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CHAPTER XIV. 1680. FORT CRÈVECOEUR
BUILDING OF THE FORT.—LOSS OF THE "GRIFFIN."—A BOLD RESOLUTION. —ANOTHER VESSEL.—HENNEPIN SENT TO THE MISSISSIPPI.—DEPARTURE OF LA SALLE.
La Salle now resolved to leave the Indian camp, and fortify himself for the winter in a strong position, where his men would be less exposed to dangerous influence, and where he could hold his ground against an outbreak of the Illinois or an Iroquois invasion. At the middle of January, a thaw broke up the ice which had closed the river; and he set out in a canoe, with Hennepin, to visit the site he had chosen for his projected fort. It was half a league below the camp, on a little hill, or knoll, two hundred yards from the southern bank. On either side was a deep ravine, and, in front, a low ground, overflowed at high water. Thither, then, the party was removed. They dug a ditch behind the hill, connecting the two ravines, and thus completely isolating it. The hill was nearly square in form. An embankment of earth was thrown up on every side: its declivities were sloped steeply down to the bottom of the ravines and the ditch, and further guarded by chevaux-de-frise; while a palisade, twenty-five feet high, was planted around the whole. The men were lodged in huts, at the angles: in the middle there was a cabin of planks for La Salle and Tonty, and another for the three friars; while the blacksmith had his shed and forge in the rear.
Hennepin laments the failure of wine, which prevented him from saying mass; but every morning and evening he summoned the men to his cabin, to listen to prayers and preaching, and on Sundays and fête days they chanted vespers. Father Zenobe usually spent the day in the Indian camp, striving, with very indifferent success, to win them to the faith, and to overcome the disgust with which their manners and habits inspired him.
Such was the first civilized occupation of the region which now forms the State of Illinois. The spot may still be seen, a little below Peoria. La Salle christened his new fort Fort Crèvecoeur. The name tells of disaster and suffering, but does no justice to the iron-hearted constancy of the sufferer. Up to this time he had clung to the hope that his vessel (the "Griffin") might still be safe. Her safety was vital to his enterprise. She had on board articles of the last necessity to him, including the rigging and anchors of another vessel, which he was to build at Fort Crèvecoeur, in order to descend the Mississippi, and sail thence to the West Indies. But now his last hope had well-nigh vanished. Past all reasonable doubt, the "Griffin" was lost; and in her loss he and all his plans seemed ruined alike.
Nothing, indeed, was ever heard of her. Indians, fur-traders, and even Jesuits, have been charged with contriving her destruction. Some say that the Ottawas boarded and burned her, after murdering those on board; others accuse the Pottawattamies; others affirm that her own crew scuttled and sunk her; others, again, that she foundered in a storm. [Footnote: Charlevoix, i. 459; La Potherie, ii. 140; La Hontan, Memoir on the Fur- Trade of Canada, MS. I am indebted for a copy of this paper to Winthrop Sargent, Esq., who purchased the original at the sale of the library of the poet Southey. Like Hennepin, La Hontan went over to the English; and this memoir is written in their interest.] As for La Salle, the belief grew in him to a settled conviction, that she had been treacherously sunk by the pilot and the sailors to whom he had intrusted her; and he thought he had found evidence that the authors of the crime, laden with the merchandise they had taken from her, had reached the Mississippi and ascended it, hoping to join Du Lhut, a famous chief of coureurs de bois, and enrich themselves by traffic with the northern tribes. [Footnote: Lettre de la Salle à La Barre, Chicagou, 4 Juin, 1683, MS. This is a long letter, addressed to the successor of Frontenac, in the government of Canada. La Salle says that a young Indian belonging to him told him that, three years before, he saw a white man, answering the description of the pilot, a prisoner among a tribe beyond the Mississippi. He had been captured with four others on that river, while making his way with canoes laden with goods, towards the Sioux. His companions had been killed. Other circumstances, which La Salle details at great length, convinced him that the white prisoner was no other than the pilot of the "Griffin." The evidence, however, is not conclusive.]
But whether her lading was swallowed in the depths of the lake, or lost in the clutches of traitors, the evil was alike past remedy. She was gone, it mattered little how. The main-stay of the enterprise was broken; yet its inflexible chief lost neither heart nor hope. One path, beset with hardships and terrors, still lay open to him. He might return on foot to Fort Frontenac, and bring thence the needful succors.
La Salle felt deeply the dangers of such a step. His men were uneasy, discontented, and terrified by the stories, with which the jealous Illinois still constantly filled their ears, of the whirlpools and the monsters of the Mississippi. He dreaded, lest, in his absence, they should follow the example of their comrades, and desert. In the midst of his anxieties, a lucky accident gave him the means of disabusing them. He was hunting, one day, near the fort, when he met a young Illinois, on his way home, half-starved, from a distant war excursion. He had been absent so long that he knew nothing of what had passed between his countrymen and the French. La Salle gave him a turkey he had shot, invited him to the fort, fed him, and made him presents. Having thus warmed his heart, he questioned him, with apparent carelessness, as to the countries he had visited, and especially as to the Mississippi, on which the young warrior, seeing no reason to disguise the truth, gave him all the information he required. La Salle now made him the present of a hatchet, to engage him to say nothing of what had passed, and, leaving him in excellent humor, repaired, with some of his followers, to the Illinois camp. Here he found the chiefs seated at a feast of bear's meat, and he took his place among them on a mat of rushes. After a pause, he charged them with having deceived him in regard to the Mississippi, adding that he knew the river perfectly, having been instructed concerning it by the Master of Life. He then described it to them with so much accuracy that his astonished hearers, conceiving that he owed his knowledge to "medicine," or sorcery, clapped their hands to their mouths, in sign of wonder, and confessed that all they had said was but an artifice, inspired by their earnest desire that he should remain among them. [Footnote: Relation des Découvertes et des Voyages du Sr. de la Salle, Seigneur et Gouverneur du Fort de Frontenac, au delà des grands Lacs de la Nouvelle France, faits par ordre de Monseigneur Colbert; 1679, 80 et 81, MS. Hennepin gives a story which is not essentially different, except that he makes himself a conspicuous actor in it.]
Here was one source of danger stopped; one motive to desert removed. La Salle again might feel a reasonable security that idleness would not breed mischief among his men. The chief purpose of his intended journey was to procure the equipment of a vessel, to be built at Fort Crèvecoeur; and he resolved that before he set out he would see her on the stocks. The pit- sawyers and some of the carpenters had deserted; but energy supplied the place of skill, and he and Tonty urged on the work with such vigor that within six weeks the hull was nearly finished. She was of forty tons burden, [Footnote: Lettre de Duchesneau, à—, 10 Nov. 1680, MS.] and built with high bulwarks to protect those within from the arrows of hostile Indians.
La Salle now bethought him that in his absence he might get from Hennepin service of more value than his sermons; and he requested him to descend the Illinois, and explore it to its mouth. The friar, though hardy and daring, would fain have excused himself, alleging a troublesome bodily infirmity; but his venerable colleague, Ribourde,—himself too old for the journey,—urged him to go, telling him that if he died by the way, his apostolic labors would redound to the glory of God. Membré had been living for some time in the Indian camp, and was thoroughly out of humor with the objects of his missionary efforts, of whose obduracy and filth he bitterly complained. Hennepin proposed to take his place, while he should assume the Mississippi adventure; but this Membré declined, preferring to remain where he was. Hennepin now reluctantly accepted the proposed task. "Anybody but me," he says, with his usual modesty, "would have been very much frightened at the dangers of such a journey; and, in fact, if I had not placed all my trust in God, I should not have been the dupe of the Sieur de la Salle, who exposed my life rashly." [Footnote: "Tout autre que moi en auroit été fort ébranlé. Et en effet, je n'eusse pas été la duppe du Sieur de la Salle, qui m'exposait témérairement, si je n'eusse mis toute ma confiance en Dieu" (1704), 241.]
On the last day of February, Hennepin's canoe lay at the water's edge; and the party gathered on the bank to bid him farewell. He had two companions, Michel Accau, and a man known as the Picard Du Gay, [Footnote: An eminent writer has mistaken "Picard" for a personal name. Du Gay was called "Le Picard," because he came from the province of Picardy. Accau, and not Hennepin, was the real chief of the party.] though his real name was Antoine Auguel. The canoe was well laden with gifts for the Indians,– tobacco, knives, beads, awls, and other goods, to a very considerable value, supplied at La Salle's cost; "and, in fact," observes Hennepin, "he is liberal enough towards his friends." [Footnote: (1683), 188. This commendation is suppressed in the later editions.]
The friar bade farewell to La Salle, and embraced all the rest in turn. Father Ribourde gave him his benediction. "Be of good courage and let your heart be comforted," said the excellent old missionary, as he spread his hands in benediction over the shaven crown of the reverend traveller. Du Gay and Accau plied their paddles; the canoe receded, and vanished at length behind the forest. We will follow Hennepin hereafter on his adventures, imaginary and real. Meanwhile, we will trace the footsteps of his chief, urging his way, in the storms of winter, through those vast and gloomy wilds,—those realms of famine, treachery, and death, that lay betwixt him and his far-distant goal of Fort Frontenac.
On the second of March, [Footnote: Tonty erroneously places their departure on the twenty-second.] before the frost was yet out of the ground, when the forest was still leafless and gray, and the oozy prairie still patched with snow, a band of discontented men were again gathered on the shore for another leave-taking. Hard by, the unfinished ship lay on the stocks, white and fresh from the saw and axe, ceaselessly reminding them of the hardship and peril that was in store. Here you would have seen the calm impenetrable face of La Salle, and with him the Mohegan hunter, who seems to have felt towards him that admiring attachment which he could always inspire in his Indian retainers. Besides the Mohegan, four Frenchmen were to accompany him: Hunaud, La Violette, Collin, and Dautray. [Footnote: Déclaration faite par Moyse Hillaret, charpentier de barque, MS.] His parting with Tonty was an anxious one, for each well knew the risks that environed both. Embarking with his followers in two canoes, he made his way upward amid the drifting ice; while the faithful Italian, with two or three honest men and twelve or thirteen knaves, remained to hold Fort Crèvecoeur in his absence.
CHAPTER XV. 1680. HARDIHOOD OF LA SALLE
THE WINTER JOURNEY.—THE DESERTED TOWN.—STARVED ROCK.—LAKE MICHIGAN.—THE WILDERNESS.—WAR PARTIES.—LA SALLE'S MEN GIVE OUT.—ILL TIDINGS.—MUTINY.—CHASTISEMENT OF THE MUTINEERS.
The winter had been a severe one. When La Salle and his five companions reached Peoria Lake, they found it sheeted from shore to shore with ice that stopped the progress of their canoes, but was too thin to bear the weight of a man.
They dragged their light vessels up the bank and into the forest, where the city of Peoria now stands; made two rude sledges, placed the canoes and baggage upon them, and, toiling knee-deep in saturated snow, dragged them four leagues through the woods, till they reached a point where the motion of the current kept the water partially open. They were now on the river above the lake. Masses of drift ice, wedged together, but full of crevices and holes, soon barred the way again; and, carrying their canoes ashore, they dragged them two leagues over a frozen marsh. Rain fell in floods; and, when night came, they crouched for shelter in a deserted Indian hut.
In the morning, the third of March, they dragged their canoes half a league farther; then launched them, and, breaking the ice with clubs and hatchets, forced their way slowly up the stream. Again their progress was barred, and again they took to the woods, toiling onward till a tempest of moist, half-liquid snow forced them to bivouac for the night. A sharp frost followed, and in the morning the white waste around them was glazed with a dazzling crust. Now, for the first time, they could use their snow- shoes. Bending to their work, dragging their canoes which glided smoothly over the polished surface, they journeyed on hour after hour and league after league, till they reached at length the great town of the Illinois, still void of its inhabitants. [Footnote: Membré says that he was in the town at the time, but this could hardly have been the case. He was, in all probability, among the Illinois in their camp near Fort Crèvecoeur.]
It was a desolate and lonely scene,—the river gliding dark and cold between its banks of rushes; the empty lodges, covered with crusted snow; the vast white meadows; the distant cliffs, bearded with shining icicles; and the hills wrapped in forests, which glittered from afar with the icy incrustations that cased each frozen twig. Yet there was life in the savage landscape. The men saw buffalo wading in the snow, and they killed one of them. More than this: they discovered the tracks of moccasons. They cut rushes by the edge of the river, piled them on the bank, and set them on fire, that the smoke might attract the eyes of savages roaming near.
On the following day, while the hunters were smoking the meat of the buffalo, La Salle went out to reconnoitre, and presently met three Indians, one of whom proved to be Chassagoac, the principal chief of the Illinois. [Footnote: The same whom Hennepin calls Chassagouasse. He was brother of the chief, Nicanopé, who, in his absence, had feasted the French on the day after the nocturnal council with Monso. Chassagoac was afterwards baptized by Membré or Ribourde, but soon relapsed into the superstitions of his people, and died, as the former tells us, "doubly a child of perdition." See Le Clercq, ii. 181.] La Salle brought them to his bivouac, feasted them, gave them a red blanket, a kettle, and some knives and hatchets, made friends with them, promised to restrain the Iroquois from attacking them, told them that he was on his way to the settlements to bring arms and ammunition to defend them against their enemies, and, as the result of these advances, gained from the chief a promise that he would send provisions to Tonty's party at Fort Crèvecoeur.
After several days spent at the deserted town, La Salle prepared to resume his journey. Before his departure, his attention was attracted to the remarkable cliff of yellow sandstone, now called Starved Rock, a mile or more above the village,—a natural fortress, which a score of resolute white men might make good against a host of savages; and he soon afterwards sent Tonty an order to examine it, and make it his stronghold in case of need. [Footnote: Tonty, Mémoire, MS. The order was sent by two Frenchmen whom La Salle met on Lake Michigan.]
On the fifteenth, the party set out again, carried their canoes along the bank of the river as far as the rapids above Ottawa; then launched them and pushed their way upward, battling with the floating ice, which, loosened by a warm rain, drove down the swollen current in sheets. On the eighteenth, they reached a point some miles below the site of Joliet, and here found the river once more completely closed. Despairing of farther progress by water, they hid their canoes on an island, and struck across the country for Lake Michigan. Each, besides his gun, carried a knife and a hatchet at his belt, a blanket strapped at his back, and a piece of dressed hide to make or mend his moccasons. A store of powder and lead, and a kettle, completed the outfit of the party. [Footnote: Hennepin (1683), 173.]
It was the worst of all seasons for such a journey. The nights were cold, but the sun was warm at noon, and the half-thawed prairie was one vast tract of mud, water, and discolored, half-liquid snow. On the twenty- second, they crossed marshes and inundated meadows, wading to the knee, till at noon they were stopped by a river, perhaps the Calumet. They made a raft of hard wood timber, for there was no other, and shoved themselves across. On the next day, they could see Lake Michigan, dimly glimmering beyond the waste of woods; and, after crossing three swollen streams, they reached it at evening. On the twenty-fourth, they followed its shore, till, at nightfall, they arrived at the fort, which they had built in the autumn at the mouth of the St. Joseph. Here La Salle found Chapelle and Leblanc, the two men whom he had sent from hence to Michillimackinac, in search of the "Griffin." [Footnote: Déclaration de Moyse Hillaret, MS. Relation des Découvertes, MS.] They reported that they had made the circuit of the lake, and had neither seen her nor heard tidings of her. Assured of her fate, he ordered them to rejoin Tonty at Fort Crèvecoeur; while he pushed onward with his party through the unknown wild of Southern Michigan.
They were detained till noon of the twenty-fifth, in making a raft to cross the St. Joseph. Then they resumed their march; and as they forced their way through the brambly thickets, their clothes were torn, and their faces so covered with blood, that, says the journal, they could hardly know each other. Game was very scarce, and they grew faint with hunger. In two or three days they reached a happier region. They shot deer, bears, and turkeys in the forest, and fared sumptuously. But the reports of their guns fell on hostile ears. This was a debatable ground, infested with war- parties of several adverse tribes, and none could venture here without risk of life. On the evening of the twenty-eighth, as they lay around their fire under the shelter of a forest by the border of a prairie, the man on guard shouted an alarm. They sprang to their feet; and each, gun in hand, took his stand behind a tree, while yells and howlings filled the surrounding darkness. A band of Indians were upon them; but, seeing them prepared, the cowardly assailants did not wait to exchange a shot.
They crossed great meadows, overgrown with rank grass, and set it on fire to hide the traces of their passage. La Salle bethought him of a device to keep their skulking foes at a distance. On the trunks of trees from which he had stripped the bark, he drew with charcoal the marks of an Iroquois war-party, with the usual signs for prisoners, and for scalps, hoping to delude his pursuers with the belief that he and his men were a band of these dreaded warriors.
Thus, over snowy prairies and half-frozen marshes; wading sometimes to their waists in mud, water, and bulrushes, they urged their way through the spongy, saturated wilderness. During three successive days they were aware that a party of savages was dogging their tracks. They dared, not make a fire at night, lest the light should betray them; but, hanging their wet clothes on the trees, they rolled themselves in their blankets, and slept together among piles of spruce and pine boughs. But the night of the second of April was excessively cold. Their clothes were hard frozen, and they were forced to kindle a fire to thaw and dry them. Scarcely had the light begun to glimmer through the gloom of evening, than it was greeted from the distance by mingled yells; and a troop of Mascoutin warriors rushed towards them. They were stopped by a deep stream, a hundred paces from the bivouac of the French, and La Salle went forward to meet them. No sooner did they see him, and learn that he was a Frenchman, than they cried that they were friends and brothers, who had mistaken him and his men for Iroquois; and, abandoning their hostile purpose, they peacefully withdrew. Thus his device to avert danger had well-nigh proved the destruction of the whole party.
Two days after this adventure, two of the men fell ill from fatigue, and exposure, and sustained themselves with difficulty till they reached the banks of a river, probably the Huron. Here, while the sick men rested, their companions made a canoe. There were no birch-trees; and they were forced to use elm bark, which at that early season would not slip freely from the wood until they loosened it with hot water. Their canoe being made, they embarked in it, and for a time floated prosperously down the stream, when, at length the way was barred by a matted barricade of trees fallen across the water. The sick men could now walk again; and, pushing eastward through the forest, the party soon reached the banks of the Detroit.
La Salle directed two of the men to make a canoe, and go to Michillimackinac, the nearest harborage. With the remaining two, he crossed the Detroit on a raft, and, striking a direct line across the country, reached Lake Erie, not far from Point Pelée. Snow, sleet, and rain pelted them with little intermission; and when, after a walk of about thirty miles, they gained the lake, the Mohegan and one of the Frenchmen were attacked with fever and spitting of blood. Only one man now remained in health. With his aid, La Salle made another canoe, and, embarking the invalids, pushed for Niagara. It was Easter Monday, when they landed at a cabin of logs above the cataract, probably on the spot where the "Griffin" was built. Here several of La Salle's men had been left the year before, and here they still remained. They told him woful news. Not only had he lost the "Griffin," and her lading of ten thousand crowns in value, but a ship from France, freighted with his goods, valued at more than twenty-two thousand livres, had been totally wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence; and of twenty hired men on their way from Europe to join him, some had been detained by his enemy, the Intendant Duchesneau, while all but four of the remainder, being told that he was dead, had found means to return home.
His three followers were all unfit for travel: he alone retained his strength and spirit. Taking with him three fresh men at Niagara, he resumed his journey, and on the sixth of May descried, looming through floods of rain, the familiar shores of his seigniory and the bastioned walls of Fort Frontenac. During sixty-five days he had toiled almost incessantly, travelling, by the course he took, about a thousand miles through a country beset with every form of peril and obstruction; "the most arduous journey," says the chronicler, "ever made by Frenchmen in America." Such was Cavelier de la Salle. In him, an unconquerable mind held at its service a frame of iron, and tasked it to the utmost of its endurance. The pioneer of western pioneers was no rude son of toil, but a man of thought, trained amid arts and letters. [Footnote: A Rocky Mountain trapper, being complimented on the hardihood of himself and his companions, once said to the writer, "That's so; but a gentleman of the right sort will stand hardship better than anybody else." The history of Arctic and African travel, and the military records of all time, are a standing evidence that a trained and developed mind is not the enemy, but the active and powerful ally, of constitutional hardihood. The culture that enervates instead of strengthening is always a false or a partial one.]
He had reached his goal; but for him there was neither rest nor peace. Man and nature seemed in arms against him. His agents had plundered him; his creditors had seized his property; and several of his canoes, richly laden, had been lost in the rapids of the St. Lawrence. [Footnote: Zenobe Membré in Le Clercq, ii. 202.] He hastened to Montreal, where his sudden advent caused great astonishment; and where, despite his crippled resources and damaged credit, he succeeded, within a week, in gaining the supplies which he required, and the needful succors for the forlorn band on the Illinois. He had returned to Fort Frontenac, and was on the point of embarking for their relief, when a blow fell upon him more disheartening than any that had preceded. On the twenty-second of July, two voyageurs, Messier and Laurent, came to him with a letter from Tonty; who wrote that soon after La Salle's departure, nearly all the men had deserted, after destroying Fort Crèvecoeur, plundering the magazine, and throwing into the river all the arms, goods, and stores which they could not carry off. The messengers who brought this letter were speedily followed by two of the habitans of Fort Frontenac, who had been trading on the lakes, and who, with a fidelity which the unhappy La Salle rarely knew how to inspire, had travelled day and night to bring him their tidings. They reported that they had met the deserters, and that having been reinforced by recruits gained at Michillimackinac and Niagara, they now numbered twenty men. [Footnote: When La Salle was at Niagara, in April, he had ordered Dautray, the best of the men who had accompanied him from the Illinois, to return thither as soon as he was able. Four men from Niagara were to go with him, and he was to rejoin Tonty with such supplies as that post could furnish. Dautray set out accordingly, but was met on the lakes by the deserters, who told him that Tonty was dead, and seduced his men.—Relation des Découvertes, MS. Dautray himself seems to have remained true; at least he was in La Salle's service immediately after, and was one of his most trusted followers. He was of good birth, being the son of Jean Bourdon, a conspicuous personage in the early period of the colony, and his name appears on official records as Jean Bourdon, Sieur d'Autray.] They had destroyed the fort on the St. Joseph, seized a quantity of furs belonging to La Salle at Michillimackinac, and plundered the magazine at Niagara. Here they had separated, eight of them coasting the south side of Lake Ontario to find harborage at Albany, a common refuge at that time of this class of scoundrels; while the remaining twelve, in three canoes, made for Fort Frontenac along the north shore, intending to kill La Salle as the surest means of escaping punishment.
He lost no time in lamentation. Of the few men at his command, he chose nine of the trustiest, embarked with them in canoes, and went to meet the marauders. After passing the Bay of Quinté, he took his station with five of his party at a point of land suited to his purpose, and detached the remaining four to keep watch. In the morning two canoes were discovered, approaching without suspicion, one of them far in advance of the other. As the foremost drew near, La Salle's canoe darted out from under the leafy shore; two of the men handling the paddles, while he with the remaining two levelled their guns at the deserters, and called on them to surrender. Astonished and dismayed, they yielded at once; while two more who were in the second canoe hastened to follow their example. La Salle now returned to the fort with his prisoners, placed them in custody, and again set forth. He met the third canoe upon the lake at about six o'clock in the evening. His men vainly plied their paddles in pursuit. The mutineers reached the shore, took post among rocks and trees, levelled their guns, and showed fight. Four of La Salle's men made a circuit to gain their rear and dislodge them; on which they stole back to their canoe, and tried to escape in the darkness. They were pursued, and summoned to yield; but they replied by aiming their guns at their pursuers, who instantly gave them a volley, killed two of them, and captured the remaining three. Like their companions, they were placed in custody at the fort to await the arrival of Count Frontenac. [Footnote: The story of La Salle's journey from Fort Crèvecoeur to Fort Frontenac, with his subsequent encounter with the mutineers, is given in great detail in the unpublished Relation des Découvertes. This and other portions of it are compiled, with little abridgment, from the letters of La Salle himself, some of which are still in existence. They give the particulars of each day with a cool and business-like simplicity, recounting facts without comment or the slightest attempt at rhetorical embellishment. This is the authority for the details of the journey: the general statement is confirmed by Membré, Hennepin, and Tonty. The Mémoire of Tonty, though too concise, is excellent authority, and must by no means be confounded with the Relation de la Louisiane, to which his name is falsely affixed.]
