 
sion at the Bay of Quinte f on Ontario Lake, and they now 
proposed to extend their operations to the tribes in the 
distant west. An expedition was therefore set on foot for 
this purpose, under the management of Fathers DoUier de 



•■■'One of the five tribes then composing the Iroquois Nation. 

tThis mission was established among the Cayugas in 1668, by 
the Abbe de Fenelon, a brother of the author of Telemachus, and Claude 
Trouve, but it does not appear to have been very successful. 



74 La Salle and His Early Explorations. 

Casson and Rene de Galinee. But on going down to Que- 
bec to procure the requisite outfit, they were advised by 
the governor to modify their plans so as to act with La 
Salle in exploring the unknown river to the southwest. 
In accordance with his suggestion the two expeditions 
were merged into one — an arrangement ill-suited to the 
temper of young La Salle, who was formed by nature for 
an untrammeled leader rather than a co-partner in any en- 
terprise. 

It was on the 6th of July, 1669, that the combined 
party, numbering some twenty -two men, with seven canoes, 
embarked upon the St. Lawrence. Accompanying them 
were two other canoes, carrying the party of Seneca 
Indians who had wintered at La Salle's settlement, and 
who were to act as guides and interpreters. On the 2d ot 
August, after having stemmed the impetuous current of the 
St. Lawrence, and threaded the mazes of the Thousand 
Isles, the adventurous explorers emerged upon the broad 
and deep bosom of Lake Ontario. Passing thence to a 
small bay in the southern part of the lake, they were pi- 
loted by their guides to the village of the latter, near the 
Genesee River. Arrived there, they expected to find other 
guides to conduct them to the sources of the Ohio ; but 
the Senecas refused to furnish a guide, and even burned 
before their eyes a young prisoner taken from one of the 
western tribes, he being the only person who could have 
served them in that capacity. This, with other unfriendly 
treatment experienced by the party of La Salle, caused 
them to suspect that the Jesuit priest at the village, who 
acted as their interpreter, was jealous of their enterprise, 
and had purposely misrepresented it to the Indians, in 
order to defeat it. After lingering at this place about a 
month, they had the good fortune to meet with an Indian 
from an Iroquois settlement near the head of the lake, 
who told them they could there find what they wanted, 
and offered to be their conductor. 

Gladly accepting his proffered assistance, the explorers 
left the Senecas and coasted along up the southern 
shore of Lake Ontario, passing on their way the mouth of 



His First Journey of Exploration. 75 

the I^iagara, and on the 24th of September reached the 
village of Otinawatawa, near the present town of Hamil- 
ton. Here they were received by the natives in a friendly 
manner, and La Salle was presented with a Shawanoe pris- 
oner, who assured him that the Ohio could be reached in 
six weeks' time, and that he would guide his party thither. 
Pleased with this proposal, they were about to set out on 
the journey, when they unexpectedly learned of the arrival 
of two other Frenchmen at a neighboring village. One of 
them proved to be Louis Joliet, who was returning to Que- 
bec from a trip to Lake Superior. He gave to the Sulpitian 
priests a copy of a map that he had made, representing 
such parts of the upper lakes as he had visited, and, at the 
same time, told them of the Pottawatomies and other tribes 
in that region, who stood in great need of spiritual in- 
struction. 

On receiving this piece of information, the missionaries 
resolved that the Indians on those latkes must not sit in outer 
darkness, and that the discovery of the Mississippi might 
be efi'ected as well by a northern route, as by going farther 
southward. La Salle remonstrated without avail against 
their determination, for it was in accordance with their 
original design. He had been troubled for some time with an 
intermittent fever, and finding his remonstrance unheeded, 
he informed them that his physical condition would not 
admit of his accompanying them farther. This plea of 
sickness was no doubt a ruse to bring about a separation, 
which was now agreed upon. After the solemnization 
of mass La Salle and his men fell back to Lake Ontario ; 
while the Sulpitians descended Grand River to Lake Erie, 
and thence pursued their voyage up the lakes. On arriving 
among the Indians at Ste. Marie du Saut, they found, as La 
Salle had surmised, the Jesuit fathers already established in 
that western region, and that they wanted no assistance from 
the priests of St. Sulpice. The latter therefore retraced their 
lonely course, and reached Montreal on the 18th of June, 1670, 
without having begun any mission or converted any Indians.* 

* But De Galinee, after his return, made the earliest map of the Upper 
Lakes known to exist. — Parkman's "La Salle and the Great West," p. 21. 



76 La Salle and his Early Explorations. 

The course pursued by La Salle, after his separation 
from the Sulpitian priests, is involved in obscurity. It is 
affirmed that some of his men now forsook him and re- 
turned to La Chine, which is not improbable. He is known 
to hkve kept private journals or records of his explorations 
at this period, which were in existence as late as 1756, but 
they never saw the light of print. The only contempo- 
raneous and connected record of his movements is contained 
in a pamphlet bearing the title of " Hlstoire de Monsieur de 
la Salle.'' It gives an account of his explorations and of the 
state of parties in Canada prior to the year 1678, and pur- 
ports to have been derived by its unknown writer from La 
Salle himself, in the course of a dozen conversations had with 
him in Paris, whither he had gone from Canada in the au- 
tumn of 1677. According to this anonymous memoir. La 
Salle, after leaving the head of Lake Ontario, went to a 
village of the Onondagas, in what is now New York, where 
he obtained guides, and thence made his way southward 
to a tributary of the Ohio (probably the Alleghany), which 
he descended to the main river, and followed it " as far 
as to a rapid that obstructed it," at the site of what is 
now Louisville. It is asserted by some winters that he 
continued his descent of the Ohio from that point to its 
confluence with the Mississippi, but this is no doubt a 
fiction.* 

This tour of exploration is supposed to have been 
made during the fall and winter of 1669-70 ; for it ap- 
pears that the celebrated voyageur, Nicholas Perrot, met La 
Salle in the early summer of 1670, hunting wnth a party of 
Iroquois on the Ottawa. That he discovered the Ohio, is 
a pretty well .authenticated fact. He himself affirmed it, 



•'""Pierre Margry, a recent French writer, asserts tliat in 1670-71 
La Salle descended the Ohio to the Mississippi ( Dussieux, Canada, p. 
37) ; but the proof has not been given, and, not improbably, is a delu- 
sion, as no notice of the fact appears in any document of the time, and 
the friends of La Salle would not be likely to omit an expedition giving 
him a priority to the discovery of the Mississippi ; nor would La Salle, 
having a i)08t at Niagara, overlook the advantages of following the same 
course to the Mississippi."— Note by .T. G. Shea to Washington's Diary 
of his tour to the Ohio in 1753, printed in New York, 1800. 



His Discovery of the Ohio. 77 

in a memorial addressed to Count Frontenac in 1677. 
Moreover, his rival, Joliet, made two maps of the region 
of the Mississippi and great lakes, on both of which the 
Ohio is laid down, though not correctly, with inscrip- 
tions to the effect that it had been explored by La Salle. 
But his exploration of this noble river (which the French 
appropriately named La Belle Riviere., from the Iroquois 
word signifying beautiful), was not sufficiently extensive to 
reveal its true character, nor to disclose the fact that the 
"Wabash w^as simply one of its tributaries. 

With regard to La Salle's peregrinations during the 
years 1671 and 1672, we learn from the apocryphal memoir 
before cited, that he embarked with an exploring or trading 
party on Lake Erie, ascended the Detroit and St. Clair to 
Lake Huron, passed the Straits of Michilimackinac into 
Lake Michigan, and on to the southern extremity of this 
lake ; that he thence crossed the country to a river (the 
Illinois) flownng to the southw^est, which he followed to the 
Mississippi, and thence down that stream to the 36th par- 
allel of latitude. Arrived thither, and being convinced 
that the great river had its discharge in the Gulf of Mexico, 
he returned on his course, intending at some future time to 
explore it to its mouth. 

Little, if any, weight can be allowed to the above 
incredible story. La Salle was, at this period, leading the 
life of a coureur de bois. It is doubtless true that he was 
employed in some work of exploration. Indeed, it appears 
from an official despatch of M. Talon in 1671, that he had 
been "sent southward and westward to explore"; but this 
may have only referred to the region south of the lower 
lakes, and it is not unlikely that at this time he made the 
discovery of the Ohio. Mr. Parkman, in his " La Salle and 
the Discovery of the Great West," after learnedly discussing 
this obscure and controverted portion of La Salle's career, 
thus concludes : " La Salle discovered the Ohio, and in all 
probability the Illinois ; but that he discovered the Mississippi 
has not been proved, nor, in the light of the evidence we 
have, is it likely to be." For our own part, we very much 
question if he ever saw the Illinois River, or any branch of 



78 La Salle and Mis Early Explorations. 

it, prior to December, 1679, though, as suggested by Mr. 
Shea, he might have reached the mouth of the St. Joseph 
in Lake Michigan. 

The expedition of Joliet and Marquette had well nigh 
demonstrated the fact that the Mississippi emptied its vast 
volume of waters into the Mexican Gulf ; but this was far 
from satisfying the mind of La Salle, who wished to see 
and know for himself. He had read the published narra- 
tives of the Spanish adventurers in the southwest, and 
heard the vague stories of the Indians, and he seems to 
have entertained the idea (first put torth in Marquette's jour- 
nal) that, by ascending the Missouri, or some other western 
affluent of the Mississippi, it would be found to interlock 
with another stream running southwest to the Vermilion, 
or Gulf of California, and thus aflbrd the desired passage 
to the Pacific* Nor was this theory so chimerical as it 
might first appear ; for by mounting the Platte River to its 
source in the Rocky Mountains, one may thence readily 
pass to the headwaters of the Colorado, which flows off" 
into the Gulf of California. But, above all, La Salle longed 
to trace the Mississippi itself to the sea, and thus acquire 
for himself the distinction he coveted, and for his sover- 
eign an embryo empire. It was several years, however, 
before he could resume and carry out any of his bold 
schemes of exploration and discovery. 

In the meantime, he sought and gained the patronage 
of Governor Frontenac. Ko sooner had that astute func- 
tionary been installed in oflSce, than he eagerly scanned the 
resources of the colony, and prepared to bring them under 
his own control. Being advised that the Iroquois, at the 
instigation of the English, were intriguing with the Ind- 
ians of the upper lakes to break their faith with the French, 
and transfer their trade in furs from Montreal to Albany 



*The delusive idea of a water-way to the Pacific was partly derived 
by the French from the Spaniards, who, during the preceding century, 
had scoured the coasts of Mexico and Central America in the vain quest 
for a strait connecting the two oceans. 



Founding of Fort Frontenac. 79 

and New York, he determined to counteract that design 
by erecting a fort and depot near the outlet of Lake Onta- 
rio. Not wishing to excite the jealousy of the Canadian 
merchants and traders, he gave out that he only intended 
to make a tour of observation to the upper part of the col- 
ony. But, lacking means of his own for the enterprise, he 
required the principal merchants of Quebec and Montreal 
to each furnish him with a certain number of men and 
canoes. "When the spring of 1673 had opened, he sent La 
Salle in advance from Montreal to Onondaga, to invite the 
L'oquois sachems to meet him in council at the foot of 
Lake Frontenac (Ontario), while he followed at his leisure 
up the St. Lawrence. In response to the invitation sent 
them, the Indians resorted in considerable numbers to the 
appointed place of meeting, and were well pleased witli 
the attentions there shown them by the governor, who was 
the first Frenchman to address them by the name of "chil- 
dren," instead of "brothers." Cajoled by his blandish- 
ments and presents, and awed by his audacity and show of 
force, they acquiesced in the erection of a fort at the mouth 
of Cataraqui Creek, where Kingston now stands. 

The building of this fort (which was begun in July of 
that year, and was called Frontenac after its founder), was 
in violation of the existing regulations of the king, which 
required the fur-dealers to carry on their trade with the 
natives within the borders of the French settlements. Still, 
in view of its importance as a means of overawing the 
restless Iroquois, all technical objections were waived, and 
provision was made for its maintenance. " With the aid 
of a vessel now building," writes Frontenac at this time, 
"we can command the lake, keep peace with the Iroquois, 
and cut off the fur-trade from the English. With another 
fort at Niagara, and a second vessel on the river above, we 
can control the entire chain of lakes." These extensive 
views accorded well with the schemes of La Salle, who, as 
we shall see, was soon employed in putting them into 
practice. 

In November, 1674, LaSalle embarked for France, 



80 La Salle and His Early Explorations. 

with letters of recommendation from the governor* and 
others, and, on his arrival at Versailles, presented two pe- 
titions to the king (Louis XIV.) ; the one for a patent of 
nobility, in consideration of his valuable services as an ex- 
plorer; and the other for a grant in seigniory of Fort 
Frontenac and the adjoining lands. He proposed to reim- 
burse the king for the ten thousand livres which the new 
post had cost him ; to maintain it at his own charge, with 
a garrison equal to that of Montreal, besides a score of la- 
borers ; to form a French colony around it; to build a 
church whenever the number of inhabitants should reach 
one hundred, and in the meantime to support one or more 
Recollet friars ; and, finally, to form a settlement of do- 
mesticated Indians in the neighborhood. These liberal 
oliers, on the part of LaSalle, were accepted by the crown ; 
and by letters-patent of the 13th of May, 1675, he was 
raised to the rank of the untitled nobility.f At the same 
time he received a grant of Fort Frontenac, and the lands 
contiguous, to the extent of four and one-half leagues in 
front and one-half league in depth, besides the neighbor- 
ing islands, and was also invested with the government of 
the fort and settlement, subject to the provincial governor. 
After LaSalle's favorable reception at court, his more 
wealthy relations in Rouen advanced him considerable 
sums of money, which put him in position to fulfill the 
more important obligations annexed to his grant, and he 
now returned to Canada the proprietor of what promised 
to be one of the most valuable estates in the province. 



* In a despatch to Minister Colbert, of the 14th of November, 1674, 
Frontenac thus commends his favorite : " I can not help. Monsieur, 
recommending to you the Sieur de la Salle, who is about to go to France, 
and who is a man of intelligence and ability — more capable than any 
body else I know here, to accomplish every kind of enterprise and dis- 
covery which may be entrusted to him, since he has the most perfect 
knowledge of the state of the country, as you will see if you are dis- 
posed to give him a few moments of audience." — Parkman's Discovery 
of the Great West, p. 89. 

t This was an empty kind of honor, with which the Kings of France 
were wont to gratify the vanity and reward the services of their more 
deserving subjects. 



His Letters Patent from the King. 81 

During the two following years, while all New France was 
being rent and torn by civil and ecclesiastical feuds, he was 
busily occupied in clearing his lands, strengthening his 
fort, and developing his seigniory. In addition to furnish- 
ing the stipulated military and clerical forces, and erecting 
a chapel for the use of the latter, he built three or four 
decked boats, or brigantines, to carry freight on Lake On- 
tario, — to the head of which it was next proposed to ad- 
vance. He was now on the high road to fortune, if riches 
had been his only object, and he consequently became a 
mark for the shafts of tlie envious and malevolent, or those 
whose opinions and interests conflicted with his own. 

Meanwhile, he did not relinquish his favorite design 
of exploration. In the autumn of 1677, he again went to 
France, and laid his plans before Jean Baptiste Colbert, 
then minister for the colonies, and the great promoter of 
French industry and commerce. LaSalle dilated upon the 
immense extent of the western country, its endless natural 
resources, and the advantages that would accrue from colo- 
nizing it and opening trade with its numerous native tribes. 
For this purpose, he asked permission and authority to ex- 
plore and build forts in the western valleys, with seigniorial 
rights over all hands, that he miglit discover and colonize 
within the period of twenty years. His petition was fa- 
vorably considered by the minister, and Letters were accord- 
ingly issued to him by the crown. But he was required to 
complete his enterprise within five years instead of twenty, 
as desired. Following is an English copy of this curious 
and important state paper : 

'^ Louis, by the Grace of God, King of France and Nacarre: 
" To our dear and well-beloved Eobert Cavelier, Sieur 
de la Salle : 

" We have received, with favor, the very humble pe- 
tition which has been presented to us in your name, to per- 
mit you to endeavor to discover the western part of our 
country of New France, and we have consented to this 
proposal the more willingly, because there is nothing we 
6 



82 LaSftlle and His Early Explorations. 

have more at heart than the discovery of this country, 
through which it is probable that a passage may be found 
to Mexico ; and because your diligence in clearing the 
lands which we granted to you by the decree of our coun- 
cil of the 13th of May, 1675, and by letters patent of the 
same date, to form habitations upon the said lands and to 
put Fort Frontenae in a good state of defense, the seigni- 
ory and government whereof we likewise granted to you, 
affords us every reason to hope that you will succeed to our 
satisfaction, and to our subjects of the said country. For 
these reasons and others thereunto moving us, we have per- 
mitted and do hereby permit you, by these presents, signed 
by our hand, to endeavor to discover the western part of 
our country of New Franco, and for the execution of this 
enterprise, to construct forts wherever you shall deem it 
necessary; which it is our will that you shall hold on the 
same terms and conditions as Fort Frontenae, agreeably 
and conformably to our said letters patent of the 13th of 
May, 1675, which we have confirmed, as far as is needful, 
and hereby confirm by these presents. And it is our 
pleasure that they be executed according to their form and 
tenor. 

" To accomplish this, and every thing above mentioned, 
we give you full powers, on condition, however, that you 
shall finish this enterprise within five years, in default of 
which these presents shall be void and of none effect ; that 
you carry on no trade whatever with the savages called 
OiitaouacSy^ and others who bring their beaver skins and 
other peltries to Mouti-eal ; and that the whole shall be 
done at your expense, and that of your company to which 
we have granted the privilege of the trade in buffalo skins ; 
and we call on the Sieur de Frontenae, our governor and 
lieutenant-general, and on the Sieur de Chesneau,f intend- 
ant of justice, police and finance, and on the officers who 
compose the supreme council in the said country, to affix 



* The Ottawas. 

t Jacques de Chesneau had been appointed Intendaut of New 
France in ^lay, 167'>. Ho was an enemy of both Frontenae and La 
Salle. 



First Great Expedition to the West. 83 

their signatures to these presents ; for such is our pleas- 
ure. 

" Given at St. Grermain en Laye, this 12th of May, 
1678, and of our reign the thirty-fifth. 

"By the King, ' Louis."* 

" COLBEKT." 

Inasmuch as no pecuniary aid was to be received from 
the government, La Salle had to look to his monopoly of 
the future trade in butfalo skins for the support of his ex- 
pensive enterprise. Meantime, his relatives were induced to 
make him further advances of money, and some of them 
became shareholders in the venture. He also found a use- 
ful ally in La Motte de Lussiere, who became a partner 
in the company, and who joined him on the eve of his em- 
barkation for Canada. La Salle sailed from Rochelle on 
his return the 14th of July, 1678, bringing with him about 
thirty men, besides an ample supply of stores, implements 
for building vessels, etc. After a two months sea voyage, 
he reached Quebec, and thence proceeded up the St. Law- 
rence to his seigniory of Frontenac. His new enterprise 
aroused jealousy and opposition from the start, among the 
old Canadian traders; but our resolute Is^orman was ac- 
customed to grapple with obstacles and opposition, and he 
energetically proceeded to organize his expedition. Having 
laid aside as impracticable his scheme of a western passage 
to China and Japan, and convinced that the Mississippi 
emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, he had substituted a 
vast plan, which should eventually plant on the shores of 
the Gulf the national colors of France, and open to her the 
whole interior of this continent. 

Of the men whose services La Salle had secured in 
France, and who were destined to win honor with him 
in his great explorations, the most useful and trusted 
was Henry de Tonty,t or Tonti, as it is written in Italian. 
He was a native of the Neapolitan town of Gaeta, Italy, 
where he first saw the light about the year 1650. His 



* Frontenac's signature was affixed to this patent November 5, 1678. 
t Tonty had been a protege of the Prince de Conti, by whom he was 
recommended to La Salle. 



84 La Salle and His Early Explorations. 

father, Lorenzo di Tonti, was sometime governor of Gaeta, 
but fled to France to escape the political disturbances of his 
own country. lie was an ingenious financier, and the in- 
ventor of the Tontine system of annuities, which he intro- 
duced into France during the latter part of the seventeenth 
century. Henry de Tonty entered the French military 
service in 1668, and served as a cadet two years. He next 
served four years as a midshipman, at Marseilles and 
Toulon, and made seven campaigns, four in ships and 
three in galleys. While at Messina, Sicily, he was made 
lieutenant and then captain of the first company of a regi- 
ment of horse. In assisting to repel an attack of the 
enemy on the post of Libisso, his right hand was shot oft 
by a grenade, and he was taken prisoner and detained for 
six months, after which he was exchanged. He then re- 
paired to France to obtain some favor of the king, who 
gave him three hundred livers. Returning to Sicily, he 
made a campaign as a volunteer in the galleys ; and when 
the troops were discharged, being unable to obtain employ- 
ment on account of the general peace, he enlisted under 
La Salle, in his expeditions of discovery. 

Notwithstanding the loss of his right hand (which, 
however, was replaced by one of iron or copper), and a 
constitution apparently feeble, his indomitable energy made 
him the superior of most men in physical endurance. His 
experience, too, as a soldier, and his natural intrepidity, well 
fitted him for the life of a military explorer. Moreover, 
his fidelity was such that neither the frowns of adversity, 
nor the intrigues of seci^et or open enemies, could ever 
swerve him from the interest of his patron and employer. 
The Sieur La Motte, before named, was also a man of enter- 
prise and integrity of character, but not so efficient or valua- 
ble an assistant to La Salle as the little veteran De Tonty. 

The spiritual directors, who were selected by the chief 
for this memorable expedition, were expected to ofiiciate as 
chaplains and missionaries at such forts and trading posts 
as might be established. Following are their names : 
Father Louis Hennepin, the first in respect to ability and 
enterprise ; GaVjriel de la Ribourde, venerable for his years, 
and his long and unselfish clerical labors ; the amiable and 



His First Great Expedition to the West. 85 

devoted Zenobious Membre ; and the pious Melithoii Wat- 
teau, who was stationed at JSTiagara and made it his mission. 
All of these were Flemings, or natives of Flanders, and all 
were RecoUet friars, of the mendicant order of St, Francis. 
It would doubtless have been more conducive to La Salle's 
interest if this had been otherwise, since the Jesuits already 
occupied the upper lake region, and had planted some mis- 
sions in the northern part of the country of the Illinois. 
Under such circumstances, they were naturally jealous of 
any infringement upon their assumed territorial jurisdiction 
by members of another branch of the mother church, and 
were inclined to throw obstacles in the way of the latter. 

Soon after his return from France to Fort Frontenac, 
La Salle dispatched fifteen men with merchandise to Mack- 
inac and Lake Michigan, to barter for furs, and instructed 
them, after executing their commission, to repair to Green 
Bay, on the border of the Illinois, and there await his ar- 
rival. The first important step in his westward progress, one 
which had been long contemplated, was to establish a fort 
or block-house at the outlet of the Niagara channel. For 
this purpose, on November 18, 1678, La Motte and Henne- 
pin embarked, with fifteen men, in one of the brigantines 
that lay at the landing of the fort, and started up Lake On- 
tario. Being retarded in their passage by rough weather, it 
was not until the 6th of December that they reached the 
mouth of the Niagara. Here, after several weeks, they were 
joined by La Salle and Tonty, who had been detained in 
procuring the necessary supplies. They, too, encoun- 
tered adverse winds on the way, and the pilot to whom La 
Salle had intrusted one of his boats disregarded his instruc- 
tions, and suifered her to be wrecked. The crew managed 
to escape, but the cargo was lost, excepting the ropes and 
anchors intended for use in constructing the new vessel. 

The appearance of the French upon the lake excited 
the suspicions of the Seneca Indians, who inhabited its 
southern shores, and when it was proposed to erect a fort 
at the foot of the mountain ridge,* on the east side of the 

* The block-house, which La Salle afterward built where Fort 
Niagara now stands, was called Fort Conti. 



86 La Salic and His Early Explorations. 

river, they made objection. In order to gain their consent, 
La Motte and La Salle botli visited, in turn, the principal 
village of the Seneca's situated near the site of the present 
Rochester, !New York, and distributed presents freely 
among their chiefs. Some diplomacy was also used by La 
Salle, and in lieu of a fort, it was finally agreed that the 
Frenchmen might erect a warehouse. This was now speedily 
completed and inclosed with a palisade. If was used as an 
abode by the men during the rest of that winter, and, sub- 
sequently, as a station and place of deposit for implements 
and merchandise. 

The energies of La Salle were next directed to the con- 
struction of a sailing vessel, with which to navigate tlie up- 
per great lakes. The spot chosen for this important experi- 
ment was at or near the mouth of Cayuga Creek,* on the 
eastern bank of the Niagara, and some five miles above the 
Falls. This difficult and tedious work (made doubly so by 
their want of proper facilities) w^as formally begun on the 
22d of January, 1679, and was prosecuted under the per- 
sonal supervision of the Sieur de Tonty, whose knowledge 
of marine architecture was thus brought into active requisi- 
tion. The Senecas, it is averred, tried to burn the vessel 
while on the stocks, but she was launched by the middle of 
July, and was then towed farther up the river to be rigged. 
The builders celebrated her completion by firing cannon and 
singing songs in commemoration of the event. And well 
they might felicitate themselves upon their achievement ; 
for she was the first sail -rigged and sea-going craft that 
ever spread canvas to the breeze on our inland seas. The 
little schooner was armed with five small cannon and three 
large muskets, and on her prow was carved the wooden 
figure of a griffin,t from which, in compliment to the ar- 
morial bearings of Count de Frontenac, she received her 



*As usual in such cases, the place of the building of the " Griffin " 
is disputed. .Some contend for a site known as the " Old Ship-yard," 
on the Little Niagara. 

tOr griffon, according to the French orthography. The vessel was 
of sixty tons burden, and was estimated by Hennepin to have cost sixty 
thousand livres, or about $12,000; but this included a cargo of furs. 



His Voyage in the Griffin. 87 

name. Every thing was now in readiness awaiting the re- 
turn of the commander, who had gone to Fort Frontenac to 
replenish his stores, and was detained there by pecuniary 
difficulties. He arrived in the beginning of August, ac- 
companied by Friars Ribourde and Membre, who wei'e 
going to distribute the " bread of life " among the pagan 
tribes of the southwest. 

At length, on the 7th of August, 1679, with the dis- 
charge of small artillery, and the chanting of the Te Deani, 
La Salle and his venturesome followers stepped aboard the 
new vessel, which was wafted by a gentle wind out upon 
the crystal surface of Lake Erie. Thus the Griffin, flying 
from her mast-head the pennon of France, went forth as a 
herald of civilization, and as the forerunner of that un- 
counted multitude of schooners, brigs, barks, pro}iellers, 
and other smaller craft, which to-day ply the great lakes in 
every direction, in the peaceful and gainful pursuits of com- 
merce. After a pleasant navigation of five days, the voy- 
agers entered the noble channel of the Detroit, and found 
its forest-studded banks filled with dift'erent species of small 
game, of which they shot and killed enough for their needs. 
Ascending thence through Lake St. Clair and the connect- 
ing strait, they issued upon the sea-like expanse of Lake 
Huron, and in sailing over its dark and treacherous depths 
encountered a terrific storm, which threatened to speedily 
engulf their little bark, with all onboard. In this extremity 
of peril. La Salle and the friars fell ui»on their knees to say 
their prayers, and invoked the aid of St. Anthony of Padua, 
as the patron saint of their expedition. It would seem that 
the saint heard and answered their prayers ; for the Griffin 
weathered the gale, and, on the next day, rode unscathed 
into the Straits of Michilimackinac. 

Approaching the roadstead at the mission of Saint Ig- 
nace, they fired an artillery salute to announce their ar- 
rival, and, immediately after landing, repaired to the mis- 
sion chapel to return thanks to God for their recent deliv- 
erance from the fury of the elements. On this occasion 
La Salle wore a scarlet coat, trimmed with gold lace, which 



88 La Salle and His Early Explorations. 

he kept by him for occasions of ceremony. He was re- 
ceived here by the Jesuit priests and traders with an out- 
ward show of respect and friendship, though they were 
privately antagonizing his enterprise. The neighboring In- 
dians now swarmed in canoes about liis armed vessel, view- 
ing her with mingled feelings of wonder and terror. 
While anchored at this station, the commander found and 
took into custody four of his men, whom he had sent up 
the lakes with merchandise to exchange for pelts ; they 
having disposed of the goods and pocketed the proceeds. 
At the same time lie sent Tonty to Sault de Ste. Marie in 
pursuit of others, who were also caught. 

Weighing anchor about the 2d of September, La Salle 
continued liis westward voyage, and next arrived at one of 
the islands in the entrance to Green Bay, jutting out from 
Lake Michigan. Landing on the island, he was hospitably 
received by a Pottawatomie chief, who had visited in Canada, 
and here he was also met by the remainder of his advance 
traders, who had honestly disposed of his goods and collected 
in return a large quantity of furs. These were now conveyed 
on board the Griffin, and, with other pelts procured during 
her outward passage, were to be carried to Niagara for the 
benefit of his creditors. This transaction was in violation 
of the letter and spirit of La Salle's royal patent : but his 
pecuniary necessities were such at the time as to justify or 
excuse a liberal interpretation of the terms of that instru- 
ment. The pilot and five sailors, to whom he committed 
the charge of the Griffin, were instructed, after they had 
landed her valuable cargo, to return with the vessel to the 
southeastern part of Lake Michigan. The Griffin set sail 
from Green Bay on the 18th of September, but was never 
afterward heard of. It would have been better for the 
doomed vessel if she had never sailed on this return trip, 
and better still, perhaps, if La Salle had continued his own 
voyage in her to the head of the lake. 

On the next day (the 19th), he embarked with his re- 
maining men, fourteen in nundier, in foni* canoes, for the 
mouth of the river Miamis, afterward known as the St. 



His First G-reat Expedition to the West. 89 

Joseph.* The canoes were heavily laden with a forge, im- 
plements, arms, etc., and their progress was retarded by 
tempestuous weather. After a perilous passage along the 
western and southern shores of the lake, in the course of 
which the voyagers suffered keenly from hunger and ex- 
posure, they reached their destination about the first of 
]!^ovember. Here they were disappointed at not finding 
the Sieur de Tonty, who had started from Michilimackinac 
with a party of twenty men, and was slowly making his 
way up the eastern side of the lake ; but he did not arrive 
until twenty days later. In the interval of waiting, La 
Salle, to keep his men from idleness, employed them in 
building a wooden fort, eighty feet long and forty wide, 
near the mouth of the river. It was completed by the end 
of November, and was named Fort Miami, after a neigh- 
boring tribe of Indians. Ample time had now elapsed for 
the return of the Grifiin, and La Salle, being much troubled 
at her non-arrival, sent two men down the lake to look for 
the vessel, and pilot her to the entrance of the St. Joseph. 
Different opinions were entertained respecting the fate of 
the Griffin. Hennepin believed that she foundered in a 
storm in the north part of Lake Michigan, which is quite 
probable; others thought that the Indians might have 
boarded and burnt her; while La Salle himself long cher- 
ished the notion that her pilot and crew, after disposing of 
her valuable cargo, sunk her, and then ran awa}" with their 
ill-gotten gains. Unfortunately, the loss of this much- 
prized vessel was irreparable, and it proved a serious blow 
to the success of his expedition. 

But, without longer delay, on December 3, 1679, the 
reunited party, numbering some thirty-three persons, with 
eight canoes, began the ascent of the St. Joseph's River, 
en route to the Illinois. It was a miscellaneous and rather 
picturesque company, comprising soldiers, friars, artisans, 

*At the mouth of this river, several years before, the Jesuit Father 
Allouez had collected some scattered bands of the Hurons and others, 
and established a missionary station, thereby making it a point known 
to these adventurers, and one which, knowing, they would endeavor to 
reach. See Breese's Early Hist, of 111., p. 10(3. 



90 La Salle and His Early Explorations. 

laborers, coarears des bois, and a few Indians. After a 
fatiguing journey southward of twenty-five leagues, in 
which they had often to drag their canoes against the shal- 
low current of the river, they n eared the site of the pres- 
ent city of South Bend, Ind. Thence a portage was made 
of two or three miles to the headwaters of the Te-a-ki-ki 
(Kankakee), which they reached with the assistance of a 
Mohegan Indian, whom La Salle had employed in the 
double capacity of guide and hunter for the expedition. 
The winter had now fully set in, the earth being thickly 
mantled with snow, and as the adventurers paddled their 
weary way down the narrow, torturous stream, flowing 
through reedy and frozen marshes, the whole landscape 
presented a most cheerless aspect. To increase their mis- 
ery, they were distressed by the pangs of hunger until re- 
lieved ]jy the fortunate capture of a large buffalo, which 
was found struggling in the mire of the river, and was soon 
slaughtered. Being thus regaled, they resumed their canoes 
and reached without accident the junction of the Kankakee 
and the Des Plaines, which unite to form the Illinois River. 
Gliding rapidly down the channel of the latter, the 
voyagers shortly entered a region of bolder and more strik- 
ing scenery. On the right they passed the elevation called 
Buffalo Rock, standing out like an island in the valley, and 
farther down, on their left, appeared the tall cliff, since 
known as Starved Rock. A mile or more below it, on the 
north bank of the here expanded river (named by Henne- 
pin the Illinois Lake), stood the principal town of the Illi- 
nois nation, in which were counted four hundred and sixty 
lodges. These were made in the shape of long arbors, with 
a frame-work of posts and poles, and covered with double 
mats of flat flags, so well sewed together that they were 
impervious to rain or snow. Each lodge had four or five 
fires, and each fire served one or two families. It was here, 
about the 25th of December, that La Salle and his hungry 
followers landed, in order to procure some maize, of which 
they stood sorely in need ; but, as had been foreseen, they 
found the village deserted and silent, its inhabitants being 
away on their usual winter hunt. Some of the Frenchmen, 



He Arrives at Peoria Lake. 91 

however, discovered a supply of the desired grain stored in 
pits, and of it they took enough to supply their wants, in- 
tending to pay for the same when the owners should be 
met. After resting and refreshing themselves for a short 
time, they re-embarked and continued their course. 

On New Year's day, 1680, the voyagers again landed 
to hear mass, which was solemnized by the friars, and the 
exercises were closed by Hennepin with an encouraging 
address to the men. Two days afterward, Hiey entered 
that irregular expansion of the Illinois River (from seven to 
eight leagues in length) called Lac Pimiteoui, or Lake Peo- 
ria, meaning "the place of fat beasts." Moving on cau- 
tiously toward the south end of the lake, where the river 
resumes its ordinary width, they perceived smoke rising 
above the bai-e tree tops, denoting the presence of Indians, 
and on turning a sharp bend saw, on both sides of the 
stream, a number of pirogues, and about eighty cabins 
filled with people. This was on the morning of the fifth 
day after leaving the great village.* Having some reason 
to suspect an uncivil reception from the savages, La Salle 
now formed his small flotilla into a line across the river, so 
as to present as formidable an array as possible. As they 
thus swept down the stream to the village, some of the dis- 
mayed natives took to flight, and others seized their arms 
to make resistance; but, in the midst of their confusion, 
our little band of Frenchmen sprang ashore, armed and 
equipped for action. Awed by the bold and martial bear- 
ing of the latter, the Indians de[)uted two of their chiefs 
to present the peace calumet, which La Salle promptly 
recognized by showing one in turn, and thereupon a 
friendly intercourse was opened between them. This was 
succeeded by a feast, at which the more obsequious of the 
savages rubbed the uncovered feet of the friars with bear's 
oil, while others fed their guests with buftalo meat, putting 
the first three morsels into their mouths with much cere- 
mony, as a mark of great civility. 

When the feast was ended, M. de la Salle informed 

* See Hennepin's Description de la Louisiana; Shea's translation 
(N. Y., 1880), p. 156. 



92 La Salle and His Early Explorations. 

Nicanope, and the other principal men of the tribe, that in 
descending the river he had stopped at their great town, 
and had taken some corn from their pits to supply the 
necessities of his men, but that he was prepared to make 
them full compensation. He then proceeded to explain the 
purpose of his visit, saying, in substance, that he had come 
to raise a fort in their neighborhood to protect them from 
the incursions of the Iroquois, and also to build a large 
canoe, in wliich to descend the "great river" to the sea and 
thence bring back goods to exchange for their peltry. He 
further told them that if his plans did not meet with their 
approval, he would pass on to the Osages and Missouris, 
and give them the benefit of his trade and protection. 
These Peoria Indians readily assented to what he said 
about his plans and purposes, and were profuse in their 
expressions of friendship and good will. Yet, despite all 
this, it soon became apparent to La Salle that secret ene- 
mies were striving to thwart his enterprise, and that the 
minds of the savages had been prejudiced against hiiu in 
advance. 

A few days afterward there arrived at this village a 
Mascoutin chief named Monso, or Monsoela, who came 
equipped with presents and accompanied by several Miamis 
braves, and who held nightly conclaves with the head men 
of the village. He professed to have been sent to warn the 
Illinois against the designs of La Salle, of whom he spoke 
as an intriguer and friend of the Iroquois, and that he had 
come among the Illinois only to open the way to their ene- 
mies, who were coming on all sides to destroy them.* 
Having thus re-aroused the distrust of the tickle-minded 
Peorias, the crafty cliief and his party hastened away un- 
der the cover of night. In the altered and reserved de- 
meanor of the natives, La Salle now met a fresh difficulty, 
which taxed all his address and knowledge of the Indian 
character to overcome. It was not without reason that he 
attributed the meddlesome visit of the Mascoutin chief to 
the machinations of the Jesuit Father Allouez, whose ])rin- 



* Membre's Narrative iu Le Clercq. 



JBuUding of Fort Crece-cmur. 93 

cipal station was among the Miamis, Init who had been at 
the great town of tlie Illinois only a few months before. 

To add to the commander's vexations, some of his own 
men, who had been discontented from the start, now be- 
came sullen and mutinous, and endeavored to stir up disaf- 
fection among the better disposed. Xot succeeding in this 
to their satisfaction, they held private interviews with tlie 
Illinois to excite their ill-will against La Salle. As a last 
resort, the m^ilcontents sought his life by secretly putting 
poison in his food. The effect of the poison, however, was 
neutralized by the timely taking of an antidote, and no ill- 
results followed. This was an age of poisoning, the prac- 
tice having been introduced into France from Italy ; and it 
appears that a similar attempt had been made against the 
life of La Salle, not very long before, at Fort Frontenac. 
Shortly after the departure of the Mascoutin chief, six of 
the Frenchmen, including some of the best workmen, basely 
deserted their employer, and set oft" on their return to Can- 
ada. To this dastardly course tliey were partlj* influenced 
by previous disaftection, and partly by the dangers of the 
expedition, which had been artfully magnified to their 
minds by tlie Indians. In order to stay further desertions, 
La Salle called the remaining men together, and told them 
that he did not intend to take with him any but those who 
would go Avillingly, and that he would leave the others at 
liberty in the spring to return to Canada, whither they 
might go without risk and by canoe ; whereas, the}' could 
not then undertake it l)ut with evident peril to their lives.* 

It was now mid-winter, and the commander, wearied 
with his accumulating difficulties, and finding it impractica- 
ble to proceed farther to the south, resolved to erect a fort, 
whicli might attbrd shelter and security to his company 
until the opening of spring. The site chosen for this first 
European fortification in Illinois M^as a moderate sized hill, 
or termination of a ridge, on the eastern side of the river 
(as shown by Franquelin's, and Hennepin's old maps), and 
about half a league below the outlet of the lake where the 



Hennepin's "Description of Louisiana," p. 173. 



94 La Salle and His Early ExjAoratiovs. 

explorers had lirst landed. The precise location of the 
fort, of which not a vestige remains, is clouded with doubt 
and controversy. Some would tix it at the %nllage of Wes- 
ley City, four miles below the present city of Peoria; while 
others, with rather more show of reason, contend for a site 
higher up the river, and over against the northern suburbs 
of Peoria. Interest in the subject has revived from time 
to time, and the relative claims of these two different sites 
were elaborately discussed through the Peoria press iu Jan- 
uary, 1890.* 

La Salle's men worked with a "good grace" on the 
fort, and by the first of the ensuing March, 1680, it was 
nearly finished, and was occupied. It now received the 
significant name of Creve-ca:ur, or Heart Break ; not, as 
has been often stated (on the authority of a passage in 
Hennepin's "New Discovery"), because of the commander's 
dejection at the desertion of his men and his increasing 
difficulties, but after the fortress of Creve-coeur in Brabant 
of the Netherlands, which had recently been taken by 
the French arms and demolished. Such, more than two 
hundred and thirteen years ago, was the primal military 
occupation of Illinois by the French, though no continuous 
white settlement was established at Peoria Lake until nearl}' 
or quite a century later.f 



* In La Salle's day, when the river carried a somewhat larger vol- 
ume of water than at present, Lake Pimiteou, is described by him as 
consisting of "three small lakes, which intercommunicated with each 
other by so many straits." (See i)art of a letter by La Salle in vol. 2 of 
Pierre Margry's Collection). The chief ditBculty now is to determine 
whether the exi)lorer landed and encamped at the foot of the second, or 
of the third and lower sheet of water. As partly contirming La Salle, 
it may be as well to note what M. Joutel says in his journal about this 
chain of lakes. In describing the passage of his partj' up the Illinois 
River, in 1687, he writes: "The 9th (September), we came into a lake 
about half a league over, which we crossed and returned into the chan- 
nel of tlie river, on the banks whereof we found several marks of the na- 
tives having been encamped. The 10th, we crossed another lake called 
Pimitehouy, and returned to the river." — Journal flixlorujut'. 

t For a more circumstantial account of the Ijuilding of Fort Creve- 
coeur, see extracts from Hennepin's writings in the next succeeding 
chapter. 



He Begins a New Vessel. 95 

While the fort was building, La Salle put his best 
mechanics to work on a brigautine, which, when built, he 
proposed to freight with buffalo and other skins, to be col- 
lected in his descent of the Mississippi, and thence sail to 
St. Domingo or France, and dispose of the cargo. The 
keel of the new boat was laid, forty-two feet in length 
by twelve in breadth, and work on her hull was well 
advanced by the end of February. Being without rig- 
ging or sails for his vessel (they having been unluckily 
lost with the Griffin), the indomitable leader now formed 
the bold design of returning over-land to Fort Frontenac, 
to procure these and other appliances, leaving De Tonty in 
command at Creve-coeur, while Hennepin should meantime 
go up the Mississippi on a voyage of exploration, — La Salle 
promising to send men to meet him at the mouth of the 
Wisconsin, on his own return from the East. 



96 Louis Hennepin. 



CHAPTER V. 

1675-1701. 
FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN. 

The name of Father Hennepin having been already 
introduced in connection vt'ith La Salle's history, it is 
deemed proper to devote the present chapter to a delinea- 
tion of his shifting and romantic career, since no more 
picturesque and interesting personage is to be found in 
the annals of French exploration and discovery in North 
America. 

About the year of grace 1640, in the ancient town of 
Ath, in the interior province of Hainault, and in what was 
then a part of the Spanish Netherlands, but is now a part 
of the kingdom of Belgium, was born the celebrated Louis 
Hennepin. With respect to his early domestic life, we pos- 
sess no definite information. In his writings he tells us 
much about himself, but very little concerning his family, 
from which it may be inferred that he came of obscure 
parentage. He appears to have been sent to school at a 
tender age, and he quaintly informs us that wliile prose- 
cuting his early studies, "he felt a strong incliuation to 
leave the world and to live in the rule of strict virtue." 
He accordingly entered the monastic order of Saint Fran- 
cis,* to spend his days in a life of religious austerity. His 
novitiate was made in the RecoUet convent at Bethune, in 



*The Franciscans were an ofl'shoot of the old Carmelite friars, of 
Mount Carmel, Palestine. The order was first established in Europe by 
St. Francis, of Assisi, Italy, in the year 1209. Through an excess of 
humility, he denominated the monks of his order " little brethren," or 
" friars minor " — a name by which they are still distinguished. They 
are also called "gray friars," from the color of their dress. " It was a 
mendicant order (says Breese's Hist. 111., p. 102), vowed to the lowest 
poverty and the severest penance ; gray coats and bare feet as badges of 
distinction, and an entire devotion to the precept, ' preach my gospel to 



His Youthful Bambles in Europe. 97 

the province of Artois, France, and his master of Novices 
was Father Gabriel de la Ribourde, a man eminent in the 
order for his social position and exemplary life, who was 
destined, at a later day, to die for the Faith, while labor- 
ing as a missionary among the savages in America. 

In order to learn Flemish, young Hennepin went from 
Bethune to Ghent, where a married sister of his resided, 
and where he stayed some time. As he approached the 
age of manhood, he manifested a strong propensity to 
travel in foreign parts, which occasioned his sister much 
anxiety. With the consent of the general of his order, he 
first set off to see Italy, and visited the principal Francis- 
can churches and convents in that country, as also in Ger- 
many. On returning home, he was sent to the convent of 
Halles in Hainault, where he discharged the duties of a 
preacher for a year, and then went to Artois. He was 
thence sent to Calais, and afterward to the convent of Biez 
at Dunkirk, in both of which places he appears to have 
been employed to solicit alms for the fraternity. During 
his sojourn at those seaport towns, the strange stories he 
heard related by old mariners stimulated anew his curi- 
osity and desire to visit foreign lands ; and with a view to 
further gratify his taste for travel, he went in the char- 
acter of a missionary to the principal cities of Holland. 
Wliile sojourning in that country, on August 11, 1674, he 
was present, as an assistant chaplain, at the obstinate and 
bloody battle of Seneffe, fought between the Prince ol 
Orange and the Prince of Conde, and he there found 
abundant occupation in relieving and comforting the 
wounded and dying soldiers. 

At about this time Canada again became a field ol 
labor for the Recollet missionaries ; and Louis XIV., yield- 
ing to the appeal of Governor Frontenac, ordered that five 
Recollet religious be sent to Canada, to reinforce the little 



the heathen,' marked its members. From this and its kindred order, 
the Dominicans, has the Roman Church been supplied with many 
popes, cardinals, bishops, and other noted ecclesiastics, while in saints 
thev have been most wonderfully fruitful." 

7- 



98 Louis Hennepin. 

community of that order already established there. Friar 
Hennepin was one of the number chosen to go upon this 
mission, which he readily undertook. Receiving the re- 
quisite authority from his superior, he repaired to the sea- 
port of La Rochelle, and there, in the summer of 1675, 
embarked in the same ship with Francois de Laval, an 
eminent prelate, who had been recently appointed Bishop 
of Quebec. Among his other fellow passengers was La 
Salle, who was now returning from France to Canada, and 
with whose fortunes Hennepin was subsequently to become 
closely identified ; but for whom, at their first meeting, he 
seems to have formed no admiration. 

After a somewhat eventful voyage, they arrived in the 
month of September at Quebec, where Hennepin was 
shortly appointed priest to the cloister of the Hospital Nuns 
of St. Augustine. As the duties of this position were not 
onerous, he found time to make frequent excursions to the 
neighboring French and Indian settlements, and visited, in 
turn, the Three Rivers, St. Anne, Cape Tourmente, Bourg 
Royal, Point de Levi, and the Isle de St. Laurent. On 
these trips he went by canoe in the summer season, and in 
the winter his light luggage was drawn on the snow by a 
large dog, while he himself, on foot, was exposed to all the 
fury of the elements, with no covering save his cloak and 
hood, and with but very little to eat. In the fall of 1676, 
or the following spring, he was sent with Father Luke 
Buisset to Fort Frontenac, where they founded a small 
convent. Soon after this, Hennepin made a journey to the 
Jesuit missions among the Mohawks, and others of the 
Five Nations. Extending his tour to Albany (called Fort 
Orange by the early Dutch settlers), he was well received 
by the Catholic residents, who, if we may receive his own 
statement, entreated him to stay there and become their 
priest. 

When the Sieur de la Salle undertook his first great 
expedition to the West, he solicited Father Hennepin, 
among other of the RecoUet friars, to accompany him as 
a chaplain and missionary. The I'cstlesH and irujuisitive 
mind of Hennepin was fascinated by the very dangers of 



Hennejnn at Niagara Falls. 99 

so bold an adventure, of which he was destined to become 
the principal chronicler. Accordingly, in November, 1678, 
he left Fort Frontenac with the advance party of the ex- 
pedition under La Motte. Sailing slowly up Lake Ontario 
in a small brigantine, they reached the outlet of the Niagara 
River on the 6th of December, and, immediately after land- 
ing, chanted a Te Dewn in gratitude for their safe arrival, 
which was listened to with silent wonder by a group of the 
natives from a neighboring village. Hennepin, with a few 
companions, then went in a canoe up the river seven miles 
to the foot of the high bluff or escarpment overlooking 
the lake, and, climbing the rocky heights above what is 
now- Lewiston, soon came in sight of the great double 
cataract of Niagara, " thundering in its solitude." We 
should not assume that the friar and his party were the 
first Europeans to look upon these wonderful falls, since 
the}^ had been known to the French from the time of 
Champlain ; yet he is popularly credited with their dis- 
covery, probably from, the circumstance that he wrote and 
published the first good description of them, barring his 
extravagant estimate of their height.* Proceeding with 
his companions along the bank of the river to the head of 
the rapids, opposite the modern Canadian town of Chip- 
pewa, he thence returned the next day, and was the first 



*In his " Descriptiou of Louisiana" (1G83), Hennepin writes: " The 
river (Niagara) plunges down a height of more than five hundred feet, and 
its fall is composed of two sheets of water and a cascade, with an island 
sloping down between." In his " New Discovery," he increases the 
height of the falls to six hundred feet, and La Houtan fixes it at about 
the same figure. Father Charlevoix (Travels in North America, pp. 
152-3), in endeavoring to account for these gross exaggerations, re- 
marks : ■' It is certain that if we measure its height by the three 
mountains (or ascents) which we must first pass over, there is not much 
to bate of the six hundred feet which the map of M. Delisle gives it; 
who, without doubt, did not advance this paradox but on the credit of 
the Baron de la Houtan and Father Hennepin. Charlevoix' own meas- 
urement of the cataract with a cord, in 1721, fell short of the jiresent 
altitude of the American Fall, which is 165 feet. 

In L750, seventy years after the time of Hennepin, the Great FallS' 
were visited and carefully described by Professor Kalm, the eminent 
Swedish traveler. 



100 Louis Hennepin. 

priest to offer mass at the Falls of Niagara. He then 
began the erection of a bark chapel on the eastern side of 
the river, near the Great Rock, where the Sieiir la Motte 
and his men were building a fortified house. Shortly after- 
ward he accompanied La Motte, and five other Frenchmen 
on a journey of thirty leagues through the snow-incumbered 
forests of western New York to the principal village of the 
Seneca nation, to negotiate with the sachems for permis- 
sion to complete the house or fort at Niagara. Describing 
the elders of that village, Hennepin graphically says : " They 
are for the most part tall and well shaped, covered with a sort 
of robe made of beavers' and wolves' skins, or black squirrels, 
holding a pipe or calumet in their hands. The senators of 
Venice do not appear with a graver countenance, and per- 
haps do not speak with more majesty and solidity than 
those ancient Iroquois." 

After the completion of the Griffin, Hennepin sailed 
in her, with La Salle and others, through Lakes Erie, St. 
Clair and Huron, and reached Michilimackinac on the 26th 
of August, 1769. Continuing his voyage in that vessel 
with the commander to Green Bay, and thence in canoes 
up Lake Michigan to the mouth of the Miamis, or St. 
Joseph, they shortly entered the country of the Illinois. 
On their way down the Illinois River, Hennepin observed 
indications of stone-coal, and other minerals, in the upper 
valley of that stream. The approach of the explorers to 
the outlet of Lake Pimiteoui, he thus narrates : 

" Toward the end of the fourth day, while crossing a 
little lake, formed by the river, we observed smoke, which 
showed us that the Indians were cabined near there. In 
fact, on the fifth, about nine in the morning, we saw on 
both sides of the river a number of parakeets (pirogues), 
and about eighty cabins full of Indians, who did not per- 
ceive us until we had doubled a point behind which the 
Illinois were camped within half gunshot. We were in 
eight canoes abreast, all our men arms in hand, and allow- 
ing ourselves to go witli the current of the river."* 



Description of Louisiana," by Father Louis Hennepin ; trans- 



His Description of Fort Crhe-Cmur. 101 

Some two weeks after the landing of the French ad- 
venturers here, and when it was decided to erect a fort in 
the vicinity of their camp, Hennepin went with La Salle to 
choose a site for the same. Of the building of this fort 
the friar gives the following descriptive account : 

"A great thaw having set in the 15th of January 
[1680], and rendered the river free below the village, the 
Sieur de la Salle begged me to accompany him, and we 
proceeded with one of our canoes to the place which we 
were going to select to work at this little fort. It was a 
little mound about two hundred paces distant from the 
bank of the river, which, in the season of the rains, ex- 
tends to the foot of it ; two broad, deep ravines protected 
two other sides and a part of the fourth, which we com- 
pletely intrenched by a ditch which united the two ravines. 
Their exterior shape, which served as a counterscarp, was 
fortified with good chevaux de friese, and (we) cut this emi- 
nence down steep on all sides, and the earth was supported 
as much as was necessary with strong pieces of timber 
(and) with thick planks, and for fear of any surprise we 
planted a stockade around, the timbers of which were 
twenty-five feet long and a foot thick. The summit of the 
mound was left in its natural figure, which formed an ir- 
regular square, and we contented ourselves with putting on 
the edge a good parapet of earth capable of covering all 
our force, whose barracks were placed in two of the angles 
of this fort, in order that they might be always ready in 
case of an attack. 

" Father Gabriel, Zenobe, and I lodged in a cabin cov- 
ered with boards, which we adjuvSted with the help of our 
workmen, and in which we retired, after work, all our peo- 
ple for evening and morning prayer, and where, being una- 
ble any longer to say mass — the wine which we had made 
from the large grapes of the country having just failed us — 
we contented ourselves with singing vespers on holidays 
and Sundays, and preaching after morning prayers. 



lated from the French edition of 1683, with notes, etc. By John G. 
Shea (New York, 1880), p. 156. 



102 Louis Hennepin. 

"The forge was set up along the curtain which faced 
the wood. The Sieur de la Salle posted himself in the 
middle, with the Sieur de Tonty ; and wood was cut down 
to make charcoal for the blacksmith."* 

On page 175 of the same work, Hennepin also tells us 
the fort " was called Creve-coear,'' and that it was " situated 
four days' journey from the great village of the Illinois, 
descending toward the river Colbert" (Mississippi). By 
the phrase " great village," he undoubtedly referred to the 
one that stood in the vicinity of The Rock. In his 
second publication, entitled "l^ew Discovery," etc. (Eng- 
lish edition, London, 1698-1699, p. 103), Hennepin gives a 
shorter account of the construction of Fort Creve-cceur, 
containing, however, some further particulars, which we 
reproduce here. 

" I must observe," he writes, " that the hardest winter 
lasts not above two months in this charming country ; so, 
that on the 15th of January came a sudden thaw, which 
made the river navigable and the weather as mild as it is 
with us in the middle of the spring. M. la Salle, improv- 
ing this fair season, desired me to go down the river with 
him to build our fort. After having viewed the country, 
we pitched upon an eminence on the bank of the river, 
defended on that side by the river, and on two others by 
two ditches (which) the rains had made very deep by suc- 
cession of time, so that it was accessible only by one way ; 
therefore, we cast a line to join these two natural ditches, 
and made the eminence steep on every side, supporting the 
earth with great pieces of timber. We made a hasty lodg- 
ment thereupon, to be ready to defend us in case the sav- 
ages would obstruct the building of our fort ; but nobody 
offering to disturb us, we went on diligently with our 
work. . . . The fort being half finished, M. la Salle 
lodged himself in the middle with M. Tonti, and every- 
body took his post. We placed our forge along the cur- 



* Hennepin's "Description of Louisiana"; same edition as before 
cited, pp. 170-178. 



Membre's Account of the Illinois. 103 

tain, on the east side, and laid in a great quantity of coals 
for that use." 

La Salle's own story of the building of Creve-coeur, as 
related in Pierre Margry's work (vol. II.), does not differ 
essentially from that of Hennepin, nor does he appear to 
fix its location with any more precision. The Indians con- 
tinuing friendly, the fort was substantially completed and 
occupied before the first of March, 

In the meantime, Father Membre devoted himself to 
missionary instruction among the Illinois, at their village 
or camp about half a league above the fort. La Salle, it is 
told, had made a present of three axes to one of their 
chiefs named Oumahouha (meaning the wolf), on condition 
that he should adopt Membre as his son and care for him. 
The good friar visited the Indians daily in their lodges, 
and in spite of his repugnance to their filthy habits and 
disgusting manners, labored earnestly, though with scant 
success, for their spiritual enlightenment. Marquette had 
previously described the Illinois as having " an air of hu- 
manity, which he did not observe in any of the other 
nations seen on his route." But Membre, after a familiar 
acquaintance with this people, has portrayed them more 
nearly as they really were, in all their ignorance and degra- 
dation. 

" The greater part of these tribes," says he, " and es- 
pecially the Illinois, with whom I have had most inter- 
course, make (the coverings of) their cabins of double 
mats of flat rushes, sewed together. Their villages are not 
inclosed with palisades, and being two cowardly to defend 
them, they take flight at the first news of a hostile army. 
They are tall of stature, strong and robust, and good arch- 
ers. They had as yet no fire-arms — we gave some to a 
few. They are wandering, idle, fearful and desolate — al- 
most without respect for their chiefs — irritable and thiev- 
ish. The richness and fertility of the country gives them 
fields every-where. They have used iron implements and 
arms only since our arrival. Besides the bow, they use in war 
a kind of short pike and wooden maces. Hermaphrodites are 
numerous. They have many wives, and often take several 



104 Louis Hennepin, 

sisters that they may agree the better ; and yet they are so 
jealous thg,t they cut off their noses on the slightest provo- 
cation. They are lewd, and even unnaturally so, having 
boys dressed as women, destined for infamous purposes. 
. . . They are, moreover, very superstitious, although 
they have no religious worship. They are, besides, much 
given to play, like all the Indians in America that I am 
able to know.* 

Having come to the conclusion that Hennepin might 
be more advantageously employed than in preaching homi- 
lies to the Frenchmen at Fort Creve-coeur, La Salle re- 
quested him to lead an exploring party down the Illinois 
and up the Mississippi river. The worthy friar, accord- 
ing to his own subsequent account, was very averse to this 
difficult and perilous undertaking, which yet was to make 
him famous. He set up the plea of bodily infirmity, claim- 
ing that he had an abscess in his mouth, which had lasted 
for more than a year, and which required his return to 
Canada for medical treatment. His excuse, however, was 
not held sufiicient, since neither of his two missionary as- 
sociates was so well qualified for the bold task as himself; 
Father liibourde being too old and Membre too young. 
" Anybody but me," writes Hennepin, in his Neio Discovenj^ 
" would have been much frightened with the dangers of 
sucli a journey, and if I had not put all my trust in God, I 
should not have been the dupe of La Salle."* 



"•'■See A Narrative of the adventures of La Salle's party at Fort Creve- 
coeur, and in the Valley of the Illinois, by Zenobe Membre ; printed in 
LeClercq's " First Establishment of the Faith in New France." En- 
glish translation, New York, 1881, vol. II, p. 1.34. 

•■ With reference to this adventurous river voyage, the Margry Re- 
lation has the following: " At the same time the Sieur de la Salle pro- 
posed to have the route he was to take to the river Mississippi explored 
in advance, and the course of that river above and l)elow the mouth of 
the Divine river, or of the Illinois. Father Louis Hennepin offered to 
take this voyage, in order to begin and make acquaintance with the 
nations among whom be proposed to go and settle to jireach the faith. 
The Sieur de la Salle was reluctant to impose this task on him, but 
seeing that he was resolute, he consented." See note in Shea's llenne- 
l)in, p. 179. 



His Famous Mississippi Voyage. 105 

His compagnons dc voyage were Michael Ako, or Ac- 
cault, and Picard dii Gay, a native of Picardy, whose real 
name was Anthony Augelle. Accault was tolerably versed 
in the language of the Illinois, and, for this reason, and be- 
cause of his experience, he was made the business director 
of the party. Both of these men were robust and hardy, 
though physically, somewhat smaller than Hennepin. Be- 
sides being well clad and armed, they were supplied with 
a good canoe, a large peace calumet, and about one thousand 
livres worth of goods, to be used in trading with and con- 
ciliating the Indians who might be met on the river. The 
little party embarked near Fort Creve-coeur, on the even- 
ing* of tlie last day of February, 1680. La Salle and the 
rest of his men quietly escorted them to the bank of the 
river to see them ofl", and wish them a bon voyage. With a 
parting benediction from the good old Father Ribourde, 
who advanced to the waters' edge to bestow it, the voya- 
gers plied their light paddles, and were soon lost to sight 
in the shadows and bend of the stream. 

The Lower Illinois, on which they were now afloat, 
and which Hennepin called the Seignelay, is described by 
him as being as deep and broad as the river Seine, at Paris, 
and as widening out in several places to a quarter of a 
league. The first Indians met on the way were a party of 
the Peorias, who were returning up to their village, and 
who used every effort to induce the voyagers to turn back 
with them. Continuing to descend the river until the 7th 
of March, and having arrived within two leagues of its 
mouth, they found a tribe called the Maroas, or Tamaroas, 
numbering about two hundred families, who wished to 
take them to their village, which lay some distance below, 
on the bank of the " great river." Upon reaching the 
Mississippi it was discovered full of running ice, a sight 
well calculated to shake the strongest nerves. Being de- 



*This was the time of their departure, as stated by La Salle, and it 
would seem to have been selected on purpose to avoid observation and 
annoyance by the neighboring Indians. See La Salle's letter of Aug. 
22, 1682, in Margry, IL, p. 245. 



106 Louis Hennepin. 

tained from this circumstance till the 12th of March our 
intrepid voyagers re-embarked, and, turning the prow of 
their canoe against the sweeping current of the unexplored 
river, continued to ascend it, slowly and with difficulty, for 
the succeeding four weeks. 

On the 11th or 12th of April, having passed the mouth 
of the river Des Moines, they were surprised and captured 
by a >var party of one hundred and twenty Sioux Indians, 
who were coming down the Mississippi in lifty canoes, in 
pursuit of a band of the Miamis. Having made this un- 
expected capture, the Sioux warriors held a council, and 
decided to return to their own country. Accordingly, on 
the next day, they began their homeward voyage, taking 
with them as prisoners Hennepin and his two companions. 
After a rapid navigation of nineteen days, and having 
passed through Lake Pepin, where the savages kept up a 
terrible howling, they landed in a cove of the river a few 
leagues below the Falls of St. Anthony. Here the Sioux 
warriors hid their own canoes in a clump of alders, and 
then broke up the canoe of the Frenchmen, lest the latter 
might return in it to their enemies. They next divided 
the property of their captives, including Hennepin's vest- 
ments and portable chapel, and distributed their persons to 
three separate heads of families, to take the place of their 
sons who had been killed in war. This being done, though 
not without sharp wrangling among themselves, the Indians 
started northward across the country for their homes, taking 
their captives with them. After a hurried march of five 
days, during which the friar and his companions had well 
nigh perished from cold, hunger and fatigue, they reached 
the Sioux villages nearMillo Lacs, Minnesota, about the 5th 
of May. 

The savage dwellers in these northern villages were 
called the Issati, or Isanati, and they formed one of the 
three divisions of the powerful Sioux Nation.* It was 



*"The earliest record of the Siouau languages," says Professor J. 
W. Powell, "is that of Hennepin, compiled about 1680. The earliest 
printed vocabulary is that of the Naudowessie {i. e., the Dakota) in 
Carver'H Travels, first published in 1778." It is worthy of mention hero, 



His Life Amoncj the Sioux. 107 

with thiB imcouth people that Hennepin spent the ensuing 
summer and early autumn. He experienced some rather 
hard usage at first, but, upon the whole, was better treated 
than might have been expected. He was assigned to the care 
'Of a chief named Aquipaguetin, whom he did not like, but 
who adopted him as a son, and took him to his lodge and 
village. Here, in consequence of his enfeebled condition, 
the Indians made for him one of their sweating baths, in 
which he was immersed three times a week, and derived 
much benefit from the treatment. Regaining his health, 
he studied the language and manners of this barbarous 
race, and acted as physician to such of them as required 
his services. But he did not find among these wild men 
any encouragement for the exercise of his clerical func- 
tions. " I could gain nothing over them," he tells us, " in 
the way of their salvation, by reason of their natural stu- 
pidity." Yet, on one occasion, he baptized a sick child 
just before its death. 

At the end of about two months, Hennepin and his 
associates in captivity were allowed to accompany a numer- 
ous hunting and fishing party of the Sioux down Rum 
River, from Mille Lac to the Mississippi. Arrived thither, 
the restless friar and Du Gay, after obtaining permission 
from the chief, Ouasicoude, set out in a birch canoe for the 
mouth of the Wisconsin, where they hoped to meet some 
Frenchmen whom La Salle was expected to send to meet 
them. Accault did not accompany them on the journey, 
as he preferred to stay with the Indians. Rapidly descend- 
ing this hitherto unexplored part of the Mississippi, our 
two voyagers soon drew near the Falls of St. Anthony, so 
named by Hennepin in honor of his patron saint of Padua. 
He describes the falls as from forty to fifty feet high, with 
an island of pyramidal form lying nearly midway the 
stream.* Carrying their light canoe and luggage below 



that some philologists have traced an apparent analogy between the 
language of the Sioux and that of the Tartars in northern Asia. 

*A8 late as 1820, according to Schoolcraft (H. R.), the perpendicular 
height of the cataract, in its highest part, was about forty feet, its 
breadth being twelve hundred feet. But by the constant reaction of 



108 . Louis Hennepin. 

the roaring cataract, they re-embarked, and held on their 
lonely way down the sinuous river to the confluence of the 
Wisconsin, a distance of sixty French leagues from the 
falls. Finding no Frenchmen there to receive them, they 
returned disappointed, and joined a large band of the 
Sioux who were hunting on the Chippewa, a stream which 
enters the Mississippi from the east at Lake Pepin, and 
leisurely followed them back up tlie river. 

At length, after an irksome and anxious captivity of 
five and a half months, the friar and his associates were 
allowed to go free. Their release was effected through the 
opportune arrival of one of their own countrymen, Daniel 
Greysolon du L'hut,* who, with five armed Frenchmen, 
had penetrated into the Sioux country from Lake Superior, 
and made satisfactory terms with the savages. 

Toward the end of September, Father Hennepin and 
his compatriots — eight Frenchmen in two canoes — left the 
Sioux villages on their return to the French settlements, 
and journeyed south and east, via the St. Francis, the Mis- 
sissippi, the Wisconsin, and Fox Rivers, to Green Bay. 
Thence they coasted around the northern shore of Lake 
Michigan to Michilimackinac, where Hennepin spent the 
winter with the Jesuit Father Pierson, a former fellow- 



the water against the underlying strata of soft sandstone, and the conse- 
quent breaking off of the upper and harder table rock, the height of 
the falls is now reduced to fifteen feet. Their natural beauty has also 
been marred and obscured by the erection of mills, and other works 
of civilized man. 

* Some additional notice of the Sieur du L'hut, or Du Luth, may be 
acceptable to the general reader. He was a native of Lyons, France, 
^nd a cousin of the Sieur de Tonty, whom he more than once visited at 
Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Having come to Canada as a young of- 
ficer, he led the life of a militarj' adventurer, and became noted for his 
enterprise and hardiliood. In 1686 he was ordered by De Nonville, then 
governor of Canada, to fortify the Strait of Detroit. Proceeding thither 
with fifty men, he built a stockade called Fort St. Joseph, and occupied 
it till the summer of 1687, when he headed a force of French and In- 
dians from the upper lakes in the war against the Senecas. In 1695 he 
was commandant at Fort Frontenac, and retained this position for some 
years. He died of chronic gout, in Canada, during the winter of 1709-MO. 
It was doubtless from this noted Frenchman, that the modern commer- 
cial nitv of Duluth derived its name. 



He Returns to France. 109' 

townsman, at the mission of St. Io:nace. On the 29th of 
the following March, 1681, before the ice had disappeared 
from the straits, our restless friar, with a few boatmen, re- 
sumed his journey eastward from Michilimackinac* Drag- 
ging their canoes and provisions over the snow and ice un- 
til open water was reached, they then embarked and rowed 
along the western shore of Lake Huron to and through the 
St. Clair, and thence over Lake Erie to the Falls of Niag- 
ara. Making a portage round the falls, they next entered 
Lake Ontario and sailed along its southern side thirty 
league to a large village of the Senecas, where Hennepin 
stopped for a while and renewed his acquantance with the 
chiefs of that nation. He thence proceeded to Fort Fron- 
tenac, and afterward descended the St. Lawrence to Mon- 
treal, where Governor Frontenac then was. Here he was 
very graciously received by the governor, to whom he gave 
a graphic recital of his river voyages and captivity among 
the wild tribes on the upper Mississippi, and showed him 
the advantages to be derived from their discovery. 

Taking ship at Quebec for Old France, Father Henne- 
pin reached that country again near the close of 1681, after 
an absence of six years. He then went to reside for a time 
at the Convent of St. Germain-en-Laye. After this he was 



* Mackinac, or Michilimackinac, was then a place of much less con- 
sequence than in 1688 (seven years later), when the Baron de la Hon- 
tan was sent thither with a company of French troops. He gives us 
this quaint yet interesting description of the mission and settlement : 
" Missilimackinac is certainly a place of great importance. It lies in 
latitude of forty-five degrees and thirty minutes; but as to its longi- 
tude I have nothing to say, for reasons expressed in my second letter. 
'T is not above half a league from the Illinois Lake (Michigan). Here 
the Hurons and Outaous have each a village ; the one being severed 
from the other by a single palisade. . . . In this place the Jesuits- 
have a little house or college, adjoining to a sort of church, and inclosed 
with pales that separate it from the village of the Hurons. These good 
Fathers lavish away all their divinity and patience in converting such 
ignorant infidels. . . . The coureurs de Bois have a very small set- 
tlement here, though 'tis not inconsiderable, as being the staple (or 
mart) of all the goods that they truck with the soutli and west savages ; 
for they can not avoid passing this way when they go to the seats of the 
lUinese and the Oumamis (Miamies), or to the Baye des Puant and the 
River Mississippi." — La Hontan's Voyages, English ed., vol. I., pp. 87, 88 ' 



110 Louis Hennepin. 

vicar and acting superior of the Recollets at Chateau Cani- 
bresis, where he was visited by his former companion, 
Father Zenobe Membre, about 1683. Subsequently, he 
was Guardian for some three years of the RecoUet convent 
at Rentz, in Artois. During this time he was requested by 
his superior to return to the mission in Canada, but he de- 
cUned to comply; his excuse being that the "particular laws 
of his religious order did not oblige him to go beyond the 
sea against his will," and that the malice of his enemies: 
there would expose him to perish among the savages. 

At or before the year 1697, owing in part to his in- 
triguing character, Hennepin was ordered by the Minister 
of W^ar to quit the French realm ; and, with the consent of 
his superior, withdrew into Holland, where he gained pro- 
tection at the court of William III. In order to travel in that 
country without attracting particular notice, he laid aside 
his monastic garb, but did not renounce his vows, and con- 
tinued to sign himself " Recollect and 1^^'otaire Apostolique." 
Becoming tired of Holland, we are told that he ottered to 
return and again go as a missionary to America, but that 
he was not permitted to re-enter France for the purpose. 
With respect to his peregrinations in the last years of his 
erratic and checkered life, we have no authentic informa- 
tion. It is stated by some writers that he went on a pil- 
grimage to Rome, and was at the convent of Ara-celi in 
1701, but that he returned thence, and died shortly after at 
Utrecht. He was then probably sixty-two years old. 

During his extended travels in North America, Friar 
Hennepin had kept a diary or journal, and his first labor 
on returning to France was to prepare it for publication. 
His first and most valuable work, because written from 
personal observation, and without an}'^ special motive to 
prevaricate, was published at Paris early in January, 1683, 
and was dedicated to his Christian Majesty, Louis XIV. 
Its French title runs as follows : " Description de la Louisi- 
ane, novellem.ent decouvcrf.e au sud-ouest de la Nouvelle France ; 
Avec la Carte du. Pays, les moeurs etla maniere deine dcs iSav- 
vages. Dediee d, sa Majestic. Par Ic R. P. Hcnnepiny Mis- 
sionaire Recollect e.t Notaire Apostolique." 



His Writings. Ill 

This book became immediately popular, both in France 
and the adjacent countries, and translations of it soon ap- 
peared in the English, Dutch, and Italian languages. It 
contains a copious though desultory narrative of La Salle's 
first expedition to the West, and of Hennepin's own voy- 
ages and discoveries in connection therewith ; and despite 
its author's egotism and propensity to magnify his individ- 
ual exploits, the work is equally entertaining and instruc- 
tive. The style is simple and natural, and the language 
perepicuous, though losing much of itvS originality in its 
English dress. He was an observant traveler, using his eyes 
wherever he went, and his pictures of the wild country and 
of savage life are very graphic. He had studied the In- 
dians attentively, and portrays their manners vividly. 

His second and more comprehensive, but less reliable, 
publication, did not see the light of print until fourteen 
years after the first. It is thus lengthily entitled in French : 

'^ Nouvelle Decouverte crun tres grand pays, situ.e dans U 
Amerique, entre le Noveau Mexiquc et la Mer Glaciale ; Avec 
les Cartes et les Figures necessaire, et de plus UHistoire nat- 
urelle et morale, et les avantages qu on peut tier par le etablisse- 
ment des colonies. Le tout dediee d su Majeste Brittanique, 
Guillaume III., Par le Louis Hennepin,'' etc. A. Utrecht 
1697, Amsterdam 1698, and London 1698-'99.* 

In this book was first inserted the narrative of Henne- 
pin's pretended descent of the Mississippi to the Gulf, and 
and in the preface thereto, by way of explanation, he says : 
" 'Tis true I published part of it in the year 1684 (1683), 
in my account of Louisiana, printed at Paris by order of 
the French king; but I was then obliged to say nothing of 
the course of the river Meschasipi, from the mouth of the 
river Illinois down to the sea, for fear of disobliging M. la 



*The English of this reads as follows: "New Discovery of a very 
Great Country, situated in America between New Mexico and the Icy 
Sea ; with some necessary maps and illustrations, and, moreover, the 
history, natural and moral, and the advantages that may be had by the 
establishment there of some colonies. The whole dedicated to his 
Brittanic Majesty, William Til. By Louis Hennepin," etc. Printed at 
Utrecht 1G97, Amsterdam 1698, and London 1698-'99. 



112 Louis Hennepin. 

Salle, with whom I began my discovery. This gentleman 
would have the glory of having discovered the course of 
that river ; but when he heard that I had done it two years 
before him, he would never forgive me, though, as I have 
said, I was so modest as to publish nothing of it/'* 

Hennepin's third and smaller work on America, bear- 
ing the title of "' Nouveau Voyage d' un pais plue grand 
que L' Europe; avec les reflexions des enterprises du Sieur 
de la Salle, fur les mines de St. Barbe," etc., was issued at 
Utrecht in 1698, and was also dedicated to the King of 
England and Holland, in that style of fulsome adulation 
then in vogue. In his prefatory note to this book, the friar 
speciously replies to those who had doubted the possibility of 
his havingsailed down and up the Mississippi within thebrief 
time mentioned in his " New Discovery." The story of his 
feigned descent of that river to the Gulf of Mexico obtained 
general credence in this country, notwithstanding the man- 
ifest difficulty of reconciling its dates and conflicting state- 
ments, until the appearance of Spark's Life of La Salle (in 
his series of "American Biographies," 1844— '47), since which 
time it has been rejected as a fiction. Hennepin would 
thus seem to have been guilty of deliberate falsehood, and 
in seeking to rob La Salle of his principal laurel, he only 
tarnished his own fame. La Salle, however, is not deserv- 
ing of any especial commiseration ; for it appears from the 
anonymous brochure or memoir put forth in his interest, 
in the year 1678, that he was not unwilling to have the 
world believe he had discovered the Mississippi, before the 
historic voyage thereon by Joliet and Marquette. 

*" Before this publication, however, Tonty's Relation had been 
published, and, in 1691, a work entitled: 'The Establishment of the 
Faith in New France,' by the Recollet missionary, Father (Chretien) Le 
Clercq, who had derived his materials relating to La Salle's expedition 
to the Gulf from the letters which the Father Zenobe Membre, who ac- 
companied it, had written to the Bishop of Qu(^bec. Parallel passages 
from Le Clercq and Hennepin have been examined, so closely resembling, 
in every important particular, as to compel the belief that Hennepin's 
publication of 1098 is a piracy upon it, and a wicked attempt to deprive 
La Salle of hie hard-earned honor."— Breese's Early Hist. 111., p. 128; 
Chicago, 1884. 



His Writings. 113 

Henuepin was, at this time, in the service or pay of 
the Dutch-English court ; and it is affirmed that he was in- 
duced (perhaps required) to write a new account of his 
travels and discoveries in North America, comprising a nar- 
rative of his alleged voyage down the Mississippi to the sea, 
in order to favor the pretensions of King William III., who 
wished to set up for himself a claim to the country of Lou- 
isiana. This statement derives plausibility from the circum- 
stance that, in 1699, two English vessels were sent to ex- 
plore the passes of the Mississippi. There were also other 
motives that influenced and may help to explain the friar's 
dubious conduct. Among these was his inordinate vanity, 
which seems to have augmented with his years, and 
prompted him to air his personal grievances, and to pose 
before the reading world as a persecuted man. Then again, 
the prospective increase in the sale of his book, from the 
insertion of new and entertaining matter, must have exer- 
cised no little influence, particularly with his publishers. 

Yet, apart from all this, there are reasons for suspecting 
that Hennepin himself was not responsible for all the fic- 
tions printed in his " New Discovery." The hand of an 
anonymous and careless editor is traceable in various parts 
of the book, which is said to have been altered even after 
its first printing. This charitable view of the matter, while 
it lessens Hennepin's culpability, does not exculpate him 
from censure. The whole truth about the origin and appear- 
ance of his last two publications, though inviting attention 
and inquiry, will probably never be known.* 

But still, with all his faults and failings and caprices, 
Louis Hennepin was no ordinary man, and his was no or- 
dinary destiny. Distinguished not only as a traveler and 
Recollet missionary, he was also the first popular writer on 
the French in North America. Moreover, his memory is 
lastingly linked with two, at least, of the great natural 

*' For a critical disquisition upou this curious and recondite subject, 
the inquring reader is referred to the late Dr. Shea's Notice of the Life 
and Writings of Father Hennepin, in his annotated edition of the " De- 
scription de la Louisiane,'^ N.. Y., 1880. 



114 Louis Hennepin. 

monuments of this country — the Falls of Niagara and the 
Falls of St. Anthony ; and it was he who first publicly gave 
the name to that vast and magnificent territory, lying mostly 
on the west of the Mississippi, which is still worn by that 
portion of it incorporated into the sovereign State of Lou- 
ieiana. 



La Salle Returns to Fort Frontenac. 115 



CHAPTER VI. 

1680-1681. 
LA SALLE AND TONTY. 

It is now time to return to La Salle, the central figure 
in this important and difiicult enterprise. On the second ot 
March, two days after the departure of Father Hennepin 
from Creve-coeur, the resolute chief himself set forth on 
his return journey to Fort Frontenac. He left Tonty, his 
trusted lieutenant, in command at the Illinois fort, with a 
company of fifteen men, and took with him four French- 
men, besides his indispensable Mohegan hunter. The last 
montVi of the winter had been extremely cold, so that the 
passage of La Salle and his little party up the river and 
lakes was much obstructed by ice, either firm or drifting. 
At Peoria Lake his men had to make sledges for their two 
canoes, and drag them over the frozen surface. From 
thence they slowdy and laboriously advanced, alternately 
by land and water, amid the chilling rains and melting 
snows of the opening spring. 

Arriving at the great town of the Illinois on the 11th 
of March, they found it still a solitude, and the roofs 
of its lodges crested with snow, the copper-hued in- 
habitants not having as yet returned from their winter 
hunt. Encamping here, one of the hunters killed a stray 
buflfalo, and while his men were smoking the meat of the 
animal, La Salle reconnoitered the adjacent country. Fall- 
ing in with three Illinois Indians, he brought them to his 
camp, gave them food and presents, and secured from them 
a promise to send provisions to his men at the fort. Dur- 
ing his short stay at this place, he attentively examined 
that rugged and precipitous cliff, designated by him as Lc 
jRocher (The Rock), which had been passed without particu- 
lar notice in his previous trip down the river. Being im- 



116 La Salle and Tonty. 

pressed with its rare capabilities as a defensive position, lie 
soon afterward sent back word to Tonty to occupy and 
fortify it. 

Quitting the vicinity of tlie Indian town on the 15th, 
the leader and his party continued their toilsome ascent 
of the Illinois and its Des Plaines branch until they ap- 
proached the place where Joliet now stands, when further 
navigation was rendered impracticable by the firmness of 
the ice in the river. Here they hid their canoes, strapped 
their luggage on their shoulders, and started over-land for 
Lake Michigan, distant about fifty miles. The country all 
around was a flat and dreary 'waste, covered with half- 
melted snow and intersected by swollen streams, some of 
wdiich they forded, and others they crossed on log rafts. 
On the 23d of March they were cheered by glimpses of the 
southern extremity of the lake, seen through the openings 
in the leafless forest trees ; at night they encamped on its 
beach, and the next day followed its sandy shores east and 
northeast to Fort Miami. Here La Salle found the two 
men whom he had sent down the lake in the preceding 
November to look for the Griffin, they having gone to 
Mackinac and returned without getting any tidings of the 
missing vessel. He now ordered them to proceed to the 
fort on the Illinois, and gave them a letter to carry to De 
Tonty. In order to gain time, the dauntless chief, and his 
travel-worn companions, next turned their steps eastward 
across the southern peninsula of Michigan. Their journey 
through its gloomy and trackless forests was one of pecu- 
liar hardship, since they could keep no fire at night for fear 
of straggling parties of Indians. Coming to a tributary of 
the Detroit, they made a log canoe and descended in it to 
that river, and thence marched across the country some 
thirty miles to Lake Erie. Here they embarked in a canoe 
and coasted the northern shore of the lake as far east as the 
mouth of Grand River, and then proceeded overland to the 
post which La Salle had established below the Falls of Niag- 
ara. From thence, with a party of fresh men, he pushed 
down and across Lake Ontario to his seigniory of Fort Fron- 
tenac, whither he arrived on the 6th of May, 1680., Thus 



La Salle's Financial Misfortunes. 117 

within the brief interval of sixty-five days, he had per- 
formed an arduous journey through the wilderness of over 
eight hundred miles, which, considering the season and 
circumstances under which made, was a most remarkable 
exhibition of pluck and physical endurance. 

Arrived at his seigniory, La Salle found all of his af- 
fairs in confusion. Not only had the Griffin been lost, with 
her furs and pelts, but a vessel coming from France with 
a cargo for his company, valued at 2,200 livres, had been 
wrecked on St. Peter's Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence; 
and several canoes loaded with his merchandise had been 
swallowed up in the rapids of the St. Lawrence. More- 
over, some of his agents had acted in bad faith with him, and 
his creditors were preparing to seize upon the residue of his 
property. But, in the presence of these accumulated mis- 
fortunes, which would have crushed any other man, he was 
neither disheartened nor swerved from his purpose. He at 
once hastened to Montreal to arrange matters with his prin- 
cipal creditors, and such was still his credit and influence 
there, that he was enabled to procure the requisite supplies 
for continuing his great enterprise. Returning from Mon- 
treal to Frontenac, he was met by two messengers just ar- 
rived with a letter from Tonty, stating that after his de- 
parture from Fort Creve-coeur, a majority of his men there 
had deserted the fort, and wasted or destroyed such stores 
as they could not carry away. Following his letter, came 
news by two traders on the lakes that the deserters had 
destroyed his fort at the mouth of the Miamis or St. 
Joseph, and plundered his warehouse at Niagara. Being 
furtlier informed that twelve of the perfidious wretches were 
coming down the northern shore of Lake Ontario with evil 
intent. La Salle, with a party of nine trusty men, sallied out 
to meet them, and coming upon them unawares, killed two 
and captured seven of the number, 'whom he imprisoned 
at Frontenac, to await punishment by a civil tribunal. 

One of the chief diificulties attending the enterprises 
of La Salle, and of other early French explorers in the 
West, was to secure the services of reliable men. The wil- 



118 La Salle and Tonty. 

derueas was in a measure full of vagabond hunters, known 
as coureurs des bois, who had fled from the restraints of 
civilization to lead lives of license and lawlessness, and 
whose consequent freedom from care and immunity from 
punishment for crime was a constant allurement to draw 
others from legitimate employment. The provincial gov- 
ernment of Canada made stringent regulations from time 
to time for the suppression of this growing evil; but it was 
easier to enact such decrees than to enforce them. 

On the 10th of August, having completed his outfit, 
and engaged the services of a lieutenant named La Forrest, 
with a company of twenty-five new men. La Salle again 
set out from his seigniory for the Illinois country, to " suc- 
cor the forlorn hope under Tonty." Taking the most di- 
rect route, he passed up the river Humber or Trent, crossed 
Lake Simcoe, descended the Severn to the Georgian Bay 
of Lake Huron, followed its rugged eastern coast to the 
Manitoulin Islands, and thence moved westward to the 
French post on the straits of Mackinac. Finding it dif- 
ficult to replenish his stock of provisions there on account 
of the enmity and jealousy of the French traders, and not 
wishing to be delayed, he pressed on up Lake Michigan 
with twelve men and four canoes, leaving La Forrest and 
the rest of the force to follow so soon as they could pro- 
cure the needed supplies. On N^ovember 28th, the advance 
party under La Salle drew their boats ashore on the sandy 
beach close to the w^recked fort of Miami. Here, for the 
purpose of facilitating his progress, he left the bulk of 
his stores in charge of five men, and continued his journey 
with the remaining seven. Ascending the river St. Joseph 
to the portage, he thence crossed to the Kankakee, and 
rapidly descended its channel to the Illinois. 

After entering the latter stream, our voyagers found 
the adjacent prairies dotted over with fat buft'aloes, and be- 
ing in want of fresh meat, they put to shore and soon shot 
a dozen or more of these favorite animals, the flesh of which 
they cut into thin strips and dried in the sun for future use. 
Resuming their canoes and passing the Rock, which 
La Salle had directed Tonty to occupy, they saw no sign 



La Salle's Second Expedition. 119 

there of any fortification, and heard no tidings of that 
trusted ofiicer. Approaching the great town of the Illinois 
nation, a scene of havoc and ruin was presented to their 
astonished sight. A force of five hundred Iroquois war- 
riors had then recently invaded the western country, driven 
away the Illinois, sacked their town, cut down their grow- 
ing corn, and rifled their corn pits. - Moreover, they had 
despoiled the sepulchers of the village dead,* scattered 
their bones over the adjoining plain, and stuck the skulls 
in derision on the charred poles of the burnt lodges. 

Having carefully inspected the scene of these acts of 
savage barbarity and desecration, to ascertain whether Tonty 
and his band had fallen victims to the vengeance of the in- 
vaders, La Salle stationed three of his men here in conceal- 
ment to keep a close watch, while he continued with the 
other four to descend the river. At different points on the 
way, he discovered the deserted camps of the opposing 
Indian forces, who had moved southward in compact 
bodies on both sides of the stream. Passing on through 
Peoria Lake, and coming to Fort Creve-coeur, he found it 
dismantled, but his unfinished boat was still on the stocks 
and but little injured. Some distance farther down, and a 
little way from the river, his eyes were met by the revolt- 
ing speotacle of the half-charred bodies of some Indian 
women and children, who had been cruelly burned at the 
stake by the Iroquois. Still discerning no traces of his 
lost men, La Salle went on to the mouth of the Illinois, 
where for the first time, perhaps, he beheld that great and 
mysterious river, which he had long desired to trace to its 
unknown embouchure in the sea. It is said that those 
who were with him proposed to proceed without delay 
upon the projected voyage; but the prudent leader, having 
his men and resources dispersed, and being uneasy about 
the fate of Tonty, was compelled to wait a more propitious 
opportunity. 



^'According to the Jesuit Father Rasles, the custom of the Illinois 
was not to bury their dead, but to wrap them in skins, and expose them 
on scaffolds, or attach them by the head and feet to the boughs of trees. 
But it appears that this practice was not universal among them. 



120 La Salle and Tordy. 

Returning expeditiously up the Illinois, he rejoined 
the three men who had been left in hiding near the ruined 
town, and, after procuring some half-burnt maize from the 
pillaged granaries, the united party re-entered their canoes 
and paddled up the river. When they reached the forks, 
and had gone a short distance up the Kankakee branch, 
they discovered on the bank a hut, containing a stick of 
wood that had been recently sawed, which was mistaken 
for an indication that Tonty and company had passed this 
way. Quitting the stream and concealing their canoes 
near this point, La Salle and his party made their way 
slowly, on foot, through blinding snow storms, to Fort 
Miami, whither they arrived late in January, 1681.* Here 
the weather-worn and exhausted travelers were warmly 
welcomed by La Forrest and his men, who, during the 
absence of the chief, had repaired the fort, cleared some 
land on which to raise a crop, and prepared material for a 
new vessel on the lake. 

Leaving La Salle within the wooden walls of Fort Miami, 
to recuperate his energies and lay new plans for the un- 
promising future, we must now go back and relate the 
thrilling adventures of the Sieur de Tonty and his com- 
panions. 

As before stated, he had been left in command of Fort 
Creve-coeur in March, 1680, with a garrison of fifteen men. 
Two-thirds of these were worthless knaves, wlio disliked 
La Salle, took no interest in his important enterprise, and 
were ripe for revolt whenever the occasion offered. 
His departure for the East, therefore, was the signal for 
the open manifestation of their disaft'ection. A month or 
more afterward, when the two men whom the chief had 



* During this retrograde journey, the great comet of 1680-'81 appeared 
nightly in the heavens, with its brilliant and appalling train, covering 
an arc of from sixty to ninety degrees. According to Mr. Parkman, La 
Salle, in his correspondence, coolly referred to the comet as "an object 
of scientific curiosity ;" whereas Increase Mather, the eminent Puritan 
divine of New England, spoke of it as "fraught with terrific portent to 
the nations of the earth." 



Tonty Left in Command at Creve-cccur. 121 

Bent from Fort Miami, with a letter to Tonty, arrived at 
Greve-coeur, they brought with them depressing intelli- 
gence. They told the already demoralized garrison, " that 
the Griffin was lost ; that Fort Frontenac was in the hands 
of La Salle's creditors, and that he was without means to 
pay those in his employ." The belief now pervading the 
garrison that they would not be paid excited a spirit of 
mutiny and mischief among them, which shortly found 
the desired opportunity to ripen into action. No sooner 
had Tonty, with a few of the men, departed up the Illinois 
River to fortify the "Rock," as ordered by his chief, than 
those left behind proceeded to demolish the fort, and then 
fled, with such arms, ammunition and goods, as they could 
carry away. Two only of the number remained faithful, 
one of whom hastened to apprise Tonty of what had hap- 
pened. Alarmed at this revolt and desertion, he dis- 
patched four men, by two difi'erent routes, to carry the 
unwelcome news to La Salle, two of whom, as we have 
seen, reached their destination. 

The Sieur de Tonty now had with him only five white 
men, namely : the young and spirited Francois de Boisron- 
det, L'Esperance (servant of La Salle), a Parisian youth 
named Etienne Renault, and the two friars, Ribourcle and 
Membre. With a part of this little band, the lieutenant 
repaired to the deserted fort, collected the tools, forge, etc., 
which had not been molested, and conveyed them up the 
river to the great town of the Illinois, where he tempora- 
rily iixed his quarters. But, as the sequel showed, it would 
have been better if the forge and tools had been left where 
they were. For the next five months the Frenchmen, 
while anxiously waiting the return of their leader, enjoyed 
the dubious hospitality of the savages. During this time 
Tonty endeavored to make himself useful by teaching 
them the construction of rude fortifications and the simpler 
arts of military strategy, and the friars labored faithfully 
to instruct them in the rudiments of Christianity. 

In this way a fairly good understanding was maintained 
with the natives until about the first of September, when 
it was announced that an army of five hundred Iroquois 



122 La Salle and Tonty. 

and one hundred Miamis was swiftly marching into the 
country. It appears that a Shawnee Indian, on his way 
home from a visit to the Illinois, had first discovered the 
approach of the invaders, and returned to warn his friends 
of their impending danger. This intelligence created 
the utmost consternation among the inhabitants of the 
town ; and Tonty, who had all along been an object of 
suspicion, was soon surrounded by a crowd of excited war- 
riors, who brandished their weapons and accused him of 
being an emissary of the enemy. Owing to his imperfect 
knowledge of the Illinois language, he was unable to ex- 
plain the situation to their satisfaction, and in their fury 
they seized upon the forge and implements, brought 
thither from Creve-coeur and threw them into the river. 
Doubting their ability to successfully defend themselves, 
since most of their young men were away on the war- 
path, they hurriedly sent their squaws and papooses down 
the river to an island, where they were left in charge of 
sixty old warriors. The remaining braves, to the number 
of about four hundred, now spent the night in preparing 
themselves for battle, painting their faces and greasing 
their bodies. Early the next day the scouts, whom they 
had previously sent out, returned and reported the Iroquois 
as near at hand, and armed with guns and swords obtained 
from the English. They further reported that they had 
seen a chief with the enemy arrayed in the French dress, 
and signified their belief that it was La Salle. This 
turned out to be simply an Iroquois warrior, wearing a 
European hat and waistcoat, yet it served to again make 
Tonty an object of dark suspicion. Being surrounded by 
a throng of infuriated savages, who threatened his life, he 
only saved himself from their uplifted weapons by promis- 
ing that he and his men would go out with them to meet 
the common foe. Since no time was to be lost, the whole 
available force of the Illinois now hurried across the river 
and took position on the plain beyond, just as the enemy 
stealthily emerged from the timber that skirted the banks 
of the Big Vermillion. Thus the two Indian armies soon 
confronted each other, and, simultaneously raising the war- 



Tonty's ,Adventures with the Iroquois. 123 

wlioop, began to exchange shots and arrows, jumping from 
side to side to elude each other's shots. At this crisis, the 
Sieur de Tonty, knowing the Illinois warriors to be cow- 
ards, and seeing that they w^ere outnumbered and likely to 
be defeated, determined to make an effort at negotiation, 
and thus stay the unequal fight. Relying on the treaty of 
peace then subsisting between the Iroquois nation and the 
French, he laid aside his gun for a necklace of wampum 
and started, at the imminent risk of his life, to meet the bel- 
ligerent invaders. An Illinois Indian accompanied him 
part of the way, and they separated themselves from the 
main body of the Illinois, who were actively skirmishing 
with the enemy. 

" "When I was within gun-shot," writes Tonty, " the 
Iroquois shot at us, seized me, took the necklace from my 
hand, and one of them plunged a knife into my breast, 
wounding a rib near the heart.* However, having recog- 
nized me, they carried me into the midst of their camp, and 
asked me what I came for. I gave them to understand that 
the Illinois were under the protection of the King of France 
and the governor of the country, and that I was surprised 
that they wished to break with the French and not con- 
tinue at peace. All this time skirmishing was going on, 
on both sides, and a warrior came to give notice that their 
left wing was giving away, and that they had recognized 
some Frenchmen among the Illinois, who shot at them. On 
(hearing) this they were greatly irritated at me, and held 
a council on what they should do with me. There was a 
man behind me with a knife in his hand, who every now 
and then lifted my hair. They were divided in opinion. 
Tegantouki, chief of the Tsonnouthouans, desired to have 
me burnt. Agoasto, chief of the Onnontagues,f wished to 
have me set at liberty, as a friend of M. de la Salle, and he 
carried his point. They agreed that, in order to deceive 
the Illinois, they should give me a necklace of porcelain 
beads to prove that they also were children of the gov- 

"*Membre tells us that " with his swarthy complexion aud half-sav- 
age dress, they took him (Tonty) for an Indian." 
t Onondagas. 



124 La Salle and Tonty. 

ernor, and ought to unite and make a good peace. They 
sent me to deliver this message to the Illinois. I had much 
difficulty in reaching them, on account of the blood I had 
lost. On my way I met the Fathers Gabriel de Ribourde 
and Zenobe Membre, who were coming to look after me. 
They expressed great joy that these barbarians had not put 
me to death. We went together to the Illinois, to whom I 
reported the sentiments of the Iroquois toward them, adding, 
however, that they must not altogether trust them."* 

Shortly afterward the Illinois returned to their village, 
and many of the Iroquois, under different pretexts, also 
crossed the river and disposed themselves in menacing 
groups about the place. These hostile demonstrations, be- 
ing repeated the next day, caused the more timid Illinois 
to seek safety in flight. Accordingly, at nightfall, tliey 
set fire to their lodges, and while the attention of the 
enemy was diverted by the flame and smoke of the burn- 
ing, they secretly betook themselves to their canoes, and 
dropped down the river to join their women and children. 
Tonty and his companions remained behind to deal as best 
they might with the faithless Iroquois. The latter now 
took possession of the village, and intrenched themselves 
therein. 

Two days later, when the Iroquois observed the scouts 
of the Illinois on the neighboring hills, they thought that 
Tonty had some communication with them, and obliged 
him and his party to remove from their cabin into the fort, 
or redoubt, of the former. They then requested Tonty to 
repair to the Illinois, and induce them to make a treaty of 
pacification, for their vaunted courage had subsided. He 
accordingly proceeded, with Father Zenobe and a hostage, 
to the camp of the Illinois. They gladly accepted the 
peace proposal, and sent a hostage in return to the Iroquois. 
But the inexperienced Illinois hostage soon disclosed to his 
cunning interviewers the numerical weakness of his people, 



"•'See M. de Tonty's Memoir of 1093, covering the period from 1678 to 
1691. Friar Membre, in his account of this exciting episode, conve5'R 
the idea that he himself went with Tonty into the Iroquois camp, but 
this is not sustained bv Tontv's Narrative. 



Tonty's Adventures with the Iroquois. 125" 

and offei'ed to give them, if they wished for peace, the 
beaver skins and some slaves which they had. The Iro- 
quois chiefs were now enraged at the Sieur de Tonty, and 
loaded him with reproaches for having told them that the 
Illinois had twelve hundred warriors, and that there were 
sixty Frenchmen at the village. " I had much difficulty," 
writes Tonty, " in getting out of the scrape." 

However, on the next day, a nominal peace was con- 
cluded between the representatives of the two nations, and 
the Iroquois made some presents of necklaces and mer- 
chandise to the Illinois. But, in utter disregard of the 
treaty, the Iroquois immediately began to construct canoes 
of elm bark, with which to descend the river and fall upon 
the Illinois. In the meantime Tonty apprised the latter of 
their danger, and advised them to retire to some distant 
nation. 

Shortly after these events (on the 10th of September), 
Tonty and Father Membre were summoned to attend a coun- 
cil of the Iroquois. It seems that they still entertained a 
wholesome fear of Governor Frontenac, under whose protec- 
tion the Illinois were, and did not want to renew their war 
upon the latter in presence of the Frenchmen. Their purpose, 
therefore, was to induce the French to leave the country. 
Accordingly, when Tonty and Membre appeared at the 
council, six parcels of beaver skins were brought into their 
presence. And the Iroquois spokesman, addressing Tonty, 
said, that the first two packages were to inform M. de 
Frontenac that they would not eat his children, and that 
he should not be angry at what they had done ; the third 
was a plaster to heal the wounds of Tonty ; the fourth was 
oil to anoint him and Membre, that they might not be fa- 
tigued in traveling ; the fifth proclaimed that the sun was 
bright ; and the sixth, and last, required them to depart for 
the French settlements.* 

These proffered gifts were scornfully rejected by Tonty, 
who, in imitation of the Indian mode of expressing con- 
tempt, indignantly kicked them away, and thus rebuked 



■ Tonty's Memoir of 1693. 



126 La Salle and Tonty. 

the savages for their insolence and perfidy. The council 
ended in recrimination and disorder, and on the next day 
the exasperated chiefs ordered the Frenchmen to quit the 
country forthwith. The Sieur de Tonty had now, at the 
repeated risk of his life, tried every expedient to save the 
Illinois from the fury of the invaders of their soil and 
homes, and since by remaining longer he would imperil the 
lives of his own men, he made a virtue of necessity, and 
speedily departed. 

On the morning of the 11th, he and his five compan- 
ions embarked in a wretched bark canoe, with but scanty 
supplies, and made haste up the river. The same day, 
about noon, the canoe broke, and they landed to repair it 
and dry their peltry. While some of the men were thus 
employed, Father Ribourde imprudently retired into an ad- 
jacent grove for the purpose of saying his breviary. As he 
did not return when expected, Tonty became alarmed for 
his safety, and started out with a companion to hunt him. 
With the quick eyes of woodmen, they soon discovered the 
tracks of Indians, by whom it was thought the friar had been 
seized, and they fired guns to direct his return, if still alive. 
Not seeing or hearing any thing of him that afternoon, in 
the evening they built fires along the river bank, and then 
withdrew to the opposite shore, to observe who might ap- 
proach them. Toward midnight several Indians were seen 
flitting about the fires, and then vanished in the darkness. 
It was afterward learned that they belonged to a band of 
young Kickapoo warriors, who had been hovering for some 
days about the Iroquois camp in quest of scalps. By chance, 
it would seem, they had fiillen in with the innocent old 
friar, whom they killed and scalped, hiding his body in a 
sink, and carrying away his breviary, which subsequently 
came into the hands of one of the Jesuit fathers. Thus 
perished by the war-club of the merciless savage, in the 
sixty-sixth year of his age, the Recollet father, Gabriel de la 
Ribourde. He was the only son and heir of a gentleman of 
Burgundy, and had not only renounced his inheritance 
and the world, to enroll himself among the lowly children 
of St. Francis, but even when advanced in life and honored 



Death of Father Bibourde. 127 

with the first dignities of his order, had sought (in 1670) the 
new and toilsome mission of Canada.* 

While this painful tragedy was being enacted, the 
Iroquois invaders, unrestrained by the presence of French- 
men, were brutally desecrating the sepulchers of the dead 
at the great town of the Illinois, and preparing to further 
wreak their vengeance upon the living. Starting down 
the river in pursuit of the retreating Illinois, they steadily 
followed them day after day ; but as both of the opposing 
armies moved in close array, neither was able to gain any 
material advantage over the other. At length, the Iroquois 
chiefs attained by strategy what their vaunted prowess and 
arms had failed to achieve. They publicly gave out that 
their object was not to destroy the Illinois, but simply to 
drive them from the country. Deceived by this artifice, 
the Illinois separated, some of them descending the Missis- 
sippi River, and others fleeing across and beyond it. But 
the Tamaroas tribe, more stupid or credulous than the rest, 
lingered at their village, not far below the mouth of the 
Illinois, until they were suddenly attacked by a superior 
force of the enemy. The pusillanimous men are said to 
have fled at the first onset, leaving their defenseless women 
and children, numbering several hundred, to fall into the 
hands of the merciless foe. Then followed those savaere 
butcheries and burnings, the horrible evidences of which 
were seen by La Salle only a few weeks afterward. Hav- 
ing scattered the tim'brous Illinois in every direction, and 
satiated their greed for carnage, the rapacious horde of 
Iroquois now set oft' on a forced march to their own coun- 
try, taking with them a number of captive squaws and 
papooses, whom they had reserved to grace their triumph 
on returning to their eastern homes. 

After the melancholy end of Father Ribourde, and the 
ineftectual search for his body, Tonty and his men resumed 
their toilsome ascent of the Illinois River. On reaching- 
the forks of that stream, they neglected to leave there any 



t Shea's Hist, of the Discov. and Explo. of the Miss. Val., page 159, 
note. 



128 La Salle and Tonty. 

mark or trace indicating their course, which might have 
served as a guide to La Salle, and saved him no little 
trouble. But evidently afraid of encountering some hos- 
tile band of Indians, they turned up the Des Plaines* 
branch of the Illinois, and made their way by short jour- 
neys to Lake Michigan. Their aim was to find an asylum 
among the friendly Pottawatomies. After coasting the 
lake shore for a considerable distance, their canoe became 
disabled, and their provisions failed them. Leaving one 
man in charge of their canoe and other articles, the Sieur 
de Tonty and the rest of the party set ofi by land for the 
nearest Pottawatomie village, which lay some twenty leagues 
to the north. But as Tonty had a fever at the time, and his 
limbs were swollen, he did not reach the village until the 
11th of November. During this hard journey the travelers 
lived on wild garlic, which they grubbed from under the 
snow, and when they came to the village they found it de- 
serted, for the Indians had gone to their winter quarters. 
They, however, discovered a little maize and some frozen 
gourds, with which to appease their hunger. 

Eeturning to the lake shore, the Frenchmen re-em- 
barked and continued their voyage. Being again obliged 
to land, they found a fresh trail, and, following it, made a 
portage of a league across the peninsula to Green Bay. 
Entering an estuary of |the bay, called Sturgeon Cove, they 
appear to have ascended it several leagues, when they were 
stopped by a high wind, which contin\ied for a week. Dur- 
ing this time they consumed all their little stock of provis- 
ions, and were in despair of being able to overtake the 
savages. Their shoes having worn out, they now made 
coverings for their feet of the late Father Gabriel's cloak. 
The stream had meantime frozen up, so that they could not 
proceed farther in their canoe. When they were preparing 
to set out on foot, two Ottawa Indians chanced to arrive at 
their camp, and conducted them to a village of the Potta- 
watomies. Here the famished travelers met a kind recep- 
tion, and had their wants liberally supplied. 



* Called by the ludians tbe Checagou. 



Tonti/s Flight to (Ire.en Bay. 129 

According to the narrative of Father Membre, Onang- 
hisse, the head chief of the Pottawatomies, was a great ad- 
mirer of the French, whom he had before befriended. And 
he was accustomed to say that "he knew of only three great 
captains, Frontenac, La Salle, and himself." * 

After recruiting somewhat from the extreme hardships 
of the journey, Father Membre went to spend the winter 
at the mission-house of the Jesuits on Green Bay, while 
Tonty and the other four members of the party remained 
with the Pottawatomies. In the following spring, they all 
proceeded to old Mackinac, and there awaited the arrival of 
their leader. 



*Both Tonty and Membre have left accounts of this journey of re- 
treat from the Illinois to the Pottawatomies, but, for the most part, we 
have followed the relation of the former. 

9 



130 La Salle's Exploits Continued. 



/^ 



CHAPTER VII. 

1681-1683. 
LA SALLe's exploits CONTINUED. 

Reverting to La Salle, wlio was left at Fort Miami to 
recruit his powers and resources, we again resume the ac- 
count of his stirring career. During the winter of 1680- 
81, while his fortunes seemed at the lowest ebb, he was 
never more active, or more determined upon achieving 
ultimate success. Believing that the then recent foray 
of the Iroquois into the country of the Illinois, was 
mainly for the purpose of extending their territorial pos- 
sessions, whence to draw fresh supplies of furs, and that 
those fierce warriors were also being used by his white ad- 
versaries to put an end to his own operations in this wide 
and attractive region, he evolved from his busy brain a 
plan to counteract their designs. His scheme was to unite 
all the difierent and often warring tribes of the West into 
a defensive league; to colonize such of them as would con- 
sent about a fort to be erected and maintained by him on 
the Illinois River, and thus oppose an efl:ectual barrier to 
the further incursions of the Iroquois and their adherents. 
This extensive plan exemplifies La Salle's fertility of re- 
source in emergency, and its success in execution was an- 
swerable to his expectations. 

After the close of the bloody and desolating war of 
Philip, of Pokanoket, with the New England colonists, in 
1676, some of his vanquished allies quitted their eastern 
homes, and sought a refuge in the forests on the south- 
eastern borders of Lake Michigan. These were mostly 
Abenakis and Mohegans, or Mohicans — the latter tribe 
having furnished the reliable hunter and servant, who bad 
already rendered such useful service to La Salle. It was to 
these small bands of Eastern exiles that our explorer first 



Confers with the Foxes and the Illinois. 131 

addressed himself in the trial of his new expedient for the 
furtherance of his general plans. He found ,them very 
willing to join their lot with his in any undertaking he 
might propose, asking only the privilege of calling him 
their chief. His next move was to effect a reconciliation 
between the Miamis and Illinois, who, though kindred 
tribes, had been long estranged. Desiring to first confer 
with the Illinois, many of whom had returned since the 
evacuation of their country by the Iroquois, La Salle set 
out with a party from Fort Miami on a journey thither. 
On entering the prairies, which were still white with 
snow, he and several of the men became snow-blind, so that 
they were- obliged to go into camp on the edge of a grove 
until they could recover their sight. Resuming his journey, 
he met with a band of the Outagamies (Foxes), whose chiefs 
he drew over to his interest by means of presents. From 
them it was learned that Tonty and his party were safe 
among the Pottawatomies, and that Hennepin had passed 
through their country (Wisconsin) on his way to Canada. 
This was welcome intelligence to La Salle, who, for several 
months, had been very anxious about their safety. Fol- 
lowing down the Kankakee River, he fell in with a party 
of the Illinois, who were stalking the prairies in quest of 
game, and who related to him the unhappy occurrences of 
the preceding year. La Salle expressed his regret at what 
had happened, and advised them to form an alliance with 
the Miamis, in order to prevent the recurrence of like dis- 
asters in the future. He told them that he and his men 
would come back to reside among them, furnish them with 
fire-arms and goods, and help them in repelling the hostile 
incursions of the Iroquois. Well pleased with this propo- 
sition, they gave him some maize, and promised to confer 
with other members of their tribe and report to him the re- 
sult. 

Returning now to Fort Miami, La Salle sent La For- 
rest down Lake Michigan to Mackinac, whither it was ex- 
pected that Tonty would go, and where both were to stay 
until he should follow them. It still remained for him to 
confer with the Miamis, and he accordingly started with 



132 La Salle's Exploits Continued. 

ten men to visit their principal village, situated near the 
portage between the St. Joseph and Kankakee. Here he 
found a small party of Iroquois warriors, who had for some 
time demeaned themselves with great insolence toward the 
villagers, and had spoken with contempt of himself and men. 
On being informed of this, he sternly rebuked them for 
their arrogance and calumnies, and such was the fear his 
presence inspired among them that at night they fled from 
the village. 

" The next day the Miamis were gathered in council, 
and La Salle made known to them the objects he wished to 
accomplish. From long intercourse with the Indians, he 
had become an expert in forest diplomacy and eloquence, 
and on this occasion he had come well provided with presents 
to give eflicacy to his proceedings. He began his address, 
which consisted of metaphorical allusions to the dead, by 
distributing gifts among the living. Presenting them with 
cloth, he told them it was to cover their dead ; giving them 
hatchets, he informed them that they were to build a scaf- 
fold in their honor ; distributing among them beads and 
bells, he stated they were to decorate their persons. The 
living, while appropriating these presents, were greatly 
pleased at the compliments paid to their departed friends, 
and thus placed in a suitable state of mind for that which 
was to follow. . . . Lastly, to convince them of the 
sincerity of his intentions, he gave them six guns, a num- 
ber of hatchets, and (then) threw into their midst a huge 
pile of clothing, causing the entire assemblage to explode 
with yelps of extravagant delight. After this. La Salle thus 
closed his harangue : 

" ' He who is my master, and the master of all this 
country, is a mighty chief, feared by the whole world ; but 
he loves peace, and his words are for good alone. He is 
called the King of France, and is the mightiest among the 
chiefs beyond the great water. His goodness roaches even 
to your dead, and his subjects come among you to raise 
them up to life. But it is his will to preserve the life he has 
given. It is his will that you should obey his laws, and 
make no war without the leave of Frontenac, who com- 



He Negotiates with the Miamis. 138 

mands in his name at Quebec, and who loves all the nations 
alike, because such is th^e will of the great king. You 
ought, then, to live at peace with your neighbors, and above 
ail with the Illinois. You have had cause of quarrel with 
them; but their defeat has avenged you. Though they are 
still strong, they wish to make peace with you. Be con- 
tent with the glory of having compelled them to ask for it. 
You have an interest in preserving them, since, if the Iro- 
quois destroy them, they will next destroy you. Let us all 
obey the great king, and live in peace under his protection. 
Be of my mind, and use these guns I have given you, not 
to make war, but only to hunt and to defend yourselves.'" * 

Having ended his mission to the Miamis nation, La 
Salle sent two of his men, with two of the Abenakis, to 
announce the result to the Illinois, in order to prevent 
further acts of hostility, and to recall the dispersed tribes. 
Moreover, he dispatclied men with presents to the Shaw- 
nees, to invite them to come and join the Illinois against 
the Iroquois, All this being done to his satisfaction, he left 
Fort Miami on the 22d of May, 1681, and, after a pleasant 
canoe voyage, arrived at the post of Mackinac about the 
middle of June. Here he had the happiness of meeting 
Tonty, Father Zenobe, and others of his men, from whom 
he had been separated for more than a year. " The Sieur 
de la Salle (says Membre's Narrative, before cited,) re- 
lated to us all his hardships and voyages, as well as his 
misfortunes, and learned from us as many regarding him ; 
yet never did I remark in him the least alteration, always 
maintaining his ordinary coolness and self-possession. Any 
one but he would have renounced and abandoned the enter- 
prise ; but, far from that, by a firmness of mind and an 
almost unequaled constancy, I saw him more resolute than 
ever to continue his work, and to carry out his discovery." 

Before La Salle could resume and push forward his 
great enterprise to a successful issue, it was necessary for 
him to return to Canada, collect his scattered resources, and 



* Davidson & Stuve's Hist, of 111., 1st ed., p. 93. See Relations des 
DecouverU's, compiled for the goveruiuent froui^Lu Salle's letters. 



134 La Salle and his Exploits Continued. 

make terms witli liis creditors. The whole party, there- 
fore, embarked for Fort Frontenac. The lono^ and watery 
way was measured without any noteworthy incident, and 
by the end of Jul}'^ our untiring chief had reached Mon- 
treal, and was consulting with the capitalists and merchants 
who had been furnishing him with money and goods. His 
seigniory of Frontenac was already mortgaged for a large 
sum, much of which had been expended in profitless ex- 
plorations ; yet by surrendering some of his monopolies, by 
the aid of a rich relative named Plet,* and by the con- 
tinued favor and support of Governor Frontenac, he found 
means to appease his more pressing creditors, and obtained 
advances for another respectable outfit. 

The season was well advanced before La Salle could 
complete his preparations, and again begin to move through 
the great lakes. He started upon this third and crowning 

■•■■In order to secure this relative from loss iu case of his death, La 
Salle executed an instrument in the nature of a will, of which the fol- 
lowing is a copy : 

[Will of La .Salle.] 

" Robert Cavelier, Esq., Sieur de la Salle, seignior and governor of 
Fort Frontenac, in New France, considering the great dangers and con- 
tinual perils in which the voyages I undertake engage me, and wishing 
to acknowledge as much as I am able, the great obligations which I owe 
to M. Francois Plet, my cousin, for the signal services which he has ren- 
dered me in my most pressing necessities, and because it is through his 
assistance that I have preserved to this time Fort Frontenac against the 
efforts which were made to deprive me of it, I have given, granted, and 
transferred, and give, grant, and transfer, by these presents, to the said 
M. Plet, in case of my death, the seigniory and property of the ground 
and limits of the said Fort Frontenac and its depending lands, and all 
my rights in the country of the Miamis, Illinois, and others to the south, 
together with the establishment which is in the country of the Miamis, 
in the condition which it shall be at the time of my death ; that of 
Niagara and all the others which I may have founded there, together 
with all the barges, boats, great boats, movables and immovables, 
rights, privileges, rents, lands, buildings, and other things belonging to 
me, which shall be found there ; willing that these presents be and serve 
for my testament and declaration in the maimer in which I ought to 
make it, such being my last will as above written by my hand, and 
signed by my hand, after having read it and again read it [lu el relu). 

" Made at Montreal the llth of August, 1681. 

[Signed.] " Cavkliku j>k \.x Sallk." 



His Third Expedition to the West. 135 

expedition with a company of thirty men (some of whom, 
however, quit his service before reaching Mackinac), and 
ten or twelve heavily-laden canoes. Passing 'up Ontario 
Lake to the vicinity of the present Toronto, he thence made 
a long portage to Lake Simcoe. It was October when 
he entered the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, and it was 
not until the close of that month that his little flotilla 
was pushed out upon the northern waters of Lake Michigan. 
As the voyagers crept slowly along the dreary eastern shore 
of the lake, skirted by high and, for the most part, barren 
sand-hill's, we may conjecture some of the melancholy 
thoughts of their chief: "A past of unrequited toil and sad 
disappointment, a present embittered by the tongue of 
slander and hate, and the future clouded with uncertainty, 
must have intruded themselves into his mind, but could not 
for a moment divert him from the great purpose which, for 
years, had been the guiding star of his destiny." After a 
monotonous and toilsome trip, the leader and his men 
reached the well-known mouth of the Miami in the latter 
part of November, and drew their canoes ashore under the 
shelter of the palisaded fort. 

Here La Salle found his poor Mohegan and Abenaki 
allies, in their squalid wigwams, patiently waiting his re- 
turn, and from among them he chose eighteen men to ac- 
company him on his southern exploration. These, being 
added to his twenty-three French and Canadians, made a 
force of forty-one men. The Indians insisted upon taking 
with them ten of their squaws to cook for them, and three 
children, thus making a total of fifty-four persons. Some 
of these supernumeraries were useless and others a burden ; 
but there seemed no help for it, and they all went. Aban- 
doning the old route via the St. Joseph and Kankakee for 
one more direct, the advance party of the expedition, under 
the conduct of the faithful Tonty and Membre, set out from 
Fort Miami on the 21st of December, in six canoes, and 
coasted around the southern bend of the lake to the mouth 
of the little river Chicago. La Salle himself followed 
a few days later, with the rest of his men (the Indian 
contingent going by land), and rejoined the others on 



136 La Salle's Exploits Continued. 

the 4th of January, 1682. It was now the middle of winter 
in this latitude ; the earth was thickly carpeted with snow, 
and the streams were all bridged over with ice. Tonty had 
caused sledges to be constructed, on which the explorers 
conveyed their canoes, baggage, and provisions up the con- 
gealed surface of the Chicago, and thence over the portage 
to the Des Plaines, or northern fork of the Illinois, which 
was also found sheeted with ice. Filing down its smooth 
surface, in long and picturesque procession, to the head of 
the Illinois proper, and thence down that river, they passed 
on their wintry way the great town of the Illinois, now 
partly rebuilt, but temporarily deserted of its inhabitants, 
and at length came to open water at the foot of Peoria 
Lake. Here were found encamped and spending the win- 
ter a large number of Indians belonging to the great town 
above. Having relinquished for the time his project of 
building a sailing vessel for navigating the Lower Missis- 
sippi, La Salle made no attempt to complete the one previ- 
ously begun at Fort Creve-coeur ; * but, after obtaining a 
supply of maize from the natives, and leaving some orders 
with them, he and his Frenchmen resumed their canoes 
and held on their course to the mouth of the river. 

Arrived thither the 6th of February, they were obliged 
to wait on account of the floating ice in the Mississippi, 
and also for their Eastern Indians, who had fallen behind. 
By the 13th, however, these laggards had all arrived ; the 
navigation was open, and the adveiiturous leader launched 
his small flotilla on the current of the majestic river which 
was to bear him southward to the sea. The voyagers trav- 
eled rather tardily, since they carried no provisions except 
Indian corn, and were compelled to liunt and fish almost 
daily. 

About seven leagues below the mouth of the Illinois 
they found the Missouri River (called the Osage by Father 
Membre) putting in from the west, and pouring its yellow 
and turbulent flood into the clearer and more placid waters 



* On their return voyage the next summer (1682), the French ex- 
plorers are said to liave found this unlinished bark burnt. 



He Descends the Mississippi. 137 

of the Mississippi. On the 14th, they passed, on their left, 
the village of the Tamaroas, containing one hundred cabins. 
The Indians were away on the chase, but the voyagers left 
there some marks to indicate their presence and the course 
they had taken. After several more days of rowing and 
Bailing down the impetuous river they reached the conflu- 
ence of the Ouabache (Ohio), where they stopped a short 
time to replenish their stock of provisions. Re-entering 
their canoes, they advanced about sixty leagues without 
stopping to encamp, because the banks on both sides were 
low and swampy and full of rushes and underbrush. 

On the 24th of February, the commander landed at the 
Third Chickasaw Blufls, not far above the future site of 
Memphis, and the hunters were immediately sent out to scour 
the woods for game. All of them returned in good time 
except one Pierre Prudhomme. Fearing that he had been 
seized by some prowling band of the Chickasaws, who fre- 
quented that region, La Salle put several Frenchmen and 
Indians on his trail, and, in the meantime, threw up an in- 
trenchment and stockade. After nine days of active search 
Prudhomme, who had lost his way in the forest, was found 
and brought into camp in a famished condition. To con- 
sole the unfortunate hunter, La Salle named the newly built 
fort for him, and left him with a few others in charge of it. 

Again the explorers embarked; and with every day of 
their adventurous progress, the mystery of this unknown 
region waV^ more and more unveiled. The hazy sunlight, 
the mild and balmy air, the tender foliage, the opening 
flowers, the cheery notes of the birds, all betokened the 
revival of Nature, and that they had entered the realms of 
spring.* 

On the 12th of March, having advanced some forty 
leagues, and passed the village of the Mitchigameas, they 
were astonished to hear on their right the beating of In- 
dian drums and war cries, emanating from a war-dance at 
a village of the Akansas (Arkansas). Apprel lending an 
attack, La Salle, under cover of a fog, immediately with- 



* Parkman's Discovery of the Great West. 



138 La Salle's Exploits Continiied. 

drew his flotilla to the opposite shore, and there, on a pro- 
jecting point or cape, threw up an intrenchment and felled 
trees to prevent a surprise. He then directed some of his 
men to go along the bank of the river, and b}^ signs, invite 
the Indians to come over to them. This being observed 
by some chiefs of the Akansas, they sent several of their 
young men in a pirogue, which approached within gunshot 
of the French camp. Here the calumet of peace was dis- 
played, and two of the savages, standing up in their canoe, 
made signs for the Frenchmen to come to them. At this 
invitation La Salle sent one of his Canadians and six Aben- 
akis, who were received with manifestations of friendship, 
and were escorted back by six of the Akansas. La Salle 
thereupon made presents to them of tobacco and some 
goods, and they, in turn, invited him to visit their village. 
Being thus assured, he crossed the river with his entire 
force to the village called Kappa, where he stayed three 
days, and was feasted throughout with corn, beans, dried 
fruit, and iish. On the day after his arrival La Salle took 
formal possession of the country by planting a cross and 
setting up the arms of France ; whereat the villagers, not 
knowing the purport of the ceremony, showed signs of 
great joy. The explorers were surprised to And here many 
domestic fowls, and some tamed bustards, which were prob- 
ably kept for ornamental purposes. They took their de- 
parture on the 17th, and six leagues farther down the river, 
came to another village of the same nation, called Toninga, 
and three leagues beyond that still another,* the inhabitants 
of which all received them hospitably. These Arkansas 
Indians called themselves Oguappas, or Quappas, and are 
said to have formerly dwelt higher up the Mississippi. It 
was observed that they were much less morose and severe 
in their manners, and more open-hearted and generous 
than the tribes of the north, which was doubtless partly 
owing to climatic influences. 

Having been furnished with the requisite guides, the 



*.Joutel, who visited the Arkansas five years later, makes mention 
of only two villages on the Mississippi; but there was a third on the 
Arkansas, just above its mouth. 



He Descends the 3Iississipj)i. 139 

explorers thence continued their voyage, and on the 22d, 
after passing the hilly site of Vicksburg, reached the terri- 
tory of a tribe called the Taensas, who dwelt around 
a little lake or bayou, formed by the Mississippi. Being 
fatigued. La Salle sent Tonty and Menibre thither with 
presents. Arrived at the main village of the Taensas, they 
were agreeably surprised at the evidences presented of In- 
dian civilization. The houses were built of earth mixed 
with straw, and roofed with cane mats in the form of a 
dome, and were arranged around a square or quad- 
rangle. The house of the head chief was a single room 
forty feet square, and fifteen feet high to the top of the 
roof. It was entered and lighted by one large door, in 
which the chief sat in state, waiting the approach of his 
visitors. Around him were grouped some sixty old men, 
dressed in white robes made of the under bark of the mul- 
berry tree, and near him sat three of his wives clothed in 
like manner, who, to do him honor when he spoke to them, 
indulged in guttural cries. After paying their respects to 
these dignitaries, the Frenchmen were conducted to the 
temple near by, which was oval-shaped and somewhat 
larger than the royal residence. Within it were deposited 
the bones of defunct chiefs, and in the middle stood an 
altar, at the foot of which a fire was kept burning day and 
night by two old pretres, or priests, who were the directors 
of their worship. The top of the temple was surmounted 
by three roughly carved eagles, facing toward the rising 
sun ; and, surrounding it, was a mud or adobe wall studded 
with sharp pointed stakes, on which were hung the skulls 
of their enemies who had been sacrificed to the sun. The 
district around the village was planted with difierent kinds 
of fruit and nut bearing trees and wild vines, which fur- 
nished a considerable part of the subsistence of the people. 
The chief of the Taensas sent provisions to La Salle, and 
the next day paid him a formal visit at his camp. He came 
with wooden canoes, attended by the officers of his house- 
hold, to the sound of the tambour and the wild music 
of the women. The chief was clothed in a fine white 
blanket, and was preceded by two attendants carrying fans 



140 La Salle s Exploits Continued. 

of white feathers. La Salle received him with great polite- 
ness, made him a few presents, and received in return pro- 
visions, aud some of their rohes or blankets. During this 
interview the Indian potentate maintained a grave de- 
meanor, not unmixed with curiosity and marks of friend- 
ship toward the Frenchmen. 

Re-embarking on the strange river, and having ad- 
vanced twelve leagues farther, the explorers (on the 26th) 
fell in with some fishermen of the i^atchies (jSTatcliez) na- 
tion, who were enemies of the Taensas, though a kindred 
people. With his usual precaution. La Salle passed over to 
the opposite bank, and then sent Tonty to them with the 
peace calumet. The Indians were found well disposed, and 
some of them crossed the river with Tonty to the French 
camp. Although their village lay some three leagues in- 
land. La Salle did not hesitate to go thither, with Membre 
and a part of his men ; and on their arrival, they met 
a kindly welcome. The chief of this village was a 
brother of the great chief or Sun of the whole nation, 
whose village lay several leagues down the river, and about 
one league from the present city of Natchez. After spend- 
ing the night at the first village, La Salle and his party 
proceeded the next day to the town of the Sun-chief, where 
they were handsomely entertained, and, by permission, 
erected a cross bearing the king's arms. This proceeding 
was viewed with great satisfaction by the inhabitants, but 
it would have been otherwise if they had understood its 
real significance. As with the Taensas, so here among the 
Natchez, the French visitors saw substantial]}' built houses, 
a royal residence, a rude temple of the sun, with its altar of 
perpetual fire, and an established form of religious worship. 
Tlie friar Membre, in his Narrative, speaks of both tribes 
as being half-civilized, and as presenting a good field for 
missionary eiFort. 

On the way back to their camp, La Salle and party were 
accompanied by several of the head men of the Natchez, 
and also by a chief of the Koroas, or Coroas. This chief 
now conducted the explorers to his village, which was situ- 
ated ten leagues below on a pleasant eminence. Arrived 



He Reaches the Gulf of Mexico. 141 

at the village, the usual Indian feast was made, and the 
customary presents were given and received. Here the 
voyagers were told that they still had ten days' sail to the 
sea.* Leaving the Koroas on Easter Sunday, the 29th of 
March, they passed the mouth of Red River two days after- 
ward, and still keeping on their course for a distance of 
nearly forty leagues, the}' discovered some Indian fisher- 
men on the bank of the river, and immediately heard the 
beating of drums and war-cries. Four Frenchmen were 
sent forward to oiier them the calumet, but they had to re- 
turn in haste, because the natives let fly at them a shower of 
arrows. These Indians belonged to the Quinipissa tribe, 
and in consequence of their hostility La Salle continued 
his voyage two leagues lower down, when he landed at a 
small village of the Tangibaos, which had been recently 
pillaged, and contained dead bodies. 

At length, on the 6th of April, after nearly two mouths 
of navigation, the explorers arrived at a point where the 
river divides itself into three principal channels or passes, 
which branch off to the Gulf. They landed and encamped 
on the bank of the most westerly. The next day (the 7th), 
La Salle divided his 'company into three bands, to go and 
explore the difterent passes. He himself took the south- 
western, Tonty and Membre the middle one, and D'Autray f 
the eastern. As the adventurous leader now drifted down 
the narrow channel, between low alluvial banks, " the 
brackish water gradually changed to brine, and the breeze 
grew fresh with the salt breath of the sea." Then, lo ! the 
broad, heaving bosom of the great Gulf itself opened to 
his enraptured gaze, with its light-green waves foaming 
and breaking upon the marshy shore ; "without a sail, with- 
out a sign of human life." 

The three passes or outlets of the river were found to 
be large and deep, and quite salt two leagues below their 
head. With an astrolabe, which La Salle always carried 

■■An ordinary day's sail with the Indians was from ten to twelve 
leagues. 

tThe Sieur D'Autray was a son of M. Bourdon d'Autray, then lately 
deceased, but formerly procurator general of Quebec. 



142 La Salle's Exploits Continued. 

with him, he took the latitude of the mouth, and ascertained 
it to be about 28° 30' north, but kept this to himself. The 
Mississippi was roughly estimated by the explorers at eight 
hundred leagues in length, and it was reckoned that they 
had traveled at least three hundred and iifty French leagues 
from the confluence of the Illinois, which was considerably 
less than the actual distance by the river. After coasting the 
spongy and reed-fringed beach for a short distance, La Salle 
retraced his course to his camp ; and on the 8th the reunited 
party mounted to a spot of dry ground on the bank of the 
main river. Here, on the 9th of April, with all possible 
solemnity, they performed the ceremony of taking posses- 
sion of the country. A column had been prepared, to which 
was affixed the arms of France, with this inscription : 
'■'■ Louis Le, Grand ^ Boi de France et de Navarre, regne; Le 
Neuvieme AvrU, 1682." 

The Frenchmen were all mustered under arms, and, 
while the New England Indians of the party looked on in 
wondering silence, the former, led by Father Zenobe, 
chanted the Te Deum, the Exaudiat, and other hymns in 
praise to God for their great discovery. Then, amid dis- 
charges of musketry and shouts of Vive le Hoi, the column 
was planted by the Sieur de la Salle, who, standing near it, 
recited, in a loud voice, the following declaration, which had 
been drawn up at his dictation by Jacques de la Metairie, a 
Canadian notary, who accompanied the expedition from 
Fort Frontenac: 

" In the name of the most high, mighty, invincible, and 
victorious Prince, Louis, the Great King of France and 
Navarre, Fourteenth of that name, this ninth day of April, 
1682, I, in virtue of the commission of his Majesty, which 
I hold in my hand, and which may be seen by all whom it 
may concern, -have taken, and do now take, in the name of 
his majesty, and of his successors to the crown, possession of 
this country of Louisiana, the seas, harbors, ports, bays, 
adjacent straits, and all the nations, peoples, provinces, 
towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams, and 
rivers, comprised in the extent of said Louisiana, from the 
mouth of the great river St. Louis, on the eastern side, 



Takes Formal Possession of the Country. 143 

otherwise called Ohio, Alighin, or Chukagona, and this with 
the consent of the Chaouanons, Chicachas, and other people 
dwelling therein, with whom we have made alliance ; as also 
along the river Colbert, or Mississippi, and rivers which dis- 
charge themselves therein, from its source beyond the coun- 
try of the Kious, or Nadouessious, and this with their con- 
sent, and with the consent of the Motantees, Illinois, Mesi- 
gameas, batches, Koroas, which are the most considerable 
nations -dwelling therein, with whom also we have made 
alliance, either by ourselves or by others in our behalf; * ae 
far as its mouth at the sea, or Gulf of Mexico, about the 
27th degree of the elevation of the North Pole, and also to 
the mouth of the river of Palms ; upon the assurance we 
have received from all these nations, that we are the first 
Europeans who have descended or ascended the said river 
Colbert ; hereby protesting ag.ainst all those who may in 
future undertake to invade any or all of these countries, 
people, or lands above described, to the prejudice of the 
right of his majesty, acquired by consent of the nations 
herein named. Of which, and of all that can be needed, I 
hereby take to witness those who hear me, and demand an 
act of the notary, as required by law." 

" To which the whole assembly responded with shouts 
of Vive le Mot, and with salutes of fire-arms. Moreover, 
the Sieur de la Salle caused to be buried at the foot of 
the tree to which the cross was attached a leaden plate, on 
one side of which were engraved the arms of France, and, 
on the opposite, the following Latin inscription : '■Ludovicus- 
Magnus Begnat, Nono Aprilis, M.D. C. LXXXIl.' etc. . . . 

"After which the Sieur de la Salle said, that his maj- 
esty, as eldest son of the church, would annex no country 
to his crown without making it his chief care to establish 
the Christian religion therein, and that its symbol must now 
be planted; which was accordingly done at once by erecting 



* There is some obscurity in this enumeration of places and Indian 
nations, arising from ignorance of the geography of the country, and the 
consent of the aborigines is, of course, assumed ; but it appears to have 
been La Salle's design to take possession of the whole territory watered 
by the Mississippi and its numerous tributaries. 



144 La Salle s Exjploits Continued. 

a cross, before which the Vexilla, and the Domine mlvum fac 
Begem, were sung. Whereupon the ceremony was concluded 
with cries of Vwe le Roi. 

" Of all and every of the above, the said Sieur de la 
Salle having required of us an instrument, we have deliv- 
ered to him the same, signed by us, and by the undersigned 
witnesses, this ninth day of April, one thousand six hun- 
dred and eighty-two. 

" La Metairie, Notary. 

" Witnesses : De la Salle, P. Zenobe (Recollect Mission- 
ary), Henri de Tonty, Francois de Boisrondet, Jean Bour- 
don, Sieur d'Autray, Jacques Cauchois, Pierre You, Gilles 
Meucret, Jean Michel (Surgeon), Jean Mas, Jean Dulignon, 
Nicolas de la Salle."* 

These formal acts, attesting La Salle's important geo- 
graphical discovery, gave to Louis XIV. a territory far 
more extensive than his hereditary European possessions, 
.though not destined in the sequence of events to become a 
permanent appendage of the French crown. 

Having thus achieved the great object of the expedi- 
tion, our explorers began their return voyage on the 10th 
of April. As they laboriously ascended the current of the 
deep river, they were half famished, having nothing to eat 
but some potatoes and tough alligator meat. The adjacent 
banks were so low, and covered with thickets of canes and 
undergrowth, that they could not stop to hunt without 
making a long halt. On the night of the 12th, they slept at 
the village of the Tangibao8,t and the next day reached the 
district of the Quinipissas. Determined to have some maize 
at any cost, La Salle now sent out a party of his Abenakis 
to reconnoiter. They returned on the morning of the 14th, 
bringing with them four of the Quinipissas women whom 
they had captured, and thereupon La Salle went and en- 
camped opposite their village. The day after he sent one 



*See Historical Coil's of La., I'art I., pp. 48-50. An authenticated 
copy of these proceedings was afterward sent to Paris, and deposited iu 
the Department of the Marine and Colonies. 

t >Supi)OBed to have been near the site of New Orleans. 



His RetarnVoyage. 145 

of the women back with presents of merchandise to indi- 
cate his good will, and the savages bronght him in return 
a little corn. Being invited to cross the river to the vi- 
cinity of their village, the Frenchmen did so, but kept 
strictly on their guard. Before daybreak the next morn- 
ing, they were attacked in their camp by the Quinipissas, 
whom they easily repulsed, killing ten and wounding others, 
besides burning their canoes. This is the only recorded in- 
stance of the sacrifice of human life during the course of 
the expedition. 

Re-emliarking on the evening of that day (the 18tli), 
La Salle and his followers reached the village of the Ko- 
roas, about the first of May, but found them no longer 
friendl}' and obliging as before. Arrived at the district of 
the Natchez, they landed and went out to their village, but, 
seeing no w^omen there, suspected some evil design. The 
Natchez gave them food to eat, but the Frenchmen ate it 
with their guns in their hands, fearing an attack from the 
great number of warriors by whom they Avere surrounded. 
Returning hastily to their canoes, they held on their way 
up the river, stopping at the Taensas and the Arkansas, 
where they were well received. 

Leaving the Arkansas villages about the middle of May, 
La Salle pushed ahead Vv'ith two canoes of his Mohegans, but 
falling sick on the river, he stopped at Fort Prudhomme, 
and was there joined by the rest of his company on the 
first of June. His sickness being protracted and danger- 
ous, the Friar Membre remained with him to nurse him. 
Meantime, Tonty was sent forward with a few compan- 
ions to Mackinac, to arrange his afiairs. It was not until 
the first of July that La Salle recovered sufticiently to 
travel. He then resumed his voyage, and advanced by 
short stages to Fort Miami, and thence to Mackinac, 
whither he arrived early in September.* 

The Sieur de la Salle had at length triumphed over 

* For fuller details cencerning this memorable and successful expe- 
dition, see the Narratives of Membre and Tonty, and the Proces Verbal of 
La Metaire. 
10 



146 La Salle's Exploits Continued. 

every opposing obstacle, and tlioiigli not finding the 
long-sought passage to the Pacific Ocean, he had followed 
the Mississippi River to its entrance into the Mexican Gulf, 
and written his name high in the list of American dis- 
coverers. It remained for him to extend and utilize his 
discovery to the best advantage for himself and his 
sovereign. As the country of the Illinois formed the center 
of his operations, he now resolved to abandon the tedious 
and difiicult line of access to it through Canada and the 
lakes, beset by so many enemies, and to open a passage to 
his western domain by way of the Gulf and Lower Missis- 
sippi. He proposed to build a fort on the head waters of 
the Illinois, and found there a French and Indian col- 
ony, which might serve the twofold purpose of a bulwark 
against the inroads of the Iroquois, and a central point for 
the fur-trade of the western tribes. And he hoped, before 
the close of the ensuing year, to establish another fort and 
colony at the embouchure of the Mississippi, thus placing 
the trade of the whole great valley under his control. This 
new enterprise was not unworthy of the genius of La Salle. 
It was his intention on his arrival at Mackinac to have 
gone at once to Canada, and thence to France, to procure 
aid from the king in the execution of his plan ; but his 
health and circumstances not permitting, he sent Father 
Membre with dispatches, making known the extent and 
importance of his discovery. 

Soon after this a report reached La Salle, that the 
Iroquois — those fierce Romans of the wilderness — were 
about to renew their raid upon the western tribes. As 
such a hostile movement might be fatal to his projected 
colony, he deemed it the part of prudence to follow Tonty, 
whom he had already sent to the Illinois, and Joined him 
at the great Indian town. This celebrated village stood 
on the northern side of the Illinois Kiver (which here runs 
from east to west), about one mile from the modern town 
of Utica, in what is now La Salle county.* It thus occu- 
pied a part of the wide strip of bottom land lying between 



So named in inomory of the great explorer. 



Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. 147 

the river and the bliifts to the north. The large quantities 
of human bones and implements of savage life that have 
been turned up here, from time to time, by the plough- 
share of the husbandman, form the only vestiges of the 
populous tribes, who once made this attractive locality 
their principal abode. Along the southern border of the 
stream extends a range of irregular sandstone bluffs, which 
culminates a mile above the old village in a natural abut- 
ment, known to the early French explorers as Le Mocker, 
but, at a later period, as the "Starved Rock." Several 
miles below this, on the same side, occurs a canyon in 
the hills and bluffs, through which the waters of the 
Big Vermilion, or Aramoni of the French, find their way 
to those of the Illinois. Of the Starved Rock and its sur- 
roundings, Breese thus enthusiastically writes : 

"It is a most romantic spot. I have stood upon the 
'Starved Rock' and gazed for hours upon the beautiful 
landscape spread out beneath me. The undulating plains 
rich in their verdure, the rounded hills beyond clad in their 
forest livery, and the gentle river pursuing its noiseless way 
to the Mississippi and the Gulf, all in harmonious associa- 
tion, make up a picture over whicli the eye delights to 
wander; and when to these are added the recollection of 
the heroic adventurers who first occupied it — that here the 
banner of France so many years floated freely in the winds, 
that here was civilization, whilst all around them was bar- 
baric darkness — the most intense and varied emotions can 
not fail to be awakened." * 

From the river which washes its base, the huge cliff 
rises perpendicularly to an altitude of one hundred and 
twenty-six feet; and only on one side, that next to the 
land, can it be climbed with difhculty. 

To the summit of this natural citadel, embracing an 
area of half an acre, La Salle and Tonty repaired in De- 
cember, 1682, and commenced tlie work of tbrtificatiou. 
With the assistance of their men, the}' felled the stunted 
growth of pines and deciduous trees that crowned the 



* " Early History of Illinois," p. 121. 



148 La Salle's Exploits Continued. 

Rock, and with these built a rude storehouse. Then they 
cut and dragged timbers, with great labor, up the rugged 
ascent of the clift", and inclosed the top with a stout 
palisade. The fort was practically finished during that 
winter, and was named by La Salle Fort de St. Louis, in 
honor to the reigning monarch of France. It was intended 
as the nucleus of a permanent settlement, and was con- 
tinuously occupied by the French until the year 1700, and 
occasionally afterward.* 
' ^ With the completion of the fortress (in the spring of 

^ 1683) the Illinois Indians began to gather about it, looking 

upon La Salle as the great chief who was to protect them 
from the Iroquois ; and the surrounding country soon again 
became animated with the wild concourse of savage life. 
Besides the Illinois, there were also scattered along the 
river valley, and among the neighboring hills and prairies, 
the fragments of at least half a dozen other tribes, namely : 
Miamis from the sources of the Kankakee, Piankashaws 
and Weas from the Wabash, Shawnees from the Ohio 
valley, and some Abenakuis and Mohicans from New 
England. La Salle's dexterous diplomacy had thus been 
crowned with unexpected success, a result largely due to 
the general terror inspired by the ferocious Iroquois. In a 
memorial addressed to the French Minister of Marine, he 
reported the whole number of warriors around Fort St. 
Louis at four thousand, which would represent a popula- 
tion of twenty thousand persons. But this exaggerated 
number could only have been possible at particular seasons 
of the year, since those nomadic people went and came 
according as the fish, game, and wild fruits were more or 
less abundant. 

By virtue of the authority conferred in his patent, La 
Salle ruled his broad domain as a seigniory, and went 
through the form of parceling out portions of the land to 



* The outline of another fort or earthwork, which might have been 
a work of the early French, is yet to be seen on the rocky bluff about 
half a mile south of Fort St. Louis, near the edge of the prairie. See 
Baldwin's Hist, of La Salle Co., 111., p. 55. 



He Corresponds with Gorernor La Barre. 149- 

his French followers. The latter, however, wore too indo- 
lent and profligate to improve or derive any benefit from 
such grants, thinking more of their Indian concubines than 
of cultivating wild lands. To maintain his new colony, the 
chief found it necessary to furnish its members with mili- 
tary protection, and merchandise to barter for furs and 
pelts — no easy task in his situation. While he was con- 
certing and endeavoring to execute measures for the main- 
tenance and development of his colony, his rivals and ene- 
mies in Canada, from envy or short-siglited policy, were 
doing all they could to defeat him. Unfortunately, his 
friend and patron. Count Frontenac, had been removed 
from office, and Le Febvre de la Barre, a headstrong and 
avaricious old naval officer, governed in his stead. From 
the outset of his administration. La Barre show^ed himself 
a bitter enemy to La Salle. Yet the latter, busy with his 
own affairs, and not knowing or assuming to know the 
jealousy with which he was regarded, wrote to the new 
governor from Fort St. Louis, under date April 2, 1(388, 
expressing the hope that he would have from him the 
same support that he had received from his predecessor. 
After saying that his enemies would try to influence the 
governor against him, he went on to give some account of 
his explorations. He stated that, with only twenty-two 
Frenchmen, he had formed amicable relations with the 
different tribes along the Mississippi River, and that his 
royal patent authorized him to establish posts in the newly 
discovered country, and to make grants around them, as at 
Fort Frontenac, and then added : 

" The losses in my enterprise have exceeded 40,000 
crowns. I am now going four hundred leagues south-west 
of this place to induce the Chicasas to follow the Shaw- 
anoes and other tribes, and settle like them at Fort St. 
Louis. It remained only to settle French colonists here, 
and this I have already done. I hope you will not detain 
them as coureiLrs des bois when they come down to Montreal 
to make necessary purchases. I am aware that I have no 
right to trade with the tribes who descend to Montreal, 
and I shall not permit such trade to my men; nor have I 



150 La SalWs Exploits Continued. 

ever issued licenses to that effect, as luy enemies say that I 
have done." 

Despite this reasonable request on the part of La Salle, 
the men whom he had sent to Montreal on business were 
detained there, and on the 4th of June he again wrote to 
Governor La Barre, in a more urgent strain, as follows : 

" The Iroquois are again invading the country. Last 
year the Miamis were so alarmed by them that they aban- 
doned their town and fled, but on my return they came 
back, and have been induced to settle with the Illinois at 
my fort of St. Louis. The Iroquois have lately murdered 
gome families of their nation, and they are all in terror 
again. I am afraid they will take flight, and so prevent the 
Missouris and neighboring tribes from coming to settle at 
St. Louis, as they are about to do. Some of the Hurons and 
French tell the Miamis that I am keeping them here for the 
Iroquois to destroy. I pray that you will let me hear from 
you, that I may give these people some assurance of pro- 
tection before they are destro3^ed in my sight. Do not suf- 
fer my men, who have come down to the settlements, to be 
longer prevented from returning. There is great need 
here of reinforcements. I have postponed going to Mack- 
inac, because, if the Iroquois strike any blow in my absence, 
the Miamis will think I am in league with them ; whereas 
if I and the French stay among them, they will regard us 
as protectors. 

" But, monsieur, it is in vain that we risk our lives 
here, and that I exhaust my means in order to fulfill the in- 
tention of his majesty, if all my measures are crossed in the 
settlements below, and if those who go down to bring mu- 
nitions, without which we can not defend ourselves, are de- 
tained under pretexts trumped up for the occasion. If I am 
prevented from ])ringing up my men and supplies, as I am 
allowed to do by the permit of (Jount Frontenac, then my 
patent from the king is useless. It would be very hard for 
us, after having done what was required, even before the 
time prescribed, and after suffering severe losses, to liave 
our efforts frustrated by obstacles got np designedly. I 
trust that, as it lies with you alone to prevent or permit 



Corresponds with Governor La Barrc. 151 

the return of the men whom I have s'ent down, you will not 
so act as to thwart my plans, as part of the goods which I 
have sent by them belongs not to me, but the Sieur de 
Tonty, and are a part of his pay. Others are to buy muni- 
tions indispensable to our defense. Do not let my creditors 
seize them. It is for their advantage that my fort, full as 
it is of goods, should be held against the enemy. I have 
only twenty men, with scarcely one hundred pounds of 
powder. I can not long hold the country without more. 
The Illi!iois are very capricious and uncertain. ... If 
I had men enough to send out to reconnoiter the enemy, I 
would have done so before this ; but I have not enough. I 
trust that you will put it in my power to obtain more, that 
this important cokmy may be saved," 

(Dated at) "Portage de Chicagou, 4 Juni, 1683."* 
It w^as in vain, however, that La Salle appealed to Gov- 
ernor La Barre for favor or su}»port in his enterprise. That 
functionary, on the contrary, was meantime writing letters 
to the Minister of Marine and Colonies, disparaging La 
Salle's discoveries, and pretending to doubt their reality ; 
saying, that " with a score of vagabonds he had pillaged his 
countrymen and put them to ransom, and was about to set 
himself up as king, and that the imprudence of the man 
was likely to involve Canada in a war with the Iroquois." 
^These calumnies, being repeated, at length reached the ear of 
the French monarch, who, under a mistaken notion of the 
true state of affairs, wrote La Barre to this effect: "I am 
convinced like 3^ou, that the discovery of the Sieur de la 
Salle is very useless, and that such enterprises ought to be 
prevented in the future, as they tend only to debauch the 
inhabitants by the hope of gain, and to diminish the rev- 
enue from beaver skins. "f 

Apparently emboldened by the king's letter, the governor 
seized upon Fort Frontenac, under pretext that La Salle 
had not fulfilled the conditions of his grant by maintaining 
there a sutiicient garrison; and, against the remonstrances 



■*' Parkman's La Salle and the Great West, pp. 299-301. 
'\ Lettre du Roy a La Barre, bth Aout, 1683, in Margry. 



152 Let Salle's Exploits ConUnued. 

of the mortgagees of tlie fort and seigniory, lie ejected La 
Salle's lieutenant, La Forrest, and put two of liis own 
minions, La Chesnaje and La Ber, in cliarge of the fort. 
1^0 sooner were these appointees installed in office, than 
they began living oft" of La Salle's stores, and they were 
afterward accused of selling what liad been provided them 
by the government for their own benefit. But not content 
with this arbitrary stretch of power, and bent upon the 
ruin of La Salle, Gov. La Barre next sent the Sieur de 
Baugis, an officer of the king's dragoons, to Fort St. Louis, 
and made him the bearer of a letter to La Salle, requinng 
his presence at Quebec. The position of the latter had 
now become intolerable, and he resolved to proceed to 
France, in order to obtain relief from the crown. Giving 
the command at Fort St. Louis to M. de Tonty, and bid- 
ding adieu to his French and Indian retainers, La Salle 
departed for Canada about the lirst of October. Enroute, 
he met De Baugis, who informed liim of the nature of his 
errand. The former sul)mitted to the indignity with as 
good a grace as possible under the circumstances, and sent 
a letter to Tonty to receive the new commandant with due 
courtesy. Arrived at Fort St, Louis, De Baugis and Tonty 
passed the winter there together, though not very harmoni- 
ously — the one commanding in the name of La Barre, and 
the other representing the interests of La Salle. 

In the following spring they both had enough to do. 
The threatened incursion of the Iroquois had been post- 
poned, yet not abandoned. In the last of March, 1684, 
those restless and enterprising warriors, to the number of 
three hundred — takinc; advantao-e of La Salle's absence, 
and incited thereto by certain of the provincial authorities 
of New York, who wished to divei"t the fur-trade of the 
western Indians from Montreal to Albany — again invaded 
the country of the Illinois, and laid siege to the rock-seated 
fort of St. Louis. ]3ut it proved too strong for their un- 
skillful and uhsteady assault, and after six days effort they 
retreated with loss. 



He Arriva in Paris. ISH 



CIIAPTKR VIII. 

1(>84-1G87. 
LAST GREAT ENTERPRISE OF LA SALLE. 

The Sieur de la Salle arrived from the west at Quebec 
early in ISTovember, 1683, and there embarked for Old France. 
He thus, unwittingly, took a last leave of the wide and wild 
theater of Canada, where, for sixteen years, he had played 
so conspicuous a part as an explorer and negotiator with 
the Indians, sometimes achieving signal triumphs, but, more 
often, experiencing severe reverses of fortune. After an 
uneventful ocean passage, he landed at Rochelle on the 
23d of December, and thence traveled by diligence to Paris ; 
then and still the eye of France, and the gay capital of Eu- 
roj^e. Here he was joined by his lieutenant, La Forrest, 
and later on, by Zenobe Membre, both of whom " had pre- 
ceded him from Canada. Here, too, he found influential 
friends, who appreciated his merits and services to the 
crown. Among the number was his former patron. Count 
Frontenac, who, though in retirement for the time, gave 
him the benefit of his influence, still considerable, at court. 

La Salle now prepared and laid before the Marquis de 
Seignelay,* Mmister of Marine and Colonies, two memo- 
rials (including a petition for the redress of his grievances), 
setting forth his discoveries and plans for the colonization 
of Louisiana. He proposed to establish a fortified colony 
on the river Colbert, or Mississippi, some sixty leagues 
above its mouth, and to make it the principal depot for the 
trade of the great river valley. To accomplish this design, 
he asked for one war vessel of thirty guns, a few cannon 
for the forts, and authority to raise, in France, two hun- 
dred men, who were to be armed and maintained at the 



* Seignelay was a son and successor of the great Colbert, who died 
September 0, l(iS3. 



154 Last Great Enterprise of La Salle. 

king's charge for one year. He further proposed, with this 
force, and an army of Indian warriors, to be afterward 
raised by himself, to undertake the conquest of New Biscay 
(Durango), the most northerly intendency of Mexico, where 
there were not more than five liundred Spaniards. La Salle 
accompanied his memorials with a map, indicating his dis- 
coveries in the country called Louisiana, which, however, 
showed that lie still had but an imperfect knowledge of the 
geography of that region. 

In the beginning of April, 1684, La Salle was granted 
an interview with his majesty, Louis XIV., to whom he un- 
folded his fascinating scheme. The time was opportune for 
his application. The grand monarch had been long incensed 
at Spain (with which kingdom he was now again at war) 
because of her jealous exclusion of French ships from her 
American ports, and he was anxious to gain a permanent 
footing on the shores of the Mexican Gulf, within easy 
reach of his West India possessions. It was, therefore, not 
difficult to obtain the royal assent and patronage to an en- 
terprise which accorded so w^ell with his own ambition. 
Our explorer had asked for the use of only one vessel, but 
the king, in his generosity, gave him four. At the same 
time, as an act of simple justice to La Salle, he wrote a 
letter to Governor La Barre, at Quebec, directing him to 
restore to the former possession of Forts Frontenac and St. 
Louis ; and La Forrest was shortly sent back to Canada, 
empowered to re-occupy both forts in La Salle's name. 

Active preparations were now begun for the colonizing 
expedition, and agents were sent to Rochelle and Rochefort 
to collect recruits. About one hundred and fifty ex-soldiers 
were enrolled, most of wdiom, unfortunately, belonged to 
the beggar and vagabon,d class. There was, however, one 
vokuiteer soldier, named Henri Joutel, who came from La 
Salle's own town of Rouen, and whose father had been a 
gardener to the Cavaliers. He proved a trusty and useful 
ofiicer, and subsequently became the principal historian of 
the exi)edition. La Salle had given orders to engage three 
or four mechanics in each of the principal trades; but the 
selection was so poor that when they reached their destina- 



Preparations for His Expedition. 155 

tion it was found that they were very indifferent workmen. 
Eight or ten families of respectable people, and some young 
women, attracted by the prospect of matrimony, offered 
to go and help found the new colony. Their offers were 
accepted, and considerable advances were made to them, as 
well as to the artisans and soldiers. Several adventurous 
young gentlemen, of good families, also joined the expedi- 
tion as volunteers. Among them were two nephews of La 
Salle, the Sieur de Moranget, and the Sieur Cavelier, the 
latter being only fourteen years of age. 

One of the first cares of the leader had been to pro- 
vide for the ecclesiastical part of his enterprise, in which it 
became necessary to procure a special dispensation from the 
Pope. Applying to the superior-general of the Seminary 
of St. Sulpice, the latter appointed three priests to accom- 
pany him and found a new mission. They were Jean Cav- 
elier, brother of La Salle, M. Chefdeville, his relative, and 
M. de Maiulle, called Dainmaville by Joutel. As the Re- 
collets had for a number of years actively seconded the de- 
signs of La Salle, he made it a point to take as many as 
three of those fathers with him also. He accordingly ap- 
plied to the superior of that order, who granted him the 
religloas he desired, namely: Father Zenobious Membre, 
superior of the mission, Anastasius Douay, and Maximus 
Le Clercq. 

Such was the personnel of the soldiers, artisans, emi- 
grants, priests, and adventurers, who were to plant the 
standard of France and the cross on the wilderness shores 
of far-away Louisiana. It were needless to observe that, 
for the most part, they were ill-adapted by discipline or 
experience for the stern task set before them. 

The fleet, which was furnished by the king, consisted 
of four vessels, namely : The Joly, a royal ship or frigate, 
carrying thirty-six guns ; the Belle, a small frigate of six 
guns ; the Airaable, a store-ship ; and the St. Francois, a 
ketch of two masts. La Salle liad asked to be given sole 
command of the expedition, with a subordinate officer and 
two or three pilots to navigate the ships, as he might direct. 
But the Marquis de Seiguelay gave the command to Capt. 



156 Last Great Enterprise of La Salle. 

Beaiijeu, of the royal navy, whose authority was restricted 
to the management of the vessels at sea, while La Salle 
was to prescribe the route they were to take and com- 
mand on shore. This division of authority displeased 
both men, and caused chafing and bickering between 
them from the start. Yet it was perhaps the best that 
Minister Seignelay could do under the circumstances, as 
La Salle himself was without nautical skill or experience. 
Beaujeu was a Franco-Norman, and an otiicer of approved 
valor and experience, but envious, self-willed, irascible, 
and utterly wanting in the qualifications requisite to the 
founding of a distant colony. Moreover, his wife is said to 
have been dominated by the Jesuits, a circumstance that 
excited La Salle's suspicion. Amid the hurry and bustle of 
the embarkation. La Salle did not forget to write to his 
aged mother a farewell letter, which lias been preserved 
among the family papers of the Caveliers. 

All things having been provided necessary for the voy- 
age, the little fleet, bearing about two hundred and eighty 
persons, including the crews of the vessels, sailed from 
Eochelle on the 24th of July, 1684. When two or three days 
out, the bowsprit of the frigate Joly broke, which compelled 
Capt. Beaujeu to return to the portof Chef deBois to procure 
a new one. This accomi»lished, the fleet again put to sea 
on the first day of August, steering to the south, southwest. 
After weathering the Lshind of Madeira, they entered the 
region of the trade winds, and encountered two separate 
storms, the second of which dispersed the vessels. The Joly, 
in which La Salle himself had taken passage, being a faster 
sailer than the others, reached Petit Goave, on the west coast 
of St. Domingo, on the 27th of September, and was soon after 
joined by the Aimable and the Belle. The St. Francois, laden 
with ])rovisions, ammunition, and tools for the new colony, 
lagged behind, and put in at Port de Paix, whence she 
sailed to join the rest of the fleet; but during the night, 
while her captain and crew thought themselves safe, they 
were surprised by two Spanish jtiraguas, which captured 
the ketch and her cargo. The loss of this vessel was prima- 
rily due to the negligence of Beaujeu, who had refused to 



ISca Voyage to the Gulf of Mexico. 157 

stop at Port de Paix, although requested to do so by La 
Salle. This was the first of the series of disasters that befell 
the expedition. It depressed the hopes of the colonists and 
distressed the mind of La Salle, who, shortly before his ar- 
rival in St. Domingo, had been seized by a violent fever, 
which afterward afiected his brain, and brought him to the 
verge of the grave. . 

Owing to the continued illness of La Salle and other | / 

causes, the remaining vessels of his expedition were de- 
tained at the port of Petit Goave, for over six weeks. 
During this time they laid in fresh provisions, a store of 
Indian corn, and all kinds of domestic fowls to stock tlie 
new colony. The French governor-general of the Isles, 
and the governor and intcndant of St. Domingo, favored 
the enterprise in every way, and endeavored to restore a 
good understanding between La Salle and Beaujeu, so 
necessary to the success of the undertaking. Meanwhile, 
the soldiers and most of the crews plunged into every kind 
of debauchery and intemperance, so common in the West 
Indies, and thus contracted various diseases, of which some 
died in the island, and others never recovered. 

At length, on the 25th of November, the squadron, 
now consisting of three vessels, weighed anchor and again 
put to sea. La Salle and his trustiest followers sailing in the 
store-ship Aimable. They pursued their way past the Cay- 
man Isles, touched at the Isle of Pines to take in water, 
and thence sailed to Cape San Antonio at the western ex- 
tremity of Cuba, where they anchored. Attracted by the 
beauty of the spot, the French landed and rested here for 
two days, and appropriated to their use some wine which 
had been left by the Spaniards. For fear of injury by 
northerly winds, said to be prevalent at the entrance to the 
Gulf of Mexico, on approaching it, they twice lay to, but 
happily entered on the first of January, 1685, when a sol- 
emn mass of thanksgiving was celebrated by Father Anas- 
tase Douay. The voyagers were now upon that great south- 
ern sea, over which no French vessel, carrying the national 
colors, had ever before sailed. Steering northward, they 
arrived on the 15th in sight of the Florida coast, when a 



158 Last Great Enterprise of La Salle. 

violent wind eonipelled the Joly to stand off", but the Aima- 
ble and Belle followed close to the shore. 

La Salle had been told in St. Domingo that the Gulf 
Stream ran with incredible velocity toward the Bahama 
channel. This false information, together with the incor- 
rect sailing directions he had received, set him entirely es- 
tray ; for thinking himself much farther north than he really 
was, he not only passed Appalache Bay without recogniz- 
ing it, but followed the coast ^vestward far beyond the out- 
let of the Mississippi, and would have continued to follow 
it, if he and his fellow voyagers had not perceived by its 
turning south, and by the latitude, that they had passed 
the hidden river. It will be remembered that when La 
Salle w^as at the mouth of the Mississippi three years be- 
fore, he had obtained its latitude, approximately, but not 
the longitude. Indeed, the mariners of that day knew lit- 
tle or nothing about longitude. 

The Aimable and the Belle at last came to anchor, 
about the middle of February, at Espiritu Santo Bay, on 
the coast of Texas, and there awaited the arrival of Capt. 
Beanjeu, who joined them a few days later with the Joly. 
A conference was now held by the commanders, which re- 
sulted in their resolving to retrace their course, and they 
returned ten or twelve leagues to a bay, which they named 
St. Louis, since known as St. Bernard, or Matagorda. 
As provisions began to fail, Beanjeu declined to further 
continue the search on that exposed coast, unless his crew 
was provisioned from the stores of the colonists; to which 
La Salle objected. Finally, the Sieur La Salle, impatient 
of further delay, anxious to get rid of his disagreeable col- 
league and command alone, and thinking, that the lagoons 
of the coast might connect with the most westerly arm or 
outlet of the Mississippi, decided to disembark his troops 
and colonists on the western shore of Matagorda Bay. To 
this purpose, boats were sent to sound and buoy the inlet to 
the bay. This being done, the little frigate Belle was taken 
in without accident on the 18th of February. On the 20tli 
the Aimable weighed anchor and started throuo-h the nar- 
row channel leading into the bay; but lier captain, M. 



He Lands on the Coast of Texas. 159 

d'Aigron, being on ill terms with La Salle, disregarded his 
orders, and either through gross negligence or design drove 
the vessel on the shoals, where she stranded, so that she 
could not be got off. 

La Salle was some little distance from the seashore 
when this deplorable disaster happened, and was on the 
point of returning to remedy it, when he saw a large party 
of wild Indians approaching. This necessitated his putting 
his men under arms, and the roll of their drums put the 
savages temporarily to flight, but he had trouble with them 
afterward. The storeship remained stranded for three 
weeks or more, without going to pieces, though full of 
w^ater. The men saved all they could from her in boats, 
including a quantity of flour and powder, but could ouly 
reach her in fair weather. At length a gale arose, which 
completely wrecked the ship, and scattered the residue of 
her cargo on the waters of the bay. 

After the landing had been eventually effected, which 
included eight iron cannon from the hold of the Aimable, 
Beaujeu prepared to depart for France. Although he and 
La Salle had been at variance throughout the long voyage, 
their official relations became more amicable at its close. 
He seems, at heart, to have wished La Salle and his enter- 
prise well, and was no doubt anxious to have it appear that 
he had discharged his duty as naval conductor of the expe- 
dition, so as to avoid censure from the Minister of Marine. 
Before quitting this low and dangerous coast, it is stated 
that he offered to go to Martinique and return with addi- 
tional provisions for the colony, but that La Salle, from 
motives of pride and over self-reliance, declined the ofter.* 
On the 12th or 14tli of March, after a polite leave-taking, 
Beaujeu sailed away in the Joly, taking with him several 
of the better class of the colonists, wlio had lost heart in 
the enterprise. 

The remaining adventurers, to the number of about 
one hundred and eighty, now found themselves stranded 



® See the correspondence between Beaujeu and La Salle, printed in 
Vol. II of Margry's Publications. 



160 Last Great Enterprise of La Salle. 

upon the borders of an unknown wilderness, nearly five 
hundred miles from the place of their original destination, 
and most of them were suffering, more or less, from dysen- 
tery and other diseases contracted during their long sea- 
voyage. The first labor of the commander was to throw up 
an iiitrenchment on the sandy beach, and to erect therein 
a temporary building in which to shelter his people and 
goods, and to protect them from the depredations of the 
neighboring savages. The house was constructed of drift- 
wood, cast up by the sea, and of the timbers and plank 
from their wrecked ship. Leaving Joutel and Moranget 
with a hundred men at this naval camp, La Salle next set 
out with some fifty others, including his brother and the 
Fathers Zenobe and Maxime, to explore the interior of the 
bay, and seek a proper place to locate his colony. The 
captain or pilot of the Belle had orders to sound the bay 
and take his vessel in as far as he safely could. He accord- 
ingly advanced along the shore about twelve leagues, and 
anchored opposite a point which took the name of Hurler, 
from the ofiacer who was appointed to command there. 
This post served as a station between the camp on the 
seashore and the fort, which La Salle and his party went 
(on the 2d of April) to establish at the western head of the 
bay. The site of the latter was fixed on a rising ground, 
two leagues up a small river called LaVache, now La Vaca, 
and in latitude about twenty-seven degrees north. The 
building of the fort was a work of severe and protracted 
labor, since there was no wood within a league, and all the 
timbers had to be cut and transported from a distance, 
many of them being brought from the wreck of the Aimable. 
By the 21st of April (Easter eve) the fort was so far 
advanced as to be ready for partial occupancy, and the 
Sieur de La Salle returned to the main camp. The suc- 
ceeding three or four days were devoted to celebrating with 
all possible solemnity, under the circumstances, the festi- 
vals of the church, after which preparations were made 
for removing the women and children, and such of the sick 
as could be moved, to the new establishment. Meanwhile, 
however, a few of the soldiers had deserted, and others had 



Environs of his Texan Fort. 161 

died of the diseases contracted at St. Domingo, notwith- 
standing all the care they received, and the relief afibrded 
by the use of broths, preserves, and wine.* 

When the fort was completed, La Salle gave to it his 
favorite name of St. Louis. The naval camp at the mouth 
of the bay was then abandoned, and Joutel and his com- 
mand rejoined the main body of the colonists. The fort 
was mounted with eight pieces of rusty old cannon, and 
had a sort of magazine under ground for the safe deposit 
of the more valuable eftects, in the event of fire. Here, 
then, in this lone spot on the Texan coast, the ensigu of 
France was flung to the winds of heaven ; here a rude 
chapel was raised, in which masses w^ere said and vespers 
chanted by the missionary priests and friars; and here, too, 
in the grassy prairie hard by, a common field was opened, 
planted, and tilled for the maturing of crops. By this early — / 

yet transient occupation, the King of France gained a" ^tAvv''-**^ ; 
color of claim to the country which, though contested by. -7 /,„^^ o^ou 

Spain, was never finally relinquished until the vast and in- ' .^. ,,^ 

definitely defined territory of Louisiana was ceded to the . -^•"^"^^ 
government of the United States. ) i^ fH 

The scenery environing Fort St. Louis was not without . /f/ 
its charms, and served in a measure to relieve that feeling ^ ' 
of despondency arising in the minds of the colonists from r^'^^'^f-^jMr^v^ 
their isolation and misfortunes. At the foot of the stock- 
ade inclosure flowed the river, swarming with fish and 
water-fowl, and beyond that the bay, bordered by reedy 
marshes, stretched away to the south-east; while to the 
south-west lay two large ponds, with a forest in the dis- 
tance. To the north and west rolled a sea of grassy prairie, 
dotted at certain seasons with grazing bufi[alo and wild goats, 



* See I-e Clercq's (P'ather Chretien) "First Establishment of the 
Faith in New France" (Vol. II), for an account of La Salle's attempt to 
reach the Mississippi by sea, and of the establishment of a French col- 
ony at St. Louis or ^Matagorda Bay. It is, in some respects, the best con- 
temporaneous narrative extant of that historical voyage. The discreet 
father only liiuts at the unfortunate disagreement between La Salle and 
Beaujeu, but this matter is set forth in detail by Joutel and others. 
11 



162 Last Great Enterprise of La Salle. 

and decked with the heautiful wild flowers for which Texas 
is still remarkable. It was, in truth, as since demonstrated, 
a goodly land for the habitation of civilized man. But the 
degraded aborigines, with such uncouth names as Guoaquis, 
Guinets, Bahamos, and Quealomouches, who then roamed 
the coast of this southern country, had no thought of cul- 
tivating the soil, or of any other useful labor, beyond the 
requirements of a most meager subsistence. 

Having provided as well as he could for the comfort 
and safety of his people, La Salle now prepared to renew his 
search for the hidden river. But he iirst found it necessary 
to make open war on the neighboring tribes of Indians, 
whose repeated acts of hostility gave him no peace ; and he 
accordingly set out for this purpose on the 13th of October, 
with sixty soldiers, wearing wooden corslets to protect 
them against the arrows of the savages. In different en- 
gagements with them he killed some, wounded others, and 
put others still to flight. The execution thus done among 
the natives inspired them with terror, and rendered the 
colony somewhat more secure than before. 

About the 31st of October, 1685, putting Joutel in com- 
mand at the fort, with provisions for several months. La Salle 
and his brother, with some fifty well-armed men, started os- 
tensibly to seek the mouth of the Mississippi. The accounts 
we have of this long and rambling journey are rather 
vague and contradictory. The leader himself was reticent 
as to his plans and purposes, and the story told by the elder 
Cavelier is not very intelligible. They first passed eastward 
along the northern shore of the bay, and examined the out- 
lets of the rivers emptying into it, none of which seemed 
large enough to form an arm of the Mississippi. La Salle 
thence turned northward and westward and traveled the 
country a long distance, in the hope, it would seem, 
of reaching the borders of Mexico. At length, on the 
13th of February, 1686, liaving come to a large river, 
he built a small fort on its banks, in which he left a 
part of his men, and with the others continued to explore 
the country in the direction of Mexico. Still advancing, 
he visited several villages and tribes, who treated him 



His Wanderings in Texas. 163 

kindly, and from whom he gained considerable information 
in regard to the Spaniards, who were generally hated by 
the Indians in Texas. Under other circumstances, it would 
have been no very difficult task to have gathered an army 
of native warriors and led them across the Rio del i^orte ; 
but La Salle was without horses and a sufficiency of men 
to prosecute his contemplated invasion of New Biscay.* 
He was away on this expedition longer than he had expected, 
owing to delays in rafting over so many rivers, and the ne- 
cessit}^, wherever he went into camp, of throwing up in- 
trenchments to guard against Indian assaults. Retracing 
their tortuous course, the leader and his followers reached 
Fort St. Louis in the latter part of March, tattered, weather- 
beaten, and worn out by long marchings and vigils, but 
bringing with them a welcome supply of fresh meat for the 
other colonists. 

Shortly before this the Belle, the only remaining vessel 
of the colony, was lost on the farther side of the bay, though 
it was some weeks before particulars of the accident were 
received at the fort. Through a lack of precaution on the 
part of those in charge of her, she was wrecked with all her 
stores, consisting of thirty-six barrels of flour, a quantity of 
powder, some tools, and a lot of the clothing and personal 
effects belonging to La Salle. The priest Chefdeville, the 
pilot, and four of the crew escaped with difficulty in a 
canoe, but managed to save some of the papers and luggage 
of their chief. Meantime, La Salle himself fell seriously ill, 
the fatigues of his great journey, and the tidings of this 
last misfortune, having overcome his physical strength. 
" In truth (says the priest Cavelier, in his Relation du Voy- 
age)^ after the loss of the vessel, which deprived us of our 
only means of returning to France, we had no resource but 
in the firm guidance of my brother, whose death each of us 
would have regarded as his own." So long as the little 
frigate remained. La Salle had the means of following 
along the coast and finding the mouth of the Mississippi, 

*According to Mr. Shea, La Salle was lured by Penaloso, a renegade 
Spanish governor of New Mexico, to undertake the conquest of the rich 
mines in northern Mexico. 



164 Last Great Enterprise of La Salle. 

and he might also have sailed to St. Domingo and ob- 
tained succor for his colony. But now, all his plans being 
disconcerted and his affairs brought to a crisis, he resolved 
to try and reach Canada by land. 

This resolution was the result of dire necessity, and he 
must have anticipated the difficulties and hazards likely 
to attend its execution. Preparations were speedily made 
for the journey ; and on April 22, 1686, after celebrating the 
divine mysteries in the little chapel. La Salle issued from 
the gate of the fort, accompanied by his brother, his nephew 
Moranget, the friar Douay, the younger Duhaut, a German 
from Wittemburg named Hiens,* and others to the number 
of twenty in all. They traveled on foot, each man carrying 
his pack and weapons on his shoulders, and shaped their 
general course to the north-east. Crossing the Colorado on 
a raft, they journeyed through a pleasant country of alter- 
nate prairie and woodland, decked with wild flowers, and 
clothed in the fresh green livery of spring. After passing 
the Brazos and Trinity, and other smaller rivers, they 
reached the habitations of the Cenis Indians (then a 'power- 
ful tribe, but now long since extinct), where they experi- 
enced a friendly reception. Here the travelers were sur- 
prised to see saddles, bridles, clothing, and various other 
articles of Spanish manufacture, which these Indians had 
obtained from their allies, the Comanches, who inhabited 
the country bordering New Mexico. After quitting the 
Cenis village, La Salle and his company advanced eastward 
as far as the river Neches,! in the vicinity of which both 
himself and nephew were attacked by malarial fever. This 
mishap caused a delay of some two months, and proved 
fatal to the success of the expedition. When the sick leader 
was sufficiently convalescent to travel, he found that his am- 
munition was well nigh spent, and that four of his men had 

*Hiens was an ox-bufcanecr, who had joined La Salle's expedition 
at Petit Goave, in St. Domingo. 

tThe name Tejas or Texas was first applied (b3' the Spaniards) as a 
local designation to a spot on the river Neches, in the Cenis territory, 
whence it extended to the whole country. — Yoakum's History of Texas, 
p. 52. 



. His Journey to the Cenis Villages. 165 

deserted to the Assonis Indians. Under these untoward 
circumstances, no better alternative presented itself than 
to return to Fort St. Louie. Their return march was 
greatly facilitated by the use of some horses, which La 
Salle had bought of the Cenis, and they met with no serious 
accident on the way, excepting the loss of one of their men, 
who was seized by an alligator while attempting to cross a 
large river, supposed to have been the Colorado. 

The temporary excitement produced in the little band 
of colonists by the return of their chief soon gave way to 
a feeling of dejection akin to despair, and La Salle had a 
hard task to sustain their drooping spirits. But the jour- 
ney to Canada, by way of the Illinois, was their only hope; 
and the chief, after a brief rest, prepared to renew the at- 
tempt. In the month of November, while thus occupied, he 
was again taken sick with a flux, which prostrated him for 
four or five weeks. At the end of this time he was once 
more able to travel, and all hands at the fort were busied in 
making from their scanty stores an outfit for his traveling 
party. Christmas day again came, and was solemnly ob- 
served. " There was a midnight mass in the chapel, where 
Membre, Douay, Cavelier, and their priestly brethren, stood 
in vestments strangely contrasting with the rude temple 
and ruder garb of the worshipers. And as Membre ele- 
vated the consecrated wafer, and the lamps burned dim 
through the clouds of incense, the kneeling group drew 
from the daily miracle such consolation as true Catholics 
alone can know." * 

It was on the morning of the 7th of January, 1687, 
that La Salle mustered his small company of adventurers 
for this his last journey. The five horses purchased from 
the Cenis Indians were brought into the inclosed area of the 
fort, and loaded for the march. Assembled here was the 
poor remnant of the colony — those who were to go, and 
those who were to stay behind. The latter numbered some- 
thing over twenty persons. There was the Sieur Barbier, 
who was to command in place of Joutel ; the Marqu^is 



*Parkman'8 La Salle and the Great West, p. 373. 



166 Last Great Enterprise of La Salle. 

de Sablonniere, a dissolute young nobleman; the two friars, 
Membre and Le Clercq, and the young priest Chefdeville ; 
also a surgeon, some few soldiers and laborers, seven women 
and girls, and a few children — all of whom were " doomed 
in this deadly exile to wait the issues of the journey, and 
the possible arrival of a tardy succor." La Salle had pre- 
viously caused an earthwork to be throw^i up around the 
habitations of the colonists adjoining the fort, and had 
taken other precautions for their safety. He now made 
them a farewell address, full of touching pathos, and 
delivered with that engaging air which this unhappy man 
sometimes assumed, and which moved them all to tears. 
Then followed the painful parting scene. " We separated 
from each other," says Joutel, " in a manner so tender and 
so sad, that it seemed w^e all had the presentiment that we 
should never meet again." * At length, equipped and armed 
for the journey, the adventurers filed from the gate, crossed 
the little river La Vache, and held their slow march over 
the prairie to the north-east, " till intervening woods shut 
Fort St. Louis forever from their sight." 

La Salle's traveling party was made up of some good 
and several bad men, and was perhaps not w^holly of his 
own selection. It comprised his brother and their two 
nephews, Moranget, and the boy Cavelier, now aged about 
seventeen; the friar, Anastase Douay; the trusty soldier, 
Joutel ; Duhaut, a man of reputed respectable birth and 
education ; Liotot, the surgeon of the company ; Hiens, the 
German and ex-buccaneer; the Sieur de Marie; Teissier, a 
pilot ; L'Archeveque, a servant of Duhaut, and a few 
others, numbering in all seventeen. Besides these, there 
was Nika, La Salle's Shawanoe hunter, who, together with 
another Indian, " had twice crossed the ocean with him, 
and still followed his fortunes with an admiring though 
undemonstrative fidelity." f 

Pursuing the same route as before, the travelers ad- 
vanced over a level country of grassy prairies and wooded 



* Joutel's Journal Historique. 

tParkman's La Salle and the Great West, p. 397. 



Murder of his Ncpheio, Moranget. 167 

river bottoms, meeting on the way a war party of the 
Bahamos, and several other bands of Indians, more or less 
friendly. They successively crossed the Colorado and the 
Brazos in a portable canoe covered with bullocks' hides, and, 
after passing several other smaller streams, encamped near 
a western tributary of the Trinity, on the 15th of March. 

La Salle was now in the vicinity of some corn and 
beans, which he had concealed in a pit during his former 
expedition, and he sent seven of his men to find it. They 
were Duhaut, Liotot, Hiens, Teissier, L'Archeveque, Nika, 
the Indian hunter, and Saget, a servant of the chief. They 
found and opened the cache, but its contents were unfit for 
use. In returning, however, they killed two buifaloes, and 
sent Saget back to the main camp for horses to bring in 
the meat. The next day La Salle ordered Moranget and 
De Marie to go with his servant and the horses to the 
hunters' camp. Proceeding on their errand, the latter 
found the carcasses of the buffaloes cut up and placed upon 
a scaffold to dry. In accordance with a custom among 
hunters, Duhaut and his companions had put aside the 
marrow bones and other choice bits of the game for their 
own use. Seeing this, the hot-headed Moranget, whose 
quarrelsome temper had before involved him in difficulties, 
fell into a rage and abused and menaced Duhaut and his 
friends, and ended by appropriating both the smoked meat 
and the bones to himself. This outburst of passion seems 
to have kindled into an avenging flame an old grudge 
which Duhaut had cherished toward Moranget, as well as 
his uncle. 

Duhaut thereupon withdrew, and privately conspired 
with Liotot, Hiens, and others of their party, upon a bloody 
revenge. Waiting until night, when the Sieur Moranget, 
their principal victim, after taking his turn at watch, had 
fallen asleep, the conspirators silently approached the spot 
where he lay, and while the others stood by with their guns 
cocked, Liotot brained him with an ax. I^ika, the Indian, 
and Saget, La Salle's footman, were dispatched in the same 
manner. The last two died without a struggle, but it ap- 
pears to have been otherwise with Moranget. The sacrifice 



168 Last Great Enterprise of La Salle. 

of the unoffending Nika and Saget shows the deep-seated 
villany of the assassins ; but it was no doubt made in order 
to cut off all communication with the chief, whom they 
had singled out as their next and main victim. And so 
it often happens that the commission of one bloody crime 
leads on to another, and still another, until at last the per- 
petrator expiates his offenses with his own life. 

Meanwhile, La Salle himself was at the main camp, 
six miles or more away, impatiently waiting the return of 
his nephew and party. Two days were thus passed in 
painful suspense, when, on the morning of the 19tli of 
March, he started out in search of his missing relative and 
servant, accompanied only by Father Douay and an Indian 
guide. Joutel, whom he had at first intended to take with 
him, was left in charge of the camp, with instructions to 
keep a strict watch ; for it seems that La Salle, always 
more or less suspicious, had observed the mutinous spirit 
of some of his men. 

"All the way," writes Father Douay, " he conversed 
with me of matters of piety, grace, and predestination; ex- 
patiating on all his obligations to God for having saved him 
from so many dangers during the last twenty years that he 
had traversed America. . . . Suddenly, I saw him 
plunged into a deep melancholy, for which he himself could 
not account; he was so troubled that I did not know him 
any longer ; (and) as this state was far from being natural 
to him, I roused him from his lethargy. Two leagues after, 
, we found the bloody cravat of his lackey ; he perceived two 
eagles flying over his head, and at the same time discovered 
some of his people on the edge of the river, which he ap- 
proached, asking for his nephcAv. They answered in broken 
words, showing us where we should find him. We pro- 
ceeded some steps along the bank to the fatal spot, where 
two of these murderers were hidden in the grass, one on 
each side with guns cocked ; one missed Monsieur de la 
Salle, the other firing at the same time shot him in the 
head ; he died an hour after, on the 9th of March, 1687. 

*' I expected the same fate, but this danger did not oc- 
^cupy my thoughts ; penetrated with grief at so cruel a spec- 



His Assassination. 169 

tacle, I saw him fall a step from me, with his face all full of 
blood ; I watered it with my tears, exhorting him to the 
best of my power to die well. He had confessed and ful- 
filled his devotion just before we started ; he had still time 
to recapitulate a part of his life, and I gave him absolution. 
. . . Meanwhile his murderers, as much alarmed as I, 
began to strike their breasts and detest their blindness. I 
could not leave the spot where he had expired without hav- 
ing buried him, as well as I could, after which I raised a 
cross over his grave." * 

Such is the simple and pathetic narrative of the only 
eye-witness, who has given us an account of La Salle's un- 
happy death. So much of this narration as relates to the 
alleged manifestation of remorse by his murderers, to the 
burial of his body and the erection of a cross over it, is ex- 
pressly contradicted by Joutel, and is not sustained by any 
writing of the elder Cavelier. Indeed, it is affirmed that 
Douay told a different story at the time ; and it would seem 
that he invented these fictions to soften the atrocity of the 
crime itself, as also to support liis own character as a priest 
and man of resolution. As supplementary to the above, 
we here give M. Joutel's account of the catastrophe : 

" He (La Salle) seemed to have some presage of his 
misfortune, inquiring of some whether the Sieurs Liotot, 
Hiens, and Duhaut had not expressed some discontent. 
And not hearing any thing of it, he could not forbear set- 
ting out the 20th, with Father Anastasius (Douay) and an 
Indian, leaving me the command in his absence, and charg- 
ing me to go the rounds about our camp, to prevent being 
surprised, and to make a smoke for him to direct his way 
in case of need. When he came near the dwelling (camp) 
of the murderers, looking out sharp to discover something, 
he observed eagles fluttering about a spot not far from them, 
which made him believe they had found some carrion, and 
he fired a shot, which was the signal of his death and for- 
warded it. 



* See Douay's Narrative, in Shea's Discov. and Explo. of the Mies. 
Val., pp. 213-14. 



170 Last Great Enterprise of La Salic. " 

" The conspirators, hearing the shot, concluded it was 
M. de la Salle, who was come to seek them. They made 
ready their arms, and provided to surprise him, Duhaut 
passed the river, with Larcheveque. The first of them spy- 
ing M. de la Salle at a distance, as he was coming toward 
them, advanced and hid themselves among the high weeds, 
to wait his passing by ; so that M. de la Salle, suspecting 
nothing, and having not so much as charged his piece again, 
«aw the aforesaid Larcheveque at a good distance from him, 
and immediately asked for his nephew, Moranget, to which 
Larcheveque answered that he was along the river. At the 
same time the traitor, Duhaut, tired his piece and shot M. 
de la Salle through the head, so that he dropped down dead 
on the spot, without speaking one word. . . . This is 
the exact relation of that murder, as it was presently after 
told me by Father Anastasius. 

" The shot which had killed M. de la Salle was also 
a signal of the murder to the (other) assassins for them to 
draw near. They all repaired to the place where the 
wretched dead corpse lay, which they barbarously stripped 
to the shirt, and vented their malice in vile and opprobri- 
ous language. The surgeon, Liotot,* said several times, in 
scorn and derision : ' There thou liest, great bashaw ! 
There thou liest!' In conclusion, they dragged it naked 
among the bushes, and left it exposed to the ravenous 
wild beasts,"t 

The precise locality of this gloomy tragedy, or suc- 
cession of tragedies, can not now be determined. It is said 
(correctly, we think) to have occurred on a small tributary 
of the Trinity, since it was only about three days slow jour- 
ney from thence to the main trunk of that river. But Mr. 
Sparks, in his Life of La Salle, says, " the place was proba- 
bly on one of the streams flowing into the Brazos from the 

* According to Tonty's Relation, Liotot's grievance against La Salle 
was, that in the journey along the sea-coast, he had compelled the 
brother of Liotot, who could not keep up, to return to the camp, and 
that in returning alone he was killed by the savages; but this is not 
confirmed by Joutel. 

tSee Joutel's Journal, printed in the Hist. Coil's of La., edited by 
B. F. French, N. Y., 184G, Part L, pp. 143, 144. 



His Character. 171 

^ast, — perhaps forty or fifty miles north of the present 
town of Washington, Texas." 

Thus violently ended, at the age of forty-three years 
;and four months, the extraordinary career of Robert Cave- 
lier, Sieur de la Salle; a man celebrated alike for his 
•daring and discoveries, his merits and misfortunes. We 
could have wished that his life had been longer spared, so 
that he might have found means to extricate the remnant 
of his Texan colony from impending destruction. The 
character of La Salle has been drawn by many difterent 
pens, yet, in general, they have found it easier to sum up 
his defects and failures than to set in a proper light his 
transcendent virtues. His reputation as a successful ex- 
plorer and colonizer would probably have stood higher 
with his contemporaries and posterity, if he had never em- 
barked from France on his last expedition to the Mis- 
sissippi; but then his name would be divested of much 
of that dramatic and tragic interest with which it is en- 
shrouded. 

Hennepin, in the preface to his ''New Discovery," 
written chiefly for Dutch and English readers, uses this harsh 
language in regard to La Salle's melancholy fate : " God 
knows that I am sorry for his unfortunate death ; bitt the 
judgments of the Almighty are just, for that gentleman 
was killed by one of his own men, who were at last sensi- 
ble that he exposed them to visible dangers without any 
necessity, and for his private design." 

Again, in his " Nouveau Voyage," or continuation of 
his " New Discovery,"* he writes in a difterent strain, as 
follows : " Thus fell the Sieur Robert Cavelier de la Salle, 
a man of considerable merit, constant in adversities, fear- 
less, generous, courteous, ingenious, and capable of every- 
thing. He labored for twenty years together to civilize 
the savage humors of a great number of barbarous people 
among whom he traveled, and had the ill-hap to be mas- 
sacred by his own servants, whom he had enriched. He 
died in the vigor of his age, in the midddle of his course, 



* English edition, London, 1699, p. 34. 



172 Last Great Enterprise of La Salle. 

before he could execute the design he had formed on Xew 
Mexico." Elsewhere, in the same work, Hennepin further 
sajs : " La Salle was a person qualified for the greatest un- 
dertakings, and may be justly ranked amongst the most 
famous travelers that ever were." 

Henri Joutel, the fullest and most reliable historian of 
La Salle's Texas expedition, has drawn the character of his 
commander in these measured words : 

" lie had a capacity and talent to make his enterprises 
successful ; his constancy and courage, and extraordinary 
knowledge in the arts and sciences, which rendered him fit 
for any thing, together with an indefatigable habit of body^ 
which made him surmount all difiiculties, would have pro- 
cured a glorious issue to his undertaking, had not all these 
excellent qualities been counterbalanced by too haughty a 
behavior, which sometimes made him insupportable, and 
by a rigidness to those under him, which at last drew on 
him their implacable hatred, and was the occasion of his 
death.* 

This careful estimate seems just and impartial, though 
Joutel did not know La Salle at his best, but rather when 
his constitution was broken by disease, and his temper 
soured by misfortunes. Moreover, he lived too near him to 
fully appreciate the magnitude and significance of his serv- 
ices as a pioneer of civilization in North America. From 
the charge of harshness and tyranny toward his men. La 
Salle, in a letter written to a business correspondent some 
five years before his death, thus defends himself: 

" The facility I am said to want is out of place with this 
people, who are libertines for the most part; and to indulge 
them means to tolerate blasphemy, drunkenness, lewdness, 
and license, incompatible with any kind of order. It will 
not be found that I have, in any case whatever, treated any 
man harshly, except for blasphemies and other such crimes 
openly committed. ... I am a Christian, and do not 
want to bear the burden of their crimes." 



* Joutel'e Journal Hhtorique. 



His Character. 173 

Although proud, shy, cold, and austere in his general 
deportment, La Salle was not incapable of inspiring strong 
attachments among those to whom he gave his confidence, 
and who had the penetration to discern the lofty bearing of 
his genius. He required every sacrifice at the hands of the 
men in his employ, but he himself led the way in every 
difficulty and every danger. He was something of an en- 
thusiast, and about his various schemes and enterprises 
there was much that appeared visionary and impracticable ; 
yet such was his persevering energy that he succeeded in 
many things where others would have faltered and failed, 
and his failure to found a colony at the outlet of the Mis- 
sissippi was largely due to circumstances beyond his per- 
sonal control. 

In no one particular was his superiority over contem- 
porary explorers more manifest than in his intercourse with 
the aborigines of the country, whom he every- where made 
subservient to his designs. He was greatly respected by 
the Indians throughout the Mississippi Valley. This was 
attributable not only to his liberal and conciliatory policy 
in dealing with them, but to his grave and taciturn man- 
ner, which comported well with their own ideas of dignity 
and decorum. It is worthy of remark, in passing, that he 
nearly always traveled with a train of ecclesiastics, showing 
a preference for the Recollets. They went not merely as 
missionaries to convert the heathen, but to assist him in his 
enterprises and write up his doings, and were among his 
most efiicient and faithful coadjutors. He was not a'pru- 
dent or successful business man ; his transactions as an In- 
dian trader and fur-dealer, though on a large scale, were 
usually attended with loss, and he died hopelessly insol- 
vent. His ambition was fame — fame as a discoverer and 
explorer of new and unknown lands. For the gratification 
of this passion he sacrificed his means, his comfort, his 
health, and finally life itself. His plans were too extensive 
and complex for his resources or credit, and even his un- 
common energy and fortitude could not always cope with 
the enmities and jealousies that were constantly arrayed 
against him. Nevertheless, he stands in the history of the 



174 Last Great Enterprise of La Salle. 

period as the foremost pioneer in North America. More- 
over, he was the first chartered owner and occupant of Illi- 
nois, and the first to establisli a European settlement on 
her soil. 

Physically as well as intellectually, La Salle seemed 
born to command. He was of a tall and martial figure,, 
and appears to have inherited a vigorous constitution, 
which, however, was considerably impaired by sickness 
and hardships in his later years. His picture represents 
him with a fine oval face, and a high open forehead. From 
his Norman lineage he derived his pluck and tenacity of 
purpose, qualities that nearly allied him to the ruling class 
of England. He was never married, and left no oftspring 
to perpetuate his name and fame. He held his lease of life 
by the same fragile thread as the meanest camp-follower in 
his train. He died a martyr to his own ambition and the 
glory of France. He was one of those great actors on the 
stage of our earlier continental history, about whom men 
write and converse while he sleeps the sleep that knows no 
waking. It has been felicitously observed of him, that " he 
was as brave as the bravest, as pure as the purest, and as 
unfortunate as the most unfortunate." 



In Masson's "Abridgment of Guizot's History of France," p. 490,. 
is the following condensed yet graphic, recital of La Salle's achieve- 
ments: " La Salle, in his intrepid expeditions, discovered the Ohio and 
Illinois, navigated the great lakes, crossed (descended) the Mississippi, 
which the Jesuits had been the first to reach, and pushed on as far as 
Texas. Constructing forts in the midst of savage districts, taking pos- 
session of Louisiana in the name of Louis XIV., abandoned by (some 
of) his comrades, and losing the most faithful of them by death, attacked 
by savages, betrayed by his own men, thwarted in his prospects by his 
enemies, this indefatigable man fell at last beneath the blows of a few 
mutineers in 1687, just as he was trying to get back to New France. He 
left the field open after him to innumerable travelers (and adventurers) 
of every nation and tongue, who were one day to leave their mark on 
those measureless tracts. It is the glory and misfortune of France to 
always lead the van in the march of civilization, without having the 
wit to profit by the discoveries and the sagacious boldness of her chil- 
dren." 



The Travelers Cross the Trinity. 175 



CHAPTER IX. 

1687-1689. 
SURVIVORS OF LA SALLE's TEXAN COLONY. 

The surviving members of La Salle's traveling party, 
who were not in sympathy with his murder, refrained from 
openly expressing their indignation through fear of their 
own lives, and uneasily awaited the issue of events. Mean- 
while, Duhaut and Liotot seized upon every thing in the 
camp belonging to the late commander, and arrogated to 
themselves the command in his stead. 

On the 20th of March, the day following the catastro- 
phe, the combined party broke camp and recommenced 
their journey, as if anxious to get away from the gloomy 
locality. Impeded in their advance by heavy rains they 
were three days in reaching the main stream of the Trinity, 
which they crossed in a boat made of raw hides, swimming 
their horses. Continuing their slow march through the 
timbered valley to the vicinity of another and smaller 
river,* the travelers halted and held a council in regard to 
their future movements. Being short of provisions, it was 
decided that Liotot, Hiens, Teissier, and Joutel should pro- 
ceed to the villages of the Cenis Indians, about ten leagues, 
away to the north-east, and there barter for a supply of maize 
and beans. Joutel was thus assigned to the companionship 
of three villains whom he detested, and at the same time 
suspected of contriving an opportunity to take his life, be- 
cause of his fidelity to their late commander. But having 
no choice in the matter, he dissembled his fears and set off 
with his sinister associates. A day's ride brought them to 
the nearest Cenis village, which consisted of a scattered 
group of large, grass-thatched lodges, resembling huge hay 
ricks. The Frenchmen were received with much ceremony 



Probably an eastern arm of the Trinity, 



176 Survivors- of La Salic s Texan Colony. 

bj the painted and tattooed elders of the village, and were as- 
signed a cottage in which to lodge. But these Indian hosts, 
while feeding their visitors by day, did not hesitate to pilfer 
from them by night as opportunity offered. They had no 
religion worth considering, and, in common with the sur- 
rounding tribes, were more or less addicted to cannibalism. 

After a few days stay at the village, the companions of 
Joutel returned to the French camp, leaving him to con- 
tinue the traffic alone. During his sojourn there he met 
with two French sailors named Ruter and Grollet (Jacques), 
who had forsaken La Salle on the occasion of his journey 
to this region in the preceding year, and who were now 
domesticated among the Cenis. When apprised of the 
murder of his late commander, Ruter expressed both sur- 
prise and regret. 

Some days afterward, Joutel was ordered to return 
with the provisions he had purchased to Duhaut's camp, 
and upon his arrival thither found a miserable state of af- 
fairs. The elder Cavelier and Friar Douay had been treated 
with harshness and contempt by Duhaut and Liotot, and 
were constrained to prepare their meals apart to themselves. 
Joutel now joined them, and around their own camp-fire 
they talked of nothing else but how to escape from the com- 
pany of the miscreants in which circumstances had placed 
them. No other feasible expedient presented itself except 
to continue their journey to the Mississippi, and thence to 
the Illinois and Canada, as originally undertaken by La 
Salle himself. In carrying out this plan, the first and prin- 
cipal difficulty was to get the consent of Duhaut and Liotot; 
for they had already announced their intention to return to 
Fort St. Louis on the bay, and there build a vessel with 
which to sail to the West Indies. The announcement of 
this impracticable purpose — impracticable because their car- 
penters were all dead, and they were without suitable ap- 
pliances and material for the work — showed that those 
desperate men had no mind to peril their personal safety 
by going to Canada. In pursuance of that resolution 
Iliens and three other members of the party were sent to 
the village of the Cenis to barter for additional horses. 



Survivors of La Salle's Texan Colony. 177 

In this critical posture of affairs, the elder Cavelier, 
with whom a sacrifice of truth cost no particular effort, 
opened negotiations with the Sieur Duhaut. The old priest 
represented that he and his friends were too mucli fatigued 
by travel to undertake a journey bacl?: to the fort, preferring 
to remain among the Cenis Indians, and requested a share 
of the goods, for which he ofiered to give his note of liand. 
To this preposition Duhaut, after consulting with his com- 
panions, unexpectedly assented, but soon afterward changed 
his mind on being told that it was the secret intention of 
Cavelier and party to proceed to the Illinois and Canada. 
He then gave out that he would go with them to execute 
their design, which disconcerted and troubled the latter. 

Duhaut and the others appear to have remained at the 
same camp, east of the Trinity, through April and until 
the first week in May, only advancing a little nearer to the 
river which lay between them and the village of the Cenis. 
Hiens and his three French companions were still at the 
village, being detained partly by the overflow in the river, 
but principally by the attractions of the Cenis women. 
During his stay there he heard of Duhaut's new plan of 
going to find the Mississippi, and declared to those with him 
that he was not of that mind, and refused his consent. 

"After we had been some days longer in the same 
place," writes Joutel, " Hiens arrived with the two half- 
savage Frenchmen (Ruter and Grollet), and about twenty 
natives. He went immediately to Duhaut, and after some 
(heated) discourse, told him he was not for going toward 
the Mississippi, because it would be of dangerous conse- 
quence for them, and therefore demanded his share of the 
efl:ects he had 'seized. Duhaut refusing to comply, and 
affirming that all the axes were his own, Hiens, who it is 
likely had laid the design before to kill him, immediately 
drew his pistol and fired it upon Duhaut, who staggered 
about four paces from the place, and fell down dead. At 
the same time Ruter, who had been with Hiens, fired his 
piece upon Liotot, the surgeon, and shot him through with 
three balls. 
12 



178 The Assassins Assassinated. 

" These murders committed before us, put me in a ter- 
rible consternation ; for, believing the same was designed 
for me, I laid hold of my firelock to defend myself. But 
Hiens cried out to me to fear nothing, to lay down my 
arms, and assured me he had no design against me ; but 
that he had revenged his master's death. He also satisfied 
M. Cavalier and Father Anastase, who were as much fright- 
ened as myself, declaring he meant them no harm, and that 
though he had been in the conspiracy, yet had he been pres- 
ent at the time when M. de la Salle was killed, he would 
not have consented, but rather obstructed it. 

" Liotot lived some hours after, and had the good for- 
tune to make his confession ; after which the same Ruter 
put him out of his pain with a pistol shot,* We dug a hole 
in the earth, and buried him in it with Duhaut, doing them 
more honor than they had done to M. de la Salle and his 
nephew, Moranget, whom they left to be devoured by the 
wild beasts. Thus those murderers met with what they 
had deserved, dying the same death they had put others 
to."t 

The Indian spectators looked with astonishment and 
terror upon these brutal homicides, which put to shame 
even their own thirst for blood. The Frenchmen present, 
however, excused the deed to the savages by telling them 
that those two men had been killed, " because they had all 
the powder and ball, and would not give any to the rest." 
Jean L'Archeveque, who had been entirely devoted to Du- 
haut, was absent hunting at the time, and Hiens was for 
shooting him on his return to camp, but was dissuaded 
therefrom by Joutel and the two priests. 

The only excuse or apology Duliaut and Liotot had 
oftered for their own atrocious crimes, was that they had 
been driven thereto by despair at their ill-usage. If they 



* It is related by Father Douay, in his account of these murders, 
that the flash of Iluter's pistol set fire to Liotot's hair and clothing, 
which were burned on his body, and that in this torment he died. This 
happened nearly two months after the death of La Salle. 

tSee Joutel's Journal in " Historical Collections of Louisiana," Part 
I., pp. 157, 158. 



Survivors of La Salle's Texan Colony. 179 

had remained at home in France, and not been subjected to 
any great temptations, they might have passed through life 
as respectable citizens ; but, as it was and is, their names 
must be consigned to merited execration and ignominy. 

These latter tragedies came like a thunderbolt from a 
cloudless sky, and cleared the way for the escape of the in- 
nocent members of the party. Prior to this, however, Hiens 
and his associate outlaws had promised the chiefs of the 
Cenis to accompany them on a foray against a tribe called 
the Kanoatinos, who dwelt some distance off to the north- 
west, and with whom the former were at feud. To facili- 
tate this purpose the surviving Frenchmen now decamped 
and removed their head-quarters to the Cenis village. The 
two Caveliers, Joiitel, Douay, and two others were lodged 
in a cabin by themselves, where they were watched by the 
villagers, while Iliens and his six followers, armed and 
mounted, went with the native warriors on their raid. 
After an absence of less than a fortnight, the war party re- 
turned, bringing with them several Indian prisoners, and a 
number of scalps, as trophies of their victory over the 
enemy. 

When the savage feasting and rejoicing thereat, which 
lasted several days, had come to an end, M. Cavelier and 
Joutel took occasion to inform Hiens of their proposed 
journey to and up the Mississippi. The latter atfirst stoutly 
opposed the project, as he had no thought of going thither 
himself, but finally consented on condition that Cavelier 
should give him a writing certifying to his innocence of La 
Salle's murder, which the priest did not scruple to do. For 
the rest, Hiens treated his departing fellow-travelers with 
the liberality of a successful freebooter, giving them a fair 
proportion of the booty he had acquired by his recent vil- 
lanous crimes. " Before our departure," says Joutel's 
Journal, "it was a sensible affliction to us to see that villain 
walk about the camp in a scarlet coat, with gold galons 
(lace), which had belonged to the late Monsieur de la Salle, 
and which he had seized." 

The escaping party was composed of seven persons, 
viz.: the two Caveliers (uncle and nephew), Joutel, Douay, 



180 Journey of the Escaping Party. 

De Marie, Teissier, and a Parisian youth named Barthelemy. 
Teissier was an accomplice in the death of both Moranget 
and La Salle, but had received a pro forma pardon from the 
elder Cavelier. They had six indifferent horses, a quantity 
of powder and ball, and some axes, knives, and beads, for 
use in barter with the natives on the route. They left the 
Cenis village without regret, late in May, and were attended 
by three guides. Hiens embraced them at parting, as did 
the other half-dozen ruffians who stayed with him. The 
general course of the travelers was to the north-east, in the 
direction of the Lower Arkansas, which was more than 
three hundred miles distant. After several days travel 
through an open country, passing hamlets and villages on 
the way, they readied the nation of the Assonis, or Nas- 
souis, dwelling near the river Neehes, where they were 
fairly well received. Here they were detained by continued 
rain until about the 13th of June, when they again set 
forward, with fresh guides, on their journey. 

The travelers next approached the village of a tribe 
called by Joutel the Nathosos, who inhabited the country 
between the Sabine and lied River. The dusky dwellers 
in this village had hitherto known the Europeans only by 
report, and coming out to meet their visitors, regarded them 
with great curiosity. Desirous of doing the Frenchmen 
special honor, they took them on their backs and carried 
them into the village; but Joutel, being a large and heavy 
man, bore down his carrier so much that two other Indians 
had to assist him, one on either side. Arrived at the chief's 
cottage, their horses were unloaded, and one of the elders 
of the village proceeded to wash the faces of the visitors 
with warm water from an earthen vessel. Then they were 
invited to mount a scaffolding of canes, covered with white 
mats, where they sat in the burning sun and listened to 
several speeches of welcome, of which they did not under- 
stand a single word. 

Taking leave of this hospitable people, our travelers 
next came to a village of the Cadodaquis, where they ex- 
perienced a similar reception. Crossing Red River and 
approaching the Washita, they arrived at the village of 



Survivors of La Salle's Texan Colony. 181 

another Dation, who gave them a still more oppressive wel- 
come. As the leader of the party the elder Cavelier be- 
came the principal victim of the Indian attentions. They 
danced the calumet before him, singing as loud as they could 
roar, beat upon their calabashes, stuck feathers in his hair, 
and performed various other antics. The old priest en- 
dured the irksome ceremony as long as he well could, and 
then, pretending that it made him ill, he was assisted to 
his lodge; but they continued to sing, howl, and dance all 
through the night. The meaning of all this Indian cere- 
mony was that their visitors should make them a present, 
which was accordingly done to their satisfaction. 

At length, after a wearisome journey of nearly two 
months from the Cenis, during which time they had the 
misfortune to lose one of their number (De Marie), who 
was accidentally drowned, the travelers drew near to the 
Arkansas River, at a place some fifty miles above its junc- 
tion with the Mississippi. Conducted thither by their 
native guides, they at last stood upon the banks of the Ar- 
kansas, and, looking across to the farther side, beheld an 
Indian village, and below and near it on a small eminence 
was a cabin built of cedar logs, and a tall wooden cross, 
evidently the work of French hands. Overwhelmed with 
emotions of gratitude at their deliverance, they all knelt 
down and, lifting up their hands, gave thanks to the 
Divine Goodness for having directed their footsteps to this 
little outpost of civilization. Presently, two white men 
emerged from the door of the cabin and fired their guns as 
a salute to the wanderers, who answered it with a volley 
from their own. Then two canoes crossed from the oppo- 
site shore and ferried them over to the village, where they 
were heartily greeted in their own tongue by Messrs. Cou- 
ture and De Launay, two of six men whom Henri de Tonty 
had stationed there during the preceding year.* The 
whole distance from Fort St. Louis of Texas, to the Ar- 



* This station was afterward known to the French as Poste aux Ar- 
kansas, and later, to the Americans, as Arkansas Post. The Arkansas 
Indians had two villages on this river, the second one being near its 
mouth. 



182 Tonhfs Trij) to the Gulf of Mexico. 

kansas, following the route of the traveling party, was 
computed by Father Douay at two hundred and fifty 
leagues. 

It may be remembered that in the spnng of 1685, 
by an order of the King of France, M. de Tonty had been 
reinstated in command at Fort St. Louis of the Illinois, 
with the title of captain and governor. In the autumn of 
that year, he made a special journey to Mackinac to seek 
intelligence of his absent chief. Arrived thither, he learned 
that a letter had been received from Governor Denonville, 
then lately arrived from France, stating that La Salle 
had landed on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and that 
he had lost one of his vessels there. Upon hearing this 
news, Tonty returned to the Illinois, and organized an 
expedition on his own responsibility, and at his own ex- 
pense, to go to La Salle's assistance. Accordingly, on the 
16th of February, 1686, he departed from Fort St. Louis, 
with thirty Frenchmen and five Indians, in log canoes, and 
descended the Illinois and the Mississippi to the Gulf, 
which he reached in Holy Week. Finding no traces of 
the French colony there, he sent some of his canoes to 
scour the coast for thirty leagues on either side of the di- 
verging outlet of the river. But all this search was futile, 
for La Salle was then rambling in the distant wilds of 
southern Texas. Disappointed yet not disheartened at his 
failure, Tonty wrote a letter to his commander, informing 
him of this trip in quest of him, which he committed to 
the keeping of an Indian chief of the Quinipissas tribe, to 
be delivered so soon as an opportunity should offer. He 
then returned with his force up the Mississippi to the mouth 
of the Arkansas, which he entered and ascended some dis- 
tance to a village of that nation. Here, on lands which 
had been previously granted to him by La Salle, the Sieur 
de Tonty stationed six of his men, who volunteered to re- 
main, and who were to report to him any information they 
might gather from the natives or otherwise concerning his 
chief. 

But to go back to the party of Cavelier and Joutel. 
They tarried for several days at the French outpost on the 



I 



Survivors of La Salle's Texan Colony. 183 

Arkansas, resting from the fatigues and anxieties of their 
extraordinary journey. As chief spokesman of the party, 
the elder Cavelier related to M. Couture and De Launay 
the history of their long sea-voyage, and subsequent wan- 
derings and sufferings in the southern wilderness, including 
an account of La Salle's dismal end, which drew tears from 
their eyes. For various prudential reasons, this last bit of 
information was kept from the Arkansas Indians, who held 
him in great respect, and impatiently expected his return. 

The travelers departed from the house of the French- 
men about the 28th of July, leaving behind them their 
horses and young Barthelemy, the Parisian, who afterward 
told slanderous stories about La Salle's alleged cruelty to 
his men. They embarked with a number of the natives in 
a pirogue forty feet long, belonging to one of the chiefs of 
the village, and were accompanied part of the way by M. 
Couture. Descending the Arkansas to the next village 
(called Torriman) of that nation, they tarried there until 
the following day, when they went in two canoes to cross 
and ascend tlie Mississippi, which had been so long the ob- 
ject of their search, and which Joutel terms, in his journal, 
the " fatal river." After stopping to visit the third village 
of the Arkansas, which was seated on the banks of the Mis- 
sissippi, they thence proceeded up the river eight leagues 
to Kappa, the fourth and last village of that people. On 
the 2nd of August our five travelers took leave of M. Cou- 
ture at the Kappa village, and re-embarked in a single canoe 
with four Arkansas guides. In their north-bound voyage, 
they found it requisite to often cross the river, and some- 
times to carry their canoe and luggage, on account of the 
rapidity of the current, and at night, for greater safety, en- 
camped on some one of the smaller islands. On the 19th 
they reached the mouth of the Ohio, to which their In- 
dians made a sacrifice of some tobacco and buffalo steaks. 
Leaving that behind them, and still ascending, they passed 
the confluence of the turbid Missouri on the first of Sep- 
tember, and tho next day turned from the "Father of 
Waters" into the quiet channel of the Illinois. 

In navigating this central part of the Mississippi, 



184 The Escaping Party Ascend the Mississippi. 

neither Joutel nor Doiuiy observed any thing very remark- 
able in the painted rocks of the Piasa, as described by 
Marquette. " The 2nd" (of September), writes Joutel, " we 
arrived at the place where the figure is of the pretended 
monster spoken of by Father Marquette. That monster 
consists of two scurvy figures drawn in red, on the flat side 
of a rock, about ten or twelve feet high, which wants very 
much the extraordinary height that relation mentions. 
However, our Indians paid homage, by offering sacrifice to 
that stone." * 

Father Douay saw, and briefly describes in his narra- 
tive, certain rude figures on another rock, some forty leagues 
below the month of the Missouri, which, on Thevenot's re- 
production of Marquette's map, is marked as the evil Mani- 
tou of the Illinois Indians. Douay goes on to state, that 
" about midway between the river Ouabache (Ohio) and that 
of the Massourites, is Cape St. Anthony ; it was to this 
place, and not farther, that the Sieur Joliet descended in 
1673." But in the above unsupported and improbable 
statement, the Recollet father simply displays his own ig- 
norance and jealousy of the prior discoveries made by 
Joliet and Marquette; for it is morally certain that they 
went a long distance below the confluence of the Ohio. 

But to return from this die^ression. After enterino- the 
Illinois River, it required ten days more of hai-d rowing and 
pushing to bring the travelers to the rock-seated fort of 
St. Louis, whither they arrived on the 14th of September, 
and were once more among friends and countrymen. The 
Sieur de Tonty was away in the east, fighting the Iroquois ; 
but his lieutenant. Belle Fontaine, was in charge of the 
fort, and his little garrison received the way-worn voyagers 
with a salvo of musketry, which was supplemented by the 
whooping of the Indian occupants of the Rock, who ran 
down to the river to meet them. As the season was grow- 
ing late, our travelers were eager to press forward to Que- 
bec, in order to take shipping there for France. After a 
few days of repose, therefore, they took leave of Belle Fon- 



Joutel's Journal Hlstortque. See ante, Chap. III. of this work. 



Survivors of La Salle's Texan Colony. 185 

taine and his men (from whom they had studiously withheld 
any knowledge of La Salle's death), and proceeded on their 
way up the river to Lake Michigan. On arriving at the 
mouth of Chicago rivulet, they embarked on the waters of 
the lake in a canoe, which had been procured for that pur- 
pose at the fort ; but being driven back by stress of weather, 
they abandoned their design, buried a part of their effects 
on the lake shore, and returned to Fort St. Louis to spend 
the winter. 

At the close of the month of October, Captain Tonty 
returned from the Seneca war, accompanied by several of 
his French friends, and he now listened with profound in- 
terest to the long and sad narrative of his travel-worn 
guests from the south-west. With the connivance of his 
party, the elder Cavelier did not scruple to practice on 
Tonty the same deceit he had used with his lieutenant. 
He told him that La Salle had been with them nearly to 
the Cenis villages, and that when they parted from him he 
was in good health, which was technically true so far as a 
majority of the old priest's party was concerned. The 
main purpose of this studied deception was to derive all 
the pecuniary advantage he could from his character of 
representative of his brother. Besides, both he and his 
associates were still not without some apprehension from 
the accomplices of La Salle's murderers, should any of them 
return to Canada or France. If the elder Cavelier had 
been frank and candid with Tonty, the expedition which 
the latter subsequently undertook for the relief of the 
Texan colonists might have been attended with better re- 
sults. Friar Douay tells us that the presence of Tonty made 
their stay at the fort much more agreeable, and speaks of 
him, as "this brave gentleman, always inseparably attached 
to the interests of the Sieur de la Salle, whose lamentable 
fate we concealed from him, it being our duty to give the 
first news to the court."* 

The elder Cavelier carried a letter of credit from La 
Salle — whether genuine or not, it were needless to inquire — 

* Narrative of Father Anastase Douay, in Le Clercq's Etablissement 
de la Foi, vol. II. 



186 Cavelier's Deception of Tonty. 

requesting Tonty to furnish him with supplies, and pay 
him 2,652 livres in beaver skins. On the strength of this 
and his verbal representations, Cavelier drew upon Tonty 
to the amount, it is averred, of four thousand livres in furs,* 
besides a canoe and a quantity of other goods, all of which 
were delivered to him on his quitting the fort, and for 
which in return he gave his promissory note. The only 
excuse for this deliberate deception and fraud was the des- 
titution of the old priest and his companions, and the 
further fact that he had a claim against his brother's es- 
tate, which, however, he must have known was insolvent. 
It seems hardly credible that during all this time, the Sieur 
de Tonty should not have received a hint of, or even sus- 
pected, the death of his former commander. 

After living upon Tonty's generous hospitality for six 
months, the Cavelier party finally departed from Fort St. 
Louis the 20th of March, 1688. Seven days of travel up 
the Illinois River and its northern fork brought them to the 
Chicagou, whence they again embarked on Lake Michigan, 
and, after many perils, reached Michilimackinac on the 6th 
of May.f Here the elder Cavelier disposed of a portion of 
his ill-gotten furs to a trader, and received in exchange an 
order on a Montreal house. Being thus supplied with funds 
for the rest of the journey our travelers left Mackinac about 
the 5th of June, and proceeded by way of northern Lake 
Huron, Frenth River, Lake Nipissing, and the Ottawa River 
to Montreal. Here, after converting the remainder of their 
furs into money, they provided themselves with much 



■•Tonty's Memoir does not make it so much. 

tThe Baron de la Hontan, who was then at Mackinac witii a small 
detachment of French soldiers, in a letter dated the 26th of May, thus 
speaks of Cavelier and his party: " M. Cavelier arrived here May 6th, 
accompanied by his nephew, Father Anastase, the Recollect, a pilot, one 
of the savages, and some few Frenchmen, which made a sort of party- 
colored retinue. These Frenchmen were some of those that M. de la 
Salle conducted upon the discovery of Mississippi. They give out that 
they are sent to Canada, in order to go to France, with some dispatches 
from M. de la Salle to the King. But we suspect that he is dead, be- 
cause he does not return along with them." — La Hontan's Voyages, vol. 
1, p. 87. 



Survivors of La Salle's Texan Colony. 187 

needed clothing and other necessaries, and then went down 
the St. Lawrence to Quebec, whither they arrived the 29th 
of July. Taking passage on the 20th of August for Old 
France, they arrived in safety at Rochelle on the 9th of Oc- 
tober, 1688, and thence proceeded to Rouen. The wander- 
ers had been absent from home something over four years, 
and during that period had performed one of the most ad- 
venturous and remarkable journeys on record. 

It was not until their return to France, that the gloomy 
secret of La Salle's tragic death was disclosed. When it 
was told to Louis XIV., he gave orders for the arrest of all 
persons concerned in the murder who might appear in New 
France, but no one was ever arrested. M. Joutel had hoped 
that a royal ship-of-the-line would be sent out for the rescue 
of the surviving colonists on the coast of Texas ; yet this 
was not done. Being occupied with other and, to him, 
weightier matters, the king left the miserable little band to 
their fate. In fact, it was probably too late then to have 
saved them from destruction. 

The priest, Jean Cavelier, made a written report of 
La Salle's expedition to Seignelay, the Minister of Marine 
and Colonies, and also wrote a journal of the sea-voyage to 
the Gulf, which is in print, but was not brought down to the 
time of his brother's death. It is stated that he afterward 
inherited a large estate from a relative in France, and " died 
rich and very old." Apart from his natural prudence and 
self-command, he had most of the defects without any of the 
redeeming and ennobling traits of La Salle : and the cor- 
respondence of the latter shows that he entertained but 
little aftection for this elder brother, who was " always in- 
terfering with or crossing his plans." 

" Joutel," writes Parkman, " must have been a young 
man at the time of the Mississippi expedition, for Charle- 
voix saw him at Rouen thirty-five years after. He speaks 
of him in terms of emphatic praise ; but it must be admit- 
ted that his connivance in the deception practiced upon 
Tonty leaves a shade on his character, as well as on that of 
Douay." Joutel's Historical Journal of that expedition did 
not appear in print until the year 1713. As he was only 



188 Tonty Attempts to Succor the Texan Colony. 

an ordinary scholar, it is fair to presume that he had the 
assistance of a competent scribe in preparing his work for 
publication. Its general accuracy and impartiality are 
unquestioned, though in the matter of dates it is perhaps 
inferior to Douay's Narrative. It contains the best descrip- 
tion extant of the country of Texas at that early day. 

We now return to M. de Tonty. In September, 1688, 
he was visited at his fort in the Illinois by M. Couture,* 
and two Indians from the Arkansas, who danced the cal- 
umet. It was then, for the first time, we are told, that he 
learned with sorrow and indignation of the lamentable 
fate of his chief, and of the deceit that had been practiced 
upon him by the elder Cavelier and party. The opinion of 
this Fidas Achates of M. de la Salle is epitomized in his 
observation, that " he was one of the greatest men of the 
age." The leader whom he had so long followed was, in- 
deed, beyond any human aid ; but the still surviving colo- 
nists, languishing on the distant shores of the Gulf, might 
yet be saved from extermination. He therefore resolved 
upon an expedition for their relief, and furthermore, if it 
were found practicable, to make them the nucleus of a war 
party to cross the Rio del Norte into Mexico. Tonty's 
means or resources were utterly inadequate to the accom- 
plishment of so bold and difficult an undertaking ; never- 
theless, he made the attempt. 

After some little preparation, this impulsive and chiv- 
alrous man set off from his fortified rock early in De- 
cember of that year (1688),t in a large canoe, with five 
Frenchmen, two Indian slaves, and a Shawnee hunter. 
Passing down the Illinois and tlie Mississippi to the mouth 
of Red River, and thence up the latter stream, he reached 
the Natchitoches on the 17tli of the ensuing February, and 
the Cadodaquis on the 28th of March. The Cadodaquis 
were allied with the Nachitoches and the Nassoui. All 



* Couture was a native of Rouen, and a carpenter by trade. 

t Parkman's " La Halle and the Great West," p. 439. 

Tonty's own Memoir says that he set out on this journey in Octo- 
ber, 1689 ; but as he probably wrote from recollection, his dates can not 
always be relied upon. 



Suroivors of La Salle's Texan Colony. 189 

three of these nations dwelt in the Red River Valley, and all 
spoke substantiallv the same language. Upon his arrival 
at the Cadodaqnis village, Tonty was told that Hiens and 
his French confederates were at a village of the Naoua- 
diches, some eighty leagues to the south-west. But when 
he was preparing to go there, all of his men refused to fol- 
low him, excepting one Frenchman and the Shawnee In- 
dian. Not being able to compel the attendance of the 
others, he set forward on the 6th of April, with the two 
men who were faitliful, and five native guides. A few days 
afterward, in crossing a stream, his French companion lost 
his bag containing the most of their powder. But, un- 
deterred by this accident he pressed on to the Naouadiche 
village, lying east of the Cenis, where the criminals were 
said to be. Arrived thither on the 23d, he found no traces 
of Hiens and his associates. When he inquired for them 
of the head men of the village, they told him different 
stories, and when he charged them with having killed the 
Frenchmen, the women began to cry, from which he in- 
ferred tliat his charge was true. These villagers refused 
Tonty guides to further continue his journey, although, as 
he tells us, it was only three days' travel from thence to 
where La Salle had been murdered. Owing, therefore, to 
his lack of guides, and the shortness of his ammunition, he 
was obliged to relinquish his purpose of endeavoring to 
reach the fort on Matagorda Bay. While at this Texan 
village, he seems to have heard rumors in regard to the 
breaking up and destruction of the French colony on the 
coast by the Indians. 

In retracing their winding track, Tonty and his com- 
panions found the country flooded by the heavy vernal 
rains, and experienced incredible hardships in threading the 
Red River wilderness. They had to construct a raft and 
paddle through the water, sleep on logs laid one upon an- 
other, build fires on the trunks of trees, and subsist on a 
little bear and dog meat. He says, in his memoir, that 
he never suffered so much in his life as during this journey 
back to the Mississippi, which was reached on the 11th of 
July. Making his way thence to the village of the Coroae, 



190 Spanish Expedition to Fort St. Louis. 

Tonty stayed there several days to recuperate, after which 
he went up to his post on the Arkansas. Here he fell sick 
of a fever, brought on by exposure, which detained him till 
the 11th of August. He then resumed his river voyage 
homeward, and arrived at Fort St. Louis, of the Illinois, 
late in September, 1689. Ten months were consumed in 
this extraordinary journey, which was one of the longest 
and hardest he ever made. 

This unavailing attempt was the last that was made 
to rescue the unhappy colonists from the savage immensity 
which shut them out from home and civilization. Their 
final extirpation by the Texas Indians was subsequently 
learned from the Spaniards in Mexico. By priority of dis- 
covery and occupation, Spain claimed all the country sur- 
rounding the Mexican Gulf, and the viceroys of Mexico 
had been active and energetic in enforcing this claim. 
The capture of one of La Salle's vessels off the coast of 
St. Domingo had first made known his designs to the 
Spanish authorities, and during the succeeding three years 
as many as four expeditions were sent out from Vera Cruz 
to find and destroy his colony. They scoured the entire 
coast, and even found the wrecks of his vessels, but owing 
to the secluded, inland position of the French fort, it had 
eluded their search. The Spaniards therefore rested for a 
time in the belief that the intruders upon their territory 
had perished, when fresh advices from the frontier prov- 
ince of JSTew Leon caused the viceroy to order a renewal 
of the search. 

Accordingly, in January, 1689, Don Alonzo de Leon 
started with a strong body of horsemen from a military 
post in the province of Quagila (Coaliuila), and marched 
northward over the barren mountains until he came to the 
Spanish-Mexican town of Calhuila. He then turned to 
his right, and, crossing the Ivio Bravo del Norte, entered 
the territory of the Bahamos Indians. Guided thence by 
a French prisoner (supposed to have been a deserter from 
La Salle), he traversed the country to the north-east, 
crossing in turn the ISTueces, the San Antonia, and the 
Guadalupe, and at length reached the Bay of St. Bernard, 



Survivors of La Salle's Texan Colony. 191 

called by the Spaniards Espiritu Santo.* Arrived at the 
French fort of St. Louis on the 22d of April, the Spanish 
leader and his cavalcade proceeded to reconnoiter the 
place. They found the dead bodies of several of the colo- 
nists, who had been killed by blows or pierced by arrows ; 
also a lot of old French books (mostly religious works) 
scattered around, and a number of iron cannon mounted 
upon navy gun carriages; but no living thing was there, 
and no explanation of the mystery was obtainable from 
the stolid savages dwelling on the shores of the bay. 
After an interval of several days, however, there arrived 
at the Spanish camp two strangers, whose faces were 
painted, and who were otherwise attired as Indians. They 
were James GroUet and Jean L'Archeveque, the latter 
having been one of the principal accomplices in the mur- 
der of La Salle. Finding life insupportable among the 
savages, these two Frenchmen had come, under pledges 
of good treatment, to surrender themselves to the Spanish 
commander. From them was obtained about all that is 
definitely known in regard to the melancholy end of the 
occupants of the fort. 

The neighboring Indians, as we have seen, had been 
from the first on ill terms with the French colonists ; and 
it appears that some three months before a band of the 
savages had stealthily approached the fort, the inmates of 
which had been suftering from the small-pox, to take 
them by surprise. Fearing treachery, the French refused 
their visitors admittance, but received them at a house 
without the palisade, where the savages made a pretense 
of trade. Suddenly, at a preconcerted signal, the larger 
part of this band of warriors, who had been in hiding un- 
der the river bank, rushed from their cover, entered 
the gate, and massacred nearly all of the French inmates. 
L'Archeveque and Grollet stated that they, with some 
others of their companions, came hither from the Cenis 
villages and buried fourteen corpesof the slain. The four 

* See manuscript map of the route of the Spaniards in INIargry's 
Collection. 



192 Final Destruction of the Colony. 

children of a Canadian named Talon, together with an 
Italian and a young Frenchman named Eustache de Bre- 
men, were saved hy some Indian women who had been 
domesticated at the fort, and who hurried them away, 
carrying the children on their backs. These young cap- 
tives were all soon after surrendered to the Spaniards. 

Conspicuous among those who are believed to have 
thus perished under the war clubs and scalping-knives of 
the vengeful savages were the two friars, Maxime le Clercq 
and Zenobe Membre. And here it may be as well to col- 
late the known facts in the adventurous life of the latter, 
who died at about the age of forty-four. Agreeably to a 
statement of Hennejtin, Membre was born at Bapaume, a 
small fortified town in the south part of Artois, Fratice, 
about 1645. His name of Zenobius was probably assumed 
on entering the Recollet convent in Artois. He appears 
to have been a cousin of Father Chretien le Clercq, who 
published an abridgment of his letters and journals in 
L' Mablissement de hi Foi. With this cousin, he was first 
sent out to Canada as a missionary in the year 1675. In 
1682, after returning from the memorable expedition down 
the Mississippi, he was sent by La Salle to lay the result 
of that expedition before the government of France. 
Having fulfilled his mission at court, he went to Bapaume, 
and there held the ])Osition of Warden to the Recollets 
until 1684, when, at La Salle's request, he was appointed 
superior of the Recollet missionaries who were to accom- 
pany his expedition by sea to the Mississippi. After the 
stranding of the "Aimable" at the entrance to Matagorda 
Bay, he came near being drowned while passing tiiat ves- 
sel in a boat, which was driven by the force of the waves 
against the wreck and dashed to pieces. In January, 
1687, when La Salle finally left Fort St. Louis of Texas, 
Membre was intending, as soon as possible, with the aid 
of Father Maxime le Clercq, to establish a mission among 
the friendly Cenis Indians ; but this project was never 
carried out. 

Father Membre was not a man of superior parts or 
learning, llis letters and journals are often involved and 



What Became of Heins and Others. 193 

obscure, yet they bear intrinsic marks of fidelity, and show 
him to have been a less prejudiced observer of men and 
things than some of his clerical companions. Neither his 
natal year, nor the month nor day of his martyrdom, is defi- 
nitely determined ; but, surely, this amiable man and de- 
voted missionary merited a better and happier destiny. 

"L'Archeveque and Grollet were sent to Spain, where, 
in spite of the pledge given them, they were thrown into 
prison, with the intention of sending them back (to Mex- 
ico) to work in the mines. The Italian was imprisoned at 
Vera Cruz. The fate of Bremen is unknow^i. Pierre and 
Jean Baptiste Talon, who were now old enough to bear 
arms, were enrolled in the Spanish navy, and being capt- 
ured in 1696 by a French ship of war, regained their liberty; 
while their younger brother and sister were carried by the 
viceroy to Spain. With respect to the ruffian companions 
of Heins, the conviction of Tonty that they had been put 
to death by the Indians may have been correct ; but the 
buccaneer himself is said to have been killed by liuter, the 
white savage. And thus, in ignominy and darkness, ex- 
pired the last embers of the doomed colony of La Salle." * 

Here ends the wild, lurid, and most tragical story of 
the first Grallic explorers and colonists of Texas ; a story 
which exemplifies the familiar adage that truth is often 
stranger than fiction. Such was the dismal fate of others 
of the earlier European settlements in America, until the 
colonists became sufficiently numerous and powerful to 
cope with the ravages of disease and the hostility of the 
savages. 



Parkman's " La Salle and the Great West," p. 445. 

13 



194 Illinois as a Dependency of Canada. 



CHAPTER X. 

1689-1712. 
ILLINOIS AS A DEPENDENCY OF CANADA. 

After La Salle's ineffectual attempt to plant a colony 
in tlie delta district of the Mississippi, it was over twelve 
years before the government of France essayed another 
experiment in that quarter. Busily engaged in a great 
war with William of Orange and the German princes for 
European supremacy, the French monarch had neither the 
time nor the inclination to indulge in projects of distant 
and expensive colonization. During this long interval 
there was but little immigration into the Mississippi Valley, 
nor were any steps taken by kingly authority for the gov- 
ernment of the newly-acquired territory. Meantime, how- 
ever, the Jesuit missionaries and fur-traders from Canada 
were both active and enterprising ; the one in disseminat- 
ing the Catholic faith among the aborigines, and the other 
in bartering cheap goods and "fire-water" for their furs 
and pelts. 

Fort St. Louis continued for some years to be the seat 
of French power in the Illinois, with Henri de Tonty as 
commandant and governor, whose authority extended about 
as far in every direction as his French-Italian imagination 
chose to stretch it. In 1690, or 1691, the company of Foot, 
in which he had held the rank of captain since 1684, but 
without receiving au}^ regular pay, was ordered to be dis- 
banded. Being thus thrown out of employment in the line 
of his profession, he made a trip down the lakes to Quebec, 
and there prepared and forwarded to the French Minister, 
Count de Pontchartrain, a petition setting forth his mili- 
tary and other service to his king and country, and praying 
that a new command might be assigned to him. The truth 
of Tonty's statements was certified to by the then aged 



Decline of Fort St. Louis. 195 

Count Frontenac, who had been reinstated in the governor- 
ship of Canada in 1689, and who remained in office until 
his death at Quebec. In answer apparently to this peti- 
tion, the proprietorship of Fort St. Louis of the Illinois 
was granted to Tonty, conjointly with La Forrest, another 
former lieutenant of La Salle. Here they carried on for 
some years a limited trade in furs with the Indians. In 
1699 a royal decree was issued against the coureurs des hois, 
who had long been a source of disquietude to the Canadian 
government ; but an express provision was made in the 
decree in favor of Messrs. Tonty and Forrest, who were em- 
powered to send up the country, annually, two canoes laden 
with goods, with twelve men, for the maintenance of the 
fort. Again, in 1702, a provincial order was made to the 
effect that La Forrest should henceforth reside in Canada, 
and Tonty on the Mississippi, and the establishment on the 
Illinois was discontinued. Some two years prior to this, 
however, as the sequel will more fully disclose, Tonty joined 
D'Iberville's colony in Lower Louisiana. He thus finally 
passed from the country of the Illinois, where he had been 
a conspicuous and honorable figure for twenty years, and 
had achieved for himself a name which will outlast the ef- 
facing fingers of time. 

The decline of Fort St. Louis was partly due to the 
dispersion of the surrounding native tribes, but chiefly, 
perhaps, to a change in the main route of French travel 
and transit from the great lakes to the Mississippi ; the voy- 
ageiirs and fur-traders having found the portage shorter 
and less difficult by way of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, 
than the Illinois. In 1718, the fort was temporarily re- 
occupied by some French traders, but, three years later, it 
was again deserted ; and when Charlevoix passed by the 
Rock in 1721, he saw only the remains of its palisade and 
rude buildings. 

The founding of Kaskaskia has been variously ascribed 
to members of La Salle's party, on returning from their 
exploring expedition to the mouth of the Mississippi in 
1682 ; to Father Jacques Gravier about 1685 ; to Henri 
de Tonty in 1686, and to others still, explorers or mission- 



196 Illinois as a Dependency of Canada. 

aries, at different dates, in the last quarter of the seven- 
teenth century. But the Kaskaskia of our time is not so 
old as was formerly supposed. 

The original site of this Indian settlement has been 
identified with that of the tribe of the same name, first found 
on the banks of the Illinois River, at or near the wide bot- 
tom lying immediately to the south of the modern town of 
Utica, in La Salle county. It will be remembered that 
when Father Marquette and his companions returned from 
their voyage of discovery down the Mississippi (in 1673), 
they stopped at a village of the Kaskaskias,* on the Up- 
per Illinois, which then comprised seventy-four lodges. 
Being very hospitably entertained by the villagers, the 
good priest, at their request, returned thither in April, 
1675, and began a mission among tliem called " The Im- 
maculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin." After the 
departure and death of Marquette, as already related. 
Father Claude Allouez was appointed to succeed him by 
the superior general of the Jesuits at Quebec. 

Father Allouez came to America from Toulouse, 
France, in July, 1658, and had been actively and zealously 
employed, with other priests, in planting Jesuit missions 
among the Indians of the upper lake region. Having es- 
tablished the mission on Green Bay, in 1669, he was as- 
signed to its charge, including the neighboring tribes. 
During October, 1676, he set out from that station, with a 
few French attendants, on a voyage to his new mission at 
the Illinois, and on the way skirted the western and 
southern shores of Lake Michigan. In his narrative of 
this roundabout voyage (printed in Shea's " Discovery and 
Exploration of the Mississippi"), the Father says: 

" In spite of all our efforts to hasten on, it was the 
27th of April (1677), before I could reach Kachkachkia, 
a large Illinois town. I immediately entered the cabin 
where Father Marquette had lodged, and the sachems, with 



* On Thevenot's reproduction of Father Marquette's map, the name 
of this tribe is printed Cuchouadiouia, but on liis original map, as pre- 
served at St. Mary's College, Montreal, it is written >^t<c/(Aa8^/o. 



The Jesuit Mission at the Illinois. 197 

all the people, being assembled, I told them the object of 
my coming among them, namely, to preach the true, living 
and immortal God, and his son Jesus Christ. They listened 
very attentively to my whole discourse, and thanked me 
for the trouble I took for their salvation. 

" I found this village much increased since last year 
(meaning probably 1(375). It was before composed of only 
one nation, the Kachkachkia. There are now eight ; the 
iirst having called the others, who dwelt in the neighbor- 
hood of the Mississippi. You can (readily) form an idea 
of the number of Indians who compose this town ; they 
are lodged in three hundred and fifty-one cabins, easily 
counted. They are mostly ranged on the banks of the 
river. The place which they have selected for their abode 
is situate at 40° 42' ; it has on one side a prairie of vast ex- 
tent, and on the other an expanse of marsh, which makes the 
air unhealthy, and often loaded with mists ; this causes much 
sickness and frequent thunder. They, however, like this 
post, because from it they can easily discern their enemies." 

This description corresponds in the main with that of 
Father Hennepin,* who says that the village was "situated 
at forty degrees of latitude, in a somewhat marshy plain, 
on the right bank of the river," which was "as broad as 
the Seine before Paris." But some allowance must be 
made for the old latitude, which was too low, and, with the 
French explorers, was never more than approximately cor- 
rect. That this Illinois village stood in the vicinity of 
blufis or high ground is evidenced by the remark of Al- 



* The population of this great village had still further increased in 1680, 
when Hennepin computed the number of lodges at four hundred and 
sixty, with several fires to each lodge. The RecoUet Father Membre, 
writing in the same year, fixes the number of cabins at between four and 
five hundred, and estimates the entire Indian population at from seven to 
eight thousand. This large estimate probably included the " Cascaskias," 
whose village he locates south-west of the " bottom of Lake Dauphin 
(Michigan), at about latitude 41° north." In Margry's publication (vol. 
II., pp. 128, 175), as cited by Shea, we are also told that the village of 
the Kaskaskia proper, was two leagues below the mouth of the Peste- 
gouki, or Fox (of Illinois), and six leagues below the confluence of the 
Checagou (Des Plaines) and Teakiki, and that both it and the great vil- 
age were destroyed by the Iroquois. 



198 Illinois as a Dependency of Canada. 

louez, that, " from it they could easily; discern their ene- 
mies.'' 

In his journal, just quoted, Father Allouez relates 
that he relaid the foundation of the Illinois mission by the 
baptism of thirty-five children, and a sick adult, who soon 
after died. He furtlier states that on the 3d of May, 1677, 
the anniversary of the Feast of the Holy Cross, he erected 
in the village a cross twenty -five feet high, and chanted the 
Vexilla in the presence of " a great number of the Illinois 
of all tribes." In 1679 he revisited this mission, and re- 
mained until the approach of La Salle's expedition of that 
year, when he withdrew to the north. In 1684 he again 
repaired to the Illinois, accompanied by M. Durantaye, who 
then commanded at Mackinac. He was there sick in 
1687, when the Cavelier-Joutel party reached Fort St. 
Louis from Texas, but left shortly after, on hearing that 
La Salle was still alive. Although chiefly a missionary to 
the Miamis, Allouez still clung to his Illinois mission, 
which he probably visited once more in 1689. He died at 
Fort Miami, in 1690. He is described as the ablest of all 
the Jesuit Fathers sent to the Illinois. A man of cold yet 
persevering temper, he seems to have ruled his extensive 
charge principally by the sheer force of intellect. 

The inmiediate successor of Father Allouez, in the 
Illinois mission, was Sebastian Rasles,* who embarked 
in a canoe at Quebec in August, 1691, and completed his 
lengthened voyage in the spring of 1692. After laboring 
vith the Illinois for a year or more, he was recalled to his 
original charge among the Abenakis on the Kennebec, in 
Maine. Here, after long years of laborious service, he was 
barbarously slain by a party of New England soldiers in 
August, 1724. 

Father Jacques Gravier, who had visited the Illinois 
mission as early as 1687, received it from Father Rasles. 
With the permission of Captain de Tonty, he erected a 
chapel within the palisade of Fort St. Louis, which over- 
looked the Indian village across the river. His relation of 



® Otherwise "written Sebaetien Raslo, or Kale. 



The Jesuit Mission at the Illinois. 199 

occurrences at the "Mission of the Immaculate Conception" 
of the Illinois, from March 20, 1693, to February 15, 1694, 
presents an interesting view of his toils and trials with 
these Indians. He remained in general charge of the mis- 
sion until 1697, when he was recalled to his former station 
at Mackinac. In 1700, he made a canoe voyage, by way of 
the Illinois and Mississippi, to the French establishment at 
Biloxi. Remaining there some time, he returned to the 
Illinois and resumed his labors among the Peorias. Here, 
in an assault upon him, instigated by the medicine-men of 
the tribe, he received a serious wound, from the effects of 
which he subsequently died at the Mobile, about the year 
1708. 

Father Gravier was among the first of the Jesuit mis- 
sionaries to investigate the principles of the Illinois lan- 
guage, and to reduce them to grammatical rules. He was 
an earnest, able, and faithful missionary priest. 

Gravier was succeeded in 1697 by the Fathers Julian 
Binneteau and Jacques (or Francois) Pinet, the latter of 
whom went to labor among the Tamaroas. Of Binneteau 
it is recorded by Bancroft, that, having followed the Illinois 
in one of their annual hunts on the prairies bordering the 
Mississippi, he was there seized with a mortal fever, " and 
his bones were left to bleach on the wilderness range of 
the buffalo.'" His death occurred in December, 1699. 

In 1698, came Gabriel Marest, or Maret, who, four 
years before, had accompanied D'Iberville on a voyage to 
Hudson's Bay, and had chanted aves to the benighted Es- 
quimaux on its frozen shores. Father Marest was espec- 
ially associated with the Kaskaskias, whose language he 
easily mastered, and in which he compiled a catechism. 
It was under his immediate guidance, in the year 1700, that 
the mission to the Kaskaskias was removed from the Illi- 
nois River to the Mississippi. The subjoined account of 
the transfer and migration of the tribe is extracted from an 
exhaustive article upon the subject by Hon. E. G. Mason, 
of Chicago, printed in the " Magazine of American His- 
tory," for March, 1881 (Vol. VI): 

"But the evidence," says Mr. Mason, "that this mis- 



200 Illinois as a Dependency of Canada. 

sion remained upon the Illinois River until the year 1700, 
and that there was no settlement before that time upon the 
site of the Kaskaskia we now know, appears to be well 
nigh conclusive, A letter written to the Bishop of Quebec 
by John Francis Buisson de St. Cosme, a missionary priest, 
describes the journey of his party from Michillimackinac 
to the mouth of the Arkansas, b}' the Illinois and Missis- 
sippi Rivers, in the year 1699. They stayed at the house 
of the Jesuit Fathers at Chicago, and set out from there 
about November 1st, on wliat one of their predecessors 
calls the divine * river, named by the Indians Checagou, 
and made the portage to the river of the Illinois. Passing 
the Illinois village before referred to, they learned that 
most of the Indians had gone to Peoria Lake to hunt. 
Arriving there, they met the Fathers Pinet and Marest, 
with their tiock, of which St. Cosme gives a good account, 
and he speaks of their work as the Illinois mission. 

"The party journeyed onward under the guidance of 
La Salle's trusty lieutenant, Tonti. While on the Illinois 
River, certain Indians attempted to prevent their going to 
the Mississippi, and intimated that they would be killed if 
they did so. Tonti replied that he did not fear men ; that 
they had seen him meet the Iroquois, and knew that he 
could kill men ; and the Indians offered no further opposi- 
tion. They reached the Mississippi the 6th of December, 
1699, and the next day reached the village of the Tamarois, 
who had never seen any ' black gown,' except for a few 
days, when the Reverend Father Gravier paid them a visit." 
A week later, they ascended a rock on the right, going 
down the river, and erected a beautiful cross, which their 
escort saluted with a volley of musketry, and St. Cosme 
prayed that God might grant that the cross, which had 
never been known in those regions, might triumph there. 
From the context of this letter, it is evident that this cere- 
mony took place not far below the site of the present Kas- 
kaskia, which St. Cosme must have passed to reach this 



* The term divine was applied to the river Des Plaiiies, which was va- 
riously called Checagou, Chekagou, Ckkagou and CMgagov, by the early 
explorers. 



Transfer of the Kaskaskia Mission. 201 

rock, but he makes no mention of such a village. Further- 
more, within fifteen miles or so of Kaskaskia, there is a 
rocky bluff on the Mississippi side of the river, then known 
as the Cape of the Five men, or Cap Cinq Homines. This 
is doubtless a corruption of the name of the good Father 
St. Cosme, as appears from a map made a little more than 
one hundred years ago, which gives both names, Cinq 
Homines and St. Cosme, to this very bluli". It probably is 
the identical one he ascended, and he could not have spoken 
of the cross as unknown in those regions, had there been 
any settlement so near the spot as the Kaskaskia we now 
know. Tonti, who was the leader of this party, is thought 
by some to have founded Kaskaskia in 1686. iSTobler 
founder could no town have had than this faithful and fear- 
less soldier, but the facts just narrated make such a theory 
impossible. 

"Again in the early part of the year 1700, a bold voy- 
ager, Le Sueur (on his way to the copper mines in the Sioux 
country), whose journal is in print, pushed up the Missis- 
sippi from its mouth, where D'Iberville had just planted the 
banner of France, and passed the site of Kaskaskia without 
notice of such a place. He speaks of the village of the Tam- 
arois, where by this time, St. Cosme had taken up his abode 
on his return from the south.* About July 15th, going 
northward, Le. Sueur arrived at the mouth of the Illinois, 
and there met three Canadian voyageurs coming to join his 
party, and received by them a letter from the Jesuit Marest, 



■■■ It is doubtful if Father St. Cosme ever returned from the South as 
above stated, unless for a brief season. He was born in France about 
the year 1658, and ordained a Jesuit priest in 1683. We next find him 
engaged as a missionary in Canada, from whence, in the autumn of 
1699, he was sent to establish a mission among the Natchez Indians on 
the Lower Mississippi. Arrived thither, he soon gained the confidence 
of the Sun Chief and the esteem of his nation, but did not succeed very 
well in converting those sun-worshipers to the Eoman Catholic faith. 
In 1707, being obliged to make a journey to Mobile, St. Cosme embarked 
in a canoe with three other Frenchmen, and while sailing down the 
river, they were set upon and killed by a band of the Chetimacha In- 
dians. The Natchez, it is said, avenged his death by the slaughter of 
a great part of the offending tribe. — See Appleton's Encyclo. of Amer. 
Biog., vol. 5, p. 369. 



202 Illinois as a Dependence of Canada. 

dated July 10, 1700, at the ' Mission of the Immaculate Con- 
ception of the Blessed Virgin at the Illinois.' The letter of 
St, Cosme and the journal of Le Sueur seem to show clearly 
enough that down to the middle of the year 1700, the pres- 
ent Kaskaskia had not been settled, and that the mission 
was still on the Illinois River. 

"And, lastly, we have the journal of the voyage of 
Father James Gravier, in 1700,* from the country of the 
Illinois to the mouth of the Mississippi ; from which we 
learn that he returned from Michilimackinac, and set out 
from Chicago on the 8th of September, 1700. He says he 
arrived too late at the Illinois, of whom Father Marest had 
charge, to prevent the transmigration of the village of the 
Kaskaskias, which was too precipitately made, on vague 
news of the establishment on the Mississippi, evidently re- 
ferring to the landing of D'Iberville the year before. He 
did not believe that the Kaskaskias, whom Marest accom- 
panied, would have separated from the Peorias and other 
Illinois, had he arrived sooner, and he obtained a promise 
from the Peorias to await his return from the Mississippi. 
After having marched four days with the Kaskaskias, Gra- 
vier went forward with Marest, whom he left sick at the 
Tamarois village, and departed from there October 9, 1700, 
to go to the lower part of the Mississippi, accompanied 
only by some Frenchmen. The Indians, with Marest, we 
may presume, halted between the Kaskaskia and Missis- 
sippi Rivers, where we soon after find them ; and thus 
doubtless was accomplished the transfer of the mission to 
its final location. The eagerness of the Illinois tribes to be 
in closer communication with the French was probably in- 
tensified by their desire to escape any further assaults from 
tlieir dreaded enemies, and to rear their wigwams where 
they would never hear the war-cry of the Iroquois. Both 
motives would operate more powerfully with the Kaskas- 
kias than with any others, because they had been longer 



* Relation, ou Journal du Voyage du li. P. Jacques Gravier, de la Com- 
pagnie de Jcsuk, en 1700, depuis le pays de Illinois jusqu' a V embouchure des 
oi, p. 68. Cramoisy Series of Relations, N. Y., 1859. 



Transfer of the Kaskaskia Mission. 203 

under the influence of the French, and because, in their old 
location, they were the first to receive the onslaughts of the 
relentless foemen of the Illinois. Hence they set out to go 
to the Lower Mississippi, hut Gravier's influence, and per- 
haps Marest's illness as well, led them to pause at the first 
suitable resting-place. And when we consider that, a few 
years later, this same Marest, who accompanied these In- 
dians on their migration, was stationed at the present Kas- 
kaskia, in charge of the Mission of the Immaculate Con- 
ception, as appears from his letters ; that he died and was 
buried there, as is shown by the parish records, and that 
we hear nothing further of a mission of this name on the 
Illinois River, we may reasonably conclude that the Kas- 
kaskia of our time should date its origin from the fall of 
the year 1700, and should honor James Gravier and Gabriel 
Marest as its founders." 

Shortly after the transfer of the mission had been ef- 
fected, the site of the new settlement was fixed on the right 
bank of the Kaskaskia or Okaw River, six miles above its 
confluence with the Mississippi, and nearly two miles east 
of the latter river. It is not improbable that an Indian 
settlement had previously existed here, though this is a 
matter of conjecture. The village was christened by the 
missionaries "if Village (V ImmaciiUe Conception de Cas- 
casquias" but no regularity of design was observed by its 
founders, nor was any attempt made to profit by the natural 
advantages of its position. 

At that pristine period, the scenery about Kaskaskia 
was well calculated to attract and please the eye of such of 
the French missionaries as had a taste for the beautiful in 
nature. " The velvet verdure of the plain, the glassy sur- 
face of the idle river, the lofty hill* (on the east), with its 
stately forest, the air scented with the fragrance of its wild 
flowers, the little springs gushing from its side in sparkling 
beauty, all reposing in the sleep of nature, with their virgin 



* The river at Kaskaskia was three hundred and fifty feet wide, and 
the bluffs opposite the town rise to the height of about two hundred 
feet. 



204 Illinois as a Dependency of Canada. 

freshness upon them, — there was a landscape to charm her 
most capricious lover." * 

For the first few years of her existence, Kaskaskia is 
little noticed in contemporaneous records, except as a mis- 
sion station. The early history of the place is mostly drawn 
from the parish records, and the letters and journals of the 
missionary priests. Some of these records are in the cus- 
tody of the priest of the parish, and others are in the keep- 
ing of the hishop of the diocese. The oldest record of the 
church at Kaskaskia is the " Register of Baptisms of the 
Mission of the Illinois, of the title of the Immaculate Con- 
ception of the Blessed Virgin." The first entry in it, ac- 
cording to Breese, bears date March 20, 1695. Retaining 
the French spelling of the names, it reads as follows : 

" In the year 1695, March 20th, I, Jacques Gravier, of 
the Society of Jesus, baptized Pierre Aco, newly-born of P. 
Michael Aco. Godfather was De Hautchy, godmother 
Maria Aramipinchicoue ; Maria Joanna, grandmother of the 
child."t 

This entry is claimed to be a copy of the original rec- 
ord, which was made before the removal of the mission 
from the Upper Illinois River. The register was continued 
until June 1719, when the mission of Kaskaskia was 
changed into a parish. A new baptismal register was then 
opened, which bears this French title: ''■ Begistre des Bap- 
tems fails dans L'Eglisse de la Mission et Paroisse de la Con- 
ception de Notre Dame, commence le 18 Juin, 1719." 

Marriage and burial registers were likewise kept from 
quite an early date, and were continued down, with varying 
regularity, until toward the middle of the present century. 
On these venerable records appear the signatures of many 
men of note an<l influence in the early French history of 
Illinois. 

In 1707, Father Marest was joined at Kaskaskia by 



*Breese's Early Hist, of 111., p. 158. 

tit is affirmed that Michael Aco's wife was the daughter of a Kas- 
kaskia chief, and that he was the identical Ako, or Accault, who accom- 
panied Friar llenneiiin in his voyage of exploration up the Mississippi 
in 1680. 



Early History of the Present Kaskaskia. 205 

Father Jean Mermet, who had previously attempted a mis- 
sion among the Mascoutins and others on the Lower Ohio, 
and had also labored at the great village of the Illinois. 
Mr. Bancroft, in the third volume of his History of the 
United States, gives us the following distinct picture of 
Father Mermet's labors and success at Kaskaskia : 

" The gentle virtues and fervid eloquence of Mermet 
made him the soul of the mission of Kaskaskia. At early 
dawn his pupils came to church, dressed neatly and mod- 
estly, each in a deerskin, or a robe sewn together from sev- 
eral skins. After receiving lessons, they chanted canticles; 
mass was then said in presence of all the Christians, the 
French, and the converts, the women on the one side and 
the men on the other. From prayers and instructions, the 
missionaries proceeded to visit the sick and administer med- 
icine, and their skill as physicians did more than all the 
rest to win confidence. In the afternoon the catechism was 
taught in the presence of the young and the old, when every 
one, without distinction of rank or age, answered the ques 
tions of the missionary. At evening all would assemble at 
the chapel for instruction, for prayer, and to chant the 
hymns of the church. On Sundays and festivals, even after 
vespers, a homily was pronounced ; at the close of the day 
parties would meet in houses to recite the chaplets in alter- 
nate choirs, and sing psalms until late at night. These 
psalms were often homilies, with words set to familiar 
tunes. Saturday and Sunday were the days appointed for 
confession and communion, and every convert confessed 
once in a fortnight."* 

This description by Bancroft is chiefly drawn from a 
narrative letter written by Father Marestto Father Germon, 
dated November 9, 1712, and published in the Lettres Edifi- 
antes, at Paris. In the course of that letter, Marest remarks : 
" The Illinois are much less barbarous than the other Indians. 
Christianity and their intercourse with the French have 
somewhat civilized them. ... It would be diflicult to 



'■'Father Mermet continued to labor at the Kaskaskia mission until 
his death in 1718. 



206 Illinois as a Dependency of Canada. 

say what is their religion. It consists entirely in some 
superstitions with which their credulity is amused." 

These missionary priests were truly a heroic and self- 
devoted class of men. Of their hard and trying manner of 
life, the same father gives us some glimpses in his printed 
correspondence. On Good Friday, in the year 1711, he set 
out on a trip across the country to the Peorias, who wanted 
a new mission opened among them. Concerningthis journey 
on foot through the wilderness, he thus vividly writes : 

" I departed, having nothing about me but my crucifix 
and breviary, and being accompanied by only two savages, 
who might abandon me from levity, or might fly through 
fear of enemies. The terror of these vast, uninhabited 
regions, in which for twelve days not a single soul was 
seen, almost took away my courage. This was a journey 
wherein there was no village, no bridge, no ferry-boat, no 
house, no beaten path, and over boundless prairies, inter- 
sected by rivulets and rivers, through forests and thickets 
filled with briars and thorns, through marshes in which we 
sometimes plunged to the girdle. At night repose was 
sought on the grass or leaves, exposed to the winds and 
rains, happy if by the vside of some rivulet, whose waters 
might quench our thirst. Meals were prepared from such 
game as might be killed on the way, or by roasting ears of 
corn." 

Father Marest was longer in missionary service with 
the Illinois Indians than any of his predecessors. He died, 
it is said, near Peoria, September 17, 1715. 

It has been a mooted question among Illinois antiqua- 
rians as to which is the more ancient of the two villages, 
Kaskaskia or Cahokia. Pittman, in his account of the 
French Settlements, says that Cahokia "was the first settle- 
ment on the Mississippi; " and in the "Annals of the West" 
it is stated that " Cahokia appears to have been a trading 
post and missionary station earlier than Kaskaskia." These 
statements are supported by the weight of probal)ility, 
though the difterence in age between the two can hardly 
exceed one year. According to Breese's History, the Jesuit 
Fathers Pinet and Binneteau established the mission at 



Founding of Cahokia. 207 

Cahokia, and christened the little community which grew 
up around it by the name of aS'^. Famille de Caoquias. It 
is doubtful, however, if Father Binneteau ever labored at 
this mission. 

" The credit of establishing the mission of Cahokia, at 
first called Tamaroa, belongs to Rev. Jacques Pinet, but at 
what date has been a matter of dispute. Up to the time of 
St. Cosme's visit to the Tamaroas in 1699, it appears that no 
' black gown ' had been seen there, except Father Gravier 
for a few days. The following year, however, when Le 
Sueur had reached this village (where he remained seven- 
teen days), he found three French missionaries, viz.: Rev. 
J. Bergier, and Fathers Pinet and Joseph de Limoges, and 
also a number of Canadian traders, who were purchasing furs 
and skins. In October of the same year (1700), Father 
Gravier mentions the fact in his journal that, on his way 
down the Mississippi, he stopped at the village of the Tam- 
aroas, and found Father Pinet there, ' peaceably discharg- 
ing the functions of a missionary, and Rev. M. Bergier, 
also,' who had care only of the French. Father Bergier 
remained at Cahokia until his death, July 16, 1710." * 

Father Pinet met with unusual success in his mission 
at Cahokia, and soon found his chapel too small to accom- 
modate the crowds that resorted thither to the mass. The 
Indians under his spiritual charge were the Tamaroas and 
Cahokias, the latter being an allied tribe or branch of the 
former. The imposing rites of the Roman Church were 
well calculated to awe the senses of these ignorant and 
superstitious savages, but the religious impressions made 
upon their minds were feeble and transient, and when away 
from the influence and guidance of the priests, they were 
prone to relapse into the excesses of barbarism. 

When the village of Cahokia was originally established 
(say in 1699), it stood upon the immediate bank of the 
Mississippi; but in the course of a few years the river 



* " Illinois, Historical and Statistical." By John Moses, Chicago, 
1889, Vol. I., p. 85. 



208 Illinois as a Dependency of Canada. 

shifted its bed to the west, so as to leave tlie village some 
distance inland. It long remained a place of considerable 
importance for trade, though there was never any thing 
attractive in its situation or environs. At present it is a 
straggling, decayed, and antiquated little village, seated on 
a sandy ridge in the American Bottom,_,opposite Carondo- 
let, and about one mile east from the Mississippi River. 

Besides Kaskaskia and Cahokia, other French villages 
afterward sprang up in that vicinity, which will be noticed 
hereafter. Other and branch missions were also established 
among the Illinois Indians by the zeal and enterprise of the 
Jesuit clergy, who, prior to the introduction of any form 
of civil government in the country, officiated in the double 
capacity of spiritual directors and temporal rulers of the 
people. 

Although anticipating somewhat the chronological or- 
der of events in our history, we make space here for the 
following extracts from Father Charlevoix' interesting and 
instructive description of the Illinois country, through 
which he traveled with an armed escort in the autumn of 
1721. Of Peoria, then still an Indian village, he says : 

" The two following days, we traveled a charming 
country ; and the 3d of October, about noon, we found our- 
selves at the entrance of Lake Pimiteouy. It is the river 
which grows wider here, and which for three leagues is 
one league in breadth. At the end of these three leagues, 
we find on the right a second village of the Illinois, distant 
about fifteen leagues from that at the Rock.* Nothing can 
be more pleasant than the situation ; it has over against it, 
as in perspective, a very fine forest, which was then of all 
colors, and behind it a plain of immense extent, bordered 
with woods. The lake and the river swarm with fish, and 
their sides with wild fowl. I met also in this village four 
French-Canadians, who informed me that I was between 
four parties of enemies, and that it was unsafe for me either 
to go forward or return." 

* By the course of the river, the distance was nearer thirty than fif- 
teen leagues. 



Charlevoix' Visit to the Illinois. 209 

Accompanied by two of the Canadians from Peoria as 
guides, Charlevoix and party resumed their journey, and 
next stopped at Cahokia, concerning which village, and the 
missionaries stationed there, he thus writes : 

" The same day (10th of October), we went to lay in 
a village of the Caoquias and Tamarouas. These are two 
nations of the Illinois which are united, and who do not 
together make a very numerous village. It is situated on 
a little river which comes from the east, and which has no 
water but in the spring season ; so that we were forced to 
walk a good half league to the cabins. I was surprised 
that they had chosen such an inconvenient situation, as 
they might have found a much better ; but they told me 
that the Mississippi washed the foot of the village when it 
was built, and that in three years it (the river) had lost half 
a league of ground, and that they w^ere thinking of looking 
out for another settlement. I passed the night in the house 
of the missionaries, who are two ecclesiastics of the Sem- 
inary of Quebec, formerly my disciples, but who might now 
be my masters. The oldest of the two (Dominique A. 
Thaumer) was absent. I found the youngest (Francois le 
Mercier) such as he has been reported to me, severe to 
himself, full of charity for others, and making virtue ami- 
able in his own person But he has so little health, that I 
think he can not long support the way of life which they 
are obliged to lead in these missions." 

Of Kaskaskia and its environs, the same traveler 
writes : " I arrived next day (the 12th) at the Kaskasquias, 
at nine in the morning. The Jesuits had here a very flour- 
ishing mission, which has lately been divided into two, be- 
cause it was thought proper to form two villages of sav- 
ages instead of one. The most populous is on the side of 
the Mississippi ; two Jesuits* have the government of it in 
spiritual affairs. Half a league lower is Fort Chartres, 
about a musket-shot from the river. M. Duquet de Bois- 
briant, a Canadian gentleman, commands here for the Com- 

'■■ Fathers Boulanger and Kereben. 
14 



210 Illinois as a Dependency of Canada. 

pany, to which the place belongs ; and all the space be- 
tween the two places begins to be peopled by the French. 
Four leagues further, and two leagues from the river, there 
is a large village of French, who are almost all Canadians, 
and have a Jesuit for their priest. The second village ot 
the Illinois is two leagues distant from it and farther up the 
country, and is under the charge of a priest. 

" The French here are pretty much at their ease, A 
Fleming, who was a servant of the Jesuits, has taught 
them how to sow wheat, and it thrives very well. They 
have some horned cattle and fowls. The Illinois cultivate 
the lands after their fashion, and are very laborious. They 
likewise breed poultry, which they sell to the French. 
Their women are sufficiently dexterous ; they spin the buf- 
falo's wool, and make it as fine as that of the English 
sheep. Sometimes one would even take it for silk. They 
make stufis of it, which they dye black, yellow and dark 
red ; they make gowns of it, which they sew with thread 
made of the sinews of the roebuck. They expose these to 
the sun for three days, and when dry beat them, and with- 
out difficulty draw out threads of great fineness. 

"All this country is open. It consists of vast meadows 
(prairies) which extend for twenty-five leagues, and are 
separated by little groves that are all of good wood." 

Remaining at Kaskaskia for a month, Charlevoix re- 
sumed his way down the Mississippi, and reached the con- 
fluence of the Ohio about the 15th of November, 1721. 
With regard to this river (then still called the Ouabache), 
and the advantage of having a settlement at its mouth, his 
journal says : 

" Immediately after this reach, we passed on the left 
by the fine river Ouabache, by which one can go quite up 
to the Iroquois, when the waters are high. Its entrance 
into the Mississippi is a little less than a quarter of a 
league wide. There is no place in Louisiana more fit, in 
my opinion, for a settlement than this, nor where it is of 
more consequence to have one." * 



* Vide "An Historical Journal of Travels in North America, under- 



Charlevoix' Life and Works. 211 

taken by order of the King of France." By Father Charlevoix (English 
Translation, London, 1763j, i^p. 284-291, and 303. 



Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix, an eminent Jesuit scholar, 
historian, and traveler, was born at St. Quentin, in the North of France, 
October 29, 1682. At the age of sixteen he entered the Society of Jesus, 
and while still a student of divinity was sent to Canada in 1705. During 
the succeeding four years he taught in the Jesuit College at Quebec, 
and afterward returned to France, where he was made a professor of 
belles-lettres in one of the Jesuit universities. In 1720 he again came to 
Canada, and during the next year ascended the river St. Lawrence, and 
the great lakes to the head of Lake Michigan, from whence he entered 
and traversed the Illinois country. Descending the Mississippi to New 
Orleans, he thence visited the French establishments at Biloxi and on 
the Mobile, and afterward sailed via St. Domingo to France, whither he 
arrived (1722) after an absence of two years. 

Charlevoix was author of several learned and valuable works. He 
first published a history of the Catholic Missions in Japan, which was 
followed by a history of Saint Domingo ; and in 1744 his Histoire d( 
Nouvelle France, which had been withheld for nearly twenty years, ap- 
peared in three large volumes. Although quoted and praised by schol- 
ars, no translation of it was made from the French until somewhat re- 
cently, when an edition in English, with copious notes, was published 
by Dr. John G. Shea (N. Y., 1865-72), in six volumes. 

About the year 1744, Charlevoix also published his Journal of Trav- 
els in North America, in the form of letters addressed to the Duchesse 
de Lesdiguiere. It is averred that from this work the British Ministry 
first gained a correct notion of Canada and its dependencies, and of the 
great advantages to be derived from the possession of that country. 
The last literary performance of our author was his History of Para- 
guay, which contains a full account of the operations of the Jesuits in 
that southern quarter of the globe. 

Charlevoix died in La Fl^che, France, on February 1, 1761, at a 
green old age. 



212 Settlement of Lower Louisiana. 



CHAPTER XL 

1698-1 71 L 
PERMANENT SETTLEMENT OF LOWER LOUISIANA. 

By the treaty concluded at Ryswick, in 1697, Louis 
XIV. relinquished nearly all of his European conquests, 
and recognized the Prince of Orange as King of England, 
Temporary tranquillity being thus restored in Western 
Europe, Louis had some leisure to devote to his American 
possessions, and to the renewal of his former endeavor to 
establish a colony at or near the embouchure of the Mis- 
sissippi River. This monarch was obviously ambitious to 
enhance the glories of his reign by creating for France a 
colonial dominion on the sunny shores of the Gulf of 
Mexico, which might rival the flourishing English settle- 
ments on the Atlantic coast. Accordingly, in the begin- 
ning of the year 1698, he gave orders for the fitting out of 
a suitable expedition to colonize Louisiana. The command 
of this royal enterprise was entrusted to Captain d'lber- 
ville, a distinguished young naval officer, whose energy, 
tact, administrative ability, and varied experience pecu- 
liarly qualified him for so arduous and important an un- 
dertaking. 

Pierre le Moyne,* Sieur d'Iberville, was a native of 
Canada, having been born in Montreal, July 16, 1661. He 
was, it is said, the third son of Charles le Moyne, himself a 
gallant soldier, and was one of eleven brothers, seven of 
whom died naval ofiicers. When but a boy of fourteen, 
Pierre entered the French navy as a midshipman, and by 
meritorious service rose rapidly in his profession. In 1692 
he became captain of a frigate, and, ten years later, cap- 
tain of a line-of-battle-ship. During this period of active 



By some authors, this family name is written Lemoine. 



Iberville's Colonizing Exjpedition. 213 

service, he acquitted himself not only as a brave and skill- 
ful naval officer, hut as an efficient agent of the French 
government in settling colonies in Acadia and Cape Breton 
Island. In 1697 he made a cruise with his ship, the Peli- 
can, into the misty and frigid waters of Hudson's Bay, 
wdiere he engaged and sunk an English man-of-war, cap- 
tured her two consorts, and reduced Fort Nelson, or Fort 
Bourbon, as it was called by the French. Returning to 
France from this brilliant cruise, he sought and obtained 
command of the new colonizing expedition to the Missis- 
sippi. 

On the 24th of Septeml)er, 1(398, Captain d' Iberville 
set sail from Rochelle upon his distant and uncertain en- 
terprise, taking with him M. de SauvoUe,* and his young 
brother, Bienville. His squadron consisted of two frigates, 
the Badine and Marin, of thirty guns each (the former was 
commanded by himself, and the latter by the Comte de 
Surgeres) and two smaller ships, bearing a company of 
marines and about two hundred colonists. A majority of 
the latter were ex-soldiers, who had served in the armies 
of France, some of whom were accompanied by their 
wives and children. The other colonists were made up ot 
artisans, laborers, and needy adventurers. They were all 
supplied with the necessary clothing, provisions and im- 
plements for beginning a settlement in the remote solitudes 
of Louisiana. Stopping at Brest to complete his outfit, 
the commander sailed from that port on the 24th of Octo- 
ber, shaping his general course to the south-west. After 
an auspicious passage, he dropped anchor in the haven 
of Cape Francois, now Cape Haytieu, St. Domingo, late in 
the following December. 

On arriving thither, his fleet was joined by the war 
ship Le Francois, of fifty guns, commanded by the Mar- 
quis de Chateaumorant, who had received orders to escort 
the expedition to its destination. Being thus reinforced, 



* It is doubtful if Sauvolle belonged to the Le Moyne family of 
brothers, though Mr. Gayarre treats him as a full brother, and tells 
us that he inherited a fortune from his godfather. 



214 Settlement of Lower Louisiana. 

D'Iberville again put to sea on the 1st of January, 1699, 
taking the route via Cape Sau Antonio, at the western end 
of Cuba. Having doubled that cape on the 15th of Janu- 
ary, he steered northward over the Mexican Gulf, and 
reached the southern shore of Florida on the 24th. An- 
choring his ships securely off the Island of Santa Rosa, 
he then proceeded to reconnoiter the Bay of Pensacola 
(called by the Spaniards Santa Maria de Galva), where he 
found two Spanish war vessels, and a small fort and garri- 
son. Upon sending in a boat with two officers, the Spanish 
commander received them politely, but refused the French 
permission to enter with their vessels. The Spaniards had 
long been in possession of East Florida, but it was not 
until they had learned that a French armament was fitting 
out for the western coast of the peninsula, that they made 
haste to establish this military post on Pensacola Bay. 
The new erection, therefore, was an obvious indication ot 
their intention to anticipate, and, if possible, frustrate the 
designs of the French in these waters. 

Leaving Pensacola Bay and standing along the low 
coast to the west, D'Iberville, on the 31st of the month, 
cast anchor off Dauphin Island, lying on the west and near 
the entrance of Mobile Bay. This Island was first named 
by the French Isle de Massacre, from the circumstance that 
on its level surface was found a mound composed of earth 
and the bones of long dead Indians, who had fallen there 
in combat with their enemies. Sailing still farther west- 
ward, the French commander next discovered a group of 
small islands, to which was given the name of Isles dcs 
Chandeleur. Anchoring his frigates near them, he went to 
examine the channel between Cat Island and Ship Island, 
and, having landed his colonists on the latter, he caused 
temporary huts to be erected there for their shelter from 
the weather. The Marquis de Chateaumorant, having now 
fulfilled his mission, and finding the waters on this coast 
too shallow to remain long in safety with his large frigate, 
sailed away on his return to St. Domingo. 

About the 11th of February, Iberville sent his brother 
Bienville, with a felucca and canoe, to the mainland, which 



Iberville inters the Mouth of the Mississippi. 215 

lay about four leagues to the north of his anchorage. 
Having entered a little bay, the exploring party discovered 
several piroques filled with half-naked savages, who fled 
with consternation at the approach of the Frenchmen. On 
the next day, however, the latter contrived to intercept a 
woman of the Indians, by whom they were enabled to 
open an intercourse with her tribe, which was the Bilocci, 
or Biloxi — a name given by the French to the bay itself. 
On the evening of the same day there arrived at this bay a 
war party of some eighty Bayagoulas, so called, who were 
then at war with the Indians on the Mobile. From the 
former it was learned, by the language of signs (for there 
was no interpreter,) that they dwelt oiF to the south-west, 
on the shores of a large and deep river, called by them the 
Malabouchia. Having ascertained by further inquiry among 
the natives the probable distance and course of the un- 
known river, Iberville prepared to go in quest of it. 

Accordingly, on the 27th of February, he set off from 
Isle de Vaisseau (Ship Island) with two shallops, carrying 
twenty-four men each — one of which was commanded by 
Bienville — and took with him as a guide Father Anastase 
Douay, who had been a companion of La Salle in his last 
Mississippi expedition. Sailing cautiously southward along 
the low and marshy coast, at the end of three days the voy- 
agers happily discovered the outlet of the "hidden river," 
which it was believed no European vessel had as yet pene- 
trated from the sea. On" the 2d of March they entered 
one of its principal passes, which Father Anastase* thought 
he recognized as the Mississippi, from its turbid and seeth- 
ing waters. On the 3d they began to ascend the river, and, 
after seven days of sailing and rowing, had attained a dis- 



* Father Douay, as Hennepin informs us, was a native of Quesnoy 
in Hainault, and, subsequent to his return from America in 1688, had 
been appointed vicar of the RecoUet convent at Cambray. Remaining 
there until summoned to join D'Iberville's colonizing expedition, he 
probably returned with the latter to France in 1699, since we find no 
further mention of him in Louisiana. We were pleased to have met 
with Pere Anastase once more ; and now that he disappears from the 
historic page, we can only say, hail ! and farewell. 



216 Settlement of Lower Louisiana. 

tance of forty leagues from the Gulf. Here our explorers 
came upon three pirogues filled with naked savages, who 
hastily fled at their advance. One of the natives, however, 
was overtaken in his flight, and by making him some trifling 
presents, which gained his good will, he was induced to 
bring back his companions. They belonged to the tribe 
of the Bayagoulas, and readily undertook to conduct the 
Frenchmen to their village, further up the river, which was 
reached on the 14th of March. It was found to contain 
between four and five hundred inhabitants, and mustered 
about one hundred warriors. Among the villagers were 
found stuffs of European fabric, said to have been given 
them by La Salle or Tonty. The chiefs of the Bayagoulas 
received their French visitors in a very civil manner, and 
gave to them, among other things, a few domestic fowls, 
which they claimed to have reared from some they had ob- 
tained from nations to the west of the Mississippi, near 
the seashore. Such fowls were not uncommon among the 
southern Indians at this time, though it seems that they 
were kept more as pets than for use as an article of food. 
They were doubtless originally brought to the country by 
the Spaniards. 

M. d'Iberville was still in doubt whether the river he 
was ascending was the Mississippi or not ; for he had not 
as yet seen or heard of the Tangibaos, of whom La Salle 
had made mention. Upon inquiry, however, it was ascer- 
tained that this small tribe had been destroyed by another 
called the Mongoulachas, or Bayagoulas, the Quinipissas of 
La Salle and Tonty. Soon afterward, Bienville found in 
the possession of one of these natives a letter which Tonty 
had penned to La Salle, and left in the keeping of a chief 
of the Quinipissas tribe, on the occasion of his trip to the 
Gulf in the spring of 1686.* This opportune discovery 



*This letter of Tonty's, to which we have previously alluded, or so 
much of it as was jiuhlished, reads as follows : 

" Vii-LAGK OP THE QuiNiPissAs, April 20, 1685 {1()86). 

"Sir: Having found the posts on which you had set up the King's 
arms thrown down by driftwood, I have planted another further in, 
about seven leagues from the sea, where 1 left a letter in a tree be- 



Iberville Explores the Lower Mississippi. 217 

dissipated all doubts in the minds of Iberville and his asso- 
ciates as to what river they were navigating, and inspired 
them with fresh conlidence to continue their upward voy- 
age. Among the Indians of this delta region, they also 
found jiart of an old suit of Spanish armor, which was sup- 
posed to have belonged to De Soto's army. 

On the 18th, still cautiously ascending, our voyagers 
passed on their right the Baton Rouge, the first high 
bank * they had seen since entering the river. Here was 
established the northern limit of the hunting grounds of 
the Bayagoulas. Some distance above that they came to a 
point where the river made a long detour or circuit, and, to 
save time, the commander caused the trees to be felled, and 
transported his boats to the opposite side of the peninsula. 
The Mississippi afterward cut itself a channel through this 
point, which has ever since been known as '■'■Point Coupee.'' 
On the 20th the explorers arrived at a large village of the 
Oumas, containing over three hundred braves, who wel- 
comed them with music and dances, and acquainted them 
with the Indian ceremony of smoking the calumet of peace. 
At this village they saw many domestic fowls, which were 
mostly kept for ornamental purposes. 

Here the Sieur d'Iberville, learning that there was a 
river or bayou to the eastward, which he could reach by a 
short portage, and down which he might descend through 
lakes to the sea, left the Mississippi, with two canoes and 
a guide, sending Bienville down the main river with the 
large boats, under instructions to meet him at the Isle de 

side. . . . All the nations have sung the calumet to me ; they fear 
us excessively since you defeated this village. I conclude by saying, 
that it is a great disappointment to me that we should return without 
the good fortune of meeting you, after two canoes have coasted toward 
Mexico for thirty leagues, and toward Florida for twenty-five, etc." See 
Charlevoix' New France, V., p. 123. 

■•■'On this bluff, twenty-five feet above high water, and one hundred 
and twenty-nine miles by the river above New Orleans, the French sub- 
sequently established a fortlet and village (now city), which received 
the name of Baton Rouge, or Red Post. This name, according to Le 
Page du Pratz's early History of Louisiana, is derived from the large 
cypress trees that formerly grew there, the wood of which is red. 



218 Settlement of Lower Louisiana. 

Vaisseaii. Proceeding on his return course, Bienville 
reached the island, without accident, about the first of 
April. Here he was met by Iberville, who had arrived 
before him, having come down through the bayou Man- 
shac or Iberville, and the two connecting lakes or arms of 
the Gulf, which he severally named Maurepas and Pont- 
chartrain. 

On the 12th of April, M. d'Iberville went to examine 
a small bay, lying several leagues north of Isle de Vais- 
seau, to which he gave the name of St. Louis. Pleased 
with the situation and appearance of this bay, he would 
have removed his colony thither forthwith, but for the fact 
that the water at its entrance was too shallow for his ves- 
sels of heavy draft. Finally, he decided to locate his es- 
tablishment on the eastern side of the mouth of Biloxi 
Bay, a northern arm of Mississippi Sound. The spot thus 
chosen was tolerably healthy, yet sandy and unproductive 
in the extreme. Its sterility, however, was not particularly 
objected to by the colonists, who thought nothing about 
agriculture, but only of trading with the Indians, and 
scouring the country for its supposed mineral wealth. 

In his official report, D'Iberville thus describes the first 
settlement ever made by white men upon the soil of what 
is now the State of Mississippi : 

" After having visited several places well adapted for 
forming settlements, our provisions falling short, we 
thought best to commence operations at the Bay of Biloxi, 
four leagues north-west of the place where the ships were 
anchored, and which could be approached at a distance of 
two leagues. We made choice of this place merely on ac- 
count of the road, where the small vessels can go and come 
at all times, aiul where we could assist, without fear, with 
a portion of the crew, in building the fort which I ordered 
to be constructed there ; whilst, in the meantime, the place 
most convenient for the colony can be selected at leisure. 

" This fort is built of wood, with four bastions ; two 
are made of hewn timber placed together, one foot and a 
half thick, and nine feet high ; the other two of double 



Iberville Plants his Colony at Biloxi Bay. 219 

palisades. It is mounted with fifty-four pieces of cannon,* 
with a plentiful supply of ammunition." He left M. de 
Sauvolle in command ; DeBienville, as king's lieutenant ; 
LeVasseur, major; DeBordenac, chaplain; M. Care, sur- 
geon ; two captains, two cannoniers, four sailors, eighteen 
filibusters, thirteen Canadians, ten mechanics, six masons, 
and thirty sub-oflicers and soldiers (ninety in all). 

M. d'Iberville named this fort for Count Maurepas, 
who was then Secretary of Foreign Affairs. After causing 
a group of log huts to be built around the fort for the use 
of the colonists, and having them to plant a quantity of 
beans and Indian corn, he distributed provisions for four 
or five months, and, on the 3d of May, re-embarked for 
France. Sailing through the old Bahama Channel^ and 
touching at St. Domingo, he arrived in safety at the port 
of liochefort on July 2, 1699.t 

On the 22d of May, after the departure of Capt. d' 
Iberville, Lieutenant Bienville set out with a small party on 
an excursion into the interior of the country. During the 
course of this trip, he was informed that a band of two hun- 
dred Chickasaws, headed by two white men (supposed to 
be Englishman from the colony in Carolina), had fallen upon 
and destroyed a village of the Colapissas, situated on the 
northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain. He, however, met 
with no enemy. Returning to Fort Biloxi, he again set off, 
on the 9th of June, with two canoes, to explore the coast 
on the east. Having passed the mouth of Pascagoula River 
and Mobile Point, he approached so near to Fort Pensacola 
that he perceived it was still occupied by the Spaniards. 

About the first of July the colonists at Biloxi Bay 
were cheered by the unexpected arrival of two bark ca- 
noes, carrjdng several Canadians and two Jesuit priests, 
Father Anthony Davion and Father Montigny. They came 



■■This is manifestly an error or misprint. The real number of can- 
non mounted upon the fort, as stated by Bancroft, Gayarre and other 
historians, was twelve. 

tSee M. d'Iberville's brief official narrative of this expedition, 
printed in " Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida," edited by 
B. F. French. (New Series, N. Y., 1869), pp. 30-32. 



220 Settlement of Lower Louisiana. 

by way of the Illinois and the Mississippi, and having 
learned from the Oumas that the French were establishing 
a colony near the Gulf, had come down to see them. After 
a pleasant visit here of ten days, the two priests departed 
to begin a mission among the Tonicas on the Mississippi, 
near the Yazoo. 

In September of the same year (1699), while Lieuten- 
ant Bienville was descending the Lower Mississippi, and 
when at a point some twenty-eight leagues from the sea, 
he discovered in the river an English ship of sixteen guns, 
commanded by one Captain Barr, who had left a consort 
in waiting at the mouth. The English captain was not 
certain that he was actually upon the Mississippi, and Bien- 
ville gladly availed himself of the opportunity to assure him 
that it was not the Mississippi ; that the river he sought ran 
much farther to the west, and that the stream on which he 
was sailing was within the limits of a country that had 
been taken possession of in the name of his majesty, the 
King of France. By this deception the wily Frenchman 
induced the English mariner to face about and return to 
the sea ; and from this circumstance the place has ever 
since borne the name of Detour des Anglais, or " English 
Turn." 

It is related as a fact, that on board Captain Barr's ship 
was a Protestant Frenchman, who secretly handed to Bien- 
ville a letter addressed to the King of France, in which his 
majesty was assured that if he would accord liberty of con- 
science to a Protestant colony in Louisiana, more than four 
hundred Huguenot families, already inured to exile and 
hardships, would immigrate hither from the Carolinas. 
The letter was afterward transmitted to Count Pontchar- 
train, the French Minister of Colonies, who, with the 
harshness and bigotry of that age, returned for answer, 
that his " Christian majesty had not expelled heretics from 
his kingdom in order to establish them in America." 

On the 6th of January, 1700, M. d'Iberville re-appeared 
in the waters of the Gulf oft" Fort Biloxi, with two large 
ships of war — the Renomme rating lifty guns, and the 
Gironde forty-six — bringing with him sixty Canadian im- 



Iberville liaises a Fort on the Mississippi. 221 

migrants, and a fresh supply of provisions and stores for 
the needy colonists. He also brought royal commissions, 
appointing Sauvolle governor, or commandant of the col- 
ony ; Bienville lieutenant, and Boisbriant major. By the 
same vessels arrived Pierre le Sueur and thirty miners, 
who had been sent by M. de Iluillier, of Quebec, to open 
and work a copper mine which had been discovered on 
the St. Peter's (now Minnesota) River, one of the afHu- 
ents of the Upper Mississippi. Le Sueur, moreover, had 
instructions from the governor of Canada to erect a fort on 
the St. Peter's, to hold in awe the Sioux or Dakotas. He 
departed in April on his mission to the far north.* 

When the vigilant D'Iberville was informed by his 
brother Bienville that two English ships had appeared in 
the mouth of the Mississippi, he determined to forthwith 
construct a fort on that river, so as to anticipate any future 
attempt of the English to gain a foot-hold on its shores. 
Having dispatched Bienville through the lakes and bayous 
to the Bayagoulas, to procure guides to some suitable spot 
on the lower part of the river, the commander himself left 
Isle de Vaisseau, or Ship Island, on the 15th of January, 
taking with him sixty men, two shallops, and two 
smaller vessels loaded with the necessary provisions, imple- 
ments, etc. After entering and ascending the Mississippi 
about eighteen leagues, he was met by Bienville, and they 
selected a position secure from inundation, and there liegun 
the construction of a log and earth fort, which received the 
name of Iberville. 

Toward the middle of February, while still engaged 
upon the fort, M. d'Iberville was joined by the veteran De 
Tonty, who arrived with a party of twenty Canadians from 
the Illinois, and who is said to have come in response to an 
invitation that had been sent him from Sauvolle. Tonty 
was now past his prime, yet his long and varied experience 

*" Stoddard, in his Sketches of Louisiana, on the authority of a MS. 
narrative of La Harpe, says that Le Sueur ascended the St. Peter's River 
to the mouth of Blue Earth River, where he erected a fort called 
L'Huillier, which was abandoned the next year on account of the hos- 
tility of the Sioux." — Mohette's Val. of the Miss., I., p. 206. 



222 Settlement of Lower Louisiana. 

with La Salle, and his intimate knowledge of the principal 
Indian nations of the Mississippi Valley, rendered him a 
valuable acquisition to the southern colony. Availing him- 
self of Tonty's presence and assistance, D'Iberville decided 
to ascend the river as far as the Natchez, and establish ami- 
cable relations with the natives on the way. Hastily or- 
ganizing an expedition for this purpose, he set out with 
Bienville and Tonty, proceeding in boats and canoes. 
They first stopped at the Bayagoulas, where they remained 
till the first week in March, when they proceeded to the Ou- 
mas.* Continuing their upward voyage, they next reached 
the Natchez, whose villages lay about three hundred and 
seventy-five miles from the Gulf, by the windings of the 
river. 

When the great Sun-chief heard of the approach of 
the French, he came forth from his village to meet them, 
borne upon a litter, and attended by a large and picturesque 
procession of his people. This nation, formerly very nu- 
merous and powerful, was now reduced to about twelve 
hundred warriors. The missionary St. Cosme, already re- 
ferred to, had arrived the year before, and taken up his 
residence among them. The better class of these Indians 
appeared to D'Iberville much more civilized than any 
others he had met with in the country. During his brief 
stay here, one of their temples was struck and set on fire 
by lightning. The keepers of the temple thereupon solic- 
ited the squaws to throw their infants into the fire, in 
order to appease the anger of the divinity ; and a number of 
children were thus sacrificed before the Frenchmen could 
prevail upon them to desist.f Delighted Avith the beauty 
of the Natchez country, and especially with the high, bold 
bluff, which commands an extensive prospect up and down 
the river, D'Iberville selected it for the future capital of 
Louisiana, and suggested the name of Rosalie, Avhich was 
given to the fort afterward built here by the French. 

On the 22d of March, Bienville and St. Denis, attended 
by twenty Canadians and a number of Indians, set oft' 



* The village of the Ounias, or Hounias, was situated two and one- 
half leagues east of the river. 

* Martin's History of Louisiana, vol. 1., j). 152. 



Bienville's Excursion to Bed River. 223 

from the Natchez on a tour of exploration to the westward, 
which extended to Red River, and occupied them nearly 
two months. At the same time, D'Iberville, accompanied, 
perhaps, by De Tonty,* returned to his fort above the 
outlet of the Mississippi, and thence to the anchorage of 
his ships at Isle de Vaisseau. Upon his arrival, he was 
surprised to learn that the Spanish governor of Pensacola 
had been there with a twenty-four gun ship, manned by one 
hundred and forty marines, and some armed shallops, in- 
tending to drive the French from the coast. But finding 
his force insutficient for this purpose, he had left a written 
protest against the French occupation of the country, 
claiming that it was within the limits of his Catholic 
majesty's dominions in Mexico. The French, however 
had come to stay, and paid little heed to the protest of 
Spain, whose power and prestige as a nation were on the 
decline. Having put his colony in as good a state of de- 
fense as possible, and given Bienville command of the fort 
on the Mississippi, M. d'Iberville sailed for France on the 
28th of May, 1701. 

About the middle of May, and before the sailing of 
D'Iberville, Bienville returned from his western expedition. 
He had ascended the Ouachita (Washita) a considerable dis- 
tance, thence traversed the countr}' westward to Red River, 
and returned down the latter stream and the Mississippi, 
having passed through a fertile region and visited several 
Indian tribes, particularly the Yatasses and Natchitoches. 
The main object of this expedition was to search for mines 
of the precious metals, and another Avas to ascertain the 
probable distance to the nearest Spanish establishments on 
the west. On the 22d of July in that year (1701), M. de 
Sauvolle died, an early victim to bilious fever, leaving the 
sole direction of affairs in the colony to Lieutenant Bien- 
ville. 

On the 18tli of the ensuing December, D'Iberville 



* As Tonty still retained some interest in Fort St. Louis of Illinois, 
it is not improbable that he returned there on business during that 
year (1700), though we find no reliable record of such a journey. 



224 Settlement of Lower Louisiana. 

again appeared in these southern waters with a French 
armament, consisting of the Renomme, a fifty gun ship, 
the Palmier, of forty-four guns, and a large brigantine. 
His arrival was very opportune for the starving colonists, 
whose number had been diminished by disease and casualties 
to about one hundred and fifty persons, and who had been 
driven to such straits as to have subsisted for some time 
wholly upon maize. Considering the unfavorable condi- 
tion and prospects of the colony, the commander now or- 
dered the removal of the })rincipal establishment from 
Biloxi to the Mobile. 

Accordingly, in the first week of January, 1702, Bien- 
ville set out to execute the orders of his chief, leaving only 
twenty men as a garrison at Biloxi. The site of the new 
establishment was fixed on the west side of the Mobile 
River, about eighteen leagues from the sea. Here a depot 
was formed and a fort soon built, which received the name 
of Fort Louis de la Mobile. By the 20th of March, the 
colonists had become settled in their new quarters, to which 
Avere transported such of their munitions and stores as had 
been kept on Dauphin Island. This removal brought the 
French into somewhat closer relations with the Choctaws, 
who inhabited the country to the north of Mobile Bay, and 
who were then at war with the Chickasaws. But M. 
d'Iberville, before his departure for France, was enabled to 
effect a truce between those puissant tribes. 

On the 24th of June (1702), a Spanish shallop arrived 
from Pensacola, bringing a letter from Don Francisco 
Martin, governor of that post, stating that his garrison was 
in a state of famine, and requesting a supply of provisions, 
which was sent to him by Bienville. Again, on the 11th 
of November, Don Martin himself arrived at Fort Louis 
from Pensacola, with the intelligence that France and 
Spain were at war with England. He asked for provisions 
and munitions, and . in view of the alliance of the two 
former powers, his request was granted. In the meantime, 
on the first of October, Father Davion visited the fort, 
with two Canadians from the Yazoo River. They were 
accompanied by Father Limoges, who was stationed among 



The Colony Reinforced. 225 

the Natchez, and who informed Bienville that the Coroas 
Indians had killed his missionary colleague, Foucault, and 
three other Frenchmen. 

On the 28th of November two Spanish officers arrived 
at the French head-quarters from St, Augustine, Florida, 
with a letter from the governor of that town, stating that 
he was besieged by an English force from Charleston, with 
a fleet of seventeen vessels, and some two thousand sav- 
ages. In response to the appeal of the Spaniards for aid, 
M. de Bienville gave them a liberal supply of munitions of 
war, and also dispatched a force of one hundred men to 
their assistance. It thus appears that, notwithstanding 
the jealousies of the rival colonies, situated so near each 
other, with conflicting territorial claims, the French gen- 
erously assisted their neighbors on different occasions with 
both provisions and ammunition. At this period the 
Spaniards found great difficulty in maintaining their es- 
tablishments in Florida. This was principally due to 
the inveterate animosity of the Indians of the countiy, 
who were encouraged in their hostilities, and sometimes 
materially aided, by the English colonists of South Car- 
olina. 

In the summer of 1703, M. d'Iberville sent his brother, 
Anthony le Moyne de Chateaugue, to Louisiana, with sev- 
enteen Canadian colonists, who carried with them imple- 
ments of husbandry, etc. About the 1st of May, 1704, the 
Pelican, a fifty-gun ship, arrived from France at Dauphin 
Island, loaded with provisions and military stores for the 
colony. She brought out two companies of troops to re- 
inforce the garrisons, four priests, two nuns, and twenty 
poor young women, who were shortly afterward married 
to the bachelor colonists. This was the first shipment of 
unmarried women to Louisiana, and was followed by others 
at intervals. 

During the autumn of that year there was much sick- 
ness and mortality in the French colony, and the horrors 
of famine were averted only by relief received from the 
Spanish governor of Pensacola. On the 27th of October, 
15 ^ 



226 Settlement of Lower Louisiana. 

intelligence was received that the Spanish fort of Pen- 
sacola had been destroyed by fire, together with a large 
quantity of provisions, clothing, and stores; and at the 
same time a request came that the French would send 
them a schooner to carry the tidings of their disaster 
to Vera Cruz. On the 11th of December news came that 
the English were fitting out an armament at Charleston, 
to operate against the French establishments at Biloxi and 
on the Mobile, but this fortunately proved to be incorrect. 
In January, 1705, a trader named De Lambert arrived at 
the Mobile from a small French post on the Wabash (prob- 
ably the Lower Ohio), which he had abandoned in conse- 
quence of the hostile disposition of the savages in that in- 
terior region. During this year war again broke out be- 
tween the Choctaws and Chickasaws, which was character- 
ized by more than the usual Indian barbarities. A tempo- 
rary peace, however, was at length eft'ected through the 
active mediation of the French under Bienville, though at 
considerable personal risk to the latter. 

On the 9th of July, 1706, Pierre le Moyne, Sieur 
d'Iberville, died at sea, near St. Domingo, aged forty- 
five years. He had been previously attacked with yel- 
low fever, and barely escaped with his life. Unable to 
sustain the enervating influence of a tropical climate, he 
had retired to France to recuperate his broken health. 
After a year or more he again sailed to the West Indies, 
and was there stricken by a severe disease which termin- 
ated his earthly existence.* He thus fell a lamented victim 
to his sense of oflUcial duty, and of devotion to the service 
of his king and country. We have already passed in re- 
view the chief incidents in his active and fortunate career, 
and need only add here a brief estimate of his character. 
He was a man of great energy and determination of pur- 
pose, and, as a naval commander, was quick and judicious 
to decide, and prompt and bold in the execution of his 
plans. Less learned, brilliant, and fanciful than La Salle, 
he was better balanced, more practical, and therefore more 



* Monette's " Valley of the Mississippi," Vol. I, p. 207. 



Misfortunes of the Louisiana Colony. 227 

successful as a colonizer. The idol of his Canadian coun- 
trymen, he was justly recognized as one of the ablest cap- 
tains in the French navy. His premature decease cast a 
gloom over the infant colony of Louisiana, of which he 
had been both the persevering founder and constant bene- 
factor. His name is fitly perpetuated in one of the rivers, 
as well as in a parish, of the Pelican State of Louisiana. 

After the death of B'Iberville, contention and trouble 
arose in the colony. Bienville Avas charged with sundry 
acts of misconduct and mismanagement, and was dis- 
missed from oflice, but his successor dying on the way 
from France, he still retained the command. In January, 
1707, intelligence was brought to the fort on the Mobile 
that St. Cosme, the Jesuit missionary among the l^atchez, 
and three other Frenchmen, had been slain by the Cheti- 
maclias, as they were descending the river to the sea.* 
Presents were thereupon sent by the French to the surround- 
ing nations, to induce them to wage war upon that treach- 
erous tribe. 

In September, 1710, an English corsair, with an armed 
party, made a descent upon Dauphin Island, and pillaged 
it of property said to have been worth sixty thousand 
livres. During the years 1709 and 1710, the Louisiana 
colonists suffered severely from sickness and famine ; and 
in March, 1709, there was a great flood in the Mobile and 
other rivers, wiiich inundated the houses of Fort Louis. 
For this reason the French abandoned the fort, and built 
another at or near the mouth of Mobile River, where the 
city now stands. 

Such, in imperfect outline, are the principal occurrences 
in the history of the colony of Lower Louisiana during the 
first twelve years of it precarious existence. In the French 
colonial annals of the period, nothing is more astonishing 
than the number of canoe and boat voyages made by them 
to every part of the wilderness Valley of the Mississippi. 
The comparative ease and safety with which these long 
and difiicult journeys were performed indicated great tact 

*See note in the preceding chapter, j)age 201. 



228 Settlement of Lower Louisiana. 

and facility on the part of the French in adapting them- 
selves to the primitive modes of life and locomotion of the 
aborigines, and in gaining and retaining their good will. 
What has been remarked by the brilliant historian, Pres- 
cott, of the Spanish conquerors of Mexico, may apply with 
equal pertinence to the French explorers of the Mississippi 
Valley : 

" The mere excitement of exploring the strange and 
the unknown was a sufficient compensation to the Spanish 
adventurer for all his toils and trials. It seems to have been- 
ordered by Providence that such a race of men should exist 
contemporaneously with the discovery of the New World, 
that those regions should be brought to light which were 
beset with dangers and difficulties so appalling as might 
have tended to overawe and discourage the ordinary spirit 
of adventure." * 

Pecurring once more to Henri de Tonty, it may now 
be proper to relate what little is known in regard to his 
last years, and to sum up his character and career. In 1702 
he was sent by Captain d'Iberville on a mission to secure 
the ChJckasaws in the French interest. The route taken 
by him from Mobile is laid down on some of the old French 
maps, but of the incidents of his trip, or the measure of suc- 
cess that attended it, we have no knowledge. After this we 
find no further special mention of his name, save that he died 
in September, 1704, at Fort Louis on the Mobile.f That 
was a sickly season with the colony, and marked by more 
than the ordinary mortality ; and it seems probable that 
no kind friend or priest was with our hero to chronicle the 
particulars of his last hours, or if so the record thereof has 
perished. At the time of his singularly quiet exit from the 
scenes of busy life, Tonty must have been aged about fifty- 
four. Though not an old man in point of years, he was old 
in experience and knowledge of the world, and especially 

* Prescott's " History of the Conquest of Mexico," vol. 3, book vii., 
chap. iii. 

t .See Charlevoix' History of New Frauoe,^vol. HI, p. 201, note by the 
editor. 



Condasion of Tonty's Eventful History. 229 

in the number and variety of exciting adventures through 
which he had passed, as well in Europe as in America. 

He could hardly be classed as a great captain or leader, 
though he was not incapable of devising and executing 
the boldest enterprises. As a first lieutenant, he rendered 
invaluable services to La Salle, and next to his chief, con- 
tributed most toward the exploration of the Mississippi 
Valley. His courage and address were strikingly exhibited 
in his intercourse with the Indians, both in war and in 
peace; but his acts were mostly performed where there 
were few to observe, and fewer still to record them. He 
was "honest, sincere, generous, faithful, and brave" — the 
heau ideal of a true soldier. These admirable qualities en- 
deared him to all his compatriots in life, and have made 
him a prime favorite with all of La Salle's biographers. 

" Very few names in French- American history," writes 
Parkman, " are mentioned with such unanimity of praise 
as that of Henri de Tonty. Hennepin finds some fault 
with him; but his censure is commendation.* The dis- 
patches of the governor, Denonville, speak in strong terms 
of his services in the Iroquois war, praise his character, 
and declare that he is fit for any bold enterprise, adding 
that he deserves reward from the king. The missionary 
St. Cosme, who traveled under his escort in 1699, says of 
him : ' He is beloved by all the voyageurs. It was with 
deep regret that we parted from him ; he is the man who 
best knows the country; he is loved and feared every- 
where.' " Parkman himself adds : " He seems never to 
have received the reward his great merit deserved." f La 
Salle, however, had done what he could for Tonty, and, as 
already noticed, made him a grant of lands on the Ar- 
kansas River. 

He had a younger brother named Alphonse de Tonty, 
a captain in the French service, who long held command 
at the post of Detroit, and against whom charges of pecu- 



■■ When the " Griffin " was building at Niagara, Hennepin says that 
Tonty took some offense at his lieeping a journal, and tried to seize it. 
t " Discovery of the Great West," note, p. 441. 



230 Settlement of Lower Louisiana. 

lation were preferred ; but no stain tarnishes the fair es- 
cutcheon of the little, copper-handed Henri. Around his 
name more than that of any other of the French explorers, 
is wreathed a halo of chivalry and romance, and only a 
few years since, he was made the hero in a popular histori- 
cal fiction, entitled ''The Story of Tonty." He is some- 
times referred to as the Chevalier de Tonty, but, though a 
true knight, it does not appear that he ever received the 
honor of knighthood. He did not share La Salle's antip- 
athy to the Jesuits, but rather courted their favor, and in 
return for his considerate attentions, they heralded his 
praises and helped to embalm his memory. 

As early as 1697, a book, purporting to be a Memoir 
of the Sieur de Tonty, was published in France under this 
title : '■^Dernieres Decouvertes dans L'Amerique Septentrionale, 
de 31. de la Salle, 'par Chevalier de Tonti, Gouverneur da Fort 
St. Louis aux Illinois. Paris, 1697."* Copies of the same 
having found their way to New France, Tonty disavowed 
to M. d'Iberville and Father Marest all responsibility for 
the w^ork, which he characterized as full of errors and ex- 
aggerations. But then he had written a memoir, and sent 
it to Paris in 1693, which formed the basis of the above 
spurious publication. 

The real or admitted memoirs of Henri de Tonty are 
embraced in the valuable collection of Pierre Margry, di- 
rector of the Archives of the Marine and Colonies at Paris, 
under this general title: '■'•Decouvertes et Etablissem.ents des 
Francais dans L' Quest et Sud de L'Ameriquc Septentrionale 
(1614-1754), iH/fimoM'.s et Documents originauz" — Paris, France, 
1877-78. Volume I of this publication contains " Voyages 
et etat des Francais sur les lacs et le Mississippi, sous les ordres 
de M. de la Salle et de Tonty, du 1678 d 1684." Volume II 
contains '•'■Lettres of Henri de Tonty sur ce qu' il a appris de 
M. de la Salle, le voyage qu'' il a fait j^our V alter chercher, et son 
depart prochein pour marcher contre les Iroquois, 1686-1689." 



* An English translation of this memoir, or relation, was printed in 
London in 1698, entitled an "Account of ]\I. de la Salle's Last Expedi- 
tion and Discoveries in North America," whi(;h was republished in New 
York in 1814. 



Petition of M. de Tonty. 231 

Besides the above, Tonty wrote and addressed to Count 
de Pontcliartrain a short memoir of himself (before noticed), 
which is also printed in Margry's collection, as well as else- 
where. It is without date, but is supposed to have been 
written in the year 1690 or 1691. Following is an En- 
glish version of this curious and interesting autobiographi- 
cal paper: 

Petition of the Chevalier de Tonty to Count de Pontchartrain, Minister of 

Marine. 

Monseignenr — Henri de Tonty humbly represents to your highness, 
that he entered the military service as a cadet, and was employed in 
that capacity in the years 1668 and 1669, and that he afterward served 
as midshipman four years at Marseilles and Toulon, and made seven 
campaigns, that is, four on board ships of war, and three in galleys. 
While at Messina he was made captain, and in the interval lieutenant, 
of the first company of a regiment of horse. When the enemy at- 
tacked the post of Libisso, his right hand was shot away by a grenade, 
and he was taken prisoner and conducted to Metasse, where he was de- 
tained six months, and then exchanged for the son of the governor of 
that place. He then went to France to obtain some favor of his majesty, 
and the king granted him three hundred livres. He returned to the 
service in Sicily, made the campaign as a volunteer in the galleys, and 
when the troops were discharged, being unable to obtain the employ- 
ment he solicited at court on account of the general peace, he decided, 
in 1678, to join the late Monsieur de la Salle, in order to accompany 
him in the discoveries of Mexico, during which, until 1682, he was the 
only officer who did not desert him. 

These discoveries being finished, he remained, in 1683, commandant 
of Fort St. Louis of the Illinois ; and in 1684 he was there attacked by 
two hundred Iroquois, whom he repulsed with great loss on their side. 
During the same year, he repaired to Quebec, under the orders of M. de 
la Barre. In 1685, he returned to the Illinois, according to the orders 
which he had received from the court, and from M. de la Salle, as a 
captain of foot in a marine detachment and governor of Fort St. Louis. 
In 1686, he went with forty men in canoes, at his own expense, as far as 
the Gulf of Mexico, to seek for M. de la Salle. Not being able to find 
him there, he returned to Montreal, and put himself under the orders 
of Monsieur Denonville,* to engage in the war with the Iroquois. 

At the head of a band of Indians, in 1687, he proceeded two hun- 
dred leagues by land, and as far in canoes, and joined the army, when, 
with these Indians and a company of Canadians, he forced the ambus- 
cade of the Tsonnonthouans.t The campaign being over, he returned 



* Jacques Reue de Brisay Denonville superseded La Barre, in 1685, as governor 
of Canada, and served about four years. 
+ Or Senecas. 



232 Petition of M. de Tonty. 

to the Illinois, whence he departed, in 1689, to go in search of the re- 
mains of M. de la Salle's colony ; but being deserted by his men, and 
unable to execute his design, he was compelled to relinquish it when he 
had arrived within seven days' march of the Spaniards. Ten months 
were spent in going and returning. As he now finds himself without 
employment, he prays that, in consideration of his voyages and heavy 
expenses, and considering, also, that during his service of seven years 
as captain, he has not received any pay, your highness will be pleased 
to obtain for him from his majesty a company, with which he may con- 
tinue his services in this country, where he has not ceased to harass the 
Iroquois by enlisting the Illinois against them in his majesty's cause. 
And he will continue his prayers for the health of your highness. 

Henri de Tonty. 

Nothing can be more true than the account given by the Sieur de 
Tonty in this petition ; and should his majesty reinstate the seven com- 
panies which have been disbanded in this country, there will be justice 
in granting one of them to him, or some other recompense for the serv- 
ices which he has rendered, and which he is now returning to render at 
Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. Frontenac. 



Change of Officers in Louisiana. 233 



CHAPTER XII. 

1712-1717. 
LOUISIANA UNDER M. CROZAT DEMISE OF LOUIS XIV. 

Hitlierto the small, isolated French settlements in the 
Illinois, and those founded by D'Iberville and Bienville on 
the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, had been separate and 
unorganized dependencies of Canada, or Kew France. But 
they were now soon to be united in one large province, 
under the designation of Louisiana, with a government de- 
pendent upon and subordinate to that of New France. 
This immense wilderness territory extended from Lake 
Michigan and the Wisconsin river on the north to the 
Mexican Gulf at the south, and from the Ohio Valley on 
the east to the base of the Rocky Mountains and New 
Mexico in the west. It was already known to possess a 
temperate and salubrious climate, a rich and very produc- 
tive soil, and to abound in fur-bearing animals ; and it was 
also believed to contain metallic ores of untold value. 

In 1711 the government of Louisiana was committed 
by the French king to a governor, or commandant-general, 
with other subordinate oflicers. The chief head-quarters of 
this colonial government was established, as before, on the 
Mobile, and a new fort was completed near the site of the 
present city of Mobile. The Sieur de Muys, who had been 
commissioned governor, died on the outward passage from 
France ; but M. Diron d' Artaguette, the commissiaire ordon- 
nateur, who had arrived in Louisiana in 1708, entered upon 
his official duties.* This, however, was provisional. 

In order to the more speedy and systematic devel- 
opment of the commercial and mineral resources of the 



* Bancroft's History, III., p. 343; and Monette's Hist, of Miss. 
Valley, I., 209. 



234 Louisiana under Crozat. 

country, Louis XIV., by letters patent, bearing date at 
Fontainbleau, September 14, 1712, and registered in the 
Parliament of Paris on the 24th of September, granted a 
monopoly of the commerce, and sole direction of the affairs 
of the new province (for the term of fifteen years) to M. 
Antoine Crozat, Marquis de Chatel, a man of great wealth, 
one of his majesty's councillors, and secretary of his house- 
hold, crown and revenue. This royal patent constituted 
the first regular charter of government for Louisiana. It 
is a length}'- and elaborately drawn paper, the introductory 
portion whereof reads as follows : 

" Louis, by the grace of God, King of France and Na- 
varre, 

" To all who shall see these •present letters, greeting : 

" The care we have always had to procure the welfare 
and advantage of our subjects, having induced us, not- 
withstanding the almost continual wars which we have 
been obliged to support from the beginning of our reign, 
to seek for all possible opportunities of enlarging and ex- 
tending the trade of our American colonies ; we did, in the 
year 1683 (1684), give our orders to undertake a discovery 
of the countries and lands which are situated in the 
northern part of America, between New France and New 
Mexico, and the Sieur de la Salle, to whom we committed 
that enterprise, having had success enough to confirm a 
belief that a communication might be settled (opened) from 
New France to the Gulf of Mexico, by means of large 
rivers, this obliged us immediately after the peace of Rys- 
wick to give orders for the establishing a colony there, and 
maintaining a garrison which lias kept and preserved the 
possession, we had taken in the year 1683, of the lands, 
coasts and islands, which are situated in the Gulf of Mex- 
ico, between Carolina on the east and Old and New Mexico 
on the west. 

"But a new war having broke out in Europe shortly 
after, there was no possibility till now of reaping from that 
colony the advantages that might have been expected from 
thence, because the private men, who are concerned in the 
sea-trade, were all under engagements with other colonies, 



Crozafs Royal Patent. 235 

which they have been obliged to follow. And, whereas, 
upon the information we have received concerning the dis- 
position and situation of the said countries known at pres- 
ent by the name of the Province of Louisiana, we are of 
opinion that there may be established therein a considera- 
ble commerce, so much the more advantageous to our 
kingdom in that there has hitherto been a necessity of 
fetching from foreigners the greater part of the commodi- 
ties which may l)e brought from thence, and because in ex- 
change thereof, we need carry thither nothing but commod- 
ities of the growth and manufacture of our own kingdom. 

" We have resolved to grant the commerce of the coun- 
try of Louisiana to the Sieur Anthony Crozat, our council- 
lor, secretary of the household, crown, and revenue, to 
whom we intrust the execution of this project. We are the 
more readily inclined hereunto, because his zeal and the 
singular knowledge he has acquired in maritime commerce 
encourage us to hope for as good success as he has hitherto 
had in the divers and sundry enterprises he has gone upon, 
and which have procured to our kingdom great quantities 
of gold and silver in such conjunctures as have rendered 
them very welcome to us. 

"For these reasons, being desirous to show our favor 
to him, and to regulate the conditions upon which we mean 
to grant him the said commerce, after having deliberated 
this affair in our council, of our certain knowledge, full 
power and royal authority, we, by these presents, signed by 
our hand, have appointed, and do appoint, the said Sieur 
Crozat, solely to carry on a trade in all the lands possessed 
by us, and bounded by New Mexico, and by the English 
of Carolina, all the establishment, ports, havens, rivers, 
and principally the port and haven of the Isle Dauphine, 
heretofore called Massacre, the river of St. Louis, hereto- 
fore called Mississippi, from the edge of the sea as far as 
the Illinois, together with the river of Saint Philip, here- 
tofore called the Missoury's, and of Saint Jerome, hereto- 
fore called Ouabaehe, with all the countries, territories, 
lakes, within land, and the rivers which fall directly or in- 
directly into that part of the river St. Louis." 



236 Louisiana under Crozat. 

The kind of government to be established under this 
patent, and the powers, duties, and restrictions imposed by 
it upon M. Crozat, are specifically defined in the Articles, 
the first of which is thus worded : 

I. " Our pleasure is that all the aforesaid lands, coun- 
tries, streams, rivers, and islands be and remain comprised 
under the name of the government of Louisiana, which 
shall be dependent upon the general government in New 
France, to which it is subordinate ; and, further, that all 
the lands which we possess from the Illinois be united, so 
far as occasion requires, to the general government of New 
France, and become part thereof,* reserving, however, the 
liberty of enlarging, as we shall think fit, the extent of the 
government of the said country of Louisiana." 

Article 11. granted " to the said Sieur Crozat, for fifteen 
successive years, to be reckoned from the day of enrolling 
these presents, a right and power to transport all sorts of 
goods and merchandise from France into the said country 
of Louisiana, and to traflic thither as he shall think fit." 
And all other persons or companies were herein forbid- 
den to trade thither, under any pretense whatever, under 
penalty of confiscation of goods and ships, and other more 
severe punishments, as occasion should require. 

Article III. permitted him " to search for, open, and 
dig all sorts of mines, veins, and minerals throughout the 
whole extent of the said country of Louisiana, and to trans- 
port the profits thereof into any part of France during the 
said fifteen years." By this article there was also granted 
to Crozat, in perpetuity, his heirs and others claiming un- 
der him or them, the property of and in said mines, veins, 
and minerals, wliich he should bring to bear, paying the 
king, in lieu of all claim, the fifth part of all the gold and 
silver, to be transported to France at Crozat's own ex- 
pense (not including the risk of sea and war), and the tenth 
part'of what eftects he might draw from the other mines, 
veins, and minerals, which tenth was to be conveyed to the 



'This provision was doubtless iutended to apply to the northern 
part of the Illinois country. 



Crozafs Royal Patent. 237 

king's magazine in Louisiana. He was also permitted to 
search for precious stones and pearls, paying the one-fifth 
part of the same to his majesty, in like manner as directed 
for the gold and silver. 

It was further herein provided, that the said Crozat, 
his heirs, or those claiming under him or them the perpet- 
ual right aforesaid, should forfeit the property in the said 
mines, veins, and minerals, if they discontinued the work 
during three years, and that in such case, the said mines, 
veins, and minerals should be fully re-united to the king's 
domain, without the formality of any process of law, but 
only by an ordinance of reunion from the sub-delegate of 
the intendant of New France, who should be in the said 
country. 

Articles IV., V., and VI. relate to and regulate the 
trade to be carried on by said Crozat with the French and 
Indians in Louisiana, and also to the mills and manufac- 
tories he was authorized to set up in the said country. 

Article VII. provides, that the royal " edicts, ordi- 
nances and customs, the usages of the mayoralty and 
shrievealty of Paris, shall be observed for laws and cus- 
toms in the said country of Louisiana." 

The next succeeding six articles specify the minimum 
number of ships to be sent out annually by the said Crozat 
to said Louisiana, and oblige him to transport thither at 
his own charge such of the king's troops as may be needed 
for garrison duty ; exempt from all duties the goods and 
merchandise by him exported from or imported to the said 
country, but require the same to be deposited in and de- 
livered from the government custom and warehouses ; and, 
further, grant him the use of the felluccas and canoes be- 
longing to the king in said Louisiana, on condition that at 
the expiration of his patent, he shall restore them, or an 
equal number in their place, to the governor of the province. 

The three concluding articles of the patent are worded 
as follows : 

XIV. " If, for the cultures and plantations which the 
Sieur Crozat is minded to make, he finds it proper to have 
blacks in the said country of Louisiana, he may send a ship 



238 Louisiana under Crozat. 

every year to trade directly upon the coast of Guinea, taking 
permission from the Guinea Company so to do, (and) he 
may sell those blacks to the inhabitants of the colony of 
Louisiana ; and we forbid all other companies and persons 
whatsoever, under any pretense whatsoever, to introduce 
blacks or traffic for them in the said country, nor shall the 
said Sieur Crozat carry blacks elsewhere. 

XV. " He shall not send any sliips into the said coun- 
try of Louisiana, but directly from France, and he shall 
cause the said ships to return thither again, the whole 
under pain of confiscation and forfeiture of the present 
privilege. 

XVI. " The said Sieur Crozat shall be obliged, after 
the expiration of the first nine years of this grant, to pay 
the officers and the garrison which shall be in the said 
country during the six last years of the continuance of the 
present privilege. 

" The said Sieur Crozat may in that time propose and 
nominate the officers, as vacancies shall fall, and such 
officers shall be confirmed by us, if we approve them," * 

Such are the material provisions of the ample charter 
granted by the king to M. Antoine Crozat, in the hope 
of receiving thereby rich monetary returns to replenish his 
depleted exchequer. "We have given the more space to the 
exposition of this patent, because under it was instituted 
the first civil government for the Province of Louisiana, 
including the Illinois. 

To effectuate the main purpose of his grant, Crozat 
sent out from France the necessary miners and mining 
tools, with other artisans and laborers, and some slaves 
from St. Domingo, to begin prospecting for the precious 
metals. 

On May 17, 1718, a large French ship arrived in the 
waters of Louisiana, having on board Antoine de la Mothe 
Cadillac,t the newly appointed governor of the colony, his 



* For the full text of Crozat'e Letters Patent, see " Historical Col- 
lections of liOuisiana," vol. III. 

tLa Mothe, or La Motte, Cadillac was born of noble parentage in 
Gascony, France, about tlie year 1666. .Sailing thence to America, he 



Officers of Crozafs Government. 239 

family, and M. Duclos, intendant commissary. By the 
same vessel was also brought a commission naming Bien- 
ville as lieutenant-governor. The coming of Cadillac and 
his associates would have had a more salutary inHuence on 
the future of the colony, if he and Bienville had acted in 
concert ; but they were mutually jealous of each other from 
the outset, and each had his party of followers, which 
proved detrimental to the interests of both. 

At this early and unpromising stage of her history as 
a colony, although over two thousand persons had been 
transported thither. Southern Louisiana contained not more 
than four hundred whites, twenty negro slaves, and about 
three hundred head of horned cattle, which latter had 
mostly been imported from St. Domingo. 

The Sieur Crozat expected to realize handsome profits 
from the fur-trade with the Indians, and if he had confined 
himself to that alone, he would have succeeded better in 
the end ; but the possibility of sudden wealth from the dis- 
covery of rich mines of gold and silver was what chiefly 
engaged the attention of his agents, and induced them to 
the most lavish outlay of capital. To accomplish this ob- 
ject, prospecting parties were sent out to various parts of 
the country, and small posts were established on the upper 
waters of Red River, the Washita, the Yazoo, the Coosa,* 
the Cumberland (near iSTashville), and on other southern 
rivers. Indeed, to such a degree were Crozat and his part- 
ners affected by this mania for the precious metals, that 
they often magnified insignificant findings into supposed 
realities of great value. But though gold and silver were 
not to be found, either by washing, digging or boring, 
large deposits of the less valuable ores of lead and iron were 
found in what is now south-eastern Missouri. The mining 
adventurers in this wild region drew their principal sub- 
sistence from the French settlements of Kaskaskia and Ca- 



served as a captain in Acadia, and in 1694 was sent by Frontenac to 
command at Mackinac ; after which, in 1701, he founded the military 
post of Detroit. During his five years' stay in Louisiana, he not only 
officiated as governor, but was a partner in Crozat's commercial ven- 
tures. His name is perpetuated in a thriving lumber city of Michigan. 
* That on the Coosa was called Fort Toulouse. 



240 Louisiana under Crozat. 

hokia, to which they added such of their number as pre- 
ferred to cultivate the soil and a fixed abode to the more 
precarious pursuit of mining. Hence, from this source, the 
Illinois colony derived a considerable accession of European 
bone and muscle.* 

Under the auspices of M. Crozat an attempt was made 
to open trade with the Spaniards at Vera Cruz, by sending 
thither a vessel laden with a valuable cargo of merchandise, 
but it was not allowed to land either there or at any other 
Me:j^ican port. The occupancy of Louisiana by the French 
had been regarded by Spain from the first as an encroach- 
ment upon her territory, and a menace to her supremacy in 
the Gulf; and, therefore, after three years of ineffectual ne- 
gotiations with the viceroy of Mexico, Crozat was obliged 
to relinquish his scheme of commercial relations with the 
Spanish ports. Another project was to establish trade 
overland with the interior provinces of Mexico, but in this 
case, after repeated eflbrts, he also failed, his goods being 
seized and confiscated and his agents imprisoned. I^ordid 
the fur-trade with the Indians prove so remunerative as 
had been anticipated. English agents from Carolina were 
active in their eftbrts to incite the Choctaws and Chicka- 
saws against the French, and, wherever it was practica- 
ble, they controlled the fur-tratfic by furnishing goods to 
the Indians at reduced prices. Agriculture, the only source 
of permanent prosperity, was of course neglected. At the 
end of four years, he had expended about 425,000 livres 
and realized only 300,000,t and he found himself unable to 
meet his liabilities or pay his men. 

On the 23d of August, 1717, M. Crozat, despairing of any 
better success in the future, surrendered his vested rights 
and privileges to the young king, Louis XV., who then oc- 
cupied the throne of France under the regency of the Duke 
of Orleans, and thereupon the government of Louisiana 
reverted solely to the officers appointed by the crown. 



*At a later period the French opened and worked lead nnues, to 
some extent, on the Upper Mississippi, about (lalena and Dubuque, 
t Davidson and Stuve's Hist. 111., p. 114. 



Bienville and the Natchez. 241 

During the five years of his connection with the province, 
although it was widely explored, the growth of the French 
settlements therein was inconsiderable, and but little was 
accomplished for their real benefit. The principal pros- 
perity they enjoyed grew out of the enterprise of individual 
merchants and traders, who, despite the restrictions of 
Crozat's monopoly, managed to carry on a limited trade 
with the natives and with some of the neighboring European 
colonies. At the close of this epoch the colonists and 
adventurers in Upper and Lower Louisiana, including the 
king's troops sent thither to protect them, did not exceed 
fifteen hundred souls. 

From the foregoing review of the Parisian Crozat's 
operations in Louisiana, we turn to chronicle certain civil 
and military events which transpired in the province during 
that period. In February, 1716, Lieut. Bienville departed 
up the Mississippi, under the orders of Governor Cadillac, 
on an expedition to the Natchez nation, where some French 
hunters and traders had already found a lodgment. 
Having learned that five Frenchmen had been slain, and 
that six more were still prisoners in the hands of the IS^at- 
chez, Bienville dissembled his knowledge of the matter 
until he had induced the war-chiefs to meet him in 
council, when they gave up their six prisoners. He then 
reproached them with the murder of the other Frenchmen, 
and refused to treat with them until the guilty authors 
should be surrendered up to him. They replied that it was 
not possible for sun-chiefs and men of valor to thus give 
up their people. Upon this they were immediately put in 
irons and imprisoned under guard. On the next day the 
prisoner chiefs requested permission to send a deputation 
to their grand chief, desiring him to send the head of the 
chief Whitehead, who was the principal murderer. Bien- 
ville having given his consent, the deputation was sent, and 
returned, not with the head of that chief, but with another 
who was willing to devote himself to death in place of 
Whitehead. This and other similar offers the French com- 
mander firmly declined. 
16 



242 Louisiana under Crozat. 

In the meantime lie received a letter from a Canadian 
among the J^atchez, informing him that six pirogues of his 
countrymen were on their way down the river, and that, 
ignorant of this rupture with the Indians, they would fall 
into the hands of the latter. Bienville promptly dispatched 
a canoe from his camp, which passed the Natchez village 
unperceived, and, meeting the Canadian voyageurs, apprised 
them of their danger. Not wishing to resort to extreme 
measures against the Natchez, Bienville finally proposed 
peace to them on condition that they should put to death 
Big-beard, one of the murderers, and help to build 
a fort for the French; which terms they complied 
with. The fort was erected on an elevated blufi overlook- 
ing the river, and on the site that had been previously 
selected by M. d'Iberville. It was named Rosahe in com- 
pliment to the wife of Count Pontchartrain, formerly Sec- 
retary of State for the Colonies. Thus was laid the mili- 
tary foundation of the present city of Natchez, — the oldest 
permanent white settlement on the Lower Mississippi, save 
that of Arkansas Post, which was never a place of much 
importance. Having re-established peaceful relations with 
the Natchez nation, Bienville stationed a garrison at Fort 
Xiosalie to maintain it, and returned down the river with 
the rest of his men to the French head-quarters. 

Late in August, 1716, Louis Juchereau de St. Denis re- 
turned to Fort Louis on the Mobile from an extraordinary 
journey overland to Mexico, or New Spain. Two years be- 
fore, in 1714, he had been sent by Governor Cadillac to 
the middle provinces of Mexico for the double purpose of 
finding a market for Crozat's goods, and of forestalling the 
action of the Spaniards, who were supposed to be meditat- 
ing an establishment at the Natchitoches. Having been 
supplied by the governor with ten thousand livres worth of 
merchantable goods, St. Denis, with twenty-four Cana- 
dians, and an equal number of southern Indians, ascended 
the Mississippi and Red River to the village of the Natchi- 
toches, located on an island in the latter stream. Arrived 
thither, he at first employed his men in building some log 
cabins for the use of those whom he intended to leave be- 



St. Denis' Overland Journey to Mexico. 243 

hind. Then, taking with him twelve picked Canadians, and 
a few active yonng Indians, all well armed and mounted, 
he quit the low valley of Red River, and boldly struck 
across the far-spreading plains to the westward. After 
twenty days' march, he reached a tribe of the Cenis nation, 
in the vicinity of Trinity River. Being furnished by them 
with fresh guides, the leader and his troop traveled thence 
about one hundred and iifty leagues to the south-west, 
when they arrived at the Spanish settlement of San Juan 
Bautista, or Presidio del N^orte, situate some two leagues 
beyond the Rio Grande. Here St. Denis was well received 
by the Spanish commandant, Don Pedro da Vilescas, who 
took him and the principal men of his party to his own 
quarters, and assigned lodgings for the remainder. 

It was now near the close of the year 1714, and, after 
a few days' rest, St. Denis began negotiations with Don 
Pedro for the opening of a regulated trade with the French 
colonists of Louisiana. But the Spanish officer informed 
him that he could do nothing without the permission of his 
immediate superior, the governor of Caouis (Coahuila), to 
whom he sent a courier for orders. The governor de- 
cided that St. Denis would have to go to the capital and 
see the viceroy in person. To this he assented, but was in 
no hurry about starting, having meantime become enam- 
ored of Dona Maria, the handsome daughter of Don Pedro. 
At length, on setting out from Caouis, he wrote to the 
Frenchmen-at-arms whom he had left at Presidio del Xorte 
to return to the Natchitoches. He made the journey south- 
ward to the city of Mexico (distant over two hundred 
leagues) with M. Jallot, one of his French companions, and 
was escorted by a body of twenty -five Spanish horsemen. 
Upon his arrival at the capital, St. Denis presented his cre- 
dentials to the viceroy, who, after perusing them, sent him 
to prison, where he was detained for three months, and 
might have been kept in "durance vile" much longer, if it 
had not been for the personal intercession of some French 
officers in the service of New Spain. After his liberation 
he was generously treated by the viceroy, who spared no 
effort to induce him to enter the military service of Spain. 



244 Louisiana wider Crozat. 

Among other arguments used for this purpose, the viceroy 
told him that he was ah^eady a half Spaniard, since he 
sought the hand of the daughter of Don Pedro de Vilescas, 
and was to marry her upon his return to San Juan. 

Prior to his departure from the city of Mexico, St. 
Denis is said to have concerted a plan with the viceroy for 
the planting of Eoman Catholic missions among the Indian 
nations in Texas. Quitting the Mexican capital about the 
26th of October, 1715, he journeyed, with a small escort, 
back to Presidio del Norte. Here he performed a valuable 
service to the Spanish commandant, by preventing the re- 
moval of certain dissatisiied tribes from the Rio Grande, 
whose trade and friendship was of importance to the Span- 
iards. Soon after this he married Don Pedro's daughter, 
with whom he lived happily for six months, when it be- 
came necessary for him to return to Louisiana. But no 
sooner had he arrived at the French head-quarters, and re- 
ported to Governor Cadillac the result of his lengthened 
mission, than he made haste to join another land expedi- 
tion to Mexico. Arrived thither, lie repeated some of his 
former experiences, and was again imprisoned by the Span- 
ish authorities, but managed to effect his escape. 

Returning to Louisiana, in 1719, St. Denis was after- 
ward appointed commandant of the post of i^atchitoches, 
where he was joined by his wife and family, and where we 
shall find him taking part in the Natches war. He was, 
indeed, one of the most remarkable personages of his time 
in the province, and the narrative of his Mexican adven- 
tures reads more like the story of a paladin of romance 
than sober reality. It is true that he accomplished little or 
nothing in the way of establishing commercial intercourse 
with the arrogant and exclusive hidalgos of Mexico, yet 
his long journeys back and forth across the country added 
greatly to the geographical knowledge of the French, and 
enabled them to extend and confirm their alliances with 
the principal aboriginal tribes of Texas.* 



•From Charlevoix' History of New France (vol. vi., p. 12 and 
TWte), we glean some further particulars in regard to the checkered life 



jRecall of Governor Cadillac. 245 

In January, 1717, soon after the return of St. Denis 
from his first overland journey to Mexico, the governor 
sent a sergeant with a few soldiers to take possession of 
the before-mentioned island of Natchitoches, and to estab- 
lish a military post there; it being regarded by the French 
authorities not only as a place of strategic importance, but 
as a ffood location for interior trade with the natives of 
that region. This was the commencement of the still ex- 
isting town of Natchitoches. 

On the 9th of March, in that year, M. de la Mothe 
Cadillac, having served almost four years as governor of 
Louisiana, and failing to give satisfaction, was relieved by 
M. de L'Epinay, who arrived with three ships, bringing 
out some fifty immigrants, and three companies of infantry 
to fill the depleted garrisons of the province. The retiring 
executive returned by the same vessels to France, where he 
died in the following year. Bienville, however, still re- 
tained the position of lieutenant-governor, and, about 
this time received the decoration of the Cross of St. Louis. 

Heretofore the business of agriculture had been almost 
totally neglected by the colonists, and they had often ex- 
perienced a partial famine in consequence of such neglect. 
It was now proposed to form an agricultural settlement on 
the banks of the Mississippi River, and to raise necessary 
provisions for the consumption of the settlers. The grow- 
ing of articles for export, such as rice, indigo and tobacco, 
was also contemplated, for which the soil was found well 
adapted. 

It was during the year 1717, while looking for a suita- C^^^ '<^ — » 

— ' ^ izj?**^ 

of Louis Juchereau de St. Denis. Born in Quebec, Canada, September ti C (Q ^ 
18, 1676, he was a son of Nicholas Juchereau Sieur de St. Denis, or "'^ ' _^ 

Denys, and an uncle of the wife of M. d'Iberville. In 1720, after his-^fljj^^^.'*^ 
second expedition to Mexico, the Chevalier de St. Denis received the^' ^jy*^^l 

brevet of captain, and the insignia of the Cross of St. Louis — a military "^jlW^^^^*^ 
order instituted by Louis XIV., in 1693, for the encouragement of the , V*''"^'" 



*iji: 



second expedition to Mexico, the Chevalier de St. Denis received the 

brevet of captain, and the insignia of the Cross of St. Louis — a military 

order instituted by Louis XIV., in 1693, for the encouragement of the 

officers of the army and navy. In 1721, he was sent with a detachment ^'^ #f«'**''\ 

of regular troops to Natchitoches, and remained there in command of yj^ tnti^ 

that post. The date of his death is not determined, though it was sub- ..^yW*^ u^*^ 

Indians of the Red River Valley, with whose language and customs he ^^CflTj^ 
was entirely familiar, and over whom he wielded an extensive influence. f\y*^^^ 



sequent to the year 1731. It is told that he died much regretted by the ' t 



246 Demise of Louis XIV. 

ble location on the Mississippi, to become the nucleus of 
the projected agricultural and commercial settlement, that 
Bienville selected the tract whereon New Orleans now 
stands, lying on the north bank of the river, where it 
makes a great curve to the east, and distant one hundred 
and live miles from its mouth. The situation was low and 
swampy, and b}- no means inviting to the superficial ob- 
server; but with its proximity to the waters of Lakes 
Borgne and Pontchartrain, and with a deep river channel 
to the sea, it promised ultimately to become a commercial 
mart, — considerations which no doubt influenced its choice. 
Having fixed upon the site, Bienville afterward caused it 
to be surveyed, and sent a party of woodmen there to 
make a clearing. Such appears to have been the origin of 
that great southern emporium, of w^hose gradual rise into 
prominence and importance, we shall have occasion to 
further speak in the sequel. 

As a not inappropriate conclusion to the present chap- 
ter, some general notice may here be taken of the demise 
and character of Louis XIV., the Grand Monarque, under 
whose authority all the discoveries, explorations, and set- 
tlements by the French in the Mississippi Valley had 
hitherto been eftected. On September 1, 1715, after a short 
illness, the great king breathed his last in his palace at 
Versailles, having reached the advanced age of seventy- 
seven, and reigned seventy-two years. During the three 
preceding years, he had been severely tried by domestic 
atflictions. His ambitious second wife, Madame de Main- 
tenon, whom he had privately married, went into voluntary 
retirement. He lost by death his son and heir apparent, 
his grandson and eldest great-grandson ; so that his young- 
est great-grandson succeeded to the crown under the title 
of Louis XV. 

Louis the Fourteenth had fallen heir to the throne of 
France in 1643, when less than six years old, and during 
his minority his mother was regent of the kingdom, with 
Cardinal Mazarin as her chief counciloj*. The reign of this 
Louis was the longest and, in many respects, the most il- 



His Reign and Character. 247 

lustrious in the annals of France. Among the princes of 
his time, he stood pre-eminent in commanding presence, in 
regal dignity, and in absolute power. After the death of 
Mazarin, in 1661, he had no prime minister, but he wisely 
chose great men for his assistants and ministers of govern- 
ment. Under him Colbert and Louvois long filled the first 
ofifices of state ; the former being the great promoter of 
French industry and manufactures, while the latter was his 
able and successful minister of war. His foremost gen- 
erals were Turenne, Conde, and Luxembourg, while Vau- 
ban was his chief military engineer. The younger Mansard 
was made head architect and superintendent of the royal 
buildings. 

During his reign, Paris and its environs were adorned 
Avitli parks and public edifices to an extent previously un- 
known. The most noted of these were the Observatoire, the 
Church of Val dc Grace, the Colonnade of the Louvre, the 
Hotel des Bivalides, the completion of the Palais Royal, the 
Place des Victoires, the Place Vend.ome, and additi(nis to the 
palace of the Tuileries ; but, above all others in extent and 
magnificence, is the palace and garden of Versailles.* The 
architecture of these various buildings, like the dress of 
that age, is profusely ornate, and wanting in pure taste. 

Louis XIV. was a munificent patron of literature, 
science and the arts, and some of the most celebrated 
writers of France flourished under his reign. The French 
tongue was then cultivated and polished to such a degree 
that it became the language of court and diplomatic circles 
throughout Europe. He made his capital the gayest and 
most luxurious in Europe. He caused the court of Ver- 
sailles to be every-vvhere admired and imitated as a model 
of taste and elegance, and of a princely and refined style 



* " It was on this splendid palace that Louis XIV. lavished the wealth 
of his people, to give expression to his own grandeur and selfish ambi- 
tion. It was built on the site of the hunting lodge of Louis XIII., ten 
miles from Paris, which city Louis disliked, because he saw there only 
the edifices and monuments of other kings. The buildings constituting 
the palace, undertaken in 1661, were committed in KwO to the architect 
Mansard, and their construction was continued to the end of the reign." — 
Anderson^ s History of France. 



248 Demise of Louis XIV. 

of living. But as he sought only the gratification of his 
pride and vanity, his love of pageantry and pleasure, and 
his thirst for dominion and renown, his personal rule ex- 
tinguished all civil freedom, sound morals and manly sen- 
timents among his subjects. Court favor, therefore, became 
the aim and end of all individual effort, and adroit flattery 
was the surest way to attain it. A venal age, virtue and 
merit were but lightly esteemed. In fine, such were the 
baneful efl'ects of his policy and example, that from his 
reign has been dated the decline of the great French mon- 
archy, though it was accelerated by the incapacity of his 
successors. 

The latter years of Louis' imperial sway were clouded 
by reverses to his armies in the field, and by a spirit of 
bigoted intolerance in his civil administration. His revo- 
cation of the Edict of Nantes* was as impolitic as it was 
unjustifiable, and his stern persecution of the Protestant 
Huguenots drove from his kingdom nearly half a million 
of his most industrious and useful subjects. But religious 
toleration, as now generally understood and approved, was 
in that age little known, and still less practiced, on the con- 
tinent of Europe. The king believed and acted upon the 
theory that unity of religious faith was essential to the 
stability of his throne. His ruling principle of government 
was embodied in the famous aphorism ascribed to him — Le 
etat c' est moi, or, "I am the state." f 

To the readers of English history Louis XIV. is re- 
membered as the generous friend and supporter of James 
II., the dethroned Catholic king of England. 

Among the best known French works on this great 
prince's reign are Voltaire's Siede de Louis XIV., St. 
Simon's Memoirs, and Louis XIV. et son Siede, by Alexan- 
der Dumas. 



* This famous edict had heen enacted hy Henry IV., in April, 1598, 
and being in the nature of a compromise, it was deemed irrevocable. 
The order for its revocation was issued October 22, 1685. 

t The great king may never have uttered these words, though they 
perfectly express his sentiments; for, in 1666, he wrote: "It is God's 
will that whoever is born a subject should not reason, but obey." — 
Parkman's Old Regime in Canada, p. 172. 



Sketch of John Law. 249 



CHAPTER XIII. 

1717-1723. 
FRENCH FINANCES, AND LAW'S MISSISSIPPI COMPANY. 

The long wars and general extravagance of Louis 
XIV. had exhausted France, and entailed upon her a 
debt estimated at not less than two billions of livres, 
or about four hundred millions of dollars. The people 
were oppressively taxed, but still the surplus revenues of 
the kingdom were wholly inadequate to meet the annual 
interest on the indebtedness. The consequence was that 
the government stocks sank to a merely nominal value, 
and its credit was depressed to the lowest ebb. In this 
dilemma, while the regency was casting about for some 
means of financial relief, John Law, the famous financier- 
adventurer, appeared at the Court of Versailles with his 
" magnificent credit system." 

John Law, eldest son of a Scotch silversmith and 
banker, was born in Edinburgh in April, 1671. He re- 
ceived a liberal education, and at an early age discovered 
a strong bent for finance. After the death of his father, 
and before attaining to his majority, he became notorious 
as a gambler and debauchee. Having unhappily killed an 
antagonist named Wilson, in a duel, he fied to France to 
avoid arrest. From thence he passed into Holland, where 
he made a special study of banking in the great banking 
house at Amsterdam. After perfecting his theory he re- 
turned to Edinburg in 1700, and shortly published a work 
advocating the establishment of a bank which should hold 
all the sources of revenue of the state in its own hands, 
and, treating them as capital, should issue notes thereon, 
and at the same time make a profit by discounting bills 
and notes. His plan of banking was ridiculed by the 
British wits of the day, and was discarded by the Scottish 



250 French Finances, and Law's Mississippi Co. 

Parliament. He then went with his scheme to Paris, 
where it attracted considerable attention, but was utterly re- 
jected by the old king and his comptroller-general of finance. 
Law sojourned for awhile in Paris, leading a gay and 
luxurious existence, playing high and winning large sums 
of money. But his prosperous career was interrupted by 
a message from the chief of police, ordering him to quit 
Paris, on the ground that he "was rather too skillful at 
the game which he had introduced." For several years 
succeeding he shifted his abode from one state to another 
in Italy and Germany, offering his scheme of finance to 
every court that he visited, though without success. The 
Duke of Savoy, afterward King of Sardinia, was much 
impressed with his project, but, after considering it for a 
time, remarked : " I am not sufliciently powerful to ruin 
myself." 

Upon the decease of the great Louis, in 1715, John 
Law returned to Paris with a fortune of half a million of 
dollars, which he had acquired by gambling. Louis XV. 
was then but a child, and during his non-age the govern- 
ment was administered by Philippe, Due d' Orleans,* as 
regent. The finances of France being at this time in a 
bankrupt condition. Law soon gained a hearing at court 
for his fiivorite banking project. The regent had before 
been favorably impressed with the scheme, which suited his 
bold and reckless spirit, and his taste for profligate ex- 
travagance. Accordingly, on the 2d of May, 1716, despite 
the opposition of his ministers and the Parliament of Paris, 
he granted letters patent to Law, authorizing him and his 
brother William to establish a bank of deposit, discount 
and circulation, under the firm name of "Law and Com- 
pany," to continue for twenty years. The capital of this 
institution was fixed at six millions of livres, divided into 
shares of five hundred livres each, which were to be sold 
for twenty-five per cent of coin, and seventy-five per cent, 
of the public securities. The coin, which had been already 
debased by an arbitrary edict of the regent, was held in 

* He was a cousin or second cousin of tlie young king. 



Law's Banking Scheme. 251 

the bank for the redemption of its notes. Inasmuch as 
the bank accepted at par government securities, on which 
there was a discount of seventy-eight per cent., and as 
there was a general lack of private credit, its stock was 
soon taken, and a very lucrative business was established. 
Thus, while the bank was limited in its operations, and 
while its paper really represented the specie in its vaults, 
it seemed to realize all that had been promised for it. It 
speedily acquired public confidence, and produced an activ- 
ity in commerce that was unknown under the preceding 
reign. Moreover, the bills of the bank bore an interest, 
and as it was stipulated that they would be of invariable 
value, and as hints had been adroitly circulated that coin 
would experience successive diminution in value, every 
body hastened to the bank to exchange gold and silver 
for the paper money. In a few months the bank shares 
arose enormously, and the amount of its notes in circulation 
exceeded one hundred and ten millions of livres. 

Hitherto all had gone on well enough, and all might 
have continued to go well, if the paper system had not 
been further expanded. But Law had yet to develop the 
grandest part of his scheme. He had yet to disclose his 
ideal world of speculation, his El Dorado of unlimited 
wealth. His financial theory was, that the currency of a 
country is simply the representative of its moving wealth, 
and that this representative need not possess any intrinsic 
value, as in the case of gold and silver, but might consist 
of paper, or any other substance which can be conveniently 
handled. He held that while there was no standard of 
prices or money, credit was every thing, and that a state 
might safely treat even possible future profits as the basis of a 
paper currency. The English had brought the vast imag- 
inary commerce of the South Seas in aid of their banking 
operations ; and Law sought to bring, as a powerful auxil- 
iary of his bank, the whole trade of the Mississippi Valley. 
To this end he now produced his Mississippi scheme, which 
was to make him a conspicuous figure in the colonial an- 
nals of Louisiana and Illinois. The prolific resources and 
possibilities of Louisiana still filled the imaginations of the 



252 French Finances, and Law's Mississippi Co. 

French people with visions of hounclless riches. The ill- 
success that had there attended the operations of Crozat 
and his partners was not sufficient to dispel the illusion 
from the public mind, or to beget therein more rational 
views. The stories of its vast mineral deposits were art- 
fully revived ; ingots of gold, the products of its supposed 
mines, were exhibited at the Paris mint ; and the sanguine 
court saw in the future of that province an empire, with its 
fruitful valleys, growing cities, busy wharves, and exhaust- 
less mines of gold and silver, pouring its precious freights 
into the channels of French commerce. 

As soon, therefore, as the charter of the Sieur Crozat 
was annulled, Law proceeded, under letters patent from 
the regent, to organize the Compagnie cV Occident, or Com- 
pany of the "West, which was based upon the plan of col- 
onizing and drawing profits from the French possessions 
in North America. The charter of the company was reg- 
istered in the Parliament of Paris on the 6th of September, 
1717 ; and all of the king's subjects, including corporate 
bodies, and even aliens, Avere allowed to take stock in it. 
The capital was fixed at about one hundred millions of 
livres, divided into shares of five hundred livres each, bear- 
ing interest at four per cent., which were subscribed for in 
the public securities. As the bank was to co-operate with 
the company, the regent issued an order that its bills should 
be received the same as coin in all payments of the public 
revenue. Law was made chief director of the company, 
which was copied after the Earl of Oxford's South Sea 
Company, originated in 1711, and which distracted all 
England with the frenzy of speculation. 

Among the more important privileges conferred on this 
company by the government, was the exclusive control of 
the commerce of Louisiana for twenty-five years, to begin 
the 1st of January, 1718. All other subjects of his majesty 
were prohibited from trading hither, under penalty of con- 
fiscation of their merchandise and vessels; but this was not 
intended to prevent the colonists from trading with each 
other, or with the Indians. Power and authority were 
also given the company to make treaties with the Indian 



Law's Credit System. 253 

nations, and to wage war against them in case of aggres- 
sion or insult ; to import negro slaves into the province ; to 
open and work all mines, free of duty ; to grant lands, even 
allodially; to cast cannon, build ships of war, raise and 
equip troops, and to nominate the provincial officers, who 
were to be commissioned by the crown. In addition to the 
above, the regent promised the company protection against 
foreign powers, and presented it with all the forts, guns, 
ammunition, boats, and stores in Louisiana, that had been 
surrendered by the Sieur Crozat. Nor was this all. Dur- 
ing the continuance of its charter, the goods of the company 
were to be exempt from duty, and the white inhabitants or 
the province from the payment of any state tax.* 

The paper system of Law, and his scheme of coloniza- 
tion, were earnestly opposed by D'Anguesseau, the chan- 
cellor, and by the Duke de Noailles, Minister of Finance, 
who foresaw the evils that the system was calculated to pro- 
duce. Finding that they seriously interfered with his plans, 
the regent dismissed them from office ; but the opposition of 
the Parliament of Paris was not so easily managed, since 
that body aspired to an equal authority with the regent in 
the administration of affairs. The chief hostility of the 
parliament was directed against Law, a foreigner, a heretic, 
and an adventurer. So far was this hostility carried, that 
secret measures were taken to investigate his malversations, 
and to collect evidence against him ; and it was resolved in 
parliament that should the testimony collected justify their 
suspicions, they would have him seized and arraigned for 
trial, and, if convicted, would hang him in the court-yard 
of the palace. Receiving intimation of his threatened dan- 
ger, Law took refuge in the Palais Royal, the residence of 
the regent, and implored his protection. The regent him- 
self was embarrassed by the sturdy opposition of the parlia- 
ment, which contemplated nothing less than a decree re- 
versing his own measures of finance. However, by assem- 
bling a board of justice, and bringing to bear the absolute 



'History of Louisiana, by Francois Xavier Martin (New Orleans, 
1827), vol. 1,' pp. 198, 201. 



254 French Finances, and Law's Mississippi Co. 

authority of the king, he triumphed over parliament and 
relieved Law from the dread of being hanged. 

The credit system now went on with full sail. The 
Company of the West, being identified with the bank, rap- 
idly increased in power and privileges. One monopoly 
after another was granted to it ; the trade of the Indian 
seas, the slave trade with Senegal and Guinea, the farming 
of tobacco, the royal coinage, etc. Each new privilege was 
made a "pretext for emitting more bills, and caused a pro- 
portionate advance in the prices of stock. At length, on 
the 4th of December, 1718, the regent gave the institution 
the imposing title of the Royal Bank of France, and pro- 
claimed that he had eiFected the purchase of all the shares, 
the proceeds of which were added to its capital. Arbi- 
trary measures were now begun to force the bills of the 
bank into artificial circulation. On the 27th of December 
an order was made in council, forbidding, under severe 
penalties, the payment of any sum above six hundred livres 
in gold or silver. This decree rendered bank bills neces- 
sary in all considerable transactions of purchase and sale, 
and called for a new emission. The prohibition was oc- 
casionally evaded or opposed, but confiscations were the 
consequence. 

The worst efit'ect of this illusive system was the mania 
for gain, or for gambling in stocks, that now seized upon 
the French nation. Under the stimulus of lying reports, 
and the compulsory efi'ects of government decrees, the 
shares of the company went on rising until they reached 
thirteen hundred per cent. Nothing was talked of but the 
prices of shares, and the immense fortunes suddenly made 
by lucky speculators. The most extravagant dreams were 
indulged concerning the wealth that was to flow in upon 
the company from its colonies, its trade, and its various 
monopolies. To doubt of these things was to excite anger, 
or incur ridicule. And in a time of public infatuation, it 
requires no small exercise of courage to doubt a i>opular 
fallacy. 

Paris now l)ecame the center of attraction for the ad- 
venturous and avaricious, who flocked thither not only 



The Mania for Speculation. 255 

from the provinces, but from the neighboring countries. 
A stock exchange was established in a hotel on one of the 
principal streets,* and immediately became the resort of 
stock jobbers and speculators. Guards were stationed at 
either end of the avenue to maintain order, and to exclude 
horses and carriages. The whole street swarmed through- 
out the day like a bee-hive. Bargains of all kinds were 
struck with avidity. Shares of stock passed from hand to 
hand, mounting in value, one knew not why. Fortunes 
were made in a moment, as if by magic, and every lucky 
bargain prompted those around to a more desperate throw 
of the die. 

To ingulf all classes in this ruinous vortex, Law di- 
vided the shares of fifty millions of stock into one hundred 
shares each, thus accommodating the venture to the hum- 
blest purse. Society was thus stirred to its very dregs, and 
people of the lowest order hurried to the stock market to 
invest their small savings. All honest, industrious pur- 
suits, and moderate gains were now despised. The upper 
classes were as base in their venality as the lower. The 
highest nobles, abandoning all generous pursuits and lofty 
aims, engaged in the vile scuffle for gain. Even prelates 
and ecclesiastical bodies, forgetting their true objects of de- 
votion, mingled among the votaries of Mammon. The 
female sex likewise participated in the sordid frenzy. Prin- 
cesses of the blood, and ladies of the first nobility were 
among the most rapacious of stock-jobbers. Meanwhile, 
luxury and extravagance kept pace with this sudden infla- 
tion of fancied wealth, and a general laxity of morals was 
diffVised throughout society. 

Law went about with a countenance beaming with 
satisfaction, and apparently dispensing wealth on every 
hand. Even his domestics were enriched by the crumbs 
that fell from his table. "Wherever he went his path was 
beset by a base throng, who waited to see him pass, and 
sought the favor of a word or a smile, aS if a mere glance 
from him would bestow a fortune. The same venal atten- 



* It was afterward removed to the Place Vendome. 



256 French Finances, and Law's Mississippi Co. 

tion was paid by all classes to his family. The highest 
born ladies of the court vied with each other in meanness 
to secure the lucrative friendship of Mrs. Law and her 
daughter. The wealth of the banker rapidly increased 
with the expansion of the bubble. In the course of a few 
months he purchased some fourteen titled estates, paying 
for them in paper money ; and the unthinking public 
hailed these vast acquisitions of landed property as so 
many proofs of the soundness of his system. 

The illusory credit continued its course triumphantly 
for eighteen months. Law had nearly fulfilled one of his 
promises, viz., to pay oft" the public debt ; but it was paid 
in bank shares, which had been inflated several hundred 
per cent above their real value, and which were shortly to 
vanish like smoke in the hands of the holders. 

Toward the close of the year 1719, the Mississippi 
Bcheme had reached its culmination. Nearly half a million 
of strangers had crowded into Paris, in quest of fortuue. 
The hotels and boarding houses were overflowing ; lodgings 
were procured with great difficulty ; granaries were turned 
into bed-rooms; splendid houses were multiplying on every 
side ; and the streets were thronged vv-itli new and costly 
equipages. 

On the 11th of December, Law obtained another pro- 
hibitory decree, for the purpose of drawing all the remain- 
ing specie in circulation into the bank. By this it was for- 
bidden to make any payment in silver above ten livres, or 
in gold above three hundred. The repetition of decrees of 
this nature, the object of whicli was to depreciate the value 
of coin and increase that of paper, awakened distrust of a 
system which required such bolstering. Sound financiers 
conferred together, and agreed to make common cause 
against this continual expansion of the paper system. The 
shares of the bank and of the company began to decline in 
value. Wary speculators took the alarm, and began to 
realize ; a term now first brought into use, it is said, to sig- 
nify the conversion of ideal property into something real. 

The regent, discerning these signs of decay in the sys- 
tem, sought to sustain it by bestowing office upon its au- 



Edicts of the Regent. 257 

thor. Accordingly, in January, 1720, he appointed Law 
to be comptroller-general of the finances. But before his 
appointment, the banker had to abjure his Protestant 
faith and take out letters of naturalization, — a feat of no 
great difiiculty with him. 

In February following, a decree was published in the 
king's name uniting the Royal Bank to the India Com- 
pany, by which last appellation the whole establishment 
was subsequently known. By this time, the bank is said 
to have issned notes to the amount of one thousand mil- 
lions of livres ; being more paper than all the other banks 
of Europe were able to circulate. Various compulsory 
measures were now adopted, which gave a temporary 
credit to the bank ; but with all these props and stays, 
the system continued to totter. On the 22d of May a royal 
edict was issued, in which, under pretense of having re- 
duced the value of his coin, it was deemed necessary to 
reduce the value of his bank notes one-half, and of the 
India shares from nine thousand to five thousand livres. 
On the 27th this oppressive edict was revoked, and bank 
bills were restored to their former value. But the fatal 
blow had at length been struck ; the delusion was at an 
end ; and specie payments, except in small sums, were sus- 
pended by the bank. 

To avert popular odium from himself, the regent, on 
on the 29th of May, dismissed Law from the office of 
comptroller-general, and stationed a Swiss guard in his 
house to protect him from the anger of the populace. 
But he continued, in private, to co-operate with him in 
his financial schemes. A general confusion now took 
place in all financial attairs ; and execrations were poured 
out on all sides against the unfortunate banker. 

About the middle of July the last grand effort was 
made by Law and the regent to keep up the system, and 
provide for the enormous issue of paper. A decree was 
formulated, giving the India Company the entire monopoly 
of commerce, on condition that it would in the course of 
a year reimburse six hundred millions of livres of its bills, 
17 



258 French Finances, and Law's Mississippi Co. 

at a fixed rate per month. On the 17th, when this decree 
was sent to Parliament to be registered, it raised a storm 
of opposition in that assembly, and a vehement discussion 
ensued. In the forenoon of that day, several persons 
were stifled in the crowd at the door of the bank, where 
they had gone to change ten franc notes for specie to buy 
provisions in the market. During the same day Law 
ventured to go in his carriage to the Palais Royal. But 
as he passed along the streets, he was saluted with cries 
and curses, and reached the palace in a terrible fright. The 
regent, whose nerves were stronger, amused himself with 
his fears, but kept him there and sent away his carriage, 
which was assailed by the mob and pelted with stones un- 
til its glasses were shivered. 

In December, 1720, John Law finally - quit Paris 
and France, traveling in a private conveyance of the 
regent. When he was fairly out of the way, a council of 
the regency was summoned to deliberate on the state of 
the finances and the aflairs of the India Company. It was 
then ascertained that bank bills were in circulation to the 
enormous amount of two milliards and seven hundred mil- 
lions of livres, while the specie remaining in the kingdom 
was estimated at not more than thirteen hundred millions 
of livres. 

When Law left Paris, he took with him only eight 
hundred louis cVor, and a few personal eflects. The chief 
relic of his immense fortune was a big diamond, which, it 
it is said, he was often obliged to pawn. His furniture and 
library were sold by auction at a low price, and his landed 
estates were confiscated to the government. In October, 
1721, he went to England, and was presented at court to 
his majesty George I. Returning again to the continent, 
he led an adventurous life, shifting about from place to 
place. He received from France an annual pension of 
twenty thousand livres until the death of the Duke of Or- 
leans in 1723, and down to that time entertained hopes of 
arranging a settlement of his accounts with the French 
India Company ,Jto which he was heavily indebted. By de- 
grees, however, he sank into obscurity, and finally died in 



End of Law's Career. 259 

poverty in Venice, March 21, 1729, at the age of fifty-eight 
years. 

It is now generally conceded that John Law was a 
very ingenious calculator, a sincere believer in his own 
monetary theory, and the founder to some extent of the 
modern system of banking. The evil genius of his sys- 
tem appears to have been the regent, who in a manner 
forced him on to an expansion of his paper currency far 
beyond what he had originally contemplated. " Law was 
like a poor conjuror in the hands of a potent spirit that he 
had evoked. He only thought at the outset to raise the 
wind, but the regent compelled him to raise the whirl- 
wind." * 

" Works on Law and his system are numerous," saya 
the American Encylopedia (X., p. 218); "but it is only 
within the present century that justice has, to any degree, 
been done to the extraordinary talents of which he was 
really possessed." 

The unsound financiering and mania for speculation, 
originating with and fostered by the great " projector," 
proved most disastrous to the material and moral welfare 
of France ; yet a great impetus was given to the settle- 
ment of Louisiana through the agency of his Company 
of the West, which, under difterent names and auspices, 
was continued for fifteen years. The first efibrts of the 
company at colonizing the new province were upon a large 
scale ; indeed, extraordinary measures were adopted for 
this purpose. A royal edict was issued, authorizing the 
collection and transportation of settlers to the Mississippi, 
under which the streets and prisons of Paris and other 
cities were swept of their mendicants and vagabonds. 
These unwilling colonists were conveyed to the seaport of 
Rochelle, and, with implements of all kinds for the work- 
ing of mines, were crowded on board of ships, and sent to 
Louisiana. 



* See the admirable essay, entitled Tlie Mississippi Bubble, in the 
" Crayon Papers," by Washington Irving, from which the foregoing 
sketch of Law's personal career is chiefly condensed. 



260 Louisiana under Laws' Company. 

On the 9th February, 1718, three ships, of the West- 
ern Company — the Dauphine, the Vigihmte and the Nep- 
tune — arrived at Dauphin Island to take possession of Lou- 
isiana. After discharging their cargoes, these vessels 
sailed on their return to France ; and on the 8th of March 
two frigates, the Duchesse de Noailles and the Victoire, cast 
anchor at Ship Island.* By the first named frigate came 
Pierre Duque de Boisbriant, a French-Canadian, who had 
received the appointment of king's lieutenantf of the 
province, and who was the bearer of a commission appoint- 
ing his cousin, Bienville, governor and commandant-gen- 
eral, in place of M. L'Epinay removed. Besides the of- 
officers and the soldiers belonging to the company, these 
ditferent vessels brought out about six hundred colonists, 
who were intended to settle the various concessions or land 
grants that had been made to persons of prominence, as 
inducements to immigration. The new colonists were of 
different ages, sexes and conditions, but mostly belonged 
to the poor and ignorant class. Some of them perished 
from the lack of thrift and enterprise; some from impru- 
dence and the diseases incident to the climate ; while 
others lived and prospered by their own energy and in- 
dustry. 

In October, of that year (1718), Bernard de la Harpe, 
one of the leading spirits of the province, at^ this period, 
started to take possession of a grant or concession of land 
that had been made to him on the upper waters of Red 
River. With a party of fifty Frenchmen, in two boats and 
three pirogues, he pushed up that stream to the Natchi- 
toches, where he found M. Blondel in command of the 
French fort, then recently erected there, and on the island 
near by were about two hundred Indians, belonging to 
the Natchitoches, Dulcinoes and Yatasse tribes. LaHarpe 
thence continued to ascend the river until he reached the 
nation of the Nassonis, whose villages w^ere located from 
seventy to eighty leagues above the Natchitoches. Upon 



* French's " Historical Collections of La." New Series (N. Y., 
18(J9), p. 140; also vol. II, First Series, p. 66. 

t That is luutenant du roi, or lieutenant-g(*vernor. 



Adventures of La Harpe. 261 

his arrival thither, he at first employed his men in con- 
structing a block-house for their use and the storage of his 
goods, in which labor they had the friendly assistance of 
the !N"assonis. From this point of vantage, he afterward 
attempted to open a trade with the Spaniards in New Mex- 
ico, and also explored the wide range of country between 
Red River and the Upper Arkansas. Agreeably to his own 
narrative, he ascended the Arkansas, or one of its con- 
stituent branches, to the base of the Rocky Mountains, 
and there found several tribes living together in one large 
village. In pursuance of the usual French policy, he made 
himself well acquainted with the different Indian nations 
inhabiting those wild and hitherto unvisited regions, and 
formed amicable relations with several of them. His 
printed journal of his voyage and discoveries is charac- 
terized by simplicity of style and easy credulity, but it is 
none the less entertaining, and contains, withal, much use- 
ful information respecting the aborigines whom he vis- 
ited.* It was not until the end of the year 1719 that 
La Harpe returned to the head-quarters of Governor Bien- 
ville. 

From the beginning of operations by the Western 
Company in Louisiana, the directors thereof had evinced 
much anxiety for the occupation of the Gulf coast, west 
of the river Sabine, with a colony. But Governor Bien- 
ville, believing in the policy of concentrating the settle- 
ments near the Mississippi, had declined sending colonists 
to that remote quarter, where they would be exposed to the 
attacks of both the Indians and Spaniards. At length, in 
August, 1721, under special instructions from the direct- 
ors, he issued the following official order, addressed to La 
Harpe, for the establishment of a post near the Bay of St. 
Bernard, or Matagorda : 

" We, Jean Baptiste de Bienville, chevalier of the mil- 



* Vide ^^ Journal du voyage de la Louisiane , fail par le »S'V Bernard de la 
Harpe, et des decouverte^ qiC il a faites dan la partie de L' ouest de cette colo- 
nic," from the year 1718 to 1722, inclusive ; printed in the " Historical 
Collections" of Louisiana. 



262 Louisiana under Law's Company. 

itary order of St. Louis, and commandant-general for the 
kins: in the Province of Louisiana: 

'•'■ It is hereby decreed that M. de la Harpe, command- 
ant of the Bay of St. Bernard, shall embark in the packet, 
' Subtile,' commanded by Beranger, with a detachment of 
twenty soldiers, under Belile, and shall proceed forthwith 
to the Bay of St. Bernard, belonging to this province, and 
take possession in the name of the king and the Western 
Company; shall plant the arms of the king in the ground, 
and build a fort upon whatsoever spot appears most advan- 
tageous for the defense of the place. 

" If the Spaniards or any other nation have taken pos- 
session, M. de la Harpe will signify to them that they have 
no right to the country, it being known that possession 
was taken in 1685 by M. de la Salle, in the name of the 
King of France, etc. " Bienville." 

"August 10, 1721." * 

Pursuant to this order, La Harpe sailed shortly after 
upon his doubtful enterprise ; but on arriving at the bay 
he found no safe harbor, and owing to the opposition man- 
ifested by the natives on its shores (who were partly in- 
fluenced by the Spaniards in Mexico), he built no fort there. 
Mindful, indeed of the fate of La Salle's colony, and un- 
willing to expose his own men to savage massacre, he re- 
turned to Dauphin Island early in the following October,f 
and the enterprise was thereafter abandoned. 

In 1719 the directors of the company sent out for pub- 
lication in the province of Louisiana a proclamation and 
schedule, fixing the prices at which goods and merchandise 
were to be obtained in the company's stores at Dauphin Is- 
land, Mobile, and Biloxi. To these prices an advance of 
five per centum was to be added to goods delivered at ISTew 
Orleans ; ten per cent, at Natchez ; thirteen at Yazous ; 
twenty at Katchitoches, and fifty at the Illinois and on the 

* Monette's " Valley of the Mississippi," vol. 1, p. 235. 
tThe town of La Harpe, in Hancock County, 111., ajipoars to have 
been so named in memory of this noted Frenchman. 



Bienville Founds New Orleans. 263 

Missouri. The commodities of the country were to be re- 
ceived at the company's warehouses in Mobile, Biloxi, Ship 
Island, and New Orleans, at the rates following, viz : Silk, 
of which very little was produced, from one dollar and 
fifty cents to two dollars the pound ; tobacco, of the best 
kind, five dollars the hundred ; rice, four dollars ; super- 
fine flour three dollars ; wheat, two dollars ; barley and oats 
ninety cents the hundred ; deer-skins from fifteen to twenty- 
five cents ; dressed, without head or tail, thirty cents ; hides 
eight cents per pound.* 

No sooner had M. de Bienville superseded L'Epinay 
as governor of Louisiana, in 1718, than he revived his 
scheme for transferring the seat of government of the 
province from the sterile sands of the Gulf coast to the al- 
luvial banks of the Mississippi. Having already selected 
a site for the new capital, he now sent the Sieur de 
la Tour, chief engineer of the colony, with a force of 
eighty convicts (lately arrived from the prisons of France), 
to clear a strip of land along the river, and trace out the 
plan of the town. The settlement thus begu]i here was 
named Noaveau, Orleans, in honor to the Duke of -Orleans, 
then prince regent of France. But M. Hubert, commis- 
sary of the colony and Company of the "West, refused to 
transfer the ofiices and warehouses of the company from 
Mobile and Dauphin Island, which were more accessible to 
vessels from the sea. For this reason, New Orleans was 
maintained for several years only as a small military and 
trading post. In 1720 La Tour surveyed the mouths or 
passes of the Mississippi, and reported that New Orleans 
might be made a commercial port. At this time it was a 
collection of less than one hundred palisade cabins, built of 
cypress wood on low, malarious ground, subject to inun- 
dations, and surrounded by a forest or thicket of willows, 
canes, and dwarf palmettos. In January, 1722, the town 
was visited by Father Charlevoix, who thus recorded his 
impressions of the place : 

" The environs of New Orlans have nothing very re- 

t Martin's History of Louisiana, vol. 1, page. 219. 



264 Louisiana under Law's Company. 

markable. I did not find this city so well situated as I had 
been told ; others are not of the same opinion." Again, he 
writes : " I have nothing to add to what I said in the be- 
ginning of my former letter concerning the present state 
ofJS^ew Orleans. The truest idea that youcauform of it is to 
represent to yourself two hundred persons that are sent to 
build a city, and who are encamped on the side of a great 
river, where they have thought of nothing but to shelter 
themselves from the air, while they wait for a plan, and 
have built themselves some houses. M. dePauger,* whom 
I have still the honor to accompany, has just shown me one 
of his drawings. It is very fine and very regular, but it 
will not be so easy to execute it as to trace it on paper." f 

The Mobile and Alabama Rivers had formed a favorite 
line of communication with the northern interior, and from 
its closer connection with the sea. Fort Louis on the Mo- 
bile remained a principal post ; but in August, 1723, the 
ofiicial quarters of Bienville were removed to New Orleans, 
and its destiny was fixed. Thus the central point of French 
power in Louisiana, after hovering for over twenty years 
round Ship and Dauphin Islands, and the bays of Biloxi 
and Mobile, was at last permanently established on the 
banks of the Mississippi, and the southern colonists began 
to gather in settlements along that great river, so as to be 
within easy reach of the rising capital. Although many of 
the French doubted the wisdom or propriety of Bienville's 
conduct in thus changing the seat of government, yet time 
has amply demonstrated the clearness of his foresight, and 
the soundness of his judgment in this important action. 

From a mere provincial head-quarters and central depot 
for the commercial transactions of a single company, New 
Orleans has since progressively grown to be the great em- 
porium of the Lower Mississippi Valley, the recipient of 
the trade of some fifteen thousand miles of river naviga- 
tion, to say nothing of her extensive railway connections, 

* De Paug^r was second or assistant engineer of the colony ; and in 
1722 ho established the little post called Balize, at the south pass of the 
Mississippi. 

t " Journal of Travels in North America," pp. 332, 334. 



The Province Divided into Districts. 265 

and the busy port where the ships and merchants of all 
nations do congregate. 

Even at that early day her rare commercial advantages, 
present and prospective, were well understood on the Paris 
Bourse. Yet, all around the nascent city, was then a mat- 
ted and marshy forest, "calculated by its dreariness and 
solitude to inspire far other thoughts than those of com- 
merce, empire, wealth, and power." 

At or before this time (1723), the Province of Louisi- 
ana was divided for civil and military purposes into Jiine 
districts, each of which was placed under the jurisdiction 
of a separate commandant. These military districts were 
named as follows: (1) Alibamons,* (2) Mobile, (3) Biloxi, 
(4) New Orleans, (5) Natchez, (6) Yazoux, (7) Illinois and 
Wabash, (8) Arkansas, (9) Natchitoches. The province was 
also divided into three ecclesiastical districts. 

We must now revert to the war which broke out in 
1719 between France and Spain, and which extended to 
their American colonies. On the 19th of April in that year 
two ships arrived from France, bringing out some colonists, 
and an abundant supply of provisions and ammunition. 
By these vessels, Governor Bienville received letters from 
the court informing him that war had been declared in 
Europe betweeu France and Spain. The governor there- 
upon called a council of his oHicers, at which it was de- 
termined to make an attack on Fort Pensacola, before the 
Spanish garrison there could be reinforced. For this expe- 
dition he assembled his regular troops, together with some 
Canadians and Indians, and put them under the command of 
Captain de Chateaugue, his brother, and Captain de Riche- 
bourg. Embarking his little army in three vessels, the 
commander sailed early in May to Santa Rosa Island, where 
the Spaniards had an outpost. This the French seized 
without opposition, and then advanced upon Pensacola, 
which they invested and took by surprise ; for the Spanish 
commandant claimed that he was not aware of the exist- 



*The district of the Alibamons lay between the rivers Alabama 
and Tombigbee. 



266 Louisiana under Law's Company. 

ence of war between the two nations. Having made him- 
self master of Pensacola, Bienville sent the prisoners he 
had taken in a vessel with some troops, commanded by 
Captain de Richebourg, to Havana. He then left his 
brother, Chateaugue, in command of Fort Pensacola, with 
a garrison of sixty men, and retnrned to Dauphin Island. 

The French, however, were soon compelled to relin- 
quish their conquest. On the 5th of August two Spanish 
vessels arrived from Havana before Pensacola, and sum- 
moned the commandant to surrender. This being refused, 
a brisk cannonade began on both sides, and was continued 
until night. On the next day the Spaniards again sent a 
summons to Chateaugue to surrender. He asked four days 
time to consider the matter, and was allowed two, during 
which he sent by land to Dauphin Island for assistance. 
Unfortunately, Bienville was not then in a position to af- 
ford liim any aid, and the attack was renewed. Captain 
Chateaugue defended the fort as long as he could, but be- 
ing deserted by a part of his garrison, he was obliged to 
capitulate, when he was sent a prisoner to Havana. The 
Spanish commandant was now reinstated, and immediately 
set to work to repair the injuries done by the cannonading; 
and in order to strengthen the defenses of the place, he 
erected a little fort on the Isle of Santa Rosa. 

Soon after this the Spanish commander of Pensacola 
dispatched a large bateau, armed with six pieces of cannon, 
to harass the French establishment on Dauphin Island. The 
bateau being joined by another armed vessel, they opened 
a sharp fire upon the island, which was stoutly returned 
by the French ship, Philip, and a battery on shore. After 
bombarding the island several days, and making various 
ineffectual attempts to land their forces, the Spanish vessels 
were compelled to witlidraw, their departure being hastened 
by the unexpected appearance of a French squadron of five 
vessels, commanded by M. de Champmeslin. 

This fleet arrived before Dauphin Island on the 1st of 
September, 1719, and brought out about eight hundred peo- 
ple, comprising officers, soldiers, and colonists, for Louis- 
iana. A council of war being held, it was decided to re- 



The Capture of Pensacola. 267 

take Pensacola, and rescue the French soldiers who had 
been taken prisoners by the Spaniards. Accordingly, on 
the 7th of September, the entire fleet, with the exception 
of one vessel, set sail for Pensacola. The French and Cana- 
dian troops, from Dauphin Island, who formed a little army 
by themselves, commanded by the Sieur de St. Denis, were 
debarked near the mouth of the river Perdido, to attack 
the large fort by land, while the squadron held on its way. 
No sooner had the French ships of war entered and come 
to anchor within the harbor at Pensacola, than they opened 
fire upon the Spanish forts and vessels. After a fierce can- 
nonade of two or three hours, the Spaniards, numbering 
about twelve hundred, surrendered, and were made prison- 
ers of war. Among them were found forty French de- 
serters, twenty of whom were hung at the yard-arm of the 
admiral's ship, and the remainder condemned to ten years' 
labor as galley slaves. On the next day a Spanish vessel, 
laden with provisions and stores, entered the port of Pen- 
sacola, not knowing that it had changed masters, and was 
immediately captured by the French. 

After the re-taking of Pensacola, the two forts were 
demolished, and all the houses were destroyed save four, 
which were kept for the use of the small garrison left there. 
The captured munitions and stores were transported to 
Dauphin Island.* 

But the operations of this inter-colonial war, which 
lasted two years, were not wholly confined to the fringe 
of European settlements on the coast of Florida and 
Louisiana. Adventurous white traders and explorers had 
already found a route across the wide and barren plains 
of the west, from the Missouri River to New Mexico ; and 
during the year 1720 a Spanish expedition was organized 
at Santa Fe t to operate against the French in jSTorthern 



■■■■ Duinont's Historical Memoir of Louisiana. 

Note. — It was during the autumn and winter of that year (1719), 
that Governor Bienville removed the main body of the colony from 
Dauphin Island to Old Biloxi, and thence to New Biloxi, on the west 
side of the bay of that name. 

t Santa Fe was settled by the Spaniards as early as 1582-'S3. 



268 Louisiana under Law's Company. 

Louisiana, while, at the same time, it was expected that a 
fleet would assail the posts of the latter on the Gulf. 

Accordingly a force of three hundred Spanish cavalry, 
together with some tradere, women, and a few priests, set 
out from Santa Fe on their eastward march across the 
country, guided by a band of Padouca, or Comanche, In- 
dians. The intention of the leaders of the expedition was 
to proceed by way of the Upper Arkansas, and to secure 
the co-operation of the Osage Indians in a combined 
attack upon the Missouris, who were friends or allies of 
the French. Seventy only of the Spaniards appear to have 
persevered in this dangerous enterprise, and they w6re con- 
ducted by their ignorant guides so far to the north that 
they struck the Kansas, instead of the Arkansas River, at 
a point not far above its junction with the Missouri. 
Here they unwittingly found themselves among the Mis- 
souri Indians, who spoke the same language as the Osages. 
The wily chiefs of the Missouris dissembled their own in- 
tentions until they had ascertained the purpose of the in- 
vaders, and received a supply of arms from them. They 
then assembled their young warriors, and, falling suddenly 
upon the Spaniards, put them all to death, save the com- 
mander, who is said to have escaped by the fleetness of his 
horse. 

Such, in substance, is the storj' of the invasion and 
attempted occupation of the country of the Missouris by the 
Spaniards from New Mexico, whose objective point was the 
lUinois. — (Martin's Hist, of La., pp. 234-5.) 



The account of this Spanish expedition, as given in 
Bossu's Letters of Travel, agrees in essential points with 
the above, but varies from and is fuller in its details. He 
writes : 

"In 1720 the Spaniards formed the design of settling at the Mis- 
souris, who are near the Illinois, in order to confine us (the French) 
more on the westward ; tlie Missouris are far distant from New Mexico, 
which is the most northerly province the Spaniards have. 



Bossivs Account of the Spanish Expedition. 269 

" They believed that in order to put their colony in safety, it was 
necessary they should entirelj' destroy the Missonris; but concluding 
that it would be impossible to subdue them with their own forces alone, 
they resolved to make an alliance with the Osages, a people who were 
the neighbors of the Missouris, and at the same time their mortal en- 
emies. With that view, they formed a caravan at Santa Fe, consisting 
of men, women and soldiers, having a Jacobine (Dominican) priest for 
their chaplain, and an engineer captain for their chief and conductor, 
with the horses and cattle necessary for a permanent settlement. The 
caravan being set out mistook its road, and arrived at the Missouris, 
taking them to be the Osages. Immediately the conductor of the car- 
avan ordered bis interpreter to speak to the chief of the Missouris, 
as if he had been that of the Osages, and tell him that they were come 
to make an alliance with him, in order to destroy together the Missouris, 
their enemies. 

" The great chief of the Missouris concealed his thoughts upon 
this expedition, showed the Spaniards signs of great joy, and promised 
to execute a design with them which gave him much pleasure. To 
that purpose, he invited them to rest for a few* days after their tiresome 
journey, till he had assembled his warriors, and hel<l council with the 
old men ; but the result of that council was, that they should entertain 
their guests very well, and affect the sincerest friendship for them. 

" They agreed together to set out in three days. The Spanish captain 
immediately distributed fifteen (five) hundred muskets, with an equal 
number of pistols, sabers and hatchets ; but the very morning after this 
agreement, the Missouris came by break of day into the Spanish camp, 
and killed them all except the Jacobin priest, whose singular dress did 
not seem to belong to a warrior. . . . 

"All these transactions the Missouris themselves related, when they 
brought the ornaments of jthe chapel hither — (to the Illinois). These 
people, not knowing the respect due the sacred utensils, hung the 
chalice to a horse's neck, as if it had been a bell. They were dressed 
out in these ornaments; the chief having on the naked skin the 
chasuble, with the paten suspended from his neck. 

" The i\Iissouris told him (Boisbriant) that the Spaniards intended to 
have destroyed them ; that they had brought him all these things as being 
of no use to them, and that if he would, he might give them such goods 
in return as were more to their liking. Accordingly, he gave them some 
goods, and sent the ornaments to M. de Bienville, who was then the 
governor of the Province of Louisiana. As the Indians had got a great 
number of Spanish horses from the caravan, the chief of the Missouris 
gave the linest of them to M. de Boisbriant. They had likewise brought 
with them the map which had conducted the Spaniards so ill ; who came 
to surrender themselves, confessing their intention to their enemies." — 
Nouveau Voyages aux Indies Occidentales, Par M. Bossu, Capitaine dans Jes 
Troupes de la. Marine. A Paris, 1768. English edition, London, 1771, 
Part I., pp. 150-155. 



270 Boisbrianf s Rule in Illinois. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

1718-1732. 

LIEUTENANT BOISBRIANT'S RULE IN THE ILLINOIS — THE NATCHEZ 

WAR. 

Early in the month of October, 1718, Pierre Duque de 
Boisbriant, as king's lieutenant for Louisiana, departed from 
the Mobile up the Mississippi, with a considerable detach- 
ment of regular troops, to regulate affairs in the Illinois, 
and to establish a permanent military post for the better 
protection of the French inhabitants in that important part 
of the province. Arrived at Kaskaskia, he temporarily lo- 
cated his head-quarters there, which was the lirst military 
occupation of the village ; but it was only for about fifteen 
months that he made it his residence. Selecting a con- 
venient site for a post, some sixteen miles above and to the 
north-west of Kaskaskia, he sent a number of artisans and 
laborers to work there, and by the spring of 1720 they had 
built and completed the fort, which was thenceforth the 
head-quarters of the commandant and the seat of authority 
in the district. It was erected at the expense of the Com- 
pany of the West, and was named Fort Chartres, or Fort 
de Chartres, probably in compliment to the then Regent of 
France, from the title of his son, the Due de Chartres.* 
The fort stood less than one mile from the Mississippi, and 
a little to the east of an older fortlet that had been raised 
by the adventurers under Crozat. This second fort was 
not a place of much military strength, being constructed 
principally of wood ; but it subserved the pnr})Ose of its 
builders and occupants, and in time was supplanted by that 
extensive stone erection, at the same place, which figures 
80 prominently in the later French history of Illinois. 



* It might also have been so called from a city of that name in 
France. 



First Building of Fort Chartres. 271 

Upon the building of Fort Chartres, a village began 
to grow on the bottom between it and the river. The 
"company" erected its warehouses here, and the Jesuits 
built the church of St. Anne de Fort Chartres. Under the 
jurisdiction of the priest of this church, chapels were sub- 
sequently erected at Prairie du Rocher and St. Philippe's. 
After the rebuilding of the fort in 1756, the village took 
the name of i^ew Chartres; and, a few years later, it is 
said to have contained forty families. Part of the ancient 
records of the parish of St. Anne have been preserved to 
this day.* 

Shortly after the occupation of Fort Chartres, all the 
French villages in Illinois became extended and received 
considerable accessions to their population. In 1719, a par- 
ish was formed of the mission at Kaskaskia, of which, in 
the succeeding year, Father Nicholas Ignatius de Beaubois 
had charge. In 1721 the Jesuits established a monastery 
and college (so called) at Kaskaskia, and in 1725 the vil- 
lage became incorporated as a town. At Caliokia, the Sul- 
pitians erected a water-mill for grinding corn and sawing 
lumber, and also improved and stocked a fine plantation. 

As the transactions of the Western Compimy were 
multiplied and extended in Lower Louisiana, the district 
of the Illinois was likewise benefited ; for they furnished 
a market for its surplus agricultural productions, already 
considerable, and to the furs and pelts gathered in traffic 
with the Indians, as well as to the lead dug from the mines 
of Missouri. But this was not all. The colonists could 
now obtain from the company titles to their landed pos- 
sessions, and thus be quieted in any uneasiness they might 
otherwise have felt in regard to them. The only tenure by 
which they had hitherto held their village lots and parcels 
of land was by verbal grant or mere acquiescence of the 
Indians, with no reference to the king, " the lord para- 
mount of the soil according to French law." 

The "company" had succeeded to the rights of the 
crown in the land, and, though extensive domains were 



History of Randolph Co., 111., etc., p. 376. 



272 Boisbrianfs Rule in Illinois. 

granted by it to some favored or influential persons in the 
soutliern part of Louisiana, there were but few in the north- 
ern part who sought to secure more than those small par- 
cels or tracts, the cultivation of which had inspired them 
with a feeling of home. Moreover, it was important to the 
managers of the company that the soil should be cultivated, 
as a ready and certain source of subsistence to those at- 
tached to it, and for the success of all their operations. 
Disappointed in the eager search for mineral wealth, many 
of the adventurers betook themselves from necessity to the 
pursuits of agriculture. Grants of land were therefore 
made, for the purposes of settlement and cultivation, to all 
who applied for them. The earliest recorded private grants 
date back to 1722, and were mostly executed by M. de 
Boisbriant, commandant in the Illinois, representing the 
king, and Marc Antoine de la Loire des Ursins, on behalf 
of the Royal Indian Company, successor to the Company 
of the West. The following is one of the earliest of 
record : 

" Pierre Duquet de Boisbriant, Knight of the Military 
Order of St. Louis, and tirst King's Lieutenant of the 
Province of Louisiana, commanding at the Illinois, and 
Mons. Antoine de la Loire des Ursins, principal Commissary 
for the Royal India Company, on the demand of Charles 
Danie, to grant him a piece of land of five arpents in front 
on the side of the Mitchigamia River, running north and 
south, joining to Michael Philip on one side, and on the 
other to Meleque, and in depth, east and west to the Mis- 
sissippi. In consequence, they do grant to the said Charles 
Danie, in socage, tlie said land, whereon he may from this 
date commence working, clearing and sawing, in expecta- 
tion of a formal concession,* which shall be sent from 
France by Messrs. the Directors of the Royal India Com- 
pany, and the said land shall revert to the domain of the 



* This more " formal concession " seems to have been neglected by 
the company. 



Land Grants by the Company. 273 

said company if the said Charles Danie does not work 
thereon within a year and a day. 

" Given this 10th day of May, 1722. 

(Signed,) " Boisbriant, 

" "Des Ursins."* 

Remarking upon the above and similar grants, Judge 
Breese writes : " Incipient titles were only granted by these 
officers, but almost all of them ripened into a right without 
the formality of a concession from the company in France, 
and became allodial, though granted in socage, for the sim- 
ple reason that they were considered of so little value as 
property that the agents of the company did not trouble 
themselves to see whether the conditions and services were 
performed or not. 

" The manner in which the settlers cultivated is pecu- 
liar, I believe, to the French, and deserves a passing notice. 
They had not, as we have, separate fields, nor did they re- 
side on the cultivated lands in general. They dwelt in 
villages, on lots of ground containing generally an arpent 
square (less than the English acre), which they inclosed 
witli pickets of cedar or other durable wood, sharpened at 
the top, and appropriated it to the purpose of a garden, re- 
serving a small part only for a barn, stable, and other out- 
houses. Their farming lands were adjacent to the village 
in the neighboring prairie, divided into strips, sometimes 
not more than half an arpent in width, extending originally 
west from the Kaskaskia to the Mississippi River, a mile or 
more in length, and uninclosed by any fence whatever. 
These farming strips, thus lying contiguous to each other, 
embraced what was long known as the ' common field.' " f 

It appears from a petition presented by the inhabitants 
of Kaskaskia to the district commandant of the Illinois, 
early in 1727, that in the year 1719 Major Boisbriant had 
caused to be drawn the lines of the grand square in the 



* He was afterward killed in the massacre at Fort Rosalie. 
t "Early History of Illinois," p. 173. 

18 



274 Boisbrialfifs Rule in Illinois. 

prairie which they then tilled, and designated to each in- 
habitant his respective parcel of land. He then established 
a " common " for stock, lying outside of the lines of the 
cultivated fields, and extending south to the mouth of the 
Kaskaskia River, and also including the adjacent islands in 
the Mississippi, and a strip of bottom land on the east side 
of the former river, for their cattle, horses, and swine to 
range upon. But the written instruments of concession 
were not delivered to them by the Superior Council of 
Louisiana. 

Under this arrangement, it was necessary to watch 
their live stock while grazing on the common adjacent to 
the cultivated lands, the idea not having occurred to them 
until Boisbriant gave them the hint, that a fence would 
protect them from their ravages and render watching use- 
less. It was not, however, until 1727 that they did inclose 
these lands by planting pickets upon the lines marked out 
by Boisbriant, thus making a large field of several thousand 
acres. The " commons " aftbrded a rich pasturage for their 
cattle and horses, and much of it was covered with a lux- 
uriant growth of walnut, oak, and hickory, the mast from 
w" hich, added to the hazel-nuts, served to fatten their numer- 
ous swine. 

On the 22d of June, 1722, Messieurs Boisbriant and 
Des Ilrsins granted to the inhabitants of Cahokia their 
"commons," situated on the alluvial bottom between that 
village and the Mississippi, and near to the present great 
city of St. Louis. The same officials also confirmed to 
them their " common field," which extended from the 
bluffs that line the American Bottom on the east to the 
liigolet or creek of Cahokia.* 

In the following year, on June 14, 1723, Boisbriant 
and Des Ursins granted to Philip Francois de Renault, di- 
rector-general of the mining operations of the company, 
one league scpuxre of land in the south-west part of what is 
now Monroe county, Illinois, and also a tract of land of 
more than fourteen thousand acres at Peoria, lienuult was 



* Breese's History, pp. 174 to 176. 



Land Grants to the Sieur Renault. 275 

a man of fortune and enterprise, who had left La Belle 
France in the spring of 1719, with two hundred miners and 
laborers, and every thing needful to prosecute the business 
pertaining to his office. On the voyage to Louisiana, he 
purchased at St. Domingo five hundred Guinea negroes to 
work in the mines. Arriving on the Lower Mississippi, he 
thence ascended the river in canoes to the Illinois and Mis- 
souri, where gold and silver were supposed to exist in 
abundance. Sanguine hopes were entertained by the stock- 
holders of the "company" at his anticipated success, but 
they all eventually ended in disappointment. Prospecting 
and mining parties were sent out into various parts of the 
countr3\ Diligent search was made for minerals on 
Drewry's Creek, in what is now Jackson county; about St. 
Mary's, in Randolph county; along Silver Creek, in Monroe 
county ; at several points in St. Clair county, and in other 
parts of Southern Illinois, as well as in Missouri. But, 
after expending a large amount of money and four years 
of valuable time, Renault had to content himself with the 
gift of the before mentioned wild lands, and with dull lead 
instead of the glittering ores.* 

On the concession made to him in Monroe county, he 
laid out a little village, which he honored with his own 
baptismal appellation of " St. Philippe." It stood on the 
plain, about one mile east of the Mississippi, and five miles 
from old Fort Chartres. Like all the other French villages, 
it had its '' common field," the allotments being made by 
the founder, and also its "commons," embracing a large 
scope of the unappropriated domain. It contained at one 
time sixteen houses, besides a small chapel, but in 1765 
nearly all the inhabitants deserted it, and went to reside on 
the western bank of the Mississippi. ]^ot a vestige of 
either this or Charte Village now remain to tell the story 
of their rise, progress, or decline. The name of the worthy 
Renault, however, is still perpetuated in that of a precinct 
and post-office of Monroe county. 



* Later geological investigation has shown that silver is combined 
with the lead mined in this region, but in hardly sufficient quantities 
to pay for its separation. 



276 Boisbria7ifs Hide in Illinois. 

To Boisb riant himself, the Company of the Indies, be- 
fore the surrender of its vast privileges to the crown, 
granted what in Europe would have been considered a 
handsome principality, embracing several thousand acres 
of rich bottom land, extending from the bluffs on the east 
to the Mississippi. In 1733, he transferred this fine tract 
to his nephew, Jean St. Therese Langlois, an officer of the 
king's troops then quartered in the Illinois. Imitating 
Renault's example, Langlois established upon his estate the 
village of Prairie du Rocher, reserving to himself certain 
seignorial rights recognized by the feudal law and the cus- 
toms of Paris. He divided the land set apart for the vil- 
lage into small, narrow allotments, with a "common field," 
as usual, to actual settlers, some of whose descendants 
continue to cultivate it in a primitive way to the present 
time. This village took its name from the rocky bluff that 
bounds it on the east, and runs parallel with the river at 
the distance of a league therefrom. It is situated about 
three miles east of Fort Chartres, and, at the close of the 
French dominion, comprised twenty-two dwelling-houses 
and a chapel. 

Aside from those we have mentioned, but few grants 
of any magnitude were made by the Royal India Company 
to persons in Illinois. Good lands were far too abundant 
in those days to be much cared for, or considered of any 
particular value ; otherwise, many of the French settlers 
might have possessed dukedoms. At this period, the pres- 
ence of the commandant, and of the local officers of the 
" company," together with a detachment of his majesty's 
troops, at Fort Chartres, made it the focus of whatever of 
wealth, culture, and fashion there was in the district of the 
Illinois. 

In 1725, Governor Bienville, owing to the jealousy and 
opposition of his enemies, was recalled to France, and his 
brother, Chateaugue, was also deposed from his office of 
lieutenant-governor in the colony. M. de Boisbriant, as 
first king's lieutenant, now became governor ad interim of 
Louisiana, with head-quarters at New Orleans, and his po- 
sition of major-commandant at the Illinois was filled by 



Gov. Bienville Succeeded by Perier. 277 

the Sieur de Liette, a captain in the royal army. Boisb riant 
was an amiable and benevolently inclined gentleman, and 
his administration of affairs was deservedly popular, both 
in Upper and Lower Louisiana. In August, 1726, he was 
relieved of his duties as commandant-general of the prov- 
ince by M. de Perier, an officer of the marines, and a 
knight of St. Louis, who had been appointed to succeed 
Bienville. 

Shortly after his arrival and installation in office. Gov- 
ernor Perier's attention was called to the Natchez and 
Chickasaw Indians, and to the insincerity of their profes- 
sions of friendship for the French. He thereupon ad- 
dressed the directors of the India Company, and urged 
upon them, as his predecessor had done before, to provide 
more effective protection for the white settlers exposed to 
the hostility of those tribes. But his apprehensions were 
not shared by the directors, and no additional troops appear 
to have been provided. 

We now approach one of the most memorable epi- 
sodes in the French annals of Louisiana, viz, the war with 
and destruction of the Natchez nation. The history of 
this strange and interesting people has been imparted to 
us by their destroyers ; and we may therefore presume that 
all the more amiable and polished traits ascribed to them 
are true. They and their kindred, the Taensas (who dis- 
appeared as a distinct tribe before 1712), inhabited that 
range of sunny hills on the east side of the Mississippi, 
which constitutes one of the finest districts in the present 
State of Mississippi. Their traditions pointed to the fact 
that their ancestors had come from countries to the south- 
west. Their language, Sabianism, human sacrifices, and 
mound building, seem to connect them with the Toltecs of 
Mexico, or the Mayas of Yucatan. Their singular custom 
of distorting the head by compression corresponds with the 
description of the ancient Mexicans, by Bernal Diaz. They 
are described as mild, friendly and brave, though preferring 
peace to war, and as being very dissolute. 

Compared with the Indians around them, the Natchez 
might be called a semi-civilized people. It is true that 



278 Boisbrianfs Rule in Illinois. 

some barbarous customs prevailed among them, but these 
only indicate that a cruel and sanguinary superstition may 
taint the character and manners of a people, otherwise 
peaceable and humane. They had fixed laws or usages, 
gradations of rank, and an established worship, with tem- 
ples dedicated to the sun. They were governed by a chief 
called the Great Sun, said to have been descended, in the 
female line, from a man and woman who came down from 
the sun, and built tlieir first temple for perpetual fire, which 
was ever afterward maintained. This temple stood on a 
mound about eight feet high, with a pitched roof, and 
in it three logs were kept slowly burning. The power of 
the Sun-chief was absolute, as was that of the lesser suns, 
or male members of his family. Such was the idolatrous 
veneration in which the great chief was held by his sub- 
jects, that he was never approached by them without 
special marks of reverence. Next to the Suns were the 
subordinate chiefs or nobles. The common people, called 
puajits, by the French, were apparently a mixed race of 
Choctaws and others. In war the N^atchez used bows and 
arrows, clubs, and other Indian weapons, but they had no 
metals of any consequence. They dressed in bufialo, bear 
and other skins for winter, and in summer wore light robes 
made of flax, or the inner bark of the mulberry. They 
had various feasts, wiiich were duly celebrated ; and on 
the death of a chief killed many of his retainers to attend 
him in the future life. Their dead, after the practice of 
the Indians in general, were kept on raised platforms till 
the flesh was consumed, when the bones were buried. 

" The Natchez,"' writes Mr. Gayarre, "were of a light 
mahogany complexion, with jet black hair and eyes. Their 
features were extremely regular, and their expression was 
intelligent, open, and noble. They were tall in stature, 
very few of them being under six feet, and the symmetry 
of their well-proportioned limbs was remarkable." This 
description, however, could hardly apply to any but the 
chiefs and nobles of that race. Originally a very numerous 
people, they occupied and ruled the country iar up and 
down the Mississippi; but they begati to decline l)efore the 



I 



Some Account of the Natchez Nation. 279 

appearance of the French among them, which has been 
termed "the era of their doom." The causes assigned for 
the dwindling of this race were, their frequent hecatombs 
of human beings, the state of warfare in which they lived 
with the neighboring tribes, the prevalence of lung diseases 
among them, and the ravages of the small-pox. 

The existence of the Katchez was known to Europeans 
from the year 1560, when Don Tristan de Luna led a Span- 
ish expedition into their country from the southern coast 
of Florida. La Salle, as we have seen, reached them in 
March, 1682, and d'Iberville was there in the spring of 
1700. Soon after that, they were visited by English traders 
from Carolina. At this period they occupied a group of 
five villages, situated to the east and south-east of the pres- 
ent city of Natchez, and about three miles from the Missis- 
sippi River. The French both courted and dreaded this 
formidable people, and in their intercourse with them had 
need for the exercise of all their tact and skill in Indian 
diplomacy. In 1716, the JSTatchez having killed some 
Frenchmen and made prisoners of others, Bienville, as 
lieutenant of the province, coerced them to put to death 
certain of the nmrderers, and built Fort Rosalie there for 
the protection of the French settlers. In 1722 acts of hos- 
tility were renewed by the inconstant Natchez, when Bien- 
ville, as commandant-general, sent the Sieur Paillou, with 
a number of troops, to chastise them ; and in October, 1723, 
the governor himself conducted an expedition from New 
Orleans against that people. Upon arriving with his army 
at the Natchez, he destroyed two of their villages (White 
Apple and Gray Village), and compelled Stung-Serpent, 
the great chief of the nation, to bring him the heads of 
Oldhair, chiet of the White Apple Village, and of a free 
negro, who had settled among the Natchez and made him- 
self the leader of an insurrectionary party. Having thus 
brought the war to an end, the governor returned to the 
capital.* But the peace now made was insincere, and new 



Dumont's Memoir, in Hist. Coil's of La., vol. v. 



280 The Natchez War. 

troubles arose from time to time between the whites and 
the Indians. 

The proximate cause of the war, which ended in the 
extinction of the Natchez as a nation, was due to the ra- 
pacity and tyranny of the Sieur de Chopart, or Chepart, 
who was appointed commandant of Fort Rosalie in 1726. 
He first made himself obnoxious to the French settlers at 
Ifatchez by various acts of oppression and injustice, and 
was ordered to New Orleans to undergo an investigation of 
his conduct. But, at the solicitation of influential friends, 
and with mistaken leniency on the part of Governor Perier, 
he was reinstated in his command. On his return to hia 
post, in 1729, Chopart took with him some negro slaves, 
intending to establish a plantation in that locality. Not 
daring to dispossess any of the French settlers, he resolved to 
take possession of the Great Village of the Natchez, which 
was seated in a beautiful plain, intersected by the little river 
St. Catharine. With this intention, he sent for the Sun- 
chief, and by his interpreter, Papin, ordered him to remove 
his people from the Great Village, since it was needed for 
the erection of some large buildings. To so astounding a 
proposition the great chief replied, " that their nation had 
long been in possession of that village, and lived there ; 
that the ashes of their fathers reposed there, deposited in 
the temples which they had built ; that the Fi'ench had 
never yet taken lands by force ; that if they had settled on 
their lands, the nation itself gave them sites in the hope of 
obtaining protection and defense against their enemies; and 
that many Frenchmen had given goods to the Indians in 
payment for the lands they occupied." * 

These representations made no impression on the 
mind of the rapacious commandant, who repeated his order, 
with the threat that, if it was not complied with, he would 
send the chief bound hand and foot to New Orleans, The 
great chief seeing that he could not move the command- 
ant, pretended to yield to his demand, and only asked two 
moons (months) in which to choose and prepare a new vil- 



* Dumont's Memoir, in Hist,. Coil's of I.a., vol. v., p. (55. 



Tyrrany of the French Commandant. 281 

lage for his nation. The time asked for was granted by 
Chopart, but on the condition that the inhabitants of the 
village should pay him a certain quantity of poultry, bask- 
ets of corn, pots of bear's oil and bundles of skins. 

When the great chief returned to his village, he sum- 
moned a council of his principal chiefs and warriors to 
consider what means should be adopted to prevent their 
village and lands from being taken from them by the 
French. Many secret meetings and conferences were held, 
and it was finally resolved to massacre not only the com- 
mandant and garrison of Fort Rosalie, but all the French 
in their territory, and thus rid themselves of their hated 
presence. So soon as this barbarous resolution was taken, 
they sent deputies to the principal Indian nations in the 
province, requesting their aid in this supreme effort to pre- 
serve their independence. The Choctaws, the Chickasaws, 
and even the Illinois were invited to take part with them 
in their meditated scheme of vengeance. The Choctaws 
were the first and readiest to embrace the quarrel of the 
Natchez. They agreed to destroy all the French on the 
lower part of the Mississippi, and for the execution of this 
purpose fixed the day which ended the two moons granted 
by the commandant. But as these Indians could not count, 
they exchanged with each other as many little sticks or 
twigs as there were days, till that fixed for the butchery. 
After this negotiation, the Natchez deputies returned to 
their village, bearing the fatal bundle of sticks. These the 
great chief carried to the temple, and every morning he 
threw one of the twigs on the fire, which was kept burning 
there. The Indians, meantime, remained quietly at their 
Great Village, taking no steps to remove to another site. 

Although kept very secret, the plot was neverthe- 
less disclosed. The interpreter of the post, the sub-lieu- 
tenant of the garrison, and several others were warned of 
what was coming by certain Indian women, their mis- 
tresses. Even the day (St. Andrew's-eve) of the bloody exe- 
cution was foretold. But when this was reported to Cho- 
part, the commandant, he refused to believe it, and went so 
far as to order those who brought him the disquieting news 



282 The Natchez War. 

to be placed under arrest. " Warned as he was, he might 
very easily have prevented the misfortune which happened, 
had he chosen to do so ; it would have been enough to put 
the troops under arms, and fire a cannon even without ball. 
But either because wine and the table had troubled his 
judgment, or that he was unfortunately prejudiced in favor 
of the Indians, or that he believed them incapable of dar- 
ing to execute such a design, he would not take any meas- 
ures to thwart it ; and as his injustice provoked, so his ob- 
stinacy crowned the evil and made it remediless."* 

The fatal day for the outburst of the smothered ven- 
geance of the savages, according to the count kept by the 
Natchez, was the 29th of November, 1729. On the morn- 
ing of that day the Sun-chief set out from his village, at- 
tended by a numerous body of his warriors, with their 
weapons concealed under their clothing, and with the calu- 
met raised aloft, they marched to the house of the com- 
mandant, bearing the promised tribute of poultry, corn, 
bear's oil, etc. The soldiers of the garrison were abroad in 
fancied security, and the savages immediately seized the 
gates of the fort, so as to exclude them from access to their 
arms. At the same time the houses of the French, and a 
boat at the landing, were surrounded. The work of blood 
now began, and before noon nearly all the Frenchmen can- 
toned among the Natchez were slain. Two men only were 
spared — one a carter and the other a tailor — and a few 
others escaped. Such was the abhorrence and contempt of 
the Natchez for Chopart, that none of their chiefs would 
kill him, and a Puant warrior was deputed to perform that 
service. 

It is related that the Sun-chief took his seat under the 
projecting roof of the store-house belonging to the India 
Company, and complacently smoked his calumet, while the 
heads of the Frenchmen were brought one after another 
and laid at his feet. Among the more prominent victims 



*Dumont's Historical Memoir, before cited. He was a lieutenant 
in the P'rench service, and a participant in some of the events he nar- 
rates. 



Massacre of the French at Fort Rosalie. 283 

of this treacherous massacre were, Father du Poissoii, a 
Jesuit missionary among the Arkansas ; Father Soulet, a 
Capuchin missionary to the Natchez ; the Sieur de la Loire 
des Ursins, who had been judge and commissary at 
Natchez ; M. de Koly and son, who had arrived only the 
day before to visit their concession on St. Catherine's 
Creek ; and the Sieur Codere, commandant of the post on 
the Yazoo, who happened to be at Fort Rosalie at the time. 
The French garrison of twenty men, at Fort St. Claude, 
on the Yazoo, also shared the fate of assassination ; but this 
was not until some weeks later, for the Natchez did not, at 
first, admit the Yazoo Indians into the secret of their plot. 
The total number of men killed was reckoned at not less 
than two hundred and fifty. Several of the French women, 
who attempted to defend their husbands or brothers, were 
cut down by the pitiless savages ; but the greater part of 
the women and children were held up as captives, and the 
negro slaves were kept for menial purposes. 

When the tidings of this horrible massacre were car- 
ried to New Orleans and Mobile, it created a general con- 
sternation. But Governor Perier promptly took measures 
of defense and retaliation. A vessel was dispatched to 
France for additional troops and military stores, and mes- 
sengers were sent with the news, by way of Red River 
and the Arkansas, to Fort Chartres, in the Illinois. The 
town of New Orleans was hastily fortified by a ditch and 
embankment, and each house was furnished with arms. 
The governor assembled a force of regulars and militia to 
move up the river against the Natchez, and confided the com- 
mand of it to the Chevalier de Lubois, king's lieutenant. 

Governor Perier also sent the Sieur de Lery,* a capable 
oflicer, familiar with the Indian languages, to sound the 
Choctaws, and gain over that inconstant tribe to the French 
interest. The Choctaws were piqued at the Natchez for 
having made their attack upon the French two days in ad- 
vance of the time fixed by their fagot of sticks, and, more- 
over, were dissatisfied with the reception accorded by the 



Or Le Sueur, according to some authorities. 



284 The Natchez War. 

ISTatcliez to their deputies, who had been sent thither a few- 
days after the massacre. Under these circumstances, the 
Sieur de Lery, by distributing presents among the Choctaw 
chiefs, easily induced them to serve the French in the cam- 
paign, and he was followed across the country by over 
twelve hundred of their dusky warriors. Entering the 
Natchez territory, and advancing to the vicinity of the 
Great Village, Captain de Lery and his Choctaw army en- 
camped about the 28th of January, 1730, to await the ar- 
rival of the French army from New Orleans. Still exult- 
ing in their triumph, and not expecting to be attacked so 
soon, the Natchez were spending their time in idle festivi- 
ties and carousals. Early the next morning (the 29th), the 
Choctaws rushed upon their village, liberated some of the 
captive French women (whom they stripped of every thing 
the Natchez had left them), and brought away a number of 
prisoners and scalps. 

In the following February the colonial troops arrived 
from the capital, under the command of the Chevalier de 
Loubois, who laid siege to the fort of the Natchez on St. 
Catherine's Creek. In the meantime the Natchez made 
preparations for a determined resistance; but upon the ap- 
pearance of so superior a force, and hearing tlie discharge 
of French cannon, they humbly sued for peace, oflering to 
restore the prisoners remaining in their hands, and forsake 
the country. Anxious to save the captive women and 
children, Loubois consented to postpone the attack for one 
day. During the night of the truce, however, the Natchez 
withdrew from their fort and village so quietly as not to 
disturb the slumbers of their enemies. Their escape was 
due to a want of vigilance on the part of the French of- 
ficers, who may have connived at it, and the war was con- 
sequently prolonged. Leaving a detachment of one hun- 
dred and twenty men to rebuild Fort Rosalie, which had 
been destroyed by the Natchez, the French commander em- 
barked with the remainder of liis army for New Orleans. 

Some of the fugitive Natchez sought shelter and homes 
with the Chickasaws ; but the main body of the nation, 
under the lead of the Sun-chief, crossed the Mississippi and 



Extinction of the Natchez Nation. 285 

established a new village and fort on Black River, from 
whence they continued their acts of hostility. Thither they 
were pursued by Governor Perier in January, 1731, with 
a force of one thousand French and Indians ; and on the 
25th of that month, partly by assault, and partly by strat- 
egy, he reduced their stronghold, capturing the Sun, his 
brother and nephew, forty warriors, and three hundred and 
eighty-seven women and children. These were sent to New 
Orleans, whence they were shipped to St. Domingo, and 
sold as slaves for the benefit of the " company." A remnant 
of the tribe, fleeing farther westward, came in conflict with 
the Natchitoches, by whom they were repulsed with loss, 
aided by the French under the veteran St. Denis ; after 
which they joined the Chickasaws, and kept up a desultory 
warfare on the French settlers.* 

'' Thus perished the nation of the Natchez. Their pe- 
culiar language, which has been still preserved by the de- 
scendants of the fugitives, and is, perhaps, now on the 
point of expiring — their worship (of the sun), their divis- 
ions into nobles and plebeians, their bloody funeral rites^ 
invite conjecture, and yet so nearly resemble in character 
the distinctions of other tribes that they do but excite, 
without gratifying, curiosity." f 



*The Natchez never again appeared as a distinct nation. After a 
considerable time they moved to the Muskogees, and in 1835 were re- 
duced to 300 souls, retaining their own language and line of Suns, but 
without restoring their temple or sun-worship. For their language, the 
only materials are the words preserved by Le Page du Pratz and other 
early French writers, and a vocabulary taken by Gallatin, in 1826, from 
the chief Isahalateh. Dr. P.rinton traced the analogy between it and 
the Maya. — Amer. Encyclo., vol. xii., p. 158. 

t Bancroft's History, vol. iii., p. 364. 

Note.. — In the vicinity of the modern city of Natchez there are, or 
were formerly, two or three groups of ancient mounds of considerable 
size, from which have been taken numerous relics, such as stone 
weapons, pipes, earthen vessels covered with figures, fragments of pot- 
tery, etc. It has been a question among local antiquaries whether these 
tumuli \vere in any way the work of the Natchez Indians. But the 
probabilities are, that while they may have been used as places of sep- 
ulture by these or other Indians, yet that, if not mere natural eleva- 
tions, they were originally the work of the more ancient mound builders. 



286 The Company Surrenders its Charter. 

The heavy expenditures incurred in prosecuting the 
war against the Natchez, the consequent loss of trade with 
other tribes, the inadequate returns from its commerce and 
mines, and the financial embarrassments following Law's 
failure, induced the Company of the Indies to solicit leave 
of the king for a surrender of its charter in Louisiana. 
The petition was granted; and on the 10th of April, 1732, 
by proclamation of Louis XV., the jurisdiction and control 
of the government and commerce of the colony reverted 
directly to the French crown. The Company of the West 
and its successor, the Royal India Company, had held act- 
ual possession of the Louisiana wilderness for fourteen 
years, which, upon the whole, were years of prosperity. 
During this period the white population of the province 
had increased from something over one thousand to five 
thousand, and the number of negro slaves from twenty to 
two thousand. New Orleans had been made the seat of the 
provincial government and the chief mart of trade. The ex- 
travagant hopes at first entertained in regard to the precious 
metals had not been realized, but the search for them had 
attracted hither man}' immigrants, some of whom had now 
made such progress in agriculture as to be self-sustaining. 
Illinois contained at this tiine several flourishing settle- 
ments, the inhabitants of which were more exclusively 
devoted to the cultivation of the soil than in any other 
part of the province. 

It has been observed by an Illinois historian, that all 
industrial enterprises were, to a gi'eat extent, paralyzed by 
the, arbitrary exactions of the " company ;" that the agri- 
culturists, the miners, and the fur-traders of Illinois were 
held in a sort of vassalage, which enabled those in power 
to dictate the price at which they should sell their products, 
and the amount they should pay them for imported mer- 
chandise ; and that the interest of the company was always 
at variance with that of the producer. 

All of this might have been, and perhaps was, sub- 
stantially true. But " whoever takes a correct view of the 
transactions of the Mississippi Company," says Major Stod- 
dard, "nmst be convinced that it was of infinite utility to 



Benefits of its Sway in Louisiana. 287 

Louisiana, perhaps the preservation of it." * Judge Breese 
also takes a very favorable view of the rule of the great cor- 
poration in the Illinois. He writes : 

" Their sway here was more in name than in fact ; for, 
setting aside their power to grant lands, all real control of 
the people (in Illinois) was with the Jesuits. Their busi- 
ness pursuits were but little interfered with, and no arbi- 
trary or forced exactions of their little abundance were 
made. They did not find, as is too often the case in others, 
in this overshadowing monopoly, whose sole principle of 
aggregation was wealth, a cruel and heartless tyrant, ready 
and willing, in the various modes such corporations can de- 
vise, to plunder them of their small revenues, or oppress 
them in any form. In their relations to it, it was as the 
benefactor to the benefited; and though the fortunes of its 
proprietors were wrecked, the colony itself received a new 
and immense impulse from its varied operations."! 



*" Historical Sketches of Louisiana" (Phila., Pa., 1812), p. 61. 
t" Early History of Illinois," p. 180. 



288 Louisiana Under the Crown. 



CHAPTER X\'. 

1732-1752. 
LOUISIANA UNDER THE DIRECT GOVERNMENT OF THE CROWN. 

When the Eoyal India Company, successor to the 
Company of the West, gave up its charter and vast privi- 
leges to the crown, another government was at once organ- 
ized for the Province of Louisiana, which severed it from 
New France, and continued Illinois as a dependency of 
Louisiana. By letters patent of the 7th of May, 1732, the 
Superior Council of the province was re-organized, with 
Perier as governor, Salmon as intendant commissary, and 
Loubois and d'Artaguette (Diron) as king's lieutenants. 
The ecclesiastical affairs of the colony were under the 
more immediate supervision of a vicar-general, residing in 
New Orleans. 

In 1733 the Canadian, Bienville, much to his own sat- 
isfaction and that of his friends, was re-appointed governor 
of Louisiana in place of Perier, who was promoted to the 
rank of lieutenant-general as a reward for his important 
services in the colony. The new commandant-general 
reached New Orleans early in 1734, and the Sieur Perier, 
resigning the government into his hands, immediately cm- 
barked for France. 

During that year Captain Pierre d'Artaguette was ap- 
pointed by Governor Bienville major-commandant for the 
district of the Illinois, with head-quarters at Fort Chartres. 
He was a younger brother of Diron d'Artaguette, the com- 
missaire ordonnateur of Louisiana, and one of the most 
conspicuous men in the province. Pierre d'Artaguette had 
served with gallantry in the Natchez war, and was after- 
ward sent by Perier to command at the new fort, wliich 



The Chickasaw Nation. 289 

was bnilt on the site of the old one at ISTatchez.* After 
his transfer to the Illinois he had no pleasant path to tread, 
as was the case with his predecessors. 

The Chickasaw Indians — the Iroquois of the South — 
had all along preferred an alliance with the English colo- 
nists of Carolina, and had been stimulated by artful emis- 
saries of the latter (if they required any stimulus) to re- 
peated deeds of rapine and blood against the French, who 
were waiting a favorable opportunity to make them feel 
the weight of their resentment. The Chickasaws were 
known to Europeans, or at least to the Spaniards, from the 
time of De Soto. They inhabited the country intermediate 
between Upper and Lower Louisiana, extending eastward 
from the Mississippi River into Alabama, and northward 
through "Western Tennessee. They were a less numerous 
people than the Cherokees, or even the Choctaws, but they 
made up in craft and pugnacity what they lacked in num- 
bers. The presence of the Chickasaws in roaming bands 
on the eastern banks of the Mississippi not only rendered 
navigation perilous, but seriously interfered with trade be- 
tween Kaskaskia and J^ew Orleans, and many of the 
French boatmen and voyageurs successively fell victims to 
their muskets and tomahawks. Such, indeed, was the ani- 
mosity of this people that they sent emissaries to the tribes 
of the Illinois to detach them from their long-established 
friendship with the French settlers, and to persuade them 
to make war upon and exterminate the latter. But the 
Illinois rejected the proposition with scorn, and sent a 



* The new Fort Rosalie, as seen and described by Captain Pittman, 
in 1766, stood on the east side of the Mississippi, about six hundred 
and seventy yards from the river, and at an elevation of one hundred 
and eighty feet above the usual water line. The fort was an irregular 
pentagon, without bastions, and was built of sawn or hewed plank five 
inches thick. The buildings within the walls were a store-house, a 
house for the officers, a barrack for the soldiers, and a guard-house. 
These houses were constructed of framed timbers, the spaces between 
being filled with mud and Spanish moss. The fort was surrounded on 
three sides by a dry ditch, and the fourth or north side was fenced with 
pickets. Some traces of the ruins of this fort are said to be still visible 
at Natchez. 

19 



290 Louisiana Under the Crown. 

deputation, headed by their principal chief, Checagou, to 
New Orleans to offer their services to the governor. In an 
interview with Bienville the chief presented the pipe of 
friendship, saying: " This is the pipe of peace or war ; you 
have but to speak, and our braves will strike the nations 
that are your foes." * 

By authority of the King of France an invasion of the 
Chickasaw country was now projected, with the three-fold 
purpose of re-establishing safe communication between the 
northern and southern districts of the province, of reducing 
those truculent savages to submission, and of driving the 
English traders from among them. The French were not 
wanting in a plausible pretext for commencing hostilities. 
Many of the I^atchez Indians who escaped the war of ex- 
tirpation against them had taken refuge among the Chick- 
asaws, and become incorporated with that nation, where 
they continued to cherish their hatred of the French. Be- 
fore the beginning of the year 1736, Governor Bienville 
made a demand on the Chickasaws for the surrender of 
those fugitives, and foreseeing that his demand was not 
likely to be complied with, he assembled an army to march 
against them. Great preparations were made, considering 
the military strength of the colony, to render the expedi- 
tion successful. In addition to the regulars and militia 
raised in Southern Louisiana, the Governor sent Captain 
Leblanc up the river to Fort Chartres with orders to the 
Sieur d'Artaguette, commandant of the district, to get in 
readiness the troops under his command, together with 
such of the Illinois and other Indians as could be induced 
to join the expedition. D'Artaguette was further ordered 
to be in the Chickasaw country, with his forces, by the 
10th of the ensuing May, and to there await the arrival of 
the conmiander-in-chief and his army from the south. 

On the 4th of March, 1736, Bienville embarked at New 
Orleans, with a force of live hundred and fifty-four French- 
men and forty-five negroes, for Fort Mobile, the rendez- 
vous of the troops. Resting here until Easter-day, the first 
of April, the army began to ascend the river in bateaux 



* Bancroft's History, Vol. Ill, p. 305. 



Bienville's Expedition Against the Chickasaws. 291 

and pirogues, which moved in line by force of oars. On 
the 20th the army reached a place called Tombecbe (Tom- 
bigbee), to which the governor had sent a company of sol- 
diers nine months before to build a fort, intending it as a 
place of defense and a depot of supplies. This fort was 
on the Tombigbee River, and within the territory of the 
Choctaws. The artillery which the French had brought 
with them was now placed in position, and its discharge 
broke, for the first time, the stillness of the surrounding 
forest. Here the Choctaw chiefs, in consideration of a 
certain quantity of merchandise, joined Bienville's expe- 
dition with over six hundred of their warriors. Re-em- 
barking on the 4th of May, and continuing to ascend the 
river, the troops reached the place of debarkation on the 
24th of that montli. They were now within seven or eight 
leagues of the nearest and principal Chickasaw village, 
which was situated only a few miles from the present 
county town of Pontotoc, in Northern Mississippi, — a town 
which still preserves the name of the Indian stronghold. 

On the 25th of May (two weeks behind the pre- 
arranged time), the commander formed his army in two 
columns, and marched to within two leagues of the Chick- 
asaw village, when he halted for the night. Early the 
next morning the impetuous Choctaws rushed forward 
upon the village, expecting to take it by a couj) <le main. 
But they found the Chickasaws awake and ready to receive 
them ; and not only so, but protected by a strong fortifi- 
cation of earth and timbers, which had been constructed 
under the supervision of some resident English traders. 
During that day Bienville made two vigorous attempts to 
carry the enemy's works by storm, but was repulsed both 
times, and sustained a loss of thirty-two killed and sixty 
wounded, including several commissioned officers. He 
was, therefore, compelled to draw off his army, leaving his 
dead on the field of battle. 

During the night of the 26th, a party of Indians ar- 
rived from another village, as they claimed, to present the 
calumet and a letter to Bienville ; but, provoked by the re- 
verses of the day, he refused to receive them, and ordered 



292 Louisiana Under the Crown. 

his Indians to attack them, which they did.* By this rash 
conduct, the commanding general probably lost his only 
opportunity of opening communication with D'Artaguette 
and his associate officers, who were then prisoners in the 
hands of the Chickasaws. 

On the next day there was some skirmishing between 
the Choctaw and Chickasaw warriors, but without any de- 
cisive result. Discouraged at his unexpected failure, con- 
vinced of his inability to reduce the enemy's formidable 
works without cannon and the means of siege, and hearing 
nothing from the army that was to co-operate with him 
from the Illinois, Bienville now reluctantly abandoned the 
expedition. Dismissing his Indian auxiliaries, he made a 
retrograde march to his boats, and descended the river to 
Fort Tombecbe. On arriving there, it is told that he threw 
the iron cannon belonging to the fort into the river, to 
prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy, and re- 
turned to New^ Orleans covered with humiliation at his dis- 
astrous defeat. 

Prior to these occurrences, however, Major d'Arta- 
guette had set out from Fort Chartres in the last week of 
February, with thirty regular soldiers, one hundred volun- 
teers (including the Jesuit father Senat) and two hundred 
Illinois and Missouri Indians, and descended the Missis- 
sippi to the site of Fort Prudhomme, at the Third Chicka- 
saw Bluff". Here he was soon after joined by the Sieur de 
Vincennes, from the "Wabash, with twenty- Frenchmen and 
about one hundred Miamis braves. The Sieur de Mon- 
cherval was also daily expected, with a contingent of Ca- 
hokias and Michigamies from the Illinois. Leaving a de- 
tachment at the river landing, to guard the canoes and 
heavier baggage, Major d'Artaguette set forward on his 
march into the Chickasaw country, and advanced b}^ slow 
stages in order to give Moncherval a chance to overtake 
him. But that officer did not arrive in time to participate 
in the approaching battle. Having reached the appointed 
rendezvous, which was on the head-waters of the Yalo- 
busha, on the 9th of May, D'Artaguette waited ten days 



* Dumont's Historical Memoir of Louisiana. 



D' Artaguette's Ill-fated Expedition. 293 

for the appearance of the commander-in-chief, ready to 
unite with him attacking the enemy. 

Meanwhile, according to Mr. Gayarre, a courier 
reached his camp with a letter, said to have been written 
by Bienville, stating that in consequence of unexpected ob- 
stacles and delays, he would not be able to reach the Chick- 
asaws at the time designated, and authorizing him to act on 
his own military judgment. D'Artaguette thereupon con- 
vened a council of war, composed of his principal officers 
and the Indian chiefs, and at this council it was resolved to 
make an immediate attack upon the enemy's stronghold. 
Accordingly, about the 20th of May, having formed his 
impatient forces in order of battle — forces who had the 
courage to strike, without the discretion to wait the proper 
time — the commander led them against the Chickasaws. 
The charge was daring and impetuous, and the enemy was 
successively driven from two of his intrenched positions, 
but in the assault upon the third D'Artaguette was se- 
verely wounded and disabled, at the moment when the 
victory seemed within his grasp. Panic-struck at the fall 
of their leader, his Indian confederates, the Illinois and 
Missouris, precipitately retreated, and were hotly pursued 
for twenty-five leagues by the Chickasaws, in the flush of 
triumph. The Miamis, from the Wabash, appear to have 
been guilty of deliberate treachery, they having been pre- 
viously tampered with by English agents.* 

Father Senat and the chivalrous DeVincennes might 
have both escaped, but the former, true to his profession, 
stayed to console the wounded and dying, while the latter 
was so devoted to his unfortunate chief, that he would not 
leave him in peril, "preferring rather to share his captivity, 
and, if necessary, to die by his side." As a consequence, 
they, with some fifteen other Frenchmen, including a 
brother of Captain Louis St. Ange, fell into the hands of the 
Chickasaws. The prisoners were, at first, civilly treated by 
their captors, who expected to receive a large reward from 



*See " History of Louisiana," by Chas. Gayarre (New Orleans, 1885), 
3d ed., vol. II., pp. 485-6. 



294 Louisiana Under the Crown. 

the Frencli for their safe return. But, after the discomfiture 
and retreat of Bienville's army, the Chickasaw chiefs aban- 
doned hope of securing an adequate ransom for their pris- 
oners, and prepared to make them the victims of a savage 
triumph. To this end they were taken to a neighboring 
field and bound by fours to stakes; and neither valor nor 
piety could save them from being tortured to death by slow 
and intermitting fires. Two of the number were reserved 
to be exchanged for a Chickasaw warrior, who had been 
made prisoner by the French. 

After this cruel manner perished the gallant D'Arta- 
guette, the faithful Senat, and the heroic De Vincennes. 
We would not withhold the meed of sympathy due them 
in their direful fate. At the same time it must not be 
forgotten that, in hazarding an assault upon the enemy in 
his fortified position, before the arrival of the main army 
under Bienville, they invited the very fate that befell them, 
and destroyed the chances of French victory in that cam- 
paign. 

The Chickasaws were now more defiant than ever, and 
being elated with vanity over their success in repelling the 
attacks of two French and Indian armies, they sent a depu- 
tation of chiefs to announce their triumph to the English 
authorities in Carolina, with whom they renewed their alli- 
ance, and by whom they were supplied with arms and 
ammunition, as well as merchandise. 

Ambitious to retrieve his own military reputation, and 
also to recover the lost prestige of the French arms in 
Louisiana, Governor Bienville resolved upon a second cam- 
paign against the Chickasaws; but it was not until after 
receiving reinforcements from France that he was able to 
renew this arduous enterprise. In the spring of 1739, hav- 
ing previously obtained the sanction of the French Minister 
of Colonies, he again began active preparations for the sub- 
jugation of that fierce tribe, which had so successfully de- 
fied his power and authority. Orders were sent out to 
commandants of the various military posts in tlie jtrovince 
to furnish as many troops as possible, which resulted in the 
assembling of the largest and best appointed army hitherto 



Bienville's Second Campaign. 295 

seen in Louisiana. The general rendezvous was at. first 
fixed on the St, Francis River, just above its junction with 
the Mississippi, where a fort and cabins were erected to 
serve as a basis of operations. The commandant-general 
arrived at this post .toward the end of June, and in August 
he embarked his army and moved up to the mouth of Wolf 
River, a small stream which tails into the Mississippi near 
the present city of Memphis. Here, on the blufl, another 
and larger fort was built, with a house for the commandant, 
barracks for the soldiers, store-houses, etc. It received the 
name of Fort Assumption, because the troops landed here 
on that day. 

At this fort the army received reinforcements from the 
north. The first to arrive was the Illinois force, composed 
of about two hundred Frenchmen and three hundred In- 
dians, commanded by Alphonse de Buissoniere, who had 
succeeded the unfortunate D'Artaguette as commandant at 
Fort Chartres. After that came Captain de Celeron and 
Lieutenant de St. Laurent, with thirty cadets from Canada, 
and a large following of Indians. These united troops made 
a formidable army, numbering twelve hundred Frenchmen, 
and double as many Indians and negroes. Owing in part 
to the difiiculty in procuring supplies, which had to be 
brought a long distance, this large body of troops was al- 
lowed to remain here in inactivity for six months.* In the 
meantime, provisions became so scarce that they had to kill 
and eat their horses, and sickness breaking out in the camp 
carried oft" a great number. Such were the ravages of 
disease and famine, that by the first of March, 1740, not 
more than two hundred French soldiers were fit for active 
service. 

In these straits. Governor Bienville sent the Sieur de 
Celeron, with a body of French and Indian troops, to the 
Chickasaws, with orders, in case they sued for peace, to grant 
it in his name. When Celeron arrived with his force in sight 
of the enemy's fort, the Chickasaws, believing him to be 

* Mr. Gayarre attributes Bienville's inaction to his jealousy of 
Noailles, who had been sent to command the army. 



296 Louisiana under the Crown. 

followed by the whole French army, seat to him to ask for 
peace, promising to renounce their English alliance and re- 
sume friendly relations with the French. To confirm this 
agreement, a party of their chiefs returned with Celeron to 
Fort Assumption, and there entered into a treaty of pacifi- 
cation with the governor, which was ratified with the cus- 
tomary Indian ceremonies. Bienville now dismissed his 
Indian auxiliaries, having first paid them off' in goods, after 
which he demolished his two forts, as being of no further 
use, and re-embarked for New Orleans,* 

So ended, in April, 1740, the second campaign against 
the Chickasaws. It was less inglorious and disastrous 
than the first, but its results were far from satisfactory, and 
by no means commensurate with the costly preparations 
that had been made. Having failed to redeem his tarnished 
military record, and the prestige of the French arms in the 
colony, the commandant-general thereby incurred the dis- 
pleasure of his sovereign, and for this and other reasons he 
was, in no long time, removed from office. Toward the 
close of the year 1742, he was superseded by Pierre Fran- 
cois de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal, a native 
of Quebec, and a man of distinguished ftimily and social 
connections. 

Thus closed the official career of Jean Baptiste le 
Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, in Louisiana, — a career which, 
with some interruptions, extended through a period of 
forty-three years, and which is without a parallel in French- 
American history. Born at Montreal, in February, 1680, 
he was nineteen years the junior of his celebrated brother, 
D'lberville, who introduced him when a mere lad into the 
naval service, took him with him to Hudson's Bay, and 
afterward on his first colonizing expedition to the Missis- 
sippi. Age and care had now cooled the ardor and energy 
of Bienville's prime, and the luster of the honors achieved 
in former years was obscured under a cloud of court cen- 
sure, some of which, at least, was undeserved. In May, 



* For more detailed accounts of this Chickasaw war, see Dumont's, 
Martin's, and Gayarr^'s Histories of Louisiana. The account by Du- 
mont is the earliest and most authentic. 



Retirement of Governor Bienville. 297 

1743, he sailed from New Orleans for France, thus leaving 
Louisiana forever. Although under the displeasure of the 
court the colonists were loud in expressing their regrets at 
his departure ; and whatever errors or mistakes, insepara- 
ble from human nature, he may have committed, his pop- 
ularity in the province, where he had mostly lived from 
early manhood to old age, had never been seriously shaken. 
He has been justly stjded the Father of the Louisiana col- 
ony, of which his brother D'Iberville was the founder. 
He left behind him a code, sometimes called Le Code Noir, 
which was lirst promulgated in 1724, regulating the condi- 
tion of the slaves, banishing the Jews, and prohibiting the 
exercise of every religion except the Roman Catholic. This 
code, with some modifications, remained in force in Louis- 
iana until the cession of that country to the government 
of the United States, when it was abolished, excepting 
so much of it as related to the African slaves. After re- 
turning to France, Bienville lived for over twenty years in 
dignified retirement at Paris. 

But to return to Louisiana. After the peace of 1740 
with the Chickasaws, all the other aboriginal tribes in the 
immediate Valley of the Mississippi recognized the domin- 
ion of France, and became allies or friends of her colonists. 
Trade with the natives was now renewed and enlai'ged, 
and agriculture, freed from former restrictions, took on a 
new life. The culture of fruit became general. The or- 
ange, the lemon, and the fig tree began to blossom about 
the houses on the Lower Mississippi, and near the shores 
of the gulf; while farther to the north the apple, the peach, 
the apricot, and the plum were successfully grown. The 
sweet potatoe and the melon, extending over a wide range 
of latitude, also contributed largely to the sustenance of 
the people. Sugar-cane was brought by the Jesuits from 
St. Domingo as early as 1744, and was first cultivated by 
them in their orardens at New Orleans.* It was before this 



® In 1758, M. de Breuil opened a sugar plantation on a large scale, 
and erected the first sugar mill in Louisiana. His plantation occupied 
the lower part of New Orleans, known as the suburb of St. Marigny. — 
Reynolds' Pioneer History, second edition, p. 64. 



298 Louisiana Under the Crown. 

time that indigo began to be raised for export. The cotton 
plant was not introduced until some years later, when it 
was successfully cultivated as far north as the Ohio. Every 
vessel arriving from France added to the population of the 
southern settlements; and many Canadians, fleeing from 
the rigor of their northern winters, sought homes and hap- 
piness in the more genial climate of the IlUnois. Under 
the stimulus of private and associate enterprise, commerce 
between the northern and southern districts of the prov- 
ince, and between New Orleans and foreign ports, was 
largely augmented. Cargoes of flour, bacon, tallow, pelts 
and lead were annually transported in bateaux to New 
Orleans, and thence reshipped to the "West Indies or to 
France, in exchange for rice, sugar, indigo, and goods of 
European manufacture. The difl'erent districts of the prov- 
ince were mutually dependent, and, by means of the Mis- 
sissippi and its numerous large tributaries, supplied with 
facility each other's wants. Upon the whole, the decade 
from 1742 to 1752 was one of unwonted prosperity in the 
French history of Louisiana.* 

After some ten years of comparative peace and quiet, 
the Chickasaws, notwithstanding their existing treaty obli- 
gations, renewed their depredations upon the French colo- 
nists, and again interrupted their trade on the Mississippi 
River. To curb the marauding disposition of these savages, 
and coerce them into submission, Governor de Vaudreuil un- 
dertook another armed expedition to their forest fastnesses. 
Embarking at New Orleans, in 1752, with seven hundred 
regular soldiers, he was joined on the way by a horde of 
Choctaw braves, ready for the fray. His route was up the 
Mobile and Tombigbee Rivers, the same as that taken by 
Bienville in 1736. He had cannon, munitions, and supplies 
in abundance; yet, like his predecessor, he failed to van- 
quish the stubborn Chickasaws, who avoided an open battle, 
and shut themselves up in their fortresses. The French 
commander, however, destroyed some of their deserted 



* Davidson and Stuve's History, p. 127. 



The Beginning of Vincennes. 299 

villages, and left a strong garrison at Fort Tombecbe to 
hold them in restraint. 

Reference having been made to the Sieur de Vincennes, 
and to the sad fate that befell him in the first campaign of 
the Chickasaw war, the inquiring reader may desire to 
know something more of his history, and also of the ori- 
gin of the French village (now city) which is indissolubly 
linked with his memory. Jean Baptiste Bissot, Sieur de 
Vincennes was the tenth child of M. Francois Bissot, a 
leading merchant of Quebec, and was there born in Janu- 
ary, 1688. He appears to have been a relative of Joliet, 
the explorer, who was probably an uncle by marriage. 
Early bred to the profession of arms, young De Vincennes 
was sent out to the West, where he soon became noted for 
his activity and enterprise. In 1704, with a party of Cana- 
dian troops, he attacked an Ottawa band, and rescued from 
them some Iroquois prisoners that had been taken in viola- 
tion of treaties, thus averting a cause of war with the latter 
nation. In the autumn of 1705, he was sent by Governor 
de Vaudreuil* on a mission to the Miamis, who then prin- 
cipally occupied the territory immediately to the north-west 
of the Upper Wabash. In 1712 he took part in the defense 
of Detroit from an invasion of the Fox Indians, and during 
that year was again sent as an agent to the Miamis. 

As early as 1719, De Vincennes probably established, 
or aided in establishing, the trading post on the Wabash 
which still bears his name; for it M^as about this time that 
Fort Ouatanon, higher up the river, was also founded by 
the French. A more ancient date than this has been 
claimed for the first settlement at Vincennes, but it doubt- 
less originated in the confounding of the Wabash and 
Lower Ohio together as one stream. 

"Before the close of the year 1702 (says Dillon's His- 
tory of Indiana, p. 21), the Sieur Juchereau, a Canadian 
ofllcer, assisted by the Jesuit missionary Merniet, made an 



* This was Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, who had 
been appointed governor of Canada in 1703, to succeed M. de Callieres. 
He was the father of that Marquis de Vaudreuil, who became succes- 
sively governor of Louisiana and of Canada. 



300 Louisiana under the Crown. 

attempt to establish a post on the Ohio, near the mouth of 
that river; or, according to some authorities, on the Wabash 
at the site now occupied by Vincennes." But La Harpe,* 
and after him Charlevoix, fix the position of that post at the 
mouth of the Ouabache (Ohio), which discharges itself into 
the Mississippi. It was probably on the site of the more 
modern Fort Massac, and the date of its establishment is 
fixed by some French writers in the year 1700. 

The neighboring Mascoutins, who later became asso- 
ciated with the Kickapoos, soon gathered about this post 
on the Ohio for the purpose of barter, and Father Mermet 
undertook, without success, to convert them to Christianity. 
In 1705, or thereabouts, the post Avas broken up in conse- 
quence of the increasing hostility of the Indians, and the 
French traders fled, leaving their eflects behind them.f 



* " In 1702 M. Juchereau, a French officer of Montreal, accompanied 
by thirtj'-four Canadians, attempted to form a settlement at the mouth 
of the Ouabache, to collect buflalo skins." — Extract from La Harpe's 
Journal, dated Feb. 8, 1703, cited in Dillon's Hist, of Ind., p. 400. 

t "Acording to the authoritj' of La Harpe, and the later historian 
Charlevoix, the French, in the year 1700, established a trading post near 
the mouth of the Ohio, on the site of the more modern Fort Massac, in 
Massac county. 111., for the purpose of securing buffalo hides. The 
neighboring INIascoutins, as was customary witli the Indians, soon gath- 
ered about it for the purpose of barter. Their numbers, as well as the 
expressed wish of the French traders, induced Father IMermet to visit 
the place and engage in mission work. At the end of four or five years, 
in 1705, the establishment was broken up on account of a quarrel of 
the Indians among themselves, which so threatened the lives of the 
Frenchmen that the latter fled, leaving behind them their effects and 
thirteen thousand buffalo skins which they had collected. Some years 
later, Father Marest, writing from Kaskaskia, relates the failure of 
Father Mermet to convert the Indians at this post on the Wabash ; and 
on the authority of this letter alon^-, and although Father Marest only 
followed the prevailing style of calling the Lower Ohio the Wabash, 
some writers (the late Judge Law being the first) have contended that 
this post was on the Wabash and at Vincennes. Charlevoix says ' it was 
at the mouth of the Wabash which discharges itself into the Mississippi.' 
La Harpe, and also Le Sueur, whose personal knowledge of the post 
was contemporaneous with its existence, definitely fix its jiosition near 
the mouth of the Ohio. The latter gives the date of its beginning, and 
the former narrates an account of its trade and final abandonment. In 
this way an antiquity has been claimed for Vincennes to which it is not 



Early History of Vmcennes. 301 

When the French first explored the Wabash, they 
found the land on either side of the lower course of that 
stream in possession of the Piankashaw Indians ; and Vin- 
cennes was first known to the former as a Piankashaw vil- 
lage, by the name of Chip-'pe-coke, or Brushwood. It was a 
secluded spot on the eastern bank of the river, about one 
hundred miles above its mouth. It was far removed from 
the French settlements on the northern lakes and on the 
Mississippi, and during many years it was a mere halting 
place for the missionaries and fur-traders, who chose to 
travel southward by the way of the Maumee and the Wa- 
bash. Of this sequestered post very little was known to 
the outside world until some time after the Sieur de Vin- 
cennes became its commandant. The priests and traders 
of Kaskaskia and Cahokia kept up some intercourse with 
the place, but there was no regular communication with it. 
The route thither by river was circuitous and dangerous, 
while the Indian "trace" or trail across the intervening 
wilderness of Illinois was beset by roving bands of blood- 
thirsty Kickapoos. 

Under the auspices of De Vincennes, who built an 
earthen fort there about the year 1725, this Wabash post 
gradually assumed importance. He appears to have granted 
lands, in small parcels, to the French settlers for cultivation, 
and from the neighboring Indian chiefs they received a gift 
of more than two thousand acres, which they appropriated 
chiefly as " commons." * It is conjectured by Breese that 
the land on which the village was built, and the " common 
field" as well, were originally granted to De Vincennes by 
the India Company, or by the governor of Louisiana after 
the dissolution of the company in 1732, and that he, as 



historically entitled."— " History of Vermilion County, Illinois," by H. 
W. Beckwith (Chicago, 1879), p. 102, note. 

* "In 1742, some years after the foundation of the post of Vincennes, 
the natives of the country made the French and their heirs an absolute 
gift of tlie lauds lying between the point above and the river Blanche 
(White) below the village, with as much land on both sides as might be 
comprised within the said limits." — Dillon's Hist, of Ind., p. 402. See 
also Memorial signed by sixteen of the inhabitants of Vincennes, dated 
November 20, 1793, and addressed to the president of the United States. 



302 Louisiana Under the Crown. 

commandant, parceled it out in small allotmenta to the 
villagers. But however this might be, it was all included 
within the dependency of the Illinois, and difiered but little 
from the other villages in this provincial district. 

The Sieur de Vincennes* was still commanding at this 
post in 1735, and until the spring of 1736, when he was 
summoned by Major d'Artaguette to join him, with a force 
of French and Miamis, in his expedition against the Chick- 
asaws, from which neither of these French officers ever 
returned. But the post village which the former had 
founded was thereafter variously known as Post de Vin- 
cennes, Au Poste, Post Vincent, Post St. Vincents, and 
finally Vincennes. Louis St. Ange de Bellerive succeeded 
De Vincennes in command of the post, though in what 
year is undecided. During his lengthy incumbency, and 
as early as the year 1749, he made some grants or deeds 
conveying small lots of land to diiferent settlers in the vil- 
lage. These were executed on coarse paper, and were 
signed by "St. Ange, commandant au poste Vincenne." 

In 1749, a mission was established, under charge of the 
missionary Meurin, at the Piankashaw village, which stood 
near the site of Post Vincennes. In the course of the next 
year, 1750, a small stockade fort was built at that place, and 
another light fortification was erected about the same time at 
the confluence of the Wabash and the Ohio. Between the 
years 1754 and 1756 the white population of Post Vincennes 
was considerably augmented by the arrival of immigrants 
from Detroit, Kaskaskia, and New Orleans. During this pe- 
riod the French settlers at Post Vincent, Ouatanon,t and the 



* There is some little reason for supposing that there were two men 
of this name who figured in the Valley of the Wabasii at or near the 
same time. In a letter addressed to the Council of Marine, written at 
(iuebec, and dated October 28, 1719, M. de Vaudreuil says: "I learn 
from the last letters that have arrived from the Miamis, that the Sieur 
de Vincennes having died in their village, these Indians have resolved 
not to remove to the river St. .loseph." After citing the above extract 
in his history, page 402, Mr. Dillon observes : " This report of the death 
of Vincenne was untrue ; or there was soon afterward, in the West, 
another P>ench officer who bore the name of M. de Vincenne." 

t Ouiatenon, Ouatanon, or Watanon, stood on the north side of the 



Early History of Vincennes. 303 

Twightee village near the site of Fort Wayne, enjoyed a 
state of almost unlimited ease and freedom. Living in the 
midst of the forest wilderness, without taxes or church 
rates, and in friendship with the neighboring Indians, they 
spent their days in hunting and fishing, and in trading for 
pelts and furs, raising a few vegetables and a little maize 
for the sustenance of their families. Many of them inter- 
married with the daughters of the red men, whose amity 
was thereby secured and strengthened.* 



Wabash, not far below the present city of Lafayette. When Colonel 
George Croghan visited this post in July, 1765, he found there fourteen 
French families residing within the stockade. According to his printed 
journal, Vincennes then contained from eighty to ninety families, and 
was a " place of great consequence for trade." The fort was garrisoned 
by only a few soldiers. 

*" Dillon's Hist. Ind., pp. 55 and 109. 



304 Events in the Illinois Dependency. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

1742-1756. 
PROGRESS OF EVENTS IN THE DEPENDENCY OF ILLINOIS. 

In 1742, when the Marquis de Vaudreuil was made 
governor of Louisiana, Captain Benoist de St. Clair was 
major-commandant of the Illinois, having been appointed 
two years before to succeed La Buissoniere. But, early in 
1743, St. Clair was superseded by the Chevalier de Bertel, 
or Berthel, who held the position until 1748-9. 

Among the earlier acts of his provincial administra- 
tion. Governor de Vaudreuil confirmed to the inhabitants 
of Kaskaskia their right of "commons" — a right for which 
they had petitioned the Royal India Company, through 
their commandant, De Liette,* in 1727, but which had been 
until now wholly disregarded. It will be remembered that 
in 1719 M. de Boisbriant, as commandant at the Illinois, 
had granted a right of commons to the citizens of Kaskas- 
kia, but had neglected to put his grant in writing, and that 
upon the surrender of the India Company's charter, in 1732, 
the whole country became united to the royal domain, so 
that the poor villagers continued in a state of painful un- 
certainty for sixteen years. At length, in June, 1743, these 
loyal subjects of the French king addressed a respectful 
petition to the new provincial governor to confirm their 
title ; and in August they received a favorable response 
thereto in writing, of which the following is the more im- 
portant part : 

" Pierre de Rigault de Vaudreuil, governor, and Edme. 
Gatien Salmon, commissary orderer of the Province of 
Louisiana : — 

" [Having] seen the petition to us presented on the 16th 



* Breese writes this naine De Lklte, and Mason De Siette. 



Confirmation of Kaskaskia's Right of Commons. 305 

day of June of this present year, by the inhabitants of the 
parish of the Immaculate Conception of Kaskaskia, de- 
pendence of the Illinois, tending to be confirmed in the 
possession of a common which they have had a long time 
for the pasturage of their cattle, in the point called La 
Pointe de Bois, which runs to the entrance of the river Kas- 
kaskia, We, by virtue of the power to us granted by his 
majesty, have confirmed and do confirm to the said inhab- 
itants the possession of the said commons, on the following 
conditions. 

[Then follow the conditions in detail, which are omit- 
ted here.] 

" Given at New Orleans, the 14th day of August, 1743. 
(Signed) " Vaudrieul. 

" Salmon." 

Concerning the above act of confirmation, Breese 
writes: " This confirmation took from the inhabitants the 
islands in the Mississippi, and the land on the east side of 
the Kaskaskia River, which the benevolent Boisbriant had 
verbally granted to them ; nevertheless, they were content, 
as it secured to them nearly seven thousand acres of rich 
pasture and woodland, for house-bote, plough-bate, fire-bote, 
and estooers, and yielding, also, in great profusion, grapes, 
plums, persimmons, the lucious papaw, the delicate pecan, 
and other rich and delicious nuts; whilst the 'common 
field,' by this arrangement, did not embrace less than eight 
thousand acres of the richest, deepest, blackest loam, cap- 
able of itself of sustaining a numerous people.* 

Kaskaskia continued from the first to be the most con- 
siderable of the Illinois villages, and carried on a profitable 
trade by the river with Natchez and New Orleans. From 
Kaskaskia, as a parent hive, small swarms of colonists were 
sent out, at intervals, to people the neighboring localities. 

As early as the year 1735, according to tradition, a few 
French Canadian families had fixed their abode on the west- 
ern bank of the Mississippi,! attracted thither, no doubt, 



* Breese's Early Illinois, p. 187. 

t The first military settlement of the French, in what is now the 

20 



306 Events in the Illinois Dependency. 

by the salt springs and lead mines, which had been opened 
in that vicinity. This hamlet was located on the low river 
bottom, and took the name of Misere, signifying poverty 
or misery, but only in a comparative sense, when contrasted 
with the older and more flourishing establishments on this 
side of the river. After the great flood in the Mississippi, 
in 1785, which completely inundated their village, the in- 
habitants removed to the present site, on a bluflf, three miles 
north or north-west of the old one. The new village re- 
ceived the name of Ste. Genevieve, by which it has ever 
since been known.* It is still a place of considerable im- 
portance, with a noticeable admixture of the original Gallic 
element in its population. The town has long been the 
seat of justice of Ste. Genevieve county. Mo., and by the 
last United States census, contained fifteen hundred and 
eighty-six inhabitants. 

The population of the French and Indian villages in 
the district of the Illinois, at the period of which we write, 
is largely a matter of conjecture and computation. Father 
Louis Vivier, a Jesuit missionary, in a letter dated June 8, 
1750, and written from the vicinity of Fort Chartres, says: 

"We have here whites, negroes, and Indians, to say 
nothing of the cross-breeds. There are five French vil- 
lages, and three villages of the natives within a space of 
twenty-five leagues, situate between the Mississippi and 
another river called (Kaskaskia). In the French villages 
are, perhaps, eleven hundred whites, three hundred blacks, 
and sixty red slaves or savages. The three Illinois towns 
do not contain more than eight hundred souls, all told." f 

This estimate does not include the scattered French 
settlers or traders north of Peoria, nor on the Wabash. It 
is stated that the Illinois nation, then dwelling for the most 
part along the river of that name, occupied eleven diti'erent 
villages, with four or five fires at each village, and each fire 
warming a dozen families, except at the principal village, 
where there were three hundred lodges. These data would 



State of Missouri, aj)pears to have been at Fort Orleans, ou the site of 
Jefferson City, in 1719. 

* Switzler's History of Missouri, p. 14:;. 

t Lettres Edifiantes et curieuses, Paria, ITSl. 



Form of the Provincial Government. 307 

give us something near eight thousand as the total number 
of the Illinois of all tribes. 

It may be as well to observe here that the form of gov- 
ernment, if not the character of the civilization, instituted 
by the French in Canada and Louisiana, was materially dif- 
ferent from that contemporaneously established by the 
English on the Atlantic seaboard. The government of 
France was bureaucratic, and more on the feudal type ; a 
government in which all power was concentrated in the 
officers who administered it, while the paysans, or common 
people, had nothing to do but to obey the edicts and orders 
of their rulers. It was a system more conducive to the 
general equality and contentment of the people, than to 
their individual freedom and progress. 

In the Province of Louisiana the governor and com- 
mandant-general, the intendant commissary, and the royal 
council exercised supreme authority in both civil and mili- 
tary affairs, and were accountable only to the king from 
whom they received their appointment. The governor was 
invested with a great deal of power, which, however, was 
checked on the side of the crown by the intendant, who 
had the care of the king's rights and whatever pertained to 
the revenue, and on the side of the people it was restrained 
by the royal council, whose duty it was to see that the 
colonists were not oppressed by the one nor defrauded by 
the other. The council was styled Le Conseil Superieur de 
la Louisiane. It was composed of the intendant, who sat 
as first judge, the procureur-general or king's attorney, 
six of the principal inhabitants, and the registrar of the 
province; and they judged in all civil and criminal matters. 
Every citizen had the right to appear before this body and 
plead his own cause, either verbally or by written petition, 
and the evidences of each party were submitted to and ex- 
amined by the council. 

The commandants in the various districts of the prov- 
ince were appointed by the governor, for no fixed period, 
and exercised all such executive duties as the exio^encies of 
their respective districts required, though not without per- 
sonal accountability to the power appointing them. The 



308 Events in the Illinois Dependency. 

major-commandant, as he was styled, was usually connected 
with the governor by interest or relationship. " He was 
absolute in his authority," writes Captain Pittman, "except 
in matters of life and death ; capital ofienses were tried by 
the council at New Orleans. The whole Indian trade was 
80 much in the power of the commandant, that nobody was 
permitted to be concerned in it but on condition of giving 
him a part of the profits. Whenever he made presents to 
the Indians in the name of the king, he received peltry and 
furs in return ; (and) as the presents he gave were to be 
considered as marks of his favor and love for them, so the 
returns they made were to be regarded as proofs of their 
attachment to him. Speeches, accompanied by presents, 
were called paroles de valeur; any Indians who came to the 
French post were subsisted at the expense of the king 
during their stay, and the swelling of this account was no 
inconsiderable emolument. 

"As every business the commandant had with the In- 
dians was attended with certain profit, it is not surprising 
that he spared no pains to gain their aftections ; he made it 
equally the interest of the oflicers under him to please them, 
by permitting them to trade, and making themselves agents 
in the Indian countries. If any person (or persons) brought 
goods within the limits of his jurisdiction, without his 
particular license, he would oblige them to sell their mer- 
chandise at a very moderate profit to the commissary, on 
the king's account, calling it an emergency of government, 
and employ the same goods in his own private commerce. 
It may be easily supposed, from what has before been said, 
that a complaint to the governor at New Orleans would 
meet with very little redress. It may be asked if the in- 
habitants w^ere not ofiended at this monopoly of trade and 
arbitrary proceedings. The commandant could bestow 
many favors on them, such as giving contracts for furnish- 
ing provisions, or performing public works; by employing 
them in his trade, or by making their children cadets, who 
were allowed pay and provisions, and he could, when they 
were grown up, recommend them for commissions. They 
were happy if, by the most servile and submissive behavior, 



The Court of Royal Jurisdiction. 309 

they could gain his confidence and favor. Every person 
capable of bearing arms was enrolled in the militia, and a 
captain of the militia regulated the corvees and other per- 
sonal service. 

" From this military form of government, the authority 
of the commandant was almost universal. The commis- 
sary (district) was a mere cipher, and rather kept for form 
than any real use ; he was always a person of low de- 
pendence, and never dared to counteract the will of the 
commandant." * 

Subordinate to the major-commandant of the district, 
each village had its own local commandant, who was usually 
a captain of the militia. " He was as great a personage," 
says Breese, "as our city mayors, superintending the police 
of the village, and acting as a kind of justice of the peace, 
from whose decisions an appeal lay to the major-command- 
ant. In the choice of this subordinate though important 
functionary, the adult inhabitants had a voice, and it is the 
only instance wherein the}' exercised an elective franchise." 

About the year 1751, for the furtherance of justice, the 
so-called " Court or Audience of the Royal Jurisdiction of 
the Illinois" was instituted at Kaskaskia. The proceedings 
of this court were carried on before a single judge, without 
the assistance of a clerk, sheriff, or lawyers, the judge him- 
self entering his decisions in a book called " The Register." 
Following is one of the decrees extracted from it, being the 
opinion of the court by Justice Bucket : 

"Between Louis Chan eel lier, plaintiff, by petition on 
the 18th of this present month — stating that having aban- 
doned the prosecution of the suit which he had formerly 
brought against the defendant hereinafter named (on the 
subject of his negro woman, to whom a fright caused by 
the son of the defendant has produced dangerous conse- 
quences, since the said negro is afflicted with a falling sick- 
ness in consequence of this fright) — on the one part, and 
Pierre Fillet, called De la Londe, defendant, who plead that 



*Pittinan's "State of the European Settlements on the Mississippi' 
(London, 1770), pp. 53, 54. 



310 Events in the Illinois Dependency. 

he would not answer for the deeds of his son, but would 
say in defense of his son that this negro woman fell sick 
of this sickness before the fright, and, therefore, the plaintiff 
could not claim any damages on account of the fright which 
his son gave her, since the cause of her sickness is anterior 
to that which he pretends to rely upon. 

" The parties having been heard, we condemn the de- 
fendant to make proof within eight days of what he ad- 
vances, in order that it may be made to appear to whom 
the right belongs. 

"Done at Kaskaskia. Court held 20th May, 1752.— 
Bucket." 

Here is another case of a later date, arising ex contractu, 
against an administrator : 

" Between Raimond Brosse, called Saint Cernay, in- 
habitant of Kaskaskia, plaintiff, to the effect that the de- 
fendant, Charles Lorain, be made to acknowledge a note 
for sixty francs, executed by the deceased Louis Langlois, 
and of Louise Girardy, his widow, and now wife of Charles 
Lorain, the aforesaid defendant, on the other part. 

" The said note being examined, the parties heard, and 
all things considered, we condemn the defendant to pay, 
without delay, to the plaintiff the sum of sixty francs 
(livres), the amount of the said note, and also the costs of 
suit, wliich we have taxed at twenty-eight francs and ten 
cents (sols). 

" Done at I^ew Chartre, in our hearing, we holding 
court, Saturday the fifth of June, 1756. — Chevallier.'' * 

The practice, or mode of procedure, in this and other 
courts of the province was after the forms of the civil law, 
very simple and brief, and probably as well calculated to 
promote the true ends of justice as the more cumbrous 
forms of the English common law, filled with technical 
jargon. Trial by jury was unknown here ; the law and the 
facts in every case being decided by the presiding judge. 



*Breese'8 Early History, pp. 217-219. At the time Judge Breese 
wrote, the record of the i)roceeding8 of this high-sounding court was 
yet extant, and it may be still. 



Mode of Administering the Government. 311 

Judgments and decrees were executed by the captain of 
militia, or the provost marshal, and no "stay laws" or 
" valuation laws " impeded its operation, nor was there any 
" redemption after sale." Occasion, however, did not very 
often arise for the exercise of the judicial authority, as liti- 
gation was expensive, and the people in general were peace- 
able, honest, and punctual in their dealings wnth each other. 
In fact, the most common mode of settling small diiRculties 
and disputes about money, etc., was by referring them to 
the arbitration of friends and neighbors, or else by the mild 
interposition of the village priest.* 

Thus were exercised the executive and judicial powers 
in the provincial district of Illinois ; of legislative powers 
there were none. The laws in force were the edicts and 
ordinances of the King, and the "usages of the mayoralty 
and shrievalty of Paris." These were introduced by France 
into all her American colonies, but they were changed or 
modified, more or less, by the ignorance or caprice of those 
whose business it was to construe and apply them. The 
peculiar local customs of the colony, also, had the force 
of law.* 

The pernicious system of monopolies still prevailed in 
the province. In August, 1744, Gov. de Vaudreuil con- 
ceded to a Frenchman named Deruisseau the exclusive 
right of trading in all the country watered by the Missis- 
sippi River, and the streams falling into it. This privilege, 
which seems to have embraced the entire district of the 
Illinois, was for a term something in excess of five years, 
beginning January 1, 1745, and terminating on the 20th of 
May, 1750. Several conditions were annexed to the grant, 
such as tlie maintenance of the posts on the Missouri, and the 
regulation of the prices at which goods were to be supplied 
to the settlements. One of the reasons assigned by De 
Vaudreuil for granting this monopoly to Deruisseau was 
to deprive the colonists in the Illinois district of all means 
of carrying on any commerce with the Indians, and thus 



Breese's Early Illinois, pp. 221, 222. 



312 Events in the Illinois Dependency. 

force them into the cultivation of the soil, and the raising 
of produce for the soutliern market.* 

In 1749, the Sieur de St. Clair was re-appointed major- 
commandant at the Illinois, hut, in the autumn of 1751, he 
was supplanted hy the Chevalier Macarty, or Makarty, an 
Irishman by birth, and a major of engineers. Macarty 
served about nine years, and then yielded the position to 
Capt. Neyonf de Villiers. 

Early in 1753, after a popular and successful adminis- 
tration of over ten years, the Marquis deVaudreuil-Cavagnal 
relinquished the governership of Louisiana to accept the 
higher honor of governor-general of Canada. His suc- 
cessor in the former office was M. de Kerlerec, a captain in 
the royal navy. He arrived in New Orleans the 3d of 
February, 1753, and on the 9th of that month, was installed 
as chief executive of the province. 

Let us now take a cursory view of contemporaneous 
military events, occurring beyond the confines of Louisiana. 
In 1744, war was again declared between France and Great 
Britain, and their trans- Atlantic colonies speedily became 
embroiled in the armed conflict, which is known as the 
Third French War. The active military operations, so far 
as they aflected the French-American possessions, were 
chiefly confined to the eastern seaboard. But to guard 
against surprise, or any sudden irruption of the Chickasaws 
and other unfriendly tribes, some fresh levies of troops 
were made in Louisiana, and the garrisons were strength- 
ened at the principal posts in the province. 

The most noteworthy episode of this foreign war was 
the capture of the fortress of Louisburg, situated upon 
Cape Breton Island, by an army of four thousand men 
from Boston, under the command of Colonel (afterward 
Sir) WiUiam Pepperell, in June, 1745. The reduction 
of this stronghold, which had hitherto been considered im- 
pregnable, was a heavy blow to the French power, and 
during the succeeding year a powerful fleet was fitted out 

* Gayarre's Hist, of La., Vol. II, pp. 23, 24. 
t Written Noyon in old Frenr-h docunuMits. 



Peace of 1748 — Rebuilding of Fort Chartres. 313 

in France to recover it and chastise its captors. The fleet, 
however, was delayed, and its aim was frustrated by a 
storm. But by a provision of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle 
(1748), Louisburg was restored to the possession of France 
in exchange for certain territory that England desired in 
India, — an arrangement very displeasing to the New Eng- 
landers. 

The peace of 1748, which conferred increased pros- 
perity on the Province of Louisiana, was not destined to 
be of long duration. Of the various causes at work to 
bring about a renewal of hostilities between the two rival 
powers, it is unnecessary now to speak, as we shall here- 
after take occasion to pass them in review. But the fear 
that the English might eventually gain a foot-hold in this 
great Valley of the Mississippi was ever present to the 
minds of the intelligent French inhabitants. And the 
suggestion was made by De Bertel, commandant at the 
Illinois, to the governor in New Orleans, and through him 
to the king, that additional means of defense were required 
for the protection of these valuable possessions, hinting at 
more troops and larger and stronger forts. 

Nothing appears to have been done at the time, how- 
ever, excepting to enroll those able to bear arms into com- 
panies of militia, and to provide for the maintenance of 
garrisons at the more exposed places. 

It was not until the year 1753, when Macarty was 
major-commandant, that the rebuilding of Fort Chartres 
was begun, in accordance with plans and speciflcations 
furnished by M. Saucier, a French engineer.* This huge 
structure of masonry, an object of wonder and curiosity 
to all who ever beheld it, was reared at an estimated cost 
of over five millions of livres, or about one million dollars. 
It was so nearly completed by the beginning of 1756, that 



* See Letters of Travel through Louisiana, by M. Bossu, captain in the 
French Marines, and afterward Chevalier of the Order of St. Louis. Im- 
printed at Paris, 1768; English ed., London, 1771, p. 127. Of the fort 
itself, Bossu says (p. 158) : " It is built of freestone, flanked with four 
bastions, and capable of containing (or housing) a garrison of three 
hundred men." 



314 Events in the Illinois Dependency. 

it was occupied by the Illinois commandant, and the archives 
of the local government were deposited therein. Thence- 
forth, the fortress was popularly known as " New Chartres." 

"As a means of defense," writes Breese, " except as a 
citadel to Hee to on any sudden attack of the savages, the 
erection was Avholly unnecessary. Official emolument must 
have prompted it, and some of the many millions of livres 
it is said to have cost must have gone into the command- 
ant's pocket, or into those of his favorites, and they enriched 
by this mode of peculation." 

This extensive fortification was constructed during 
Kerlerec's administration of the government of Louisiana, 
and he probably shared in the profits of the erection. Ma- 
karty was then major-commandant of the Illinois, and the 
Abbe de Gagnon, of the order of St. Sulpice, was chaplain 
at the fort. 

M. de Kerlerec held the office of provincial executive 
from February 9, 1753, until June 29, 1763, when he was 
superseded by Mons. d'Abbadie * — not as governor, but as 
director-general, etc. — and was ordered to return to France. 
He was accused of various violations of duty and assump- 
tions of power, and, in particular, was reproached with 
having spent ten millions of livres in four years, while M. 
Rochemaure was intendant-commissary, under the pretext 
of preparing for war. Upon his arrival in Paris, he was 
incarcerated for some time in the Bastile, and is said to 
have died of vexation and grief shortly after his discharge 
from that gloomy state prison. f 

In Captain Pittman's " Present State of the European 
Settlements on the Mississippi," already cited, is contained 
an excellent description of Fort Chartres, as seen by him 
in 1766, while it was yet in its prime. He writes : 

" Fort Chartres, when it belonged to France, was the 
seat of government of the Illinois. The head-quarters of 
the English commanding officer is now here; who, in fact, 
is the arbitrary governor of the country. The fort is an ir- 
regular quadrangle ; the sides of the exterior polygon are 

* Otherwise written Abadie. 

t Gayarre'K Hist, of La., II., p. 95 ; and Martin'p Louisiana, I., p. 343. 



Pittman's Description of Fort Chartres. 315 

four hundred and ninety feet. It is built of stone plastered, 
and is only designed as a defense against Indians ; the wall 
being two feet two inches thick, and pierced with loop- 
holes at regular distances, and with two port-holes for can- 
non in the faces and two in the flanks of each bastion. 
The ditch has never been finished. The (main) entrance to 
the fort is through a very handsome rustic gate ; within 
the walls is a small banquette, raised three feet, for the men 
to stand on when they fire through the loop-holes. 

" The buildings within the fort are the commandant's 
and commissary's houses, the magazine of stores, corps de 
garde, and two barracks ; they occupy the square. Within 
the gorges of the bastions are a powder magazine, a bake- 
house, a prison, on the lower floor of which are four dun- 
geons, and in the upper two rooms, and an outhouse be- 
longing to the commandant. 

" The commandant's house is thirty-two yards long 
and ten broad. It contains a kitchen, a dining-room, a 
bed-chamber, one small room, five closets for servants, and 
a cellar. The commissary's house, now occupied by officers, 
is built in the same line as this ; its proportions and distri- 
bution of apartments are the same. 

" Opposite these are the store-house and guard-house. 
They are each thirty yards long and eight broad. The 
former consists of two large store-rooms (under which is a 
large vaulted cellar), and a large room, a bed-chamber, and 
a closet for the store-keeper ; the latter of a soldier's and 
officer's guard-rooms, a chapel, a bed-chamber and closet 
for the chaplain, and an artillery store-room. 

"The lines of barracks have never been finished. 
They at present consist of two rooms each for officers, and 
three rooms for soldiers. They are good, spacious rooms 
of twenty-two feet square, and have betwixt them a small 
passage. There are five spacious lofts over each building, 
which reach from end to end. They are made use of to 
lodge regimental stores, working and intrenching tools, etc. 

" It is generally allowed that this is the most commo- 
dious and best built fort in North America. 

" The bank of the Mississippi next the fort is con- 



316 Events in the Illinois Dependency. 

tinually falling in, being worn away by the current, which 
has been turned from its course by a sand-bank, now in- 
creased to a considerable island, covered with willows. 
Many experiments have been tried to stop this growing 
evil, but to no purpose. When the fort was begun in 1756, 
it was a good half-mile from the water side. In the 3^ear 
1766 it was but eighty paces. Eight years ago the river 
was fordable to the island ; the channel is now forty feet 
deep." 

The story of the subsequent dilapidation and ruin of 
this historic fortress, which was intended to secure the em- 
pire of the French in the West, may be told in a few sen- 
tences. In tiie spring of 1772, a great freshet in the Mis- 
sissippi, which submerged all the adjacent bottom, made 
such inroads upon the crumbling river bank, that the west- 
ern wall and one of the bastions of the fort were under- 
mined and precipitated into the raging current. The Brit- 
ish garrison then abandoned it, and took refuge at Fort 
Gage, on the high bluff of the Kaskaskia, opposite to and 
overlooking the old town of that name. Thither the seat 
of government was transferred, and Fort Chartres was 
never again occupied. It was left to become a ruin, and 
such of its walls and buildings as escaped destruction by 
succeeding inundations were torn down and removed by 
the neighboring villagers for building purposes. 

After the flood of 1772, "the capricious Mississippi 
devoted itself to the reparation of the danmge it had 
wrought. The channel between the fort and the island 
in front of it, once forty feet deep, began to fill up, and 
ultimately the main shore and the island were united, 
leaving the fort a mile or more inland. A thick growth of 
trees speedily concealed it from the view of those passing 
on the river, and the high road from Kaskaskia to Cahokia, 
which at first ran between the fort and the river, was soon 
after located at the bluffs, three miles to the eastward. 
These changes, which left the fort completely isolated and 
hidden, together with the accounts of the British evacua- 
tion, gave rise to the report of its total destruction by the 
river. . . . But this is entirely erroneous; the ruina 



The Ruin of Fort Chartres. 317 

(or part of them) still remain; and had man treated it as 
kindly as the elements, the old fort would be nearly perfect 
to-day."' * 

I^ow and then a curious tourist or an antiquary made 
his way thither. In 1804, the fort was visited by Major 
Amos Stoddard,! of the U. S. Engineers, who described it 
as in a good state of preservation. In 1820, Dr. Lewis C. 
Beck, and Nicholas Hansen, of Illinois, made a careful 
drawing of the plan of the fortress, for insertion in Beck's 
"Gazetteer of Illinois and Missouri." At that time many 
of the rooms and cellars in the buildings, and portions of 
the outside walls, showing the opening for the main gate, 
and loop-holes for the musketry, were still in a state of tol- 
erable repair. According to their measurements, the whole 
exterior line of the walls and bastions was 1,447 feet. The 
area of the fort embraced about four acres : and the walls, 
built of solid stone, were in some places iifteen feet high. 
In 1851, ex-Governor Reynolds visited the remains of the 
old fortress, concerning which he thus writes: 

" This fort (situated in the north-west corner of Ran- 
dolph county) is an object of antiquarian curiosity. The 
trees, undergrowth, and brush are so mixed and interwoven 
with the old walls that the place has a much more ancient 
appearance than tlie dates will justify. The soil is so fer- 
tile that it has forced up large trees in the very houses 
which were occupied by the French and British soldiers." ;|: 

The same writer was there again in October, 1854, and 
found what was left of the fort " a pile of moldering 
ruins," the walls having been torn away in many places 
nearly even with the ground. Moralizing upon the scene 
of desolation thus presented to his gaze, he quaintly wrote : 
"There is nothing durable in this world, except God and 
Nature." Later tourists to this interesting spot have seen 



* Paper read before the Chicago Historical Society, by Hon. E. G. 
Mason, June 16, 1880. 

t It was Stoddard who took possession of Upper Louisiana for the 
Government of the United States, in March, 1804, under the treaty of 
purchase from France. 

t Reynolds' Pioneer Hhtury, 2d ed., p. 40. 



318 Events in the Illinois Dependency. 

the outlines of the external walls and ditches, and scattered 
heaps of broken stone ; also the vaulted powder magazine, 
a piece of solid masonry, existing almost entire. 

It is much to be regretted that this large and commo- 
dious fortress — the only great architectural work of the 
French in the entire basin of the Mississippi — over which, 
in succession, had long and proudly floated the flags of two 
powerful nations, should not have been built upon a firmer 
and more elevated site, where it might have been preserved, 
as an impressive and historical monument of the past, even 
unto the present time. 



Movements of the French on the Upper Ohio. 319 



CHAPTER XVII. 

1753-1760. 
THE MEMORABLE SEVEN YEARS' WAR. 

We now approach that momentous contest popularly 
known as the " Okl French and Indian War," * or the " Seven 
Years' War," in which France and Great Britain stubhornly 
contended for the final possession of this continent. The 
French, having begun their wonderful career of conquest 
and colonization in the early part of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, had gradually extended a chain of military and trading 
posts from Quebec up the river St. Lawrence to Lake On- 
tario, and thence westward along the great connecting lakes 
to the head of Lake Michigan ; thence diagonally through 
the country of the Illinois to the Mississippi, and down 
that interior water-way to the Gulf of Mexico. The En- 
glish, in the meantime, had been planting along the 
Atlantic seaboard — a reach of over two thousand miles — 
the most prosperous and powerful colonies in the New 
World. And it was the extension of their growing power 
and settlements across the Appalachian range of mountains, 
which had hitherto constituted their western boundary, that 
first brought them into controversy and collision with the 
French Canadian authorities. 

France claimed the entire Valley of the Mississippi, 
including that of the Ohio as well, which her enterprising 
fur-traders and missionaries had been the first to explore 
and formally occupy, but which she had as yet only very 
sparsely peopled. In furtherance of this claim of exclusive 
jurisdiction, the alert French went so far as to carve their 
nationsil Jieur-de-lis on the forest trees, and to bury metallic 
plates, stamped with the arms of France, at various places 



It was really the fourth French and Indian war. 



320 The Seven Years' War. 

in the Ohio Valley. On the other hand, England, in virtue 
of the primal discovery of the country by the Cabots, 
maintained the right to extend her possessions on the 
Atlantic coast indefinitely westward, and in conformity 
with this view the charters of some of her colonies were 
so worded as to reach across the entire breadth of the con- 
tinent. The English sought to further strengthen their 
title by annexing to it the pretense of their Indian allies, 
the Six Nations,* who claimed, by right of conquest, all 
that part of the northwestern territory lying south of the 
great lakes and between the Alleghany Mountains and the 
Mississippi. 

So long as France and Great Britain were at peace, 
which was never many years at a time, this standing, 
national controversy gave rise only to a series of border 
disputes, petty encroachments, and intrigues with the fickle 
aborigines, neither party being numerous enough to colon- 
ize the territory which both coveted. But when war ex- 
isted between the two parent countries, their respective 
American colonies likewise engaged in murderous conflict, 
which, because of the savages enlisted in it, was fearfully 
destructive of life and property. 

By the opening of the year 1753 affairs had reached a 
crisis, and France, in order to fix a barrier to the westward 
march of English colonization, and thus protect her wide 
possessions in the West and South, determined to run a line 
of detached posts from Niagara and Lake Erie to the head 
of the Ohio, and down that river. The Indians were the 
first to take alarm at this movement; and in April, when 
the news reached the Upper Ohio that a French force was 
on the way to erect forts in that region, the Mingoes, Dela- 
wares, and Shawnees met in council at a village called 
Logston, on the Ohio, and sent an envoy to Fort Niagara 
to protest against the French occupation, but their protest 
was unheeded. In pursuance of a pre-determined plan, 



*The Five Nations were increased to six by the addition of the 
Tuscaroras from North Carolina, in the first quarter of the eighteenth 
century. 



Major Washington's Mission. 321 

the French soldiery, under General Pierre Paul, Sieur de 
Marin, built Fort Presque Isle on the south-eastern shore of 
Lake Erie, near the present city of Erie, and Fort le Boeuf 
on the head waters of French Creek, fourteen miles south- 
east of the former fort, and then opened a wagon road be- 
tween the two. They also converted into a military station 
the Indian village of Venango, situate at the junction of 
French Creek with the Alleghany River ; but when they 
undertook to erect a fort at the forks or head of the Ohio, 
they came into collision with representatives of the Ohio 
Company. This company, which had been formed in Vir- 
ginia as early as 1750, was authorized by the Virginia Coun- 
cil to select five hundred thousand acres of land on both 
sides of the Upper Ohio for the purpose of settlement, and 
had caused surveys to be made of the lands and built some 
houses thereon. The French troops, however, seized sev- 
eral of the English agents and traders and sent them pris- 
oners to Canada, and warned others away, — an arbitrary 
and unfriendly proceeding. The company thereupon made 
complaint to Robert Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, who 
commissioned young George Washington (then adjutant- 
general, with the rank of major, of the provincial militia in 
the northern division of the colony) to be the bearer of a let- 
ter to the commander of the French forces on the head waters 
of the Ohio, requiring him to peaceably withdraw from that 
territory, which was claimed as a part of Virginia, and as 
belonging to the crown of Great Britain. 

Major Washington started on his diificult mission from 
Williamsburg (the old capital of Virginia) on the Slst ot 
October, 1753, first stopping at Fredericksburg to engage 

.'^"French interpreter, and proceeded via Alexandria to Win- 
chester, where he procured horses and baggage, and thence 

journeyed to Wills Creek. Here he employed a guide and 
four men as servants, and, continuing his journey over the 
mountains in a north-westerly direction, reached the junction 
of Turtle Creek and the Monongahela on the 22d of Novem- 
ber, and the forks of the Ohio on the 23d. The next day 
he went down the river to Logstown, several miles below the 
21 



322 The Seven Years' War. 

forks, and there held a conference with the Indians friendly 
to the English cause. From thence, attended by a small 
native escort, he traveled up the valley of the Alleghany, and 
its tributary of French Creek, to Fort le Boeuf,* whither 
he arrived on the 11th of December. Presenting his cre- 
dentials and letter to Jacques le Gardeur de St. Pierre, who 
had succeeded the Sieur de Marin (then recently deceased) in 
command of the French troops in that quarter, Washington 
was politely received and entertained by the commander 
and his staft. Some days later, on taking his departure 
from the fort, he was handed a letter by St. Pierre in an- 
swer to that of the Virginia governor. 

Major Washington and his party set out on their re- 
turn home the 16th of December, and after a most disa- 
greeable and dangerous winter journey, made partly on 
horseback and partly afoot, he reached Williamsburg on 
January 16, 1754. Calling without delay upon Governor 
Dinwiddle, he delivered to him the letter of reply from the 
French commander, with which he liad been intrusted, and 
of which the following is a translation : 

" Sir : As I have the honor of commanding here in 
chief, Mr. Washington delivered to me the letter which you 
wrote to the commander of the French troops. I should 
have been glad that you had given him orders, or that he 
had been inclined, to proceed to Canada to see our general ; 
to whom it better belongs than to me to set forth the evi- 
dence and the reality of the rights of the kin^, my master, 
to the land situate along the river Ohio, and to contest the 
pretentions of the King of Great Britain thereto. 

" I shall transmit your letter to the Marquis du Quesne. 
His answer will be a law to me. And if he shall order me 
to communicate it to you, sir, you may be assured I will 
not fail to dispatch it forthwith to you. As to the sum- 
mons you send me to retire, I do not think myself obliged 
to obey it. Whatever may be your instructions, I am here 
by virtue of the orders of general ; and I entreat you, sir, 



1 



Or Fort »ur la. RiriSre au Boeuf. 



General St. Pierre's Letter to Governor Dinwiddie. 323 

not to doubt one moment but that I am determined to con- 
form myself to them with all the exactness and resolution 
which can be expected from the best officer. I do not know 
that in the progress of this campaign any thing has passed 
which can be reputed as an act of hostility, or that is con- 
trary to the treaties which subsist between the two crowns, 
the continuation whereof interesteth and is as pleasing to 
us as to the English," etc. 

(Signed) " Le Gardeur de St. Pierre. 

" Dated December 15, 1753." * 

When this rather defiant letter had been read and con- 
sidered by the governor and council of Virginia, an order 
was issued to raise a regiment of mounted militia, for the 
double purpose of driving the French intruders from their 
territory, and of completing and garrisoning the post at 
the confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers, 
the erection of which had been already begun by the 
agents of the Ohio Company. The command of this regi- 
ment was assigned to Colonel Fry, with Washington as 
lieutenant-colonel, and they were speedily equipped and on 
their way across the mountains. But the object of this expe- 
dition was thwarted in the main by the prompter action of the 
French under Captain Antoine Pecody Contrecoeur, who, 
in the month of April, in anticipation of the arrival of the 
Virginia troops, moved down to the head of the Ohio with 
a force of about one thousand regulars and Indians, and 
eighteen pieces of cannon. After dispersing the employes 
of the company and a small body of militia, whom he found 
there, Contrecoeur proceeded to finish the fort which they 
had commenced, and named it Duquesne, in compliment to 
the commander of the French forces in Canada. 

Lietenant-Colonel Washington had meantime pushed 
forward, with one-half of the Virginia regiment, in advance 
of the rest, to a place called the Great Meadows, fifty miles 
north-west of Wills Creek (afterward Fort Cumberland), 



''^Vide " Diaries of Washington," edited by Benson J. Lossing, N. Y., 
1860, p. 247. 



324 The Seven Years' War — Death of Jumonville. 

and there erected a rude stockade fort, which received the 
name of Fort Necessity, While he was thus engaged, N. 
Coulon de Jumonville, a young French officer, was sent 
from Fort Duquesne, with a detachment of thirty men, to 
reconnoiter his movements and notif}^ him to surrender the 
fort. On being apprised by his scouts of the approach of 
the French party, Washington planned to fall upon them 
by surprise. Accordingly, on the evening of the 27th of 
May, with a part of his provincials and a few Indian allies, 
he suddenly surrounded De Jumonville's camp, at a se- 
cluded spot called the Little Meadows, and ordered his 
men* to open fire. In the brief action of a quarter of an 
hour that ensued, the Virginians had one man killed and 
three wounded.; while, on the side of the French, ten men 
were either killed or wounded, and the remainder made 
prisoners. Among the slain was M. de Jumonville,* who 
commanded the French party. The killing of this brave 
young officer, who bore on his person a summons to the 
Virginians to surrender, caused much excitement in Can- 
ada and France, where it was claimed to be a violation of 
the law of nations, and it contributed to kindle into a flame 
the embers of war. 

So soon as intelligence of this bloody encounter was 
brought to the Illinois, Ne^^on de Villiers, a brother of the 
deceased Jumonville, and captain of a company then sta- 
tioned at Fort Chartres, solicited leave of Makarty, the 
major-commandant, to go and avenge the deatli of his rela- 
tive. Permission being given, De Villiers set out with a 
considerable force of French and Indians. Passing down 
the Mississippi and up the Ohio to Fort Duquesne, he was 
there joined by M. Coulon de Villiers, with other forces, 
bent upon the same stern errand. The French on the Ohio, 
being thus re-info reed, took the offensive. 

Some little time before this Colonel Fry had deceased, 
and Washington succeeded to the full command of his regi- 



* M. .Iiimonville de Villiers was born in Picardy, Franco, about 1725. 
He was one of seven brothers, all soldiers, six of whom, it is said, were 
killed during this war. His death was made the theme of a short epic 
poem by M. Thomas, a French poet. 



Washington'' s Surrenders Fort Necessity. 325 

ment. Finding himself confronted by a superior force of 
the enemy, he now fell back to Fort Necessit}^ at the Great 
Meadows, which he strengthened as well as he could in the 
brief time allowed him. Here, on the 3d of July, he was 
attacked by De A'^illiers, with an army of some six hundred 
Frenchmen and over one hundred Indians. The Virginia 
troops made a stubborn defense, and withstood the irregu- 
lar fire of the French and their allies (who sheltered them- 
selves behind the forest trees), from ten o'clock in the morn- 
ing until sunset. At length, fearing the failure of his am- 
munition, and not desiring to sacrifice the lives of his men 
by storming the fort, De Villiers sent in a flag of truce 
oft'ering moderate terms of capitulation. In view of his 
critical situation. Colonel Washington, after some parleying 
over details, accepted the terms oftered. By these he was 
allowed to march ofii" his troops with the honors of war, and 
to carry away his baggage, but was required to leave his 
cannon, and to surrender all of his prisoners previously 
taken. In this frontier battle the French are said to have 
lost only three men killed and a few wounded, while the 
Virginians, penned up in the stockade fort, lost over thirty 
men killed and wounded. 

When the news of these stirring events reached Eng- 
land and France, both nations prepared to settle their ter- 
ritorial disputes by the arbitrament of the sword, though 
war was not formally declared by the King of Great Britain 
until May, 1756. Among other sources of irritation be- 
tween the two governments at this time was the alleged 
encroachment by French colonists upon the domain of the 
English in Acadia, or Nova Scotia, which had been ceded 
to England by the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, but the 
boundaries of which remained unadjusted. 

To the mere superficial observer the impending con- 
test seemed a very unequal one. The population of the 
Anglo-American colonies aggregated about one million 
and a quarter, with wealth and military resources in pro- 
portion ; whereas, the French, all told, did not count more 
than one hundred thousand souls. But the latter were 
difiicult to be reached, for the reason that their forts and 



326 The Seven Years' War. 

settlements were situated at remote points in the wilder- 
ness, and surrounded by numerous Indian allies, who could 
be quickly summoned to their aid ; and from these forest 
retreats they menaced the entire western English frontier. 
Moreover, the regular British army of that day was an un- 
wieldy machine, incumbered with heavy baggage and mu- 
nitions, commanded by brave yet conceited officers, who 
were inexperienced in the wild tactics of Indian warfare, 
and in constant danger of being surprised and defeated 
by a lighter equipped, more agile and vigilant foe. 

In February, 1755, General Edward Braddock, who 
had been given the chief command in the English colonies, 
arrived at Alexandria, Virginia, with two regiments of 
regular troops. During the following April he met there 
the governors of five of the leading provinces, and con- 
certed with them a general plan of campaign. Three sep- 
arate expeditions were planned ; one against Fort Duquesne, 
to be commanded by Braddock in person ; the second, 
against Forts Niagara and Frontenac, to be led by Gov- 
ernor William Shirley, of Massachusetts ; and the third, 
against Crown Point, by General (afterward Sir William) 
Johnson. 

Early in May, General Braddock set out with his army 
from Alexandria upon his luckless expedition. Arrived at 
Fort Cumberland, on the Upper Potomac, he was there 
joined by several hundred Virginia militia, under the lead 
of Colonel Washington, whom he had invited to serve as 
one of his aides de camp. Being thus reinforced, and hav- 
ing now completed the equipment of his army, the gen- 
eral resumed his march on the 10th of June. But the 
difficulty and delay attending the opening of a military 
road across the mountains induced him, partly at the sug- 
gestion of Washington, to leave his wagon train and heavy 
cannon behind with a guard of eight hundred men, under 
Colonel Thomas Dunbar, and to press forward Avith the 
main body of his army, over twelve hundred strong, in 
order to reach the French fort before its garrison could 
be reinforced. After reaching and fording the Monongahela 



BraddocWs Disastrous Defeat. 327 

River, Braddock marched rapidly to the north down the 
valley of that stream. 

Meanwhile, Daniel Lienard de Beaujeu, who had prac- 
tically, if not formally, supplanted Captain Contrecoeur in 
the command at Fort Duquesne, being advised by his scouts 
of Braddock's approach, marched out with a force of two 
hundred and fifty Frenchmen, and six hundred and fifty 
Indians, to intercept his advance. Proceeding up the 
Monongahela seven miles from the fort, the French and 
Indians concealed themselves in the thick woods on the 
brow of a ridge overlooking the banks of the river, along 
which Braddock was expected to pass, and there uneasily 
awaited his coming. 

In the forenoon of the 9th of July, the British force 
recrossed the river near the mouth of Turtle Creek,* and 
without taking any adequate precautions to guard against 
an ambuscade, boldly climbed the first bank, and advanced 
along a defile of the second, above and near which the 
enemy lay in ambush. And now, at a preconcerted signal, 
the Indians raised their hideous yell, and a deadly volley 
was poured upon the front column, which checked its ad- 
vance, and caused it to fall back on the center, and the center 
on the rear, which was hemmed in by the river. Thus this 
brave army, which might have advanced and driven the 
enemy from his covert, speedily became involved in inex- 
tricable confusion, and, after a murderous conflict of three 
hours, was utterly routed and put to flight. Of the four- 
teen hundred and sixty ofiftcers and men who went into the 
battle on that hot July day, only five hundred and eighty- 
three came out uninjured. The carnage was frightful 
among the oflicers, who were picked oft' by the French 
sharp-shooters. General Braddock himself fought with 
great intrepidity, but, after having three or four horses 
shot under him, received a mortal wound, of which he died 
a few days later.f 



■■ Lieutenant-Colonel Gage, ^vho led the advance column, first forded 
the river, and sent back word that no enemy was in sight, whereupon 
the rest of the army followed after him. 

tThis imprudent and unfortunate commander was born in Perth- 



328 The Seven Years' War. 

The French lovss, not counting that of their Indian al- 
lies, was less than forty; but it included their skillful com- 
mander, Captain Beaujeu, who had planned the ambuscade, 
and who was killed early in the action.* 

Colonel Washington's clothing was riddled with bul- 
lets, and he escaped, as it were by a miracle, from that field 
of slaughter. His Virginia riflemen, despite Braddock's 
injudicious orders to the contrary, took positions behind 
trees and rocks, and maintained the unequal fight until 
more than half of them were killed and wounded. With 
those that remained, the dauntless and self-possessed colonel 
covered the retreat of the routed army. Happily for the 
fugitives, the Indian auxiliaries of the French were too in- 
tent upon the spoils of the battle field to pursue them 
beyond the river; and never before, in a single engage- 
ment, had the savages reaped such a harvest of scalps and 
booty as was gathered here. The panic of the defeat was 
quickly communicated to the rear-guard, commanded by 
the pusillanimous Colonel Dunbar, who abandoned his 
heavy artillery and baggage, and fled over the mountains 
to Philadelphia, leaving the frontier settlements defenseless. 

Owing partly to the discouragement produced by 
Braddock's defeat, the other expeditions that had been 
planned by him and the colonial governors, for that year, 
also ended in failure. The attempt of Governor Shirley 
against Forts Frontenac and Niagara wholly miscarried. 
The governor, with a force composed principally of raw 



shire, Scotland, about the y«-ar ](li)'), and had risen to the rank of major- 
general after forty years of meritorious service in the British army. It is 
affirmed, on what seems to be good authority, that Braddock was fatally 
shot in the side or back at the battle of the Monongahela, by one of the 
provincials, whose brother had been stricken down by the irate general 
for refusing to obey orders ; yet it is equally probable that the shot was 
accidental. General Braddock expired in the camp of Colonel Dunbar, 
on the 13th of July, and was buried in the military highway, seven 
miles east of Uniontown, Pa., where his grave is still shown. 

* For some old French accounts of this celebrated battle, see "Relatiom 
Diverses sur la Bataille c?' Malanguele, Gague le 9th a Jouillet, 1755, par It' Frat)- 
cais sous M. le Beaujeu, Commandant du Fort da Queue, sur les Angluis sous 
M. Braddock, General en chef des troupes Angloises,'' pp. xv., 9-51, N. Y., 
1860 (— Cramoisy Series of Relations relative to the French in America). 



The Beducfion of Acadia. 329 

militia, marched to Oswego, on Lake Ontario ; but, in con- 
sequence of the lateness of the season, and the difficulty of 
procuring provisions and transports, he abandoned the ex- 
pedition and returned to Albany. 

It is true that the Aeadians of I^ova Scotia were re- 
duced to subjection, by a fleet fitted out for that purpose at 
Boston, with a land force of over two thousand men under 
the command of Colonel John Winslow, of Massachusetts. 
After the treaty of 1748, the French inhabitants of that 
peninsula, living on the disputed territory, had not only 
refused to take the oath of unqualified allegiance to the 
King of England, but had contributed material aid to their 
own countrymen in the existing war. They were now (in 
August, 1755) inhumanly punished for their contumacy. 
Their petty forts at the head of the Bay of Fundy were 
taken and demolished ; their villages were burned, and their 
farms laid waste. As many as three thousand of the poor 
Aeadians — men, women and children — were forcibly put 
on shipboard and transported to the other English colonies, 
where they were distributed around as paupers. Some of 
these unhappy exiles, as we shall see, eventually found an 
asylum in Lower Louisiana, where they established a thrifty 
and permanent settlement.* 

The army, under General Johnson, which was intended 
to operate against Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, 
reached the south end of Lake George in the latter pnrt of 



* Longfellow has graphically portrayed the touching scenes in this 
deportation of the unfortunate Aeadians, and thrown around it the halo 
of romance, in the polished stanzas of his " Evangeline," beginning 
with these lines: 

"In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas, 
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand Pre 
Lay in the fruitful valley." 

The history of the Aeadians is long, varied and interesting. They 
were, in truth, the sport of fortune from the time of DeMonts (1604) 
until the treaty of Paris, in 1763. Their descendants, however, are still 
numerous in northern Nova Scotia. The name of this peninsula was 
first changed from Acadia to Nova Scotia in 1621, when Sir Wm. Alex- 
ander obtained a grant of the country from James I., and undertook to 
colonize it with Scotchmen. 



330 The Seven Years' War. 

August, (1755), when information was received that two 
thousand of the enemy, commanded by Baron Dieskau, 
who had recently arrived with fresh troops from France, 
were marching against Fort Edward, on the Hudson. Gen- 
eral Johnson thereupon detached Colonel "Williams, with a 
strong force, to intercept this movement of the French. 
Colonel Williams unexpectedly fell in with the army of 
Baron Dieskau, on the 8th of September, when a blood}^ 
action took place, in which the English were defeated and 
put to flight, aud Williams himself was slain. But when 
the French, flushed with their success, advanced to attack 
the main body of Johnson's army, they were warmly re- 
ceived, and, after an obstinate conflict, were driven from 
the field with heavy loss, Dieskau himself being mortally 
wounded and taken prisoner. Satisfied with this hard-won 
victory. General Johnson gave over the further prosecution 
of his movement against Crown Point. Soon after these 
events, the English constructed a regular fort at the head 
of Lake George, and called it Fort William Henry. 

In July, 1756, Lord Loudon arrived in America, as 
commander-in-chief of the British forces. An army of 
about twelve thousand men was raised this year, which was 
better prepared to take the field than any other that had 
been assembled within the colonies. But the change of 
commanders delayed military operations, and nothing of 
any consequence was accomplished by the English army. 
The French, however, under the able conduct of the Mar- 
quis de Montcalm, struck at least one vigorous blow. This 
was directed against Fort Ontario, at Oswego, on Lake 
Ontario. In the early part August they attacked this fort, 
with a strong armament, and quickly compelled its sur- 
render, with a garrison of over one thousand men, and a 
large quantity of artillery and valuable stores. By the loss 
of Oswego, and the defeat of Braddock in the preceding 
year, all the western country was laid open to the ravages 
of the enemy; and the Indians, sustained and encouraged 
by the French, now wasted the frontiers of Pennsylvania 
and Virginia, in particular, with a pitiless and desolating 
war. 



Montcalm Takes Fort William Henry. 331 

The next year, 1757, was marked by the same inactiv- 
ity and inefl&ciency on the part of the English, and by an- 
other successful expedition on the side of the French. The 
English colonists, as a rule, displayed great energy in rais- 
ing men and money for the war ; but their efforts were 
paralyzed by the want of concert with each other, by the 
necessity of awaiting orders from England, and by the 
dilatory and do-nothing policy of the incompetent gen- 
erals sent over to command them. On the other hand, 
Montcalm, as general-in-chief of the French, not being 
obliged to take counsel with any one (unless it was the 
governor of Canada), speedily collected a force of about 
eight thousand men, including Canadians and Indians, with 
which he passed up lakes Champlain and George, and laid 
siege to Fort William Henry. The garrison here was nearly 
three thousand strong, commanded by Colonel Monroe, a 
brave officer, and General Webb was at Fort Edward, only 
fourteen miles away, with four thousand more. But the 
latter made no effort to succor the beleagured fort, and 
manifested so much indifference to its fate that he was sus- 
pected of treachery. After standing a close siege for six 
days, and seeing that he was to have no relief from General 
Webb, Colonel Monroe capitulated on terms honorable to 
himself and the garrison. But the savage auxiliaries of 
the French, paying no regard to the articles of capitula- 
tion, nor to the entreaty of Montcalm, fell upon the En- 
glish after the surrender, robbed them of their baggage 
and other effects, massacred their sick and wounded, and 
killed and scalped the Indians in their service. 

The unexpected capture of this valuable post, together 
with the Indian atrocities attending it, caused great alarm 
throughout New York and New England, and, when too 
late, large re-inforcements of militia were assembled and 
sent forward to Albany and Fort Edward. Meantime, 
however. General Montcalm, after ravaging the settle- 
ments on the Mohawk River, retired into Canada. 

Thus far the war had been very disastrous and dis- 
couraging to the English. After three consecutive cam- 
paigns, the French not only retained every foot of the 



332 The Seven Years' War. 

disputed territory, but had captured Oswego, driven their 
antagonists from Lake George, and, through their Indian 
confederates, had carried the brand and tomahawk into 
the heart of the English settlements. To remedy this 
series of defeats in America, as well as elsewhere, Will- 
iam Pitt, afterward Earl of Chatham, was called to the 
head of the English ministry. He took the helm in June, 
1757, and by his vigor and consummate ability, soon gave 
a new and surprising turn to affairs. 

In the spring of 1758, General Abercrombie, who 
had been appointed to the chief command in place of 
Lord Loudon, found himself at the head of about fifty 
thousand fighting men, one-half of whom were regulars. 
This was the largest force that had ever been seen in 
America, and from it was expected great results. On the 
other hand, all the French Canadians capable of bearing 
arms did not exceed twenty thousand, and they had been 
so constantly in the service that agriculture was neglected, 
and the horrors of partial famine were added to those of 
war. 

On the 28th of May a powerful armament, which had 
been fitted out in England, sailed from Halifax for the 
reduction of Louisburg — the Dunkirk of New France — 
which was defended by the Chevalier de Drucourt, with 
3,100 men. The English fleet, consisting of twenty ships 
of the line and eighteen frigates, besides numerous trans- 
ports, was commanded by Admiral Boscawen, and carried 
a land force of fourteen thousand men, under General 
Amherst. Arrived before Louislnirg the 2d of June, a 
close investment was begun of tlie town both by sea and 
land. After a stubborn defense, the French garrison sur- 
rendered on the 27th of July, and, together with the 
sailors and marines (amounting in all to 5,737 men), were 
transported prisoners of war to England. The loss of 
this colossal fortress, with all its cannon, mortars, miHtary 
stores, and shipping in the harbor, was the most etfectual 
blow that France had received since the beginning of the 
war. It made the Eua-Jish masters of the entire coast from 



Defeat of Genereil Abercrombie at Ticonderoga. 333 

Halifax to the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and greatly 
facilitated their conquest of Canada.* 

Early in July of that year, General Abercrombie moved 
with an arm}- of fifteen thousand effective men against Fort 
Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain. Montcalm had mean- 
time thrown himself with a strong force into the fort, and 
had so obstructed the approach to it by an abatis of felled 
trees that it was impregnable, except by the processes of a 
regular siege. The English troops, with more courage than 
calculation, attacked the enemy's lines in front, and, after 
a desperate conflict of four hours, were routed with heavy 
loss, and retreated precipitately to their camp at the foot of 
Lake George. To ofl'set this mortifying defeat, the result 
of bad generalship. Colonel John Bradstreet was shortly 
detached, with a force of three thousand provincials, on an 
expedition againset Fort Frontenac. He crossed the outlet 
of Ontario Lake, landed within a mile of the fort, planted 
his batteries, and speedily compelled the surrender of its 
garrison and munitions. By the capture and demolition of 
Fort Frontenac, the English gained practical control of 
Lake Ontario, and cut off the main line of communication 
between Montreal and the French posts in the West. 

While these momentous events were transpiring in the 
north. General Joseph Forbes, who had been appointed to 
command the expedition to the Ohio, was slowly advancing, 
with an army of seven thousand men (including wagoners, 
sutlers, and camp-followers), to the conquest of Fort Du- 
quesne. The British general left Philadelphia in June, and 
was joined en route by Colonel Washington, with two regi- 
ments of Virginia militia. In consequence of the serious 
obstacles encountered in opening a new road across the 
Alleghanies, this army was greatly retarded in its march, 



■■ The fortifications at Louisburg (wliicli stood on ttie south-eastern 
side of Cape Breton Island) had been thirty years in building, and had 
cost the French government over $5,000,000. After this second capture 
by the British, the fortress was demolished and never again re-built. 
The town itself was ruined during the siege, and its present population 
comprises only a few fishermen. 



334 The Seven Years' War. 

aud did not reach tlie head of the Ohio till the 25th of 
November. 

In the meantime Colonel Grant, commanding a de- 
tachment from the main army, had pushed ahead to recon- 
noiter the situation of the fort. But he was suddenly at- 
tacked and driven back with considerable loss, by M. Aubry, 
who had recently arrived with a reinforcement of French 
troops from the Illinois. 

When General Forbes reached Fort Duquesne, he found 
it deserted and burned. The French garrison, numbering 
about five hundred men, had set fire to the wooden building 
on the preceding night, and fled clown the river in boats? 
carrying with them their ordnance and stores. Taking 
quiet possession of the burnt fort, Forbes caused it to be 
forthwith repaired, and changed its name to Fort Pitt, in 
compliment to the English prime minister. At the same 
time he sent out a body of men to the battle-ground on the 
Monongahela, to bury the dead soldiers of Braddock's 
army, whose bones had been left to bleach there for three 
years on the hillsides. 

Leaving two regiments of provincials as a garrison at 
Fort Pitt, General Forbes returned by short marches to 
Philadelphia ; but his constitution was so broken by the ex- 
posure and fatigues of the campaign, that he died shortly 
after his arrival thither. And now the Indian nations, 
throughout the region of the Upper Ohio, seeing that the 
French were losing ground, and ever ready to join the 
stronger side,* made overtures of peace to the English. A 
treaty of pacification was accordingly entered into with 
them, which gave security for a few years to the border 
settlements in Pennsylvania and Virginia. 

In passing down the Ohio from Fort Ducpiesne, M. 
Aubry, the French commander, made a halt about thirty- 
six miles above its mouth, and there on the site of a former 
fortlet, on the northern bank of the river, commenced 
building a fort, at which he left one hundred men for gar- 



*ln this particular, tliey were not unlike many of the more civilized 
descendants of Adam. 



Fort Massac on the Ohio. 335 

rison duty, and returned with the rest to Fort Chartres. 
The new post was called Fort Massac, in compliment to M. 
Massac, or Marsiac, the officer who first commanded there. 
This was the last fort erected by the French on the Oliio, 
and it was occupied by a garrison of French troops until 
the evacuation of the country under the stipulations of the 
Treaty of Paris, in 1763 * 

*■ Mouette's " Valley of the Mississippi," vol. i, p. 317. 

Note. — The early French history of Fort Massac dates back to the 
beginniug of the last century, but it is obscured by time and fiction. 
Dr. Lewis C. Beck, in his " Gazetteer of Illinois and Missouri " (Albany, 
N. Y., 1823, p. 114), describing the place, says: "A fort was first built 
here by the French when in possession of this country. The Indians, 
who were then at war with them, laid a curious stratagem to take it, 
which answered their purpose. A number of them appeared in the 
daytime on the opposite side of the river, each of whom was covered 
with a bear-skin, and walked on all-fours. Supposing them to be bears, 
a party of the French crossed the river in pursuit of them. The re- 
mainder of the troops left their quarters, and resorted to the bank of the 
river in front of the fort to observe the sport. In the meantime a large 
body of warriors, who were concealed in the woods near by, came 
silently up behind the fort and entered it without opposition, and very 
few of the Frenchmen escaped tlie carnage. They afterward built 
another fort on the same ground, and called it Massac (or Massacre), in 
memory of this disastrous event." This romantic story is repeated by 
Judge Hall, in his " Sketches of the West," and by other western 
writers. Ex-Governor Reynolds, in his "Own Times" (2d ed., p. 16), 
writes more specifically of the fort, as follows: "Fort Massac was first 
established by the French about the year 1711, and was also a mission- 
ary station. It was only a small fort until the war commenced in 1755, 
between the English and the French. In 1756 (1758), the fort was en- 
larged and made a respectable fortress, considering the wilderness it was 
in. It was at this place that the Christian missionaries (first) instructed 
the southern Indians in the gospel precepts, and it was here also that 
the French soldiers made a resolute stand against the enemy." Fort 
Massac was subsequently maintained by the United States government 
as a military post, and a few families resided in the immediate vicinity, 
until after the close of the war of 1812-14. During this later period of 
its history it was sometimes called the " old Cherokee Fort," from the 
river of that name, better known as the Tennessee. In 1855 Reynolds 
visited the place, which, in his "Own Times," he thus describes: "The 
outside_ walls were one hundred and thirty-five feet square, and at each 
angle strong bastions were erected. The walls were palisaded, with 
earth between the wood ; a large well was sunk in the fortress ; and the 
whole appeared to have been strong and substantial in its day. Three 
or four acres of graveled walks were made on the north of the fort, ou 



336 The Seven Years' War. 

Stimulated by the brilliant successes that had attended 
their arms in the campaign of 1758, the British ministry re- 
solved to make a supreme effort the next year for the com- 
plete conquest of Canada. The Anglo-American colonies, 
zealously seconding the exertions of the home government, 
brought into the field twenty thousand provincials, and 
raised a large sum of money for their equipment and sus- 
tenance. At a general military council, held early in the 
year 1759, it was decided to invade Canada with three dif- 
ferent armies, which should enter the country by three 
separate routes, and commence offensive operations at about 
the same time. The command of the first and principal 
expedition, which was destined against Quebec, was in- 
trusted to General James Wolfe, a young brigadier of great 
enterprise and promise, who had distinguished himself by 
his valor and conduct at the reduction of Louisburg. Of 
the two subsidiary expeditions, one, under General Sir Jef- 
frey Amherst, was to proceed by way of Lake Champlain 
to Montreal, and the other w^as to march against Fort 
Niagara. 

General Amherst's operations were impeded and re- 
stricted by a lack of vessels and transports. Yet Ticon- 
deroga and Crown Point successively fell into his hands 
without a struggle — the danger to Quebec having caused 
the withdrawal of the greater part of their French garri- 
sons — and a detachment of his army attacked and burned 
the Indian village of St. Francis, whence many of those 
scalping parties were believed to have issued, which had 
ravaged the frontiers of New England. General Prideaux 
was unhappily killed by the bursting of a gun at the siege 
of Niagara; but his successor in command, Sir William 
Johnson, on the 24th of July, defeated a force of twelve 
hundred French and Indians, who had advanced to relieve 
the fort, and he pressed the siege so vigorously that the 
garrison soon (capitulated. Johnson should then have 



which the soldiers paraded. These walks were made in exact angles, 
and are beautifully graveled with pebbles from the river. The site is 
one of the most beautiful on La Belle Riviere, anil commands a view that 
is charming." 



Wolfe's Victory Over Montcalm at Quebec. 337 

passed down Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence, to co- 
operate with Wolfe in the attack upon Quebec, but the 
want of facilities for transporting his troops prevented the 
execution of this purpose. 

In the latter part of June, General Wolfe appeared in 
the St. Lawrence, below Quebec, with a powerful fleet, and an 
army of eight thousand regular soldiers. His force, though 
hardly equal, in number to that of the French, was bet- 
ter equipped and provisioned ; but the latter had the ad- 
vantage of one of the strongest natural fortresses in the 
world, which had been greatly strengthened by art, and 
they were commanded by a general of consummate ability, 
who had merited the first honors in war. So long as Wolfe 
sought to bombard Quebec from his batteries at Point Levi, 
on the opposite height of the St. Lawrence, or assaulted 
the French intrenchments below the city, along the St. 
Charles, his efforts were easily frustrated by the tact and 
vigilance of Montcalm. But, after trying various expedi- 
ents, the British general at last hit upon the bold design of 
moving his forces from the Isle of Orleans (his base of op- 
erations) up the river, and then dropping down at night, in 
flat- bottomed boats, and silently scaling the high plateau 
known as the Heights of Abraham, at a point about one 
mile above the citadel of Quebec. This critical movement 
was as skillfully executed as it had been daringly planned, 
though the aclivity was so steep and rugged that the sol- 
diers could, with difficulty, climb it by clinging to the pro- 
jecting rocks and roots of trees. Learning with surprise 
and chagrin that the English had thus gained a position in 
his rear, where his defenses were rather weak, and seeing 
that a battle was unavoidable, Montcalm drew out his 
army of five thousand men on the sloping plain behind the 
town, and put the fate of Canada on the hazard of a single 
engagement. Nor was the issue long in doubt. After 
some skirmishing in front by a body of light armed Cana- 
dian and Indian marksmen, the French advanced briskly 
to the charge. The English received them with firmness, 
but reserved their fire until the enemy was near, and then 
22 



338 The Seven Years' War. 

delivered it with decisive effect. The French fought with 
valor and determination until the fall of their general and 
his second in command, when they retreated, and were pur- 
sued almost to the gates of the city. 

This famous battle was fought September 13, 1759. 
The English lost in killed and wounded six hundred men, 
and the French nearly one thousand. Generals Wolfe and 
Montcalm were both mortally wounded, the former dying 
on the field of conflict, and the latter on the next day within 
the city walls.* On the 18th of that month the citadel of 
Quebec was formally surrendered, and received a British 
garrison of five thousand men. The royal ensign of France, 
which, with a single interval of three years, had waved 
over this fortress for a century and a half, was now low- 
ered from its stafl", and in its place was unfurled the victo- 
rious cross of St. George. 

But the submission of Canada did not immediately 
follow after the fall of Quebec. The war was further pro- 
tracted. The Chevalier de Levis succeeded to the com- 
mand made vacant by the death of Montcalm, and strove 
to retake the city by a coup de main. Another pitched 
battle was fought a few miles above Quebec, on the 28th 
of April, 1760, in which the French army gained the ad- 
vantage, and they made the most strenuous yet unavailing 
eflbrts to recover their lost citadel and seat of power. It 
was not until the 8th of September, 1760, when the united 
British forces were concentrated before Montreal, that ar- 
ticles of capitulation were signed by the governor-general, 
the Marquis de Vaudreuil. By these terms Canada and 
its dependencies were surrendered to the English crown, 
with a reservation to the French inhabitants of their civil 
and religious privileges. 

Equally unsuccessful, both in Europe and America, and 
exhausted by her great and protracted exertions, France 
now made overtures of peace. These were favorably con- 



* After receiviuii; his mortal wound, Montcalm was carri.Ml into the 
city ; and when informed that he could survive only a few hours, he 
replied: " So much the better; I shall not then live to see the surren- 
der of Quebec." 



Submission of Canada to the English Grown. 339 

sidered by England, and every thing seemed in a fair way 
of adjustment, when the negotiations were suddenly broken 
off by the attempt of the court of Versailles to bring in the 
aft'airs of Spain and Germany. A secret compact of the 
Bourbon princes to support each other, in peace and in war, 
had rendered Spain averse to a treaty which weakened her 
ally, and this induced France to once more try the fortunes 
of war. As the interests of these two nations were thus 
identical, it only remained for the King of England to pro- 
claim hostilities with Spain. The ^ew England colonies, 
being interested in the reduction of the West Indies, on 
account of their commerce with them, furnished a liberal 
quota of men and means for continuing the war; and 
a great fleet was dispatched from old England, bearing a 
land force of some sixteen thousand men. These combined 
forces acted with such vigor and celerity that, before the 
end of the next year, Great Britain had gained possession 
of Havana (the key to the Gulf of Mexico), Grenada, Martin- 
ique, St. Lucia, St, Vincent, and the Caribbee Islands. 

The rapid progress of her conquests, which threatened 
the remaining possessions of France and Spain, was arrested, 
however, by the exchange of preliminary articles of peace 
at Fontainebleau, toward the close of the year 1762. On 
the 10th of the ensuing February, 1763, a definitive treaty of 
peace was signed at Paris, and it was soon after ratified by 
the respective powers. By this memorable treaty, France 
ceded to Great Britain all the conquests made by the latter 
in JS^orth Anaerica during the war. The western boundary 
of the British possessions was fixed to run along the mid- 
dle of the Mississippi River, from its source down to the 
Iberville, and thence along the center of that river or bayou, 
and through Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the 
Mexican Gulf. All of Louisiana lying west of the Missis- 
sippi, together with the district of !N^ew Orleans on the 
east, had been ceded from France to Spain by a private 
treaty, executed at Fontainebleau on November 3, 1762, 
which was permitted to stand.* By the treaty of Paris, 



See Article seventh of the Paris treaty in Chap. XIX of this work. 



340 The Seven Years' War. 

England also acquired large territorial possessions in India 
and elsewhere. 

Such was the final outcome of this prolonged and san- 
guinary war, whereby the great power of the French mon- 
archy in America was permanently annihilated. The strug- 
gle was computed to have cost the Anglo-American colonies 
thirty thousand lives, and over sixteen millions of dollars, 
of which only five millions were ever reimbursed to them by 
the government of Great Britain. Among the more direct 
advantages accruing to the colonies from the war, was a 
marked increase in their trade and population ; while the 
indirect benefits, such as unity and concert of action in 
emergency, and knowledge and experience in military 
science, prepared the way for the War of Independence. 



Notice of Montcalm. 



Louis Jose])h, Marquis de Moncalm-Gozon de St. V6rain, the most 
celebrated soldier in French- American history, was born at the chateau 
of Candiac, near Nismes, in the south of France, on the 29th of Febru- 
ary, 1712, and died in Quebec, Canada, September 14, 1759. His educa- 
tion was directed by one Dumas, a natural son of his grandfather, and at 
the age of fourteen he entered the French ariny as an ensign, in the regi- 
ment of Hainault. He served with gallantry and distinction in Italy 
and Germany, and was promoted from one position to another until he 
attaijied the rank of general. In the spring of 1756 he was appointed to 
succeed the Baron Dieskau in command of the French forces in North 
America, and arrived at Quebec about the middle of May. His subse- 
quent eventful career is written in the history of that war. It is believed 
that if he had received timely reinforcements from his home govern- 
ment, he could have maintained the authority of France in Canada. 
General Montcalm is described as a man of small stature, with a fine 
head, a vivacious countenance, and a rapid, impetuous speech. He had 
a nice sense of honor and ardent patriotism, combined with the tastes 
of a scholar, and a love of rural pursuits. He possessed true military 
genius, and as a commander stands very high, though not in the highest 
rank. His last years were embittered, and his popularity impaired, by 
contentions with the governor of Canada, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, 
who, during the life of his rival, and after his death, lost no opportunity 
of traducing him. (Appleton's Cyclop, of Amer. Biog., vol. iv., p. 3()4.) 
Upon the final overthrow of the French power in Canada, the friends of 
the dead general preferred serious charges to the king against Governor 
Vaudreuil, who was thereupon summoned to appear and answer them 



Wolfe and Montcalm. 341 

in France. But, after a full investigation of the acts of liis administra- 
tion by a competent tribunal, he was exonerated. Having lost his prop- 
erty, he died in Paris, October 20, 1765. 

On the 20th of November, 1827, during Lord Dalhousie's adminis- 
tration in Canada, when the animosities and race prejudices, engen- 
dered and perpetuated by centuries of cruel warfare, had been in a 
measure obliterated, the corner-stone of a monument to the joint mem- 
ory of Montcalm and Wolfe was laid, with military and Masonic cere- 
monies, in tlie Palace Garden, formerly attached to the old Castle of 
St. Louis, in the Upper Town of Quebec. This appropriate monument — 
built of gray granite in the form of an obelisk — is sixty-five feet high, 
and bears upon its pedestal the following Latin inscription : 

Wolfe — Montcalm. 

Mortem Virtuis Communem, 

Famam Historia, 

Monumentum Posteritas. 

Dedit A. D. 1827. 

Which, being freely rendered into English, reads thus: "Military vir- 
tue gave them a common death; History a common fame; Posterity a 
common monument."* 



*In 1832 Lord Aylmar, governor-general of Canada, caused to be erected on the 
Plains of Abraham, at the spot wliere Wolfe fell, a granite monument ten feet high. 
But it became so broken and defaced in a few years by relic hunters, that it was re- 
placed in 1849 by a Doric column, inclosed by an iron fence. This beautiful pillar 
was erected at the expense of the British Army in Canada; and on the west side of 
its pedestal, as on the former monument, are inscribed the words: "Here died 
Wolfe Victorious, Sept. 13, 1759." 



342 Conspiracy and War of Pontiac. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

1760-17(35. 
INDIAN CONSPIRACY AND WAR OF PONTIAC. 

During the prolonged and bitter struggle between 
France and Great Britain for supremacy on this continent, 
as hereinbefore succinctly narrated, the French settlements 
in Upper and Lower Louisiana, being remote from the 
principal theater of warfare, were but slightly afiected by 
its various fluctuations, though most of the garrisons in this 
western province were withdrawn, from time to time, to 
participate in the ensanguined contest. The dread of 
British conquest no doubt operated to dull the energies and 
cloud the future of these detached colonists ; yet they lived 
on in comparative tranquillity and happiness, no scenes of 
rapine and bloodshed occurring in their midst to disturb 
the even tenor of their lives. It was only when the war 
betw^een the two rival kingdoms had ceased, and after the 
peace of Paris, that its wide reaching results were brought 
directly home to them. 

M. Neyon de Villiers* was then major-commandant 
of the Illinois, and the Sieur d' Annville was king's ad- 
vocate and judge, doing duty as commissary. Among the 
few records extant of their official acts, we find the grant 
of a certain tract of land, for use as a stock farm, to one 
Joseph Labusciere, who had^made written application there- 
for "at New Chartre, the 22d September, 1761."t 



* DeVilliers had been taken prisoner by the English at Fort Niagara, 
in July, 1759, but was afterward exchanged or released. 

t Appended to Labusciere's application appears the following official 
indorsement: 

" In consideration of the above declarations and others from other 
quarters, we have granted and do grant to Joseph Labusiere the land 
(called la belle fontaine) situated between the hills and Outard's marshy 



Major Rogers Occupies Detroit. 343 

We now proceed to recount the military transactions 
that took place in the West after the capitulation of Mon- 
treal. On the 12th of September, 1760, Major Robert 
Rogers, a gallant colonial officer of New Hampshire, re- 
ceived orders from General Amherst to ascend the lakes 
with a strong detachment of rangers, and take possession, 
in the name of his Britannic majesty, of Detroit, Mackinac 
and other western posts still held by the French. While 
Rogers' flotilla was on its way up Lake Erie, being delayed 
by stormy weather, he dispatched a courier in advance to 
inform Captain Belestre, the French commandant at De- 
troit, that Canada had surrendered, and that an English 
force v^as on its way to relieve him of his command. 
Taking umbrage at the informality of the notice, and 
doubtless wanting a pretext for delay, Belestre incited the 
Indians around the post to measures of resistance. Ac- 
cordingly, when Major Rogers reached the head of Lake 
Erie, he found a force of about four hundred warriors 
ready to dispute his farther progress. But through the 
active intervention of Pontiac, or Pondiac, the great Ot- 
tawa chief (with whom Rogers had recently held an inter- 
view on the lake shore), he and his men were allowed to 
advance unmolested to Detroit. They arrived thither in 
the last week of November, and on the 29th of that month, 
this military and trading post, the most considerable in the 
central lake region, passed into the hands of the English. 
The French garrison, composed of three officers and thirty 
privates, quietly laid down their arms, to the astonishment 
of the Indians present, and were sent prisoners of war to 
Montreal. The Canadian residents of the district were left 
in the undisturbed possession of their houses and lands, but 



prayed for by him, according as it is explained and described in the 
present petition, on condition tliat the said land shall be subject to the 
public charges, and that it shall be put to profit or built upon in the 
course of the year beginning from this day, under the penalty of being 
again reunited to the king's domain. 

'•Given at Fort Charte, this fourth day of January, 1762. 

(Signed), " Noyon Devillikrs. 

" D'Annville." 



344 Conspiracy and War of Pontiac. 

were required to take the oath of allegiance to the British 
crown. 

As heretofore remarked, the first permanent military- 
settlement of Detroit was made by Antoine la Mothe Cadil- 
lac, in July, 1701. He had previously been in command of 
the post at Mackinac, and in his voyages up and down the 
lakes had observed the strategic value of the place, com- 
manding the passage between Lakes Erie and St. Clair. 
Returning to France in 1699, he laid the matter before 
Count Pontchartrain, minister for the Colonies, who author- 
ized him to erect a fort on the strait. It was built on the 
plain adjoining the western brink of the river, and at or 
near the site of the older fortlet of St. Joseph, erected by 
Du L'hut in 1686. It was named by Cadillac, Fort Pont- 
chartrain, but it early assumed the name of Detroit, which, 
in French, means a strait. From that time until the close 
of the Anglo-American war of 1812-14, the history of this 
post is one of marked vicissitudes — of sieges, captures, bat- 
tles, and bloodshed. As the fort slowly grew into a village, 
with a fixed population, it was inclosed with a quadrangular, 
wooden stockade, having two gates as the only entrances. 
At the beginning of the English possession, the French- 
Canadian population of Detroit, including their settlements 
along the river, was estimated as high as twenty-five hun- 
dred persons, but the number soon diminished. The fort, 
then embracing the entire town, is described as a stout pali- 
sade, twenty-five feet in height, furnished with bastions at 
the four angles, and block-houses over the two gateways. 
A short distance below the fort, on the same side of the 
strait, stood a village of the Pottawatomies. To the south- 
east, on the opposite bank, was that of the Wy an dots, and 
five miles above the latter, on the same bank, lay the vil- 
lage of the Ottawas. The river, half a mile in width, ran 
through a landscape of singular beauty, and in its pellucid 
waters were mirrored the outlines of the stately forest trees 
that stood on either bank. Back from the full-flowing 
stream rose the whitewashed cottages of the settlers, while 
in the distance were clustered the Indian wigwams, from 
which curling columns of smoke rose high into the pure 



French Intrigues Among the Indians. 345 

northern atmosphere. At the Isle a la Peche, near the out- 
let of Lake St. Clair, dwelt Pontiac, " the master spirit of 
this sylvan paradise, who, like Satan of old, revolved in his 
powerful mind schemes for marring its beauty and inno- 
cence." Here, according to Rogers' journal, he lived with 
his squaws and children, and here, no doubt, he might have 
been often seen reclining on a rush mat, like any ordinary 
warrior. 

Directly after the British occupation of Detroit, Major 
Rogers sent officers to take possession of Forts Miami on 
the Maumee, and Ouatanon on the Wabash. The major 
himself started to relieve the French posts on the upper 
lakes, but was prevented from carrying out his purpose by 
the early approach of winter. During the ensuing spring 
of 1761, however, the forts on the Straits of Mackinac and 
St. Mary, at the head of Green Bay, and on the river St. 
Joseph, were all garrisoned by small detachments of British 
troops. But the flag of France still w^aved over the posts 
in Illinois and Louisiana, which had not been included in 
the stipulations of the surrender at Montreal. 

The English were now in military possession of the 
whole of Canada ; yet the task of maintaining their author- 
ity in this vast region was found to be one of no small dif- 
ficulty, because of the general dissatisfaction with the change 
of rulers pervading its inhabitants. The French settlers, 
who formed the ruling element, having their national liatred 
intensified by years of warfare, were irreconcilable, and many 
of the more discontented left their Canadian homes and re- 
moved to Illinois and Louisiana, w^hich still belonged to 
France. Here they continued to cherish their animosity 
and foment resistance, still hoping that Canada might be 
again restored to France. Illinois thus became a place of 
refuge and a center of French intrigues against the British 
rule. Canadian traders and refugees went every-where 
among the north-western tribes, whose good will they had 
long before secured by a conciliatory policy, and incited 
them to take up arms against the English, who, it was de- 
clared, were seeking to compass their destruction by hedg- 
ing them round with forts and settlements, and by stirring 



346 Conspiracy and War of Pontiac. 

up the Cherokees and Chickasaws to attack them. To give 

the greater efficacy to their arguments, the French traders 

1 liberally distributed among the Indian chiefs guns and am- 

,' munition, which the English refused to do, and otherwise 

C ', treated them as inferiors. It should be observed that fire- 

^ arms, blankets, and other articles of European fabric had 

\ been so long supplied by the French to the western Indians, 

that they were now become a necessity to the existence of 

the latter. 

jy_^ Cv- "^H^v^ Under these altered circumstances, Pontiac, who still 

:^^]^<t«4^ hated tlie British, although he had interfered on their side 

\ g-j so far as to permit Major Rogers to take peaceable posses- 

rfy*,^Jf sion of Detroit, soon began to show his old partiality for the 

2/TAi**^ "^_^ French. He was now some fifty years of age, and in the 

/£ / yiiJUy^^^ prime of his powers. Pontiac was born on the Ottawa 

^^ ^ ^iJl^^^'^^ about the year 1712, and was, it is said, the son of an 

<?2*yi^ i ^^il^^ ^1' Chippewa woman. It has been claimed that he 

y^jy^^ ft the Ojibwas and Pottawatomies, he became in time the prin- 
aL».3^^^ cipal chief of the three tribes. In 1746 he defended the 
"^ /%,^jj^9i ^ chief post of Detroit from an attack of some discontented 
^ 1^ ^^ribes of the north, and in 1755 he appears to have com- 

JjJjC^ jZ^ tM '•"ttianded a band of Ottawa warriors at General Braddock's 

J^^y^^^*"^ defeat. During the war between France and England he 
(?ft<**^'' ii«-^*^"^^^ valiantly on the side of the former, and for his 

1^ 'uiJ^**"****^ courage and devotion was presented with a full French 

JV^>**^ ^ After the final defeat of the French and the surrender 

\ X^tf^ of Canada, Pontiac at first manifested a disposition to cul- 
^tf^ tivate the friendship of the conquerors, but was disappointed 



Sac lineage, but he belonged, by adoption at least, 
the Ottawa tribe.* As the Ottawas were in alliance with 



^uniform by the Marquis de Montcalm, only a short time be 
\\SJ^ * fC*^ fore the fall of Quebec 



* Reynolds says, in his " Pioneer History," that Pontiac had French 
blood in his veins; and his alleged lifijht complexion and strong bias 
toward the French lend credence to the assertion. The traditional de- 
scriptions of this Indian chief vary in regard to his features and the 
color of his skin, but all concur in depicting him as a savage of sym- 
metrical and noble form, of proud and haughty demeanor, and of com- 
manding address. 



Planning of the Conspiracy. 347 

in the advantages he expected to derive from their favor. 
In the now^ changed state of affairs, his sagacious mind dis- 
cerned the danger which threatened his race. The equi- 
Hbrinm that had hitherto subsisted between the French 
and English gave the Indians the balance of power, and 
both parties were compelled to respect their rights to some 
extent. But, under British domination, their importance 
as allies was gone, and their doom sealed, unless they could 
restore the power of the French and use it to check the en- 
croachments of the English. Inspired with this idea, as 
well as by ambition and patriotism, he sent trusty mes- 
sengers to the nations of the upper lakes, to those on the 
Illinois, the Mississippi, and Ohio, and southward to the 
Gulf of Mexico. In the autumn of 1762 his emissaries, 
bearing the red-stained hatchet and war-belt as symbols of 
their mission, passed quickly from tribe to tribe, and every- 
where the dusky denizens of the forest assembled, eager to 
hear the fiery message, which had been prepared by the 
leader for the occasion. The attending chiefs and warriors, 
moved by these stirring appeals, pledged themselves to 
unite in the league and war against the common enemy of 
their race.* 

Thus, by his own superior energy, activity, and ad- 
dress, Pontiac became the acknowledged head and front of 
the most extensive confederation of Algonquin nations ever 
before known in Indian history. He not only conceived 
the great scheme of uniting all these nations in a league or 
conspiracy against the English colonists, but of simulta- 
neously attacking all the accessible forts of the latter, and, 
after butchering their garrisons, to turn upon the defense- 
less settlements and continue the death-dealing work until 
the entire English population should be exterminated, or 
driven into the sea. The conspiracy was planned or ma- 
tured at a council of the Ottawas, Pottawatomies, Chippe- 
was, and Hurons, held near Detroit about April 27, 1763, 
when Pontiac made a speech recounting the wrongs and 
indignities that had been suffered by the Indians, and 

*See Davidson & Stuve's Hifit. of 111., pp. 140, 141. 



348 Conspiracy and War of Pontiac. 

prophesied their extermination. The plot was well laid, 
and it was more successfully executed than might have 
been expected, considering the limited resources of the na- 
tives, and the rankling jealousies and enmities that pre- 
vailed among the diiferent tribes. 

Prior to this, on February 10, 1763, was signed the 
treaty of Paris, by which all the territorial possessions of 
France east of the Mississipi were ceded to Great Britain. 
During the following spring, in pursuance of this act of 
cession, all the French posts in Southern Louisiana, on 
the east side of the Mississippi, but not including the 
district of New Orleans, were occupied by English gar- 
risons. The immediate occupation of Illinois, however, 
was not deemed practicable, owing to the strong barrier of 
hostile Indians surrounding the forts there, and the French 
officers then in command were therefore authorized by Sir 
Jeffrey Amherst, the British commander-in-chief, to retain 
their posts until formally relieved. In the exercise of this 
trust they seem to have been guilty of a breach of faith, 
both in furnishing the Indians with arms and supplies, and 
in concealing from them the transfer of the country to the 
English.'-^ But for this misplaced confidence, or want of 
soldierly foresight on the part of General Amherst, the war 
that ensued might have been abbreviated, and thus divested 
of some of its barbarities. 

According to the plan concerted by Pontiac and his 
council of war, the last of May (1763) was designated as 
the time for the general uprising, when each tribe was to 



® " It now appears from the best authoritiea (says a Report of Sir 
William Johnson, .Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to the Board of 
Trade, December 26, 1764), and can be proved by the oaths of several re- 
spectable persons, prisoners among the Indians of Illinois, and from the 
accounts of the Indians themselves, that not only many French traders, 
but also French officers, went among the Indians, as they said, fully 
authorized to assure them that the French king was determined to sup- 
port them to the utmost, and not only invited them to visit the Illinois, 
where they were plentifully supplied with ammunition and other neces- 
saries, but also sent several canoe loads at different times up the Illi- 
nois River to the Miamis, as well as up the Ohio to the Shawanese and 
Delawares." 



Pontiac's Siege of Detroit. 349 

attack the garrison of the nearest English fort, and the se- 
cret was so closely kept that two-thirds of the posts at- 
tacked were captured, either by surprise or stratagem. 
The taking of Detroit was to be the preliminary task of 
Pontiac himself, and the date of its execution was set for 
the 7th of May. He accordingly attempted, with a band 
of trained warriors, to seize that post, but was foiled in his 
design by the vigilance of Major Henry Gladwin, the Eng- 
lish commandant, who had received information of the 
plot the day before, from a young Chippewa woman, who 
had formed an attachment for him and wished to save his 
life.* 

The assault upon Detroit was renewed by Pontiac, 
with an augmented force, on the 12th of May, but, failing 
in this, he turned it into an irregular siege. The garrison, 
meantime, obtained food from the neighboring Canadian 
settlers, who likewise supplied the Indians in turn. In con- 
sequence of the largely increased number of his followers, 
Pontiac found it necessary to make regular levies on the 
French farmers for provisions, and in lieu of other com- 
pensation, he gave them his promissory notes, scrawled on 
pieces of birch bark and signed with the figure of an otter, 
the totem of his family. This imitation of the practices of 
civilized men might have been suggested to him by some 
of the farmers themselves, yet it is related to his credit that 
all of these notes were afterward paid. 

Supplies and reinforcements were sent to the belea- 
guered fort in small schooners, by way of Lake Erie ; but 
these were mostly captured by the Indians, who compelled 
their prisoners to row them to Detroit in hope of surpris- 
ing the garrison. At length, however, the garrison was re- 
inforced, and thereupon took the oftensive. On the Slst 
of July the English attacked Pontiac at his camp near the 
mouth of a little stream known as Bloody Run ; but in this 
engagement the assailants were defeated, and retreated to 



* It may be hoped that no iconoclast will arise, as in the case of Po- 
cahontas, to demolish this traditional story of the devoted Chippewa 
maiden. 



350 Conspiracy and War of Pontiac. 

the fort with a loss of tifty-niue men in killed and wounded. 
The siege of Detroit was maintained in a desultory manner 
until about the 10th of October, when the ammunition of 
the natives fell short, and they became discouraged. 

Although failing in all their efforts to capture this 
coveted post, the Indians were more successful elsewhere. 
It is true that Forts Pitt and Niagara, which they also at- 
tacked, proved too strong for their destruction ; but be- 
tween the first and twentieth of June, they took Fort Ve- 
nango, LeBoeuf, Presque Isle, Sandusky, Miami (on the 
Maumee), St. Joseph,* Mackinac and LeBaye,t and either 
murdered or made prisoners of their respective garrisons, 
only a few effecting their escape. The destruction of life 
and property at these widely separated posts was but the 
prelude to a general Indian war, which carried terror and 
desolation into many of the fairest and most fertile valleys 
of Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. 

General Amherst had now become aware that the oc- 
cupation of the Illinois forts by French garrisons was con- 
tributing to prolong and intensify the contest, and he would 
gladly have displaced them at once, but still found it im- 
practicable to break through the cordon of hostile tribes 
by which they were environed. His only expedient, there- 
fore, was to write to Neyon de Villiers at Fort Chartres, 
instructing him to make known to the Indian chiefs and 
warriors their altered-relations under the treaty of cession. 
That French otficer, being thus compelled to divulge what 
he had long concealed, reluctantly wrote to Pontiac, saying, 
" that he must not expect any assistance from the French ; 
that they and the English were now at peace and regarded 
each other as brothers, and that the Indians should aban- 
don their hostilities, which could lead to no good result."! 



*0n Lake Michigan, formerly called Ft. Miami. 

t At the head of Green Bay. 

X At or before that time De Villiers wrote to D'Abbadie, at New Or- 
leans, that it was the fault of the English if the Indians manifested 
such enmity to them. "The English," said he, "as soon as they be- 
came aware of the advantages secun^d to them by the treaty of cession, 
kept no measures with the Indians, whom they treated with harshness 



Expeditions of Colonels Bouquet and Bradstreet. 351 

This letter was a grievous disappointment to Pontiac, who 
relied for ultimate success upon the continued support of 
the French, and it proved the entering wedge toward the 
breaking up of his prodigious power and influence. Shortly- 
after its reception, he departed from Detroit, with a num- 
ber of his followers, and went southward to the country of 
the Maumee, intending to return and renew the contest the 
next spring. 

The winter of 1763-4 passed without any very note- 
worthy occurrence. In the early summer of 1764, the En- 
glish authorities fitted out two considerable expeditions; one 
to operate against the savages in the central lake region, and 
the other for the punishment of those in the Valley of the 
Ohio. The command of the latter column was entrusted to 
Colonel (afterward General) Henry Bouquet, who marched 
from Fort Pitt, and, encountering the warlike Del a wares 
and Shawnees on the banks of the Muskingham, soon de- 
feated and reduced them to submission. This eflSicient of- 
fi.cer required these Indians to surrender all of their white 
prisoners. In compliance with his demand, they reluctantly 
brought into camp a large number, principally women and 
children, some of whom had been captured during the early 
part of the French war, and had been in captivity so long 
as to have almost forgotten their native tongue and the 
homes of their childhood or youth. 

Colonel Bradstreet, who commanded the other expe- 
dition, proceeding up the southern shore of Lake Erie, 
wrested Sandusky from the hands of the hostile Indians 
and reinforced Detroit. He then sent Captain Thomas 
Morris, with some Canadians and friendly Indians, to in- 
duce the Illinois and their allies to make peace with the 
English. The captain and his party ascended the Maumee 
River to the vicinity of Pontiac's camp, and thence went as 
far as Fort Miami, which had been captured by the Indians 
in the preceding year. But, after experiencing great hard- 
ships, and being subjected to gross indignities by the Miamis 



and the haughtiness of masters, and whose faults they punished hy 
crucifixion, hanging, and ev'ery sort of torment." — Gayarre's Hist, of 
La., Vol. II., p. 98. 



352 Conspiracy and War of Pontiac. 

and Kickapoos, Morris was glad to escape from their grasp 
with his hfe, and returned to Detroit without having ef- 
fected the object of his perilous journey.* 

Previously to this, in the early part of February, 1764, 
Major Arthur Loftus, then doing duty with the 22d regiment 
at Pensacola, Florida,t was ordered to proceed to the Illinois 
and take military possession of the posts there. He accord- 
ingly sailed from Pensacola with four hundred men for that 
purpose, but on his arrival in New Orleans some of them de- 
serted him. On the 27th of February he re-embarked his 
troops, with thirty-seven women and children, in ten heavy 
boats and two pirogues, and started up the Mississippi. Ad- 
vancing slowly, he reached Davion's Bluff, near Tunica 
Bend, on the 19th of March, when he was fired upon by a 
party of Tunica Indians, who had ambushed both sides of the 
river. They killed six and wounded seven of the English 
soldiers, and thus stayed the farther progress of the expe- 
dition. The suspicion was strong among the English that 
the French, at Pointe Coupee, had aided the Tunicas with 
their slaves in this murderous attack. Returning to New 
Orleans in a rage. Major Loftus accused Governor D'Abbadie 
of complicity with the Indians ; but it does not appear that 
the governor was in any way responsible for the unfortunate 
occurrence. On the contrary, he had furnished the British 
officer with an interpreter, and had sent orders to the com- 
mandants of the French posts on the river to afford him 
needed aid and protection, and, in fine, had done all in his 
power to insure the success of his expedition. The truth 
is, that Loftus himself was partly to blame for his failure, 
since he took little pains to conciliate either the Frencli or 
Indians. :}: 

Soon after this abortive effort to reach Fort Chartres, 



*In a letter written during this adventurous trip, dated La Prairie 
des Mascoutins, September 2, 17G4, and addressed to Colonel Bradstreet^ 
at Detroit, Captain Morris suggestively says: "I am certain, sir, that a 
few presents to the chiefs would have a good effect. Kind treatment 
Mill infallibly open a way to the Illinois country." 

t In the treaty of Paris, Florida had been given by Spain to Eug- 
lane in exchange for Havana. 

t See Gayerr^'s History of Louisiana, Vol. II., pp. 102, 103. 



Croghan's Mission of Conciliation. 353 

Captain Pittman started from Mobile to make a second at- 
tempt, but on his arrival in New Orleans he was deterred 
from proceeding farther, owing to the excited state of feel- 
ing among the Indians along the Mississippi. During the 
ensuing summer. Major Robert Farmer was dispatched 
from Mobile, with a part of the 34th regiment of foot, 
upon the same mission, yet he did not advance far before 
he was stopped by the hostile savages. It was not, indeed, 
until the first week in December, 1765, and after the final 
surrender of Fort Chartres, that he arrived with his force in 
the Illinois. 

Such was the continued great influence of Pontiac, and 
such the strength of the combination he had formed among 
the aboriginal tribes of the Mississippi Valley, that General 
Gage (who had succeeded Sir Jefi:rey Amherst as com- 
mander-in-chief of his Britannic Majesty's forces in North 
America) now became convinced that it would be impos- 
sible to eradicate from the minds of the Indians the idea 
of French assistance, so long as the forts in Illinois re- 
mained in the hands of French ofiicers. He therefore un- 
dertook to put a period to this tedious and humiliating war, 
by removing the principal cause of its continuance. After 
the failure of the attempts of Majors Loftus and Farmer, it 
was determined to send troops to the Illinois by way of the 
Ohio River. To facilitate this design, Colonel George Cro- 
ghan, a deputy of the Superintendent of Indian Aft'airs, and 
an experienced trader among the western Indians, together 
with Lieutenant Alexander Fraser, of the English army, 
were sent out in advance, to prepare the savages by ne- 
gotiation for the advent of the projected military expedi- 
tion. They started from Philadelphia in February, 1765, 
attended by a small mounted escort, and carried with them 
an ample assortment of goods for use as presents in con- 
ciliating the natives. After a difiicult and fatiguing jour- 
ney over the mountains, obstructed with snow and ice, they 
reached Fort Pitt (now Pittsburg) in March, but had the 
ill-luck to loose the larger part of their goods at the hands 
of the "freebooting borderers'" of Pennsylvania. Colonel 
23 



354 Conspiracy and War of Pontiac. 

Croghau tarried at Fort Pitt a number of weeks, in order to 
complete bis preparations, and to confer witb tbe sachems 
of the Delawares and Shawnees, along whose southern 
borders the armed expedition would have to pass. 

Meanwhile, to expedite the main business of the mis- 
sion, Lieutenant Fraser, with more boldness than discretion, 
embarked in a canoe, with a trader named Sinnott, and de- 
scended the Ohio and ascended the Mississippi to Kaskaskia. 
Arrived thither in the forepart of May, he experienced very 
rough treatment from the Illinois Indians. He was buffeted 
and his life threatened, and finding his position neither 
agreeable nor safe, he fled in disguise down the Mississippi 
River to New Orleans. 

Pontiac was then encamped in the vicinity of Fort 
Chartres, whither he had come some time before, with a 
train of four hundred warriors, to demand arms and am- 
munition of the French for the further prosecution of his 
war against the English. About the 18th of April, on be- 
ing received into the fortress and presented to St. Ange, 
the commandant, he addressed him in the following ele- 
vated strain : 

"• Father, we have long desired to see you and enjoy 
the pleasure of taking you by the hand. While we refresh 
ourselves with the soothing incense of the friendly calumet, 
we will recall the battles fought by our warriors against the 
enemy, which still seeks our overthrow. But while we 
speak of their valor and victories, let us not forget our 
fallen heroes, and with renewed resolves and more constant 
endeavors, strive to avenge their deaths by the downfall of 
our enemies. 

"Father, I love the French, and have led hither my 
braves to maintain your authority and vindicate the in- 
sulted honor of France. But you must not longer remain 
inactive, and suffer your red brothers to contend alone 
against the foe who seek our common destruction. We 
demand of you arms and warriors to assist us, ;ni(l when 
the English dogs are driven into the sea, we will again in 
peace and happiness enjoy with you these fruitful forests 



Croghan's Party Af.faeked by Indians. 355 

and prairies, the noble heritage presented by the Great 
Spirit to our ancestors." 

St. Ange was constrained by circumstances to decline 
giving the expected aid ; but he accompanied his refusal 
with soothing compliments, and added a few gifts to ap- 
pease Pontiac's bitter disappointment. 

But to return to Colonel Croghan. On the 15th of 
May, 1765, having completed his conferences with the tribes 
about Fort Pitt, he started down the Ohio with two bateaux, 
or long boats, and a small party of white men. Early the 
next day he was joined at Chartier's Island by several depu- 
ties of the Senecas, Shawnees, and Delawares, whom he had 
persuaded to accompany him. Proceeding on his way, with 
occasional short stoppages for refreshment, Croghan arrived 
the first of June at the head of the Falls of the Ohio, where he 
landed and encamped for the night. On the following morn- 
ing his party passed the Falls or rapids ; but as the river was 
quite low at the time, they had to lighten their boats in order 
to get safely through the channel on the Indiana side. Con- 
tinuing their expeditious voyage, they reached the mouth 
of the Wabash on the 6th, and found there a rude breast- 
work, supposed to have been erected by the Indians. Six 
miles below the Wabash, they put to shore and encamped 
at a place known as the " Old Shawnee Village," some little 
distance above the present Shawneetown.* From this land- 
ing place Croghan dispatched two of his Indians across the 
country to Fort Chartres, with letters to Lieutenant Frazer, 
who was supposed to be still at that post, and to Captain 
St. Ange de Bellerive. 

At day-break, on the 8th of June, while yet in camp, 
on the site of the old Indian village, Croghan's party was 
suddenly surrounded and fired upon by a band of eighty 
Kickapoo and Mascoutin warriors, who had been watching 
his movements for several days. They killed five of his 
company, two white men and three Delaware Indians, and 

* The time occupied in this downward trip from Fort Pitt was 
twenty-one days, and the distance traveled, eight hundred miles, by 
the sinuosities of the river. It will thus be seen that they moved with 
unusual celerity, averaging about forty miles per day. 



356 Conspiracy and War of Pontiac. 

wounded several others, including the leader himself; then 
made him and the rest of the whites prisoners, and pro- 
ceeded to despoil them of every thing they had. The ex- 
cuse afterward given by the assailants for this unprovoked 
and murderous attack was, that they had been told that 
Croghan was coming into their country with an armed es- 
cort of Cherokees, their mortal enemies. But a better 
reason was to be found in their instinctive love of blood 
and plunder. Having quickly divided the spoils of Colonel 
Croghan's camp, the Kickapoos and Mascoutins,* fearing 
the arrival of another marauding party, whom they sus- 
pected to be on their trail, left such heavy articles as they 
could not carry away, and set off' in haste, with their prison- 
ers, for their villages on the Upper Wabash. Their course 
lay on and through the heavily wooded river bottom, which 
was so intersected by morasses and beaver ponds, as to 
render traveling slow and laborious. 

On the 15th they reached Post Vincennes, where a 
halt was made of two days for rest and refreshment. 
Here Croghan had some new apparel made for himself and 
men, and purchased a few horses of the Piankashaw Indi- 
ans, promising them payment when he should reach De- 
troit. In his printed journal he gives but a poor character 
to the French at Vincennes, whom he describes as a " lazy 
people, a parcel of renegades from Canada, and much worse 
than the Indians." He further says : " They took a secret 
pleasure at our misfortune, and the moment we arrived 
they came to the Indians, exchanging trifles for our valua- 
ble plunder." But Croghan was hardly in a frame of mind 
to do those French settlers justice, for they refused him 
permission to write to any one but the commandant at Fort 
Chartres.f 

Arriving at Fort Ouatanon on the 23d of June, he 
was set at liberty, and took up his temporary quarters 
there, where he found a number of French families living. 

* Called ■' Musquatimes" by Croghan. 

t Journal of George Croghan, "who was sent in 1765 to conciliate 
the Indian nations that had hitherto acted with the French." Burling- 
ton (N. J.) reprint, 1831 ; small 4to, pp. 38. 



Groghail Meets Pontiac. 357 

This palisaded fort, as be informs us, was located on the 
north side of the Wabash, about two hundred and ten 
miles above Post Vincent, hj the windings of the river. It 
derived its name from a tribe of Weas, or Ouiatanous, whose 
principal village stood on the south bank of the Wabash, 
a few miles below the site of what is now Lafayette, In- 
diana. The fort was maintained as a trading post with the 
Indians until June, 1791, when it was destroyed by an 
American force, under the command of General Charles 
Scott, of Kentucky. 

During Croghan's stay here, a messenger arrived with 
a letter from Captain St. Ange, inviting him to visit Fort 
Chartres and arrange matters for the withdrawal of the 
French garrison from that place. As this request coincided 
with his own previous intentions, he set out with an Indian 
escort, on a journey thither across the prairies, but had not 
traveled far before he was met by Pontiac and a numerous 
retinue of his dusky warriors, on their return from the Il- 
linois. This astute chief, perceiving at last that the great 
confederation he had formed among the Indian nations in 
the west was falling to pieces, and that he had nothing 
more to hope for from the French, was coming to make 
terms with the accredited agent of the English ; and for 
the purpose of further conference on the subject they now 
returned together to Fort Ouatanon. Having hastily con- 
vened the neighboring chiefs and braves in council, Pontiac 
produced the calumet of peace, and made a plausible speech 
to them. He declared, among other things, that the French 
had misled him with the story that the English purposed 
to stir up the Cherokees against his brethren of the Illinois, 
to conquer and enslave them. He allowed that the Eng- 
lish might take possession of Fort Chartres and the other 
posts in the Illinois, but suggested that as the French 
settlers had never bought their lands of the Indians, and 
lived on them by sufferance only, their successors would 
have no legal right of possession. The amicable disposi- 
tion shown by such of the Illinois warriors as were pres- 
ent at this council, with other sufficient reasons, induced 



358 Conspiracy and War of Pontiac. 

Croghan to forego his intended trip to Fort Chartres, and 
to turn his attention to the tribes on the north-east. 

Having adjusted matters satisfactorily with the natives 
at and about Fort Ouatanon, he departed thence on the 
25th of July, being accompanied by Pontiac and a number 
of his followers. Proceeding on horseback up the Valley 
of the Wabash to the portage between that river and the 
Maumee, Croghan stopped to visit a small village of the 
Twightees near Fort Miami. He thence continued his 
journey to the main Twightee xnllage, situated on the St. 
Joseph's River,* which unites with the St. Mary to form 
the Maumee, or Miami, as it was called by him. Arrived 
thither, he met a friendly reception from the Twightee 
chiefs, and, after completing his conference with them, set 
out on the 6th of August for Detroit, descending the Mau- 
mee in a canoe to Lake Erie. On the 17th he landed at 
the battle-scarred post of Detroit, which he incidentally de- 
scribes in his journal, as a "large stockade, inclosing about 
eighty houses." During his stay here, he held frequent 
consultations with the chiefs of the Chippewas, Wyandots, 
Pottawatomies,and other congregated tribes, from whom the 
fear of condign punishment, and the privations they had en- 
dured in consequence of the long suspension of the fur- 
trade, had driven all thoughts of further hostility. They 
had had enough of war to curb their restless spirit for the 
time at least, and were anxious to make terms with the 
English authorities. At a general meeting of the sachems 
and warriors, convened in the Council Hall on the 27th of 
August, Croghan was present, and in imitation, or rather 
exaggeration, of that figurative forest eloquence with which 
he had become so familiar, thus addressed the convocation : 

Children, — We are very glad to see so many of you 
present at your ancient council fire, which has been neg- 
lected for some time past. Since then high winds have 
blown, and raised heavy clouds over your country. I now, 
by this belt (of wampum), rekindle your ancient fire and 



* The above mentioned river St. Joseph should not be confused 
with another and larger stream of the same name, which flows west- 
ward into Lake Michigan. 



Peace Speeches by Oroghan and Pontiac. 359 

throw dry wood upon it, that the blaze may ascend to 
heaven, so that all nations may see it and know that you 
live in peace with your fathers, the English. By this belt 
I disperse all the black clouds over your heads, that the sun 
may shine clear upon your women and children, and those 
unborn may enjoy the blessings of this general peace, now 
so happily settled between your fathers, the English, and 
you, and all your younger brethren toward the sunsetting. 

"Children, we have made a road from the sunrising to 
the sunsetting. I desire that you will preserve that road, 
good and pleasant to travel upon, that we may all share the 
blessings of this happy reunion." 

The council reassembled the next day, when Pontiac, 
in behalf of his people, replied to Croghan's address as 
follows : 

" Father, we have all smoked out of this pipe of peace. 
It is your children's pipe; and as the war is all over now, 
and the Great Spirit,"^ who has made the earth and every 
thing therein, has brought us all together this day for our 
mutual good, I declare to all the nations that I have settled 
my peace with you before I came here, and now deliver my 
pipe to be sent to Sir Wiiliam Johnson, that he may know 
I have made peace and taken the King of England for my 
father, in presence of all nations now assembled; and when- 
ever any of these nations go to visit him, they may smoke 
out of it with him in peace. 

" Fathers, we are obliged to you for lighting up our 
old council lire for us, and desiring us to return to it, but 
we (the Ottawas) are now settled on the Maumee River not 
far from hence ; whenever you want us, you will find us 
there. Our people love liquor, and if we dwelt near you 
in our old village, our warriors would be always drunk, and 
quarrels would arise between us and you." f 

" Pontiac probably derived his correct notions of the Great Spirit 
mainly from association with white men ; and there is no doubt but 
that his speeches were revised and iinproved somewhat by the English 
Hcribes. 

t Vide " History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac," by Francis Park- 
man, Boston, 18(58; 4th edition, pp. 555, 550. 



360 Conspiracy and War of Pontiac. 

The conciliatory mission of Colonel Croghan being at 
last brought to a happy fruition, he started on his return to 
the East toward the close of September, going first to Fort 
Niagara, and thence to report to the commander-in-chief. 
Before quitting Detroit, however, he had exacted from 
Pontiac a promise to repair to Oswego, jS^ew York, and 
enter into a treaty of peace and amity with Sir William 
Johnson, the Indian Superintendent, on behalf of those 
western tribes with whom he had been leagued in the late 
war. In fulfillment of his promise, the veteran chief pro- 
ceeded, with a few attendants, to Oswego in the early sum- 
mer of the next year (1766), and there, in presence of a 
large gathering of whites and Indians, he thus addressed 
the representative of the British crown: "Father, we thank 
the Great Spirit, who has given us this day of bright skies 
and genial warmth to consider the great afiairs now before 
us. In his presence, and in behalf of all the nations 
toward the sunsetting, of which- I am the master, I now 
take you by the hand. I call upon him to witness that I 
have spoken from my heart, and, in the name of the tribes 
which I represent, I promise to keep this covenant as long 
as I live." 

After the executio!i of the treaty at Oswego, Pontiac 
returned to his home, on the banks of the Maumee River, 
and for the ensuing three years buried his ambition and 
disappointment in the seclusion of its somber forests, pro- 
viding, as a common hunter, for the wants of his family 
and dependents. 

In the meantime Captain Thomas Stirling, following 
upon the mission of Croghan, embarked in boats at Fort 
Pitt, with one hundred veteran Highlanders, of the 42d 
English regiment, and descended the Ohio to its mouth. 
Pushing thence up the Mississippi, he arrived at Fort Char- 
tres in the early part of October, 1765, and on or about 
the 10th of that month took military possession of the 
fortress. " The flag of France descended from the ram- 
part, and, with the stern courtesies of war, St. Ange 
yielded up his post, the citadel of Illinois. In that act was 
consummated the double triumph of British power in 



General Gauge's Proclamation. 361 

in America. England had crushed her hereditary foe ; 
France, in her fall, had left to irretrievable ruin the savage 
tribes to whom her policy and self-interest had lent a 
transient support."* 

On assuming command of the fort and country, Cap- 
tain Stirling caused to be posted and published the follow- 
ing proclamation, which had been carefully prepared some 
months in advance, and was intended as a kind of consti- 
tution of government for the Illinois : 

" By his Excellency. Thomas Gage, Major-General of the King's 
armies, Colonel of the 22d Regiment, General, commanding in chief of 
the forces of His Majesty in North America, etc. 

" Whereas, by the peace concluded at Paris, on the 10th of Febru- 
ary, 1763, the country of the IlHnois has been ceded to His Britannic 
Majesty, and the taking possession of the said country of the Illinois 
by troops of His Majesty, though delayed, has been determined upon, 
we have found it good to make known to the inhabitants, 

•'That His Majesty grants to the inhabitants of the Illinois the lib- 
erty of the Catholic religion, as it has already been granted to his sub- 
jects in Canada; he has, consequently, given the most precise and effect- 
ive orders, to the end that his new Roman Catholic subjects of the Illi- 
nois maj' exercise the worship of their religion, according to the rites 
of the Roman Church, in the same manner as in Canada; 

"That His Majesty, moreover, agrees that the French inhabitants 
or others, who have been subjects of the Most Christian King, may retire 
in full safety and freedom, wherever they please, even to New Orleans, or 



*Parkman's " Conspiracy of Pontiac," p. 559. 

[French Commandants at Illinois.] 
Note. — By way of recapitulation, we here present a list of the suc- 
cessive French commandants at the dependency of the Illinois, with 
the years, as near as may be, of their respective service, beginning with 
Boisbriant : 

Pierre Duque de Boisbriant 1718-1725 

Captain de Tisne (temporarily) .... 1725-1726 

The Sieur de Liette 1726-1730 

Louis St. Ange de Bellerive 1730-1734 

Pierre d'Artaguette 1734-1736 

Alphonse de la Buissoniere 1736-1740 

Beuoist de St. Clair 1740-1743 

The Chevalier de Bertel 1743-1749 

St. Clair, again 1749-1751 

The Chevalier de Macarty 1751-1760' 

M. Neyon de Villiers 1760-1764 

St. Ange, again 1764-1765 



362 Conspiracy mid War of Pontiac. 

any other part of Louisiana, although it should happen that the Span- 
iards take possession of it in the name of His Catholic Majesty ; and 
may sell their estates, provided it be to subjects of His Majesty, and 
transport their effects, as well as persons, without restraint upon their 
emigration, under any pretense whatever, except in consequence of 
debts or criminal process; 

" That those who choose to retain their lands, and become subjects 
of His Majesty, shall enjoj' the same security for their persons and effects, 
and liberty of trade, as the old subjects of the king; 

" That they are commanded, by these presents, to take the oath of 
fidelity and obedience to His Majesty, in presence of Sieur Stirling, 
Captain of the Highland Regiment, the bearer hereof, and furnished 
with our full powers for this purpose ; 

" That we recommend, forcibly, to the inhabitants, to conduct them- 
selves like good and faithful subjects, avoiding by a wise and prudent 
demeanor all cause of complaint against them ; 

"That they act in concert with His Majesty's officers, so that his 
troops may take peaceable possession of all the posts, and order be kept 
in the country; by this means alone they will spare His Majesty the ne- 
cessity of recurring to force of arms, and will find themselves saved from 
the scourge of a bloodj' war, and of all the evils which the march of an 
array into their country would draw after it. 

" Vv'e direct that these presents be read, published, and posted up 
in the usual places. 

'•Done and given at head-quarters. New York. Signed with our 
hand, sealed with our seal-at-arms, and countersigned by our Secretary, 
this 30th of December, a. d. 1764.* 

"By His Excellency, Thomas Gage, [Seal.] 

" G. Marturin, Secretary." 



*The attentive reader of American history will remember that it was General 
Gage whf), some ten years later, precipitated the War of the Revolution, by sending 
out from Boston, Massachusetts, the expeditionary force that led to the battle of 
Ijcxingion. 



Occurrences in Lower Louisiana. 363 



CHAPTER XIX. 

I7(j4-17(jy. 
OCCURRENCES IN LOWER LOUISIANA. 

On the 15th day of June, 1764, M, Neyon de Villiers, 
having become impatient at the delay of the Britisli con- 
querors in arriving to take possession of Fort Chartres, and 
disgusted with liis position, relinquished the office of major- 
commandant at the Illinois, which he had filled nearly four 
years, and departed down the Mississippi, accompanied by 
six officers, sixty-three soldiers, and eighty French inhab- 
itants of Illinois, including women and children.* He 
reached New Orleans on the 2d of July, and there tem- 
porarily fixed his quarters. Not long after this, he was re- 
quited for his fidelity and services to the French crown 
with the insignia of the Cross of St. Louis, a distinction 
corresponding to the more modern Legion of Honor. 

Mons. d'Abbadie was then acting governor or director- 
general of Louisiana, having superseded Governor Kerlerec 
in June, 1763. As heretofore observed, Western Louisiana, 
and the island district of New Orleans, had been abandoned 
to Spain by a private treaty! (Nov. 3, 1762), which was 



* Many of theee " inhabitaut8," who were induced to move to Louisi- 
ana by assurances from De Villiers that they would receive lands there 
in lieu of those they had abandoned, soon afterward found reason to 
repent of their haste in quitting the Illinois. 

t Without any apparent reference to this separate and private treaty, 
the boundaries between the French and British possessions in North 
America were defined by the definitive treaty of peace between the Kings 
of France, Spain and England, signed at Paris on the 10th of February 
1763; which article reads as follows: 

"Article VII. In order to re-establish peace on solid and durable 
foundations, and to remove forever all motivlls for dispute respecting the 
limits of the French and British territories on the American continent, 
it has been agreed that the limits between the states of his most Chris- 
tian majesty and those of his Britannic majesty, in that part of the 



364 De Choiseul's Note to Count de Fuentes. 

kept a state secret /or eighteen months. On the 2l8t of April, 
1764, the French prime minister addressed the following 
note to the Spanish ambassador on the subject of the cession 
of Louisiana : 

" Versailles, April 21, 1764. 

''Tb the Conde {Count) de Fuentes: — Sir, the king has 
caused the necessary orders to be issued for the surrender 
of the country of Louisiana, with New Orleans and the 
island on which the said city stands, into the hands of the 
commissioner whom his Catholic majesty may appoint to 
receive them. I have sent the papers to the Marquis 
d' Ossun, who will have the honor to present them to his 
Catholic majesty. Your excellency will see that the king's 
orders are entirely conformable with the acts signed in 
1762, and that his majesty has caused some articles to be 
inserted equally conducive to the tranquillity of the coun- 
try after it is in possession of his Catholic majesty, and to 
the happiness of its inhabitants. 

" I have the honor to be, with great esteem, your ex- 
cellency's most humble and obedient servant. 

" The Dug de Choiseul." 

At the same time a letter was written by or in the 



world, shall hereafter be irrevocably fixed by a line drawn along the 
middle of the river Mississippi, from its source to the river Iberville ; 
and thence by another line through the middle of that river, and of the 
lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain, to the sea ; and for this purpose, the 
most Christian king cedes to his Britannic majesty, and guaranties to 
him, the entire possession of the river and port of Mobile, and of all 
that he possesses or should have possessed on the left bank of the river 
Mississippi, with the exception of New Orleans, and of the island whereon 
that city stands, which are to remain subject to France ; it being under- 
stood that the navigation of the Mississippi River is to be equally free to 
the subjects of Great Britain and of France, in its whole breadth and 
extent, from its source to the sea, and particularly that part between the 
said island of New Orleans and the right bank of the river, as well as 
the entrance and departure by its mouth. It is moreover stipulated, 
that the vessels belonging to the subjects of either nation are not to be 
detained, searched, nor obliged to pay any duty whatsoever. The stip- 
ulations contained in the fourth article, in favor of the inhabitants of 
Canada, are to be of equal eliect with regard to the inhabitants of the 
countries ceded by this article." 



Oeeurrences in Lower Louisiana. 365 

name of Louis XV., King of France, to M. d'Abbadie, 
Director-general of Louisiana, instructing him to acquaint 
the inhabitants of that province with the act of cession, and 
to turn over the government to the officers of Spain, when 
they should arrive to receive it. We give place here to an 
English copy of this historical state paper : 

^^ Monsieur (VAbhadie : — Having, by a special act, passed 
at Fontainebleau, November 3d, 1762, ceded, voluntarily, 
to my dear and well-beloved cousin, the King of Spain, his 
heirs and successors in full right, completely and without 
restriction, the whole country known under the name of 
Louisiana, as well as New Orleans and the island on which 
that town is situated ; and the King of Spain having, by 
another act, passed at the Escurial, on the 13th of Novem- 
ber, in the same year, accepted the cession of the said 
country of Louisiana town and island of New Orleans, ac- 
cording to the annexed copies of these acts ; I write this 
letter to inform you that my intention is, that on the re- 
ceipt of this letter and the copies annexed, whether it 
reaches you through the officers of his Spanish Majesty, or 
directly by the French vessels charged with its delivery, 
you will resign into the hands of the governor (or officer) 
therefor appointed by the King of Spain, the said country 
and colony of Louisiana and its dependencies, with the town 
and island of New Orleans, in such state as they may be 
at the date of such cession, wishing that in future they be- 
long to his Catholic majesty, to be governed and administered 
by his governors and officers as belonging to him, in full 
right and without exception. 

" I accordingly order, that as soon as the governor and 
troops of his Catholic majesty arrive in the said country 
and colony, you put them in possession, and withdraw all 
the officers, soldiers and employes in my service in garrison 
there, to send them to France, and my other American 
colonies, or such of them as are not disposed to remain 
under the Spanish authorities. I moreover desire, that, 
after the entire evacuation of said port and town of New 
Orleans, you collect all papers relative to the finances and 



366 Letter of Louis XV. to Governor d'Ahbadie. 

administration of the colony of Louisiana, and come to 
France and account for them. 

" It is, nevertheless, ni}^ intention that you hand over 
to the governor, or officer thereto appointed, all the papers 
and documents which especially concern the government of 
the colony, either relative to the colony and its limits, or 
relative to the Indians and the various posts, after having 
drawn proper receipts for your discharge, and given said 
governor all the information in your power to enable him 
to govern said colony to the reciprocal satisfaction of both 
nations. 

" It is my will that there be made an inventory, signed 
in duplicate by you and his Catholic Majesty's commissary, 
of all artillery, eflects, magazines, hospitals, vessels, etc., 
belonging to me in said colony, in order that, after putting 
said commissary in possession of the civil edifices and 
buildings, an appraisement be made of the value of all the 
effects remaining in the colony, the price whereof shall be 
paid by his Catholic Majesty according to such appraisement. 

" I hope, at the same time, for the advantage and tran- 
quillity of the inhabitants of the colony of Louisiana, and 
I flatter myself, in consequence ot the friendship and aitec- 
tion of his Catholic Majesty, that he will be pleased to in- 
struct his governor, or any other officers employed by him 
in said colony and said town of I^ew Orleans, that all the 
ecclesiastics and religious communities shall continue to 
perform the rights, privileges, and exemptions granted to 
them; that all the judges of ordinary jurisdiction, together 
with the Superior Council, shall continue to administer 
justice according to the laws, forms, and usages of the col- 
ony; that the titles of the inhabitants to their property 
shall be confirmed in accordance with the concessions made 
by the governors and ordinary commissaries of said colony; 
and that said concessions shall be looked upon and held as 
confirmed by his Catholic Majesty, although they may not 
as yet have been confirmed by me ; hoping, moreover, that 
his Catholic Majesty will be pleased to give his subjects of 
Louisiana the marks of protection and good will which 
they have received under my government, which would 



Occurrences in Lower Louisiana. 367 

have been made more effectual, if not counteracted by the 
calamities of war — 

" I order you to have this, my present letter, registered 
by the Superior Council at New Orleans, in order that the 
people of the colony, of all ranks and conditions, be in- 
formed of its contents, and that they may avail themselves 
of it, should need be; such being my sole object in writing 
this letter. I pray God, M. d'Abbadie, to have you in his 
holy keeping. 

" Given at Versailles, April 21, 1764. 

[Signed] " Louis. 

[Countersigned] " The Due de Choiseul." 

It was not until October of that year that Governor 
d'Abbadie reluctantly published the foregoing letter. His 
health was already declining, and the mental distress at- 
tending the performance of this official duty hastened his 
death, which occurred in New Orleans on the 4th of the 
following February, 1765. He was a patriotic and popular 
magistrate, just to all, and firm in his enforcement of the 
laws. At a meeting of the leading citizens of New Orleans, 
held shortly after his decease, a feeling tribute was paid to 
his memory. 

M. d'Abbadie was succeeded in office by Captain Charles 
Aubry, the senior military officer of the province, on whom 
was now devolved the humiliating duty of handing over 
the government of Louisiana to the Spaniards. By his 
valor in the war with England, Aubry had won high praise 
and the Cross of St. Louis, and was also respected for his 
social virtues ; but though a good grenadier, he had few 
qualities to fit him for properly governing a colony situated 
as Louisiana then was.* 



* Memoir of Louisiana, by the Chevalier de Champigny. He was a 
contemporary and acquaintance of Aubry's, and has drawn his por- 
trait in no flattering terms. Here it is: " M. Aubry was a little, dry, 
lean, ugly man, without nobility, dignity, or carriage. His face would 
seem to announce a hypocrite, but in him this vice sprang from exces- 
sive goodness, which granted all rather than displease; always trembling 
for the consequences of the most indifferent actions, a natural effect of 



368 Arrival of Acadians in Louisiana. 

Between the first of January and the 15th of May, 1765, 
about six hundred and fifty Acadian exiles arrived in New 
Orleans from the English colonies, to swell the population 
of that part of Louisiana still nominally remaining to the 
French. At this juncture of afiairs, their coming was re- 
garded as a misfortune, since it imposed a fresh burden 
upon the unhappy colonists. Nevertheless, the claims of 
kindred humanity could not be ignored, and the poor ex- 
iles were sent by the acting governor to form settlements in 
the districts of Attakapas and Opelousas. In the following 
February (1766), two hundred and sixteen more Acadians 
arrived to join their brethren in Louisiana. They were 
authorized to make settlements on both sides of the Missis- 
sippi, from below Baton Rouge up to Point Coupee. Hence 
originated the epithet of "Acadian Coast," which is still 
applied to the banks of the river between those two points. 
As these refugees were destitute of supplies, the same ra- 
tions were issued to them by the provincial commissary, 
during the first year of their residence, as were allowed to 
the troops in the province. They were an industrious and 
frugal people, strongly attached to the French interest and 
the Catholic religion, and they prospered almost from the 
start in Louisiana. 

When the treaty-cession of Louisiana to Spain was at 
last made public, it created surprise and indignation at New 
Orleans and elsewhere in the province, and a general feeling 
of despair would have ensued, if the people had not been 
buoyed up with the hope that the transfer would never 
actually take }»lace. Early in the year 1765, a meeting of 
the principal citizens and planters from the difierent parishes 
was convened in the city of New Orleans for the purpose 
of considering the subject of their distracted condition. 



a miud without resource or light, always allowing itself to be guided, 
and thus often swerving from rectitude ; religious through weakness 
rather than from principle ; incapable of wishing evil, but doing it 
through a charitable human weakness; destitute of magnanimity or re- 
flection ; a good soldier, but a bad leader ; ambitious of honors and dig- 
nity, but possessing neither firmness nor capacity to bear the weight." — 
Vide Hist. Coil's of La. (Fifth of the series), p. 153. 



Last Appearance of Bienville ; His Death. 369 

and of sending to the throne of France a united appeal for 
royal interposition in their behalf. At this meeting La Fre- 
niere, attorney-general of Louisiana, made an eloquent 
speech on the situation of the colony, and presented a res- 
olution earnestly supplicating the king not to sever the 
colony from the parent country. The resolution was 
promptly adopted, and Jean Milhet, of New Orleans, was 
selected to carry the petition to the foot of the throne. 

Upon his arrival in Paris, Milhet went to the residence 
of the aged Bienville, who, by his request, accompanied 
him to Versailles. Waiting upon the Duke de Choiseul, 
the prime minister of Louis XV., they were courteously re- 
ceived and their statements attentively listened to ; but the 
resolution of the minister was unshaken, and he replied to 
them, in substance, as follows : 

" Gentlemen, I must put an end to this painful scene. 
I am deeply grieved at not being able to give you any 
hope. I have no hesitation in telling you that I can not 
address the king on this subject, because I myself advised 
the cession of Louisiana. Is it not to your knowledge that 
the colony can not continue its present precarious existence, 
except at an enormous expense, of which France is now 
utterly incapable ? Is it not better, then, that Louisiana 
should be given away to a friend and faithful ally, than 
be wrenched from us by an hereditary foe ? Farewell. You 
have my best wishes ; I can do no more." 

This interview is depicted by Mr. Gayarre as an affect- 
ing one, and the pathetic appeal of Bienville on behalf of 
Louisiana as not unlike that of a father pleading for the 
life of his child ; yet, under the then circumstances, it was of 
no avail. The excitement attending his effort, and grief at 
the loss of his beloved colony, seem to have loosened the 
feeble chords that bound him to life, and he died not very 
long afterward in his eighty-seventh year.* lie had sur- 



* Bienville deceased March 7. Miu, and was buried with military 
honors in the cemetery of Montniartre. His engraved portrait, from an 
oil painting belonging to the Le Moyne family mansion at Longueil, 
Canada, presents him with a martial figure and a noble head, in keeping 
with his record. 
24 



370 Occurrences in Lower Louisiana. 

vived all of his eminent brotliers. He had seen Canada, 
the land of his uativity, pass from the possession of the 
crown of France to that of Great Britain, and must now 
witness the transfer of Louisiana, with its future proud 
metropolis, which he had founded and fostered, to the do- 
minion of Spain. All that the patriarch had most loved 
and cherished on earth was gone before. Hence, it was 
not desirable for him to longer live, and he departed to 
join the shade of his favorite brother, Iberville, in the spirit 
world.* 

The primary motive of France, in voluntarily ceding 
Western Louisiana to Spain, appears to have been to in- 
demnify the latter for her expenses in the war then just 
closed. Another incentive was to prevent Louisiana from 
falling into the hands of Great Britain. Moreover, the 
province had become a burden to the French government, 
of which it was anxious to be disincumbered. It has been 
computed that France, in her prolonged attempt to colonize 
Louisiana, expended directly, or indirectly, nearly twenty 
millions of dollars, without receiving any proportionate re- 
turn ; and if she had continued to hold the country, it 
would have been necessary for her to have incurred a large 
additional outlay. " Hence," says Gayerre, " the anxiety 
of the French government to part with a territory, which, 
at a later period, in abler hands, was destined to astonish 
the world by its rapid and gigantic prosperity." 

The Duke de Choiseul having refused to address the 
king on the question of revoking the transfer of Louisiana 
to Spain, and having denied Milliet access to his majesty, 
the conunissioner returned to New Orleans, and reported 
the failui'c of his mission. Still lK)})ing that the treaty of 
cession would never be carried into execution, Jean Milhet 
was again sent to France, but returned with a like result. 
His next voyage, as we shall hereafter see. was as a state 
prisoner to Moro Castle, in Cuba. 

The French colonists, however, did not altogether 
lose hope, in which they were sustained by the delay of 



* Gayarru's Hist of La., Vol. 11, pp. 128-9. 



Opposition to Ulloa's Government. 371 

the Spanish government in taking possession of the coun- 
try. It was not until the middle of the year 1765, that the 
Court of Madrid appointed Captain Don Antonio de UUoa — 
a man of high reputation, and descended from a family dis- 
tinguished in the maritime annals of his country — to as- 
sume the government of Louisiana. Some months in ad- 
vance of his arrival in the province, Ulloa wrote from 
Havana to the Superior Council at New Orleans the fol- 
lowing brief letter, announcing his mission : 

" Gentlemen — Having recently been instructed by his 
Catholic Majesty to repair to your town and take posses- 
sion of it in his name, and in conformity with the orders 
of his Most Christian Majesty, I avail myself of this occa- 
sion to make you acquainted with my mission, and to give 
you information that I shall soon have the honor to be 
among you, in order to proceed to the execution of my 
commission. I flatter myself beforehand, that it will afltbrd 
me favorable opportunities to render you all the services 
that you and the inhabitants of your town may desire; of 
which I beg you to give them the assurance from me, and 
let them know that in acting thus, I only discharge my 
duty and gratify my inclinations, 

" I have the honor to be, etc., 

" Antonio db Ulloa." 

"Havana, July 10, 1765." 

The Spanish governor arrived at the Balize,* with 
some Capuchin friars and eighty soldiers, on the 28th of 
February, 1766, and, proceeding up the Mississippi, landed 
in New Orleans on the 5th of March. He was received by 
the French inhabitants with every superficial mark of 
courtesy and good will; but such was their aversion to 
Spanish rule, and such the lack of tact and administrative 
talent of Ulloa himself, that he could not openly exercise 
his authority.! The French troops continued to serve 



*A small port or settlement at the outlet of the Mississippi, oa 
the west side, iu French times. It took its name from the Spanish word 
baliza, a beacon. 

tThe mistake of the Spanish government, at this time, was in not 
sending an adequate military force to sustain Ulloa's authority. 



372 Occurrences in Lower Louisiana. 

under their national flag ; the council acted in the name of 
the King of France ; and all orders emanated from Aul^ry, 
the de facto French governor, who practically governed the 
colony for the King of Spain. The Spanish flag was un- 
furled at the Balize, on the banks of the river Iberville, at 
the post opposite Natchez, and at the Missouri; but at all 
the other posts in the province, the French colors were 
kept up as before. 

Governor Ulloa was apparently so desirous of concili- 
ating those over whose afiairs he had come to preside, that 
on his arrival he promised to keep at a fixed rate the de- 
preciated paper currency of the province, which then 
amounted to about seven millions of livres. He also as- 
certained the resources and wants of the country, and 
agreed to discharge the most pressing demands against it. 
On the 6th of September, 1766, the governor published an 
ordinance of the Spanish government regulating and limit- 
ing the commerce of Louisiana, but permitting a direct 
trade with the French West Indies. This, together with 
subsequent commercial restrictions, produced great discon- 
tent and excitement at New Orleans, and Ulloa, fearing 
an attempt on his life, retired for safety to the Balize. 
Here (January 20, 1767) he eftected an arrangement with 
Aubry, by wliich the latter resigned to him the colony of 
Louisiana, but agreed to govern it for the time being. This 
act was signed by the two governors in duplicate, and was 
to be exchanged by the two courts of Paris and Madrid.* 

In the meantime a conspiracy was set on foot by 
Lafreniere, Foucault, Marquis, Noyon, Villere, Milhet, 
Petit, Caresse, Poupet, Boisblauc, and others, to drive Ul- 
loa and his Spaniards from the province. To this end, at a 
delegate convention of planters, merchants and tradesmen, 
held in New Orleans on the 28th of October, 1 768, a peti- 
tion was signed by five hundred and thirty-six persons, pray- 
ing the Superior Council for a restoration of their former 
rights and privileges, and for the expulsion of the Span- 
iards from the country. This petition was presented to the 



Champigny's Memoir of Louisiana. 



Revolution against the. Spanish Authority. 373 

Council on the next day (the 29th), and, despite the formal 
protest of Aubry, the French commandant, a decree was 
passed that UUoa and the Spanish troops should leave the 
colony within three days. Governor Ulloa did not stand 
on the order of his going, but embarked on the evening of 
the 31st of October, with his few troops, and sailed for 
Spain, where he arrived on the 4th of December following. 
The news of this ill-starred revolution soon reached 
Spain, and the king (Charles III.) called a meeting of his 
ministers to determine upon the fate of Louisiana. At this 
cabinet council it was decided that ])ossession of that prov- 
ince should be taken by force, if necessary. Apprehending 
considerable resistance from the French inhabitants, the 
king issued orders for the fitting out of a formidable expe- 
dition, and gave the command of it to General O'Reilly, 
whom he also appointed governor and captain-general of 
the province.* 



"••■ Dou Alexaudro O'Reilly was born in Ireland about the year 1735, 
and when quite a young man went to Spain, and entered the .Spanish 
military service. Joining a body of his native countrymen called the 
" Ilibernia Regiment," he served a campaign in Italy, where he received 
a wound which lamed him for the rest of his life. In 1755 he obtained 
permission from the king to enter the Austrian army, and made two 
campaigns against the Prussians. In 1759 he volunteered in the army 
of France, in which he distinguishes! himself by his soldierly qualities, 
and was recommended by the Duke de Broglie to the King of Spain, 
who commissioned him to the rank of lieutenant-colonel; and, as such, 
he served with distinction in the war with Portugal. He was afterward 
promoted to the rank of brigadier-general, and on the conclusion of the 
peace of 1762 was raised to the rank of major-general, in which capacity 
he was sent to Havana to rebuild the fortifications of that city, which 
had been demolished by the British. O'Reilly stood high in the confi- 
dence of the king, notwithstanding the prejudice existing against him 
among the Spaniards on account of his foreign birth. He was a man of 
flexible disposition and conciliatory manners, yet stem and unyielding 
of purpose. We are not informed of the precise nature of his instruc- 
tions on being sent to Louisiana ; but the substance of them is embodied 
in a royal order addressed to Don Pedro Gracia, under date of January 
28, 1771, in which the king says: "But those inhabitants having re- 
belled, ... I commissioned Don Alexandro O'Reilly, lieutenant- 
general of the army, and inspector-general of all my infantry, to pro- 
ceed thither, take formal possession, chastise the ringleaders (informing 
!ue of all), establish the said gov'."rMnient, uTiUing the province to the 



374 Occurrences in Lower Louisiana. 

Governor O'Reilly arrived at the mouth of the Miesis- 
eippi on the 24th of July, 1769, with a fleet of twenty-four 
ships and transports, bearing an army of twenty-six hundred 
choice troops, — a force so large as to render all attempts at 
resistance hopeless. On the same day he dispatched his aid 
to Aubry, the acting French governor, to announce his ar- 
rival, and to notify him that he was duly authorized to 
receive possession of the Province of Louisiana. 

The coming of the Spanish armament excited a great 
commotion in New Orleans ; and on the 27th the citizens 
sent delegates to O'Reilly to implore his clemency. They 
returned to the city the next day with assurances from the 
governor that he was disposed to be lenient. On the 17th 
of August he reached Kew Orleans, and on the next day 
took military possession of the government. 

Governor O'Reilly entered upon the duties of his re- 
sponsible oiRce with every outward manifestation of respect 
for all classes of the citizens ; but, while promising pardon 
to those who quietly submitted, he had resolved in his own 
mind to punish the principal actors in the late revolution. 
This determination, however, was concealed until he had 
procured from Aubry, the retiring French governor, a full 
report of that event. On the 2l8t and 22d of August, after 
receiving Aubry's communication, he caused to be quietly 
arrested and imprisoned twelve chiefs of the revolution 
that had expelled his predecessor, Ulloa. They were, 
Nicholas Chauvin de la Freniere, ex-procureur-general of 
the province, and senior member of the Superior Council ; 
Jean Baptiste Noyon, his son-in-law, a young man of great 
worth and promise; Pierre Caresse, captain of militia; 
Pierre Marquis, a knight of St. Louis ; Jean and Joseph 
Milhet, father and son ; Joseph Villiere,* captain in the 



rest of my dominions; all of which he did, adapting its laws, and after 
proposing to me that which he judged proper for the commerce of the 
country, and for the extinction of the council by which it is governed, 
and establishing a r.ahildo in the place of said council, and taking other 
measures, all of which were approved by me," etc. — Hist. Coil's of La., 
Fifth Series (N. Y., 185;i), p. 247. 

* Viller^ resisted arrest, and died in prison three days after, from 



Conviction and Sentence of the Revolutionists. 375 

Tiiilitia; Joseph Petit, merchuut ; Baltbauser <le Masan, 
captain in the French service; Jerome Doucet, lawyer; 
Hardi de Boisblanc, assessor to the Council ; and Pierre 
Poupet, merchant.* 

These sudden arrests produced extreme uneasiness and 
trepidation among the French inhabitants. To quiet their 
fears, the Spanish governor, on the 23d of August, issued 
a proclamation of amnesty,! and a call inviting the people 
to appear before him on the 26th, and take the oath of al- 
legiance to his Catholic majesty. 

Something over a month after their arrest, the pris- 
oners were arraigned before a semi -military tribunal, con- 
stituted for the purpose, on the charge of treason and re- 
bellion, the deceased Villere being represented by an attor- 
ney in fact. They were tried and convicted under Spanish 
law, and their property was confiscated to the state, after 



the effect of wounds received in his struggle with the Spanish gendarmes 
for liberty. 

* M. Foucault, president of the Superior Council, and commissary of 
the province, was also placed under guard; but at his request, and in 
deference to his official position, he was seat to France for trial. He is 
described as a wily man, who acted with singular duplicity toward the 
revolutionists in Louisiana. 

t [^(J'lieilh/'x Prudanuitioii of Amnesty.] 

" In the name of the King, we, Alexander O'Reilly, commander of 
Benfayan, in the order of Alcantara, major and inspector-general of the 
armies of his Catholic majesty, captain-general and governor of the 
Province of Louisiana, in virtue of the orders of his Catholic majesty, 
and of the powers with which we are invested, declare to all the inhab- 
itants of the Province of Louisiana, that whatever just cause past 
events may have given his majesty to make them feel his indignation, 
yet his majesty's intention is to listen only to the inspirations of 
his royal clemency, because he is persuaded that the inhabitants 
of Louisiana would not have committed the offense of which they are 
guilty, if they had not been seduced by the intrigues of some ambitious 
fanatic, and evil-minded men, who had the temerity to make a crim- 
inal use of the ignorance and excessive credulity of their fellow-i^itizens. 
These men alone will answer for their crimes, and will be judged in ac- 
cordance with the laws. So generous an act on the part of his majesty 
might be a pledge to him that his new subjects will endeavor every day 
of their lives to deserve by their fidelity, zeal, and obedience, the par- 
don and protection which he grants them from this moment." 



376 Ocoirrevce.^ in Lower Louisiana. 

the payment of their debts. The sentence of the court was 
pronounced by the governor himself, October 24, 1769. Five 
of the number, viz., Lafreniere, ]^03'on, Caresse, Marquis, 
and (Joseph) Milhet, were condemned to death on the gal- 
lows ; but as no white hangman could be found in the col- 
ony, they were shot (October 24th) in the yard of the l)ar- 
racks. The memory of Villere was declared infamous. It 
has been observed, and perhaps truly, that these men died 
victims to their love of hberty rather than of devotion to 
France. 

The six remaining culprits were sentenced to varying 
terms of imprisonment. Petit was sentenced to imprison- 
ment for life ; Masan and Doucet to ten years ; Boisblanc, 
Milhet (Jean), and Poupet to six years each, with the un- 
derstanding that none of them should ever be permitted to 
live in any of the dominions of his Catholic majesty. They 
were shortly after transported to Havana, and incarcerated 
in Moro Castle ; but they were subsequently pardoned by 
the King of Spain, on the intercession of the French am- 
bassador at that court. After their release, it is said that 
they went to reside at Cape Francois, in St. Domingo.* 

The extreme punishment thus meted out to a few 
leaders, while a free pardon was extended to the mass of 
the people, though conformable to Spanish ideas of justice 
and clemency, aroused a deep feeling of indignation among 
the French inhabitants of Louisiana, and evoked much un- 
favorable criticism in Old France. 

O'Reilly now proceeded to abolish the laws of France 
in the province, and to substitute those of Spain. On the 
2l8t of November, he issued his proclamation for the al)oli- 
tion of the Superior Council, which had been deeply impli- 
cated in the insurrection against Spanish authority. In 
place of the Superior Council, he established the Cabildo, 
which was both a high court and a legislative council, and 
at which the governor presided. In its judicial capacity, 
it only exercised appellate jurisdiction in ai)peals from the 

* For a circuuistautial account of this nMiiarkai)le state trial, see 
Gayarre's Hist, of La., Vol. II, pp. ;m):J-34;>. 



Foreign Population of the Province. 377 

Alcalde courts, which were established in New Orleans and 
the various villages. 

He appointed lieutenant-governors for the several dis- 
tricts of the province ; and a commandant, with the rank 
of captain, was appointed for each parish or settlement, 
with authority to exercise a mixed civil and military juris- 
diction. 

He also caused to be published, in French, an abridgment 
of Spanish law, which he promulgated for the government 
of the province until the Spanish language should be bet- 
ter understood by the colonists. This publication, known 
as the " Ordinances and Instructions of Don Alexander 
O'Reilly," was afterward approved by the " Council of the 
Indies." The Spanish language was henceforth tliat in 
which the judicial proceedings were conducted and records 
kept throughout the province. The black code, or code 
noir, which had been previously in force in the colony, was 
modified and re-enacted for the government of the slaves. 
Foreigners were prohibited from passing through the coun- 
try without passports from the governor, and the inhabit- 
ants were prevented from trading with the English coloides. 
The colonists were at first permitted to emigrate, and many 
availed themselves of this privilege ; but, finding that the 
province was losing some of its valuable citizens, O'lveilly 
refused to issue any more passports. 

In accordance with an enumeration made during Gov. 
O'Reilly's administration, the whole foreign population of 
Louisiana amounted to thirteen thousand, two hundred 
and thirty-eight souls, about one-half of whom were Afri- 
can slaves. They were distributed in the settlements as 
follows : 

New Orleans* [district of], . . 3,190 

From the Bahze to town [N. O.] . . 570 



■•■ According to the lowest estimate, at this time, the number of 
bouses in New Orleans proper was 468. iMost of these were single story 
structures of brick or wood, having gardens attached, and cellars above 
ground. They were situated within the quadrilateral still known as 
" Old French Town." 



378 



Occurrences in Lower Louisiana. 



Bayou St. John and Gentilly, 


307 


Tchoupitoulas [above New Orleans], 


. 4,192 


St. Charles, . . . . 


339 


St. John the Baptiste, 


. 544 


La Fourche, . . . . 


267 


Iberville, .... 


. 376 


Point Coupee, . . . . 


783 


Attakapas, .... 


; 409 


Avoyvelles, . . . . 


314 


JSTatchitoches, 


. 811 


Rapides, . . . . . 


47 


Ouachita, .... 


. 110 


Arkansas ppost of]. 


88 


St. Louis [adjacent to the Illinois], 


. 891 



13,238 * 



This aggregate seems small, considering the fact that 
the French had been in Louisiana seventy years ; yet it 
must be remembered that the province was now shorn of 
all its territory lying north of New Orleans and east of the 
Mississippi River, including the Mobile, Natchez, and the 
Illinois. At this transition epoch, a majority of the French 
inhabitants chose to regard themselves as miserable exiles, 
and were only consoled by the hope of acquiring sufficient 
means to enable them to return to Old France to die. 
About the only contented white people in the province 
were the Acadians, and a colony of Germans, whom Law's 
company had sent here in 1722. 

The Spanish government ratified and confirmed .all of 
O'Reilly's official acts in Louisiana, but it took care not to 
continue him in command there after his work was done. 
He was accordingly recalled within a year from the date of 

* Hist, of La. (Gayarre), Vol. II, p. 355. 

Th(! exports of the province during the last year of its subjection 
to France were as follows: Indifjo, $100,000; deerskins, $80,000; lum- 
ber, $50,000 ; naval stores, $12,000 ; rice, peas, and beans, $4,000 ; tallow, 
$4,000. Total exports, $250,000. 



Fate of Auhry, the Last Acting French Governor. 379 

his appointment. During that brief period, however, he 
left an impress of his own and the Spanish character upon 
the laws and institutions of Louisiana, such as neither time, 
nor subsequent political changes, has wholly obliterated. 

We must now return to M. Charles Aubry, whose fate 
was sad and tragical. Having at length transferred the gov- 
ernment of Louisiana to Captain-General O'Reilly, Aubry 
prepared to return to France. Early in January, 1770, he 
embarked in the ship or brigantine called Pere de Fa.milley 
bound for Bordeaux. On the 18th of February, when this 
vessel had entered the mouth of the river Garonne, she met 
a violent storm, and foundered near the Tower of Corduan. 
All on board perished, save the captain, a sergeant, and two 
sailors, who succeeded in reaching the land. 

" The king, in order to show how much he appreciated 
the services of Aubry, granted a pension to the brother and 
sister of that officer. Aubry, before his departure from 
Louisiana, had been offered a high grade in the Spanish 
army, as a token of satisfaction at the liberal course which 
he had pursued toward that nation in the colony, but he 
refused it on the ground that .he intended to devote the 
remnant of his days to the service of his native country. 
Some there were, who thought that if those whom they 
loved so dearly had been unjustly treated, it was mostly in 
consequence of the imprudent denunciations of that officer, 
and of his servility to O'Reilly and the Spaniards. By 
them his melancholy end was looked upon as an act of the 
retributive justice of Heaven." * 

One of the most noteworthy events associated with the 
close of the French rule in Louisiana was the banishment 
of the Jesuits, which was effected by a decree of the Su- 
perior Council in 1763, followed by an edict of the King of 



*Hist. of La. (Gayarre), Vol. II., p. 344. 

Note. — The official correspondence of Aubry was deposited in the 
archives at Paris, but his private journal, with valuable papers belong- 
ing to the province, were lost with him in the shipwreck. This was to 
be regretted, since they contained much matter tending to illustrate the 
history of Louisiana during that troubled period. 



380 Occurrences in Lower Louisiana. 

France in 1764.* All the valuable property of that religious 
order in the province, including plate and vestments, was 
sequestered, confiscated, and sold, for the aggregate amount 
of 1180,000 — a large sum, says Mr. Gayarre, at that day — 
which, after deducting the expenses, was covered into the 
public treasury. The Capuchins, who had been established 
in Lower Louisiana since 1722, and had long contended at 
disadvantage with the Jesuits, were now freed from the 
presence of their formidable rivals, and had this field of 
labor to themselves. 

In this connection, some historical notice of the famous 
Societas Jesu (Society of Jesus) may not be uninteresting or 
uninstructive to the general reader. It was founded in 
Paris by Ignatius Loyola, an ex-Spanish soldier and re- 
ligious enthusiast, in the year 1534. The society was pri- 
marily established to promote the following objects, viz : 
" The education of youth, preaching of the Gospel, defend- 
ing the Roman Catholic faith against heretics and unbeliev- 
ers, and propagating Christianity among the pagans and 
other infidels." Its constitution and laws were perfected, 
it is said, by Laynez and Acquaviva, two generals of the 
order who early succeeded Loyola, and who much sur- 
passed him in learning and the science of government. 
They framed and introduced that system of profound and 
artful policy — a singular union of laxity and rigor — which 
has ever distinguished the Jesuit order. After receiving 
the formal sanction of Pope Paul III., in 1540, the society 
spread rapidly throughout Europe, and flourished with 
ever-increasing vigor and activity for above two centuries. 
It overshadowed all other orders in the Church of Rome, 
and at length became so rich, haughty, and powerful as to 
excite the jealousy and alarm of the crowned heads of 
Europe. 

But whatcvei" may have 1)een the errors, the follies, or 
the crimes of the. Jesuits (individually or collectively), while 
playing their part in the devious politics and diplomacy of 
the Old World, it is generally conceded that their labors in 



* See note in the next succeeding chapter. 



Notice of the Jesuits. 381 

the ISTew were prompted by a spirit of genuine pliilantliropy. 
Robertson, tlie eminent historian, in alluding to their opera- 
tions in America, and particularly among the aborigines of 
Paraguay, remarks : 

"It is in the New World that the Jesuits have ex- 
hibited the most wonderful display of their abilities, and 
have contributed most effectually to the benefits of the 
human species. The (European) conquerors of that quarter 
of the globe acted at lirst as if they had nothing in view 
but to plunder, to enslave, and to exterminate its inhabit- 
ants. Tlie Jesuits alone made humanity the object of their 
settling there. They set themselves to instruct and to civil- 
ize the savages. . . . But even in this meritorious ef- 
fort for the good of mankind, the genius and spirit of the 
order have mingled and are discernible." * 

With reference to the zeal of the Jesuits as champions 
of the Church of Rome, and to their qualifications as teach- 
ers and missionaries, Breese finely writes : 

" They became most useful auxiliaries to the pastoral 
clergy in those times of the Church's greatest need. They 
labored with untiring zeal and industry in defending the 
faith, then so violently assailed by Luther and his associates, 
and in pro}tagating it in the countries of the heathen. 

" As spiritual teachers they had no equals ; for they 
possessed all the learning of the age, and being in high 
favor with the pope, they easily became the conscience 
keepers of kings and nobles. Their arrogance and pre- 
sumption, therefore, became excessive, and the dark and 
complicated intrigues of European politics found in them 
able, wily, persevering actors. In every royal court they 
possessed some power. Schools and colleges were founded 
and controlled by them, and schemes of future aggrandize- 
ment planned. 

" In the plentitude of their power, no men on earth 
possessed higher qualifications for heathen conversion than 
they ; for to their learning was added zeal, fortitude and 
enthusiasm, acute observation and great address, and a re- 



* Robertsou's Charles V., Book VI. 



382 Occurrences in Lower Louisiana. 

markable faculty for ingratiating themselves with the 
simple natives of every clime and winning their confidence. 
They were meek and humble when necessary, and their re- 
ligious fervor inspired them with a contempt of danger, 
and nerved them to meet and to overcome the most ap- 
palling obstacles. Alike to them were the chilling wintry 
blasts, the summer's heat, the pestilence or the scalping 
knife, the angry billows of the ocean and the raging storm ; 
they dreaded none."* 

But having fallen under the ban of the government of 
Portugal, the Jesuits were forcibly expelled from that 
kingdom in the year 1759. In like manner they were ban- 
ished from the realm of France in 1764, and from Spain, 
Naples and Parma, in 1767. In December, 1768, the Bour- 
bon courts of France, Spain, Naples and Parma united in a 
formal demand upon the Po})e for the entire abolishment 
of the order ; and on July 21, 1773, Pope Clement XIV. 
issued the famous brief, Lominus ac Hedemptor noster, by 
which the Company or Society of Jesus was declared sup- 
pressed in all the countries of Christendom. The activity 
of individual members of the order, however, was not 
thereby abated, nor was its vitality permanently impaired. 
They continued their teachings in private, and strove 
against the liberal tendency of the times. 

Attempts to revive the order under other names were 
made in 1794, when the ex- Jesuits DeBroglie and De 
Tournly founded the " Society of the Sacred Heart," and 
in 1798, when Paccarani established the " Society of the 
Faith of Jesus." This last, despite the defection of its 
founder, maintained its organization, and its members 
formed the nucleus of the restored society in France. The 
prospects of general restoration at length dawned with the 
the Pontificate of Pius VII. in 1800. Having been solic- 
ited thereto by Ferdinand IV., he authorized the introduc- 
tion of the order into the kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 
1804, and on the 7th of August, 1814, he issued the bull 
of restoration, Soliciludo Omnium Lcclesiarum.f 

*■" Early History of 111.," pp. (>;), 70. 

t American Encyclopedia (1874), Vol. IX., p. 632. 



The Jesuit Relations. 383 

Since their revival the Jesuits, w^hile everj-where meet- 
ing with prejudice and opposition, and experiencing all the 
vicissitudes of good and ill fortune, have managed to re- 
gain their former footing in most of the countries of 
Christendom; and, to-day, though much less dreaded than 
formerly, they are more numerous, if not more powerful 
and influential, than ever before. 

On account of the long, dark cloaks or robes worn by 
the Jesuit missionaries, they were universally known 
among the North American Indians as the " Black Gowns," 
and their officiating priests as the "White Capes." The 
Recollet or Franciscan Fathers, in allusion to the gray 
color of their outward apparel, were called the " Gray 
Gowns." 



"The Jesuits (writes Mr. Buttertield, in his work already cited), 
intent upon pushing their fields of labor far into the heart of the conti- 
nent, let slip no opportunity, after their arrival upon the i^aint Law- 
rence, to inform themselves concerning ulterior regions, and the infor- 
mation thus obtained was noted down by them. They minutely 
described, during a period of forty years, beginning with the year 1632, 
the various tribes that they came in contact with ; and their hopes and 
fears as to Christianizing them were freely expressed. Accounts of 
their journeys were elaborated upon, and their missionary work put 
upon record. Prominent persons, as well as important events, shared 
their attention. Details concerning the geography of the country were 
also written out. The intelligence thus collected was sent every sum- 
mer by the superiors to the Provincials at Paris, where it was yearly 
published in the French language. Taken together, these publications 
constitute what are known as the ' Jesuit Relations.' " 

They were collected, edited and republished in French, under the 
auspices of the Canadian government, by M. Augustin Cote, at Quebec, 
1858, in three large volumes. Vol. I contains twelve relations of the 
dates 1611, 1626 and 1632-1641 ; Vol. II, fourteen relations, dated 1642- 
1655; Vol. Ill, seventeen relations, dated 1656-1672. The relations of 
each year are paged separately, and form forty-three distinct memoirs. 
Besides the above, there are some separate publications of a later date 
than 1672. 



384 Illinois Under British Domination. 



CHAPTER XX. 

1764-1778. 
ILLINOIS UNDER THE BRITISH DOMINATION. 

We now return once more to the Illinois. In the 
month of June, 1764, on the resignation and withdrawal of 
M. Neyon de Villiers from Fort Chartres, the command 
of this stronghold was devolved upon Louis St. Ange de 
Bellerive, who had arrived from Post Vincennes to receive 
it. He was a veteran Canadian officer, possessed of rare 
tact and ripe experience, and in his early manhood had 
formed one of Charlevoix' escort in his travels through 
the West. As ad interim commandant of the fortress, St. 
Ange's position was both insecure and difficult to fill. It 
required no ordinary skill and address to save the isolated 
French settlements from being embroiled in renewed war- 
fare with the English forces on the one hand, and from 
massacre by the hordes of restless savages that surrounded 
them on the other. He had been advised by his own gov- 
ernment of the treaty of cession to England, and ordered 
to surrender his post on the arrival of her representatives 
to claim it. In the meantime he was repeatedly importuned 
by deputations from the martial tribes to the north and 
eastward, under the domination of Pontiac, for material 
aid in keeping up their futile struggle against the English, 
and, moreover, was constantly annoyed by the demands of 
the Illinois Indians for arms and ammunition. But the 
commandant managed to put off the importnnities of the 
natives from time to time, with fair speeches and occasional 
presents, while he anxiously waited the coming of an ade- 
quate British force to relieve him from his critical situation. 
Before yielding up his office and authority, however, he in- 
stituted some prudent and salutary regulations respecting 



St. Ange takes Command at St. Louis, Mo. 385 

the titles of the French settlers to their lands, and other- 
wise aided him to the extent of his power. 

Evacuating Fort Chartres in October, 1765, St. Ange, 
under orders from the provincial executive at ]^ew Orleans, 
conducted his little garrison, of about thirty officers and 
men, up and across the Mississippi River to the embryo 
village of St. Louis. This post, so named in honor to Louis 
XV. of France, was founded in February, 1764, by Pierre 
Laclede* Liguest, and young Auguste Chouteau, of the 
firm of " Maxent, Laclede & Company, merchants of New 
Orleans, who had obtained the year before a special license 
from Governor Kerlerec to trade with the Indians on the 
Missouri River. 

Although France had relinquished to Spain her terri- 
tory on the west of the Mississippi, no Spanish authority 
was as yet established there, and in January, 1766, at the 
request of the principal inhabitants of St. Louis, Captain 
St. Ange assumed the functions of military commandant. 
His acts were approved by Aubry, the French commandant- 
general, and he continued to exercise the duties of his office 
until May 20, 1770, when he was relieved by Lieutenant- 
governor Don Pedro Piernas, the first Spanish commandant 
of the district. After that St. Ange was admitted into the 
Spanish regiment of Louisiana, with the same rank of cap- 



* Pierre Laclede was born in the South of France about the year 
1724. In 1755 he sailed to Louisiana, and engaged extensively in mer- 
chandising. On August 3, 1763, he left New Orleans with his boat, 
heavily laden with goods, and started up the Mississippi. After a short 
stoppage at Ste. Genevieve, he proceeded to Fort Chartres, whither he 
arrived on tlie 3d of November. During the next month he traveled 
by laud as far as the mouth of the Missouri, selected and marked out 
the site for his trading post, and then returned to F'ort Chartres to spend 
the rest of the winter. On the opening of navigation in February, 1764, 
Laclede sent Auguste Chouteau (then a youth under age) in charge of 
his boat, with a company of thirty men and boys, and with instructions 
where to land and make a clearing. Chouteau landed at the place desig- 
nated on the 14th of February, and the next day put his men to work. — 
See " History of St. Louis City and County," by J. Thomas Scharf (Phil- 
adelphia, 1883), Vol. I., pp. 66, 67, note, and fragment of Chouteau's 
Journal. 

25 



386 Illinois Under British Domination. 

tain as he had before held under the French, but on half 
pay.* It has been affirmed that he returned to Fort Char- 
tres, after the asserted death of Captain Stirling, and that, 
on the solicitation of the English, he again exercised com- 
mand there for a short time; but this story is wanting in 
proof and probability. 

It was in April, 1769, while still commanding at St. 
Louis, that St. Ange received an unexpected visit from 
Pontiac, who had been living for three years in sullen re- 
tirement on the river Maumee, but was now come on some 
unexplained yet suspicious mission to the Illinois. The 
Indian chieftain appeared at the head-quarters of the 
French commandant arrayed in the uniform which had 
been given to him by General Montcalm in 1759, and 
which, it is said, he never wore except on occasions of cere- 
mony. After being hospitably entertained at St. Louis for 
several days, Pontiac, contrary to the advice of St. Ange 
and others of the French inhabitants, who warned him of 
the danger he was incurring, re-crossed the Mississippi, 
with .a few of his personal adherents, to attend a social 
gathering, or pow-wow, of the Indians at Cahokia. Upon 
arriving thither, he found them engaged in a drinking- 
bout, and, with his fondness for liquor, soon became drunk 
himself. The noisy meeting broke up late at night, when 
he started with some friends down the long village street, 
and on the way was heard singing medicine songs, in the 
mystic virtues of which he seems to have reposed implicit 
confidence. 

The visit of this redoubtable chief to the Illinois was 
regarded with great distrust by the few English residents 
of the country, who justly dreaded his power for evil over 
the minds of his fellow red men. At this time, it appears, 
there was in Cahokia an English trader named Williamson, 
who determined to avail himself of the opportunity pre- 



* St. Ange de Bellerive died at the house of Madame Chouteau, in St. 
Louis, on the evening of December 26, 1774 (having executed his last 
-will on the same day), and was buried there in the parish cemetery. 
He had attained the ripe old age of about seventy-four years. See Bil- 
lon's "Annals of St. Louis," p. 128. 



Pojitiac's Last Visit and Death in the Illinois. 387 

sented to effect his destruction. For this sinister purpose, 
he bribed a vagrant Indian of the Kaskaskia tribe, for a 
barrel of liquor and the promise of further reward, to take 
Pontiac's Hfe. The hired assassin accordingly followed the 
inebriated chief into the forest, and, gliding silently up be- 
hind him, stabbed him to the heart. Thus ingloriously 
ended the notable career of the veteran Poutiac, whose ex- 
traordinary ability as a leader and organizer of the red men, 
his strategy and audacity in war, rendered him the terror 
of the English, and the typical hero of his race. When 
informed of this tragical occurrence, which created wild 
excitement in Cahokia, Captain St. Ange, mindful of his 
former friendship for the fallen chief, caused his body to be 
shrouded and brought to St. Louis, where it was interred 
with the honors of war, near the intersection of Walnut 
and Fourth streets. No mound nor tablet marks his for- 
gotten grave, but his deeds are written, and his name is 
enduringly preserved in that of a thriving town in Illinois. 
Poutiac left several children, among whom were two sons 
of note in their tribe.* 

The unfortunate killing of Poutiac — unfortunate if he 
was not seeking to stir up another race war with the En- 
glish — aroused intense animosity against the Illinois Indians 
on the part of his numerous friends and followers among 
the more northern tribes. It was the occasion of a re- 
newal of hostilities between the Sacs and Foxes and the Il- 
linois, in which the latter sustained heavy losses and were 
finally driven south of the Illinois river. During this ex- 
terminating war, and about the year 1770, tradition says 
that a defeated band of Illinois warriors took refuge on the 
Rock of St. Louis, where, after a protracted siege, they 
were starved into submission and captured, thus giving rise 
to the legend of the " Starved Rock." 

Just before and during the first years of the English 



* An Ottawa tradition states that Pontiac took a Kaskaskia wife, 
with whom he had a quarrel, and that she persuaded her two brothers 
to kill him. But see Parkman's " History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac" 
(4th ed., 1868, pp. 571, 572, iwtes), where the various accounts of the 
great Indian's death are mentioned and discussed. 



388 Illinois Under British Domination. 

domination, there was a large exodus of the French inhab- 
itants from Illinois. Such, in fact, was their dislike of 
British rule that fully one-third of the population, embrac- 
ing the wealthier and more influential families, removed, 
with their slaves and other personal effects, beyond the 
Mississippi, or down that river to I^atchez and New Or- 
leans. Some of them settled at Ste. Genevieve, while 
others, after the example set by St. Ange, took up their 
abode in the village of St. Louis, which had now become 
a depot for the fur company of Louisiana. From the im- 
petus thus received, as well as from its pleasant and ad- 
vantageous situation for general trade, St. Louis soon 
outstripped the older French settlements on the eastern 
side of the Mississippi. Under successive mild adminis- 
trations (French and Sf)anish),the village quietly grew and 
fliourished, meeting with but few drawbacks, saving the at- 
tack by northern Indians, in May, 1780, the destructive in- 
undation in 1785,* and the epidemic of 1801. It was not 
until after the Indian incursion that St. Louis was stock- 
aded, and a regular fortification constructed at the upper 
end of the village. In 1770 there were one hundred 
wooden and fifteen stone buildings in the place. But no 
church edifice existed there prior to the year 1776, except 
a small log chapel which stood upon what was known as 
the Church Block. In 1794 the garrison and government 
house, situate on the second rise or bank of the village, was 
completed and occupied. In March, 1804, when the govern- 
ment of the country west of the Mississippi was transferred 
to the United States, the number of houses in St. Louis had 
increased to one hundred and thirty of wood, and fifty-one 
of stone, making a total of one hundred and eighty-one, of 
which one hundred and sixty were dwelling houses. These 
were one and two story structures, built upon the first bank 
of the river, with little or no pretensions to architectural 
embellishment. The population of the place was then rated 



*The unusual inundation of 1785 was caused by the annual floods 
in the Mississippi and Missouri rivers occurring together. This was 
known as L'ann^e des grands daux, or " the year of the great waters." 



Early Upbuilding of St. Louis. 389 

at nine hundred and twenty-five souls.* French influence 
was long dominant in St. Louis, and tended to retard her 
early development ; but, in modern years, her growth and 
expansion into a great commercial and industrial city have 
been something phenomenal. 

At the close of the year 1765, the whole number of in- 
habitants of foreign birth or lineage, in Illinois, excluding 
the negro slaves, and including those living at Post Vincent 
on the Wabash, did not much exceed two thousand persons J 
and, during the entire period of British possession, the in- 
flux of alien population hardly more than kept pace with 
the outflow. Scarcely any Englishmen, other than the 
ofiicers and troops composing the small garrisons, a few en- 
terprising traders and some favored land speculators, were 
then to be seen in the Illinois, and no Americans came 
hither, for the purpose of settlement, until after the con- 
quest of the country by Colonel Clark. All the settlements 
still remained essentially French, with whom there was no 
taste for innovation or change. But the blunt and sturdy 
Anglo-American had at last gained a firm foot-hold on the 
banks of the great Father of Rivers, and a new type of 
civilization, instinct with energy, enterprise and progress, 
was about to be introduced into the broad and fertile Valley 

of the Mississippi. t 

In Captain Pittman's valuable w^ork, from which we 
have repeatedly quoted, is found a comprehensive account 
of the Illinois country and its inhabitants, with sketches in 
detail of the several French posts and villages situated 
therein, as personally viewed by him in 1766-7. Pittman 
was an oflicer of the British Royal Engineers, and was first 
sent out with a regiment to Pensacola, Florida, in 1763. 
From Pensacola he went to Mobile, and thence to New 
Orleans ; after which he passed up the Mississippi, stopping 
at Natchez, and appears to have reached the lUinois early 
in the year 1766. Returning to Florida, he thence sailed 
for England in 1768. His book, we are told, was originally 

* Billon's Annals of Early St. Louis. 

t Davidson's and Stuve's History, 1st ed., p. 163. 



390. Illinois Under British Domination. 

written at the request and for the use of the Secretary of 
State for the Colonies. It contains, in a compact form, 
much useful and reliable information (nowhere else to be 
found) concerning the Mississippi Valley and its people at 
that transition period.* 

Pittman describes the country of the Illinois as then 
"bounded b}^ the Mississippi on the west, by the river Illi- 
nois on the north, by the rivers Ouabache and Miamis on 
the east, and by the Ohio on the south." Treating of the 
villages seriatim^ and beginning with Kaskaskia, he writes: 

" The village of Notre Dame de Cascasquias is by far the 
most considerable settlement in the country of the Illinois, 
as well from its number of inhabitants as from its advan- 
tageous situation. It stands on the side of a small river, 
which is about eighty yards wide, and empties itself with 
a gentle current into the Mississippi, near two leagues below 
the village. This river is a secure port for the large bateaux 
which lie so close to its banks as to load and unload with- 
out the least trouble, and at all seasons of the year there is 

water enough for them to come up Another 

great advantage that Cascasquias receives from its river is 
the facility with which mills for corn and plank may be 
erected on it. Mons. Paget was the first who introduced 
water-mills in this country, and he constructed a very fine 
one on the river Cascasquias, which was both for grinding 
corn and sawing boards ; it lies about one mile from the 
village. The mill proved fatal to him, being killed as he 
was working in it with two negroes, by a party of Chero- 
kees, in 1764. 

" The principal buildings here are the Church, f and 
Jesuit's House, which (latter) has a small chapel adjoining 
it; these, as well as some other houses in the village, are 
built of stone, and, considering this part of the world, 



* Vide "The Present State of the European Settlements on the Mis- 
sissippi ; with a Geograpliical Description of that River, illustrated by 
Plans and Draughts." By Captain Philip Pittman. London, 1770. 
Quarto, pp. 107. 

t The bell belonging to this quaint old church was cast at La Ro- 
chelle, France, in 174L 



Pittm.an's Account of the French Settlements. 391 

raake a very good appearance. The Jesuit's plantation 
consisted of two hundred and fort}^ arpents (an arpent be- 
ing 85-100 of an acre) of cultivated land, a very good stock 
of cattle, and a brewery ; which was sold by the French 
commandant, after the country was ceded to the English, 
for the Crown, in consequence of the suppression of the 
order.* Mons. (Jean Baptiste) Beauvais was the pur- 
chaser, who is the richest of the English subjects in this 
country. He keeps eighty shives ; he furnished eighty-six 
thousand weight of flour to the king's magazine, which 
was only part of the harvest he reaped in one year. Sixty- 
five families reside in this village, besides merchants, other 
casual people, and slaves. 

"The fort, which was burnt down in October, 1766, 
stood on the summit of a high rock opposite the village, 
and on the opposite side of the river. It was an oblong 
quadrangle, of which the extreme polygon measured two 
hundred and ninety by two hundred and fifty-one feet. It 
was built of very thick square timbers, and dovetailed at 
the angles. An oflEicer and twenty soldiers are quartered 
in the village. The oiRcer governs the inhabitants under 
the direction of the commandant at Fort Chartres. Here 
are also two companies of (French) militia. 

" La Prairie des Roches f is about seventeen (fifteen) 
miles from Cascasquias. It is a small village, consisting of 
twelve dwelling houses, all of which are inhabited by as 
many families. Here is a little chapel, formerly a chapel of 
ease to the church at Fort Chartres. The inhabitants are 
very industrious, and raise a great deal of corn and every 
kind of stock. The village is two miles from Fort Char- 



* The only Jesuit priest allowed to remain in the Illinois was Sebas- 
tian Louis Meurin, and he was required to sign a paper obligating him- 
self not to acknowledge any other superior than that of the Capuchins 
at New Orleans. (Shea's "Catholic Church in Old Colonial Days.") 
Father Meurin died at Prairie du Rocher in 1778. He was a learned 
man and faithful missionary, who left in manuscript a large dictionary 
of the Indian and French languages. 

t Prairie du Rocher is the only one of these old French villages that 
has continued to flourish until the present day. In 1890, according to 
the Ignited States census, it contained a population of 408 souls. 



392 Illinois Under British Domination. 

tree. It takes its name from its situation, being built under 
a rock that runs parallel with the river Mississippi, at a 
league distance, for forty miles up. Here is a company of 
militia, the captain of which regulates the police of the 
village." 

After giving a particular description of Fort Chartres,t 
Pittman's account continues : " In the year 1764, there were 
about forty families in the village near the fort, and a par- 
ish church served by a Franciscan friar, dedicated to St. 
Anne. In the following year, when the English took pos- 
session of the country, they abandoned their houses and 
settled at the village on the west side of the Mississippi, 
choosing to continue under the French government. 

" Saint Phillippe is a small village about five miles 
from Fort Chartres, on the road to Kaoquias. There are 
about sixteen houses and a small church standing ; all the 
inhabitants, except the captain of the militia, deserted it 
in 1765, and went to the French side (Missouri). The cap- 
tain of the militia has about twenty slaves, a good stock of 
cattle, and a water-mill for corn and planks. This village 
stands on a very fine meadow, about one mile from the 
Mississippi. 

" The village of Saint Famille de Kaoquias (Cahokia) 
is generally reckoned fifteen leagues from Fort Chartres, 
and six leagues below the mouth of the Missouri. It stands 
near the side of the Mississippi, and is marked from the 
river by an island (Duncan's) two leagues long. The vil- 
lage is opposite the center of this island ; it is long and 
straggling, being three-fourths of a mile from one end to the 
other. It contains forty-five dwelling houses, and a church 
near the center. The situation is not well chosen, as in 
the floods it is generally overflowed two or three feet deep. 
This was the first settlement on the Mississippi. The land 
was purchased of the savages by a few Canadians, some of 
whom married women of the Kaoquias nation, and others 
brought wives from Canada, and then resided there, leaving 
their children to succeed them. The inhabitants of this 



* kSee avte, ChapU^r XVI., )>. ;]14. 



Pittman's Account of the French Settlements. 393 

place depend more on hnnting and their Indian trade than 
on agriculture, as they scarcely raise corn enough for their 
own consumption ; they have great plenty of poultry, and 
good stocks of horned cattle. 

" The mission of St. Sulpice had a very fine plantation 
here, and an excellent house built on it. They sold this 
estate, and a very good mill for corn and planks, to a 
Frenchman (M. Gerardine), who chose to remain under the 
English government. They also disposed of thirty negroes 
and a good stock of cattle to different people in the coun- 
try, and returned to France in 1764. What is called the 
fort, is a small house standing in the center of the village. 
It differs nothing from the other houses, except in being one 
of the poorest. It was formerly inclosed with high pali- 
sades, but these were torn down and burnt. Indeed, a fort 
at this place could be of little use." * 

Concerning the soil, products, commerce, and aborigi- 
nes of the country, Pittman says : 

" The soil of this country, in general, is very rich and 
luxuriant ; it produces all kinds of European grains, hops, 
hemp, flax, cotton, and tobacco, and European fruits come 
to great perfection. The inhabitants make wine of the 
wild grapes, which is very inebriating, and is, in color and 
taste, very like the red wine of Provence. 

" In the late wars, New Orleans and the lower pai-ts of 
Louisiana were supplied with flour, beef, wines, hams, and 
other provisions from this country. At present, its com- 
merce is mostly confined to the peltry and furs, which are 
got in traflic from the Indians ; for which are received in 
return such European commodities as are necessary to carry 
on that commerce and the support of the inhabitants. 



* " The old fort has long since disappeared ; no vestige of it can now 
be seen. The church still stands, and is probably the oldest house of 
worship west of the Alleghany Mountains. The village, instead of 
being ' near the side of the Mississippi,' is nearly a mile to the east of 
it. This change was mainly wrought by the general flood of 1844." — 
History of St. Clair Co., 111., 1881, p. 327. "The old court-house was 
built (by the Americans) in 1795, or thereabouts, at which time Cahokia 
became the county seat. In 1814 the county seat was removed to Belle- 
ville."— Ibid., p. 329. 



394 Illinois Under British Domination. 

" The principal Indian nations in this countiy are the 
Cascasquias, Kahoquias, Mitchigamias, and Peoyas ; these 
four tribes are generally called the Illinois Indians. Except 
in hunting seasons, they reside near the English settlements 
in this country. They are a poor, debauched and dastardly 
people. They count about three hundred and fifty warriors. 
The Panquichas (Piankashaws), Mascoutins, Miamies, Kick- 
apous, and Pyatonons, though not very numerous, are brave 
and warlike people." 

With regard to the hamlet of Prairie du Pont, of 
which Pittman makes no mention, Reynolds gives us this 
information : 

" The village of Prairie du Pont was settled by emi- 
grants from the other French villages, in the year 1760, 
and was a prosperous settlement. It is stated that this vil- 
lage, in the year 1765, contained fourteen families. They 
had their common field and commons, which were con- 
firmed to them by the government of the United States. 
This village is situated about one mile south of Cahokia, 
and extended south from the creek of the same name for 
some distance. It is a kind of suburb to Cahokia."* 

In order to further illustrate the history of the French 
settlements in Illinois, it is now requisite to give a succinct 
narration of the English rule over them. Captain Thomas 
Stirling began the military government of the country on 
October 10, 1765, with fair and liberal concessions, calcu- 
lated to secure the good-will and loyalty of the French- 
Canadians, and to stay their further exodus ; but his ad- 
ministration was not of long duration.f On the 4th of the 
ensuing December, he was succeeded by Major Robert 
Farmer, who had arrived from Mobile with a detachment 
of the 34th British infantry. In the following year, after 



* Reynold's Pioneer History, second edition, p. 67. 

tit appears that Captain .Stirling did not die while in command at 
Fort Chartres, as related by the earlier historians of Illinois. On the 
contrary, he afterward fought his way up to a brigadier-generalship in 
the War of the Revolution, and finally died in J]ngland, in 1808, a bar; 
onet and a general of high rank. — Moses' History of Illinois (Chicago, 
1889), Vol. I., p. 137; New York Colonial Docs., VII., 786, not£. 



Successive English Commandants in Illinois. 395 

exercising an arbitrary authority over these isohited and 
feeble settlements, Major Farmer was displaced by Colonel 
Edward Cole, who had commanded a regiment under 
Wolfe, at Quebec. Colonel Cole remained in command at 
Fort Chartres about eighteen months; but the position 
was not congenial to him. The climate was unfavorable to 
his health, and the privations of life at a frontier post in- 
creased his discontent. He was accordingly relieved at his 
own request, early in the year 1768.* His successor was 
Colonel John Reed, who proved a bad exchange for the 
poor colonists. He soon became so notorious for his mili- 
tary oppressions of the people that he was removed, and 
gave place to Lieutenant-Colonel John Wilkins, of the 
18th, or royal regiment of Ireland, who had formerly com- 
manded at Fort Niagara. 

Colonel Wilkins arrived from Philadelphia and as- 
sumed the command September 5, 1768. He brought out 
with him seven companies of his regiment for garrison 
duty ; but many of these soldiers succumbed to the mala- 
rious diseases of the country. Having been authorized by 
General Gage to institute a court of justice in Illinois for 
the civil administration of the laws, Wilkins issued his 
proclamation to that eifect on the 2l8t of November. He 
next appointed seven magistrates or judges, who were to 
form a court, and to-hold monthly sessions for the trial and 
adjudication of all controversies arising among the people 
in relation to debts or property. The first term of this 
honorable court was convened at Fort Chartres, December 
6, 1768. It was the first court of common law jurisdiction 
established in the Mississippi Valley ; and, although called 
by courtesy a common law court, it was, in fact, a very 
nondescript tribunal. 

" It was a court of first and last resort ; no appeal lay 
from it. It was the highest as well as the lowest, the only 
court in the country. It proved any thing but popular, and 
it is just possible that the worthy judges themselves, taken 
from among the people, may not have been the most en- 



*Mo6eB' History of 111., Vol. I., p. 138. 



396 Illinois Under British Domination. 

lightened exponents of the law. The people were under 
the laws of England, but the trial by jury — that great bul- 
wark of the subject's right, coeval with the common law 
and reiterated in the British constitution — the French mind 
was unable to appreciate, particularly in civil trials. They 
thought it very inconsistent that the English should refer 
nice questions relating to the rights of property to a tribu- 
nal composed of tailors, shoemakers, or other artisans and 
trades-people, for determination, rather than to judges 
learned in the law. While thus, under the English admin- 
istration, civil jurisprudence was sought to be brought 
nearer to the people, it failed, because, owing to the teach- 
ings, and perhaps genius of the French mind, it could not 
be made of the people. 

" For nearly ninety years had these settlements been 
ruled by the dicta and decisions of theocratic and military 
tribunals, absolute in both civil and criminal cases ; but as 
may well be imagined, in a post so remote, where there was 
neither wealth, culture, nor fashion, all incentives to oppress 
the colony remained dormant, and the extraordinary powers 
of the priests and commandants were (generally) exercised 
in a patriarchal spirit, which gained the love and implicit 
confidence of the people. Believing that their rulers were 
ever right, they gave themselves no trouble or pains to re- 
view their acts. Indeed, many years later, when Illinois 
had passed under the jurisdiction of the United States, the 
perplexed inhabitants, unable to comprehend the to them 
complicated machinery of republicanism, begged to be de- 
livered from the intolerable burden of self-government, 
and again subjected to the will of a military command- 
ant."* 

Subsequent to the treaty of Paris, on October 7, 1763, 
Goorge III., King of Great Britain, issued his proclama- 
tion for the government of the country wrested from France 
in America, and dividing it into four provinces. In this 
proclamation he prohibited his subjects from " making any 
purchases or settlements whatever, or taking possession of 

* Davidson & Stuve's Hist. 111., Ist ed., p. 1()5. 



Land Policy of the English Government. 397 

any of the wild lands beyond the sources of any of the 
rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or 
north-west." The object of this inhibition was to reserve 
the vast and uncultivated region of the West as a hunting- 
ground for the use of the Indians, and, by the navigation 
of the great lakes, to place their enormous fur and peltry 
trade within English control. The policy of the home 
government then was to confine the English colonies to the 
Atlantic slope, within easy reach of the English shipping, 
which would be more conducive to trade and commerce; 
whereas the granting of large bodies of land in the remote 
interior would tend to separate the colonists, and render 
them more independent and difficult to govern. 

But it was soon apparent that this narrow and re- 
strictive policy of the government could not be strictly en- 
forced. Indeed, one of the most noticeable features of 
Colonel Wilkins' administration was the liberality with 
which he parceled out large tracts of the domain over 
which he ruled to his favorites in Illinois, Philadelphia, 
and elsewhere, without other consideration than requiring 
them to re-convey to him a certain interest in the same. 
By the aforesaid proclamation of the king, the taking or 
purchasing of lands from the Indians in any of the Ameri- 
can colonies was strictly forbidden, without special permis- 
sion being first had and obtained. Under this prohibition, 
Colonel Wilkins, and some of his predecessors in office, 
treated the lands of the French absentees in Illinois as for- 
feited, and granted them away ; but these transactions 
never received the sanction of the King, and by no royal 
or judicial act did their property become escheated to the 
British crown.* 

Lieutenant Colonel Wilkins' government of the Illinois 
country eventually became unpopular, and specific charges 
were preferred against him, including a misappropriation 
of the public funds. He asked for an official investigation, 
claiming that he was able to justify his public conduct. 



Davidson & Stuve'e Hist. 111., 1st ed., p. 166. 



398 Illinois Under British Domination. 

But lie was deposed from office in September, 1771, and 
sailed for Europe iu July of the following year.* 

Captain Hugh Lord, of the 18th regiment, became 
Wilkins' successor at Fort Chartres, and continued in com- 
mand until the year 1775. It was during his incumbency, 
in the spring of 1772, that the great freshet occurred in the 
Mississippi, which undermined and partly destroyed the 
fortress, so that it was abandoned. The seat of the local 
government was then removed to Kaskaskia, and the gar- 
rison took up their quarters at the old fort on the rocky 
hill or bluff, over against the town. This fort, as herein 
before stated, had been destroyed by fire in 1766, but it was 
now repaired or reconstructed, and was named Fort Gage, 
in token of respect to the British commander-in-chief in 
America. At this time the British garrison here was quite 
small, comprising, it is said, only twenty men and one com- 
missioned officer, though there were two companies of mili- 
tia in Kaskaskia village. 

On the 2d of June, 1774, Parliament passed an act 
enlarging and extending the province of Quebec to the 
Mississippi River, so as to include the territory of the 
Northwest ; restoring to the people of Canada their ancient 
laws in civil cases ; guaranteeing the free exercise of their 
religion, and rehabilitating the Roman Catholic clergy 
with the privileges stipulated in the articles of capitulation 
at Montreal in 1760. This act was popularly known as the 
" Quebec Bill." It was intended not only to conciliate the 
French inhabitants of Canada, and to firmly attach them 
to the English crown, but to counteract the growing oppo- 
sition to the home government in the American colonies 
on the Atlantic seaboard. The measure was a master 
stroke of policy on the part of the British ministry, since 
it allayed disaffection, and tended to prevent the revolt of 
the Canadian provinces in the War of the Revolution. 

Who was the immediate successor of Captain Lord 
in command of the Illinois, is not positively determined. 
It appears from a letter written by Governor Haldimand 

* Moses' Hist, of 111., Vol. I., p. 141. 



Kennedy's River Voyage. 399 

(July 8, 1781), that Captain Matthew Johnson received a 
salary of twelve hundred pounds sterling for services as 
lieutenant-commandant of the Illinois from May, 1775, to 
May, 1781; but we are not informed as to where that 
oificer was stationed, or what duties he performed other 
than to draw his pa3\* 

It is clear, however, from the " Governor Haldimand 
Papers" (preserved in the Canadian Archives at Ottawa), 
that Philippe Francois de Rastel de Rocheblave was in 
command of the British at the fort near Kaskaskia as early 
as October, 1776, and that his conduct as such commandant 
was approved by his superior, Sir Guy Carleton.* Roche- 
blave was a native of Dauphiny, and had been an officer in 
the French service, but with the transfer of the country to 
Great Britain he changed his allegiance, and for this was 
promoted. He resided for many years in Kaskaskia, and 
was married there in April, 1763, as is shown by the parish 
records. 

In Imlay's " Description of the Western Territory of 
North America," published at London in 1797, is contained 
the journal of a river voyage made by one Patrick Ken- 
nedy, with several coureurs des bois, in the summer of 1773, 
from Kaskaskia village to the head-waters of the Illinois, 
in search of copper mines. From this curious and interest- 
ing journal, we condense the subjoined statement descrip- 
tive of his journey, and of the then still wild country of 
the Illinois. 

Kennedy and his party left Kaskaskia on the 23d of 
July, 1773, in a large canoe or bateau, and on the 31st of 
that month reached the mouth of the Illinois River, eighty- 
four miles from Kaskaskia, and eighteen above the junction 
of the Missouri. In ascending the Mississippi, they passed, 
on their right, the heavily timbered American Bottom as 
far as to the site of the present Alton, and thence skirted 
the chain of rugged rocks and high hills, which begins below 
the Piasa Bluffs and extends to and beyond the confluence 
of the Illinois. On quitting the Mississippi and enter- 



Mose's History of 111., Vol. I., p. 142. 



400 Illinois Under British Domination. 

ing the Illinois, they found the latter river so low and its 
borders so full of weeds and bushes that their progress was 
much impeded, and they were obliged to row their boat in 
the deeper water of the channel. The batiks are depicted 
by Kennedy as low on both sides; the course of the stream 
as N., N. E.; and the bottom land as being well timbered 
with pecan, maple, ash, button-wood, etc.* " There are 
fine meadows," he tells us, "at a little distance from the 
river, the banks of which do not crumble away as do those 
of the Mississippi." 

On the first day of August, after passing the mouth 
of the Macoupin, or White Potatoe Creek, the voyagers 
stopped to refresh themselves at an old wintering ground 
of the Peorias. In this lower part of the river, they en- 
countered several small islands, and saw many buffalo and 
deer feeding. On the following day they passed an island 
called Pierre a Fleche, which had its name from a large hill 
on the west side of the stream, where the Indians procured 
the stone from which they chipped their arrow-heads and 
gun flints. On the 4th our voyagers passed the mouth of 
the Sangamo, or Sangamon River,t putting in from the 
east, and on the 7th they reached the southern extremity 
of Peoria Lake ; coucerning which, and the remains of the 
fort then standing there, Kennedy's Journal says: 

" The morning being foggy, and the river overgrown 
with weeds along its sides, we could make but little (head) 
way. About twelve o'clock we got to the old Peoria fort 
and village, on the western shore of the river, and at the 



* " The kinds of timber most abundaut (in Illinois) are oaks of 
various species, black and white walnut, ash of several kinds, elm, sugar- 
maple, honey-locust, hackberry, linden, hickory, cotton-wood, pecan, 
mulberry, buckeye, sycamore, wild-cherry, box-elder, sassafras, and per- 
simmon. In the southern and eastern parts of the state are yellow pop- 
lar and beech ; near the Ohio are cypress, and in several counties are 
clumps of yellow pine and cedar. The undergrowth is redbud, papaw, 
sumach, plum, crab-apple, grape-vines, dogwood, spice-bush, green- 
brier, hazel, etc. The alluvial soil of the rivers produces cotton-wood 
and sycamore timber of amazing size." — Peck's Gazetteer of Illinois. 

t To what extent, if any, the Sangamon was ever explored by the 
French does not appear of record. 



Notice of Peorm Village. 401 

foot of a lake called the Illinois Lake, which is nineteen 
miles and a half in length and three miles in breadth. It 
has no rocks, shoals, or perceptible current. We found the 
stockade of this Peoria fort destroyed by fire, but the houses 
standing.* The summit on which the fort stood commands 
a fine prospect of the country to the eastward, and up the 
lake to the point where the river comes in at the north end ; 
to the westward are large meadows. In the lake is great 
plenty of fish, and in particular sturgeon and picamau." 

Pushing on up the lake and river, Kennedy and party 
arrived at the entrance of the Vermilion, two hundred and 
sixty-seven miles from the mouth of the Illinois, on the 
9th of August. The Vermilion River is described as thirty 
yards wide, but with such a rocky and uneven bed as not 
to be navigable. A mile above that the voyagers reached 
the rapids in the Illinois, and finding the water too shallow 
for their boat, they abandoned it and proceeded by land 
about forty-five miles farther. Having crossed a northern 



■' 111 the above citation, no reference is made to the time when this 
"old Peoria fort" was built by the French, though it must have been 
snrisequent to Father Charlevoix' visit (1721 ), for he makes no mention 
of any fort there. As to the remains of Fort Crdve-coeur, on the op- 
posite side of the river, they had disappeared long before. From the 
time of La Salle and Hennepin, the southern extremity of Peoria Lake 
was a familiar locality to the French voyageurs and traders, as well as 
to the English who followed in their wake. There is, however, no 
authentic account of any continuous European settlement in this vicin- 
ity until 1778, when the village of La Ville de Maillet was begun on the 
north-western shore of the lake. It took its name from its founder, 
Hypolite Maillet, who is portrayed as a man " remarkable for his bravery, 
brutality, and enterprise." This small French settlement was subse- 
quently changed to the old Indian village at the foot of the lake, on ac- 
count of its greater salubrity and other advantages. The transfer was 
fully effected by the year 1797, and the new village received the name 
of Peoria. (See Ballance's History of Peoi'ia.) In the fall of 1812, it 
was destroyed by a detachment of Territorial militia under Captain 
Craig, and its French inhabitants were forcibly transported to and be- 
low what is now Alton. In 1813 a wooden fort was erected on the site 
of the village, which was called Fort Clark. This fort was burned in 
1818; and it was not until the next year (1819) that the place was per- 
manently occupied by American pioneers. 

26 



402 Illinois Under British Domination. 

tributary of the Illinois called the Fox River, they struck 
and followed a trail up the Illinois to an island, where 
some French traders were found encamped. The latter, 
however, could give Kennedy no information in regard to 
the copper mine he was seeking. He now hired one of the 
traders to take himself and party in a canoe back to the 
place where they had left their boat. From thence, on the 
way down the Illinois, they met with a Frenchman named 
Jeanette, who assisted them in a further search for the 
mine ; but Kennedy finally returned to Kaskaskia without 
having discovered any copper. The meeting with French- 
Canadians on this expedition showed that they still hunted 
and trafficked with the Indians in this part of the country.* 

In 1778, when Colonel George Rogers Clark, and his 
Virginia militia, numbering less than two hundred men, 
achieved the bloodless conquest of Illinois, not a single 
British soldier was found doing duty in the country, they 
having all been withdrawn to other and more important 
points, M. de Rocheblave was still in command for the En- 
glish at Fort Gage ; but, owing to his contumacious behavior, 
he was sent a prisoner of war to Virginia, where he was pa- 
roled and afterward broke his parole. In Kaskaskia and 
Cahokia the French militia were well organized, and they 
were utilized Ijy Clark f in maintaining his conquest. 

France had exercised sovereignty over the country of 
the Illinois for ninety-two years, commencing with the dis- 
covery by Joliet and Marquette, in 1673, and ending with 
the surrender of Fort Chartres, in 1765. The actual En- 
glish possession lasted but thirteen years, or fifteen from 
the treaty of Paris in 1763 till 1778. In October of the 
latter year, the Virginia Legislature erected the conquered 
territory into the County of Illinois, and Colonel John 
Todd, I of Kentucky, was appointed lieutenant-commandant 

* See "Description of Westcru North America," by Captain Gilbert 
Imlay: 3d ed., London, 1797, pp. 507-512. 

t George Rogers Clark, the greatest character in the early American 
history of Illinois, was born in Albemarle county, Virginia, November 
19, 1752, and died, unmarried, near Louisville, Ky., in February, 1818. 

t Todd was subsequently killed at the battle of Blue Licks, Ky., in 
1782. 



Note on Kaskaskia. 403 

thereof. Illinois thus became an integrant part of Vir- 
ginia, and so remained until March, 1784, when it, with the 
rest of the territory north-west of the river Ohio, was ceded 
by the Old Dominion to the Government of the United 
States. 



In July, 1778, when Colonel Clark took military possession of Kas- 
kaskia, it is stated, on apparently good authority, that it comprised two 
hundred and fifty houses, with a proportionate population. This estimate, 
if not too high, shows a somewhat rapid and progressive growth from 
the time of Pittman's visit thither in 1766. Kaskaskia, however, con- 
tinued to prosper, and maintained her rank and prestige as the leading 
town in the Illinois country down to the year 1820, since which date she 
has gradually dwindled to a mere skeleton of her former self. In April, 
1881, the Mississippi and Kaskaskia Rivers became united above the 
village by a deep channel, which the former had cut across the penin- 
sula that forms the southern extremity of the American Bottom, thus 
leaving what remained of the historic old place on an island. 

"The very river," says a native of Kaskaskia, "upon whose placid 
■ waters they (the French settlers) paddled their light canoes, has become 
the bed of the wild currents of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and 
that beautiful and rolling peninsula, whereon the old town was located, 
has become a desert island. The history of the world affords no paral- 
lel to the rapid and absolute desolation of old Kaskaskia. Towns and 
cities have gone down to ruin, but yet have left some traces of their 
former greatness ; not so with old Kaskaskia. The verj^ earth upon 
which she stood has become a desert and desolation. Night and ignor- 
ance have wrapped themselves around her, and she rests alone in the 
memories of the past. It is scarcely beyond the life of those now living, 
when she was the most important place in our western territories— the 
center of trade in Illinois, the capital of our territory, the capital of our 
state, and, with a population of some three thousand people, embraced 
a large proportion of the wisdom, learning, wealth and eloquence of Il- 
linois. . . . 

" There is a witchery attending the hallowed memories of old Kas- 
kaskia ; with it the dreams of romance become realized, and the prose 
of life is transformed into poetry."— Extract from an address, by Hon. 
Henry S. Baker, before the Illinois State Bar Association, Jan. 10, 1888. 



404 General Descri'ption of the French Colonists. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE FRENCH COLONISTS. 

In this concluding chapter it is proposed to depict, 
with as much fidelity as possible, considering the distance 
of time and place, and the scantiness of authentic data, the 
village abodes, household and farming implements, occupa- 
tions, dress, manners, customs, amusements, the social and 
religious life, peculiar to the early French communities in 
Illinois and Louisiana. 

Unlike the English and American pioneers, who pre- 
ferred sparse settlements and a free range on account of 
their desire to become land owners, the French settlers in- 
variably established themselves in irregular yet compact 
villages, with such narrow streets between the houses that 
they could easily carry on their light and animated conver- 
sations across them. These villages were commonly located 
on the banks of some river, adjacent to a fort or other se- 
cure place, and convenient to both tim})er and prairie ; the 
one furnishing them with firewood and building material, 
and the other with ground for tillage. 

Their primitive habitations were doubtless little better 
than the Indian wigwams — a mere protection from the 
weather — but in process of time they erected more sub- 
stantial houses. In general, their dwellings were one story 
high, built in a simple and inexpensive way, after the style 
brought from Canada, or France. The framework con- 
sisted of roughly hewn posts, firmly set in the earth, a few 
inches (sometimes a few feet) apart, and bound together by 
horizontal cross-timbers, — the spaces between being filled 
in with mortar, made of common clay and Spanish moss* 
or cut straw. The walls were whitewashed, both within 



* This moss was found {jrowiug in great abundance on tlie forest 
trees of the country. 



Their Houses and Furniture. 405 

and without, which gave an air of neatness and comfort to 
the buildings. The floors were laid with puncheons, or ce- 
mented with clay mortar. The eaves were low and pro- 
jecting, and the roofs steep and thatched with straw or 
wild grass, though some were covered with clapboards 
fastened with wooden pins ; and on the comb of the roof a 
wooden cross was often placed. The doors were of plain 
batten work, and were mostly made out of walnut. The 
window^s generally had some glass in them, and were hung 
on hinges ; but in the earlier built houses, they used scraped 
skins or oiled paper as a substitute for glass. The chim- 
neys, when attached to the dwellings, stood on the outside, 
with large tire-places opening within. Most of these dom- 
iciles, especially in Lower Louisiana, were surrounded with 
plain verandas, which protected them from the sun and 
rain, while the rooms within were cool and commodious, 
having little furniture, but with white walls and well 
scoured floors. 

The mansions of the better sort were in the same pe- 
culiar style, though larger, stronger, and more pretentious 
in their architecture ; those being often built of roughly 
dressed limestone, and then whitewashed. Few articles of 
luxury were to be found in any of their homes, though it 
was not uncommon to see in the best of them small services 
of china or plate, or a single piece of silverware (i)erhap8 
an heirloom), displayed on the top of the closet, or on a 
side table. The walls of the rooms were frequently deco- 
rated with cheap prints, illustrative of our Savior's passion, 
or of scenes in the life of the V'irgin Mary, or some favorite 
saint. These pictures not only contributed to furnish 
their humble apartments, but served to inspire devotional 
sentiments in the hearts of a people inclined to piety and 
superstition. 

Of the '' commons " and '' common fields," pertaining 
to the French villages, we have elsewhere treated in this 
work. To each villager was allotted a certain portion of 
the common field, the extent of which was usually propor- 
tioned to the size of his family. The lands thus appor- 
tioned were subject to the village regulations, and when 



406 General Description of the French Colonists. 

the person in possession became idle or negligent so as to 
injure the common interest, he forfeited his claim. As ac- 
cessions were made to families from time to time, by mar- 
riage or otherwise, portions of land were taken from the 
commons and added to the common field for their benefit. 
The time of plowing, sowing, and harvesting was subject 
to the enactments of the village council and commandant. 
Even the form and construction of the inclosures to their 
dwellings and other buildings were made a matter of 
special regulation by the local commandant, and were ar- 
ranged with a view to defense in case of any sudden up- 
rising of the Indians. 

In the gardens of the villagers, the common culinary 
plants, with some medicinal herbs and small fruits, were 
cultivated by the side of the modest violet, the fragrant 
rose, and the stately sunflower. Here, too, the apple, 
peach, and pear trees blossomed and matured their de- 
licious fruits ; and the prolific grape-vine, trained along the 
inclosures or against the eaves of the cottages, yielded its 
rich vintage in its season. In addition to the varied pro- 
ducts of their gardens, their tables were otherwise well sup- 
plied from the spoils of the chase. 

There was always a considerable diversity of pursuits 
among the French inhabitants of Louisiana proper, but in the 
dependency of the Illinois, the colonists applied themselves 
mainly to agriculture. The principal crops raised were 
wheat, oats, rye, hops (for the breweries), and tobacco. 
The last named article was highly esteemed by the males for 
smoking, and by the elderly females also, when it was 
cured and pulverized into snufi". Indian corn was not much 
grown, except for hominy, and to fatten swine. For use 
as bread, the French entertained for it a settled aversion. 
Their horses, of which they did not have a great number, 
had been introduced chiefly from the Spanish settlements 
in Mexico, and were small, yet s'trong and hardy, perform- 
ing well for their size. Horned cattle were easily and ex- 
tensively raised. They were first brought into Illinois 
from Canada, and, though not large, were neat and well 
formed. 



Farming and other Lnplements. 407 

The farming implements of the colonists were of the 
crudest and most primitive pattern. They used wooden 
plows* for breaking and tilling the ground, hand-flails for 
threshing their grain, and rude wooden carts, without a 
particle of iron, in place of wagons. These implements 
were mostly the handiwork of the farmer himself, aided by 
his slaves (if he had any), or by those of his more fortunate 
neighbor. Oxen were employed in plowing or breaking 
the earth, and horses for riding and drawing the carts. 
The oxen were yoked b}^ the horns instead of the neck, 
and were guided by strips or ropes of untanned hide. The 
horses were driven tandem^ that is, one before the other, 
and were directed and controlled by the whip and voice, 
without the convenience of reins. The harness used was 
made of raw hide, since they had no tanned leather for any 
purpose. 

Although cows were plentiful and milk abundant, the 
common churn was a thing unknown to these simple colon- 
ists, their butter being made by shaking the cream in a 
bottle, or breaking it in a bowl with a spoon. Nor were 
the spinning-wheel and loom (so common with the Ameri- 
can pioneers) to be seen in their houses. The traders sup- 
plied all goods or stuft's for the use of both sexes, not from 
stocks exposed on shelves in stores, as at present, but from 
chests and trunks, or tied up in bales. 

The costume of the early French settlers was some- 
what motley in its composition, but they had an inherited 
predilection for the blue in color. For clothing, the men 
wore shirts and waistcoats of cotton, with coarse blue cloth 
or deer-skin trousers, and moccasins, after the Indian 
fashion. Over these was worn, in winter, the indispensable 
capote, or long woolen coat, with a blue hood attachment, 
which, in wet or cold weather, was drawn over the head, 
and at other times fell back on the shoulders as a cape, like 



* " The old plow used by the French would be a curiosity at this 
•day. It had no coulter, but had a large wooden mold-board. The 
handles were short, and stood almost perpendicular. The beam was 
nearly straight, and rested on an axle supported by two small wheels, 
which made the plow unsteady." — Reynolds' Pioneer History. 



408 General Description of the French Colonists. 

that of the habitants of Lower Canada. Among the iioy- 
ageurs and traders, the head was more often covered with a 
bhie cotton handkerchief, folded in the shape of a turban. 
In like manner, hut neatly trimmed with ribbons, was 
formed the fancy head-dress worn by the young women at 
balls and other festive occasions. The dress of the matron, 
though plain and with the antique short waist, was neat and 
varied in its minor details to suit the diversities of womanly 
taste. Both sexes wore moccasins of Indian manufacture, 
which, tor public occasions, were variously decorated with 
small shells, beads and ribbons, giving them quite a showy 
appearance. 

Notwithstanding their tawny complexions, and an ap- 
pearance of languor among the people, the eftects in part 
of climate, there was nothing of that sickly, cadaverous 
look, and listless air and bearing so observable in the Cre- 
oles of the West Indies and Central America. The counte- 
nances of the young maidens in particular were lively and 
engaging, with their black eyes, raven tresses, graceful 
forms, and quick, elastic steps, like that of the mountain 
maiden of whom Scott has sung : 

"A foot more light, a step more true, 
Ne'er h'om the heath-flower dashed the dew." 

They were all essentially French in character, with 
something of the Sj^anish gravity, but the tout ensemble 
indicated cheerfulness and an agreeable composure.* A 
quick-witted people, they had a penchant for nick-names, 
both as applied to persons and places. For example, they 
first named Ste. Grenevieve, Mo., Misere, as expressive of 
the misery or poverty of the place. Carondelet received the 
derisive name of Vide Poche, or Empty Pocket,t and St. 
Louis was long known as Pain Court, or Short-bread. 

* Breese's Early Ill's, p. 193. 

t Carondelet, Mo., was founded by Clement Delor de Tregette, as 
early as 1767, and was afterward named in compliment to the Baron 
de Carondelet, who was Spanish governor of Louisiana from 1792 till 1797. 
This French village is situated about six miles south of the county court 
house, in St. Louis, and now forms a part of the latter city. 



Boating on the Mississippi. 409 

Kaskaskia was familiarly called Au Kas, which became 
corrupted into Okaw. 

Among these colonists, the mechanical occupations 
were confined to a few carpenters, tailors, stone-masons, 
boat-builders, and blacksmiths ; which last could repair a 
firelock or a rifle. The artisans journeyed from village to 
village in quest of employment, and were ready to turn their 
hands to any kind of work. Now and then might be found 
among them a millwright, who could make or repair the run- 
ning-gear of a water-mill, or build a horse mill The only 
wind-mill in the country'', of which we find any mention, 
stood on the road between Kaskaskia and Prairie du Rocher. 
Coopers were scarce, though they should have been in de- 
mand, for large quantities of flour were manufactured and 
shipped to the southern markets ; but no other bagging ap- 
pears to have been used in the packing and shipment of 
flour than that afforded by dried elk and deer-skins. 

Aside from the business of hunting and small traifick- 
ing with the Indians, which attracted the more indolent, 
the most captivating and adventurous employment for the 
young or middle-aged Frenchman was boating on the Mis- 
sissippi River. Success in this arduous calling demanded 
the combined exercise of many qualities, such as bodily 
activity, courage, capability of undergoing great fatigue, 
a quick eye, a steady hand, and withal good judgment. 
The voyage from Fort Chartres or Kaskaskia to 'New Or- 
leans was the principal and most important one. It usually 
consumed about three months' time, and was more difficult 
and hazardous than a trip across the Atlantic, even at that 
day. The river, then as now, was tortuous and rapid, its 
deep channel being obstructed by snags and sawyers, and 
continually shifting its course. ISTor were these the only 
difiiculties to be encountered in navigating the stream. 
From Kaskaskia to the vicinity of Xew Orleans, there 
were no white settlements of any consequence, except at 
the Arkansas, Natchez, and, later on, Baton Rouge ; and 
the route was more or less beset by marauding bands of 
Chickasaws and other Indians, whom French power had 
not been able to subdue. 



410 General Description of the French Colonists. 

The voyage was made in large bateaux/^ each manned 
by from sixteen to twenty hands, and going in convoys for 
mutual safety. The boats were laden with the surplus pro- 
ductions of the Illinois country, which were exchanged for 
such necessaries and luxuries as their own labor or soil did 
not produce, or else converted into the gold and silver coin- 
age of France. Accounts were all kept in livres; and, be- 
sides coin, good pelts, at a fixed rate per pound, were a 
recognized measure of values, and passed freely in com- 
mercial transactions throughout the province. 

The upward or return voyage was very tedious and 
laborious, generally taking from three to four months. Every 
means was resorted to by the boatmen — by keeping in the 
eddies near the shore, by sometimes crossing the river, and by 
the frequent use of the tow rope — to make headway against 
the dead weight of the current. Under such circumstances 
an Indian ambuscade might be fatal to the crew of one 
boat, but as several went together the danger was proportion- 
ately lessened. Attacks from the savages, however, were 
less to be dreaded than the malignant fevers, which swept 
away numbers of the men annually. 

The flotilla was usually commanded by an officer of 
the king's troops, when a suitable one could be had, or, if 
not, one was selected from among the more experienced 
of the boatmen themselves. To reacli this distinction, or 
even that of captain of a single boat, was deemed an object 
worthy of ambition ; yet but few attained this coveted prize 
of their perilous calling. Strict military discipline was 
enforced, and a reguhir guard was mounted at each stop- 
ping place at night. On returning from their protracted 
river voyages, the boatmen, like sailors the world over, were 
very prodigal of their earnings. " They were as liberal as 
princes, and valued money as nothing more than a means 
by which pleasure could be purchased and appetites in- 
dulged. Saving was no part of their economy." f In con- 



■• The bateau was a loiij? and ratlier light l)uilt boat, of about twenty- 
tons burden. 

t Breese's Early Illinois, p. 208. 



Social Condition an Environments. 411 

vival intercourse, they were mucli addicted to relating long 
stories about their voyages, adventures, and hair-breadth 
escapes among the savages. 

For ordinary locomotion on water, the canoe was in- 
dispensable to the early French settler. Those in common 
use were mostly hollowed out of the trunks of trees, that 
of the cypress being preferred on account of its lightness 
and elasticity. The birch bark canoes came from the 
region of the high northern lakes, and were principally used 
by the Canadian voyageurs and fur-traders. They were con- 
structed of a slight frame-work of cedar, incased with the 
flexible bark of the "Canoe Birch," and were remarkable 
for their lightness and buoyancy. Of clifierent sizes, they 
were finished alike at both ends, and were built to carry 
from four to twelve persons. Charlevoix informs us that 
the Ottawa Indians were the most expert builders of these 
canoes, but that the French were more skillful in handling 
them. 

Owing to their extraordinary tact for ingratiating 
themselves with the aboriginal tribes, by whom they were 
surrounded, the Illinois French escaped almost entirely 
those broils and border strifes which weakened and some- 
times destroyed other and less favored European colonies. 
Whether navigating the interminable rivers of the country, 
or threading the solitudes of the wild forests and prairies 
in quest of game ; whether at home in their villages, or as 
participants in the religious exercises of the same Catholic 
church, the red men became their every-day associates and 
assistants, and were treated with the kindness and considera- 
tion of brothers. The social condition of the early colonists 
was thus formed, to some extent, by the influence of their 
Indian neighbors with whom they maintained such friendly 
relations. But while the barbarism of the savages was, in 
some degree, softened by this intercourse, the morals of the 
French were not improved. Many of the original settlers, 
and particularly the trappers and traders, contracted mar- 
riages or temporary alliances with the Indian women, 
from which sprang the mixed progeny known as "half- 



412 General Description of the French Colonists. 

breeds."* They made expert hunters and trappers, and 
indefatigable boatmen, but in their general characteristics 
partook more of the savage than the civilized man. The 
natural home of the "half-breed" is on the outskirts, the 
boundaries of American civilization, where he still flour- 
ishes as in days of yore. 

The example of the Canadian and Illinois French in 
amalgamating with the Indians, although adopted more per- 
haps as a matter of policy and convenience, was not one to 
be commended ; for time and experience have abundantly 
shown that all such intermixture of races degrade the su- 
perior without materially improving the inferior race. In 
the case of the French, they did not sink to the level of 
barbarism, yet they were left in a condition below that of 
true civilization. There are, it is true, some English and 
American half and quarter-breeds; but, as a rule, the 
Anglo-Americans have ever disdained to mingle their 
blood with a distinctively inferior race, and to this circum- 
stance they owe, in no slight degree, their pre-eminence 
among the enlightened races of mankind. 

In the early years of the French settlements in Louisi- 
ana, there was very little money of any kind in circulation, 
business being transacted by barter and exchange. After 
the collapse of Law's " credit system " (1720), the money 
in use consisted of gold and silver coins of the French and 
Spanish mints. The value of every thing was reckoned 
in livres ; the livre being equivalent to the modern franc, 
five of which equal ninety-five cents. Then there was the 
louis (Tor, a French gold coin, valued at $4.84, and the 
Spanish doubloon, a gold coin worth about $15.93. During 
Gov. Kerlerec's administration, a paper money called bons 
was extensively issued at New Orleans, but it never had 
much circulation in the dependency of the Illinois. It 
was emitted in sums of from ten sous or cents to one hun- 
dred livres, was signed by the governor and intendant of 
the province, and was so called from the first word on the 



* In the French villages of Missouri, the half-breeds received the 
nic-name of "Gumbos." 



Their Amusements and Festal Days. 41 3 

face of the paper — Bon ■pour la somme payable en lettre de 
change sur le tresor. 

Separated from their mother-land by the Atlantic 
Ocean, and by a thousand miles of interior navigation 
from Montreal on the one hand, and from New Orleans on 
the other, the French colonists of Illinois were obliged to 
rely upon themselves not only for the necessaries of life, 
but also for their amusements. Socially inclined, light- 
hearted and gay, their principal diversion was dancing, in 
which all classes freely joined, to the enlivening music of 
the violin. When parties were assembled for this purpose, 
it was customary to choose some of the older and more dis- 
creet persons to direct the entertainment, preserve order, and 
see that all present had an opportunity to participate in the 
pleasurable pastime. Whenever those in authority on such 
occasions decided that the entertainment had been pro- 
tracted long enough, it was brought to a close, and thus 
excesses were avoided. 

Then, again, the monotony of theii" existence was 
broken by the muny fetes or festal days connected with the 
Catholic church. All the people shared alike in the harm- 
less merriment of shrove-tide, and in the fun and frolic of 
the carnival, and at its close repaired to the sacred precincts 
of the sanctuary to receive the sprinkling of ashes, typical 
of their conclusion. All, too, observed the same self-denying 
ordinances during the Lenten season, which terminated 
with the festival of Easter. Society, of course, had its di- 
visions even here ; but those artificial distinctions between 
the rich and the poor, which obtain in older and more pol- 
ished communities, were not recognized or maintained 
among these secluded colonists. 

In their domestic relations, they were in general ex- 
emplary and kind, affectionate to their children and lenient 
toward their slaves. In fact, the family circle was usually 
a very cheerful and happy one. The male servants worked 
in the fields with their masters, faring as well as they did, 
and had small plots of ground assigned them, and the use 
of their master's team to cultivate the same ; thus mutual 
esteem and confidence were inspired. The females assisted 



414 General Description of the French Colonists. 

their mistresses in the kitchen and nursery, and then, 
in neat attire, accompanied them to matins and ves- 
pers. When sick or disabled, they were nursed with 
tenderness and care ; and, in fine, were the recipients of so 
much humane treatment as to be wholly unmindful of the 
fetters with which custom and state policy had bound 
them. 

The language spoken by the commonalty was not pure 
French, but a patois, or corrupted provincial dialect. No 
common schools existed in the country, nor any system of 
public instruction. The Jesuits imparted some little of that 
learning, w^ith which they were so richly endowed, to such 
young Creoles as they found " thirsting for the waters of 
the Pierian spring;" yet no plan of general education was 
ever adopted, or even seriously considered, by those in au- 
thority. Hence the charge of illiteracy is laid against this 
people; but, as the poet Gray has said — 

" Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis foil}' to be wise." 

The Eoman Catholic creed, however, was instilled into 
the minds of all from their earliest childhood, and the ta- 
pering spires of its little churches or chapels arose in every 
hamlet. In them was performed the marriage ceremony, 
the priest consecrating the nuptial tie and recording the 
act, which was attested by witnesses. There the sacrament 
of baptism was administered to infants and adults ; there, 
too, were held the last sad obsequies for the dead, and 
masses w^ere said for the souls of those " not dying in the 
odor of sanctity." * 

" Separated thus from all the world, these people ac- 
quired many peculiarities. In language, dress, and man- 
ners, they lost much of their original polish ; but they re- 



* Breese's Early 111., p. 209. 

Note. — "The inhabitants," writes Reynolds, " were devout and strong 
believers in the Roman Catholic Church. They were willing to fight 
and die for the maintenance of the doctrines of their church. They 
considered the Church of Rome infallible, emanating directly from God, 
and therefore all the dogmas were received and acted on without a why 
or wherefore." — Pioneer History of Illinois, p. 55. 



Origin of the Different Classes qf Colonists. 415 

tained, and (their descendants) still retain, many of the 
leading characteristics of their nation. They took care to 
keep np their ancient holidays and festivals; and with 
few luxuries, and fewer wants, they were prohably as cheer- 
ful and as happy a people as any in existence."' * 

The foregoing descriptive account applies not only to 
the early French colonists in Illinois and all Northern Lou- 
isiana, but also, with only slight alteration, to their village 
settlements in Southern Louisiana. At New Orleans, the po- 
litical and commercial seat of government, there was always 
a certain number of people of family and education. There 
were the rude semblance of a court, a kind of theater, and 
amusements of a higher grade than could be found else- 
where within the limits of the large province. The deni- 
zens of New Orleans were wont to look upon their rural 
countrymen in much the same manner as they themselves 
were regarded by the refined circles of Paris. Among the 
mixed population of that colonial metropolis, however, 
drunkenness, brawls, and dueling were unhappily too prev- 
alent, both before and after the Spanish occupation of the 
country.f 

Some few of the Louisiana colonists were of noble 
origin ; many were military officers, w^hile others were 
born gentlemen, and the ecclesiastics were all educated 
people. With but few exceptions, the original immigrants 
to Illinois had come by way of Canada from the north of 
France, and mostly belonged to the bourgeois and paysan 
classes. But many of those who afterward settled in 
LoAver Louisiana were from the south-western provinces 
of France, bordering on the Pyrenees and the Atlantic. 
A number of these were well educated business men from 
the larger cities and towns, and some of them made their 
way up the Mississippi to Kaskaskia and St. Louis, where 
they founded influential families, still existing.^ It was, 
perhaps, a fortunate trait, and certainly an amiable one, in 



* Sketches of the West, by Judge James Hall, vol. 1, p. 150. 

t Gayarre's Louisiana, vol. 1. 

t Billon's Annals of Early St. Louis. 



416 General Description of the French Colonists. 

the French character, that such men could so readily re- 
sign the comforts and pleasures of civilized life in their 
natal land, and make themselves contented among savages 
in the remote and uncultivated regions of the Mississippi, 
where they seldom heard from their homes over the sea 
more than once in twelve months. 



[ AUTHORITIES. ] 

For the facts embodied in the foregoing chapter, we are indebted to 
various sources, but chief]yto the labors of Judge Sidney Breese and ex- 
Gov. .Tohn Keynolds, both of whom had early an excellent opportuni- 
ties for observing the French character and manners. Breese resided in 
Kaskaskia from 1818 to 1835, and then at Carlyle, Illinois, until his death 
in 1878; while Reynolds lived in Cahokia from 1814 to about 1830, and 
afterward in Belleville, 111., imtil the close of his life in 1865. It may be 
added here that Breese's "Early History of Illinois " was first given to 
the public in the shape of an extended historical address, in December, 
1842, but it was not published in book form until after his decease, and, 
then, without his previous revision or correction. Reynolds' " Pioneer 
History," an entertaining and instructive work, first appeared in 1852. 

Among modern writers on French- American history, the two most 
distinguished are Francis Parkman and the late Dr. John Gilmary Shea.* 
Their various and valuable publications cover the entire period of the 
French rule on this continent, and are characterized by profoundness 
of erudition and elegance of style. To these may now be added Dr. 
Wm. Kingsford, of Ottawa. Canada, whose elaborate and able " History 
of Canada from the Earliest Times to 1841," has taken rank among the 
standard publications of the day. But those who would become 
thoroughly informed concerninsi- this early and intricate branch of 
American history, should study the writings of Charlevoix, Hennepin 
Le Clercq, Bossu, La Hontan, and the Jesuit missionaries. 



* This eminent Catholic .seliolar, after a long and laborious literary onreer, died at 
his home in Elizabeth. New Jer.sey, the 22d of February, 1892, aged sixty-nine. 



INDEX. 



A. 

Abenakis Indians, a band of near Fort Miami on Lake Michigan, page 
130; they form a part of LaiSalle's colony on the Illinois River, 148. 

Abercrombie, General, and commander-in-chief of the British army 
(1758), 332; rei^ilsed by Montcalm at Ticonderoga, 333. 

Acadia, settled by the French under DeMonts, 10, 11 ; origin of the 
name, 10, note; when changed to Nova Scotia, 329, note. 

Acadiaus, deportation of to English colonies, 329 and note; settlement 
formed by in Lower Louisiana, 368. 

Accauit or Ako, Michael, companion of Father Hennepin on the Mis- 
sissippi, 105; his wife the daughter of a Kaskaskia chief, 204. 

Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, 313, 329. 

Akansea, orAkansa. (See Arkansas.) 

Algonquins, on the St. Lawrence, 13 and note; mention, 34, 48. 

Alibamons, location of, 265, note. 

Allouez, Claude, founds the Jesuit Mission on Green Bay, 51 ; intrigues 
with the Miamis against La Salle, 92; re-establishes Marquette's mis- 
sion at the great town of the Illinois, 196; his description of the 
town, 197 ; death at Ft. Miami, on Lake Michigan, 198. 

Amusements of the early Illinois colonists, 413. 

Anticosti Island, discovered by Cartier, 5 ; granted to Joliet, 68. 

Aquipaguetin, a Sioux chief, the adopted father of Hennepin, 107. 

Arkansas Elver, discovered by De Soto, 29. 

Arkansas Post, 181, note; established by Henri de Touty, 182; mention, 
190, 242. 

Arkansas, villages of the, 58, 138, 183. 

Aubry, Charles, Chevalier de, defeats an English force near Fort Du- 
quesne, 334 ; becomes acting French governor of Louisiana, 367 ; 
Champigny's portrait of, 367-8, note; he delivers possession of the 
province to O'Reilly, 374 ; perishes by drowning in the river Ga- 
ronne, 379 and note. 

Authorities cited in this work, 416, note. 

B. 

Bahamos, or Ebahamos, an errant tribe of southern Texas, 162, 167. 
Bancroft, George, references to his History of the United States, 29, 

note, 205, 219, note, 285, 290. 
Balize, a hamlet at the mouth of the Mississippi, 371, note. 
Beaujeu, Captain or Count de, pilots La Salle's Sea expedition into Gulf 
27 (417) 



418 Index. 

of Mexico, 156; his bickerings with T-a Salle, 156-7; takes leave of 
the latter on coast of Texas, 159. 

Beaujeu, Daniel Lienard de, plans defeat of Braddock on the Monon- 
gahela, 327 ; is killed in the battle, 328. 

Belle Fontaine, lieutenant under Tonty at Fort St. Louis, of the 111., 184. 

Bellerive, Louis St. Ange de, commandant at Post de Vincennes, 302 ; 
he surrenders Fort Chartres to Capt. Stirling, 360; twice ap- 
p'ointed commandant at Fort Chartres, 361, note ; goes to St. Louis, 
Mo., and takes command there, 385; is admitted into a Spanish 
regiment, 385 ; dies in St. Louis at a ripe age, 386, note. 

Bienville, Jean Baptiste, Sieur de, accompanies his brother Iberville 
to Louisiana, 213; succeeds Sauvolle in command at Fort Biloxi, 
and on the Mobile, 223; is appointed lieutenant-commandant under 
Crozat, 239 ; erects Fort Rosalie at Natchez, 241 ; commissioned 
governor of the Province of Louisiana, under the Company of the 
AVest, 260; founds the city of New Orleans (in 1718), 263; takes 
Pensacola from the Spaniards, 266-7 ; his first campaign against the 
Chickasaws 290 ; second campaign, 295; retires from otfice under a 
cloud, 296; sails for France regretted by the colonists, 297; his in- 
terview with the Duke de Choiseul, to protest against the transfer of 
Louisiana to Spain, 369; death and character, 369 and note. 

Billons (F. L.) Annals of early St. Louis, 389, 415. 

Boating on the Lower Mississippi, 409. 

Boeuf, Fort Le, or Ft. sur la riviere au Bcetif, situation of, 321 ; Washing- 
ton's winter journey thither, 322; mention, 350. 

Boisbriant, Pierre Duqu^ de, arrives in Louisiana as king's lieutenant, 
260; is sent to command at the dependency of the Illinois, 270; 
builds old Fort Chartres, 271 ; land grants executed by, 272-3 ; be- 
comes governor ad interim of Louisiana, 276. 

Bossu, M., Captain in the French marines, and Chevalier of St. Louis, 
his account of the Spanish-Mexican expedition into the country of 
the Missouri Indians, 269; and notice of the rebuilding of Fort 
Chartres, 313, note. 

Bouquet, Col. Henry, conquers the Delawares and Shawnees on the 
river Muskingham, 351 ; releases many white prisoners, 351. 

Braddock, Edward, British general, lands at Alexandria, Ya., and 
marches against Fort Duquesne, 326 ; his disastrous defeat at Battle 
of the Monongahela, 327; sketch of his military career, 328, note. 

Br6beuf, Jean de, one of the first Jesuit missionaries in Canada, 16, 18. 

Breese, Sidney, references to and citations from his Early History of 
Illinois, 89, note; 96, note; 112, note; 147, 204, 273-4, 287, 305, 310, 314, 
381, 408, 410, 414, 416, no<«. 

Breuil, M. de, erects first sugar mill at New Orleans, 297. 

British military governors of Illinois, 394, 395. 

Buffalo Rock (60 feet high), on the Illinois River, about three miles above 
Starved Rock, 90. 

C. 

Cabots, John and Sebastian, early voyages of discovery to North Amer- 
ica, 2 and 3. 



Index. 419 

Cadillac, Antoine de la Mothe, governor of Louisiana under Crozat, 238 ; 
sketch of, 239, note; founds the post of Detroit, 344. 

Cadodaquis, an Indian tribe on Red River, 180, 188. 

Cahokia, first settlement of, 207; Charlevoix' account of the mission 
at, 209 ; Pittman's description of the village, 392, 393 and note. 

Canada, discovery of, 5 ; derivation of the name, 7, note. 

Canoes, birch bark, how constructed, 411. 

Carondelet, village of, when and by whom founded, 408, note. 

Cartier, Jacques, French navigator, discovers and explores the St. Law- 
rence, 5 ; with Roberval he attempts a settlement on that river, 7 ; 
is rewarded for his services to the king with a patent of nobility, 8. 

Cavelier, the Abbe Jean, a Sulpitian priest and brother of La Salle, 72; 
he accompanies La Salle in his last expedition, 155 ; deception prac- 
ticed by him on Tonty, 186. 

Cenis Indians, on Trinity River, Texas, visited by La Salle, 164; also by 
Joutel et al., 176. 

Champlain, Samuel de, parentage and early career, 9; is sent by the 
governor of Dieppe on an exploring expedition to the St. Lawrence, 
10; assists DeMonts in colonizing Acadia, 11; with Pontgrave he 
founds Quebec, 12, 13; surrenders that post to the English, and is 
carried a prisoner to England, 17; his return to Canada, and death 
at Quebec, 18: analysis of his character, 19. 

Champlain Lake, when discovered, 14. 

Charlevoix, Pierre Francois Xavier de, a distinguished Jesuit scholar 
and historian ; references to and quotations from his works, 12, 
note; 16, note; 62, 65, note; 208-240, 263; biographical notice of, 211, 
note. 

Chateaugu^, Antoine le Moyne de, brother of Iberville and Bienville, 225. 

Checagou, chief of the Kaskaskias, 290. 

Chickasaw Blufis, mention, 28, 137, 292. 

Chickasaw nation, 289; French wars with, 290, 295, 298. 

Chicagou or Chicago, site of wintered on by Marquette, 63 ; visited by 
La Salle on his way to the gulf, 135-6. 

Choiseul, Duke de, prime minister of Louis XV., letter to the Count de 
Fuentes, 364; he refuses petition of the inhabitants of La., 369. 

Clark, Col. George Rogers, his expedition to, and conquest of the Il- 
linois country, 402 and note, 403 note. 

Colbert, Jean Baptiste, a great minister under Louis XIV., favors La 
Salle's enterprises, 80, 81 ; decease of, 153, note. 

Columbus, Christopher, mention, 2. 

Comet of IGSO, 120, note. 

Commons, right of granted to the inhabitants of Kaskaskia, 304, 305. 

Common Fields, description of, 273. 

Copper mines, search for, 40, 46, 399. 

Cortereal, Gaspar de (Portuguese navigator), voyages to Labrador, 3. 

Cotton, when culture of introduced in Louisiana, 298. 

Court of " Royal Jurisdiction " in the Illinois, 309, 310. 

Court, first common law, in Illinois, 395. 



420 Index. 

Coureurs des hois, or runners of the woods, attempts of the Canadian 
government to suppress, 118, 195. 

Courcelles, Daniel de Rimy, Sieur de, second Canadian governor under 
the royal provincial government, 20 ; recall of, 45. 

Crive-coeur (See Fort Orive-coeur). 

Craig, Captain Thomas, destroys French and Indian village of Peoria, 
401, note. 

Croghan, Colonel George, conciliatory mission to the Western Indians, 
353 ; his journey over the mountains to Fort Pitt, 353 ; he descends 
the Ohio, 355 ; is captured by a band of Kickapoos below mouth of 
the Wabash, 355 ; taken as a prisoner to Vincennes, 356 ; released 
at Fort Ouatanon, 356; he meets and confers with Pontiac, 357; 
peace speech by to the Indians at Detroit, 358 ; success of his mis- 
sion, 360. 

Crozat, Antoine, Marquis de Chatel, is granted a monopoly of the com- 
merce and government of Louisiana, 234 ; his letters patent, 234-237; 
mercantile and mining operations of, 238, 239 ; surrenders his charter 
to the crown, 240. 

D. 

Dablon, Claude, eminent Jesuit missionary, 42 ; notice of his life and 
writings, 43, 44, note. 

D'Abbadie, M., succeeds Kerlerec as acting governor of Louisiana, 314, 
363 ; death of in New Orleans, 367. 

D'Artaguette, Diron, commissaire ordonnateur in Louisiana, 233, 288. 

D'Artaguette, Pierre, serves in the Natchez war, 288 ; is made command- 
ant at the Illinois, 288; leads an expedition against the Chickasaws, 
292 ; wounded and taken prisoner, 293 ; perishes at the stake, 294. 

Davidson and Stuvd's History of Illinois, references to, etc., 132-3, 286, 
298, 347, 389, 396, 397. 

D'Autry, the Sieur, explores passes of the Mississippi with La Salle, 144. 

Delaware Indians, mention, 320, 351. 

De Leon, Don Alonzo, expedition of from Mexico to Fort St. Louis, of 
Texas, 190. 

De Luna, Don Tristan, leads a Spanish army of Invasion into West 
Florida, 33, 279. 

De Monts, Pierre du Guast, Sieur, an officer of Henry IV. 's household, 
10; under letter patent he plants the first French colony in Acadia, 
11 ; loses his influence at court on death of that monarch, 15. 

Detroit, founded by La Mothe Cadillac (in 1701), 344; its situation and 
early military history, 344; Indian siege of under Pontiac, 349. 

De Yilliers, Capt. Neyon, overcomes Washington at Fort Necessity, 325 ; 
is made commandant of the Illinois at Fort Chartres, 312, 342 and 
note; he resigns and goes to New Orleans, 363; receives the decora- 
tion of the Cross of St. Louis, 363. 

De Vincennes (or Vincenne) Jean Baptiste Bissot, sketch of, 299; estab- 
lishes the post of Vincennes, 299, 301; joins D'Artaguette in his 
expedition against the Chickasaws, 292 ; and shares that officer's 
lamentable fate, 293. 



Index. 421 

Des Ureius, Marc Antoine de la Loire, commissary and judge for the 

India Company in Illinois, 272, 273 ; killed at Natchez, 382. 
Dieskau, Ludwig August, Baron, a German-French general in the Seven 

Years' War, 330 ; mortally wounded in battle near Crown Point, 330. 
Dinwiddle, Robert, colonial governor of Virginia, sends Washington on 

mission to the French, 321 ; orders the raising of a regiment to drive 

the French from Virginia territory, 323. 
Domestic Alliancesof the French colonists with the Indians, 8, 204, 303, 412. 
Donnacona, an Indian potentate at Quebec, 5 ; is carried by Cartier to 

France, 7. 
Douay, Father Anastasius, RecoUet missionary, 155 ; his account of La 

Salle's murder, 168* ; ascends the Mississippi and Illinois with Abb^ 

Cavelier, et al., 183-4 ; returns to France, 187 ; he accompanies D'lber- 

ville in his colonizing expedition to the Mississippi, 215 and note. 
Du Gay, Picard, companion of Hennepin in his Sioux captivity, 105, 107. 
Duhaut, M., principal assassin of La Salle, 170; is himself slaia in an 

altercation with Hiens, 177. 
Du L'Mut, Daniel Greysolon, penetrates the Sioux country from Lake 

Superior, and effects the release of Hennepin, et al., 108; sketch of 

his adventurous career, 108, note. 
Dumont's Historical Memoir of Louisiana, 267, 279, 280, 282, note, 292. 
Durret's, R. T., Kentucky Centennial Address, 38. 

E. 

Edict of Nantes, when enacted and revoked, 248 note. 

English, early efforts to discover the Mississippi, 38; surrender of the 

Illinois country to, 360; duration of their rule, 402. 
" English Turn," on Lower Mississippi, origin of the phrase, 220. 
Epinay, M. de L', succeeds Cadillac as governor of I^ouisiana, 245. 

F. 

Farmer, Major Robert, relieves Captain Stirling, in command at Fort 
Chartres, 394. 

Florida, when discovered, 24 ; Soto's remarkable adventures in, 24-32 ; 
Narvaez's expedition to, 25. 

Forbes, General Joseph, leads the second ICnglish expedition against 
Fort Duquesne, 333 ; death of, 334. 

Fort Biloxi, or Maurepas, built by Iberville, 219 ; unfavorable site of, 
and removal of the colony from, 224; New Biloxi, 267, note. 

Fort Chartres, first building of, 271 ; when rebuilt, 313; Breese's remarks 
on, 314 ; Pittraan's description of, 315 ; subsequent history, 316-318. 

Fort Cr^ve-coeur, building of, 93; why so named, 94; described by Hen- 
nepin, 101. 

Fort Duquesne, begun by agents of the Ohio Company, 323 ; completed 
and named by Captain Contrecoeur, 323 ; taken by the English un- 
der General Forbes, and name changed to Fort Pitt, 334. 

Fort Frontenac, when built, 79 ; granted in seigniory to La Salle, 80 ; 

* In this account, the date of La Salle's murder should read the 19th instead of 
the 9th of March, 1687. 



422 Index. 

captured and demolished by the English provincials under Colonel 
Bradstreet, 333. 

Fort Gage, near Kaskaskia, removal of British troops to from Fort Ohar- 
tres, 316; Pittman's notice of, 391 ; is taken by Colonel Clark, 402. 

Fort Massac, or Marsiac, on the Lower Ohio, 335 ; brief hist, of, 335, note. 

Fort Miami, at mouth of the St. Joseph, built by La Salle, 89. 

Fort Prudhomme, on the Mississippi, 137, 145. 

Fort Rosalie, at Natchez, when built, 242 ; rebuilt, 284 ; Pittman's de- 
scription of 289, note. 

Fort St. Claude, on Yazoo River, French garrison at massacred by the 
Natchez Indians, 283. 

Fort St. Louis of Illinois, when built, 147 ; decline of, 195. 

Fort St. Louis of Texas, 161 ; destruction of, 191. 

Fort Louis de la Mobile, when first built, 224 ; site of changed, 227. 

Fort Ouatanon, on the Wabash, mention, 299, 303, note. 

Fort Tumbecb^, on the Tombigbee River, built by Bienville, 291. 

Fox River, of Wisconsin, discovered by Nicolet, 36; mention, 51, 195. 

Foxes, or Rdnards. (See Sacs and Foxes.) 

Fowls, domestic, among the southern Indians, 38, 216. 

France, New. (See New France.) 

Francis I. of France, mention, 4, 7. 

Franciscan friars, 96, note. 

Fraser, Lieutenant Alexander, associated with Croghan,353; he descends 
the Ohio to Illinois, 354 ; is buffeted by the Indians at Kaskaskia, 
and flees down the Mississippi to New Orleans, 354. 

French-Canadian population at the beginning of long war, 325. 

French Commandants at the Illinois, table of, 361. 

French Colonists in Illinois and Louisiana, general description of, 404. 

Frontenac, Louis de Buade, Count de, celebrated governor of Canada, 
45; he sends Joliet to explore the Mississippi, 46; dispatch of re- 
lating to his discovery, 69 ; erects Fort Frontenac at the outlet of 
Lake Ontario, 79 ; recommends La Salle to Colbert, 80 ; indorses 
Tonty's petition, 232 ; expires in Quebec, 46. 

G. 

Gage, General Thomas, British commander, proclamation by to the in- 
habitants of Illinois, 361, 362, note. 

Gayarr6, Charles, references to and citations from his History of Louisi- 
ana (3 vols.), 213, note, 219, 293, note, 295-6, nota, 312, note, 351-2, notes, 
369, 379, 415. 

Gravier Jacques, one of the missionary founders of Kaskaskia, 198, 199. 

Green Bay, discovered by Nicolet, 36 ; mission station at, 51, 61. 

Griffin, construction of at Niagara, 86 and note; lost on the upper lakes, 88. 

Growth of the French settlements in Illinois, 208, 271. 

Gulf of California, mention, 59, 78. 

Gulf of Mexico, long a closed sea to the French, 38, 154. 

Gulf of St. Lawrence, explored and named by Jacques Cartier, 5. 

Gumbos, a nickname for the half-breeds in Missouri, 412, note. 



Index. 423 

H. 

Halifax, town of, British fleet sails from for the reduction of Louisburg, 
332. 

Havana, Soto's expedition sails from to Florida, 24 ; taken by the En- 
glish, 339; restored to Spain, 352, note; French state prisoners sent 
to from Louisiana, 376. 

Helena, Arkansas, mention, 59, note. 

Hennepin, Father Louis, his nativity, 96 ; early monastic life and travels, 
97 ; comes as a Recollet missionary to Canada, 98 ; his active life at 
Quebec, 98 ; joins La Salle's expedition to the West, 99; visits Niag- 
ara Falls, 99, note ; makes a journey to the principal village of the 
Senecas, 100; embarks on the Griffin, 100; his account of Fort 
Creve-coeur, 101 ; his daring canoe voyage up tlie Mississippi, 105 ; 
is captured by a party of the Sioux Indians, 106 ; adventures among 
the Sioux, 107 ; is released from captivity, 108 ; return journey to 
Canada and France, 109; his expulsion from France, 110; with- 
draws into Holland, and enters the service of William III., 110 ; 
decease, 110; review of his writings, 111, 112; his conflicting esti- 
mate of La Salle, 171. 

Henry IV. of France, issues letters patent to De Monts, 1 0. 

Hiens, one of the conspirators against Moranget and La Salle, 107 ; mur- 
ders Duhaut, 177. 

Huguenots, 9 ; driven by persecution from France, 248. 

Huron, Lake, discovered by Champlain, 16. 

Huron Indians, mention, 16, 35, 39, 48, 109, note. 

I. 

Iberville, Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur de, early naval career of, 212 ; his colo- 
nizing expedition to the Mississippi, 213, 214; plants a colony in 
Lower Louisiana, 218; revisits his colony, 220, 224; decease and 
character, 226. 

Illinois Indians, loose confederations of, 53 ; meaning of the word Illini 
or Illinois, 53; they are invaded by the Iroquois, 121, 122; they aid 
the French in the Chickasaw war, 292; are defeated by the Sacs 
and Foxes, 387 ; Pittman's notice of, 394. 

Illinois country, explored by Joliet and Marquette, 53, 60; military oc- 
cupation of by La Salle, 94 ; a dependency of Canada, 194 ; a part of 
Louisiana, 233; under M. Crozat, 234, d seq.; under Boisbriant and 
the Company of the West, 270; under the Royal government, 288 
under the English sway, 384 ; conquest of by Col. Clark, 402. 

Illinois River, mention, 43, 60, 77, 90, 105; Kennedy's voyage on, 399 

Imlay, Capt. Gilbert, work on North America, 399. 

India Company, Royal, successor to the Company of the West, 272 
surrender of the company's charter, 286. 

Indian allies, value of to the French in war, 326. 

Indian colony of La Salle on the Illinois, 148. 

Intendant, office of, 40, note. 

Iroquois (or Five Nations), 13 ; army of invade the Illinois country, 122; 



424 Index. 

burning of the great town of the Illinois, 124 ; massacre of women 
and children, 127. 



Jesuits, their first appearance in Canada, 16 ; missions of in Illinois, 63, 
196, 199 ; are banished from Louisiana, 379. 

Jesuit Order, history of, 380, 381; suppressed by Pope Clement XIV., 
382; revived by Pius VII., 382. 

Jesuit Relations, 383. 

Johnson, Gen. Sir William, mention, 326, 330; repoi't of, 348, note. 

Joliet, Louis, commissioned to explore the Mississippi River, 46 ; his 
birth and education at Quebec, 46 ; is first sent by Talon to look for 
copper mines at Lake Superior, 46; with Father Marquette, he 
reaches the Mississippi, 52 ; descends that river to the vicinity of the 
Arkansas, 59 and note; returning, he ascends the Illinois, 60; stops 
at the Indian villages en route, 61 ; he loses his manuscrij^ts in the 
rapids at La Chine, 67 ; reports his discoveries to Gov. Frontenac, 
67 ; his marriage, 68 ; makes a trip to Hudson's Bay, 68 ; is given 
the Island of Anticosti, 68 ; surveys the coast of Labrador, 68 ; is 
granted the seigniory of " Joliette," 68 ; death and character, 68, 69. 

Joliet, city of in 111., named for the explorer, 69. 

Joutel, Henri, soldier, accompanies La Salle's expedition to Texas, 154; 
his account of La Salle's assassination, 169; his Journal Historique 
of the expedition, 187. 

Juchereau, Sieur de, a Canadian officer, 299, 300, note. 

Jumonville, Sieur Coulon de, killed in action at Little Meadows, 324, 
and note. 

K. 

Kankakee (Te-a-ki-ki) River, a constituent branch of the Illinois, men- 
tion, 90, 135, 197, note. 

Kappa, or Quappa, a noted village of the Arkansas on Lower Missis- 
sippi, 58 note, 138, 183. 

Kaskaskia, Indian village on the Illinois River, first visited by Joliet and 
Marquette, 60; Mission of the I. C. V. founded there by Father 
Marquette, 63 ; re-established by Father Allouez, 198 ; removal of 
the mission and tribe to the site of the present Kaska.skia, 199; 
early history of the mission and settlement on the Mississipi^i, 204 ; 
Charlvoix' visit to, 209; Pittman's description of, 390; subsequent 
decline of the village, 403, note. 

Kaskaskias, a leading tribe of the Illinois, mention, 60, 63, 196, 202, 209, 
290, 394. 

Kennedy, Patrick, his journey up the Illinois River in search of copper 
mines, 399. 

Kerlerec, M. de, governor of the Province of Louisiana (1753-1763), 312 ; 
ordered to return to France, and incarcerated in the Bastile, 314 ; 
paper monej' issued under his administration, 412. 

Kingsford, William, references to his History of Canada, 20, 67, note, 
416, note. 



Index. 425 

Kiskakons, a christianized branch of the Ottawa Indians, disinter and 
remove Marquette's remains, 65. 



Labrador, visited by the Cortereals to, 3 ; coast of surveyed by Joliet, 68, 

La Barre, Le Febvre de, governor of Canada (1683-1685), 149; he de- 
deposes La Salle from the command of Forts Frontenac and St. 
Louis, 152. 

La Buissoniere, Alphouse de, succeeds D'Artaguette as commandant at 
the Illinois, and takes part in the second Chickasaw war, 295. 

Laclede, Pierre Liguest, principal founder of St. Louis, Missouri, 385 ; 
sketch of, 385, note. 

La Forrest, a lieutenant of La Salle, 118, 120, 153, 154, 195. 

La Harpe, Bernard de, adventures of in the southwest, 260, 261 ; is sent 
by Bienville to form an establishment on the Bay of St. Bernard, 262. 

La Hontan,'- Armand Louis de Delondarce, Baron de, a noted French offi- 
cer and traveler, 56, note ; his curious account of Mic^hilimackiiiac, 109, 
note ; his notice of the priest Cavelier and his traveling party, 180, 
note. 

La Motte, de Lusiere, an associate of La Salle in his first great exploring 
enterprise, 83, 85, 86. 

La Salle, Eobert Cavelier Sieur de, his Norman birth and parentage, 71 ; 
receives his education from the Jesuits, 71, 72; emigrates to Canada, 
72; founds Lachine, above Montreal, 72; discovers the Ohio, 76; se- 
cures the patronage of Gov. Frontenac, 78 ; is granted the seigniory 
of Fort Frontenac, 80; builds the Griffin on the Niagara, 86; voy- 
ages with her through the upper lakes, 87 ; he enters the country of 
the Illinois, 89; difficulties with the natives and his men, 92; builds 
Fort Creve-coeur at foot of Peoria Lake, 93, 94 ; sends Hennepin to 
explore the Upper Mississippi, 95 ; his return journey to Fort Fron- 
tenac, 115; second expedition to the West, 118; its failure, 120; he 
negotiates with the Western tribes, 131 ; descends the Mississippi to 
the Gulf, 136-141; takes possession of the country for the King of 
France, 142; erects Fort St. Louis on the Illinois, 147; forms an In- 
dian colony around it, 148; corresponds with Gov. La Barre, 149, 
150; is dismissed from his command l)y that fuu(;tionary, 152; he goes 
to Old France, 153; is given audience by the King, 154; sails with 
a colony for the mouth of the Mississippi, 156; lands at Matagorda 
Bay, 158; builds a fort there, 160 ; wanderings in the wilderness of 
Texas, 162, 163; sets out for the Illinois and Canada, but returns, 164; 
he again sets forth and is assassinated on the way, 165; analysis of 
his character, 171 et seq.; concealment of his death, 183, 185; de- 
struction of his colony, 191. 

La Salle Co., Illinois, named in memory of the great explorer, 196. 

La Tour, early French engineer in Louisiana, 263. 

Lake Michigan, or Lac des Ulinois, discovered by Nicolet, 35-6. 

Lake Superior, mention, 39, 40, 48. 



♦Incorrectly priuted La. Houtati, in iiule ou page 99. 



426 Index. 

Law, John, Scotch financier and adventurer, birth and education of, 249 ; 
his theory of banking, 249; is patronized by the Duke of Orleans, 
250 ; he establishes a bank in Paris, 250 ; his Mississippi scheme, 
251 ; public infatuation thereat, 252 ; progress of his credit system, 
253; its collapse, 257 ; he flees from France, 258 ; dies in poverty at 
Venice, 259. 

Lead mines in Missouri, worked by the French, 239 ; in Illinois, 275 and 
note. 

League, French, length of, 52, note. 

Le Clercq, Father Cr^tien, 104, note; his History of the Establishment of 
the Faith in New France, 112, note ; his account of La Salle's last ex- 
pedition by sea, 161 , note. 

Le Clercq, Father Maximus, Recollet missionary in Texas, 155, 192. 

Lesdigueres, Duchesse de, mention, 211. 

Le Sueur, Pierre, a French voyageur, mention, 201, 300, note. 

Levis, Chevalier de, successor to Montcalm, 338. 

Letters patent to La Salle, 81 ; to M. Crozat, 234. 

Liotot, surgeon, and one of La Salle's assassins, 170 ; his violent death, 
177, 178 and note. 

Loftus, Major Arthur, his unsuccessful attempt to ascend the Mississippi 
to Fort Chartres, 352. 

Lord, Captain Hugh, English commandant at the Illinois, successor to 
Wilkins, 398. 

Louisiana, Lower, permanent settlement of by the French, 212; cession 
of the country to Spain, 364, 365. 

Louis XIV. of France, falls heir to the throne at the age of five 
years, 246; erects Canada into a royal province, 19 ; issues patent of 
nobility to La Salle, 80; demise of, 246; review of his reign and 
character, 247, 248. 

Louis XV., cedes Western Louisiana by private treaty to Spain, .339, 
363 ; his letter concerning the cession to Gov. d'Abbadie, 365, 366. 

Louisburg, fortress of, taken by the English, 312 ; second siege and cap- 
ture of, 332, 333, note. 

Loyola, Ignatius, originator of the Order of Jesuits, 380. 

M. 

Macarty, Chevalier de, major-commandant at the Illinois during the 
rebuilding of Fort Chartres, 313; mention, 324, 361. 

Major-commandants, functions of the, 308. 

Manitou, Indian name for the Deity, 51 and note. 

Maps, Marquette's, 50, 62 ; Joliet's, 67 and note ; Franquelin's and Henne- 
pin's, 93; Delisle's, 99, note. 

Marest, (iabriel, missionary priest at Kaskaskia, 199; he transfers the 
mission of the Immaculate Conception from the Illinois River to the 
site of the present Kaskaskia, 199-203; extracts from his cor- 
respondence, 205, 206. 

Margry, Pierre, French author, references to his works, (58, 76, Tiot.e, 
104-5, notes, 151, vote, 191, note, 197, note. 



Index. 427 

Marquette, Pere Jacques, born at Laon, France, 47 ; he enters the So- 
ciety of Jesus, and is ordained to the priesthood, 47 ; sails as a mis- 
sionary to Canada, and studies the Indian languages under Father 
Dreuilletes, 47 ; with Father Dablon, he founds the mission of 8t. 
Mary of the Falls, 48 ; is thence sent to St. Esprit near western ex- 
tremity of Lake Superior, 48; returning, he founds the mission of 
St. Ignace at Old INIackinac, 49 ; with M. Joliet, he discovers and ex- 
plores the Mississippi River, 50-60; table of the distances traveled, 
&\,note ; his journal of their great canoe voyage, 61, 62 ; he establishes 
the mission of the Immaculate Conception on the Illinois River, 
63; sets out from thence on his return to St. Ignace, 64; dies and 
is buried on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, 65 ; removal of his 
remains to St. Ignace, 65 ; his religious and general character, 66. 

Mascoutins, allied tribe of the MiamiSj-Gl, 92. 

Massac, or Marsiac. (See Fort Massac.) 

Mason, E. G., kis account of the Kaskaskia Mission, 200-203 ; also of the 
ruins of Fort Chartres, 316. 

Maillet, M. Hypolite, founds French village on Peoria Lake, 401, note. 

Membre, Zenobius, RecoUet friar and follower of La Salle, 85, 87 ; his 
description of the Illinois Indians, 103 ; exciting experience with 
the Iroquois, 124, 125 ; he perishes at Ft. Louis of Texas, 192 ; notice 
of his life, 192. 

Menard, Father Rene, first French missionary in the region of Lake 
Superior, 39 and 7iote. 

Mermet, Jean, a missionary priest on the Lower Ohio, 300 and iiole ; and 
an associate of Father Marest at Kaskaskia, 205. 

Meurin, Sebastian Louis, last Jesuit missionary in the Illinois, 391, note. 

Mexico, French attempts at trade relations with, 240, 242. 

Miamis Indians, a kindred tribe of the Illinois, 51, 132, 133, 299. 

Michilimackinac, or Mackinac, 49 and note ; mission of St. Ignace at, 49; 
visited by La Salle in the Griffin, 87 ; described by La Hontan, 109, note. 

Mills, water, at Kaskaskia and Cahokia, 271. 

Missionaries in Illinois and Louisiana, Jesuits. 63, 194 ; Recollets, 103, 
121 ; Sulpitians, 393. 

Mississippi Company, Laws, 251, 252; its advantages to the Province of 
Louisiana, 250, 286. 

Mississippi River, Spanish discovery of the, 24 ; different names of, 28, 
note; French discovery and exploration of, 45. 

Missouri River, discovered by Joliet and Marquette, 56 ; said to have 
been first explored by La Hontan, 56, note. 

Missouri Indians, allies of the French, destroy expedition of the Span- 
iards from New Mexico, 268. 

Mobile River, visited by De Soto, 26; French fort on, 224. 

Mohegan Indians, band settle at Ft. Miami, 130; party of, follow La Salle 
to the outlet of the Mississippi, 135. 

Monso, a Mascoutin chief, intrigues with the Illinois against La Salle, 92. 

Montcalm, Louis Jcseph, Marquis de, captures Fort Ontario and Fort 
William Henry, 330, 331 ; defeats Abercrombie at Ticonderoga, 333 ; 



428 Index. 

is vanquished by Wolf at Quebec, 337, 338 ; sketch of his brilliant ca- 
reer, 340, note. 

Montmagny, Charles Huault de, succeeds Champlain in the government 
of the Canadian colony, IS. 

Montreal, when settled, 22 ; religious origin and early annals of, 22, 23. 

Moranget, Sieur de, nephew of La Salle, 155 ; murder of, 167. 

Moses, John, History of Illinois, references to, 62, 207, 394, note, 395, 398, 
399. 

Mound Builders, ancient, 33, 285, note. 

Morris, Captain Thomas, adventures with the Indians, 351, 252 and note. 

Muscoso, Luis de, lieutenant and successor to De Soto, 31 ; conducts the 
remains of Soto's expedition to Panuco, Mexico, 32. 

N. 

NadouessioHxs. (See Sioux.) 

Narvaez, Pamphilio de, a Spanish adventurer in Florida, 25. 

Natchez Indians, visited by La Salle, 140 ; their strange history, 277-279 ; 
they massacre the French at Fort Rosalie, 282 ; war with, 284 ; ex- 
termination of the nation, 285. 

Natchitoches, post of, when established, 245 ; mention, 260, 378. 

Natchitoches Indians, mention, 188, 242, 260, 285; New Chartres, when 
built, 313, 314. 

New Orleans, origin of, 246 ; founded by Bienville, 263; named for the 
Duke of Orleans, 263; visited by Charlevoix (1721), 263, 264; is made 
by Gov. Bienville the capital of Louisiana, 164. 

New France, a name originally bestowed by the navigator, Verrazano, 
upon the north-eastern coast of North America, 13; History of. 
(See Charlevoix.) 

Niagara Falls, Hennepin's visit to and description of, 99 and note. 

Nicanope, a chief of the Peorias, 92. 

Nicolet, Jean, early life of, among the Ottawas and Nipissings, 34; his 
voyage of discovery in the North-west, 35, 36 ; he marries an adopted 
daughter of Champlain, 37; is drowned in the St. Lawrence, 38. 

Nipissing Lake, discovered by Champlain, 16. 

Nonville (or Denonville), Jacques Rene de Brisay, Marquis de, governor 
of Canada (1685-1689), 229, 231 and note. 

Northmen, in North America, 1 and 2. 

Nouvelle France, a name applied to all the French-Canadian coun- 
try, 13, 19. 

Nova Scotia. (See Acadia.) 

0. 

Ohio River, discovery of by La Salle, 76, 77. 

Onondagas, a tribe of Iroquois, 76. 79, 123. 

Onanghisse, a Pottawatomie sachem, noted saying of, 129. 

Ortiz, Juan, interpreter for De Soto, 25, 29. 

O'Reilly, Don Alexandre, Spanish military governor of Louisiana, 373 ; 
sketch of, note ; his proclamation of amnesty, 375 ; he punishes the 
revolutionarj' leaders and reorganizes the government of Louisiana, 
376, 377. 



Index. 429 

Osage Indians, mention of, 92, 268, 269. 

Ottawa Indians, so called from the river on which they dwelt, 13, note ; 
expert builders of bark canoes, 411. 

Ouabouskigou, the Ohio, or Ouabache, of the French, 56. 

Ouisconsing (Wisconsin) River, first descended by Joliet and Mar- 
quette, 52 ; mention, 95, 195. 

Ouichita, or Ouachita (Washita), a river of Arkansas, explored by Bien- 
ville, 223. 

Oumas, or Houmas, one of the bravest tribes on the Lower Mississippi, 
217, 220; visited by Iberville, 217. 

Outagamies, a name given by French explorers to the Foxes, 131. 

P. 

Paris, Treaty of, 339 ; seventh article of the treaty, .363, note. 

Parkman, Francis, historian, references to and quotations from his works, 

75, note, 77, 120, note, 137, 151, 165, 166, 188, 193, 229, 248, note, 361. 
Pascagoula River, mention, 219. 
Passes of the Mississippi, explored by La Salle and Tonty, 141 ; surveyed 

by La Tour, 263. 
Peusacola, Florida, fort erected at by the Spaniards, 214; it is taken, 

retaken, and demolished by the French, 267 ; transferred to the 

English by the treaty of Paris, 352, note. 
Peoria Lake, La Salle's first arrival in, 91 ; description of the lake, 94, 

noU, 208. 
Peoria Village, Indian, situation and extent of, 91, 100; Charlevoix' 

notice of the village, 208 ; Kennedy's visit to, 400. 
Peoria Village, French and American, 401, note. 

Pepperell, Sir AVilliam, captures Louisburg (1745) from the French, 312. 
P^rier, M. de, governor of Louisiana during the Natchez war, 277; is 

promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general, 288. 
Piankashaws, village of on the Wabash, 301 ; mention, 356. 
Piasa, pictured rocks at, 55 and note. 
Pinet, Father Jacques, principal founder of Cahokia, 207 ; success of 

his mission there, 207. 
Pirogue, an Indian canoe, 6, note. 
Pittman, Captain Philip, sent to Pensacola, Florida (1763), 389; extracts 

from his account of the French settlements on the Mississippi, 

390-394. 
Poutchartrain, Count de, French minister of colonies, 220; his answer 

to the application of Huguenot families from Carolina to settle in 

Louisiana, 220. 
Pontiac, celebrated Ottawa chief, interposes in favor of Major Rogers' 

advance to Detroit, 343; sketch of, 346; his conspiracy and war 

against the English, 347, et seq.; unsuccessful attack and siege of 

Detroit, 349; capture of other Western posts, 350; disappointed at 

lack of French support, 351 ; he marches into the Illinois, 354 ; 

speech by at Fort Chartres, 354 ; he yields to the inevitable and 

confers with Colonel Croghan at Fort Ouatanon, 357; his peace 



430 Index. 

speeches at Detroit and Oswego, 359, 360 ; retires to the shades of 

the Maumee, 360 ; his last visit to the Illinois, 386 ; is murdered by 

a Kaskaskici Indian at Cahokia, Illinois, and buried by Captain St. 

Ange in St. Louis, Missouri, 387 and notp. 
Population (foreign) of Illinois at the time of the British occupation, 389. 
Population of the province of Louisiana at the beginning of the Spanish 

rule, 377, 378. 
Pottawatomie Indians, first visited by Nicolet, 37; mention, 88, 128. 
Prairie du Chien, village of, on the Upper Mississippi, 52, note. 
Prairie du Pont, a suburb of Cahokia, 394. 
Prairie du Rocher, a village in vicinity of Fort Chartres, 276 ; Pittman's 

account of. 391 , note. 
Prudhomme, Pierre, with La Salle on the ^Mississippi, 137; fort named 

for, 137. 

Q. 

Quebec, city of, site first visited b}' Cartier, 5 ; founded by Champlain, 
13; surrendered to the Englisli under Captain Kirk, 17; restored to 
the French, 18; failure of Sir William Phipps' attack upoUj 20; 
stone fortifications at, 21 ; the city is taken by the English under 
Wolfe, 337, 338 ; unsuccessful efforts of the French to retake the 
citadel, 338. 

" Quebec Bill," its effects upon the French colonists. 

Quints, bay of on Ontario Lake, seat of a Snlpitian mission, 73 and note. 

Quinipissas Indians (the Bayagoulas of Iberville and Bienville), La 
Salle's experience with, 141, 144; Tonty leaves a letter with one of 
their chiefs, 182, 216. 

K. 

Randolph County, Illinois, ruins of Fort Chartres in, 317. 

Easles, Sebastian, a noted Jesuit missionary in Illinois and Maine, 198. 

Red River, of Louisiana, discovered by the Spaniards, 31. 

Renault, Philip, Francois de, director-general of the uiining operations 
of the Mississippi Company, 274 ; he founds the village bearing his 
name, 275. 

Reynolds, John, Pioneer History of Illinois, references to and quota- 
tions from, 317, 335, note, 346, note, 394, 407, note, 414, note. 

Ribaut, Jean, attempts to plant a Huguenot colony in East Florida, 9. 

Ribourde, Gabriel de la, a Kecollet friar with La Salle in Illinois, 84, 101, 
104 ; is slain by a scouting party of Kickajioos, 126. 

Richelieu, Cardinal, organizes the company of "One Hundred Asso- 
ciates," 17; charter of, when abandoned, 19. 

Rio del Norte, or Rio Grande, reached and crossed by St. Denis, 243. 

Rocheblave, Philippe Francois de Rastel de, commands for the British 
at Fort Gage, 399; is sent a prisoner to Virginia by Col. Clark, 472. 

Rogers, Major Robert, takes military possession of Detroit, 343 ; and of 
other western posts, 345. 

Roman Catholic Church, devotion of the French colonists to, 414 and note. 

Rosalie. (See Fort Rosalie.) 

Ryswick, Treaty of, 212. 



Index. 431 



s. 



Sacs, or Sauks, and Foxes, mention, 36, 131, 299. 

Sangamon River, mention, 400 and note. 

Santa F^, New Mexico, when settled, 267, note. 

Sanlt de Ste. Marie, mission established at by the Jesuits, 48. 

Sauvolle — M. de Sauvolle de la Villantry— a brother or associate of D'lber- 
ville. and first colonial governor in Louisiana, 213, 219 ; his early 
death at Fort Biloxi, 223. 

Senat, a Jesuit Father and volunteer in D'Artaguette's southern expe- 
dition, 292 ; he is martyred at the stake by the Chickasaws, 294. 

Shawnees, restless character of, 56, note. 

Shea, John Gilmary, references to and quotations from his works, 12, 
note, 39, note, 64, 65, 76, note, 104, note, 113, note, 163, note, 197, note, 228; 
decease of, 416, note. 

Ship Island, first landing-place of Iberville's colony, 214. 

Sioux Indians, 48, 106 and note. 

Slaves, Negro, introduced into Louisiana by Crozat, 238; number of at 
the close of the French rule, 337. 

Soto, Hernando de, Spanish discoverer of the Mississippi, 24 ; his re- 
markable expedition through Florida, 24-32. 

Starved Eock, legend of, 387. 

Stirling, Captain Thomas, takes British possession of Fort Chartres, 360; 
what became of him, 394, note. 

Stoddard, Major Amos, 317 and note. 

St. Anthony's Falls, discovered and named by Hennepin, 107; descrip- 
tion of, 107, 108, note. 

St. Cosme, Jean Francois Buisson de, a missionary priest at the Natchez, 
200; sketch of, 2Q\,noie. 

St. Croix, or St. Charles, a tributary of the St. Lawrence at Quebec, 
5, 7, 12. 

St. Francis Xavier, name of the Jesuit mission on Green Bay, 51, 61. 

St. Denis, or Denys, Louis Juchereau de, his adventurous overland jour- 
ney to Mexico, 242-244; appointed commandant at the post of Natch- 
itoches, 244 ; sketch of, 245, note. 

Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, when settled, 306. 

St. Louis Missouri, when and by whom founded, 385 and note ; early his- 
tory of the village, 388. 

St. Lusson, Simon Francois Daumont de, sent by Talon on a mission to 
the upper lake region, 40 ; he holds an important conference with 
the North-western tribes, 41, 42. 

St. Peter's ( Minnesota) River, French fort erected on by Le Sueur, 221 , note. 

St. PhiHppe, a small village in the neighborhood of Fort Chartres, 275. 

St. Pierre, Le Gardeur de, commanding officer at Fort sur la riviere au 
Boeuf, 322 ; his letter of reply to Governor Dinwiddie, 322, 323. 

Sugar-cane, when introduced into Louisiana, 297. 



432 Index. 

T. 

Talon, Jean Baptiste, first intendant of Canada under the government 
of the crown, 20; slight sketch of, 40, note; he recommends the ap- 
pointment of Joliet to explore the Mississippi, 46. 

Taensas Indians, a kindred tribe of the Natchez, La Salle's arrival among, 
139; their habitations, life, and worship, 139, 140. 

Tamaroas, one of the five tribes of the Illinois, mention, 105, 127 ; Jesuit 
mission established among, 207. 

Tampa Bay, Florida, landing-place of De Soto, 25. 

Tejas Indians, name of Texas derived from, 164, note. 

Texas, country of claimed by Spain, 190; unsuccessful attempts of the 
French to plant colonies in, 194, 262. 

Timber, kinds of most abundant in Illinois, 400, note. 

Tombigbee River, ascended by Bienville in his expedition against the 
Chickasaws, 291 ; also by Governor de Vaudreuil, 298. 

Tontj-^, Henri de, lieutenant of La Salle, 83; his early military career, 84 ; 
accompanies La Salle to New France (1677), 85; superintends the 
construction of the Griifin, 86 ; sails with his chief to Mackinac, 87 ; 
goes thence to Sault de Ste. Marie, 88 ; arrives in the Illinois, 89 ; is 
left in command at Fort Cr^ve-coeur, 115; his perilous encounter 
with the Iroquois, 123 ; escapes with his party to the Pottawatomies, 
128, 129; he descends the Mississippi with La Salle, l?>b, et ^eq.; as- 
sists in constructing Fort St. Louis on the Illinois River, 147 ; is 
given charge of the fort by La Salle, but superseded in command 
by De Baugis, 152 ; afterward reinstated, 182 ; his river voyage to the 
Gulf in search of La Salle, 182; establishes a post on the Arkansas, 
182; heroic attempt to succor the remains of La Salle's Texan col- 
ony, 188; is continued in command at the Illinois, 194, 195; finally 
joins D'Iberville on the Lower Mississippi, 221 ; is sent thence on a 
mission to the Chickasaws, 228 ; dies at Fort Louis, on the Mobile, 
228 ; summary of his character, 229 ; printed memoirs of, 230 ; his 
petition to Count Pontchartrain, 231. 

Tonty, Alphonse de, brother of Henri, 229. 

Trois Rivieres, town on the St. Lawrence, founded by Champlain, IS, 
mention, 37, 47. 

Tunica Bend, scene of IMajor Loftus' attack by Tunica Indians, 352. 

Tuscarora Indians, a sixth tribe of the Iroquois nation, 320, note. 

U. 
UUoa, Don Antonio de, first Spanish governor sent to Louisiana, 371 ; 
letter of to the Superior Council, 371 ; his expulsion from the prov- 
ince, 373. 
Ucita, an Indian town on Tampa Bay, Florida, 25. 
Utica, Illinois, mention, 146, 196. 
Utrect, Treaty of, 21. 

V. 

Vaca, Cabeca, or Cabeza de, an early Spnnisli wanderer in Florida, 29 and 

note. 
Vaudi'euil, Pierre PVancois de Rigaud, Marquis de, governor of Louisi- 



Index. 433 

ana (1742-1753), 296; prosperity of the province under his admin- 
istration, 297 ; he is promoted to the governorship of Canada, 312 ; 
jealousy and contentions with General Montcalm, 340, noie ; charges 
preferred against him by friends of the latter, on which he is tried 
and acquitted, 340, 341, nole ; death of in Paris, Ibid. 

Vega, Garcilasso de la, a Spanish historian of De Soto's Expedition, 30, 33, 
note. 

Venango, Indian village and military post on the Alleghany River, 
321,350. 

Verrazano, Juan, a celebrated Florentine navigator ; early voyage of dis- 
covery to North America, 4. 

Vexilla, or vexilla regis prodeunt, first line of grand Latin hymn, 144, 198. 

Vicanque, ancient Indian town on the upper waters of tlie Arkan- 
sas, 29. 

Vincennes, Jean Baptiste Bissot de. (See De Vincennes.) 

Vincennes, Indiana, beginning of, 299; early history, 301, 302; visited 
by Croghan, 303, note. 

Virginia, Illinois made a county of, 402. 

W. 

"Wabash River, when French posts first established on, 299. 

"Washington, George, mission to the headwaters of the Ohio, 321 ; sur- 
renders Fort Necessity, 325 ; gallant conduct at Braddock's de- 
feat, 328. 

Wars of the French with the Spaniards, 265-268; with the Natchez, 
277-285; with the Chickasaws, 290-298; with the English, 20, 312, 
319-339 ; Pontiac's war, 346-360. 

West, Company of the, when organized, 252 ; operations of in Louisi- 
ana and Illinois, 259, 571 ; charter of surrendered to the crown, 286 ; 
benefits of its sway, 287. 

William III. of England, sends two vessels to explore the outlet of the 
Mississippi, 113, 220. 

Winnebago Indians, a Ijranch of the Sioux or Dakota nation ; Nicolet's 
visit to and account of, 36 ; mention, 41. 

Wilkins, Lieutenant-Colonel John, succeeds Colonel Reed as English 
commandant at the Illinois, 395; account of his administration, 
395-398. 

Will of La Salle, 134, note. 

Wolfe, General James, distinguishes himself at the reduction of Louis- 
burg, 336 ; his siege of Quebec, 337 ; dies on the field of battle, 338. 

Wolfe and Montcalm Monument, 341, note. 

Wolfe's column, Ibid. 

Y. 

Yazoo River, De Soto winters at village on, 27 ; French Fort on, 283. 
Yalobusha River, in Northern j\Iississippi, rendezvous of D'Artaquette 
in his unfortunate expedition against the Chickasaws, 292. 

FINIS.