[Frontispiece: Jacques Cartier]

French Pathfinders

in

North America

By

William Henry Johnson

Author of "The World's Discoverers, " "Pioneer Spaniards in NorthAmerica, " etc. 

_With Seven Full-Page Plates_

Boston

Little, Brown, and Company

1912

Copyright, 1905, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

All rights reserved

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FOREWORD

The compiler of the following sketches does not make any claim tooriginality. He has dealt with material that has been used often andagain. Still there has seemed to him to be a place for a book whichshould outline the story of the great French explorers in such simple, direct fashion as might attract young readers. Trying to meet thisneed, he has sought to add to the usefulness of the volume byintroductory chapters, simple in language, but drawn from the bestauthorities and carefully considered, giving a view of Indian society;also, by inserting numerous notes on Indian tribal connections, customs, and the like subjects. 

By selecting a portion of Radisson's journal for publication he doesnot by any means range himself on the side of the scholarly and giftedwriter who has come forward as the champion of that picturesquescoundrel, and seriously proposes {vi} him as the real hero of theNorthwest, to whom, we are told, is due the honor which we havemistakenly lavished on such commonplace persons as Champlain, Joliet, Marquette, and La Salle. 

While the present writer is not qualified to express a critical opinionas to the merits of the controversy about Radisson, a careful readingof his journal has given him an impression that the greatest part is sovague, so wanting in verifiable details, as to be worthless forhistorical purposes. One portion, however, seems unquestionablyvaluable, besides being exceedingly interesting. It is that whichrecounts his experiences on Lake Superior. It bears the plainest marksof truth and authenticity, and it is accepted as historical by theeminent critic, Dr. Reuben G. Thwaites. Therefore it is reproducedhere, in abridged form; and on the strength of it Radisson is assigneda place among the Pathfinders. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

 I. THE ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE INDIAN RACE . . . 3 II. SOMETHING ABOUT INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE . . . . . . . . . 15 III. THE IROQUOIS LEAGUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 IV. ACHIEVEMENTS OF FRENCHMEN IN THE NORTH OF AMERICA . . 45 V. JACQUES CARTIER, THE DISCOVERER OF CANADA . . . . . . 53 VI. JEAN RIBAUT: THE FRENCH AT PORT ROYAL, IN SOUTH CAROLINA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 VII. RENÉ DE LAUDONNIÈRE: PLANTING A COLONY ON THE ST. JOHN'S RIVER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 VIII. SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN IN NOVA SCOTIA . . . . . . . . . 101 IX. SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN (_continued_): THE FRENCH ON THE ST. LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT LAKES . . . . . . . 119 X. JESUIT MISSIONARY PIONEERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 XI. JEAN NICOLLET, LOUIS JOLIET, AND FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE; THE DISCOVERERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI . . . . 169 XII. PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON AND MÉDARD CHOUART EXPLORE LAKE SUPERIOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 XIII. ROBERT CAVELIER, SIEUR DE LA SALLE, THE FIRST EXPLORER OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI . . . . . . . . . . 225 XIV. LA SALLE AND THE FOUNDING OF LOUISIANA . . . . . . . 26l [SUPPLEMENT: THE EXECUTION OF HIS PLAN BY BIENVILLE] 278 XV. FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 XVI. THE VÉRENDRYES DISCOVER THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS . . . . . 313

 BOOKS FOR REFERENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

JACQUES CARTIER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ From the original painting by P. Riis in the Town Hall of St. Malo, France

Indian Family Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

FORT CAROLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 From De Bry's "Le Moyne de Bienville"

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 From the Ducornet portrait

FORT OF THE IROQUOIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 From Laverdière's "Oeuvres de Champlain"

THE MURDER OF LA SALLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 From Hennepin's "A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America"

LE MOYNE DE BIENVILLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 From the original painting in the possession of J. A. Allen, Esq. , Kingston, Ont. 

FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 From Carver's "Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America"

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French Pathfinders in North America

Chapter I

THE ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE INDIAN RACE

America probably peopled from Asia. --Unity of the American Race. --TheEskimo, possibly, an Exception. --Range of the Several Groups. 

In an earlier volume, "Pioneer Spaniards in North America, " the probableorigin of the native races of America has been discussed. Let us restatebriefly the general conclusions there set forth. 

It is the universal opinion of scientific men that the people whom wecall Indians did not originate in the Western World, but, in the fardistant past, came upon this continent from another--from Europe, somesay; from Asia, say others. In support of the latter opinion it ispointed out that Asia and America once were connected by a broad belt ofland, now sunk {4} beneath the shallow Bering Sea. It is easy, then, topicture successive hordes of dusky wanderers pouring over from the old, old East upon the virgin soil of what was then emphatically a new world, since no human beings roamed its vast plains or traversed its statelyforests. 

Human wave followed upon wave, the new comers pushing the older ones on. Some wandered eastward and spread themselves in the region surroundingHudson Bay. Others took a southeast course and were the ancestors of theAlgonquins, Iroquois, and other families inhabiting the eastern territoryof the United States. Still others pushed their way down the Pacificcoast and peopled Mexico and Central America, while yet others, driven nodoubt by the crowding of great numbers into the most desirable regions ofthe isthmus, passed on into South America and gradually overspread it. 

Most likely these hordes of Asiatic savages wandered into America duringhundreds of years and no doubt there was great diversity among them, somebeing far more advanced in the arts of life than others. But theessential thing to notice is that they were _all of one blood_. Thustheir descendants, however different they may {5} have become in languageand customs, constitute one stock, which we call the _American Race_. The peoples who reared the great earth-mounds of the Middle West, thosewho carved the curious sculptures of Central America, those who built thecave-dwellings of Arizona, those who piled stone upon stone in the quaintpueblos of New Mexico, those who drove Ponce de Leon away from the shoresof Florida, and those who greeted the Pilgrims with, "Welcome, Englishmen!"--all these, beyond a doubt, were of one widely varying race. 

To this oneness of all native Americans there is, perhaps, a singleexception. Some writers look upon the Eskimo as a remnant of an ancientEuropean race, known as the "Cave-men" because their remains are found incaves in Western Europe, always associated with the bones of arcticanimals, such as the reindeer, the arctic fox, and the musk-sheep. Fromthis fact it seems that these primitive men found their only congenialhabitation amid ice and snow. Now, the Eskimo are distinctly an arcticrace, and in other particulars they are amazingly like these men of thecaves who dwelt in Western Europe when it had a climate like that ofGreenland. The lamented {6} Dr. John Fiske puts the case thus strongly:"The stone arrow-heads, the sewing-needles, the necklaces and amulets ofcut teeth, and the daggers made from antler, used by the Eskimos, resemble so minutely the implements of the Cave-men, that if recentEskimo remains were to be put into the Pleistocene caves of France andEngland, they would be indistinguishable in appearance from the remainsof the Cave-men which are now found there. "

Further, these ancient men had an astonishing talent for delineatinganimals and hunting scenes. In the caves of France have been foundcarvings on bone and ivory, probably many tens of thousands of years old, which represent in the most life-like manner mammoths, cave-bears, andother animals now extinct. Strangely enough, of all existing savagepeoples the Eskimo alone possess the same faculty. These circumstancesmake it probable that they are a remnant of the otherwise extinctCave-men. If this is so, their ancestors probably passed over to thiscontinent by a land-connection then existing between Northern Europe andNorthern America, of which Greenland is a survival. 

From the Eskimo southward to Cape Horn {7} we find various branches ofthe one American race. First comes the _Athapascan_ stock, whose rangeextends from Hudson Bay westward through British America to the RockyMountains. One branch of this family left the dreary regions of almostperpetual ice and snow, wandered far down toward the south, and becameknown as the roaming and fierce Apaches, Navajos, and Lipans of theburning southwestern plains. 

Immediately south of the Athapascans was the most extensive of all thefamilies, the _Algonquin_. Their territory stretched withoutinterruption westward from Cape Race, in Newfoundland, to the RockyMountains, on both banks of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Itextended southward along the Atlantic seaboard as far, perhaps, as theSavannah River. This family embraced some of the most famous tribes, such as the Abnakis, Micmacs, Passamaquoddies, Pequots, Narragansetts, and others in New England; the Mohegans, on the Hudson; the Lenape, onthe Delaware; the Nanticokes, in Maryland; the Powhatans, in Virginia;the Miamis, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos and Chippeways, in the Ohio andMississippi Valleys; and the Shawnees, on the Tennessee. 

{8} This great family is the one that came most in contact and conflictwith our forefathers. The Indians who figure most frequently on thebloody pages of our early story were Algonquins. This tribe has producedintrepid warriors and sagacious leaders. 

Its various branches represent a very wide range of culture. CaptainJohn Smith and Champlain, coasting the shores of New England, found themclosely settled by native tribes living in fixed habitations andcultivating regular crops of corn, beans, and pumpkins. On the otherhand, the Algonquins along the St. Lawrence, as well as some of thewestern tribes, were shiftless and roving, growing no crops and having nosettled abodes, but depending on fish, game, and berries for subsistence, famished at one time, at another gorged. Probably the highestrepresentatives of this extensive family were the Shawnees, at itssouthernmost limit. 

Like an island in the midst of the vast Algonquin territory was theregion occupied by the _Huron-Iroquois_ family. In thrift, intelligence, skill in fortification, and daring in war, this stock stands preëminentamong all native Americans. It included the Eries and Hurons, in Canada;{9} the Susquehannocks, on the Susquehanna; and the Conestogas, also inPennsylvania. But by far the most important branch was the renownedconfederacy called the Five Nations. This included the Senecas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Oneidas, and Mohawks. These five tribes occupiedterritory in a strip extending through the lake region of New York. At alater date a kindred people, the Tuscaroras, who had drifted down intoCarolina, returned northward and rejoined the league, which thereafterwas known as the Six Nations. This confederacy was by far the mostformidable aggregation of Indians within the territory of the presentUnited States. It waged merciless war upon other native peoples and hadbecome so dreaded, says Dr. Fiske, that at the cry "A Mohawk!" theIndians of New England fled like sheep. It was especially hostile tosome alien branches of its own kindred, the Hurons and Eries inparticular. 

South of the Algonquins was the _Maskoki_ group of Indians, of adecidedly high class, comprising the Creeks, or Muskhogees, the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, and, later, the Seminoles. They occupied the area of theGulf States, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River. The {10}building of the Ohio earthworks is by many students attributed to theancestors of these southern tribes, and it was they who heroically foughtthe Spanish invaders. 

The powerful _Dakota_ family, also called Sioux, ranged over territoryextending from Lake Michigan to the Rocky Mountains and covering the mostof the valley of the Missouri. 

The _Pawnee_ group occupied the Platte valley, in Nebraska, and theterritory extending thence southward; and the _Shoshonee_ group had forits best representatives the renowned Comanches, the matchless horsemenof the plains. 

On the Pacific coast were several tribes, but none of any specialimportance. In the Columbia and Sacramento valleys were the lowestspecimens of the Indian race, the only ones who may be legitimatelyclassed as savages. All the others are more properly known as barbarians. 

In New Mexico and Arizona is a group of remarkable interest, the _PuebloIndians_, who inhabit large buildings (pueblos) of stone or sun-driedbrick. In this particular they stand in a class distinct from all othernative tribes in the United States. They comprise the Zuñis, Moquis, Acomans, and others, having different languages, {11} but standing on thesame plane of culture. In many respects they have advanced far beyondany other stock. They have specially cultivated the arts of peace. Their great stone or adobe dwellings, in which hundreds of persons live, reared with almost incredible toil on the top of nearly inaccessiblerocks or on the ledges of deep gorges, were constructed to serve at thesame time as dwelling-places and as strongholds against the attacks ofthe roaming and murdering Apaches. These people till the thirsty soil oftheir arid region by irrigation with water conducted for miles. Theyhave developed many industries to a remarkable degree, and their potteryshows both skill and taste. 

These high-class barbarians are especially interesting because they haveundergone little change since the Spaniards, under Coronado, first becameacquainted with them, 364 years ago. They still live in the same way andobserve the same strange ceremonies, of which the famous "Snake-dance" isthe best known. They are, also, on a level of culture not much belowthat of the ancient Mexicans; so that from the study of them we may get avery good idea of the people whom Cortes found and conquered. 

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Chapter II

SOMETHING ABOUT INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE

Mistakes of the Earliest European Visitors as to Indian Society andGovernment. --How Indian Social Life originated. --The Family Tie theCentral Principle. --Gradual Development of a Family into a Tribe. --TheTotem. 

The first white visitors to America found men exercising some kind ofauthority, and they called them kings, after the fashion of Europeangovernment. The Spaniards even called the head-chief of the Mexicansthe "Emperor Montezuma. " There was not a king, still less an emperor, in the whole of North America. Had these first Europeans understoodthat they were face to face with men of the Stone Age, that is, withmen who had not progressed further than our own forefathers hadadvanced thousands of years ago, in that dim past when they usedweapons and implements of stone, and when they had not as yet anythinglike written language, they would have been saved many blunders. Theywould not have called native chiefs by such high-sounding titles as"King {16} Powhatan" and "King Philip. " They would not have styled thesimple Indian girl, Pocahontas, a princess; and King James, of England, would not have made the ludicrous mistake of being angry with Rolfe formarrying her, because he feared that when her father died, she would beentitled to "the throne, " and Rolfe would claim to be King of Virginia!

The study of Indian life has this peculiar interest, that it gives usan insight into the thinking and acting of our own forefathers longbefore the dawn of history, when they worshiped gods very much likethose of the Indians. 

All the world over, the most widely separated peoples in similar stagesof development exhibit remarkably similar ideas and customs, as if onehad borrowed from the other. There is often a curious resemblancebetween the myths of some race in Central Africa and those of someheathen tribe in Northern Europe. The human mind, under likeconditions, works in the same way and produces like results. Thus, instudying pictures of Indian life as it existed at the Discovery, wehave before us a sort of object-lesson in the condition of our ownremote ancestors. 

Now, the first European visitors made serious {17} errors in describingIndian life. They applied European standards of judgment to thingsIndian. A tadpole does not look in the least like a frog. Anuninformed person who should find one in a pool, and, a few weekslater, should find a frog there, would never imagine that the tadpolehad changed into the frog. Now, Indian society was in what we may callthe tadpole stage. It was quite unlike European society, and yet itcontained exactly the same elements as those out of which Europeansociety gradually unfolded itself long ago. 

Indian society grew up in the most natural way out of the crudebeginnings of all society. Let us consider this point for a moment. Suppose human beings of the lowest grade to be living together in aherd, only a little better than beasts, what influence would firstbegin to elevate them? Undoubtedly, parental affection. Indeed, mother-love is the foundation-stone of all our civilization. On thatsteadfast rock the rude beginnings of all social life are built. Younganimals attain their growth and the ability to provide for themselvesvery early. The parents' watchful care does not need to be longexercised. The offspring, so soon as it is weaned, is quickly {18}forgotten. Not so the young human being. Its brain requires a longtime for its slow maturing. Thus, for years, without its parents' careit would perish. The mother's love is strengthened by the constantattention which she must so long give to her child, and this is shared, in a degree, by the father. At the same time, their common interest inthe same object draws them closer together. Before the first-born isable to find its own food and shelter other children come, and so theprocess is continually extended. Thus arises the _family_, thecorner-stone of all life that is above that of brutes. 

But the little household, living in a cave and fighting hand to handwith wild beasts and equally wild men, has a hard struggle to maintainitself. In time, however, through the marriage of the daughters--forin savage life the young men usually roam off and take wives elsewhere, while the young women stay at home--instead of the original singlefamily, we have the grown daughters, with their husbands, living stillwith their parents and rearing children, thus forming a group offamilies, closely united by kinship. In the next generation, by thesame process continued, we have a dozen, perhaps twenty, families, {19}all closely related, and living, it may be, under one shelter, the menhunting and providing food for the whole group, and the women workingtogether and preparing the food in common. 

Moreover, they all trace their relationship through their mothers, because the women are the home-staying element. In our group offamilies, for instance, all the women are descendants of the originalsingle woman with whom we began; but the husbands have come fromelsewhere. This is no doubt the reason why among savages it seems theuniversal practice to trace kinship through the mother. Again, in sucha little community as we have supposed, the women, being all united byclose ties of blood, are the ruling element. The men may beat theirwives, but, after all, the women, if they join together against any oneman, can put him out and remain in possession. 

These points it is important to bear in mind, because they explain whatwould otherwise appear very singular features of Indian life. Forinstance, we understand now why a son does not inherit anything, not somuch as a tobacco-pipe, at his father's death. He is counted as themother's child. For the same reason, if the {20} mother has had morethan one husband, and children by each marriage, these are all countedas full brothers and sisters, because they have the same mother. 

Such a group of families as has been supposed is called a _clan_, or inRoman history a _gens_. It may be small, or it may be very numerous. The essential feature is that it is a body of people united by the tieof common blood. It may have existed for hundreds of years and havegrown to thousands of persons. Some of the clans of the ScotchHighlands were quite large, and it would often have been a hopelesspuzzle to trace a relationship running back through many generations. Still, every Cameron knew that he was related to all the otherCamerons, every Campbell to all the other Campbells, and he recognizeda clear duty of standing by every clansman as a brother in peace and inwar. We see thus that the clan organization grows naturally out of thedrawing together of men to strengthen themselves in the fierce struggleof savage life. The clan is simply an extension of the family. Thefamily idea still runs through it, and kinship is the bond that holdstogether all the members. 

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Now, this was just the stage of social progress that the Indians hadreached at the Discovery. Their society was organized on the basis ofthe clan, and it bore all the marks of its origin. 

Indians, however, have not any family names. Something, therefore, wasneeded to supply the lack of a common designation, so that the membersof a clan might know each other as such, however widely they might bescattered. This lack was supplied by the clan-symbol, called a_totem_. This was always an animal of some kind, and an image of itwas often rudely painted over a lodge-entrance or tattooed on theclansman's body. All who belonged to the clan of the Wolf, or theBear, or the Tortoise, or any other, were supposed to be descended froma common ancestress; and this kinship was the tie that held themtogether in a certain alliance, though living far apart. It matterednot that the original clan had been split up and its fragmentsscattered among several different tribes. The bond of clanship stillheld. If, for example, a Cayuga warrior of the Wolf clan met a Senecawarrior of the same clan, their totem was the same, and they at onceacknowledged each other as brothers. 

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Perhaps we might illustrate this peculiar relation by our system ofcollege fraternities. Suppose that a Phi-Beta-Kappa man of Cornellmeets a Phi-Beta-Kappa man of Yale. Immediately they recognize acertain brotherhood. Only the tie of clanship is vastly stronger, because it rests not on an agreement, but on a real blood relationship. 

According to Indian ideas, a man and a woman of the same clan were toonear kindred to marry. Therefore a man must always seek a wife in someother clan than his own; and thus each family contained members of twoclans. 

The clan was not confined to one neighborhood. As it grew, sections ofit drifted away and took up their abode in different localities. Thus, when the original single Iroquois stock became split into five distincttribes, each contained portions of eight clans in common. Sometimes ithappened that, when a clan divided, a section chose to take a newtotem. Thus arose a fresh centre of grouping. But the new clan wasclosely united to the old by the sense of kinship and by constantintermarriages. This process of splitting and forming new clans hadgone on for a long time among the Indians--for how {23} many hundredsof years, we have no means of knowing. In this way there had arisengroups of clans, closely united by kinship. Such a group we call a_phratry_. 

A number of these groups living in the same region and speaking acommon dialect constituted a larger union which we sometimes call a_nation_, more commonly a _tribe_. 

This relation may be illustrated by the familiar device of afamily-tree, thus:

[Illustration: Indian Family Tree. ]

{24} Here we see eleven clans, all descended from a common stock andspeaking a common dialect, composing the Mohegan Tribe. Some of thesmaller tribes, however, had not more than three clans. 

The point that we need to get clear in our minds is that an Indiantribe was simply a huge family, extended until it embraced hundreds oreven thousands of souls. In many cases organization never got beyondthe tribe. Not a few tribes stood alone and isolated. But among someof the most advanced peoples, such as the Iroquois, the Creeks, and theChoctaws, related tribes drew together and formed a confederacy orleague, for mutual help. The most famous league in Northern Americawas that of the Iroquois. We shall describe it in the next chapter. It deserves careful attention, both because of its deep historicalinterest, and because it furnishes the best-known example of Indianorganization. 

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Chapter III

THE IROQUOIS LEAGUE

History of the League. --Natural Growth of Indian Government. --HowAuthority was exercised, how divided. --Popular Assemblies. --PublicSpeaking. --Community Life. 

Originally the Iroquois people was one, but as the parent stock grewlarge, it broke up into separate groups. 

Dissensions arose among these, and they made war upon one another. Then, according to their legend, Hayawentha, or Hiawatha, whisperedinto the ear of Daganoweda, an Onondaga sachem, that the cure for theirills lay in union. This wise counsel was followed. The five tribesknown to Englishmen as the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, theCayugas, and the Senecas--their Indian names are different and muchlonger--buried the hatchet and formed a confederacy which grew to be, after the Aztec League in Mexico, the most powerful Indian organizationin North America. It was then known as "The Five Nations. "

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About 1718, one of the original branches, the Tuscaroras, which hadwandered away as far as North Carolina, pushed by white men hungry fortheir land, broke up their settlements, took up the line of march, returned northward, and rejoined the other branches of the parent stem. From this time forth the League is known in history as "The SixNations, " the constant foe of the French and ally of the English. TheIndian name for it was "The Long House, " so called because the widestrip of territory occupied by it was in the shape of one of thoseoblong structures in which the people dwelt. 

When the five tribes laid aside their strife, the fragments of thecommon clans in each re-united in heartiest brotherhood and formed aneightfold bond of union. On the other hand, the Iroquois waged fierceand relentless war upon the Hurons and Eries, because, though theybelonged to the same stock, they refused to join the League. Thisdenial of the sacred tie of blood was regarded by the Iroquois as ranktreason, and they punished it with relentless ferocity, harrying andhounding the offending tribes to destruction. 

Indian government, like Indian society, was just such as had grown upnaturally out of the {29} conditions. It was not at all likegovernment among civilized peoples. In the first place, there were nowritten laws to be administered. The place of these was taken bypublic opinion and tradition, that is, by the ideas handed down fromone generation to another and constantly discussed around the camp-fireand the council-fire. Every decent Indian was singularly obedient tothis unwritten code. He wanted always to do what he was told hisfathers had been accustomed to do, and what was expected of him. Thusthere was a certain general standard of conduct. 

Again, the men who ruled, though they were formally elected to office, had not any authority such as is possessed by our judges andmagistrates, who can say to a man, "Do thus, " and compel him to obey ortake the consequences. The influence of Indian rulers was more likethat of leading men in a civilized community: it was chiefly personaland persuasive, and it was exerted in various indirect ways. If, forexample, it became a question how to deal with a man who had donesomething violently opposed to Indian usage or to the interest of thetribe, there was not anything like an open trial, but the chiefs held asecret council and discussed the case. If they {30} decided favorablyto the man, that was an end of the matter. On the other hand, if theyagreed that he ought to die, there was not any formal sentence andpublic execution. The chiefs simply charged some young warrior withthe task of putting the offender out of the way. The chosenexecutioner watched his opportunity, fell upon his victim unawares, perhaps as he passed through the dark porch of a lodge, and brained himwith his tomahawk. The victim's family or clan made no demand forreparation, as they would have done if he had been murdered in aprivate feud, because public opinion approved the deed, and the wholepower of the tribe would have been exerted to sustain the judgment ofthe chiefs. 

According to our ideas, which demand a fair and open trial for everyaccused person, this was most abhorrent despotism. Yet it had one veryimportant safeguard: it was not like the arbitrary will of a singletyrant doing things on the impulse of the moment. Indians areeminently deliberative. They are much given to discussing things andendlessly powwowing about them. They take no important step withouttalking it over for days. Thus, in such a case as has been supposed, there was general concurrence in the {31} judgment of the chiefs, because they were understood to have canvassed the matter carefully, and their decision was practically that of the tribe. 

This singular sort of authority was vested in two kinds of men;sachems, who were concerned with the administration of the tribalaffairs at all times, and war-chiefs, whose duty was limited toleadership in the field. The sachems, therefore, constituted the real, permanent government. Of these there were ten chosen in each of thefive tribes. Their council was the governing body of the tribe. Inthese councils all were nominally equals. But, naturally, men ofstrong personality exercised peculiar power. The fifty sachems of thefive tribes composed the Grand Council which was the governing body ofthe League. In its deliberations each tribe had equal representationthrough its ten sachems. But the Onondaga nation, being situated inthe middle of the five, and the grand council-fire being held in itschief town, exercised a preponderating influence in these meetings. 

Besides the Grand Council and the tribal council, there were councilsof the minor chiefs, and councils of the younger warriors, and evencouncils of the women, for a large part of an Indian's {32} time wastaken up with powwowing. Besides these formal deliberative bodies, there were gatherings that were a sort of rude mass-meeting. If aquestion of deep interest was before the League for discussion, warriors flocked by hundreds from all sides to the great council-firein the Onondaga nation. The town swarmed with visitors. Every lodgewas crowded to its utmost capacity; temporary habitations rose, andfresh camp-fires blazed on every side, and even the unbounded Indianhospitality was strained to provide for the throng of guests. Thus, hour after hour, and day after day, the issue was debated in thepresence of hundreds, some squatting, some lying at full length, allabsolutely silent except when expressing approval by grunts. 

The discussion was conducted in a manner that would seem to usexceedingly tedious. Each speaker, before advancing his views, carefully rehearsed all the points made by his predecessors. Thismethod had the advantage of making even the dullest mind familiar withthe various aspects of the subject, and it resulted in a so thoroughsifting of it that when a conclusion was reached, it was felt to be thegeneral sense of the meeting. 

From this account it will be evident that public {33} speaking played alarge part in Indian life. This fact will help us to account for theremarkable degree of eloquence sometimes displayed. If we should thinkof the Indian as an untutored savage, bursting at times intoimpassioned oratory, under the influence of powerful emotions, weshould miss the truth very widely. The fact is, there was a class ofprofessional speakers, who had trained themselves by carefullylistening to the ablest debaters among their people, and had storedtheir memories with a large number of stock phrases and of images takenfrom nature. These metaphors, which give to Indian oratory itspeculiar character, were not, therefore, spontaneous productions of theimagination, but formed a common stock used by all speakers as freelyas orators in civilized society are wont to quote great authors andpoets. Among a people who devoted so much time to public discussion, aforcible speaker wielded great influence. One of the sources of thepower over the natives of La Salle, the great French explorer, lay inthe fact that he had thoroughly mastered their method of oratory andcould harangue an audience in their own tongue like one of their bestspeakers. 

The subject of the chiefship is a very {34} interesting one. As hasalready been explained, a son did not inherit anything from his father. Therefore nobody was entitled to be a chief because his father had beenone. Chiefs were elected wholly on the ground of personal qualities. Individual merit was the only thing that counted. Moreover, the chiefswere not the only men who could originate a movement. Any warriormight put on his war-paint and feathers and sing his war-song. As manyas were willing might join him, and the party file away on the war-pathwithout a single chief. If such a voluntary leader showed prowess andskill, he was sure to be some day elected a chief. 

It is very interesting to reflect that just this free state of thingsexisted thousands of years ago among our own ancestors in Europe. Atthat time there were no kings claiming a "divine right" to govern theirfellow men. The chiefs were those whose courage, strength, and skillin war made them to be chosen "rulers of men, " to use old Homer'sphrase. If their sons did not possess these qualities, they remainedamong the common herd. But there came a time when, here and there, some mighty warrior gained so much wealth in cattle and in slaves takenin battle, that {35} he was able to bribe some of his people and tofrighten others into consenting that his son should be chief after him. If the son was strong enough to hold the office through his own lifeand to hand it to his son, the idea soon became fixed that thechiefship belonged in that particular family. 

This was the beginning of kingship. But our aborigines had notdeveloped any such absurd notion as that there are particular familiesto which God has given the privilege of lording it over their fellowmen. They were still in the free stage of choosing their chiefs fromamong the men who served them best. We may say with confidence thatthere was not an emperor, or a king, or anything more than an electivechief in the whole of North America. 

Not only had nobody the title and office of a king among the Indians;nobody had anything like kingly authority. Rulership was not vested inany one man, but in the council of chiefs. This feature, of course, was very democratic. And there was another that went much further inthe same direction: almost all property was held in common. Forinstance, the land of a tribe was not divided among individual owners, but {36} belonged to the whole tribe, and no part of it could bebartered away without the entire tribe's consent. A piece might betemporarily assigned to a family to cultivate, but the ownership of itremained in the whole tribe. This circumstance tended more thananything else to prevent the possibility of any man's raising himselfto kingly power. Such usurpations commonly rest upon largeaccumulations of private property of some kind. But among a people notone of whom owned a single rood of land, who had no flocks and herds, nor any domestic animals whatever, except dogs, and among whom the soninherited nothing from his father, there was no chance for anybody togain wealth that would raise him above his fellows. 

Thus we see that an Indian tribe was in many respects an idealrepublic. With its free discussion of all matters of general interest;with authority vested in a body of the fittest men; with the onlyvaluable possession, land, held by the whole tribe as one great family;in the entire absence of personal wealth; and with the unlimitedopportunity for any man possessing the qualities that Indians admire toraise himself to influence, there really was a condition of affairsvery like {37} that which philosophers have imagined as the bestconceivable state of human society for preserving individual freedom. 

Even the very houses of the Indians were adapted to community-life. They were built, not to shelter families, but considerable groups offamilies. One very advanced tribe, the Mandans, on the upper Missouri, built circular houses. But the most usual form, as among the Iroquois, was a structure very long in proportion to its width. It was made ofstout posts set upright in the earth, supporting a roof-frame of lightpoles slanting upward and fastened together at their crossing. Bothwalls and roof were covered with wide strips of bark held in place byslender poles secured by withes. Heavy stones also were laid on theroof to keep the bark in place. At the top of the roof a space ofabout a foot was left open for the entrance of light and the escape ofsmoke, there being neither windows nor chimneys. At either end was adoor, covered commonly with a skin fastened at the top and loose at thebottom. In the winter-season these entrances were screened by a porch. 

In one of these long houses a number of families lived together in away that carried out in {38} all particulars the idea of one greathousehold. Throughout the length of the building, on both sides, werepartitions dividing off spaces a few feet square, all open toward themiddle like wide stalls in a stable. Each of these spaces was occupiedby one family and contained bunks in which they slept. In the aisles, between every four of these spaces, was a fire which served the fourfamilies. The number of fires in a lodge indicated, quite nearly, thenumber of persons dwelling in it. To say, for instance, a lodge offive fires, meant one that housed twenty families. 

This great household lived together according to the community-idea. The belongings of individuals, even of individual families, were veryfew. The produce of their fields of corn, beans, pumpkins, andsunflowers was held as common property; and the one regular meal of theday was a common meal, cooked by the squaws and served to each personfrom the kettle. The food remaining over was set aside, and eachperson might help himself to it as he had need. If a stranger came in, the squaws gave him to eat out of the common stock. In fact, Indianhospitality grew out of this way of living in common. A single familywould frequently have been "eaten out of {39} house and home, " if ithad needed to provide out of its own resources for all the guests thatmight suddenly come upon it. 

We are apt to think of the Indian as a silent, reserved, solitarybeing. Nothing could be further from the truth. However they mayappear in the presence of white men, among themselves Indians are avery jolly set. Their life in such a common dwelling as has beendescribed was intensely social in its character. Of course, privacywas out of the question. Very little took place that was not known toall the inmates. And we can well imagine that when all were at home, an Indian lodge was anything else than a house of silence. Of a winterevening, for instance, with the fires blazing brightly, there was avast deal of boisterous hilarity, in which the deep guttural tones ofthe men and the shrill voices of the squaws were intermingled. Aroundthe fires there were endless gossiping, story-telling, and jesting. Jokes, by no means delicate and decidedly personal, provoked uproariouslaughter, in which the victim commonly joined. 

A village, composed of a cluster of such abodes standing without anyorder and enclosed by a stockade, was, at times, the scene of almost{40} endless merry-making. Now it was a big feast; now a game ofchance played by two large parties matched against each other, whilethe lodge was crowded almost to suffocation by eager spectators; now adance, of the peculiar Indian kind; now some solemn ceremony topropitiate the spirits who were supposed to rule the weather, thecrops, the hunting, and all the interests of barbarian life. 

At all times there was endless visiting from lodge to lodge. Hospitality was universal. Let a visitor come in, and it would havebeen the height of rudeness not to set food before him. To refuse itwould have been equally an offence against good manners. Only anIndian stomach was equal to the constant round of eating. White menoften found themselves seriously embarrassed between their desire notto offend their hosts and their own repugnance to viands which couldnot tempt a civilized man who was not famished. 

It seems strange to think of the women as both the drudges and therulers of the lodge. Yet such they were. This fact arose from thecircumstance already mentioned, that descent was counted, not throughthe fathers, but through the mothers. The home and the children were{41} the wife's, not the husband's. There she lived, surrounded by herfemale relatives, whereas he had come from another clan. If he provedlazy or incompetent to do his full share of providing, let the womenunite against him, and out he must go, while the wife remained. 

The community idea, which we have seen to be the key to Indian sociallife, showed itself in universal helpfulness. Ferocious and pitilessas these people were toward their enemies, the women even moreingeniously cruel than the men, nothing could exceed the cheerfulspirit with which, in their own rough way, they bore one another'sburdens. It filled the French missionaries with admiration, and theyfrequently tell us how, if a lodge was accidentally burned, the wholevillage turned out to help rebuild it; or how, if children were leftorphans, they were quickly adopted and provided for. It is equally amistake to glorify the Indian as a hero and to deny him the rudevirtues which he really possessed. 

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Chapter IV

ACHIEVEMENTS OF FRENCHMEN IN THE NORTH OF AMERICA

The Difference between Spanish and French Methods. --What caused theDifference. --How it resulted. 

A singular and picturesque story is that of New France. In romanticinterest it has no rival in North America, save that of Mexico. Frenchmen opened up the great Northwest; and for a long time France wasthe dominant power in the North, as Spain was in the South. When theFrench tongue was heard in wigwams in far western forests; when Frenchgoods were exchanged for furs at the head of Lake Superior and aroundHudson Bay; when French priests had a strong post as far to the West asSault Ste. Marie, and carried their missionary journeyings stillfurther, who could have foreseen the day when the flag of republicanFrance would fly over only two rocky islets off the coast ofNewfoundland, and to her great rival, Spain, of all {46} her vastpossessions would remain not a single rood of land on the mainland ofthe world to which she had led the white race?

At the period with which we are occupied these two great Catholicpowers seemed in a fair way to divide North America between them. Their methods were as different as the material objects which theysought. The Spaniard wanted _Gold_, and he roamed over vast regions inquest of it, conquering, enslaving, and exploiting the natives as themeans of achieving his ends. The Frenchman craved _Furs_, and forthese he trafficked with the Indians. The one depended on conquest, the other on trade. 

Now trade cannot exist without good-will. You may rob people at thepoint of the sword, but to have them come to you freely and exchangewith you, you must have gained their confidence. Further, there was adeep-lying cause for this difference of method. Wretched beings may beworked in gangs, under a slave-driver, in fields and mines. This wasthe Spanish way. But hunting animals for their skins and trapping themfor their furs is solitary work, done by lone men in the wilderness, and, above all, by men who are free to come and go. You {47} cannotmake a slave of the hunter who roams the forests, traps the brooks, andpaddles the lakes and streams. His occupation keeps him a wild, freeman. Whatever advantage is taken of him must be gained by winning hisconfidence. 

Thus the object of the Frenchman's pursuit rendered necessary aconstantly friendly attitude toward the Indians. If he displeasedthem, they would cease to bring their furs. If he did not give enoughof his goods in exchange, they would take a longer journey and dealwith the Dutch at Albany or with the English at their outlyingsettlements. In short, the Spaniard had no rival and was in a positionallowing him to be as brutal as he pleased. The Frenchman was simplyin the situation of a shopkeeper who has no control over his customers, and if he does not retain their good-will, must see them deal at theother place across the street. 

There is no doubt that this difference of conditions made an enormousdifference between the Spanish and the French attitude toward theIndians. The Spaniards were naturally inclined to be haughty and crueltoward inferior races, while the French generally showed themselvesfriendly and mingled freely with the natives in {48} new regions. Butthe circumstance to which attention has here been called tended toexaggerate the natural disposition of each. Absolute power made theSpaniard a cruel master: the lack of it drove the Frenchman to gain hisends by cunning and cajolery. 

The consequence was, that while the Spaniard was dreaded and shunned, and whole populations were wiped out by his merciless rule, theFrenchman was loved by the Indians. They turned gladly to him from thecold Englishman, who held himself always in the attitude of a superiorbeing; they made alliances with him and scalped his enemies, white orred, with devilish glee; they hung about every French post, warmedthemselves by the Frenchman's fire, ate his food, and patted theirstomachs with delight; and they swarmed by thousands to Quebec, bringing their peltries for trade, received gewgaws and tinseldecorations from the Governor, and swore eternal allegiance to hismaster, the Sun of the World, at Versailles. 

In a former volume, "Pioneer Spaniards in North America, " we havefollowed the steps of Spain's dauntless leaders in the Western World. We have seen Balboa, Ponce, Cortes, Soto, {49} Coronado, making theirway by the bloody hand, slaying, plundering, and burning, and we haveheard the shrieks of victims torn to pieces by savage dogs. 

In the present volume quite other methods will engage our attention. We shall accompany the shrewd pioneers of France, as they make theirjoyous entry into Indian villages, eat boiled dog with pretendedrelish, sit around the council-fire, smoke the Indian's pipe, and endby dancing the war-dance as furiously as the red men. 

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Chapter V

JACQUES CARTIER, THE DISCOVERER OF CANADA

Jacques Cartier enters the St. Lawrence. --He imagines that he has founda Sea-route to the Indies. --The Importance of such a Route. --HisExploration of the St. Lawrence. --A Bitter Winter. --Cartier's Treacheryand its Punishment. --Roberval's Disastrous Expedition. 

How early the first Frenchmen visited America it is hard to say. Ithas been claimed, on somewhat doubtful evidence, that the Basques, thatancient people inhabiting the Pyrenees and the shores of the Bay ofBiscay, fished on the coast of Newfoundland before John Cabot saw itand received credit as the discoverer of this continent. So much, atany rate, is certain, that within a very few years after Cabot's voyagea considerable fleet of French, Spanish, and Portuguese vessels wasengaged in the Newfoundland fishery. Later the English took part init. The French soon gained the lead in this industry {54} and thusbecame the predominant power on the northern shores of America, just asthe Spaniards were on the southern. The formal claim of France to theterritory which she afterward called New France was based on theexplorations of her adventurous voyagers. 

Jacques Cartier was a daring mariner, belonging to that bold Bretonrace whose fishermen had for many years frequented the NewfoundlandBanks for codfish. In 1534 he sailed to push his exploration fartherthan had as yet been attempted. His inspiration was the old dream ofall the early navigators, the hope of finding a highway to China. Needless to say, he did not find it, but he found something well worththe finding--Canada. 

Sailing through the Straits of Belle Isle, he saw an inland sea openingbefore him. Passing Anticosti Island, he landed on the shore of a finebay. It was the month of July, and it chanced to be an oppressive day. "The country is hotter than the country of Spain, " he wrote in hisjournal. Therefore he gave the bay its name, the Bay of Chaleur(heat). The beauty and fertility of the country, the abundance ofberries, and "the many goodly meadows, full of {55} grass, and lakeswherein great pleanty of salmons be, " made a great impression on him. 

On the shore were more than three hundred men, women, and children. "These showed themselves very friendly, " he says, "and in such wisewere we assured one of another, that we very familiarly began totraffic for whatever they had, till they had nothing but their nakedbodies, for they gave us all whatsoever they had. " These Indiansbelonged undoubtedly to some branch of the Algonquin family occupyingall this region. 

Cartier did not scruple to take advantage of their simplicity. AtGaspé he set up a cross with the royal arms, the fleur-de-lys, carvedon it, and a legend meaning, "Long live the King of France!" He meantthis as a symbol of taking possession of the country for his master. Yet, when the Indian chief asked him what this meant, he answered thatit was only a landmark for vessels that might come that way. Then helured some of the natives on board and succeeded in securing two youngmen to be taken to France. This villainy accomplished, he sailed forhome in great glee, not doubting that the wide estuary whose mouth hehad entered was the opening of the long-sought passage to Cathay. InFrance {56} his report excited wild enthusiasm. The way to the Indieswas open! France had found and France would control it!

Natural enough was this joyful feeling. The only water-route to theEast then in use was that around the Cape of Good Hope, and itbelonged, according to the absurd grant of Pope Alexander the Sixth, toPortugal alone. Spain had opened another around the Horn, but kept thefact carefully concealed. In short, the selfish policy of Spain andPortugal was to shut all other nations out of trading with the regionswhich they claimed as theirs; and these tyrants of the southern seaswere not slow in enforcing their claims. Spain, too, had ample meansat her disposal. She was the mightiest power in the world, and herdominion on the ocean there was none to dispute. At that time Drakeand Hawkins and those other great English seamen who broke hersea-power had not appeared. This condition of affairs compelled thenorthern nations, the English, French, and Dutch, to seek a routethrough high latitudes to the fabled wealth of the Indies. It led tothose innumerable attempts to find a northeast or a northwest passageof which we have read elsewhere. (See, in "The World's Discoverers, "{57} accounts of Frobisher, Davis, Barentz, and Hudson, and ofNordenskjold, their triumphant successor. )

Now, Francis the First, the French monarch, a jealous rival of theSpanish sovereign, was determined to get a share of the New World. Hehad already, in 1524, sent out Verrazano to seek a passage to the East(See a sketch of this very interesting voyage in "The World'sDiscoverers"), and now he was eager to back Cartier with men and money. 

Accordingly, the next year we find the explorer back at the mouth ofthe St. Lawrence, this time with three vessels and with a number ofgentlemen who had embarked in the enterprise, believing that they wereon their way to reap a splendid harvest in the Indies, like that of theSpanish cavaliers who sailed with the conquerors of Mexico and Peru. Entering, on St. Lawrence's day, the Gulf which he had discovered inthe previous year, he named it the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The riveremptying into it he called Hochelaga, from the Indian name of theadjacent country. Then, guided by the two young natives whom he hadkidnapped the year before, whose home, though they had been seized nearits mouth, was high up the river, he sailed up the {58} wide stream, convinced that he was approaching China. 

In due time Stadaconé was reached, near the site of Quebec, and Cartiervisited the chief, Donnaconna, in his village. The two young Indianswho acted as guides and interpreters had been filling the ears of theircountrymen with marvelous tales of France. Especially, they had "madegreat brags, " Cartier says, about his cannon; and Donnaconna begged himto fire some of them. Cartier, quite willing to give the savages asense of his wonderful resources, ordered twelve guns fired in quicksuccession. At the roar of the cannon, he says, "they were greatlyastonished and amazed; for they thought that Heaven had fallen uponthem, and put themselves to flight, howling and crying and shrieking asif hell had broken loose. "

Leaving his two larger vessels safely anchored within the mouth of theSt. Charles River, Cartier set out with the smallest and two openboats, to ascend the St. Lawrence. At Hochelaga he found a greatthrong of Indians on the shore, wild with delight, dancing and singing. They loaded the strangers with gifts of fish and maize. At night thedark woods, far and near, were {59} illumined with the blaze of greatfires around which the savages capered with joy. 

The next day Cartier and his party were conducted to the great Indiantown. Passing through cornfields laden with ripening grain, they cameto a high circular palisade consisting of three rows of tree-trunks, the outer and the inner inclining toward each other and supported by anupright row between them. Along the top were "places to run along andladders to get up, all full of stones for the defence of it. " Inshort, it was a very complete fortification, of the kind that theHurons and the Iroquois always built. 

Passing through a narrow portal, the Frenchmen saw for the first rime agroup of those large, oblong dwellings, each containing severalfamilies, with which later travelers became familiar in the Iroquoisand the Huron countries. Arriving within the town, the visitors foundthemselves objects of curious interest to a great throng of women andchildren who crowded around the first Europeans they had ever beheld, with expressions of wonder and delight. These bearded men seemed tothem to have come down from the skies, children of the Sun. 

{60}

Next, a great meeting was held. Then came a touching scene. An agedchief who was paralyzed was brought and placed at Cartier's feet, andthe latter understood that he was asked to heal him. He laid his handson the palsied limbs. Then came a great procession of the sick, thelame, and the blind, "for it seemed unto them, " says Cartier, "that Godwas descended and come down from Heaven to heal them. " We cannot butrecall how Cortes and his Spaniards were held by the superstitiousAztecs to have come from another world, and how Cabeza de Vaca wasbelieved to exercise the power of God to heal the sick. (See "PioneerSpaniards in North America. ") Cartier solemnly read a passage of theScriptures, made the sign of the cross over the poor suppliants, andoffered prayer. The throng of savages, without comprehending a word, listened in awe-struck silence. 

After distributing gifts, the Frenchmen, with a blast of trumpets, marched out and were led to the top of a neighboring mountain. Seeingthe magnificent expanse of forest extending to the horizon, with thebroad, blue river cleaving its way through. Cartier thought it adomain worthy or a prince and called the eminence _Mont Royal_. {61}Thus originated the name of the future city of Montreal, built almost acentury later. 

By the time that he had returned to Stadaconé the autumn was welladvanced, and his comrades had made preparations against the coming ofwinter by building a fort of palisades on or near the site where Quebecnow stands. 

Soon snow and ice shut in the company of Europeans, the first to winterin the northern part of this continent. A fearful experience it was. When the cold was at its worst, and the vessels moored in the St. Charles River were locked fast in ice and burled in snow-drifts, thatdreadful scourge of early explorers, the scurvy, attacked theFrenchmen. Soon twenty-five had died, and of the living but three orfour were in health. For fear that the Indians, if they learned oftheir wretched plight, might seize the opportunity of destroying themoutright, Cartier did not allow any of them to approach the fort. Oneday, however, chancing to meet one of them who had himself been illwith the scurvy, but now was quite well, he was told of a sovereignremedy, a decoction of the leaves of a certain tree, probably thespruce. The experiment was tried with success, and the sick Frenchmenrecovered. 

{62}

At last the dreary winter wore away, and Cartier prepared to returnhome. He had found neither gold nor a passage to India, but he wouldnot go empty-handed. Donnaconna and nine of his warriors were luredinto the fort as his guests, overwhelmed by sturdy sailors, and carriedon board the vessels. Then, having raised over the scene of this crueltreachery the symbol of the Prince of Peace, he set sail for France. 

In 1541 Cartier made another, and last, voyage to Canada. On reachingStadaconé he was besieged by savages eagerly inquiring for the chiefswhom he had carried away. He replied that Donnaconna was dead, but theothers had married noble ladies and were living in great state inFrance. The Indians showed by their coldness that they knew this storyto be false. Every one of the poor exiles had died. 

On account of the distrust of the natives, Carder did not stop atStadaconé, but pursued his way up the river. While the bulk of hisparty made a clearing on the shore, built forts, and sowed turnip-seed, he went on and explored the rapids above Hochelaga, evidently stillhoping to find a passage to India. Of course, he was disappointed. Hereturned to the place {63} where he had left his party and there spenta gloomy winter, destitute of supplies and shunned by the natives. 

All that he had to show for his voyage was a quantity of some shiningmineral and of quartz crystals, mistaken for gold and diamonds. Thetreachery of the second voyage made the third a failure. 

Thus ended in disappointment and gloom the career of France's greatpioneer, whose discoveries were the foundation of her claims in NorthAmerica, and who first described the natives of that vast territorywhich she called New France. 

Another intending settler of those days was the Sieur de Roberval. Undismayed by Cartier's ill-success, he sailed up the St. Lawrence andcast anchor before Cap Rouge, the place which Cartier had fortified andabandoned. Soon the party were housed in a great structure whichcontained accommodations for all under one roof, so that it was plannedon the lines of a true colony, for it included women and children. Butfew have ever had a more miserable experience. By some strange lack offoresight, there was a very scant supply of food, and with the wintercame famine. Disease inevitably followed, so that before spring {64}one-third of the colony had died. We may think that Nature was hard, but she was mild and gentle, in comparison with Roberval. He kept oneman in irons for a trifling offence. Another he shot for a pettytheft. To quarreling men and women he gave a taste of thewhipping-post. It has even been said that he hanged six soldiers inone day. 

Just what was the fate of this wretched little band has not beenrecorded. We only know that it did not survive long. With its failurecloses the first chapter of the story of French activity on Americansoil. Fifty years had passed since Columbus had made his greatdiscovery, and as yet no foothold had been gained by France anywhere, nor indeed by any European power on the Atlantic seaboard of thecontinent. 

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Chapter VI

JEAN RIBAUT

THE FRENCH AT PORT ROYAL, IN SOUTH CAROLINA

The Expedition of Captain Jean Ribaut. --Landing on the St. John'sRiver. --Friendly Natives. --The "Seven Cities of Cibola" again!--TheCoast of Georgia. --Port Royal reached and named. --A Fort built and aGarrison left. --Discontent and Return to France. 

No doubt the severe winters of Canada determined Admiral Coligny, theleader of the Huguenots, or French Protestants, to plant the settlementwhich he designed as a haven of refuge from persecution, in thesouthern part of the New World. 

Accordingly, on the first day of May, 1562, two little vessels underthe command of Captain Jean Ribaut found themselves off the mouth of agreat river which, because of the date, they called the River of May, now known as the St. John's. 

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When they landed, it seemed to the sea-worn Frenchmen as if they hadset foot in an enchanted world. Stalwart natives, whom Laudonnière, one of the officers, describes as "mighty and as well shapen andproportioned of body as any people in the world, " greeted themhospitably. [1] Overhead was the luxuriant semi-tropical vegetation, giant oaks festooned with gray moss trailing to the ground and toweringmagnolias opening their great white, fragrant cups. No wonder theythought this newly discovered land the "fairest, fruitfullest, andpleasantest of all the world. " One of the Indians wore around his necka pearl "as great as an acorne at the least" and gladly exchanged itfor a bauble. This set the explorers to inquiring for gold and gems, {69} and they soon gathered, as they imagined, from the Indians' signsthat the "Seven Cities of Cibola" [2]--again the myth that had ledCoronado and his Spaniards to bitter disappointment!--were distant onlytwenty days' journey. Of course, the natives had never heard of Cibolaand did not mean anything of the kind. The explorers soon embarked andsailed northward, exploring the coast of Georgia and giving to therivers or inlets the names of rivers of France, such as the Loire andthe Gironde. 

On May 27 they entered a wide and deep harbor, spacious enough, itseemed to them, "to hold the argosies of the world. " A royal haven itseemed. Port Royal they named it, and Port Royal it is called to thisday. They sailed up this noble estuary and entered Broad River. Whenthey landed the frightened Indians fled. Good reason they had to dreadthe sight of white men, for this was the country of Chicora (SouthCarolina), the scene of one of those acts of brutal treachery of whichthe Spaniards, of European nations, were the most frequently all guilty. 

Forty-two years before, Lucas Vasquez de {70} Ayllon, a high officialof San Domingo, had visited this coast with two vessels. The simpleand kindly natives lavished hospitality on the strangers. In return, the Spaniards invited them on board. Full of wondering curiosity, theIndians without suspicion explored every part of the vessels. When theholds were full of sight-seers, their hosts suddenly closed the hatchesand sailed away with two ship-loads of wretched captives doomed to toilas slaves in the mines of San Domingo. But Ayllon's treachery was wellpunished. One of his vessels was lost, and on board the other thecaptives refused food and mostly died before the end of the voyage. Onhis revisiting the coast, six years later, nearly his entire followingwas massacred by the natives, who lured them to a feast, then fell uponthem in the dead of night. Treachery for treachery!

The Frenchmen, however, won the confidence of the Indians with gifts ofknives, beads, and looking-glasses, coaxed two on board the ships, andloaded them with presents, in the hope of reconciling them to going toFrance. But they moaned incessantly and finally fled. 

These Europeans, however, had not done {71} anything to alarm thenatives, and soon the latter were on easy terms with them. Therefore, when it was decided to leave a number of men to hold this beautifulcountry for the King, Ribaut felt sure of the Indians' friendlydisposition. He detailed thirty men, under the command of Albert dePierria, as the garrison of a fort which he armed with guns from theship. 

It would delight us to know the exact site of this earliest lodgment ofEuropeans on the Atlantic coast north of Mexico. All that can be saidwith certainty is that it was not many miles from the picturesque siteof Beaufort. 

Having executed his commission by finding a spot suitable for a colony, Ribaut sailed away, leaving the little band to hold the place until heshould return with a party of colonists. Those whom he left hadnothing to do but to roam the country in search of gold, haunted, asthey were, by that dream which was fatal to so many of the earlyventures in America. They did not find any, but they visited thevillages of several chiefs and were always hospitably entertained. When supplies in the neighborhood ran low, they made a journey by boatthrough inland water-ways to two chiefs on the Savannah River, whofurnished {72} them generously with corn and beans; and when theirstorehouse burned down, with the provisions which they had justreceived, they went again to the same generous friends, received asecond supply, and were bidden to come back without hesitation, if theyneeded more. There seemed to be no limit to the good-will of thekindly natives. [3]

Their monotonous existence soon began to pall on the Frenchmen, eagerfor conquest and gold. They had only a few pearls, given them by theIndians. Of these the natives undoubtedly possessed a considerablequantity, but not baskets heaped with them, as the Spaniards said. 

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Roaming the woods or paddling up the creeks, the Frenchmen encounteredalways the same rude fare, hominy, beans, and fish. Before them wasalways the same glassy river, shimmering in the fierce midsummer heat;around them the same silent pine forests. 

The rough soldiers and sailors, accustomed to spend their leisure intaverns, found the dull routine of existence in Chicora insupportable. Besides, their commander irritated them by undue severity. The crisiscame when he hanged a man with his own hands for a slight offence. Themen rose in a body, murdered him, and chose Nicholas Barré to succeedhim. 

Shortly afterward they formed a desperate resolve: they would build aship and sail home. Nothing could have seemed wilder. Not one of themhad any experience of ship-building. But they went to work with awill. They had a forge, tools, and some iron. Soon the forest rangwith the sound of the axe and with the crash of falling trees. Theylaid the keel and pushed the work with amazing energy and ingenuity, caulked the seams with long moss gathered from the neighboring treesand smeared the bottoms and sides with pitch from the pines. The {74}Indians showed them how to make a kind of cordage, and their shirts andbedding were sewn together into sails. At last their crazy littlecraft was afloat, undoubtedly the first vessel built on the Atlanticseaboard of America. 

They laid in such stores as they could secure by bartering their goods, to the Indians, deserted their post, and sailed away from a land wherethey could have found an easy and comfortable living, if they had putinto the task half the thought and labor which they exerted to escapefrom it. 

Few voyages, even in the thrilling annals of exploration, have everbeen so full of hardship and suffering as this mad one. Alternatecalms and storms baffled, famine and thirst assailed the unfortunatecrew. Some died outright; others went crazy with thirst, leapedoverboard, and drank their fill once and forever. The wretchedsurvivors drew lots, killed the man whom fortune designated, andsatisfied their cravings with his flesh and blood. At last, as theywere drifting helpless, with land in sight, an English vessel bore downon them, took them all on board, landed the feeblest, and carried therest as prisoners to Queen Elizabeth. 

[1] These people were of the Timucua tribe, one that has since becomeentirely extinct, and that was succeeded in the occupation of Floridaby the warlike Seminoles, an off-shoot of the Creeks. They belonged tothe Muskoki group, which Included some of the most advanced tribes onour continent. These Southern Indians had progressed further in thearts of life than the Algonquins and the Iroquois, and weredistinguished from these by a milder disposition. Gentle and kindtoward strangers, they were capable of great bravery when defendingtheir homes or punishing treachery, as the Spanish invaders had alreadylearned to their cost. They dwelt in permanent villages, raisedabundant crops of corn, pumpkins, and other vegetables, and, amidforests full of game and rivers teeming with fish, lived in ease andplenty. 

[2] See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America. "

[3] These were Edistoes and Kiowas. The fierce Yemassees came into thecountry later. The kindness of the Southern Indians, when not provokedby wanton outrage, is strikingly illustrated in the letter of thefamous navigator, Giovanni Verrazzano (See "The World's Discoverers"), who visited the Atlantic seaboard nearly about the same time as thekidnapper Ayllon. Once, as he was coasting along near the site ofWilmington, N. C. , on account of the high surf a boat could not land, but a bold young sailor swam to the shore and tossed a gift of trinketsto some Indians gathered on the beach. A moment later the sea threwhim helpless and bruised at their feet. In an instant he was seized bythe arms and legs and, crying lustily for help, was borne off to agreat fire--to be roasted on the spot, his shipmates did not doubt. Onthe contrary, the natives warmed and rubbed him, then took him down tothe shore and watched him swim back to his friends. 

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Chapter VII

RENÉ DE LAUDONNIÈRE

PLANTING A COLONY ON THE ST. JOHN'S RIVER

René de Laudonnière's Expedition to the St. John's. --Absurd Illusions ofthe Frenchmen. --Their Bad Faith to the Indians, and its FatalResults. --The Thirst for Gold, and how it was rewarded. --Buccaneering. --AStorm-cloud gathers in Spain. --Misery in the Fort on the St. John's. --Relieved by Sir John Hawkins. --Arrival of Ribaut with Men andSupplies. --Don Pedro Menendez captures Fort Caroline and massacres theGarrison and Shipwrecked Crews. --Dominique de Gourgues takes Vengeance. 

The failure at Port Royal did not discourage Admiral Coligny from sendingout another expedition, in the spring of 1564, under the command of Renede Laudonnière, who had been with Ribaut in 1562. It reached the mouthof the St. John's on the 25th of June and was joyfully greeted by thekindly Indians. 

The lieutenant, Ottigny, strolling off into the woods with a few men, metsome Indians and was conducted to their village. There, he {78} gravelytells us, he met a venerable chief who told him that he was two hundredand fifty years old. But, after all, he might probably expect to live ahundred years more, for he introduced another patriarch as his father. This shrunken anatomy, blind, almost speechless, and more like "a deadcarkeis than a living body, " he said, was likely to last thirty or fortyyears longer. 

Probably the Frenchman had heard of the fabled fountain of Bimini, whichlured Ponce de Leon to his ruin, and the river Jordan, which was said tobe somewhere in Florida and to possess the same virtue, and he fanciedthat the gourd of cool water which had just been given him might comefrom such a spring. [1]

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This example shows how credulous these Frenchmen were, moving in a worldof fancy, the glamour of romantic dreams about the New World still freshupon them, visions of unmeasured treasures of silver and gold and gemsfloating through their brains. 

It would make a tedious tale to relate all their follies, surrounded asthey were by a bountiful nature and a kindly people, and yet soon reducedto abject want. In the party there were brawling soldiers and piraticalsailors, with only a few quiet, decent artisans and shop-keepers, butwith a swarm of reckless young nobles, who had nothing to recommend thembut a long name, and who expected to prove themselves Pizarros infighting and treasure-getting. Unfortunately, the kind of man who is thebackbone of a colony, "the man with the hoe, " was not there. 

This motley crew soon finished a fort, which stood on the river, a littleabove what is now called St. John's Bluff and was named Fort {80}Caroline, in honor of Charles the Ninth. Then they began to look around, keen for gold and adventure. 

The Indians had shown themselves hostile when they saw the Frenchmenbuilding a fort, which was evidence that they had come to stay. Laudonnière quieted the chief Satouriona by promising to aid him againsthis enemies, a tribe up the river, called the Thimagoas. Next, misled bya story of great riches up the river, he actually made an alliance withOutina, the chief of the Thimagoas. Thus the French were engaged at thesame time to help both sides. But the craze for gold was now atfever-heat, and they had little notion of keeping faith with meresavages. Outina promised Vasseur, Laudonnière's lieutenant, that if hewould join him against Potanou, the chief of a third tribe, each of hisvassals would reward the French with a heap of gold and silver two feethigh. So, at least, Vasseur professed to understand him. 

The upshot of the matter was that Satouriona was incensed against theFrench for breaking faith with him. And to make the situation worse, when he went, unaided, and attacked his enemies and brought backprisoners, the French {81} commander, to curry favor with Outina, compelled Satouriona to give up some of his captives and sent them hometo their chief. 

All this was laying up trouble for the future. Not a sod had theFrenchmen turned in the way of tilling the soil. The river flowing attheir feet teemed with fish. The woods about them were alive with game. But they could neither fish nor hunt. Starving in a land of plenty, erelong they would be dependent for food on these people who had met them sokindly, and whom they had deliberately cheated and outraged. 

Next we find Vasseur sailing up the river and sending some of his menwith Outina to attack Potanou, whose village lay off to the northwest. Several days the war-party marched through a pine-barren region. When itreached its destination the Frenchmen saw, instead of a splendid city ofthe "kings of the Appalachian mountains, " rich in gold, just such anIndian town, surrounded by rough fields of corn and pumpkins, as themisguided Spaniards under Soto had often come upon. The poor barbariansdefended their homes bravely. But the Frenchmen's guns routed them. Sack and slaughter followed, with the burning of the town. Then thevictors {82} marched away, with such glory as they had got, but of coursewithout a grain of gold. 

At Fort Caroline a spirit of sullenness was growing. Disappointment hadfollowed all their reckless, wicked attempts to get treasure. TheIndians of the neighborhood, grown unfriendly, had ceased to bring infood for barter. The garrison was put on half-rations. Men who had cometo Florida expecting to find themselves in a land of plenty and to reap agolden harvest, would scarcely content themselves with the monotonousroutine of life in a little fort by a hot river, with nothing to do andalmost nothing to eat. It was easy to throw all the blame on Laudonnière. 

[Illustration: Fort Caroline]

"Why does he not lead us out to explore the country and find itstreasures? He is keeping us from making our fortunes, " the gentlemenadventurers cried. 

Here again we are reminded of the Spaniards under Narvaez and Soto, whostruggled through the swamps and interminable pine-barrens of Florida, cheered on by the delusive assurance that when they came to the countryof Appalachee they would find gold in abundance. (See "Pioneer Spaniardsin North America. ")

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Another class of malcontents took matters into their own hands. Theywere ex-pirates, and they determined to fly the "jolly Roger" once more. They stole two pinnaces, slipped away to sea, and were soon cruisingamong the West Indies. Hunger drove them into Havana. They gavethemselves up and made their peace with the Spanish authorities bytelling of their countrymen at Fort Caroline. 

Now, Spain claimed the whole of North America, under the Pope's grant. Moreover, Philip of Spain had but lately commissioned as Governor ofFlorida one Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a ruthless bigot who would crush aProtestant with as much satisfaction as a venomous serpent. Imagine theeffect upon his gloomy mind of the news that reached him in Spain, by theway of Havana, of a band of Frenchmen, and, worst of all, hereticssettled in Florida, his Florida!

Meanwhile the men at Fort Caroline, all unconscious of the black stormbrewing in Spain, continued their grumbling. They had not heard of thefate of the party who had sailed away, and now nearly all were bent onbuccaneering. One day a number of them mutinied, overpowered the {84}guard, seized Laudonnière, put him in irons, carried him on board avessel lying in the river, and compelled him, under threat of death, tosign a commission for them to cruise along the Spanish Main. Shortlyafterward they sailed away in two small vessels that had been built atFort Caroline. 

After their departure, the orderly element that remained behind restoredLaudonnière to his command, and things went on smoothly for three or fourmonths. Then, one day, a Spanish brigantine was seen hovering off themouth of the river. It was ascertained that she was manned by themutineers, now anxious to return to the fort. Laudonnière sent down atrusty officer in a small vessel that he had built, with thirty soldiershidden in the hold. The buccaneers let her come alongside withoutsuspicion and began to parley. Suddenly the soldiers came on deck, boarded, and overpowered them, before they could seize their arms. Infact, they were mostly drunk. After a short career of successful piracy, they had suddenly found themselves attacked by three armed vessels. Themost were killed or taken, but twenty-six escaped. The pilot, who hadbeen carried away against his will, cunningly steered {85} the brigantineto the Florida coast; and, having no provisions, they were compelled toseek succor from their old comrades. Still they had wine in abundance, and so they appeared off the mouth of the river drunk, and, as we haveseen, were easily taken. A court-martial condemned the ringleader andthree others to be shot, which was duly done. The rest were pardoned. 

In the meantime the men in the fort had been inquiring diligently invarious directions. There was still much talk of mysterious kingdoms, rich in gold. Once more they were duped into fighting his battles by thewily Outina, who promised to lead them to the mines of Appalachee. Theydefeated his enemies, and there was abundant slaughter, with plenty ofscalps for Outina's braves, but, of course, no gold. 

The expected supplies from France did not come. The second summer wasupon them, with its exhausting heat. The direst want pinched them. Ragged, squalid, and emaciated, they dragged themselves about the fort, digging roots or gathering any plant that might stay the gnawings ofhunger. They had made enemies of their neighbors, Satouriona and hispeople; and Outina, for whom they had done so much, sent them only {86} ameagre supply of corn, with a demand for more help in fighting hisenemies. They accepted the offer and were again cheated by the cunningsavage. 

Laudonnière draws a pathetic picture of their misery. In the quaint oldEnglish translation of Richard Hakluyt it reads thus: "The effects ofthis hideous famine appeared incontinently among us, for our boneseftsoones beganne to cleave so neere unto the skinne, that the most partof the souldiers had their skinnes pierced thorow with them in manypartes of their bodies. "

The thoughts of the famished men in Fort Caroline turned homeward witheager longing. They had still remaining one vessel and the Spanishbrigantine brought by the mutineers. But they must have another. Theybegan with furious haste to build one, everybody lending a hand. Thencame a disastrous check. When things were well under way, the twocarpenters, roaming away from the fort in search of food, were helpingthemselves to some ears of green corn in a field, when Indians fell uponthem and killed them. 

In this desperate pass Laudonnière took a high-handed step. He sent aparty up the river, seized {87} Outina, and brought him a prisoner to thefort. This had the desired effect. His people pleaded for his release. The Frenchmen agreed to give him up for a large supply of corn and sent awell-armed party to his village, with the captive chief. The Indiansbrought in the corn, and the Frenchmen released Outina, according toagreement. But when the former started from the village, each with a bagof corn on his shoulder, to march to their boats, which were at a landingtwo or three miles away, they were savagely attacked from both sides ofthe road. They were compelled to drop the corn and fight for theirlives. Wherever there was opportunity for an ambuscade, arrows showeredupon them from the woods. They kept up the running fight bravely, returning a steady fire, but probably made little impression on theirhidden foes swarming under cover. By the time they reached the boatsthey had two men killed and twenty-two wounded, and but two bags of corn. 

It is evident that the social life of these Indians was organized on thecommunity-system, just as we have seen it to be among the Iroquois, ofthe North. They could supply the Frenchmen with corn in considerablequantities, taking it out of a {88} stock kept for the whole community. Unlike the Iroquois, however, they lived by families, in individualhouses. 

The distress at Fort Caroline was now extreme, owing to famine within andwar without. In this dark hour, one day, four sails appeared, steeringtoward the mouth of the river. Was this the long-expected relief fromFrance? Or were these Spanish vessels? Presently "the meteor flag ofEngland" floated out on the breeze, and soon a boat brought a friendlymessage from the commander, the famous Sir John Hawkins. Being astrenuous Puritan, he was a warm sympathizer with the Protestants ofFrance. Returning from selling a cargo of Guinea negroes to theSpaniards of Hispaniola--not at all a discreditable transaction in thosedays--he had run short of water and had put into the River of May, toobtain a supply. 

Touched by the pitiful condition of the Frenchmen, he opened hisship-stores, gave them wine and biscuit, and sold them other suppliesvery cheaply, taking cannon in payment. Then, smiling grimly at the twopitiful little craft in which they purposed sailing for France, heoffered them all a free passage home. Laudonnière would not {89} accepta proposal so humiliating, but was very glad to buy a small vessel fromHawkins on credit. 

Just when all was in readiness to sail for home came news of anapproaching squadron. It was an anxious hour. Were these friends orfoes? If foes, the garrison was lost, for the fort was defenceless. Then the river was seen full of armed barges coming up. Imagine the wildjoy of the garrison, when the sentry's challenge was answered in French!It was Ribaut. He had come at last, with seven ships, bringing not onlysoldiers and artisans, but whole families of settlers. 

One might imagine that Fort Caroline's dark days had passed. But it wasnot so. Ribaut had been there just a week when his vessels, lyingoutside the bar, were attacked, about dusk, by a huge Spanish galleon. The officers were on shore, and the crews cut the cables and put to sea, followed by the Spaniard firing, but not able to overhaul them. Ribaut, on shore, heard the guns and knew what they meant. The Spaniards hadcome! Before he left France he had been secretly notified of theirintentions. 

The next morning Don Pedro Menendez in his great galleon ran back to themouth of the {90} St. John's. But seeing the Frenchmen drawn up underarms on the beach and Ribaut's smaller vessels inside the bar, all readyfor battle, he turned away and sailed southward to an inlet which hecalled San Augustin. There he found three ships of his unloading troops, guns, and stores. He landed, took formal possession of his vastdomain--for the Florida of which he had been appointed Governor wasunderstood by the Spaniards to extend from Mexico to the North Pole--andbegan to fortify the place. Thus, in September, 1565, was founded St. Augustine, the oldest town of the United States. 

One of the French captains, relying on the speed of his ship, hadfollowed Menendez down the coast. He saw what was going on at St. Augustine and hastened back to report to Ribaut that the Spaniards werethere in force and were throwing up fortifications. A brilliant ideacame to the French commander. His dispersed ships had returned to theiranchorage. Why not take them, with all his men and all of Laudonnière'sthat were fit for service, sail at once, and strike the Spaniards beforethey could complete their defences, instead of waiting for them tocollect their full force and come and attack him, cooped {91} up on theSt. John's? Such bold moves make the fame of commanders when theysucceed, and when they fail are called criminal folly. 

Unhappily, Ribaut neglected to consider the weather. It was the middleof September, a season subject to terrific gales. Making all speed, hesailed away with every available man, leaving Laudonnière, sick himself, to hold dismantled Fort Caroline with disabled soldiers, cooks andservants, women and children. 

The French ships arrived safely off St. Augustine, just before the dawn, and narrowly missed taking Menendez himself, who was on board a solitarySpanish vessel which lay outside the bar. Just in the nick of time sheescaped within the harbor. 

Before entering, the Frenchmen prudently reconnoitred the strange port. Meanwhile the breeze freshened into a gale, and the gale rose to ahurricane. The Frenchmen could no longer think of attacking, but only ofsaving themselves from immediate wreck. Down the coast they worked theirway in a driving mist, struggling frantically to get out to sea, in theteeth of the hurricane remorselessly pushing them toward the deadly reefs. 

While his enemies were thus fighting for their {92} lives, Menendezexecuted a counter-stroke to that of the French captain. Through theraging gale, while every living thing cowered before driving sheets ofrain, this man of blood and iron marched away with five hundred pickedmen. A French deserter from Fort Caroline and an Indian acted as guides, and twenty axemen cleared the way through the dense under-growth. 

What a march! Three days they tramped through a low, flooded country, hacking their way through tangled thickets, wading waist-deep through mudand water, for food and drink having only wet biscuit and rain-water, with a sup of wine; for lodging only the oozy ground, with not so much asa rag of canvas over their heads to shelter them from the torrents ofrain. 

When they reached Fort Caroline their ammunition was wet and their gunsuseless. They were half-famished and drenched to the skin. Still theywere willing to follow their leader in a rush on the fort, relying oncold steel. 

The night of September 19th the inmates of Fort Caroline listened to thedismal moaning and creaking of the tall pines, the roar of the blast, andthe fitful torrents of rain beating on the cabin-roofs. 

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In the gray dawn of the 20th a trumpeter who chanced to be astir, saw aswarm of men rushing toward the ramparts. He sounded the alarm; but itwas too late. With Spain's battle-cry, "Santiago! Santiago!" (St. James, her patron saint) the assailants swept over the ramparts andpoured through a breach. 

They made quick work. The shriek of a helpless mother or the scream of afrightened infant was quickly hushed in death. When, however, the firstfury of butchery had spent itself, Menendez ordered that such personsshould be spared, and fifty were actually saved alive. Every male abovethe age of fifteen was, from first to last, killed on the spot. 

Laudonnière had leaped from his sick-bed and, in his night-shirt, rallieda few men for resistance. But they were quickly killed or dispersed, andhe escaped to the woods, where a few half-naked fugitives were gathered. Some of these determined to go back and appeal to the humanity of theSpaniards. The mercy of wolves to lambs! Seeing these poor wretchesbutchered, the others felt that their only hope was in making their wayto the mouth of the river, where lay two or three light craft whichRibaut had left. {94} Wading through mire and water, their naked limbscut by the sedge and their feet by roots, they met two or three smallboats sent to look out for fugitives, and were taken aboard half dead. 

After two or three days of vain waiting for the reappearance of the armedships, the little flotilla sailed for France, carrying Laudonnière andthe other fugitives, some of whom died on the voyage from wounds andexposure. 

The Spaniards had Fort Caroline, with one hundred and forty-two deadheretics heaped about it and a splendid booty in armor, clothing, andprovisions--all the supplies lately brought by Ribaut from France. Everybody has read how Menendez hanged his few prisoners on trees, withthe legend over them, "I do this not as to Frenchmen, but to Lutherans. "

Meanwhile Ribaut and his ships had been blown down the coast, vainlystruggling to keep away from the reefs, and were finally wrecked, oneafter another, at various distances to the south of St. Augustine. 

Let us pass quickly over the remainder of this sickening story. One day, after Menendez had returned to St. Augustine, Indians came in, breathless, {95} with tidings that the crew of a wrecked vessel, struggling northward, had reached an arm of the sea (Matanzas Inlet), which they had no means of crossing. Immediately Menendez started outwith about sixty men in boats and met them. 

The starving Frenchmen, deceived by his apparent humanity in settingbreakfast before them, surrendered, and, having been ferried over theinlet in small batches, were led back into the sand-hills and butchered. 

About two weeks later word was brought to Menendez of a second and largerparty of Frenchmen who had reached the same fatal spot. Ribaut himselfwas among them. Not knowing of the horrible fate of his countrymen, hetried to make terms with the Spaniards. While he was parleying withMenendez, two hundred of his followers marched away, declaring that theywould rather take chances with the Indians than with these white men whomthey distrusted. 

Ribaut, having surrendered with the remaining hundred and fifty, was ledaway behind the sandhills and his hands were tied. Then he knew that hehad been duped, and calmly faced his doom. "We are of earth, " he said, "and to earth must return! Twenty years more or less matter little. "

{96}

As before, the deluded Frenchmen were brought over in tens, led away, tied, and, at a given signal, butchered. 

Some twenty days later, Menendez received tidings of a third band ofFrenchmen, far to the southward, near Cape Canaveral. This was the partythat had refused to surrender with Ribaut. When he reached the place, hesaw that they had reared a kind of stockade and were trying to build avessel out of the timbers of their wrecked ship. He sent a messenger tosummon them to surrender, pledging his honor for their safety. Partpreferred to take the chance of being eaten by Indians, they said, andthey actually fled to the native villages. The rest took Menendez at hisword and surrendered, and they had no reason to regret it. He took themto St. Augustine and treated them well. Some of them rewarded the piousefforts of the priests by turning Catholics. The rest were no doubt sentto the galleys. 

Everybody is familiar with the story of the vengeance taken by Dominiquede Gourgues, a Gascon gentleman. Seeing the French court too supine toinsist upon redress, he sold his estate, with the proceeds equipped andmanned three small vessels, sailed to the coast of Florida and, {97} withthe assistance of several hundred Indians, who hated the cruel Spaniards, captured Fort Caroline, slaughtered the garrison, hanged the prisoners, and put up over the scene of two butcheries the legend, "Not as toSpaniards, but as to traitors, robbers, and murderers. "

Thus closed the last bloody act in the tragedy of French colonization inCarolina and Florida. A long period--one hundred and thirty-fouryears--was to pass before the French flag would again fly within theterritory now embraced in the Southern States. 

[1] In "Pioneer Spaniards in North America, " p. 79, it has been mentionedthat when Ponce de Leon fancied that he heard among the Indians of PortoRico a story of a fountain having the property of giving immortality, this was because he had in his mind a legend that had long been currentin Europe. Sir John Maundeville went so far as to say that he hadvisited these famous waters in Asia and had bathed in them. The legendwas, however, much older than Maundeville's time. In the "Romance ofAlexander the Great, " which was very popular hundreds of years ago, it isrelated that Alexander's cook, on one of his marches, took a salt fish toa spring to wash it before cooking it. No sooner was the fish put intothe water than it swam away. The cook secured a bottle of the magicwater, but concealed his knowledge. Later he divulged his secret toAlexander's daughter, who thereupon married him. Alexander, when helearned the facts, was furious. He changed his daughter into a sea-nymphand his cook into a sea-monster. Being immortal, undoubtedly they arestill disporting themselves in the Indian Ocean. For this story thewriter is indebted to Professor George F. Moore, D. D. , of the HarvardDivinity School. 

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Chapter VIII

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN IN NOVA SCOTIA

How the Cod-fishery led to the Fur-trade. --Disastrous Failure of theFirst Trading-posts. --Champlain's First Visit to the New World. --HisSecond, and the Determination to which it led. --The Bitter Winter atSt. Croix. --Champlain's First Voyage down the New EnglandCoast. --Removal to Port Royal. --Abandonment of Port Royal. 

The disasters in Florida did not abate the activity of Frenchmen on thefar northern coast of America. 

The earliest attraction was the cod-fishery. Then, as the fishing-folkgrew familiar with Newfoundland and the continental shores, theirattention was drawn to the skins worn by the natives. What prices theywould bring in France! Here was a field that would make richer returnsthan rough and perilous fishing. In this way the fur-trade, whichbecame the life of Canada, had its beginning. 

The first chapters of the story were gloomy and disheartening beyonddescription. The dreadful scurvy and the cruel cold scourged thenewcomers. Party after party perished {102} miserably. The story ofone of these is singularly romantic. When Sable Island[1] was reached, its leader, the Marquis de la Roche, landed forty ragamuffins, while hesailed on with the best men of his crew to examine the coast and choosea site for the capital of his promising domain. 

Alas! he never returned. A gale swept his little craft out to sea anddrove him back to France. 

When he landed, the sun of his prosperity had set. Creditors swoopeddown upon him, political enemies rose in troops, and the"Lieutenant-General of Canada and the adjacent countries" was clappedin jail like a common malefactor. Meanwhile what of the fortypromising colonists on Sable Island? They dropped for years out ofhuman knowledge as completely as Henry Hudson when dastardly mutineersset him adrift in an open boat in the bay which bears his name, [2] orNarvaez and his brilliant expedition whose fate was a mystery until theappearance of four survivors, eight years afterward. [3]

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Five years went by, and twelve uncouth creatures stood before Henry theFourth, clad in shaggy skins, and with long, unkempt beards. They werethe remnant of La Roche's jailbirds. He had at last gained a hearingfrom the King, and a vessel had been sent to Sable Island to bring homethe survivors of his party. What a story they told! When monthspassed, and La Roche came not, they thought they were left to theirfate. They built huts of the timbers of a wreck which lay on thebeach--for there was not a tree on the island--and so faced the drearywinter. With trapping foxes, spearing seals, and hunting wild cattle, descendants of some which a certain Baron de Léry had left eight yearsbefore, they managed to eke out existence, not without quarrels andmurders among themselves. At last the remnant was taken off by thevessel which Henry sent for them. 

Shaggy and uncouth as they looked, they had a small fortune in the furswhich they had accumulated. This wealth had not escaped the notice ofthe thrifty skipper who brought them home, and he had robbed them. Butthe King not only compelled the dishonest sea-captain to disgorge hisplunder, but aided {104} its owners with a pension in setting up in thefur-trade. 

Such dismal experiences filled more than fifty years of futile effortto colonize New France. Cold and scurvy as effectually closed theNorth to Frenchmen as Spanish savagery the South. 

Then, in this disheartening state of affairs, appeared the man who welldeserves the title of the "Father of New France, " since his courage andindomitable will steered the tiny "ship of state" through a sea ofdiscouragements. 

Samuel de Champlain was born in 1567 at the small French seaport ofBrouage, on the Bay of Biscay. In his pious devotion and hisunquestioning loyalty to the Church, he was of the "Age of Faith, " andhe recalls Columbus. In his eager thirst for knowledge and his daringspirit of exploration, he was a modern man, while his practical abilityin handling men and affairs reminds us of the doughty Captain JohnSmith, of Virginia. He came to manhood in time to take part in thegreat religious wars in France. After the conflict was ended, when hismaster, Henry the Great, was seated on the throne, Champlain'sadventurous spirit led him to the West Indies. Since these were closedto Frenchmen by the jealousy {105} of the Spaniards, there was a degreeof peril in the undertaking which for him was its chief charm. Aftertwo years he returned, bringing a journal in which he had set down themost notable things seen in Spanish America. It was illustrated with anumber of the quaintest pictures, drawn and colored by himself. Healso visited Mexico and Central America. His natural sagacity is shownin his suggesting, even at that early day, that a ship-canal across theIsthmus of Panama would effect a vast saving. 

[Illustration: Samuel de Champlain]

In 1603, in two quaint little vessels, not larger than the fishingcraft of to-day, Champlain and Pontgravé, who was interested in thefur-trade, crossed the Atlantic and sailed up the St. Lawrence. Whenthey came to Hochelaga, on the site of Montreal, they found there onlya few shiftless and roving Algonquins. [4]

The explorers passed on and boldly essayed, but in vain, to ascend therapids of St. Louis. When they sailed for France, however, a greatpurpose was formed in Champlain's mind. What {106} he had gatheredfrom the Indians as to the great waters above, the vast chain of riversand lakes, determined the scene of his future activity. 

His next venture in the New World was made in association with theSieur de Monts, a Huguenot gentleman, who had obtained leave to plant acolony in Acadia (Nova Scotia). With a band of colonists--if we canapply that name to a motley assemblage of jailbirds and high-borngentlemen, of Catholic priests and Protestant ministers--they sailedfor America in 1604. 

Thirty years of bloody warfare in France had but recently come to anend, and the followers of the two faiths were still full of bitterhatred. It is easy, therefore, to believe Champlain's report that monkand minister quarreled incessantly and sometimes came to blows overreligious questions. 

This state of feeling came near to causing the death of an innocentman. After the New World had been reached, and when the expedition wascoasting along the eastern shore of the Bay of Fundy, seeking a placefor a settlement, one day a party went ashore to stroll in the woods. On reassembling, a priest named Nicolas Aubry was missing. Trumpetswere sounded and cannon fired from the ships. All in vain. There{107} was no reply but the echo of the ancient forest. Then suspicionfell upon a certain Huguenot with whom Aubry had often quarreled. Hewas accused of having killed the missing priest. In spite of hisstrenuous denial of the charge, many persons firmly believed himguilty. Thus matters stood for more than two weeks. One day, however, the crew of a boat that had been sent back to the neighborhood wherethe priest had disappeared heard a strange sound and saw a small blackobject in motion on the shore. Rowing nearer, they descried a manwaving a hat on a stick. Imagine their surprise and joy when theyrecognized Aubry! He had become separated from his comrades, had losthis way, and for sixteen days of misery and terror had kept himselfalive on berries and wild fruits. 

The place finally selected for settlement was a dreary island near themouth of the St. Croix River, which now forms the boundary betweenMaine and New Brunswick. It had but one recommendation, namely, thatit was admirably suited for defence, and these Frenchmen, reared inwar-time, seem to have thought more of that single advantage than ofthe far more pressing needs of a colony. Cannon were landed, a {108}battery was built, and a fort was erected. Then buildings quicklyfollowed, and by the autumn the whole party was well housed in itssettlement, called Sainte Croix (Holy Cross). The river they nameddifferently, but it has since borne the title of that ill-starredcolony. 

When winter came, the island, exposed to the fierce winds blowing downthe river, was fearfully cold. Ice floated by in great masses, frequently cutting off the settlers from the mainland and from theirsupplies of wood and water. The terror of those days, the scurvy, soonappeared, and by the spring nearly half of the seventy-nine men lay inthe little cemetery. Of the survivors the greater number had no otherdesire than to flee from the scene of so much misery. They werecheered, however, when Pontgravé arrived from France with supplies andforty new men. 

In the hope of securing a more favorable site in a warmer latitude, Champlain, who already had explored a part of the coast and had visitedand named the island of Mount Desert, set out in a small vessel withMonts and about thirty men on a voyage of discovery. They followed theshores of Maine closely, and by the middle of July were off Cape Ann. Then they entered {109} Massachusetts Bay. The islands of BostonHarbor, now so bare, Champlain describes as covered with trees. Theaboriginal inhabitants of the region seem to have felt a friendlyinterest in the distinguished strangers. Canoe-loads of them came outto gaze on the strange spectacle of the little vessel, with its beardedand steel-clad crew. 

Down the South Shore the voyagers held their way, anchoring for thenight near Brant Rock. A head wind drove them to take shelter in aharbor which Champlain called Port St. Louis, the same which, fifteenyears afterward, welcomed the brave Pilgrims. The shore was at thattime lined with wigwams and garden-patches. The inhabitants were veryfriendly. While some danced on the beach, others who had been fishingcame on board the vessel without any sign of alarm, showing theirfish-hooks, which were of barbed bone lashed to a slip of wood. [5]

The glistening white sand of a promontory {110} stretching out into thesea suggested to Champlain the name which he bestowed, Cap Blanc (WhiteCape, now Cape Cod). Doubling it, he held his way southward as far asNausett Harbor. Here misfortune met the party. As some sailors wereseeking fresh water behind the sandhills, an Indian snatched a kettlefrom one of them. Its owner, pursuing him, was killed by his comrades'arrows. The French fired from the vessel, and Champlain's arquebuseburst, nearly killing him. In the meantime several Indians who were onboard leaped so quickly into the water that only one was caught. Hewas afterward humanely released. 

This untoward incident, together with a growing scarcity of provisions, decided the voyagers to turn back. Early in August they reached St. Croix. 

Discouraged as to finding a site on the New England coast, Champlainand Monts began to look across the Bay of Fundy, at first called LeFond de la Baye (the bottom of the bay). 

A traveler crossing this water from the west will see a narrow gap inthe bold and rugged outline of the shore. Entering it, he will bestruck with its romantic beauty, and he will note the {111} tiderushing like a mill-race, for this narrow passage is the outlet of aconsiderable inland water. The steamer, passing through, emerges intoa wide, land-locked basin offering an enchanting view. Fourteen milesnorthward is Annapolis Harbor, shut in on every side by verdant hills. 

This is the veritable Acadia, the beautiful land of Evangeline, andhere was made the first settlement of Frenchmen in North America thathad any degree of permanence. 

The explorers had discovered and entered this enchanting basin in theprevious summer. Now its beauty recurred to them, and they determinedto remove thither. In their vessels they transported their stores andeven parts of their buildings across the Bay of Fundy and laid thefoundation of a settlement which they called Port Royal, afterwardrenamed by loyal Britons Annapolis, in honor of Queen Anne. 

The season proved very severe, and in the spring it was decided topersevere in the project of planting a colony, if possible, in a warmerregion. For the second time Champlain sailed down the New Englandcoast. 

At Chatham Harbor, as the place is now called, five of the voyagers, contrary to orders, {112} were spending the night ashore. The wordquickly passed around among the Indians that a number of the palefaceswere in their power. Through the dark hours of the night duskywarriors gathered at the meeting-place, until they numbered hundreds. Then they stole silently toward the camp-fire where the unsuspectingFrenchmen lay sleeping. Suddenly a savage yell aroused them, andarrows fell in a shower upon them. Two never rose, slain where theylay. The others fled to their boat, fairly bristling with arrowssticking in them, according to the quaint picture which Champlain made. 

In the meantime, he, with Poutrincourt and eight men, aroused fromtheir sleep by the horrid cries on the shore, had leaped from theirberths, snatched their weapons, and, clad only in their shirts, pulledto the rescue of their comrades. They charged, and the dusky enemyfled into the woods. Mournfully the voyagers buried their dead, whilethe barbarians, from a safe distance, jibed and jeered at them. Nosooner had the little party rowed back to the ship than they saw theIndians dig up the dead bodies and burn them. The incensed Frenchmen, by a treacherous device, lured some of the assailants within {113}their reach, killed them, and cut off their heads. 

Then, discouraged by the savage hostility of the natives, they turnedhomeward and, late in November, the most of the men sick in body and atheart, reached Port Royal. 

Thus ended disastrously Champlain's second attempt to find a lodgmenton the New England coast. But he was not a man to be disheartened bydifficulties. 

Soon the snows of another winter began to fall upon Port Royal, thatlonely outpost of civilization. But let us not imagine that the littlecolony was oppressed with gloom. There were jolly times around theblazing logs in the rude hall, of winter evenings. They had abundantfood, fine fresh fish, speared through the ice of the river or takenfrom the bay, with the flesh of moose, caribou, deer, beaver, and hare, and of ducks, geese, and grouse, and they had organized an "Order ofGood Fellowship. "

Each member of the company was Grand Master for one day, and it was hisduty to provide for the table and then to preside at the feast which hehad prepared. This arrangement put each one on his mettle to lay up agood store for {114} the day when he would do the honors of the feast. The Indian chiefs sat with the Frenchmen as their guests, while thewarriors and squaws and children squatted on the floor, awaiting thebits of food that were sure to come to them. 

In this picture we have an illustration of the ease with which theFrenchmen always adapted themselves to the natives. It was the secretof their success in forming alliances with the Indians, and it was inmarked contrast with the harsh conduct of the English and the ruthlesscruelty of the Spaniards. No Indian tribes inclined to the English, except the Five Nations, and these chiefly because their sworn enemies, the Algonquins of the St. Lawrence, were hand in glove with the French. None came into contact with the Spaniards who did not execrate them. But the sons of France mingled freely with the dusky children of thesoil, made friends of them and quickly won numbers of them to learntheir language and adopt their religion. From intermarriages ofFrenchmen with Indian women there grew up in Canada a large class ofhalf-breed "voyageurs" (travelers) and "coureurs de bois"(wood-rangers), who in times of peace were skilful hunters andpioneers, and in times {115} of war helped to bind fast the tiesbetween the two races. 

In this pleasant fashion the third winter of the colony wore away withlittle suffering. Only four men died. With the coming of spring allbegan to bestir themselves in various activities, and everything lookedhopeful. 

Alas! a bitter disappointment was at hand. News came from France thatMonts's monopoly of the fur-trade had been rescinded. The merchants ofvarious ports in France, incensed at being shut out from a lucrativetraffic, had used money freely at court and had succeeded in having hisgrant withdrawn. All the money spent in establishing the colony was togo for nothing. 

Worst of all, Port Royal must be abandoned. Its cornfields and gardensmust become a wilderness, and the fair promise of a permanent colonymust wither. It was a cruel blow to Champlain and his associates, andnot less so to the Indians, who followed their departing friends withbitter lamentations. 

[1] A low, sandy island, about one hundred miles southeast of NovaScotia, to which it belongs. 

[2] See "The World's Discoverers, " p. 140. 

[3] See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America, " p. 206. 

[4] At the time of Champlain's coming on the scene, fierce war existedbetween the Algonquins and the Iroquois. This fact accounts for thedisappearance of the thrifty Iroquois village, with its palisade andcornfields, which Cartier had found on the spot, sixty-eight yearsearlier. 

[5] These Massachusetts Algonquins evidently were of a higher type thantheir kinsmen on the St. Lawrence. Far from depending wholly onhunting and fishing, they lived in permanent villages and were largelyan agricultural people, growing considerable crops. At the time of thecoming of the Pilgrims, whom they instructed in corn-planting, thisthrifty native population had been sadly wasted by an epidemic ofsmall-pox. 

{119}

Chapter IX

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN (_Continued_)

THE FRENCH ON THE ST. LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT LAKES

Champlain's Motives in returning to America. --How the Monopoly of theFur-trade affected the Men engaged in it. --Fight with Free-traders atTadoussac. --The Founding of Quebec. --The First Bitter Winter. --Champlainstarts on an Exploration. --Discovery of Lake Champlain. --Fight with aBand of Iroquois. --Its Unfortunate Consequences. --Another Fight withIroquois. --Montreal founded. --Champlain's most ImportantExploration. --Lake Huron discovered. --A Deer Drive. --Defeated byIroquois. --Champlain lost in the Woods. --His Closing Years and Death. 

Hitherto Champlain has appeared at a disadvantage, because he was in asubordinate capacity. Now we shall see his genius shine, because he isin command. 

In 1608 he returned to America, not, however, to Nova Scotia, but to theSt. Lawrence. Three motives chiefly actuated him. The first was theunquenchable desire to find a water-way through our continent to China. When, in 1603, he {120} explored the St. Lawrence as far as the rapidsbeyond Montreal, what he heard from the Indians about the great inlandseas created in his mind a strong conviction that through them was apassage to the Pacific, such as the early explorers, notably Henry Hudson(See "The World's Discoverers, " p. 328), believed to exist. 

The next motive was exceedingly practical. Champlain was deeplyimpressed with the need of planting strongholds on the great streamsdraining the vast fur-yielding region, so as to shut out intruders andsecure the precious traffic to his countrymen. Let France, he argued, plant herself boldly and strongly on the St. Lawrence, that great highwayfor the savage's canoe and the white man's ship, and she would controlthe fur-trade. 

The other idea active in his mind was an earnest desire for theconversion of the Indians. It is undeniable that France was genuinelyinterested in christianizing the natives of America. Some of the mostheroic spirits who came to our country came with that object in view, andChamplain was too devoted a Catholic not to share the Church's concern onthis point. 

So he came out, in the spring of 1608, in {121} command of a vesselfurnished by the Sieur de Monts for exploration and settlement. When hereached the desolate trading-post of Tadoussac, [1] an incident occurredthat illustrates the reluctance of men to submit to curtailment of theirnatural rights. If it was hard for men in France to submit patiently tobeing shut out of a lucrative business by the government's granting thesole right to particular persons, how far more difficult must it havebeen for men who were on the coasts or rivers of the New World, who hadalready been engaged in the traffic, and who had opportunities to tradeconstantly inviting them! An Indian, let us say, paddled alongside witha bundle of valuable furs, eager to get the things which the white menhad and beseeching them to barter. But no; they must not deal with him, because they were not employed to buy and sell for the one man whocontrolled the business. 

Of course, many evaded the law, and there was a vast deal of illicittrading in the lonely forests of New France which the watchful eye of the{122} monopolist could not penetrate. Often there were violent andbloody collisions between his employees and the free-traders. 

Now, when Champlain reached Tadoussac he found his associate, Pontgravé, who had sailed a week ahead of him, in serious trouble. On arriving atTadoussac, he had found some Basques driving a brisk trade with theIndians. These Basques were fierce fellows. They belonged to one of theoldest races in the world, a race that has inhabited the slopes of thePyrenees, on both the Spanish and the French sides, so far back thatnobody knows when it came thither; moreover, a sullen and vengeful race. They were also daring voyagers, and their fishing-vessels had been amongthe earliest to visit the New World, where their name for cod-fish, baccalaos, had been given to Newfoundland, which bears that title on theoldest maps. They had traded with the Indians long before any grant ofmonopoly to anybody, and they felt that such a grant deprived them of along-established right. 

When Pontgravé showed the royal letters and forbade the traffic, thesemen swore roundly that they would trade in spite of the King, and backed{123} up their words by promptly opening fire on Pontgravé with cannonand musketry. He was wounded, as well as two of his men, and a third waskilled. Then they boarded his vessel and carried away all his cannon, small arms, and ammunition, saying that they would restore them when theyhad finished their trading and were ready to return home. 

Champlain's arrival completely changed the situation. The Basques, whowere now the weaker party, were glad to come to terms, agreeing to goaway and employ themselves in whale-fishing. Leaving the woundedPontgravé to load his ship with a rich cargo of furs, Champlain held hisway up the St. Lawrence. 

A place where the broad stream is shut in between opposing heights andwhich the Indians called Kebec ("The Narrows"), seemed an ideal situationfor a stronghold, being indeed a natural fortress. On this spot, betweenthe water and the cliffs, where the Lower Town now stands, Champlain, in1608, founded the city of Quebec. Its beginnings were modestindeed--three wooden buildings containing quarters for the leader and hismen, a large storehouse, and a fort with two or three small cannoncommanding the river. 

{124}

The Basques, all this time, were sullenly brooding over the wrong whichthey conceived had been done them. One day Champlain was secretlyinformed of a plot among his men to murder him and deliver Quebec intotheir hands. He acted with his usual cool determination. Through theagency of the man who had betrayed them, the four ringleaders were luredon board a small vessel with a promise of enjoying some wine which wassaid to have been sent from Tadoussac by their friends, the Basques. They were seized, and the arch-conspirator was immediately hanged, whilethe other three were taken by Pontgravé back to France, where they weresentenced to the gallows. After these prompt measures Champlain had nomore trouble with his men. 

Now he was left with twenty-eight men to hold Quebec through the winter. One would think that the cruel sufferings endured by Carder on the samespot, seventy-three years earlier, would have intimidated him. But hewas made of stern stuff. Soon the rigors of a Canadian winter settleddown on the little post. For neighbors the Frenchmen had only a band ofIndians, half-starving and wholly wretched, as was the usual {125} wintercondition of the roving Algonquins, who never tilled the soil or madesufficient provision against the cold. The French often gave them foodwhich they needed sorely. Champlain writes of seeing some miserablewretches seize the carcass of a dog which had lain for months on thesnow, break it up, thaw, and eat it. 

It proved a fearful winter. The scurvy raged among the Frenchmen, andonly eight, half of them sick, remained alive out of the twenty-eight. Thus this first winter at Quebec makes the first winter of the Pilgrimsat Plymouth seem, by comparison, almost a mild experience. 

With the early summer Pontgravé was back from France, and now Champlain, strenuous as ever, determined on carrying out his daring project ofexploration, in the hope of finding a route to China. His plan was tomarch with a war-party of Algonquins and Hurons against their deadlyfoes, the Iroquois, thus penetrating the region which he wished toexplore. 

Going up the St. Lawrence as far as the mouth of the Richelieu or SorelRiver, and then ascending this stream, the party entered the enemy'scountry. On the way Champlain had opportunities of witnessing a mostinteresting ceremony. {126} At every camp the medicine-man, or sorcerer, pitched the magic lodge, of poles covered with dirty deerskin robes, andretired within to hold communion with the unseen powers, while theworshipers sat around in gaping awe. Soon a low muttering was heard, thevoice of the medicine-man invoking the spirits. Then came the allegedanswer, the lodge rocking to and fro in violent motion. Champlain couldsee that the sorcerer was shaking the poles. But the Indians fullybelieved that the Manitou was present and acting. Next they heard itsvoice, they declared, speak in an unearthly tone, something like thewhining of a young puppy. Then they called on Champlain to see fire andsmoke issuing from the peak of the lodge. Of course, he did not see anysuch thing but they did, and were satisfied. [2]

{127}

Soon the river broadened, and Champlain, first of all white men, gazed onthe beautiful lake that bears his name. Now traveling became dangerous, and the party moved only in the night, for fear of suddenly encounteringa band of the enemy, whom they hoped to surprise. Their plan was totraverse the length of Lake Champlain, then pass into Lake George andfollow it to a convenient landing, thence carry their canoes through thewoods to the Hudson River, and descend it to some point where they mightstrike an outlying town of the Mohawks. [3]

{128}

They were saved the trouble of so long a journey. One night, while theywere still on Lake Champlain, they caught sight of dark objects moving onthe water. A fleet of Iroquois canoes they proved to be. Each party sawthe other and forthwith began to yell defiance. The Iroquois immediatelylanded and began to cut down trees and form a barricade, preferring tofight on shore. The Hurons remained in their canoes all night, not faroff, yelling themselves hoarse. Indeed, both parties incessantly howledabuse, sarcasm, and threats at each other. They spoke the same language, the Hurons being a branch of the Iroquois family. 

When morning came the allies moved to the attack, Champlain encased insteel armor. He and two other Frenchmen whom he had with him, each in aseparate canoe, kept themselves covered with Indian robes, so that theirpresence was not suspected. The party landed without any opposition andmade ready for the fray. Soon the Iroquois filed out from theirbarricade and advanced, some two hundred in number, many of them carryingshields of wood covered with hide, others protected by a rude armor oftough twigs interlaced. 

[Illustration: Fort of the Iroquois]

{129}

As they confidently marched forward, imagine their amazement when theranks of the enemy suddenly opened, and their steel-clad champion steppedto the front! It was an apparition that might well cause consternationamong these men of the wilderness, not one of whom probably had ever seena white man. 

What follows is thus described by Champlain: "I looked at them, and theylooked at me. When I saw them getting ready to shoot their arrows at us, I leveled my arquebuse, which I had loaded with four balls, and aimedstraight at one of the three chiefs. The shot brought down two andwounded another. On this, our Indians set up such a yelling that onecould not have heard a thunder-clap, and all the while the arrows flewthick on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly astonished and frightenedto see two of their men killed so quickly, in spite of their arrow-proofarmor. " When one of Champlain's companions fired a shot from the woods, panic sized them, and they fled in terror. The victory was complete. Some of the Iroquois were killed, more were taken, and their camp, canoes, and provisions all fell into the lands of the visitors. 

{130}

This fight, insignificant in itself, had tremendous consequences. Champlain had inconsiderately aroused the vengeance of a terrible enemy. From that day forth, the mighty confederacy of the Five Nations, embracing the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, was thedeadly foe of the French. This circumstance gave to the English, in thelong struggle for the supremacy of America, the aid of the craftiest, boldest, and most formidable native warriors on the continent. 

Another noteworthy thing is that this fight occurred in just the year inwhich Hudson ascended the river since named for him. His exploration, made in the interest of the Dutch, led to their planting trading-posts onthe river. [4]

{131}

Previously the Iroquois had been at a disadvantage, because theirenemies, the Hurons, could procure fire-arms from the French, whereasthey had not any. But the Dutch traders on the Hudson soon began to sellguns to the Iroquois; and thus one of the first effects of the coming ofwhite men into the wilderness was to equip these two savage races for adeadlier warfare. 

The next summer Champlain had another opportunity of taking a hand in afight between Indians. A canoe came with the exciting news that, a fewmiles away in the woods, a band of Algonquins had surrounded an invadingparty of Iroquois who were making a desperate stand within an inclosureof trees. His Indians snatched their weapons and raced for the scene, shouting to Champlain to follow, but leaving him and four of his men tofind their way as best they could. They were soon lost in the densewoods. The day was hot, and the air was full of mosquitoes. TheFrenchmen struggled on through black mud and knee-deep water and overfallen trees and slimy logs, panting under their heavy corselets; but nota sound could they hear to guide them to the spot. 

At last two Indians running to the fight {132} overtook them and led themto the place where the Iroquois, within a circular barricade of trees andinterlaced boughs, were fighting savagely. They had beaten off theirassailants with heavy loss. When the Frenchmen came up, they received aflight of well-aimed arrows from the desperate defenders. One splitChamplain's ear and tore through the muscles of his neck. Anotherinflicted a similar wound on one of his men. The Indians, seeing theEuropeans' heads and breasts covered with steel, had aimed at theirfaces. But fire-arms soon changed the situation. The Frenchmen ran upclose to the barricade, thrust their weapons through the openings, andpoured dismay and death among the defenders. The Indian assailants, too, encouraged by this example, rushed in and dragged out the trees of thebarricade. At the same time a boat's crew of fur-traders, who had beenattracted by the firing, rushed upon the scene and used their guns withdeadly effect. 

The Iroquois, surrounded and overwhelmed by numbers, fought to the last. The most were killed on the spot. Only fifteen survived and were takenprisoners. Thus the fiercest warriors of North America experienced asecond disaster {133} which could not but result in deepening theirhatred of the French. These early successes of Champlain were dearlypaid for by his country-men long after he was dead. 

In the following spring (1611) Champlain did another memorable thing: heestablished a post, which afterward grew into a trading-station, atMontreal. Thus the two oldest and most historic towns of Canada owetheir foundation to him. 

Champlain purposed accompanying a great force of Algonquins and Hurons inan inroad into the Iroquois country. The savage warriors, however, unwilling to wait for him, set out for their villages, taking with theman adventurous friar named Le Caron. But Champlain was not to be baulkedby this circumstance. He immediately started on the track of the largerparty, with ten Indians and two Frenchmen, one of whom was hisinterpreter, Etienne Brulé. He went up the Ottawa River, made a portagethrough the woods, and launched his canoes on the waters of LakeNipissing, passing through the country of a tribe so sunk in degradingsuperstitions, that the Jesuits afterward called them "the Sorcerers. "

After resting here two days and feasting on {134} fish and deer, whichmust have been very welcome diet after the scant fare of the journey, hedescended French River, which empties the waters of Nipissing into LakeHuron. On the way down, hunger again pinched his party, and they wereforced to subsist on berries which, happily, grew in great abundance. Atlast a welcome sight greeted Champlain. Lake Huron lay before him. Hecalled it the "Mer Douce" (Fresh-water Sea). 

Down the eastern shore of the Georgian Bay for more than a hundred milesChamplain took his course, through countless islets, to its lower end. Then his Indians landed and struck into a well-beaten trail leading intothe heart of the Huron country, between Lakes Huron and Ontario. Here hewitnessed a degree of social advancement far beyond that of the shiftlessAlgonquins on the St. Lawrence. Here were people living in permanentvillages protected by triple palisades of trees, and cultivating fieldsof maize and pumpkins and patches of sunflowers. To him, coming fromgloomy desolation, this seemed a land of beauty and abundance. 

The Hurons welcomed him with lavish hospitality, expecting that he wouldlead them to {135} victory. He was taken from village to village. Inthe last he found the friar Le Caron with his twelve Frenchmen. Nowthere were feasts and dances for several days, while the warriorsassembled for the march into the Iroquois country. Then the little armyset out, carrying their canoes until they came to Lake Simcoe. Aftercrossing this there came another portage, after which the canoes werelaunched again on the waters of the river Trent. Down this they madetheir way until they came to a suitable spot for a great hunt. TheFrenchmen watched the proceedings and took part in them with great zest. Five hundred men, forming an extended line, moved through the woods, gradually closing in toward a wooded point on which they drove the game. Then they swept along it to its very end. The frightened deer, driveninto the water, were easily killed by the canoe-men with spears andarrows. Such a great hunt supplied the place of a commissary departmentand furnished food for many days. 

Out upon Lake Ontario the fleet of frail barks boldly ventured, crossedit safely, and landed on the shore of what is now New York State. Herethe Indians hid their canoes. Now they were on the enemy's soil and mustmove cautiously. For {136} four days they filed silently through thewoods, crossing the outlet of Lake Oneida, and plunged deep into theIroquois country. One day they came upon a clearing in which some of thepeople of the neighboring villages were gathering corn and pumpkins. 

Some of the impetuous young Hurons uttered their savage yell and rushedupon them. But the Iroquois seized their weapons and defended themselvesso well that they drove back their assailants with some loss. Only theFrenchmen, opening fire, saved the Hurons from worse disaster. Then theattacking party moved on to the village. This Champlain found to be farmore strongly defended than any he had ever seen among the Indians. There were not less than four rows of palisades, consisting of trunks oftrees set in the earth and leaning outward; and there was a kind ofgallery well supplied with stones and provided with wooden gutters forquenching fire. 

Something more than the hap-hazard methods of the Hurons was needed tocapture this stronghold, and Champlain instructed them how to set aboutit. Under his direction, they built a wooden tower high enough tooverlook the palisades and {137} large enough to shelter four or fivemarksmen. When this had been planted within a few feet of thefortification, three arquebusiers mounted to the top and thence opened adeadly raking fire along the crowded galleries. Had the assailantsconfined themselves to this species of attack and heeded Champlain'swarnings, the result would have been different. But their fury wasungovernable. Yelling their war-cry, they exposed themselves recklesslyto the stones and arrows of the Iroquois. One, bolder than the rest, ranforward with firebrands to burn the palisade, and others followed withwood to feed the flame. But torrents of water poured down from thegutters quickly extinguished it. In vain Champlain strove to restoreorder among the yelling savages. Finding himself unable to control hisfrenzied allies, he and his men busied themselves with picking off theIroquois along the ramparts. After three hours of this bootlessfighting, the Hurons fell back, with seventeen warriors wounded. [5]

Champlain himself was disabled by two wounds, {138} one in the knee andone in the leg, which hindered him from walking. Still he urged theHurons to renew the attack. But in vain. From overweening confidencethe fickle savages had passed to the other extreme. Nothing couldinspire them to another assault. Moreover, Champlain had lost much ofhis peculiar influence over them. They had fancied that, with him infront, success was sure. Now they saw that he could be wounded, and byIndian weapons, and they had experienced a defeat the blame of which theyundoubtedly laid at his door. His "medicine" [6] was not the sure thingthey had thought it to be, and no words of his could raise their spirits. After a few days of ineffective skirmishing, they hastily broke up inretreat, carrying their wounded in the centre, while the Iroquois pursuedand harassed the flanks and rear. 

Champlain was treated like the rest of the wounded. Each was carried ina rude basket made of green withes, on the back of a stout warrior. Fordays he traveled in this way, enduring, he says, greater torment than hehad {139} ever before experienced, "for the pain of the wound was nothingto that of being bound and pinioned on the back of a savage. " As soon ashe could bear his weight, he was glad to walk. 

When the shore of Lake Ontario was reached, the canoes were founduntouched, and the crest-fallen band embarked and recrossed to theopposite side. Now Champlain experienced one of the consequences of hisloss of prestige. The Hurons had promised him an escort to Quebec. Butnobody was willing to undertake the journey. The great war-party brokeup, the several bands going off to their wonted hunting-grounds, andChamplain was left with no choice but to spend the winter with theHurons. One of their chiefs invited him to share his lodge, and he wasglad to accept this hospitality. 

Shortly afterward he met with a notable adventure. The Hurons werewaiting for a hard frost to give them passage over the lakes and marshesthat lay between them and their towns. Meanwhile they occupiedthemselves with hunting. One day Champlain was out with them. For tendays twenty-five men had been at work, preparing for a huge "drive. " Theyhad built a strong enclosure, from the opening of which {140} ran twodiverging fences of posts interlaced with boughs, extending more thanhalf a mile into the woods. At daybreak the most of the warriors formeda long line and, with shouts and the clattering of sticks, drove the deertoward the pound. The frightened animals rushed down the converginglines of fence into the trap, where they were easily killed. 

Champlain was enjoying watching the sport, when a strange bird lured himoff, and he lost his way. The day was cloudy, there was no sun to guidehim, and his pocket-compass he had left in camp. 

All his efforts to retrace his steps failed. At last night came on, andhe lay down and slept, supperless, at the foot of a tree. The whole ofthe next day he wandered, but in the afternoon he came to a pond wherethere were some waterfowl along the shore. He shot some of these, kindled a fire, cooked his food, and ate with relish. It was drearyNovember weather, and a cold rain set in. He was without covering of anykind. But he was used to hardships, and he said his prayers and calmlylay down to sleep. 

Another day of bewildered wandering followed, and another night ofdiscomfort. On the next {141} day he came upon a little brook. Thehappy thought came to him that, if he should follow this, it would leadhim to the river, near which the hunters were encamped. This he did, andwhen he came in sight of the river, with a lighter heart he kindled hisfire, cooked his supper, and bivouacked once more. The next day heeasily made his way down the river to the camp, where there was great joyat his coming. The Indians had searched for him far and wide. From thatday forth they never let him go into the forest alone. 

The scene of this adventure seems to have been somewhere to the north ornorth-east of the site of Kingston, Ontario. The Indians encamped hereseveral weeks, during which they killed a hundred and twenty deer. Whenthe hard cold came and the marshy country was solid with ice, theyresumed their journey, with their sledges laden with venison. Champlainwent on with them from village to village, until he reached the one inwhich he had left Brother Le Caron. When spring came, the Frenchmentraveled homeward by the same circuitous route by which they had come, bythe way of Lake Huron and the Ottawa River. 

{142}

Champlain's arrival at Quebec caused universal rejoicing. He waswelcomed as one risen from the grave, for the Indians had reported himdead, and a solemn service of thanksgiving for his safety was held. 

Here closes the most adventurous period of his career. Though his heartwas in the work of exploration, he was destined to spend his remainingyears chiefly in nursing the feeble little colony at Quebec. He had notonly to hold the balance even between monks and traders, but to guard thepuny little colony against frequent Indian outbreaks. 

Eighteen years had passed since the foundation of Quebec, and still thepopulation consisted of only one hundred and five persons, men, women, and children. Only two or three families supported themselves from thesoil. All the rest were there either as priests or as soldiers or astraders bent on enriching themselves as quickly as possible and thenreturning to France. This was one of the greatest difficulties thatChamplain had to contend with. The French at this time had littlethought of anything else than developing a great trade, whereas theEnglish colonists, with strong good sense, set themselves to tilling{143} the soil and to making true homes for themselves and theirchildren's children. The result was that Canada long remained a sicklyinfant, while the English colonies were growing sturdily. 

An event that must have deeply tried Champlain was the surrender ofQuebec by his government to the English. He actually spent some time inLondon as a prisoner, being treated with great consideration. Eventually, however, Quebec was restored to its former masters andChamplain to the governorship. 

Thus were spent the last years of his life. He died on Christmas day, in1635. At his funeral all the little community, Jesuits, officers, soldiers, traders, and settlers, gathered to pay honor to the dead"Father of New France. "

He was a great soul, his faults chiefly those of a too confiding nature, always manly and sincere, a brave soldier and a true gentleman, unselfishly devoted to the work to which he had consecrated his life, andon the rude frontiers of the New World living in a spirit worthy of thebest ages of chivalry. 

The Father of New France is worthily commemorated by a noble monumenterected in 1898 and unveiled in the presence of distinguished {144}representatives of Canada, Great Britain, France, and the United States. It stands within the area once covered by Champlain's fort and presentsthe hero holding in his hand the King's open commission, while with baredhead he salutes the child of his hopes, New France. 

[1] This place, at the confluence of the Saguenay with the St. Lawrence, was peculiarly well situated for the fur-trade. The Saguenay, having itshead-waters far to the north in the dreary region near Hudson Bay, richin furs, was the route by which the natives of that wild country broughttheir peltries to market. 

[2] The Indians were much given to various forms of divination by whichthey believed that they ascertained the will of the unseen powers. 

Jonathan Carver, who traveled much among the western tribes, about 1766, relates that once when he was with a band of Christinos, or Crees, on thenorth shore of Lake Superior, anxiously awaiting the coming of certaintraders with goods, the chief told him that the medicine-man, orconjurer, or "clairvoyant" as we should say, would try to get someinformation from the Manitou. Elaborate preparations were made. In aspacious tent, brightly lighted with torches of pitch-pine, the conjurer, wrapped in a large elk-skin, and corded with about forty yards ofelk-hide lariat--"bound up like an Egyptian mummy"--was laid down in themidst of the assembly, in full view of all. 

Presently he began to mutter, then to jabber a mixed jargon of severalnative tongues, sometimes raving, sometimes praying, till he had workedhimself into a frenzy and foamed at the mouth. 

Suddenly he leaped to his feet, shaking off his bands "as if they wereburnt asunder, " and announced that the Manitou had revealed to him that, just at noon on the next day, there would arrive a canoe the occupants ofwhich would bring news as to the expected traders. 

On the next day Carver and his Indian friends were on the bluff watching. At the appointed hour a canoe (undoubtedly sent by the conjurer) cameinto view and was hailed by the Indians with shouts of delight. Itbrought tidings of the early coming of the traders. 

[3] This was the established route used by the Indians. By it one couldpass by water, with only the short carry between Lake George and theHudson, all the way from the Great Lakes to the ocean. 

[4] The thrifty Hollanders at once saw the importance of securing thefur-trade of the region thus opened to them. To protect it, they firstestablished at the mouth of the river, on Manhattan Island, the post outof which the city of New York has grown. Next they reared a fort on anisland a little below Albany; and, in 1623, they built Fort Orange, onthe site of Albany. It soon became a most important point, because, until Fort Stanwix, on the Mohawk, was built, it was the nearest whiteman's post to which the Indians of the great Iroquois confederacy mightbring their peltries. We hear much of it in the early history. 

The great trading-stations were always on big rivers, because thesedrained a wide territory, and the supply of furs lasted long. As theFrench pushed further westward, as we shall see, important stations wereopened on the Great Lakes. 

[5] We may wonder at so small a list of casualties. The fact is that, until the introduction of fire-arms, Indian open fighting was not verydeadly. They might yell and screech and shoot arrows at each other forhours, with very little loss. Surprises and ambuscades were their mosteffective methods. 

[6] This word came into general use among French _voyageurs_ and, later, among white men generally, as the equivalent of an Indian word denotingmysterious power. 

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Chapter X

JESUIT MISSIONARY PIONEERS

Unselfishness of the Better Class of Jesuits. --Their Achievements inExploration. --The Great Political Scheme of which they were theInstruments. --Indian Superstitions. --Danger!--The Touching Story of IsaacJogues. --Ferocity of the Five Nations. --Ruin of the Hurons and of theJesuit Missions among them. 

A class of men whose aims were singularly unselfish were the missionariesof the Roman Catholic Church, mostly Jesuits, that is, members of theSociety of Jesus. The first object of the best of them was to convertthe Indians and establish a great branch of the Catholic Church in thewilds of America. There were others, however, whose first aim was toincrease the power of France. These politician-priests were wellrepresented by the famous Father Allouez who, while he preached thegospel to the Indians, took still greater pains to preach the glory ofthe French King, whose subjects he wished to make them. On one occasion, supported by a French officer and his {148} soldiers, drawn up underarms, he thus addressed a large assemblage of Indians gathered at SaultSte. Marie:

"When our King attacks his enemies, he is more terrible than the thunder:the earth trembles; the air and the sea are all on fire with the blaze ofhis cannon; he is seen in the midst of his warriors, covered over withthe blood of his enemies, whom he kills in such numbers that he does notcount them by the scalps, but by the streams of blood which he causes toflow. In each city he has storehouses where there are hatchets enough tocut down all your forests, kettles enough to cook all your moose, andbeds enough to fill all your lodges. His house is higher than thetallest of your trees and holds more families than the largest of yourtowns. Men come from every quarter of the earth to listen to and admirehim. All that is done in the world is decided by him alone. "

But we are not now concerned with such scheming priests. We wish tosketch very briefly the story of some of those faithful andsingle-hearted men who were true missionaries of religion. In theirjourneys into the wilds they often proved themselves pathfinders, penetrating {149} regions never before trodden by the foot of a whiteman. Many a tribe got its first impression of our race from thesepeaceful preachers. A mission priest, Le Caron, was the first white manwho saw Lake Huron. Another, the heroic Jogues, was the first of ourrace to see Lake George. Thus the work of Catholic missionaries musthave a large place in any truthful account of early New France. In fact, the history of Canada is for a long time the history of Jesuit activity. 

These men were in the habit of sending to their superiors in the OldWorld copious accounts of all that they saw or did. These reports, whichare known as the "Jesuit Relations, " form a perfect storehouse ofinformation about early Canadian affairs and about the Indians with whomthe French were in contact. 

These Jesuit priests commonly were highly educated men, accustomed to allthe refinements of life--some of them of noble families--and we can onlymeasure their devotion to the cause of religion when we realize thecontrast between their native surroundings and the repulsive savageryinto which they plunged when they went among the Indians. Think of sucha man as {150} Father Le Jeune, cultivated and high-minded, exilinghimself from his white brethren for a whole season, which he spent with aband of Algonquins, roaming the wintry forests with them, sharing theirhunger and cold and filth, sometimes on the verge of perishing from sheerstarvation, at other times, when game chanced to be plentiful, revoltedby the gorging of his companions, at all times disgusted by theirnastiness. "I told them again and again, " he writes, "that if dogs andswine could talk, they would use just such speech;" a remark which shows, by the way, that the good friar did not think so highly of dumb animalsas we do in these more enlightened days. 

But he had abundant charity, and he noted that underneath all this coarserudeness there was genuine fellowship among these savages; that theycheerfully helped one another, and when food was scarce, fairlydistributed the smallest portion among all. Such observations helped himto endure his lot with serenity, even when he was himself made the buttof the coarsest jokes. He survived his hard experiences and, after fivemonths of roaming, exhausted and worn to a shadow, rejoined the brethrenin the rude convent at Quebec. 

{151}

There was much of this fine spirit about the best of the Jesuits. But, besides this individual devotion, there was another importantcircumstance: they were only private soldiers in a great army. They hadno will of their own, for one of the first principles of the Order wasabsolute obedience. Wherever their superiors might send them they mustgo without a question. Whatever they might be ordered to do, they mustdo it without a murmur. 

It became the policy of the leading men of the Order in Canada toestablish missionary posts among the Hurons who, living in fixedhabitations, were more hopeful subjects than the roving Algonquins of theSt. Lawrence region. It would be a great gain, they reasoned, if thesepeople could be brought within the pale of the Church. At the same timethat so many souls would be saved from everlasting flames, the immenselylucrative fur-trade of a vast region would be secured to the French, andthe King would gain thousands of dusky subjects. Canada would flourish, the fur-traders would grow richer than ever, and France would be in theway of extending her rule ever farther and further over the westernforests and waters--all through the {152} exertions of a few faithful andsingle-hearted men who went to preach religion. 

The three men chosen for the work among the Hurons were Fathers Brebeuf, Daniel, and Davost. On their journey to their post, if they could havefollowed a direct line, they would have gone up the St. Lawrence to LakeOntario, traversed the length of the lake, and then by a short overlandjourney reached their destination. But this route would have exposedthem to the ferocious Iroquois, whose country bordered Lake Ontario onthe south. Therefore, it was necessary to take the long and circuitouscanoe-voyage which Champlain had taken fifteen years earlier (_See map_). 

At last, after many pains and perils, half-dead with hunger and fatigue, they reached a village of the Huron country. Soon they settled down tothe routine of their daily life, of which they have left us a veryreadable account. Every day they had numerous visitors, some from longdistances, who came to gaze in silent wonder at their domesticarrangements. For instance, there was the clock. They squatted on thefloor for hours, watching it and waiting to hear it strike. They thoughtit was alive and asked what it ate. {153} They listened in awe when itstruck, sure that they heard the voice of a living being. "The Captain"they called it. 

Sometimes one of the French soldiers who accompanied the Jesuits, when"the Captain" had sounded his last stroke, would cry out, "Stop!" Itsimmediate silence proved that it heard and obeyed. 

"What does the Captain say?" the Indians sometimes asked. 

"When he strikes twelve times, he says, 'Hang on the kettle, ' and when hestrikes four times, he says, 'Get up and go home. '"

This was a particularly happy thought; at the stroke of four theirvisitors would invariably rise and take themselves off. 

In spite of the lack of outward signs of success, the good men weremaking a conquest of the savage people's hearts. Their unweariedpatience, their kindness, the innocence of their lives, and the tact withwhich they avoided every occasion of ill-will, did not fail to gain theconfidence of those whom they sought to win, and chiefs of distantvillages came to urge that they would take up their abode with them. Soon the Huron country contained no less than {154} six different pointswhere faithful priests preached the gospel. 

The Fathers had abundant opportunities of observing the habits of thenatives. They have left a most interesting description of the greatFeast of the Dead, which was held at intervals of ten or twelve years, and the object of which was to gather into one great burying-place allthe dead of the tribe, these being removed from their temporaryresting-places on scaffolds and in graves. It was believed that thesouls of the dead remained with their bodies until the great commonburial, then they would depart to the spirit-world. [1]

This practice, of a great common burial, explains the occurrence, invarious parts of the country once occupied by the Hurons, of pits {155}containing the remains of many hundreds of persons all mixed togetherpromiscuously, together with belts of wampum, copper ornaments, glassbeads, and other articles. One of these deposits is said to havecontained the remains of several thousand persons. [2]

The story of Isaac Jogues is a good example both of the Jesuitmissionaries' sufferings and of their fortitude. He had gone to Quebecfor supplies and was returning to the Huron country with two youngFrenchmen, Goupil and Couture, and a number of Hurons. Suddenly thewar-whoop rang in their ears, and a fleet of Iroquois canoes bore downupon them from adjacent islands, with a terrific discharge of musketry. The Hurons for the greater part leaped ashore and fled. Jogues spranginto the bulrushes and could have got away. When he saw some of theconverted Indians in the hands of their enemies, he determined to sharetheir fate, came out from his hiding-place, and gave himself up. Goupil{156} was taken prisoner. Couture had got away, but the thought of thefate that probably awaited Jogues decided him to go back and cast in hislot with him. In the affray, however, he had killed an Iroquois. Inrevenge, the others fell upon him furiously, stripped off all hisclothing, tore away his finger-nails with their teeth, gnawed hisfingers, and thrust a sword through one of his hands. Jogues broke fromhis guards, ran to his friend, and threw his arms about his neck. Thisso incensed the Iroquois that they turned upon him, beat him with theirfists and war-clubs till he was senseless, and gnawed his fingers as theyhad done Couture's. Goupil next received the same ferocious treatment. 

The victorious Iroquois now started off with their captives for theircountry. Their route lay up the river Richelieu, through the length ofLake Champlain, and through the greater part of Lake George to a pointwhere they were wont to leave it and cross over to the Hudson. There waspicturesque scenery by the way. But what charm had the beauties of LakeChamplain and distant glimpses of the Adirondacks for the poor prisoners, harassed by the pain and fever of their wounds, in the day cruelly beatenby their captors and at {157} night so tormented by clouds of mosquitoesthat they could not sleep? In time they passed the sites of Crown Pointand Ticonderoga, sighted romantic Lake George, which these three lonelywhite men were the first of their race to see, and landed from theircanoes at the place where afterward rose Fort William Henry, the scene ofone of the most shocking tragedies of the Colonial Wars. 

Thirteen dreadful days the journey occupied, from the St. Lawrence to itstermination at a palisaded town on the banks of the Mohawk. On LakeChamplain they had met a war-party of Iroquois, and the prisoners, fortheir delight, had been compelled to run the gauntlet between a doubleline of braves armed with clubs and thorny sticks. When Jogues felldrenched in blood and half-dead, he was recalled to consciousness by fireapplied to his body. Couture's experience illustrates a singular traitof the ferocious Iroquois. There was nothing that they admired so muchas bulldog courage; and though he had exasperated them by killing one oftheir warriors, they punished him only by subjecting him to excruciatingtortures. His fortitude under these still further increased theiradmiration and they ended by adopting him {158} into the tribe. Manyyears later we read of him still living among the Mohawks. Jogues andGoupil they dragged from town to town, in each place exposing them on ascaffold and subjecting them to atrocities contrived to cause the utmostsuffering without endangering life. Yet, in an interval betweentortures, Jogues seized an opportunity to baptize some Huron prisonerswith a few rain-drops gathered from the husks of an ear of green cornthrown to him for food. 

Three of the Hurons were burned to death, and the two Frenchmen expectedthe same fate. Goupil did indeed meet with his death, but in a differentway. He was once seen to make the sign of the cross on the forehead of agrandchild of the Indian in whose lodge he lived. The old man'ssuperstition was aroused, having been told by the Dutch that the sign ofthe cross came from the Devil. So he imagined that Goupil had bewitchedthe child. 

The next morning, as the two Frenchmen were walking together, talking ofthe glory of suffering for the sake of Christ, they met two youngIndians, one of whom buried his hatchet in Goupil's head. Jogues gaveabsolution to his dying friend and then, kneeling calmly, bowed his neckto the blow {159} which he expected. Instead, he was ordered to get upand go home. 

For a time his life hung on a thread. He would have welcomed death. Butthe very indifference to it which he showed was probably the reason whythe Iroquois spared him. Now he led an existence of horrible drudgery. After a while, as he showed no disposition to escape, he was allowed tocome and go as he pleased. So he went from town to town, teaching andbaptizing whenever he could get a chance. The gangs of prisoners whomthe Iroquois brought home from the Huron country, and whom they almostinvariably burned, furnished him an abundance of subjects to work on. 

Once it happened that he went with a party of Indians to a fishing-placeon the Hudson. Thence some of them went up the river to Fort Orange, amiserable structure of logs, standing within the limits of the presentcity of Albany. The Dutch settlers there had heard of Jogues's captivityand, strenuous Protestants though they were, had striven to secure hisrelease by offering goods to a large value. Now that he was among them, they urged him not to return to his captors, but to make his escape, since his death was certain, if he went back. They offered to smugglehim {160} on board a vessel that lay in the river and pay his way toFrance. He resolved to seize the tempting opportunity. 

It would make our story too long if we should tell at length the narrowescapes that he still experienced before he succeeded in getting away. At his first attempt to slip away at night, he was severely bitten by asavage dog belonging to the Dutch farmer with whom he and the Indianslodged. When he got off he lay two days hidden in the hold of the vesselthat was to carry him away. Then the Indians came out and so frightenedits officers that he was sent ashore and put under the care of a miserlyold fellow who ate the most of the food that was provided for Jogues. While he was hidden in this man's garret he was within a few feet ofIndians who came there to trade. Finally the Dutch satisfied the Indiansby paying a large ransom and shipped Jogues down the river. He receivednothing but kindness from the Dutch everywhere and, on his arrival atManhattan (New York), was furnished by the Governor with a suit ofclothes, instead of his tattered skins, and given a passage to Europe. 

At last he landed on the coast of Brittany. In due time he reachedParis, and the city was stirred {161} with the tale of his sufferings andadventures. He was summoned to court, and the ladies thronged about himto do him reverence, while the Queen kissed his mutilated hands. 

Would not one think that Jogues had had enough of the New World, with itsdeadly perils and cruel pains? But so it was not. His simple naturecared nothing for honors. His heart was over the water, among thesavages whom he longed to save. Besides, he was only a private soldierin that great army, the Jesuit brotherhood, of which every member wassworn to act, to think, to live, for but one object, the advancement ofreligion as it was represented by the Order. And who was so fit for thework among the Indians as Jogues, who knew their language and customs?

So, in the following spring we find him again on the Atlantic, bound forCanada. Two years he passed in peaceful labors at Montreal. Then hissupreme trial came. Peace had been made between the French and theMohawks, and Couture still lived among the latter, for the expresspurpose of holding them steadfast to their promises. But, for somereason, the French apprehended an outbreak of hostilities, and it was{162} resolved to send envoys to the Indian country. At the firstmention of the subject to Jogues he shrank from returning to the scene ofso much suffering. But the habit of implicit obedience triumphed, and hequickly announced his willingness to do the will of his superiors, whichto him was the will of God. "I shall go, but I shall never return, " hewrote to a friend. 

He started out with a small party carrying a load of gifts intended toconciliate the Iroquois, and followed the route that was associated inhis mind with so much misery, up the Richelieu and Lake Champlain andthrough Lake George. At the head of this water they crossed over to theHudson, borrowed canoes from some Indians fishing there, and dropped downthe river to Fort Orange. Once more Jogues was among his Dutch friends. Glad as they were to see him, they wondered at his venturing back amongthe people who had once hunted him like a noxious beast. From FortOrange he ascended the Mohawk River to the first Indian town. With whatwonder the savages must have gazed at the man who had lived among them asa despised slave, and now had come back laden with gifts as theambassador of a great power! They received {163} him graciously, andwhen his errand was done, he returned safe to Quebec. 

It would have been well for him if his superiors had contented themselveswith what he had already done and suffered. But they had a grand schemeof founding a mission among the Iroquois. They knew its perils andcalled it "The Mission of Martyrs. " To this post of danger Jogues wassent. The devoted man went without a murmur. On the way he met Indianswho warned him of danger, and his Huron companions turned back, but hewent on. Arrived among the Mohawks, he found a strong tide of feelingrunning against him. The accident that aroused it illustrates Indiansuperstitiousness. On his former visit, expecting to return, he had lefta small box. From the first the Indians suspected it of being, likePandora's box in the old mythology, full of all kinds of ills. ButJogues opened it and showed them that it contained only some harmlesspersonal effects. After he was gone, however, some Huron prisonerswrought on their terror and at the same time reviled the French, declaring that the latter had almost ruined the Huron nation by theirwitchcraft and had brought on it drought, plague, pestilence, and famine. 

{164}

The Iroquois were well-nigh wild with rage and fright. At any moment thesmall-pox or some other horror might step out of the little box and stalkabroad among them. The three clans that made up the tribe were divided. The clans of the Wolf and the Tortoise were for keeping the peace; butthe clan of the Bear was for making war on the French. Just then, by illfortune, Jogues, approaching the Mohawk villages, encountered a band ofBear warriors. They seized and dragged him to their town. Here he wassavagely attacked and beaten with fists and clubs. In vain he remindedthem that he had come on an errand of peace. They tortured him cruelly. The Wolf and Tortoise clans protested against this violation of thepeace, but the others carried everything before them. 

The next day Jogues was bidden to a feast. He did not dare refuse to go. As he entered the lodge of the Bear chief, in spite of the efforts of anIndian who exposed his own life in trying to save him, a hatchet wasburied in his brain. Thus died a singularly pure and unselfish man, aPathfinder, too, for he was one of the three white men who first saw LakeGeorge. 

Shortly after the death of Jogues, war broke {165} out again. Nothingcould have exceeded the ferocity of the Five Nations. They boasted thatthey intended to sweep the French and their Indian friends off the faceof the earth. No place seemed too remote for them. At the mostunexpected moments of the day or the night they rose, as it seemed, outof the earth, and, with their blood-curdling war-whoop, fell upon theirintended victims with guns and tomahawks. The poor Algonquins were in astate of pitiable terror. Nowhere were they safe. Even when theyretired into the wilderness north of the St. Lawrence, they were trackedby their ruthless foes, slaughtered, burned, and drowned. 

We might go on and tell the story of other priests who all fell at thepost of duty and died worthily. But of what use would it be to prolongthese horrors? Enough to say that the Huron nation was almostannihilated, the feeble remnant left their country and went elsewhere, and the once promising work of the Jesuits among them ended in fire andblood. 

A small party of the Hurons accompanied the returning priests to theFrench settlements and became established, under French protection, nearQuebec, at a place called New Lorette, or Indian {166} Lorette, andfought by the side of their white friends in later wars. There, to thisday, their descendants, mostly French half-breeds, may be seen engaged inthe harmless occupations of weaving baskets and making moccasins. Another band wandered away to the far Northwest, came into conflict withthe warlike and powerful Sioux, and, driven back eastward, finally tookup its abode near the sites of Detroit and Sandusky. Under the name ofWyandots, its descendants played a conspicuous part in our border wars. 

[1] The faith of the Indians in a future life was very sincere andstrong. Jonathan Carver tells a touching story of a couple whom he knewwho lost a little son of about four years. They seemed inconsolable. After a time the father died. Then the mother dried her tears and ceasedher lamentations. When he asked her the reason of this, as it seemed tohim, strange conduct, she answered that she and her husband had grievedexcessively, because they knew that their little boy would be alone inthe other world, without anybody to provide for his wants, but now, hisfather having gone to join him, her mind was at rest in the assurancethat the little fellow would be well cared for and happy. 

[2] This usage seems to have been quite general. Jonathan Carver, in1767, tells of a common burying-place of several bands of the Sioux, towhich these roving people carefully brought their dead at a given time, depositing them with great solemnity. These bodies had previously beentemporarily placed on rude scaffolds on the limbs of trees, awaiting thegeneral interment. 

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Chapter XI

JEAN NICOLLET, LOUIS JOLIET, AND FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE

THE DISCOVERERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI

Jean Nicollet's Voyage on the Wisconsin. --Louis Joliet and JacquesMarquette are sent by Count Frontenac to follow the Course of theMississippi. --On the Wisconsin. --The "Great Water" reached. --Hospitablyentertained in an Indian Camp. --An Invaluable Gift. --The Mouth of theMissouri and the Mouth of the Ohio passed. --The Outlet of the Arkansasreached. --Hardships of the Return Voyage. --Death of Marquette. --Joliet'sMishap. 

A notable _coureur de bois_ (a French-Canadian wood-ranger) was JeanNicollet. He had lived for years among the savages and had becomethoroughly Indian in his habits. He was sent by the French Governor, about 1638, as an ambassador to the Winnebagoes, west of Lake Michigan. He had heard among his Indian friends of a strange people without hair orbeard who came from beyond the Great Water to trade with the Indians onthe Lakes. Who could these beardless men be but Chinese or Japanese?

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So fully possessed was he by this idea that, in order to make a suitableappearance before the Orientals whom he expected to meet, he took alongwith him a robe of heavy Chinese silk, embroidered with birds andflowers. When he neared the Winnebago town, he sent a messenger ahead toannounce his coming, and, having put on his gorgeous robe, followed himon the scene. Never did a circus, making its grand entry into a villagein all the glory of gilded chariots and brass band, inspire deeper awethan this primitive ambassador, with his flaming robe and a pair ofpistols which he fired continually. His pale face, the first that theWinnebagoes had ever seen, gave them a sense of something unearthly. Thesquaws and the children fled into the woods, shrieking that it was amanitou (spirit) armed with thunder and lightning. The warriors, however, stood their ground bravely and entertained him with a feast ofone hundred and twenty beaver. [1]

But if Nicollet did not succeed in opening relations with Cathay andCipango (China and {171} Japan), he did something else that entitles himto be commemorated among the Pathfinders. He ascended Fox River to itshead-waters, crossed the little divide that separates the waters flowinginto the Lakes from those that empty into the Gulf of Mexico, andlaunched his canoe on the Wisconsin, the first white man, so far as weknow, who floated on one of the upper tributaries of the mighty river. This was just about one hundred years after Soto had crossed it in itslower course. On his return, he reported that he had followed the riveruntil he came within three days of the sea. Undoubtedly he misunderstoodhis Indian guides. The "Great Water" of which they spoke was almostcertainly the Mississippi, for that is what the name means. 

The first undoubted exploration of the mighty river took placethirty-five years later. It was made by two men who combined the twoaspects of Jesuit activity, the spiritual and the worldly. Louis Jolietwas born in Canada, of French parents. He was educated by the Jesuits, and was all his life devoted to them. He was an intelligent merchant, practical and courageous. No better man could have been chosen for thework assigned him. 

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His companion in this undertaking was a Jesuit priest, Jacques Marquette, who was a fine example of the noblest qualities ever exhibited by hisorder. He was settled as a missionary at Michillimackinac, on MackinawStrait, when Joliet came to him from Quebec with orders from CountFrontenac to go with him to seek and explore the Mississippi. 

On May 17, 1673, in very simple fashion, in two birch-bark canoes, withfive white _voyageurs_ and a moderate supply of smoked meat and Indiancorn, the two travelers set out to solve a perplexing problem, by tracingthe course of the great river. Their only guide was a crude map based onscraps of information which they had gathered. Besides Marquette'sjournal, by a happy chance we have that of Jonathan Carver, who traveledover the same route nearly a hundred years later. From him we get muchuseful and interesting information. 

At the first, the explorers' course lay westward, along the northernshore of Lake Michigan and into Green Bay. The Menomonie, or Wild-riceIndians, one of the western branches of the Algonquin family, wished todissuade them from going further. They told of ferocious tribes, {173}who would put them to death without provocation, and of frightfulmonsters (alligators) which would devour them and their canoes. Thevoyagers thanked them and pushed on, up Fox River and across LakeWinnebago. 

At the approach to the lake are the Winnebago Rapids, which necessitate aportage, or "carry. " Our voyagers do not mention having any troublehere. But, at a later time, according to a tradition related by Dr. R. G. Thwaites, this was the scene of a tragic affair. When the growingfur-trade made this route very important, the Fox Indians living heremade a good thing out of carrying goods over the trail and helping theempty boats over the rapids. They eventually became obnoxious by takingtoll from passing traders. Thereupon the Governor of New France sent acertain Captain Marin to chastise them. He came up the Fox River with alarge party of _voyageurs_ and half-breeds on snow-shoes, surprised thenatives in their village, and slaughtered them by hundreds. 

At another time the same man led a summer expedition against the Foxes. He kept his armed men lying down in the boats and covered with oilclothlike goods. Hundreds of red-skins {174} were squatting on the beach, awaiting the coming of the flotilla. The canoes ranged up along theshore. Then, at a signal, the coverings were thrown off, and a rain ofbullets was poured into the defenceless savages, while a swivel-gun moweddown the victims of this brutality. Hundreds were slaughtered, it issaid. 

On to the lower Fox River their course led the explorers. This broughtthem into the country of the Miamis, the Mascoutins, once a powerfultribe, now extinct, and the Kickapoos, all Algonquins of the West. 

A council was held, and the Indians readily granted their request forguides to show them the way to the Wisconsin. Through the tortuous andblind course of the little river, among lakes and marshes, they wouldhave had great difficulty in making their way unaided. [2]

When they came to the portage, where now stands the city of Portage, [3]with its short canal {175} connecting the two rivers, they carried theircanoes across, and launched their little barks on the Wisconsin. Downthis river they would float to the great mysterious stream that wouldcarry them they knew not whither, perhaps to the Sea of Virginia (theAtlantic), perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the Vermilion Sea(the Gulf of California). 

Whether they would ever return from the dim, undiscovered country intowhich they were venturing, who could say? It seems amazing that onehundred and thirty years after Soto had crossed the great river, intelligent Frenchmen were ignorant even of its outlet. It shows howsuccessfully Spain had suppressed knowledge of the territory which sheclaimed. 

Down the quiet waters of the Wisconsin the voyagers glided, passing thethrifty villages of the Sacs and Foxes, then a powerful people, nowalmost extinct. On June 17, exactly one month from the day of theirstarting, their canoes {176} shot out into a rapid current, here a milewide, and with joy beyond expression, as Marquette writes, they knew thatthey had achieved the first part of their undertaking. They had reachedthe "Great Water. "

What would have been the feelings of these unassuming voyagers, if theycould have looked down the dim vista of time, and have seen the people ofa great and prosperous commonwealth (Wisconsin), on June 17, 1873, celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of their achievement!

Strange sights unfolded themselves, as they made their way down themighty stream and looked on shores that no eyes of a white man had everbeheld. What magnificent solitudes! Only think of it--more than afortnight without seeing a human being!

They used always extreme caution, as well they might, in view of thetales that had been told them of ferocious savages roaming that region. They went ashore in the evening, cooked and ate their supper, and thenpushed out and anchored in the stream, keeping a man on watch tillmorning. 

After more than two weeks of this solitary voyaging, one day they saw awell-trodden path {177} that led to the adjacent prairie. Joliet andMarquette determined to follow it, leaving the canoes in charge of theirmen. After a walk of some miles inland, they came to an Indian village, with two others in sight. They advanced with beating hearts. What wastheir reception to be? When they were near enough to hear voices in thewigwams, they stood out in the open and shouted to attract attention. Agreat commotion ensued, and the inmates swarmed out. Then, to theirintense relief, four chiefs advanced deliberately, holding aloft twocalumets, or peace-pipes. They wore French cloth, from which it wasevident that they traded with the French. These people proved to belongto the great Illinois tribe, the very people some of whom had metMarquette at his mission-station and had begged him, as he says, "tobring them the word of God. "

Now, after the pipe of peace had been duly smoked, he had thelong-desired opportunity of delivering the message of salvation. He didnot fail to add some words about the power and glory of Onontio (CountFrontenac). The head chief replied in a flowery speech, after the mostapproved fashion of Indian oratory, assuring his {178} guests that theirpresence made his tobacco sweeter, the river calmer, the sky more serene, and the earth more beautiful. He further showed his friendship by givingthem a boy as a slave and, best of all, a calumet, or peace-pipe, [4]which was to serve as a commendation to the goodwill of other Indians. Invaluable the voyagers found it. 

The friendly chief also represented very strongly the danger of goingfurther down the {179} Great Water and vainly tried to dissuade them. Feasting followed. After various courses, a dainty dish of boiled dogwas served, then one of fat buffalo, much to the Frenchmen's relief. Throughout this entertainment the master of ceremonies fed the guests asif they had been infants, removing fish-bones with his fingers andblowing on hot morsels to cool them, before putting them into theirmouths. This was the very pink of Indian courtesy. 

The two Frenchmen spent the night with their dusky friends and the nextday were escorted to their canoes by several hundreds of them. Thisfirst encounter with Indians of the Mississippi Valley on their own soilseems to have taken place not far from the site of Keokuk. 

The voyagers' next sensation was experienced after passing the mouth ofthe Illinois River. Immediately above the site of the city of Alton, theflat face of a high rock was painted, in the highest style of Indian art, with representations of two horrible monsters, to which the natives werewont to make sacrifices as they passed on the river. The sight of themcaused in the pious Frenchmen a feeling that they were in the Devil'scountry, for to Christians of the seventeenth century heathen {180} godswere not mere creatures of the imagination, but living beings, demons, high captains in Satan's great army. 

Soon the voyagers were made to fear for their safety by a mighty torrentof yellow mud surging athwart the blue current of the Mississippi, sweeping down logs and uprooting trees, and dashing their light canoeslike leaves on an angry brook. They were passing the mouth of theMissouri. A few days later they crossed the outlet of the Ohio, "Beautiful River, " as the Iroquois name means. 

All the time it was growing hotter. The picturesque shores of the upperriver had given place to dense canebrakes, and swarms of mosquitoespestered them day and night. Now they had a note of danger in meetingsome Indians who evidently were in communication with Europeans, for theyhad guns and carried their powder in small bottles of thick glass. TheseEuropeans could be none other than the Spaniards to the southward, ofwhom it behooved the Frenchmen to beware, if they did not wish to pull anoar in a galley or swing a pick in a silver-mine. Still there was asatisfaction in the thought that, having left one civilization thousandsof miles behind them, {181} they had passed through the wilderness to theedge of another. These Indians readily responded to the appeal of theFrenchmen's calumet, invited them ashore, and feasted them. 

On toward the ocean, which they were falsely told was distant only tendays' journey, the voyagers sped, passing the point at which, one hundredand thirty-three years earlier, Soto, with the remnant of his army, hadcrossed the mighty river in whose bed his bones were destined to rest. Above the mouth of the Arkansas they were for a time in deadly peril fromIndians. These were of the Mitchigamea tribe, who, with the Chickasawsand others of the Muskoki family, fought the Spaniards so valiantly. Canoes were putting out above and below, to cut off the explorers'retreat, while some young warriors on the shore were hastily stringingtheir bows, all animated doubtless by bitter memories of white meninherited from Soto's time. Once more the calumet saved its bearers. Marquette all the while held it aloft, and some of the elders, respondingto its silent appeal, succeeded in restraining the fiery young men. Thestrangers were invited ashore, feasted, as usual, and entertained overnight. They had some misgivings, but did not {182} dare refuse thesehospitalities; and no harm befell them. 

The next stage of their journey brought them to a village just oppositethe mouth of the Arkansas River. Here they were received in great stateby the Arkansas Indians, notice of their coming having been sent ahead bytheir new friends. There was the usual speechmaking, accompanied byinterminable feasting, in which a roasted dog held the place of honor. There was a young Indian who spoke Illinois well, and through himMarquette was able to preach, as well as to gain information about theriver below. He was told that the shores were infested by fierce savagesarmed with guns. 

By this time it was evident that nothing was to be gained by goingfurther. The explorers had ascertained beyond dispute that theMississippi emptied its waters, not directly into the Atlantic, or intothe Pacific, but into the Gulf of Mexico. If they went further, they ranthe risk of being killed by Indians or falling into the hands ofSpaniards. In either case the result of their discovery would be lost. Therefore they resolved to return to Canada. Just two months from theirstarting and one month from their {183} discovery of the Great Water theybegan their return. 

Their route was a different one from the original, for on reaching themouth of the Illinois River they entered and ascended it. On the way, they stopped at a famous village of the Illinois tribe called Kaskaskia. Thence they were guided by a band of young warriors through the route upthe Des Plaines River and across the portage to Lake Michigan. Coastingits shore, they reached Green Bay, after an absence of four months. 

Thus ended a memorable voyage. The travelers had paddled their canoesmore than two thousand, five hundred miles, had explored two of the threeroutes leading into the Mississippi, and had followed the Great Wateritself to within seven hundred miles of the ocean. They had settled oneof the knotty geographical points of their day, that of the river'soutlet. All this they had done in hourly peril of their lives. Thoughthey experienced no actual violence, there was no time at which they werenot in danger. 

In the end the voyage cost Marquette his life, for its hardships andexposures planted in his system the germs of a disease from which he{184} never fully recovered, and from which he died, two years later, onthe shore of Lake Michigan. 

Joliet met with a peculiar misfortune. At the Lachine Rapids, just aboveMontreal, almost at the very end of his voyage of thousands of miles, hiscanoe was upset, two men and his little Indian boy were drowned, and hisbox of papers, including his precious journal, was lost. Undoubtedly hisdaily record of the voyage would have been very valuable, for he was aman of scholarship as well as of practical ability. But its accidentalloss gave the greater fame to Marquette, whose account was printed. Inrecent years, however, he has been recognized as an equal partner withthe noble priest in the great achievement. 

[1] These Winnebagoes were the most eastern branch of the greatDakota-Sioux family. Their ancestors were the builders, it is believed, of the Wisconsin mounds. 

[2] Carver says, "It is with difficulty that canoes can pass through theobstructions they meet with from the rice-stalks. This river is thegreatest resort for wild fowl that I met with in the whole course of mytravels; frequently the sun would be obscured by them for some minutestogether. "

[3] This spot has a remarkable interest as the place where, within a veryshort distance, rise the waters that flow away to the eastward, throughthe Great Lakes, into the North Atlantic, and those that now southward tothe Mississippi and the Gulf. It is, however, according to Carver, mostuninviting in appearance, "a morass overgrown with a kind of long grass, the rest of it a plain, with some few oak and pine trees growing thereon. I observed here, " he says, "a great number of rattlesnakes. "

[4] The following description of this very important article is takenfrom Father Hennepin:

"This Calumet is the most mysterious Thing in the World among the Savagesof the Continent of the Northern America: for it is used in all theirmost important Transactions. However, it is nothing else but a largeTobacco-pipe made of Red, Black, or White Marble: The Head is finelypolished, and the Quill, which is commonly two Foot and a half long, ismade of a pretty strong Reed, or Cane, adorned with Feathers of allColours, interlaced with Locks of Women's Hair. They tie to it two wingsof the most curious Birds they find, which makes their Calumet not unlikeMercury's Wand. 

"A Pipe, such as I have described it, is a Pass and Safe Conduct amongstall the Allies of the Nation who has given it; for the Savages aregenerally persuaded that a great Misfortune would befal 'em, if theyviolated the Publick Faith of the Calumet. "

The French never wearied of extolling the wonderful influence of thissymbol of brotherhood. Says Father Gravier, writing of his voyage downthe Mississippi, in 1700: "No such honor is paid to the crowns andsceptres of kings as they pay to it. It seems to be the God of peace andwar, the arbiter of life and death. "

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Chapter XII

PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON AND MÉDARD CHOUART EXPLORE LAKE SUPERIOR

Who were the Coureurs de bois. --Radisson's Experiences as a Prisoneramong the Iroquois. --He plays the Indian Warrior. --Escapes to theDutch. --Makes his Way back to Canada. --He and his Brother-in-law setout for the Upper Lakes. --Fight with Iroquois. --Storm an IndianFort. --Reach Lake Superior. --"The Pictured Rocks. "--KeweenawPoint. --Long Overland Journey. --Summer and Feasting. --Winter andFamine. --Feasting again. --Fine Ducking. --Start for Home. --ReachMontreal with Great Fleet of Canoes. 

The early history of New France owes its romantic interest to theactivity of four classes of men. Daring explorers, such as Cartier, Champlain, Joliet, Marquette, La Salle, plunged into the wilderness, penetrated remote regions, made great discoveries, and extended Frenchinfluence and French trade as far to the west as the Mississippi and tothe northeast as far as Hudson Bay. French Catholic missionaries saidmass and preached their {188} faith in the heart of the forest primevaland at lonely posts on the shores of the Great Lakes. Able andbrilliant Governors, such as Champlain and Frontenac, built forts atcommanding points on the inland waters, and ruled, in a fashion, anarea vastly greater than that of France itself. 

Of these three classes of men and their achievements we have hadexamples. We come now to speak of a fourth class who exercised apowerful influence on the destinies of New France. If we remember thatthe material object of French activity in America was _furs_, we shalleasily understand that the men who were busied in the fur-trade were avery important part of the scanty population. They were of two kinds. There were merchants who "kept store" at Quebec, Montreal, ThreeRivers, and other trading-posts, bartering their goods to the Indiansfor peltries. These were brought to them in large quantities in theearly summer, when the ice had broken up, and fleets of canoesdescended the St. Lawrence laden with skins. Then there was amazingstir at the sleepy little posts on the great river. Painted savages, howling and screeching, mostly half-drunk, swarmed about the stations, and at night the sky was red with the glare of their {189} fires. There was an enormous profit in the traffic, for the Indians had noidea of the cheapness of the goods which they took in exchange fortheir furs, nor of the high prices which these brought in Europe. Itis no wonder that governors and other high officials were charged withhaving a secret interest in this very lucrative trade, and, for thatreason, winking at violations of the King's orders regulating it. EvenJesuit missionaries sometimes were thought by their opponents to bemore eager to share this money-making traffic than to win souls. 

But a more numerous class than these stationary traders were theso-called _coureurs de bois_, or wood-rangers. These were wild fellowswhom the love of adventure lured into the wilderness not less stronglythan the love of gain. They roamed the forests, paddled the streamsand lakes, hunted and trapped, trafficked with the Indians wherever andwhenever they pleased, often in violation of express orders, andsmuggled their forbidden furs into the trading-posts. Sometimes theyspent whole seasons, even years, among the savages, taking to wife redwomen. Lawless fellows as these were, they helped mightily to extendFrench influence and subdue the continent {190} to the white man'srule. Daring explorers, they penetrated remote regions, hobnobbed withthe natives, and brought back accounts of what they had seen. 

One of their leaders, Daniel Greysolon du Lhut, whose name is borne bythe city of Duluth, in Minnesota, was a conspicuous figure in the wildfrontier life. He carried on a vast fur-trade, held his roughfollowers well in hand, led a small army of them in fighting thebattles of his country, and even appeared at the French court atVersailles. 

The half-breed children of these _coureurs_, growing up in Indianwigwams, but full of pride in their French blood, became a strong linkbinding together the two races in friendly alliance and deciding theIndians, in time of war, to paint themselves and put on their feathersfor the French rather than for the English. Therefore any account ofpioneer Frenchmen should include a sketch of the _coureurs de bois_. 

To illustrate this type, one is here taken as an example who was bornin France, and who was a gentleman by birth and education, but whoseinsatiable love of adventure led him to take up the _coureur's_ life, with all its vicissitudes. Withal, he {191} was a man of note in hisday, played no inconsiderable part in opening up the wilderness, andsuggested the formation of that vast monopoly, the Hudson Bay FurCompany. His journals, after lying for more than two hundred years inmanuscript, have been published and have proved very interesting. Theygive such an inside picture of savage life, with its nastiness, itsalternate gluttony and starving, and its ferocity, as it would be hardto find elsewhere, drawn in such English as the wildest humorist wouldnot dream of inventing. 

Pierre Esprit Radisson was born at St. Malo, in France, and came toCanada in May, 1651. His home was at Three Rivers, where his relativeswere settled. One day he went out gunning with two friends. They werewarned by a man whom they met that hostile Indians were lurking in theneighborhood. Still they went on, forgetting their danger in theenjoyment of shooting ducks. Finally, however, one of the party saidhe would not go further, and the other joined him. This led Radissonto banter them, saying that he would go ahead and kill game enough forall. 

On he went, shooting again and again, until {192} he had more geese andducks than he could carry home. Finally, after hiding some of his gamein a hollow tree, he started back. When he came near the place wherehe had left his companions, imagine his horror at finding their bodies, "one being shott through with three boulletts and two blowes of anhatchett on the head, and the other run through in several places witha sword and smitten with an hatchett. "

Suddenly he was surrounded by Indians who rose, as it were, out of theground and rushed upon him, yelling like fiends. He fired his gun, wounding two with the duck-shot, and his pistol, without hurting anyone. The next moment he found himself thrown on the ground anddisarmed, without a single blow. 

His courage had impressed the Indians so favorably that they treatedhim very kindly. When they pitched their camp, they offered him someof their meat, which smelt so horribly that he could not touch it. Seeing this, they cooked a special dish for him. He says it was anasty mess, but, to show his appreciation, he swallowed some of it. This pleased his captors, and they further showed their good-will byuntying him and letting him lie down comfortably {193} between two ofthem, covered with a red coverlet through which he "might have countedthe starrs. "

The Indians traveled homeward in very leisurely fashion, stopping bythe way for days at a time and making merry with Radisson, to whom theyevidently had taken a strong liking. When they tried to teach him tosing, and he turned the tables by singing to them in French, they weredelighted. "Often, " he says, "have I sunged in French, to which theygave eares with a deepe silence. " They were bent on making a thoroughsavage of him. So they trimmed his hair after their most approvedfashion and plastered it with grease. 

He pleased his captors greatly by his good humor and his taking part inchopping wood, paddling, or whatever might be doing, and chiefly by hisnot making any attempt to escape. In truth, he simply was afraid ofbeing caught and dealt with more severely. 

They were traveling the familiar route to the Iroquois country, and intime they came to a fishing-station, the occupants of which greeted thereturning warriors uproariously. One of them struck Radisson, who, ata sign from his "keeper, " clinched with him. The two fought {194}furiously, wrestling and "clawing one another with hands, tooth, andnails. " The Frenchman was delighted that his captors encouraged him asmuch as their fellow tribesman. He came off best, and they seemedmightily pleased. 

The two men whom he had wounded at the time of his capture, far fromresenting it, showed him "as much charity as a Christian might havegiven. "

Still things looked squally for Radisson, when he entered the nativevillage of the party and saw men, women, and boys drawn up in a doublerow, armed with rods and sticks, evidently for the savage ordeal ofrunning the gauntlet. He was on the point of starting, resolved to runhis swiftest, when an old woman took him by the hand, led him away toher cabin, and set food before him. How different from being torturedand burned, which was the fate that he expected! When some of thewarriors came and took him away to the council-fire, she followed andpleaded so successfully that he was given up to her, to be her adoptedson, in the place of one who had been killed. 

Now nothing was too good for Radisson. The poor old woman had takenhim to her heart, and {195} she lavished kindness on him. Herdaughters treated him as a brother, and her husband, a famous oldwarrior, gave a feast in his honor, presenting him to the company underthe name of Orinha, which was that of his son who had been killed. Heenjoyed the savage life for a time, having "all the pleasuresimaginable, " such as shooting partridges and "squerells. "

But he soon grew home-sick and eager for an opportunity to escape. Oneoffered itself unexpectedly. He had gone off on a hunt of several dayswith three Indians who invited him to join them. On the second dayout, they picked up a man who was alone and invited him to go with themto their camp, which he gladly did. Imagine Radisson's surprise whenthis man, while the others were getting supper ready, spoke to him inAlgonquin, that is, the language of the people who were allies of theFrench and mortal enemies of the Iroquois. Evidently he was a prisonerwho had been spared and given his liberty. 

"Do you love the French?" he asked in a low tone. 

"Do you love the Algonquins?" Radisson returned. 

"Indeed I do love my own people, " he {196} replied. "Why, then, do welive among these people? Let us kill these three fellows to-night withtheir own hatchets. It can easily be done. "

Radisson professes to have been greatly shocked. But in the end hefell in with the plan. The two treacherous villains, after eating ahearty supper with their intended victims, lay down beside them andpretended to sleep. When the three Iroquois were deep in slumber, theyrose, killed them with tomahawks, loaded the canoe with guns, ammunition, provisions, and the victims' scalps, which the Algonquinhad cut off as trophies, and started on the long journey to ThreeRivers. 

Fourteen nights they had journeyed stealthily, lying in hiding all theday, for fear of meeting Iroquois on the war-path, and had reached apoint but a few miles from Three Rivers, when, venturing to cross LakeSt. Peter, a wide expansion of the St. Lawrence, by daylight, theyencountered a number of hostile canoes. In vain they turned andpaddled their hardest for the shore they had left. The enemy gained onthem rapidly and opened fire. At the first discharge the Indian waskilled and the canoe was so riddled that it was sinking, when theIroquois ranged alongside and took Radisson out. 

{197}

Now he was in trouble indeed. No more junketing! No more singing ofjolly French songs to amuse his captors, but doleful journeying alongwith nineteen prisoners, one Frenchman, one Frenchwoman, and seventeenHuron men and women, the latter constantly chanting their mournfuldeath-song. 

Through the day the poor wretches lay in the canoes, pinioned andtrussed like fowls; and at night they were laid on the ground securelyfastened to posts, so that they could not move hand or foot, whilemosquitoes and flies swarmed about them. When the Iroquois country wasreached, they furnished sport to the whole population, which turned outeverywhere to greet them with tortures. This time Radisson did notwholly escape. But when, for the second time, he was on the point ofrunning the gauntlet, for the second time his "mother" rescued him. His "father" lectured him roundly on the folly of running away frompeople who had made him one of the family. Still he exerted himselfstrenuously to save Radisson from the death penalty which hung overhim, and succeeded in securing his release after he had been dulytortured. 

"Then, " he says, "my father goes to seeke {198} rootes, and my sisterchaws them and my mother applyes them to my sores as a plaster. " Aftera month of this primitive surgery, he was able to go about again, free. 

The winter passed quietly and pleasantly. Then Radisson, anxious toshow himself a thorough Iroquois, proposed to his "father" to let himgo on a war-party. The old brave heartily approved, and the youngrenegade set off with a band for the Huron country. 

Now follows a dreary account of the atrocities committed. In the endthe party, after perpetrating several murders, encountered aconsiderable number of the enemy, with the loss of one of their menseverely wounded. They burned him, to save him from falling into theenemy's hands, and then fled the country. Their arrival at home, withprisoners and scalps, mostly of women and children, was an occasion ofgreat honor, and Radisson came in for his full share. 

Being now allowed greater freedom, he improved it to run away to jointhe Dutch at Fort Orange (Albany). He tramped all the day and all thenight without food, and at daylight found himself near a Dutchsettler's cabin. The Dutch treated him with great kindness, gave himclothes and {199} shoes, and shipped him down the Hudson to "Menada"(Manhattan, New York), whence he sailed for Amsterdam. From that porthe took ship for La Rochelle, in France, and thence back to Canada. 

To cover a distance of about two hundred and fifty miles, he had beenobliged to travel about seven thousand!

Hitherto we have seen Pierre Radisson figure as a mere _coureur debois_. Now we shall see him in the more important role of a discoverer. 

Probably he and his brother-in-law, Médard Chouart, who styled himselfthe Sieur des Groseillers, in the course of their long trading journeysamong the Indians, in 1658 reached the Mississippi. One importantdiscovery they unquestionably made a few years later. That they werethe first white men trading in the Lake Superior region is proved byRadisson's giving the first description of notable objects on theshores of the lake. His account of the memorable experiences of thisjourney, considerably abridged, fills the remainder of this chapter. 

One cannot but wonder that, until a very recent time, the name of thisinteresting discoverer has not even been mentioned by historicalwriters. {200} Here was a man who certainly was of considerableimportance in his day, since he was one of two who suggested theformation of the famous Hudson Bay Fur Company, and yet who, untillately, never was spoken of by historians who recorded the achievementsof Pathfinders in America. What was the cause of this singularneglect? Chiefly the fact that in his time Canada was full ofadventurous _voyageurs_. The fur-trade was the great and only avenueto wealth, and it attracted the most daring spirits. These hardyfellows penetrated the wilderness in all directions, and it was chieflythey who made the northern portion of our country known to white men. Radisson and his brother-in-law, who was his constant companion, belonged to this class. Their journeys were not made for scientific, but for commercial, purposes. They were simply in quest of furs, andwhatever discoveries they made were accidental. Thus, little accountwas made of them at the time. 

The chief reason, however, is that the importance of Radisson's journalescaped attention. It was mistaken for a mere record of wanderings. Places not being named--at that time they had no names but the Indianones--close attention {201} to the descriptions in the narrative wasneeded in order to identify them and determine his route. Thus it cameto pass that this singularly interesting journal remained unpublished, that is, practically unknown, for more than two hundred years. When, happily, the Prince Society of Boston recognized its value and printedit, in 1885, the writer at once took his rightful place among thePathfinders. 

Radisson and his brother-in-law, in the spring of 1661, applied to theGovernor of Canada for permission to go on a trading journey up thelakes. On his refusing, except on the condition of their taking withthem two of his servants and giving them half of the profits, theyslipped away at midnight without leave, having made an agreement withsome Indians, probably Ojibways, of the Sault (Sault Ste. Marie, between Lake Huron and Lake Superior), that these would wait for themat Lake St. Peter, some miles above Three Rivers. 

The two parties met, as agreed, and began their long journey. After afew days they found traces of a party that had preceded them, theirfires still burning. Judging from certain signs that these were notenemies, they exerted themselves to {202} overtake them. They foundthem to be a party of Indians from Lake Superior who had been toMontreal and were returning. The two bands united and now formed aconsiderable force, in fourteen canoes. This union proved a happycircumstance, for the next day they were attacked by a war-party ofIroquois who were lying in wait for the Lake Superior Indians, havingobserved their passage down the river. The Iroquois, who had fortifiedthemselves, were evidently surprised to find themselves confronted by afar larger force than they expected. 

Radisson and an Indian were sent to scout and examine the fort. Theyfound it to be a stockade surrounded by large rocks. The Iroquois madeovertures for peace by throwing strings of wampum over the stockade, and that night they slipped away, leaving a free passage to Radisson'sparty. 

The next day, however, there was a brush with Iroquois, in which threewere killed, as well as one of Radisson's party. The enemy were not insufficient force to make a fight in the open and fell back into an oldfort--for this region, being on the route to the upper lakes, was aconstant battleground. Radisson's party gathered to attack it, {203}the Iroquois meanwhile firing constantly, but doing little harm. Darkness came on, and the assailants filled a barrel with gunpowderand, "having stoped the whole" (stopped the hole) and tied it to theend of a long pole, tried to push it over the stockade. It fell back, however, and exploded with so much force that three of the assailantsthemselves were killed. 

Radisson then made a sort of hand-grenade by putting three or fourpounds of powder into a "rind of a tree" (piece of bark) with "a fusey[fuse] to have time to throw the rind. " This he flung into the fort, having directed his Indians to follow up the explosion by breaking inwith hatchet and sword. Meanwhile the Iroquois were singing theirdeath-song. The grenade fell among them and burst with terribleexecution. Immediately Radisson's party broke in, and there was ascene of confusion, assailants and assailed unable in the darkness todistinguish friend from foe. 

Suddenly there fell a tremendous downpour of rain, with pitchydarkness, which seemed so timely for the Iroquois that Radissonremarks, "To my thinking, the Devill himselfe made that storme to givethose men leave to escape from our {204} hands. " All sought shelter. When the storm was over the Iroquois had escaped. The victors found"11 of our ennemy slain'd and 2 only of ours, besides seaven wounded. "There were also five prisoners secured. The bodies of their own deadwere treated with great respect. "We bourned our comrades, " saysRadisson, "being their custome to reduce such into ashes being slainedin batill. It is an honnour to give them such a buriall. "

At daybreak the party resumed their journey, rejoicing in "10 heads andfoure prisoners, whom we embarqued in hopes to bring them into ourcountry, and there to burne them att our own leasures for the moresatisfaction of our wives. " Meanwhile they allowed themselves a littleforetaste of that delight. "We plagued those infortunate. We pluckedout their nailes one after another. " Probably, when Radisson says"we, " he means the Indians only, not his brother and himself. 

Traveling on, the party espied a large force of Iroquois hovering near. Anticipating an attack, "we killed our foure prisoners, because theyembarrassed us. " "If ever blind wished the Light, we wished theobscurity of the night, which no {205} sooner approached but weembarqued ourselves without any noise and went along. " Radisson thinksthe Iroquois must have been encumbered with prisoners and booty: elsethey would not have let his party get away so easily. Fearing, however, to be pursued, these plied their paddles desperately "fromfriday to tuesday without intermission, " their "feete and leggs" allbloody from being cut in dragging the canoes over sharp rocks in theshallows. After this terrible strain, being "quite spent, " they werefain to rest, so soon as they felt themselves safe from pursuit. 

The party was following Champlain's old route, up the Ottawa River, across country to Lake Nipissing, then down its outlet, French River, to Lake Huron. 

After a hard and perilous journey, having "wrought two and twenty dayesand as many nights, having slept not one houre on land all that while, "they came out on Lake Huron. Still trouble beset them, in the form ofdearth of food. Game was scarce along the shore, and they were glad ofsuch berries as they found. Radisson records that the "wildmen, " as healways calls the Indians, showed themselves "far gratfuller then manyChristians even to their {206} owne relations, " for whenever they founda good patch of berries they always called him and his brother to get afull share. In due time they reached a strait full of islands (the St. Mary's River), where an abundance of fish relieved their hunger, andcame to "a rapid that makes the separation of the lake that we callSuperior, or upper" (Sault Ste. Marie). [1]

Some of Radisson's Indian companions were now in their native region. They had promised the two Frenchmen that they "should make good cheareof a fish that they call Assickmack, wch signifieth a white fish, " andso it proved. [2]

{207}

Game, also, was most abundant; and, after their long hardships andprivations, the Frenchmen thought this country "like a terrestriallparadise. " Having rested and enjoyed the abundance of food for awhile, the party went on, "thwarted (crossed) in a pretty broad placeand came to an isle most delightfull for the diversity of its fruits. "Here they supped and enjoyed themselves until ten o'clock, when, thenight being fine, they embarked again and before daylight reached thesouth shore of the lake. Here Radisson was shown a place where "manypeeces of copper weare uncovered. " He and his brother were about totake some specimens, when the Indians told them that they would findfar larger quantities at a place to which they were going. 

The next evidence that we encounter of the accuracy of Radisson'snarrative is his description of the hills of shifting sand that form astriking feature of this part of the coast. One of the Indians climbedan especially high one, and, Radisson says, "being there, did shew nomore then a crow. " These are the sand-hills, which the Indian legend, in Longfellow's "Hiawatha, " says were thrown up by Pau-puk-keewis whenhe blew up a whirlwind. The sight of so much sand reminded Radisson of{208} "the wildernesses of Turkey land, as the Turques makes theirpylgrimages" (the desert of Arabia). 

Next the voyagers came to a very "remarquable place, a banke of Rocksthat the wildmen made a sacrifice to. They fling much tobacco andother things in its veneration. " Radisson thus describes this strikingobject. "It's like a great Portall, by reason of the beating of thewaves. [He means that the dashing of the water against the mass ofrock has worn it away in the shape of an arch. ] The lower part of thatoppening is as bigg as a tower and grows bigger in the going upp. Ashipp of 500 tuns could passe, soe bigg is the arch. I gave it thename of the portall of St. Peter, because my name is so called, andthat I was the first Christian that ever saw it. " The latter statementseems unquestionably true. But Radisson's name did notstick--unfortunately, for "St. Peter's Portal" would be abetter-sounding and more significant name than the meaningless"Pictured Rocks, " which is the common designation of this famous object. 

This natural arch affords a striking illustration of the wearing effectof water. The waves constantly washing and often beating in fury uponthe line of sandstone cliffs has, in the course of ages, {209} hollowedthis arch at the point where the rock was softest. The immense amountof material thus washed from the face of the cliffs has been thrownashore, blown along the coast, and heaped up in the sand-hills whichRadisson describes, and which are reliably reported to vary from onehundred to three hundred feet in height. 

A few days later the party came to a place where they made a portage ofsome miles, in order to save going around a peninsula jutting far outinto the lake. "The way was well beaten, " says Radisson, "because ofthe comers and goers, who by making that passage shortens their journeyby 8 dayes. " From this circumstance it is evident that our travelerswere on a frequented route, and that the Indians knew enough of thegeography of the country to avoid a canoe journey of several hundredsof miles, by carrying their light craft and their goods across the baseof the peninsula, which is here very narrow, being almost cut in two bya chain of lakes and rivers. [3]

{210}

Radisson was told that "at the end of the point there is an isle all ofcopper. " This is not very far from the truth, for this peninsulacontains, about Keweenaw Point, the richest copper deposit in theworld. In 1857 there was taken from one of the mines a mass of oreweighing 420 tons and containing more than ninety per cent of purecopper. 

Traveling on, the party met with some Christinos, or Crees, who joinedit "in hopes, " says Radisson, "to gett knives from us, which they lovebetter then we serve God, which should make us blush for shame. " Intime they came to "a cape very much elevated like piramides, " probablythe "Doric Rock. " In a certain "channell" they took "sturgeons of avast bignesse and Pycks of seaven foot long, " probably the well-knownmuscalonge. [4]

Now the long canoe voyage had come to an end, and as the Indians saidthat five days' journey would be needed to bring them to their homes, and the two white men had heavy packs which they were loth to carry solong a distance, they {211} decided to remain where they were and lettheir red friends either come or send back for them. Then, being buttwo men, surrounded by wild tribes, they built themselves a littletriangular log fort by the water-side, with its door opening toward thewater. All around it, at a little distance, was stretched a long cord, to which were fastened some small bells, "which weare senteryes"(sentries), Radisson says. [5]

Having thus fortified themselves with a perfect armory within, namely, "5 guns, 2 musquetons, 3 fowling-peeces, 3 paire of great pistoletts, and 2 paire of pocket ons, and every one his sword and daggar, " theymight feel reasonably safe in a country in which the natives as yetstood in awe of fire-arms. They had some friendly visitors, but wouldnever admit more than one person at a time. Radisson says, in hisdroll way, "During that time we had severall alarums in ye night. Thesquerels and other small beasts, as well as foxes, came in andassaulted us. " For food there was an abundance of fish and of"bustards" (wild geese), of which Radisson shot a great number. 

{212}

When, after twelve days, some of their traveling companions reappeared, they were astounded at the sight of the fort and complimented the twoFrenchmen by calling them "every foot devills to have made such amachine. " They had brought a quantity of provisions, imagining the twowhite men to be famishing. But, lo! here was a supply of game morethan sufficient for the whole party. The Indians wondered how itchanced that the Frenchmen's baggage was so greatly reduced. Theseaccounted for it by saying that, fearing lest the sight of so muchwealth should lead to their being murdered, they had taken a great partof their merchandise and sunk it in the water, committing it to thecare of their "devill, " who was charged "not to lett them to be wettnor rusted, wch he promised faithlesse" that he would do; all of whichthe simple creatures believed "as ye Christians the Gospell. " Radissonexplains that he and his brother had really burled the goods across theriver. "We told them that lye, " he says, "that they should not havesuspicion of us. "

The two white men immensely enjoyed the profound deference paid them. When they started on their journey, "we went away, " says Radisson, {213} "free from any burden, whilst those poor miserables thoughtthemselves happy to carry our Equipage, for the hope that they had thatwe should give them a brasse ring, or an awle, or an needle. "

After traveling four days, our "2 poore adventurers for the honour ofour countrey" were told that they were approaching their destination. Runners went ahead to warn the people of their coming. "Every oneprepared to see what they never before have seene, " that is, white men. 

Their entry into the village was made with due pomp, and they"destinated 3 presents, one for the men, one for the women, other forthe children, to the end, " says Radisson, "that we should be spoaken ofa hundred years after, if other Europeans should not come in thosequarters. " These gifts having been received with great rejoicing, there followed feasting, powwowing in council, and a scalp-dance, allof which occupied three days and consumed, in good Indian fashion, theprovisions which should have helped them to get through the fastapproaching winter. Accordingly, we soon read of the horrors offamine, amid the gloomy wintry forests, the trees laden and the grounddeeply covered with snow. Radisson gives a moving description of it. "It {214} grows wors and wors dayly. . . . Every one cryes out forhunger. Children, you must die. Ffrench, you called yourselves Godsof the earth, that you should be feered; notwithstanding you shall tastof the bitternesse. . . . In the morning the husband looks upon hiswife, the Brother his sister, the cozen the cozen, the Oncle the nevew, that weare for the most part found dead. " So for two or three pages hegoes on telling of the cruel suffering and of the various substitutesfor nourishing food, such as bark ground and boiled; bones that hadlain about the camp, picked clean by dogs and crows, now carefullygathered and boiled; then "the skins that weare reserved to make usshoose, cloath, and stokins, " and at last even the skins of the tentsthat covered them. 

Radisson and his brother had long since eaten their dogs. About thistime "there came 2 men from a strange countrey who had a dogg" thesight of which was very tempting. "That dogge was very leane and ashungry as we weare. " Still the sight of him was more than mortal couldbear. In vain the two Frenchmen offered an extravagant price for thepoor beast; his owners would not part with him. Then they resolved{215} to "catch him cunningly. " So Radisson watches his opportunity, prowling at night near the visitors' cabin, and when the dog comes out, snatches him up, stabs him, and carries him to his party, where he isimmediately cut up and "broyled like a pigge. " Even the snow soakedwith his blood goes into the kettles. 

Radisson's description of the horrors of that fearful time will notfail to remind readers of Hiawatha of the poet Longfellow's picture ofa famine in the same region in which Radisson was. The main featuresare the same. There is the bitter cold, O the long and dreary winter! O the cold and cruel winter!

There is the gloomy, snow-laden forest, Ever deeper, deeper, deeper Fell the snow o'er all the landscape, Fell the covering snow, and drifted Through the forest, round the village. 

There are the pitiful cries of the helpless, starving ones, O the wailing of the children! O the anguish of the women!

There is the hunter engaged in his bootless quest, {216}

 Vainly walked he through the forest, Sought for bird or beast and found none, Saw no track of deer or rabbit, In the snow beheld no footprints. 

Then came the two dread visitors, Famine and Fever, and fixed theirawful gaze on Minnehaha, who

 Lay there trembling, freezing, burning At the looks they cast upon her, At the fearful words they uttered. 

Out into the forest rushes Hiawatha, crying frantically to Heaven, "Give me food for Minnehaha, For my dying Minnehaha!" Through the far-resounding forest, Through the forest vast and vacant Rang the cry of desolation, But there came no other answer Than the echo of the woodlands, "Minnehaha! Minnehaha!"

All the day he roamed the gloomy depths of the wintry woods, stillvainly seeking food. When he came home empty-handed, heavy-hearted, lo! the spirit of Minnehaha had fled to the Islands of the Blessed. Her body they laid in the snow, In the forest deep and darksome, Underneath the moaning hemlocks. 

{217}

The singularly vivid descriptions of Indian life, with its alternationsof human affection and fiendish cruelty, of daring and cowardice, ofgorging and starving, make one of the most interesting features ofRadisson's book. He lived the life himself and left such a picture ofit as few white men could have drawn. Accordingly, he soon tells offeasting once more. What broke the famine was a storm of wind and rainthat caused the snow to fall from the trees, cleared the forests, andformed, after a freeze, a crust on the snow that enabled the hunters tokill an abundance of game. Deer, with their sharp hoofs, broke throughthe crust "after they made 7 or 8 capers" (bounds), and were easilytaken. There was other food, too, for there came a deputation ofIndians to visit the white strangers, accompanied by their women"loaded of Oates, corne that growes in that country. " He means wildrice, which formed the staple food of certain tribes. This was a gift, and at its presentation there were elaborate ceremonies, the account ofwhich fills several pages. Still this was only the beginning, for theappointed time for a grand council was approaching, and soon therearrived deputations from eighteen different tribes, until five hundred{218} warriors were assembled. More feasting, more ceremonies, morehonors to the white visitors, who received more beaver-skins than theycould possibly carry away, and pledges of eternal friendship on bothsides. 

Hardly were these rites ended, when there came fresh troops of savages, and all began over again. "There weare, " says Radisson, "playes, mirths, and bataills for sport. In the publick place the women dancedwith melody. The yong men that indeavoured to gett a pryse [prize]indeavored to clime up a great post, very smooth, and greased with oyleof beare. "

Then followed a most interesting exhibition "in similitud of warrs, "the young men going through the various motions of attack, retreat, andthe like, without a word, all the commands being given by "nodding orgesture, " the old men meanwhile beating furiously on drums made of"earthen potts full of water covered with staggs-skin. " There followeda dance of women, "very modest, not lifting much their feete from theground, making a sweet harmony. "

Finally, after more feasting, more "renewing of alliances, " moreexchange of gifts, in which, of course, the Frenchmen received valuablefurs in {219} return for the merest trifles, the great assembly brokeup, the red men filed off toward their distant villages, and thehonored strangers started on their long homeward journey, with numeroussled-loads of peltry. 

All that summer they traveled among the numerous islands on the northshore of the great lake, enjoying an abundance of ducks, fish, andfresh meat. Radisson was amazed at "the great number of ffowles thatare so fatt by eating of this graine [wild rice] that heardly they willmove from it. " He saw "a wildman killing 3 ducks at once with onearrow. "

When the final start was made for the French settlements, there wereseven hundred Indians in 360 canoes, with a proportionately largequantity of beaver-skins. A stop was made at the River of Sturgeons, to lay in a store of food against the voyage. In a few days over athousand of these fish were killed and dried. 

After they had started again, Radisson came near to parting unwillinglywith the splendid fleet of canoes that he was guiding down to theFrench settlements. One day they espied seven Iroquois. So great wasthe dread of these formidable savages, that, though these seven took totheir heels and {220} discarded their kettles, even their arms, intheir flight, the sight of them threw the hundreds with Radisson into apanic. They were for breaking up and putting off their visit toMontreal for a year. Radisson pleaded hard, and, after twelve days ofdelay and powwowing, he succeeded in prevailing on all except the Creesto go on with him. 

Down the St. Mary's River into Lake Huron the great fleet of canoeswent in long procession. Then, the wind being favorable, everybodyhoisted some kind of sail, and they were driven along merrily untilthey came to the portage. This passed, they went on down the OttawaRiver without misadventure as far as the long rapids. Then anotherpanic seized the Indian fleet, this time on more reasonable grounds, for the party discovered the evidences of a slaughter of Frenchmen. Seventeen of these, with about seventy Algonquins and Hurons, had laidan ambush here for Iroquois, whom they expected to pass this way. Instead, the biter was bitten. The Iroquois, when they came, numberedmany hundreds, and they overwhelmed and, after a desperate resistance, destroyed the little band of Frenchmen, with their allies. Theappalling {221} evidences of this slaughter were terrible proof thatthe enemy were numerous in that neighborhood. Even Radisson and hisbrother were alarmed. They had much ado to persuade their Indianfriends to go on with them. As last they succeeded and proudly led toMontreal the biggest canoe-fleet that had ever arrived there, "a numberof boats that did almost cover ye whole River. "

It was a great triumph for the two daring _voyageurs_ to bring tomarket such a volume of trade and many Indians from distant tribes whonever before had visited the French. 

They expected that this service would be recognized. Instead, theGovernor put Groseillers in prison and fined both an enormous sum forgoing away without his leave. Incensed at this injustice, theydetermined on going to London and offering their services to theEnglish King. This was the reason of Radisson's translating the notesof his travels into a language that was foreign to him, with such queerresults as we have seen in the extracts that have been given. 

[1] Dr. Reuben G. Thwaites in his "Father Marquette" quotes thefollowing description, written by a Jesuit missionary about eight yearsafter Radisson's visit: "What is commonly called the Saut is notproperly a Saut, or a very high water-fall, but a very violent currentof waters from Lake Superior, which, finding themselves checked by agreat number of rocks, form a dangerous cascade of half a league inwidth, all these waters descending and plunging headlong together. "

[2] It is interesting to learn that the whitefish, so much prizedtoday, was held in equally high esteem so long ago, and even before thecoming of the white men. The same writer quoted above by Dr. Thwaitestells of throngs of Indians coming every summer to the rapids to takethese fish, which were particularly abundant there, and describes themethod. The fisherman, he says, stands upright in his canoe, and as hesees fish gliding between the rocks, thrusting down a pole on the endof which is a net in the shape of a pocket, sometimes catches six orseven at a haul. 

[3] The great steamers of to-day follow this route, which the Indian'sbark canoe frequented hundreds of years ago. This illustrates theinteresting fact that, over all this continent, the Indians were theearliest pathmakers. Important railroads follow the lines of trailsmade by moccasined feet, and steamboats plough the waters of routeswhich the birch canoe skimmed for centuries. 

[4] Undoubtedly it was one of these "sturgeons of a vast bignesse"that, according to the legend, swallowed both Hiawatha and his canoe. We are now in Hiawatha's country, and we are constantly reminded byRadisson's descriptions of passages in Longfellow's beautiful poem. 

[5] This little structure has a peculiar interest, because of itsbeing, in all probability, the first habitation of white men on theshores of Lake Superior. It seems to have stood on Chequamegon Bay. 

{225}

Chapter XIII

ROBERT CAVELIER, SIEUR DE LA SALLE, THE FIRST EXPLORER OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI

La Salle's Early Association with the Jesuits. --His Domain inCanada. --He starts on an Exploring Expedition. --Disappears fromView. --The Favor of Frontenac. --La Salle's ExtraordinaryCommission. --Niagara Falls. --The First Vessel ever launched on theUpper Lakes. --Great Hardships of the Journey. --Arrival in the Countryof the Illinois. --Fort Crèvecoeur built. --Perilous Journey back toCanada. --La Salle starts again for the Illinois Country. --IroquoisAtrocities and Cannibalism. --La Salle goes as far as the Mississippiand returns. --Tonty's Perilous Experiences. --Boisrondet's Ingenuitysaves his Life. --La Salle journeys down the Great River. --InterestingTribes of Indians. --The Ocean!--Louisiana named. --Hardships of theReturn Journey. --Fort St. Louis built. 

Robert Cavelier, more generally known as La Salle, at the first wasconnected with the Jesuits, but left the Society of Jesus and, at theyouthful age of twenty-three, came to Canada to seek his fortune. Hehad an elder brother among the priests of St. Sulpice. These, beinganxious to have a fringe of settlements outside of their own {226} as asort of screen against Indian attacks, granted to La Salle a quiteconsiderable tract a few miles from Montreal. Here he laid out avillage surrounded by a palisade and let out his land to settlers for atrifling rent. 

With a view to exploration, he at once began to study the Indianlanguages. Like Champlain and all the early explorers, he dreamed of apassage to the Pacific and a new route for the commerce of China andJapan. The name which to this day clings to the place which hesettled, La Chine (China), is said to have been bestowed by hisneighbors, in derision of what they considered his visionary schemes. 

After two or three years La Salle, beginning his real life-work, soldhis domain and its improvements, equipped a party, and started out intothe wilderness. We trace his route as far as the Seneca country, inwestern New York. Then for two years we lose sight of him altogether. This time he passed among the Indians; and there is the best reason forbelieving that he discovered the Ohio River and, quite probably, theIllinois. 

When Joliet and Marquette ascertained that the outlet of the GreatWater was in the Gulf of {227} Mexico, their discovery put an end tothe fond hope of establishing a new route to East India and China byway of the Mississippi, but it inspired a brilliant thought in LaSalle's mind. Why should France be shut up in Canada, with itspoverty, its rigorous climate, its barren soil, covered with snow forhalf the year? Why not reach out and seize the vast interior, with itssmiling prairies and thousands of miles of fertile soil, with theglorious Mississippi for a waterway? She already held the approach atone end, namely, through the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Let hergo forward on the path which lay open before her. To realize thissplendid dream became the purpose of his life. 

The coming of Count Frontenac to Canada as its governor was a boon toLa Salle. Both were essentially men of the world, with ambitions oftheir own. Both were strong men, daring, ardent, and resolute; andboth heartily hated the Jesuits and were hated by them with equalfervor. Both, too, were men of small means who aimed at vast results. In short, they were kindred spirits. But the one was Governor ofCanada, and the other was an almost penniless adventurer. This factdetermined their relations. La Salle {228} became a partisan ofFrontenac, siding with him against certain fur-traders and the Jesuits. Frontenac became the protector of La Salle, backing his schemes withhis influence and giving him a strong recommendation to the King. 

Now, Frontenac had built a fort near the lower end of Lake Ontario, about the site of Kingston. It had the look of being a great publicbenefit, for it would help to hold the Iroquois in check and it wouldcut off trade from the English. On these grounds the expense ofbuilding it was justified. But the Jesuits and the fur-traders wereopposed to it, the fur-traders because they foresaw the loss of a largepart of their trade. Indians bringing their annual canoe-loads ofpeltry to market would not take the long trip to Montreal and Quebec, if they could barter them off at a much nearer point. They suspected, with good reason, that this new fort, erected ostensibly for thedefence of the country, was really meant to cut off from them the tradethat came down the Lakes and turn it into the hands of the Governor andthose who might be in secret league with him. 

The feeling was very strong, and attempts were made to induce the Kingto have the {229} obnoxious fort demolished. Just then La Salle sailedfor France with strong letters from Frontenac. Imagine the rage of hisopponents when he returned not only master of the fort, but a titledman, the Sieur de La Salle, with the King's patent in his pocket givinghim a princely grant of many square miles on the mainland and theadjacent islands!

But how was a needy adventurer to raise the money to pay for the fortand to do all the high-sounding things that he had promised the King?He counted on raising money on the strength of his great expectations. He was not disappointed. His friends and relatives rejoicing in hisgood fortune, which they naturally hoped to share, lent large sums ofmoney to enable him to carry out his agreement with his royal master. Now he began piling up a mass of debts that alone would have crushed acommon man. He had, besides, a tremendous combination to fight, nearlyall the merchants of the colony, backed by the influence of the Jesuits. 

Still La Salle might have settled down in his seigniory, commanded hissoldiers, lorded it over his colony, controlled the trade of the Lakes, paid off his debts, and have grown enormously rich {230} within a fewyears from the profits of the fur-trade. But he flew at higher gamethan money, and cared for it only as it might serve his ambition. Hewas dreaming of the Gulf of Mexico and in imagination ruling aSouthwestern New France many times larger than the old. 

Therefore he took ship again for France. This time he went crownedwith success. He had done all and more than all that he had engaged todo. He had torn down the wooden fort and replaced it with one ofstone, surmounted with nine cannon. He had erected a forge, a mill, abakery, barracks, and officers' quarters. He had gathered about him avillage of Iroquois, who were under the teaching of two Recolletfriars. Some French families had been settled on farms. Land had beencleared and planted. Cattle, fowls, and swine had been brought up fromMontreal. Four small vessels had been built for use on the lake andriver. Altogether, French civilization was handsomely represented atthis lonely outpost; and La Salle had shown what he was capable ofdoing as an organizer and ruler. Now he went to ask another grant. 

Fancy the dismay of his opponents when he came back, in the followingyear, with an {231} extraordinary commission that gave him authority to"labor at the discovery of the western parts of New France, throughwhich, to all appearance, _a way may be found to Mexico_. " The lastwords show its true purpose. Louis aimed a blow at his enemy, Spain, the mistress of Mexico, and La Salle was the arm through which he meantto strike. The document gave him authority to build forts wherever hesaw fit, and to own and govern them under the same conditions as FortFrontenac. In short, he had a roving commission to go wherever hepleased between the eastern end of Lake Ontario and the borders ofMexico, and to exercise the authority of a royal governor anywhere inall that vast region. But he must do all at his own expense, and hemust do it all within five years. 

His most serious need was that of money. But, with his usual successin drawing other men's means into his schemes, he obtained a large sum, on which he was to pay interest at the rate of forty per cent. We cansee that he was piling up debts fast enough to meet the wishes of hisheartiest haters. 

Now La Salle was in a position to enter on his grand undertaking, thedream to which he {232} devoted his life. His first step was to send aparty of men ahead in canoes to Lake Michigan, to trade with theIndians and collect provisions against his coming, while another party, one of whom was the famous Father Hennepin, started in a small vesselup Lake Ontario, to await La Salle's coming at Niagara. In due timethey reached the Niagara River, and the earliest published account ofthe great cataract is Father Hennepin's. [1]

This advance party had orders to begin a fort on the Niagara River, butthe distrust of the Senecas proved to be an obstinate barrier. Thisfamous tribe, occupying the Genesee Valley northward to the shore ofLake Ontario, while on the west its territory extended to Lake Erie, was fiercely jealous of white men's coming to plant themselves in theircountry. 

When La Salle arrived, however, with his usual tact in managingIndians, he succeeded in securing their consent to his putting up, nota fort, but a fortified warehouse at the mouth of the Niagara River andbuilding a vessel above the Falls. 

{233}

Now the first of a series of misfortunes befell him in the loss of thelittle vessel that had brought him to Niagara. She was freighted withthe outfit for his great exploration and with goods for barter. Buteverything was lost, except only the anchors and cables intended forthe vessel that was to be built. He bore the loss with his unvaryingfortitude. 

At last all difficulties were so far overcome that the keel of thelittle vessel was laid. While the work was going on, Indians werehanging around watching it sullenly, and a squaw told the French thather people meant to burn it. The weather was cold, and the men of theparty themselves had little heart in the enterprise. The loss ofprovisions in the wrecked vessel had put them on short allowance. Onlythe skill of two Mohegan hunters kept them supplied with food. It washard work, too, for the builders needed to bring loads from the othervessel on their backs, a distance of some twelve miles. 

In spite of all these difficulties, the little craft was finished, and, at the opening of the ice in the spring, there glided down into theNiagara the first keel that ever cut the water of the Upper Lakes, theforerunner of to-day's enormous {234} tonnage. Her figure-head was amythical monster, and her name the "Griffin, " both taken fromFrontenac's coat of arms. 

On August 7, the "Griffin" fired her cannon, spread her sails, and boreaway up Lake Erie, carrying the expedition which La Salle hoped wouldmake him master of the Mississippi Valley. The plan was to sail to thehead of Lake Michigan, near the site of Chicago, then to march to theIllinois River; there to build another vessel, and in the latter tosail down the Mississippi, into the Gulf, and to the very WestIndies--an enterprise of Titanic audacity. 

The first part of the voyage was delightful. We may wonder whether ourvoyagers saw one amazing sight which Jonathan Carver describes. "Thereare, " he says, "several islands near the west end of it [Lake Erie] soinfested with rattlesnakes that it is very dangerous to land on them. The lake is covered, near the banks of the islands, with the largepond-lily, the leaves of which lie on the water so thick as to cover itentirely for many acres together; and on each of these lay, when Ipassed over it, wreaths of water-snakes basking in the sun, whichamounted to myriads!"

On the shore were verdant prairies and fine {235} forests. When thevoyagers entered Detroit River they saw herds of deer and flocks ofwild turkeys, and the hunters easily kept the party supplied withvenison and bear meat. On they sailed, across Lake St. Clair and outupon Lake Huron, passed within sight of the Manitoulins, and finallycame to anchor in the cove of Mackinaw Strait, where were the famoustrading-post and mission-station of Michillimackinac. 

At Green Bay La Salle found some of his men who had remained faithfuland had collected a large store of furs. This circumstance caused himnew perplexity. He had furs enough to satisfy his creditors, and hewas strongly moved to go back to the colony and settle with them. Onthe other hand, he dreaded leaving his party, which would surely betampered with by his enemies. Should his strong hand be withdrawn, theparty probably would go to pieces. Finally he decided to remain withthe expedition and to send the "Griffin" back with her valuable cargoto Fort Niagara and with orders to return immediately to the head ofLake Michigan. It was an unfortunate decision. The vessel's pilot wasalready under suspicion of having treacherously wrecked the vesselwhich perished on Lake {236} Ontario. The "Griffin" sailed and neverwas heard of again. Whether she foundered on the lake, was dashed onthe shore, or was plundered and scuttled, La Salle never knew. Hebelieved the latter to have been the case. Her loss was the breakingof an indispensable link in the chain. But La Salle was still ignorantof it, and he went on his way hopefully to the head of Lake Michigan. 

A hard time the men had in paddling the heavily laden canoes, subsisting on a scant ration of Indian corn, and at night dragging thecanoes up a steep bank and making their cheerless camp. By the timethat they reached the site of Milwaukee all were worn out. 

They were glad enough when they saw two or three eagles among a greatgathering of crows or turkey-buzzards, and, hastening to the spot, theyfound the torn carcass of a deer, lately killed by wolves. However, asthey neared the head of the lake, game became more abundant, and LaSalle's famous Mohegan hunters had no difficulty in providing bear'smeat and venison. 

Winter was fast setting in, and La Salle was anxious to go on to theIllinois towns before the warriors should go away on their usual winter{237} hunting. But he was compelled to wait for Tonty, an Italianofficer of great courage and splendid loyalty who had come out toAmerica as his lieutenant. With twenty men, he was making his way byland down the eastern shore. At last he appeared, with his menhalf-starved, having been reduced to living on acorns. But where wasthe "Griffin"? This was the place appointed for her meeting with theexpedition. But there were no tidings of her fate. After waiting aslong as he could, La Salle, with heavy forebodings, pushed on. 

Now the explorers shouldered their canoes and struck out across thefrozen swamps. At last they came to a sluggish streamlet, theheadwaters of the Kankakee. They launched their canoes on it and werecarried, within a few days, into a prairie country strewn with thecarcasses of innumerable buffalo, for this was a favoritehunting-ground of the Indians. But not one of the animals was insight. The men were nearly starving and, at the best, discontented andsullen. Two lean deer and a few geese, all the game that the huntershad been able to secure within several days, were short commons forthirty-three men with appetites sharpened by traveling in the keen{238} December air. It was a God-send when they found a buffalo-bullmired fast. The famished men quickly despatched him, and by theefforts of twelve of their number dragged the huge carcass out of theslough. 

Down the Illinois River the voyagers traveled until they came in sightof wigwams on both sides of the river. La Salle expected trouble, forhis enemies had been busy among the Illinois, stirring them up againsthim by representing that he had incited the Iroquois to make war uponthem. He ordered his men to take their arms. Then the eight canoes inline abreast drifted down between the two wings of the encampment. 

There was great confusion on both banks. The women screeched, and themen yelled and seized their bows and war-clubs. La Salle knew well howto deal with Indians and that it was poor policy to show himself tooeager for peace. He leaped ashore, followed by his men, arms in hand. The Indians were more frightened by his sudden appearance than disposedto attack him, as they at once showed by holding up a peace pipe. Andsoon they overwhelmed the strangers with lavish hospitality. 

These people, who formed one of the largest {239} branches of theAlgonquin stock, were particular objects of hatred to the Iroquois. Atone time they were driven across the Mississippi by these ruthlessfoes, who had traveled five or six hundred miles to attack them. There, probably, they encountered equally savage enemies, the Sioux. At all events, they returned to their old abode on the Illinois River, where La Salle found them. The deadly enmity of the Iroquois towardthem burst out again shortly afterward, as we shall see. 

La Salle took advantage of the opportunity to assure his hosts that ifthe Iroquois attacked them, he would stand by them, give them guns, andfight for them. Then he shrewdly added that he intended building afort among them and a big wooden canoe in which he would descend to thesea and bring goods for them. All this looked very plausible and wontheir hearts. The next day La Salle and his companions were invited toa feast and, of course, went. The host seized the opportunity ofwarning them against descending the Great Water. He told them that itsbanks were infested by ferocious tribes and its waters full ofserpents, alligators, dangerous rocks, and whirlpools; in short, thatthey never would reach the ocean alive. 

{240}

This harangue was interpreted to La Salle's men by two _coureurs debois_ who understood every word of it. La Salle saw dismayoverspreading the faces of his already disheartened men. But when histurn came to speak, he gave the Indians a genuine surprise. "We werenot asleep, " he said, "when the messenger of my enemies told you thatwe were spies of the Iroquois. We know all his lies and that thepresents he brought you are at this moment buried in the earth underthis lodge. " This proof of what seemed more than human sagacityoverwhelmed the Indians, and they had nothing more to say, littledreaming that La Salle had received secret information from a friendlychief. 

Nevertheless, the next morning, when La Salle looked about for hissentinels, not one of them was to be seen. Six of his men, includingtwo of the best carpenters, upon whom he depended for building thevessel, had deserted. 

To withdraw his men from the demoralizing influences of the Indiancamp, La Salle chose a naturally strong position at some distance downthe river, fortified it, and built lodgings for the men, together witha house for the friars. This, the first habitation reared by white menin the {241} territory now comprised in the State of Illinois, stood alittle below the site of Peoria and was called Fort Crèvecoeur. Thisname, Fort Break-Heart, was taken from that of a celebratedfortification in Europe. It was to be a heart-breaker to the enemy. 

La Salle believed in the doctrine of work as the best preventive of lowspirits, and he kept his men at it. No sooner was the fort finishedthan he began to build the vessel. Two of his carpenters, we remember, had deserted. "Seeing, " he says, "that if I should wait to get othersfrom Montreal, I should lose a whole year, I said one day before mypeople that I was so vexed to find that the absence of two sawyerswould defeat my plans, that I was resolved to try to saw the planksmyself, if I could find a single man who would help me with a will. "Two men stepped forward and said they would try what they could do. The result was that the work was begun and was pushed along sosuccessfully that within two weeks the hull of the vessel was halffinished. 

La Salle now felt free to make the unavoidable journey to Montreal, tolook after his affairs. His men were in better heart, and the vesselwas well on its way to completion. Leaving the {242} faithful Tonty incharge of the fort with its garrison, mostly of scoundrels, he set outwith his trusty Mohegan and four Frenchmen. 

A few days earlier he had sent off Father Hennepin with two Frenchmen, to explore the lower part of the Illinois. In another place we shallread the story of their adventures. 

We shall not follow La Salle on his journey back to Canada. It was aterribly hard experience of sixty-five days' travel through a countrybeset with every form of difficulty and swarming with enemies, "themost arduous journey, " says the chronicler, "ever made by Frenchmen inAmerica. " But there was a worse thing to come. When La Salle reachedNiagara, he learned not only the certainty of the "Griffin's" loss, with her valuable cargo, but that a vessel from France freighted withindispensable goods for him had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and a party of twenty hired men on their way from Europe tojoin him had, on their arrival, been so disheartened by reports of hisfailure and death, that only four persisted in their purpose. 

This was but the beginning of a series of disasters. His agents atFort Frontenac had plundered him; his creditors had seized hisproperty; {243} several of his canoes loaded with furs had been lost inthe rapids of the St. Lawrence; and a letter from Tonty, brought to himby two _voyageurs_, told him that nearly all the men, after destroyingFort Crèvecoeur, had deserted. 

What a blow! Fort Crèvecoeur, with its supplies, was the base of hisgreat enterprise. Now it was destroyed, its garrison gone, and Tonty, with a few faithful men, alone remained of his costly expedition. Butthis lion-hearted man, whom no disasters could daunt, borrowed moremoney at ruinous rates of interest, captured a party of his deserterson Lake Ontario, killing two who resisted arrest and locking up theothers at Fort Frontenac, and hastened off on the long journey torelieve Tonty in the Illinois country. 

When the party reached the Illinois River they beheld a stirring sight. Far and near, the prairie was alive with buffalo, while hundreds wereplunging and snorting in the water. The opportunity was not to belost. The voyagers landed and encamped for a hunt. For three daysthey gave themselves up to the excitement of the chase, killing twelvebuffalo, besides deer, geese, and swans. Then, with an ample supply ofdried and smoked meat, they re-embarked. 

{244}

When they reached the site of the populous Illinois town, the place wasdesolate, not a human being in sight. Only heaps of ashes and charredpoles and stakes showed where the lodges had stood. The whole meadowwas blackened by fire. Hundreds of wolves skulked about the burialground of the village. The ground was strewn with broken bones andmangled corpses. Every grave had been rifled, and the bodies had beenthrown down from the scaffolds where many of them had been placed. 

It was evident what had happened. The Iroquois had made a descent, insome way had missed their prey, and had wreaked their vengeance on thedead. But where were Tonty and his men? There was no sign of theirhaving been killed. Neither had any trace been observed of theirpassing up the river. It must be that they had escaped down the riverwith the Illinois in their flight. La Salle promptly determined whatto do. Leaving a part of his men, he hid his baggage and started downthe stream with a few trusty men carrying little besides their arms. When they reached the ruins of Fort Crèvecoeur, they found the vesselon the stocks untouched. 

{245}

La Salle pushed on down to the mouth of the river, without finding atrace of his missing countrymen. Now the Great Water rolled beforehim. Once he had dreamed night and day of seeing it. But to see itunder such circumstances as these, --what a mockery of his hopes! Theone thought on his mind was to find and rescue Tonty. There was nosign of him here. To go further would have been useless, and La Salleturned back, paddling day and night, and rejoined his men whom he hadleft. Then all started northward. On their way down they had followedthe Kankakee. Now they took the Des Plaines route. Near a bark cabina bit of wood that had been cut with a saw showed that Tonty and hismen had gone this way. If they had but left at the fork of the streamsome sign of their passage, La Salle's party would have seen it ontheir way down, and all this anxiety would have been obviated. 

With his mind relieved, La Salle was glad to rest for a while at hislittle Fort Miami, situated at the mouth of the St. Joseph River. 

Tonty had passed through perilous straits. The desertion of the largerpart of his men left him with but three fighting men and two friars. 

{246}

Next came a tremendous war-party of Iroquois to attack the Illinois, inthe midst of whom he was. For various reasons, the Illinois suspectedthat the Frenchmen had brought this trouble upon them and, but forTonty's coolness, would have mobbed and murdered the little handful ofwhite men. When the Iroquois began the attack, Tonty went among them, at the peril of his life, actually receiving a wound from an infuriatedyoung warrior, and succeeded in stopping the fighting by telling theIroquois that the Illinois numbered twelve hundred, and that there weresixty armed Frenchmen, ready to back them. 

The effect of this timely fabrication was magical. The Iroquois atonce were for peace and employed Tonty to arrange a truce. That nightthe Illinois slipped away down the river. The Iroquois followed them, on the opposite shore, watching for an opportunity to attack. This didnot offer itself, but they actually drove the Illinois out of their owncountry, after perpetrating a butchery of women and children. 

Meanwhile they had discovered Tonty's deception and were enraged. Hehad robbed them of a prey for which they had marched hundreds of miles. Only a wholesome fear of Count {247} Frontenac, of whom the Indiansstood in great awe, kept them from falling on the little band. As itwas, matters looked so stormy that the Frenchmen stood on the watch allnight, expecting an attack. At daybreak the chiefs bade them begone. Accordingly they embarked in a leaky canoe and started up the river. 

At their first stop Father Ribourde strolled away. When he did notreappear his comrades became alarmed. Tonty and one of the men went insearch of him. They followed his tracks until they came to the trailof a band of Indians who had apparently carried him off. Theyafterward learned that a roving band of Kickapoos, one of the worstspecimens of the Algonquin stock, prowling around the Iroquois camp insearch of scalps, had murdered the inoffensive old man and carried hisscalp in triumph to their village. 

Another of their party came near to meeting with an untimely end, buthis ingenuity saved his life. They had abandoned their worthless canoeand were making their way on foot, living on acorns and roots, when theyoung Sieur de Boisrondet wandered off and was lost. The flint of hisgun had dropped out, and he had no bullets. {248} But he cut a pewterporringer into slugs, discharged his gun with a fire-brand, and thuskilled wild turkeys. After several days he was so fortunate as torejoin his party. 

The poor fellows suffered terribly from cold and hunger while makingtheir way along the shore of Lake Michigan, but finally found ahospitable refuge among the Pottawattamies, of Green Bay, a friendlyAlgonquin tribe. 

La Salle's heart was as much as ever set on following the Great Waterto the sea. But he had learned the difficulties in the way of buildinga vessel and had resolved to travel by canoe. 

The winter at Fort Miami was spent by him in organizing the expedition. With this view he gathered about him a number of Indians from the farEast who had fled for safety to the western wilds after the disastrousissue of King Philip's War, chiefly Abenakis, from Maine, and Mohegansfrom the Hudson. These New England Indians, who had long been thedeadly foes of the English Puritans, were happy in enrolling themselvesunder a Frenchman and were ready to go with La Salle anywhere. Hisplan was to form a great Indian confederation, like that of the FiveNations, and powerful enough to resist it. {249} With this powerfulbody of Indians, backed by a sufficient number of French guns, he couldhold the Mississippi Valley against all enemies, white or red. 

When he had opened the route to the Gulf of Mexico by passing down theGreat River and taking possession of its whole length in the name ofthe French King, there would be a new outlet for the immensely valuablefur-trade of all that vast area drained by it and its tributaries. Instead of the long journey down the Lakes and the St. Lawrence, tradewould take the shorter and easier route to the Gulf of Mexico. 

But how could even La Salle fail to see the enormous difficulties inthe way, --the hostility of remote tribes down the river; the sureopposition of Spain, which was supreme on and around the Gulf, and, most of all, the bitter enmity of the French in Canada? The schememeant disaster to their interests, by turning a large part of theirtrade into another channel and setting up on the Mississippi a new andpowerful rival of Canada, with La Salle at its head. 

All commercial Canada and nearly all official Canada were alreadyincensed against him on the mere suspicion of his purposes. If theysaw {250} these taking actual form, would they not rage and move heavenand earth, that is to say, Louis the Great, [2] to crush them? A man ofless than La Salle's superhuman audacity would not in his wildestmoments have dreamed of such a thing. He deliberately cherished thescheme and set himself calmly to executing it. 

On December 21, 1682, the expedition started from Fort Miami. Itconsisted of twenty-three white men, eighteen Indian warriors, and tensquaws, with three children. These New England savages had made abloody record in their own country, knew well how to use guns, and werebetter adapted to the work in hand than raw Europeans, however brave, who had no experience of Indian warfare. 

On February 6 the voyagers saw before them the broad current of theMississippi, full of floating ice. For a long distance they paddledtheir canoes down the mighty current without adventure. As they faredon day by day, they realized that they were entering a summer land. The warm air and hazy sunlight and opening flowers were in delightfulcontrast with the ice and snow from which they had emerged. Once {251}there seemed to be danger of an attack from Indians whose war-drum theycould hear beating. A fog lifted, and the Indians, looking across theriver, saw the Frenchmen at work building a fort. Peace signals weredisplayed from both sides, and soon the white men and their Indianallies from rugged New England were hobnobbing in the friendliest waywith these dusky denizens of the southwestern woods. These were a bandof the Arkansas, the same people who had treated Joliet and Marquetteso handsomely. They lavished every kind attention on their guests andkept them three days. The friar, Membré, who chronicled theexpedition, describes them as "gay, civil, and free-hearted, exceedingly well-formed and with all so modest that not one of themwould take the liberty to enter our hut, but all stood quietly at thedoor. " He adds, "we did not lose the value of a pin while we wereamong them. "

La Salle had now reached the furthest point of Joliet and Marquette'sexploration. He reared a cross, took possession of the country in hismaster's name, and pushed on. On the western side of the river theyvisited the home of the Taensas Indians and were amazed at the degree{252} of social advancement which they found among them. There weresquare dwellings, built of sun-baked mud mixed with straw, and arrangedin regular order around an open area; and the King was attended by acouncil of sixty grave old men wearing white cloaks of the fine innerfibre of mulberry bark. The temple was a large structure, full of adim, mysterious gloom, within which burned a sacred fire, as an emblemof the sun, watched and kept up unceasingly by two aged priests. 

Altogether, the customs and social condition of these people were morelike those of the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans than those of the wildtribes with whom the explorers were familiar. When the chief visitedLa Salle he came in great state, preceded by women who bore white fans, and wearing a disk of burnished copper, --probably to indicate that hewas a child of the Sun, for the royal family claimed this high lineage. 

The next day the Frenchmen visited a kindred tribe, the Natchez, amongwhom they observed similar usages. They were hospitably entertainedand spent the night in their villages. Their chief town was some milesdistant, near the site of the {253} city of Natchez. Here again LaSalle planted a cross, less as a symbol of Christianity than of Frenchoccupation. [3]

{254} Near the mouth of the Red River, in the neighborhood of the placewhere Soto had been buried, the voyagers, while attempting to followsome fleeing natives, received a shower of arrows from a canoe. LaSalle, anxious to avoid a hostile encounter, drew his men off. Nodoubt the Indians of this region preserved proud traditions of theirforefathers' pursuit of the escaping Spaniards, the remnant of Soto'sexpedition. 

On April 6 with what elation must La Salle have beheld the waters ofthe Gulf sparkling in the rays of the southern sun! The dream of yearswas realized. His long struggle and his hopes and failures and renewedefforts were crowned with success. One hundred and ninety years afterColumbus's discovery, at enormous expense, he had led a party from thegreat fresh-water seas to the southern ocean, and had opened, he fondlybelieved, a new route for trade. But long years were to elapse ere hisvision should become a reality. 

Proudly and hopefully, in full view of the sea, he reared a cross and acolumn bearing the arms {255} of France and, with the singing of hymnsand volleys of musketry, solemnly proclaimed Louis, of France, to bethe rightful sovereign "of this country of Louisiana, " as he named it, "the seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the nations, peoples, provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fisheries, streams, and rivers within the extent of the said Louisiana, and also to the mouth of the River of Palms" (the Rio Grande). Atremendous claim surely, the historian Parkman remarks, covering aregion watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand war-liketribes, in short, an empire in itself, and all by virtue of a feeblehuman voice, inaudible at half a mile!

Alas! at that very time, La Salle's enemies in Canada had gained theupper hand and had secured the recall of his mainstay, Count Frontenac. This meant that he could do nothing more from Canada as a base ofoperations. 

On the return voyage the party had a hard time. There was the labor ofpaddling the canoes, day after day, against the strong current, under ablazing sun. Their supplies were exhausted, and they had little to eatbut the flesh of alligators. In their extremity, they applied to {256}the Quinipissas, a little above the site of New Orleans, for corn. They got it, but had to repulse a treacherous attack at night. TheCoroas, too, who at the first had shown themselves very friendly, wereevidently bent on murdering the guests whom they entertained withpretended hospitality. Only the watchfulness of the Frenchmen and theterror inspired by their guns saved them from attack. Plainly thesenatives had grown suspicious. Then La Salle was seized with sicknesswhich nearly cut him off, and which detained him for weeks. So soon ashe was able to travel, he moved on by slow stages and, about the end ofAugust, still weak and suffering, reached Fort Miami, from which he hadstarted eight months before. Of course, he had come back empty-handed, and there was nothing substantial to show for the vast expense that hadbeen incurred. His associates in Canada, who had advanced the money, must fain content themselves with the expectation that the future wouldrepay them. 

In the meantime La Salle was carrying out his plan of founding a colonyof French and Indians on the banks of the Illinois. Here he built FortSt. Louis on a cliff, probably the one now called {257} "Starved Rock, "at the mouth of Vermilion River. Around its base, under itsprotection, were clustered the lodges of various Indian bands, ofdifferent tribes, while the Illinois, numbering several thousands, wereencamped on the other side of the river. But La Salle soon found that, with the new governor, La Barre, inimical to him, he could get nosupplies from Canada. The men whom he sent for goods were detained, and finally the Governor seized Fort Frontenac and put men in charge ofit. 

La Salle had no resource but to appeal from the Governor's high-handedinjustice to the King. He left Tonty in command of Fort St. Louis anddeparted for France. 

[1] The famous falls are first mentioned in the Jesuit "Relations" of1648. Their name is of Iroquois origin and in the Mohawk dialect ispronounced Nyagarah. 

[2] The chosen emblem of the "Grand Monarch" was the Sun. 

[3] The Taensas and the Natchez were singularly interesting tribes. Their social organization did not differ radically from that of otherIndians. But they had developed one peculiar feature: the principalclan had become a ruling caste, and the chiefs were revered asdemi-gods and treated with extravagant honor, numerous human victimsbeing sacrificed at the death of one. 

The following remarks about the Taensas and the Natchez are taken fromFather Gravier's account of his voyage, in 1700, down theMississippi:--"The Natchez and the Taensas practice polygamy, steal, and are very vicious, the girls and women more than the men and boys. The temple having been reduced to ashes last year by lightning, the oldman who sits guardian said that the spirit was incensed because no onewas put to death on the decease of the last chief, and that it wasnecessary to appease him. Five women had the cruelty to cast theirchildren into the fire, in sight of the French who recounted it to me;and but for the French there would have been a great many more childrenburned. "

At their first coming, the French found a warm welcome among theNatchez, and Fort Rosalie in the Natchez country (built shortly afterthe founding of New Orleans) was the scene for many years of constantfriendly reunions of the two races. But an arrogant and cruelcommandant, by his ill-judged severity, at a time when the warlikeChickasaws were inciting the Natchez to rise, produced a fearfulexplosion. One day a solitary soldier appeared in the hamlet of NewOrleans with fearful news. Fort Rosalie had been surprised, itsgarrison of over two hundred men massacred, and two hundred and fiftywomen and children taken prisoners. In the war that followed, theChoctaws sided with the French, the Chickasaws and Yazoos with theNatchez. Finally the French, under St. Dénis, won a complete victory, the women and children taken at Fort Rosalie were recaptured andbrought to New Orleans, and the Natchez tribe was completely broken up. The prisoners were sent to die in the cruel slavery of the San Domingosugar plantations, while a few who escaped the French were adopted intothe Chickasaw nation. 

{261}

Chapter XIV

LA SALLE AND THE FOUNDING OF LOUISIANA

La Salle leads an Expedition to seize the Mouth of the Mississippi. --ASeries of Mishaps. --Landing at Matagorda Bay. --Fort St. Louis ofTexas. --Seeking the Mississippi, La Salle explores the Interior ofTexas. --Mounted Comanches. --La Salle starts out to go to Canada forRelief. --Interesting Experiences. --La Salle assassinated. --Tonty'sHeroic Efforts to rescue him and his Party. --Supplement: The Foundingof New Orleans. 

On a day in February, 1685, a party landed from one of three vesselslying off the entrance of Matagorda Bay, on the coast of Texas. Theywere under the command of La Salle. What was this extraordinary mandoing there? In accordance with the plan which had long filled hismind, of planting French forts and colonies in the valley of the GreatRiver and giving its trade an outlet into the Gulf of Mexico, he hadcome to establish a fort on the Mississippi. This, the first part ofhis plan, was very rational, if only he had the vast resources neededfor such an undertaking. 

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But the second part was so crazy that we must suppose that his mind wasbeginning to give way. With a handful of Frenchmen and an army offifteen thousand savages, which he professed to be able to muster andto march down the Mississippi, he had promised the King of France thathe would conquer the northern province of Mexico, called New Biscay, and get possession of its valuable silver mines. 

Louis had cheerfully accepted this insane proposition--insane, if weconsider the pitiful equipment that La Salle said would suffice, namely, two ships and two hundred men. Louis was indeed furiouslyjealous of the Spanish King's success in the New World and irritated byhis arrogant treatment of the Gulf of Mexico as private property ofSpain, --as completely a "closed sea" as if it had been a duck-pond inhis palace yard. Moreover, there was war now between the twocountries, and he would gladly seize an opportunity of striking hisrival a blow in what seemed an exposed part. Besides, the risk wouldbe small. If La Salle failed, the loss would be chiefly his; if hesucceeded, a province of Mexico would be a shining jewel in the Frenchcrown. 

So here was La Salle, with an outfit {263} corresponding with his madscheme--but three ships, only one a man-of-war, the "Joly, " one alittle frigate, the "Belle, " and one a transport, the "Aimable"; forsoldiers, the destined army of invasion, a parcel of rapscallions rakedup from the docks and the prisons; for colonists some mechanics andlaborers, priests and volunteers, with the usual proportion of "brokengentlemen, " some peasant families looking for homes in the New World, and even some wretched girls who expected to find husbands in the landof promise. This ill-assorted little mob to seize and colonize themouth of the Mississippi and to wrest a province from Spain!

From the first everything had gone wrong. La Salle and theship-captains, who could not endure his haughty manners, quarreledincessantly. A Spanish cruiser captured his fourth vessel, laden withindispensable supplies for the colony. Then he was seized with adangerous fever; and while the vessels waited at San Domingo for him tobe well enough to resume the voyage, his villains roamed the island andrioted in debauchery. 

Its destination being the mouth of the Mississippi, what was theexpedition doing at Matagorda Bay, in Texas? This was the result of{264} another folly. Not a soul on board knew the navigation of theGulf, so carefully had Spain guarded her secret. The pilots had heardmuch of the currents in those waters, and they made so excessiveallowance for them that when land was sighted, instead of being, asthey supposed, about Appalachee Bay, they were on the coast of Texas, probably about Galveston Bay. In the end it proved to be a fatalmistake, wrecking the enterprise. 

On New Year's day La Salle landed and found only a vast marshy plain. Clearly, this was not the mouth of the Great River. He returned onboard, and the vessel stood westward along the coast, every eye onboard strained to catch some indication of what they sought, whereasthey were all the time sailing further from it. At one point wherethey stopped, some Indians, who doubtless were familiar with the sightof white men, swam out through the surf and came on board without anysign of fear. But, nobody knowing their language, nothing could belearned from them. 

After hovering for three weeks in sight of land, La Salle, perplexedbeyond measure, but forced to decide because the captain of theman-of-war was impatient to land the men and to sail for {265} France, announced that they were at one of the mouths of the Mississippi andordered the people and stores put ashore. 

Scarcely were they landed, when a band of Indians set upon some men atwork and carried off some of them. La Salle immediately seized hisarms, called to some of his followers, and started off in pursuit. Just as he was entering the Indian village, the report of a cannon camefrom the bay. It frightened the savages so that they fell flat on theground and gave up their prisoners without difficulty. But a chillforeboding seized La Salle. He knew that the gun was a signal ofdisaster, and, looking back, he saw the "Aimable" furling her sails. Her captain, in violation of orders, and disregarding buoys which LaSalle had put down, had undertaken to come in under sail and had endedby wrecking her. Soon she began to break up, and night fell upon thewretched colonists bivouacking on the shore, strewn with boxes andbarrels saved from the wreck, while Indians swarmed on the beach, greedy for plunder, and needed to be kept off by a guard. 

What a situation, ludicrous, had it not been tragic! Instead ofholding the key of the {266} Mississippi Valley, the expeditionists didnot even know where they were. Instead of the fifteen thousandwarriors who were expected to march with them to the conquest of NewBiscay, the squalid savages in their neighborhood annoyed them in everypossible way, set fire to the prairie when the wind blew toward them, stole their goods, ambushed a party that came in quest of the missingarticles, and killed two of them. 

Next came sickness, due to using brackish water, carrying off five orsix a day. When the captain of the little "Belle, " the last remainingvessel--for the man-of-war had sailed for France--got drunk and wreckedher on a sand-bar, the situation was truly desperate. Nobody knewwhere they were, and the last means of getting away by water hadperished. 

In the meantime La Salle had chosen a place for a temporary fort, on ariver which the French called La Vache (Cow River), on account of thebuffaloes in its vicinity, and which retains the name, in the Spanishform, Lavaca. 

La Salle returned from an exploration unsuccessful. He had foundnothing, learned nothing; only, he knew now that he was not near theMississippi. The summer had worn away, {267} steadily filling thegraveyard, and, with the coming of the autumn, he prepared for a moreextensive exploration. On the last day of October he started out withfifty men on his grand journey of exploration, leaving Joutel, hisfaithful lieutenant, in command of the fort, which containedthirty-four persons, including three Recollet friars and a number ofwomen and girls. 

The winter passed not uncomfortably for the party in the fort. Thesurrounding prairie swarmed with game, buffaloes, deer, turkeys, ducks, geese, and plover. The river furnished an abundance of turtles, andthe bay of oysters. Joutel gives a very entertaining account of hiskilling rattlesnakes, which his dog was wont to find, and of shootingalligators. The first time that he went buffalo-hunting, the animalswere very numerous, but he did not seem to kill any. Every one that hefired at lumbered away, as if it were unhurt. After some time he foundone dead, then others, and he learned that he had killed several. After their wont they had kept their feet while life lasted. Even thefriars took a hand in buffalo-hunting. 

La Salle and his party, meanwhile, were roaming wearily from tribe totribe, usually fighting {268} their way, always seeking theMississippi. At last they came to a large river which at first theymistook for it. Here La Salle built a stockade and left some of hismen, of whose fate nothing was afterward heard. Then he set out toreturn to Fort St. Louis, as he called his little fort on Lavaca. Oneday in March he reappeared with his tattered and footsore followers, some of them carrying loads of buffalo-meat. 

Surely the condition of affairs was dismal in the extreme. More than ayear gone, and as yet the Frenchmen did not even know where they were. The fierce heat of another summer was near. Still La Salle, with hismatchless courage, so soon as he recovered from a fit of illness, formed a desperate resolve. He would start out again, find theMississippi, ascend that river and the Illinois to Canada, and bringrelief to the fort. This time the party was composed of twenty men, some of them clad in deerskin, others in the garments of those who haddied. On April 11 they started out. 

Months went by. Then, to the surprise of those in the fort, oneevening La Salle reappeared, followed by eight men of the twenty whohad gone out with him. One had been lost, {269} two had deserted, onehad been seized by an alligator, and six had given out on the march andprobably perished. The survivors had encountered interestingexperiences. They had crossed the Colorado on a raft. Nika, LaSalle's favorite Shawanoe hunter, who had followed him to France andthence to Texas, had been bitten by a rattlesnake, but had recovered. Among the Cenis Indians, a branch of the Caddo family, which includesthe famed Pawnees, they met with the friendliest welcome and saw plentyof horses, silver lamps, swords, muskets, money, and other articles, all Spanish, which these people had obtained from the fierce Comanches, who had taken them in raids on the Mexican border. They also met someof the Comanches themselves and were invited to join them in a forayinto New Mexico. But La Salle had, necessarily, long since given uphis mad scheme of conquest and was thinking only of extricating himselffrom his pitiable dilemma. 

This seems to have been the first meeting of Frenchmen with mountedIndians of the plains. The possession of horses, which had strayed orbeen stolen from Spanish settlements, had transformed these wild roversfrom foot-travelers, such {270} as Cabeza de Vaca and Coronado foundthem, having no other domestic animals than dogs, into matchlesshorsemen and the most dangerous brigands on the continent, capable ofcovering hundreds of miles in an incredibly short space of time. Splendid specimens of savage manhood, presenting the best type of theShoshonee stock, they amply avenged the terror which the sight ofmounted Spaniards at first struck into the hearts of the aborigines, byharrying the colonists and laying the border in blood and ashes, asthey sometimes do to this day. [1]

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From the Cenis villages, where they bought five horses, the Frenchmenwent as far, perhaps, as the Sabine River, encamped there for twomonths, detained by La Salle's illness with fever, and then, on accountof their weakened condition, returned to Fort St. Louis. 

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A deeper pall of gloom settled upon the little band of exiles. Theyhad now been two years on that forlorn spot, and still they had noteven found their way out. From one hundred and eighty their number haddwindled to forty-five. Clearly, there was but one thing to be done. If anybody was to remain alive, the journey to Canada must beaccomplished, at all costs. This time La Salle determined to takeJoutel with him, leaving Barbier in command of the little party in thefort. 

The New Year, 1687, came, and a few days later, with sighs and tears, the parting took place which many felt was for all time, and thetravelers went away in mournful silence, with their meagre outfitpacked on the horses, leaving Barbier to hold the fort with his littleband of twenty persons, including all the women and children and a fewdisabled men. 

We shall not attempt to trace closely the movements of the travelers. For more than two months they journeyed in a northeasterly direction. At the best, they were in wretched plight, with nothing for shoes butraw buffalo-hide, which hardened about the foot and held it in the gripof a vise. After a while they bought dressed {273} deerskin from theIndians and made themselves moccasins. Rivers and streams theycrossed, two or three at a time, in a boat made of buffalo-hide, whilethe horses swam after them. They met Indians almost daily and heldfriendly intercourse with them. [2]

Once they saw a band of a hundred and fifty warriors attacking a herdof buffalo with lances, and a stirring sight it was. These warriorsentertained the Europeans most handsomely. Says La Salle's brother, the priest Cavelier, "They took us straight to the cabin of their greatchief or captain, where they first washed our hands, our heads, and ourfeet with warm water; after which they presented us boiled and roastmeat to eat, and an unknown fish, cooked whole, that was six feet long, laid in a dish of its length. It was of a wonderful taste, and wepreferred it to meat. " Here the way-worn travelers were glad to buythirty horses--enough to give every one of them a mount, and to carrytheir baggage besides--all for thirty knives, ten hatchets, and sixdozen needles!

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In one of the villages they witnessed the catching of an alligatortwelve feet long on a large hook made of bone and baited with meat. The Indians amused themselves an entire day with torturing it. Theywould have been keenly disappointed, had they known how little thisanimal, so low in the scale of life as to be almost insensible to pain, suffered from their ingenious cruelty. 

The Colorado and the Trinity were reached. A deluge of rain kept themweather-bound for four or five days. It was a gloomy time. What addedfuel to the flame was that La Salle had with him a young nephew, namedMoranget, who presumed on his relation to the leader and behaved mostoverbearingly to the men. 

One day it chanced that some of the men were separated from the mainbody when Nika killed two buffaloes. They sent word to La Salle, inorder that he might have the meat brought in on the horses. Accordingly, he dispatched his nephew, Moranget, with two other men, for that purpose. This was just the opportunity the malcontentsdesired. Besides, Moranget incensed them by flying into a passionbecause they had reserved certain portions of the meat for themselves, and by seizing the whole of it. They laid their plans {275} and, inthe dead of the night, murdered him, La Salle's servant Saget, and hisfaithful Indian, Nika. 

Now they had to choose between killing La Salle and being killed byhim, as soon as he should learn the facts. They laid an ambush forhim, and when he came in the morning to look after the missing men, they shot him dead. Then the murderers stripped his body, dragged itinto the bushes, and left it to be torn by buzzards. 

Thus died, in the prime of his manhood, one who had done more than anyother toward the opening of our continent. He had traversed regionswhere white men were almost unheard of. He had launched the firstvessel that ever floated on the vast inland seas above Niagara Falls. He had established the French in the Illinois region, opening the wayfor the possession of the Mississippi Valley. He had drawn hostileIndian tribes together into a league strong enough to resist the LongHouse. He had traveled thousands and thousands of miles on foot and bycanoe. He had led the first party of white men from the Lakes to theGulf of Mexico. His foresight had grasped the commercial value of theMississippi Valley, and, triumphing over enormous difficulties, he hadopened the Great {276} West to our race. And now all his greatness wascome to this, to die in the wilderness by an assassin's hand!

After the death of the leader, a little party, among whom were Jouteland La Salle's brother, the friar Cavelier, after many strangeexperiences, finally made their way down the Arkansas River to theMississippi. There, to their inexpressible joy, they found two oftheir countrymen who had been left there by Tonty. That brave man andloyal friend, when he received the news, by the way of France, of hisformer leader's disastrous landing, had at once, at his own expense, fitted out an expedition and led it down the Illinois to the mouth ofthe Mississippi. Of course, he did not find La Salle or any trace ofhim there. He had then returned to his post, leaving some of his menat the mouth of the Arkansas. These escorted the survivors of LaSalle's party to Canada, whence they sailed to France, having made oneof the most remarkable journeys on record. They arrived in Europe, thesole known survivors of the expedition that had left France three yearsbefore. 

Louis the Great, when he heard the news of the failure of theenterprise, took no steps to {277} relieve the forlorn little band ofexiles on the coast of Texas. Not so Tonty. That brave souldetermined to rescue them, if possible. For the third time he voyageddown the Mississippi, turned up the Red River, and penetrated as far asthe country of the Caddoes. [3] There he lost the most of hisammunition in crossing a river, his men mutinied and refused to gofurther, and he was compelled to turn back. On his way down the RedRiver he encountered a flood and traveled more than a hundred milesthrough country covered with water. The party slept on logs laid sideby side and were reduced to eating their dogs. Few men who figure inour country's early story are more deserving of honorable remembrancethan this man with one hand and with the heart of a lion. 

The French King neglected the exiles in Texas, but the Spanish King didnot. He ordered a force sent from Mexico, to destroy the nest ofinvaders. When the Spanish soldiers arrived on the spot, not a humanbeing was to be seen. The poor little fort was a ruin, and a few {278}skeletons were all that remained of its former inmates. The Indians inthe neighborhood told a story of a band of warriors who had entrappedthe garrison into opening the gates, on the plea of trading, and thenhad rushed in and massacred them. 

[Illustration: The Murder of La Salle]

Thus ended, for the time, La Salle's brilliant scheme of colonizingLouisiana. 

Supplement to Chapter XIV

The Executor of La Salle's Plan of Colonization. --First Experiences ofthe Settlers. --Bienville's Shrewdness in getting rid of theEnglish. --New Orleans Founded. --Character of the Population. --IndianWars. 

La Salle was dead, but his bright dream of France enthroned on theMississippi, holding in her hand the sceptre of the great West, was toovital to die. It was growing more and more into the consciousness ofsea-going Europe, that the nation holding the mouth of the Great Riverwould grasp the key to the undeveloped wealth of the Western World. Soit was that when France stretched forth her hand to seize the covetedprize, she found rivals in the field, Spain and {279} Great Britainstruggling for a foothold, Spain already planted at Pensacola, theEnglish nosing about the mouth of the Mississippi. 

The man who was destined to achieve what La Salle had been hinderedfrom accomplishing only by the blunder of his pilots and the jealousyof his associates, was Jean Baptiste LeMoyne de Bienville. 

He was of that fine French Canadian stock that had already producedJoliet, the brave explorer, and he belonged to a family whose sevensons all won distinction, four of them dying in the service of theircountry. When he came on the enterprise in which he was destined tocomplete La Salle's unfinished work, he was a midshipman of twenty-twoserving with his older brother, Iberville, who was winning renown as abrave and skilful naval captain. Though possessing none of La Salle'sbrilliancy of genius, and never called on to make those heroicexertions or to exhibit that amazing fortitude which were soconspicuous in the case of the great explorer, he still exhibitedqualities which well fitted him for the task that fell to him, andwhich earned for him the title of "Father of Louisiana. "

To us it may seem strange that the first {280} reaching out of Francetoward the incredibly rich Mississippi Valley did not touch the valleyitself, but made its lodgment on a sandy bluff overlooking a bay in theterritory of what is now the State of Mississippi. So it was, however, and the fact only shows how little was grasped the true meaning of LaSalle's gigantic scheme. 

In January, 1699, fifteen years after the great Pathfinder had made hismisguided landing in Texas, a small fleet from Brest was hovering aboutthe mouth of Mobile River seeking a place for settlement. It wascommanded by Pierre LeMoyne d'Iberville. With him were his twobrothers, Sauvolle and Bienville, and Father Anastase Douay, who hadaccompanied La Salle. 

One of the first spots which the Frenchmen visited bore evidences of aghastly tragedy. So numerous were the human bones bleaching on thesandy soil that they called it Massacre Island (to-day Dauphin Island). It was surmised--and with some plausibility--that here had perishedsome portion of the ill-fated following of Pamphile de Narvaez. (See"Pioneer Spaniards in North America, " p. 200. )

Another island, farther to the west, chiefly impressed the visitors bythe great number of {281} animals, of a species new to them, which theyfound there. Isle des Chats they called it, and as "Cat Island" it isknown to this day. Had the Frenchmen been naturalists, they would haveseen that there was more of the bear than of the cat about thiscreature, for it was none other than our sly friend, the raccoon. 

Leaving his vessels at anchor near the mouth of Mobile River, Iberville, with his brother Bienville and Father Douay, went in searchof the mouth of the Mississippi. They found it and ascended the rivera considerable distance. What assured them that they really were onthe Great River was that they received from the Bayagoulas a letterwhich Tonty had left with them for La Salle, when he made, in 1686, that heroic journey all the way from the Illinois country to the Gulf, in the vain effort to succor his chief. 

Another interesting relic which the explorers are said to have seen, was a coat of mail shown to them by the Indians near the Red River, asonce having belonged to a Spaniard. Though nearly one hundred andsixty years had gone by since Hernando de Soto's famous expedition, itis by no means improbable that this was a genuine relic of thatenterprise. Naturally, the {282} Indians would have highly prized andwould have kept, as a precious trophy, such a reminder of theirforefathers' heroic stand against the dastardly invaders. 

The appearance on the river of the two English vessels, whose captainfrankly said that he was seeking a place for a settlement, wasconclusive evidence that France was none too early in reaching out forthe prize that others coveted. Bienville has the credit of getting ridof the Britons by telling the officer that he might easily judge hownumerous and strong were his master's, the French King's, subjects, inthat region, from seeing them on the river in small boats--a piece ofreasoning which was rather ingenious than ingenuous. It had its effectin sending away the Briton with "a flea in his ear. " "English Turn, "the name given to a great bend in the stream some miles below NewOrleans, keeps alive the memory of that piece of shrewdness. Not fardistant, by the way, is the field where, in 1815, the British regulars, under Sir Edward Pakenham, received a disastrous defeat at the hands ofAndrew Jackson and his American riflemen. 

Iberville planted his first settlement at Biloxi, {283} on MississippiSound. Other French posts were shortly afterward established on CatIsland, Dauphin Island, which is at the mouth of Mobile Bay, and atMobile. A little later Bienville built a fort fifty-four miles abovethe mouth of the Great River, and he early began to insist that thefuture of the colony lay on its banks, not on the shores and sandyislands of the Gulf. But the time had not yet come when his ideaswould prevail. The wretched colony must first go through a dismalexperience of languishing, in consequence of which the seat ofgovernment was removed to Mobile, and of actual famine. 

At last, in 1718, Bienville, who by the death of his brother hadsucceeded to the direction of affairs, with twenty-five convicts fromFrance and as many carpenters and some voyageurs from the IllinoisRiver, founded the city of New Orleans. 

At the first the outlook was far from hopeful. The site was but a fewfeet above the sea-level and was subject to constant inundation. Mostunfavorable reports went back to Mobile, which for five years longerremained the seat of government. The population, too, was rude andlawless, being made up of trappers, redemptioners having a period ofyears to serve, transported {284} females, inmates of the House ofCorrection, Choctaw squaws, and negro slave women--all, as an oldwriter says, "without religion, without justice, without discipline, without order, without police. "

Bienville, however, held firmly to his purpose and, in 1723, procuredthe royal permission to transfer the seat of government from Mobile tothe new settlement on the banks of the Great River. Thus, at last, wasLa Salle's prophetic dream realized. France had become awake to theimportance of concentrating her strength where it could be effective, rather than frittering it away on the shores of the Gulf. 

One of the most striking evidences of the warm interest which the Kingfelt in the colony was his sending out, in 1728, a number of decentgirls, each with a trunk filled with linen and clothing (from whichthey were called _filles à la cassette_, or girls with a chest), whowere to be disposed of under the direction of the Ursuline nuns, inmarriage to the colonists. Other consignments followed; and the homesthus established soon gave to the population of the city a more quietand orderly character. 

[Illustration: Le Moyne de Bienville]

Through various experiences, chiefly disastrous wars with the Natchez, that remarkable people {285} whom La Salle visited on his greatexploration, and whom the French finally broke up and scattered, andwith the Chickasaws in Mississippi, that hardy breed of warriors whohad fought Soto so fiercely, and who now sent the Frenchmen backdiscomfited, Bienville in his later years lost much of his earlierprestige. But the fact remains that it was he who grasped the meaningof La Salle's plan, he who founded New Orleans, and he who guided thestruggling colony through its perilous infancy. He well earned histitle of "Father of Louisiana. "

[1] These matchless horsemen, probably unsurpassed in the world, arealso great jockeys, passionately fond of horse-racing and deeply versedin all its tricks. The following laughable account of a race that hewitnessed is given by Col. Dodge in his very entertaining book, "OurWild Indians": "A band of Comanches once camped near Fort Chadbourne, in Texas. Some of the officers were decidedly 'horsey, ' owning bloodhorses whose relative speed was well known. The Comanche chief wasbantered for a race, and, after several days of manoeuvring, a race wasmade against the third best horse of the garrison, distance fourhundred yards. 

"The Indians wagered robes and plunder of various kinds, to the valueof sixty or seventy dollars, against money, flour, sugar, etc. , to alike amount. At the appointed time the Indians 'showed' a miserablesheep of a pony, with legs like churns, a three-inch coat of rough hairstuck out all over the body; and a general expression of neglect, helplessness, and patient suffering struck pity into the hearts of allbeholders. The rider was a stalwart buck of one hundred and seventypounds, looking big and strong enough to carry the poor beast on hisshoulders. He was armed with a huge club, with which, after the wordwas given, he belabored the miserable animal from start to finish. Tothe astonishment of all the whites, the Indian won by a neck. 

"Another race was proposed by the officers, and, after much'dickering, ' accepted by the Indians, against the next best horse ofthe garrison. The bets were doubled; and in less than an hour thesecond race was run by the same pony, with the same apparent exertionand with exactly the same result. 

"The officers, thoroughly disgusted, proposed a third race and broughtto the ground a magnificent Kentucky mare, of the true Lexington blood. The Indians accepted the race and not only doubled bets as before, butpiled up everything they could raise, seemingly almost crazed with theexcitement of their previous success. The riders mounted, and the wordwas given. Throwing away his club, the Indian rider gave a whoop, atwhich the sheep-like pony pricked up his ears and went away like thewind almost two feet to the mare's one. The last fifty yards of thecourse was run by the pony with the rider sitting face to his tail, making hideous grimaces and beckoning to the rider of the mare to comeon. 

"It afterwards transpired that the old sheep was a trick andstraight-race pony, celebrated among all the tribes of the south, andhad lately won for his master six hundred ponies among the Kickapoos ofthe Indian Nation. "

[2] They learned from these Indians to handle skin-boats, or"bull-boats, " such as we shall see were in constant use among theMandans of the upper Missouri. 

[3] These people, sometimes called the Pawnee family, were scattered, in various wandering bands, from eastern Texas as far north as theMissouri. 

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Chapter XV

FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN

His Birth and Early Experiences. --His Description of NiagaraFalls. --His Great Fraud. --His Real Achievement. --Captured by theSioux. --Given to a Master. --Superstitious Fears of the Indians. --Goeswith a Hunting Party. --Sees and names the Falls of St. Anthony. --Various Adventures. --Rescued and Freed. 

We come now to tell the story of a man who was neither great nor good, but was a most picturesque and entertaining scamp, and who withaldeserves some small place among the Pathfinders. 

Imagine a burly friar, in robe of rough gray frieze, his head coveredby a pointed hood, his otherwise bare feet protected by sandals, in hishand a stout cudgel, shuffling along on snow-shoes and dragging hisscanty possessions on a sled, or, if it was summer, paddling his canoefrom one lonely cabin to another, celebrating mass wherever he couldget together a half-dozen people, telling them the gossip of the river, eating a robust meal, then pushing on to repeat the {290} experienceelsewhere, and you will have a good picture of Father Louis Hennepin, aman whose books describing his travels, real or imaginary, had, intheir day, the widest popularity in Europe. Though he was anunconscionable braggart, and though he had no scruples about falsifyingfacts, yet, as the first person to publish an account of the Falls ofNiagara, and as the discoverer and namer of the Falls of St. Anthony, he is fairly entitled to a place in a collection like this. 

He was born in Belgium, about 1640, and in due time joined theFranciscan monks. When he tells us that he was so passionately fond oftales of adventure that he often skulked behind tavern-doors, though hewas sickened by the tobacco smoke, eagerly hanging on the words of theold tars spinning yarns to each other, we do not wonder at finding himon his way to the land of wonders, the New World, making the voyage incompany with La Salle. The wilderness, full of hardships and hauntedby treacherous savages though it was, had a fascination for him, and wesoon find him serving as an itinerant missionary on the frontier. 

His experience in this work recommended him for appointment asmissionary at that loneliest of {291} outposts, La Salle's FortFrontenac. When La Salle returned successful from his efforts tointerest the court in his gigantic scheme of exploration, FatherHennepin was selected to accompany him as the representative of theChurch. In preparation for the great undertaking, he was sent aheadwith La Motte, an officer in La Salle's service, to Fort Frontenac, whence they proceeded in a small sailing vessel to Niagara River, underorders to build a fort that was intended to be a link in the chain ofposts that La Salle purposed establishing. 

Niagara Falls--"a vast and prodigious Cadence of Water, " he callsit--made a deep impression on the Father, and he proceeded to write inhis journal this description, which, when it was printed, was the firstpublished account of the cataract: "This wonderful Downfall iscompounded of two great Cross-streams of Water, and two Falls, with anIsle sloping along the middle of it. The Waters which fall from thisvast height do foam and boil after the most hideous Manner imaginable, making an outrageous Noise, more terrible than that of Thunder; forwhen the wind blows from off the South, their dismal roaring may beheard above fifteen Leagues off. "

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The Seneca Indians, who regarded the Niagara River as belonging tothemselves, were jealous of the intruders and raised so strongobjections to the building of a fort, that La Motte and Hennepin made ajourney to their chief town, in the hope of overcoming theiropposition. Here they met with a hospitable reception from thesavages, who, Hennepin says, "wash'd our Feet, which afterwards theyrubb'd over with the Oil of Bears. " They found here two faithfulJesuit missionaries--members of an order, by the way, not especiallyfriendly to the one to which Hennepin belonged, the Franciscans--and, at their invitation, the father preached to the Indians. 

Next came a council with the elders of the tribe. These made a greatimpression on Hennepin, who writes, "The Senators of Venice do notappear with a graver countenance, and perhaps don't speak with moreMajesty and Solidity than those ancient Iroquese. " [1]

With many cunning arguments and specious reasons, the white men statedtheir case through their interpreter, making much of the point that thenew enterprise would open an easier {293} trade-route, by which goodscould be brought and sold to the natives at rates lower than those ofthe Dutch, with whom these people were in the habit of dealing at FortOrange (Albany). 

The wary old warriors accepted the presents offered them, listened tothe speeches, and reserved their decision until the next day, when theyplainly showed that they did not put much faith in the assurances oftheir white brethren. In the end, La Motte and Hennepin went awaydisappointed. La Salle, however, on his arrival, with hisextraordinary skill in dealing with Indians, secured the concessions heneeded and went on with his building and the subsequent exploration. 

It would be superfluous to repeat the story of the expedition, down tothe building of Fort Crèvecoeur. It is not until this point that thejournal of Father Hennepin becomes an independent narrative. 

From Fort Crèvecoeur La Salle dispatched the father, with two excellentmen, Accau and Du Gay, to follow the Illinois River to its mouth and, on reaching the Mississippi, to turn northward and explore its upperwaters. Accau, who was an experienced _voyageur_ (French for {294}traveler; a term applied to Canadians who traversed the forests andlakes, bartering with the Indians), was the real head of theexpedition. But Hennepin, according to his wont, even when he was incompany with so great a genius as La Salle, in his account always giveshimself the foremost place. 

If Father Hennepin had published no other writings than his account ofthe journey on the Upper Mississippi, his reputation would be that of atraveler who left a most interesting record of his experiences, embellished with fanciful additions--a not uncommon practice, in thosedays--but in the main reliable. Unfortunately for his good name, hedid something more which justly put such a blot upon his character thatmany persons refused to believe his story in any of its particulars. We must give a passing notice to this daring performance. 

Fourteen years after this expedition, when La Salle was dead, and withthe evident purpose of robbing him of his just fame as the first whiteman who explored the Mississippi all the way to the Gulf, Hennepin forthe first time put forth the astonishing statement that he and his twocompanions, on reaching the Great River, turned {295} south andfollowed its course all the way to the ocean, after which they ascendedit and explored its upper waters--a truly marvelous achievement, if itwere true, for three lonely men voyaging on an unknown stream amongfierce savages. 

Even at the time of its publication, there were those who disallowedthis amazing claim. "Why has he so long kept silence about this heroicfeat?" they naturally asked. Hennepin had a ready answer: he wasafraid of the wrath of La Salle, who would have been furious if anydoubt had been cast upon his claim of being the first explorer. 

How, then, do we know the story to be false? In several ways. First, and chiefly, because what Hennepin alleged that he had done was simplyimpossible. In his first book, which was published, let us remember, during La Salle's lifetime, Hennepin said that he left the mouth of theIllinois on March 12, and that he was captured by the Sioux, near themouth of the Wisconsin, five hundred miles above, on April 11. Thislooks reasonable, and no doubt it was true. But, in the second story, published fourteen years later, he stated that in that same interval oftime he had descended the Mississippi {296} to the Gulf, then, returning, had traced its course as far as the mouth of the Wisconsin. One month to accomplish a distance of 3, 260 miles! An average of overone hundred miles a day for three men paddling a canoe, up-stream forthe greater part of the distance! Surely, we may dismiss the wholestory as a colossal falsehood. 

But if he did not go below the mouth of the Illinois, how did Hennepinbecome possessed of the information which he gives in his usualinteresting way about the places and peoples all the way down the riverto the Gulf? His descriptions have all the appearance of truth. He"cribbed" them. We are able to put our finger on a source from whichhe drew without stint. It will be remembered that Father Membréaccompanied La Salle on his descent of the Mississippi, in 1681. Hekept a journal of their experiences. This journal was afterwardpublished by another friar, Le Clerc, but was suppressed by the Frenchgovernment, because it gave offence to the Jesuits. A few copies, however, are in existence to this day. Those who have examined one ofthese say that Membré's journal is the original of Hennepin's stolennarrative, sometimes whole pages agreeing word for word. Hennepinseems {297} to have taken it bodily, with a few necessary alterations, such as would make himself, not La Salle, the hero of the expedition. This pirated account, written in Hennepin's picturesque style, met withgreat success in Europe and was translated into several languages. Weare reminded of the sensation which was made by Amerigo Vespucci'sfanciful tales of the New World. (See "Pioneer Spaniards in NorthAmerica, " p. 44. )

One more question. If Hennepin lied in saying that he descended theGreat River, how do we know that he really ascended it? Because thispart of his story is confirmed by an independent witness. The famoustrader and leader of fur-traders, Du Lhut, testified that he foundHennepin and his two companions prisoners among the Sioux and rescuedthem, precisely as we shall find Hennepin relating in his story of theexpedition. 

We shall, therefore, reject the later-published account of theimaginary journey down the Mississippi and confine our attention to theprobably authentic story of his adventures on the upper waters. 

Hennepin and his two associates followed the Illinois to its mouth andthen turned their canoe {298} toward the head-waters of the GreatRiver. For a time all went well. Game was abundant, and the travelersfared sumptuously on buffalo, deer, turkeys, and fish. Suddenly theyencountered a war-party of Sioux in a number of canoes. These fiercerovers, members of the great Dakota family, whose range extendedwestward a thousand miles from the Mississippi, enjoyed a reputationwhich caused them to be called "the Iroquois of the West. " Immediatelythey surrounded the Frenchmen with a hideous clamor. Hennepin held upthe calumet; but one of them snatched it from him. Then he offeredsome fine Martinique tobacco, which somewhat mollified them. He alsogave them two turkeys which were in the canoe. But, for all this, itwas evident that the Sioux were about to treat their prisoners withtheir wonted ferocity. In fact, one of the warriors signified to thefriar in dumb show that he was to be brained with a war-club. On thespot he hastened to the canoe and returned loaded with presents whichhe threw down before them. This had the effect of so far softening thesavage breasts that the prisoners were given food and were allowed torest in quiet that night. 

In quiet, indeed, but not sleeping, we may be {299} sure, for can amore trying situation be imagined than that of knowing that one's lifeor death is under debate, while one has not a chance to say a singleword of defence or argument? Some of the Indians, they gathered, favored killing them on the spot and taking their goods. Otherscontended that when they all wished to attract French traders to comeinto their country and bring guns, blankets, and other suchcommodities, it would be unwise to discourage them by killing theseprisoners. 

Imagine the Frenchmen's joy, when, in the early morning, a youngwarrior in full paint came to them, asked for the pipe which hadpreviously been rejected, filled and smoked it, and then passed it tohis companions to do the same. This pipe was the famous calumet, whichwe have seen to be so efficacious in the case of Joliet and Marquette. Smoking it was an intimation to the Frenchmen that there was to bepeace. They were also informed that they would be taken by the Siouxto their village. 

Shortly afterward the friar had a comical experience. When he took outhis breviary and began to read his morning devotions in a low tone, thesavages gathered around him with looks {300} of terror and franticallysigned to him to put away the book. They mistook it for some kind of afetish, that is, an object inhabited by a powerful spirit, and hismuttering they supposed to be a magic incantation. Then a happythought struck him. He began to sing the service in a loud andcheerful voice. This delighted the savages, who fancied that the bookwas teaching him to sing for their entertainment. 

Now the journey up the river began. On the whole, the Frenchmen faredtolerably well. They took care always to sleep near the young warriorwho had been the first to smoke the peace-pipe, and whom they regardedas their protector. The hostile party among the Indians was headed bya wily old fellow who frequently threw the prisoners into a panic byfrenzied appeals to the warriors to let him avenge on the white men thedeath of his son, who had been killed by the Miamis. The Frenchmeninvariably met this excitement by fresh gifts. Thus, while they werenot openly robbed, they were gradually relieved of their earthlypossessions by a sort of primitive blackmail. 

Day after day the paddles plied by sinewy arms drove the canoes up thestream. A lake {301} was passed, which later was called Lake Pepin, inhonor of one of a party of their countrymen whom they met a short timeafterward. [2] On the nineteenth day after their capture, the prisonerslanded, along with their masters, on the spot where St. Paul now stands. 

The three Frenchmen's troubles now began in real earnest. First theymust see their canoe broken to pieces, to prevent their escape, thenthe remainder of their goods divided. After this their captors startedout for their abodes, which lay to the north, near the lake now calledMille {302} Lacs. It was a hard experience for the Frenchmen to trampwith these athletic savages, wading ponds and marshes glazed with iceand swimming ice-cold streams. "Our Legs, " says Hennepin, "were allover Blood, being cut by the Ice. " Seeing the friar inclined to lag, the Indians took a novel method of quickening his pace. They set fireto the grass behind him and then, taking him by the hands, they ranforward with him. He was nearly spent when, after five days ofexhausting travel, they reached the homes of the Sioux. 

Entering the village, Hennepin saw a sight that curdled his blood. Stakes, with bundles of straws attached to them seemed in readiness forburning himself and his comrades. 

Imagine their amazement when, instead of being roasted, they were takeninto a lodge and treated to a kind of whortle-berry pudding _à lasauvage_!

The next matter of interest was a noisy wrangle among the warriors asto the distribution of the prisoners. To his great terror, Hennepinwas assigned to Aquipagetin, the wily old villain who had insisted onthe death of the Frenchmen and had persistently blackmailed them. "Surely now {303} my time has come, " the friar said to himself. Instead, to his great surprise, he was immediately adopted by his newmaster as a son, to replace the one whom the Miamis had lately killed, a procedure quite in accordance with Indian custom. Hennepin thusfound himself separated from his two countrymen, who had other masters, much to the relief of Accau, who heartily hated him. 

The friar was now conducted by his adopted father to his lodge, whichstood on an island in a lake, was introduced as his son to some six orseven of his wives, was given a platter of fish and a buffalo-robe, andaltogether was treated quite as a member of the family. 

Now he had a period of rest in the Sioux village. The Indianssubjected him, greatly to his advantage, to a treatment such as seemsto have been in very general use on this continent and to have been themost rational feature of Indian medical practice, which relied mainlyon charms and incantations. It was administered by placing the patientin a tightly closed lodge and pouring water on heated stones, thusproducing a dense vapor which induced copious sweating, after which hewas vigorously rubbed. 

The Sioux had a certain respect for him, on {304} account of magicpowers which he was supposed to possess, and his pocket-compassinspired them with unbounded awe. On his side, he made himself usefulin various ways, such as shaving the children's heads and bleeding thesick. The children had good reason to be thankful for having the friarfor their barber, since the native method, he says, was "by burning offthe Hair with flat Stones, which they heat red-hot in the Fire. "

"Many a melancholy Day, " says Hennepin, "did I pass among theseSavages. " His coarse, filthy food was often of the scantiest, and hiswork, which he was compelled to do with squaws and slaves--for, ofcourse, no warrior would stoop to labor--was of the hardest. Besideshis useful services, one thing that helped greatly to keep him alivewas the superstition of his masters. One of his belongings inspiredthem with wholesome dread. "I had, " he says, "an Iron Pot about threefoot round, which had the Figure of a Lion on it, which during ourVoyage served us to bake our Victuals in. This Pot the Barbariansdurst never so much as touch, without covering their Hands first insomething of Castor-Skin. And so great a Terror was it to the women, {305} that they durst not come or sleep in the Cabin where it was. They thought that there was a Spirit hid within, that would certainlykill them. "

At length the time came for the Indians to go on their annual hunt, andthey took Hennepin along. His countrymen were also of the party, andthus he was again thrown with them. The friar gives this indignantaccount of their outfit: "Our whole Equipage consisted of fifteen ortwenty Charges of Powder, a Fusil [gun], a little sorry Earthen Pot, which the Barbarians gave us, a knife between us both, and a Garment ofCastor [beaver]. Thus we were equipped for a voyage of 250 Leagues. "

The whole band, some two hundred and fifteen in number, descended RumRiver, the outlet of Mille Lacs, and encamped opposite its mouth, onthe bank of the Mississippi. Food was scarce. The whole camp was onshort rations, and the three Frenchmen could get little to eat butunripe berries. 

This condition of things was scarcely endurable, and Hennepin was happyin securing permission from the head chief, who always acted in a veryfriendly manner, to go with his countrymen to {306} the mouth of theWisconsin, where he said that he had an appointment to meet some Frenchtraders who were coming thither with goods--a piece of pure inventionwhich, however, served its purpose very well. Accau refused to go, preferring the savage life to traveling with the friar. But Du Gaygladly joined him, and the two set off in a small canoe that had beengiven them. They went swiftly down the river, and soon came to afamous cataract, between the sites of St. Paul and Minneapolis, whichHennepin called the Falls of St. Anthony, in honor of the saint whom heparticularly reverenced, St. Anthony of Padua. The name remains tothis day and keeps alive the memory of the eccentric friar. [3]

{307}

We shall not follow the travelers through their wanderings andadventures. Once, when they had been on very scant fare for severaldays, they were almost trampled by a herd of buffalo rushing down thebank to cross the river. Du Gay shot a young cow, and they feasted sobountifully that they were taken ill and could not travel for two days. In the meantime the weather was warm, their meat spoiled, and they weresoon again nearly famished, depending on catfish and an occasionalturtle. Hennepin thus describes one of their encounters: "I shewedPicard [Du Gay] a huge Serpent, as big as a Man's Leg, and seven oreight Foot long. She was working herself insensibly up a steep craggyRock, to get at the Swallows Nests which are there in great Numbers. We pelted her so long with Stones, till at length she fell into theRiver. Her Tongue, which was in form of a Lance, was of anextraordinary Length, and her Hiss might be heard a great way. "

At last the two Frenchmen joined a band of hunters and among them foundour friend Accau. {308} The hunt was very successful. But Hennepin'sattention was drawn in another direction by a strange story of five"Spirits, " that is to say, Europeans, who were in the neighborhood. Afew days later he met them at a little distance below the Falls of St. Anthony. 

The leader of the party was one of the most notable men among the earlypioneers. His name was Daniel Greysolon Du Lhut, or Du Luth. He wasleagued with Count Frontenac and some others in the fur-trade and wasequally noted for his success in that line of business, for hiscoolness and skill in managing Indians and rough _coureurs de bois_, and for his achievements as an explorer. He had come to the head ofLake Superior, where a city perpetuates his name, and thence hadcrossed to one of the tributaries of the Mississippi, when he heard ofthe three Frenchmen and came to meet them. The encounter was a joyfulone on both sides, especially for the prisoners, whose release Du Lhutsecured by gifts to the Sioux. 

[Illustration: Falls of St. Anthony]

The eight Frenchmen now accompanied the Sioux back to Mille Lacs andwere treated with great honor. Then they started east and, in duetime, reached the Jesuit missions at Green {309} Bay. And here we takeleave of Father Hennepin. [4]

[1] Hennepin's language in the passages which have been quoted is givenas it appears in an old English translation. 

[2] Jonathan Carver, who journeyed up the river in 1766, was theearliest traveler who made mention of ancient monuments in this region. He says that a few miles below Lake Pepin his attention was attractedby an elevation which had the appearance of an intrenchment. He hadserved in the recent war between Great Britain and France and had aneye to such matters. He says, "Notwithstanding it was now covered withgrass, I could plainly discern that it had once been a breast-work ofabout four feet in height, extending the best part of a mile andsufficiently capacious to cover five thousand men. " It wassemi-circular in form, and its wings rested on the river, which coveredthe rear. His surmise that it was built for the purpose of defence isundoubtedly correct. He wonders how such a work could exist in acountry inhabited by "untutored Indians" who had no military knowledgebeyond drawing a bow. Since his time we have gained far more knowledgeof the aborigines, and it is ascertained beyond reasonable questionthat, at one period, they reared extensive earth-works, probably forthe permanent protection of their villages. 

[3] Jonathan Carver, who visited the Falls about a hundred years afterHennepin, and from whose works the accompanying illustration is taken, writes thus: "At a little distance below the falls stands a smallisland, of about an acre and a half, on which grow a great number ofoak-trees, every branch of which, able to support the weight, was fullof eagles' nests. " These birds, he says, resort to this place in sogreat numbers because of its security, "their retreat being guarded bythe Rapids, which the Indians never attempt to pass, " and because ofthe abundant supply of food furnished by fish and animals "dashed topieces by the falls and driven on the adjacent shore. "

About thirty mites below the Falls, he says, he visited a remarkablecave, called by the Indians Wakon-teebe, that is, the Dwelling of theGreat Spirit. Within it he found "many Indian hieroglyphicks whichappeared very ancient. " Near it was a burying-place of the Sioux. 

[4] Hennepin relates that at the Falls of St. Anthony two of the men, to the great indignation of Du Lhut when he learned of it, stole twobuffalo-robes which were hung on trees as offerings to the GreatSpirit. Striking natural objects seem to have been regarded by theIndians as special manifestations of divinity. It is an interestingconfirmation, that Jonathan Carver relates that, at the same place, ayoung warrior who accompanied him threw into the stream his pipe, histobacco, his bracelets, his neck ornaments, in short, everything ofvalue about him, all the while smiting his breast and crying aloud tothe Great Spirit for his blessing. 

{313}

Chapter XVI

THE VÉRENDRYES DISCOVER THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

Vérendrye's Experience as a Fur-trader. --As a Soldier. --He returns tothe Forests. --His Plan for reaching the Pacific. --TremendousDifficulties in his Way. --He reaches the Mandans. --His Sons discoverthe Rocky Mountains. --Alexander Mackenzie follows the Mackenzie Riverto the Arctic Ocean. --He achieves a Passage over the Mountains to thePacific. --Note on Mandan Indians. --Mah-to-toh-pa's Vengeance. --SingularDwellings of the Mandans. --Their Bloody Ordeal. --Skin-boats. --Catlin'sFanciful Theory. 

We have seen how the dream of a short route to China and the Indiesinspired a long line of adventurous explorers. At the first it washoped that the Mississippi afforded such a passage. When it was knownbeyond all doubt that the Great River flows into the Gulf, not the"Western Sea, " longing eyes were turned toward the western part of thecontinent, in the hope that some stream would be found flowing into thePacific which would carry the keels of commerce Indiaward. The hugebarrier of the Rocky Mountains was {314} not known, and it was only inthe effort to reach the Pacific by water that they were discovered. 

So important was the desired route considered that, in 1720, the FrenchKing sent out the noted historian of New France, Father Charlevoix, toexplore westward and discover a way to the Pacific. He recommended twoplans, either to follow the Missouri River to its head-waters or topush a chain of trading-posts gradually westward until the continentshould be crossed. The former plan was the one actually carried out, eighty-three years later, by the famous Lewis and Clark expedition, which crossed the Rockies and followed the Columbia River to the ocean. The second plan was the easier and less expensive, and it was theearlier to be tried. Still several years elapsed before the effort wasmade. 

The hardy adventurer was Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la Vérendrye, son of the Governor of Three Rivers. Early experience as a fur-tradertaught him to know the Indians and the hard life of the northernforests. Then came the war of the Spanish Succession, and, a loyalFrench subject, he left his fur-trade, hastened to Europe, asked toserve the King, and was given a commission as a lieutenant. The famousfield of {315} Malplaquet came near to witnessing the end of hiscareer. He lay on it for dead, gashed with the sabre and pierced withbullets. Still he recovered, returned to New France, and plunged againinto the woods as a trader. 

Being placed in command of the French outpost on Lake Nipigon, where healso carried on a brisk trade, he heard many a tale from Indians whocame with furs. One of these stories fired his imagination. It was ofa great river flowing westward out of a lake into water in which therewas a tide. Then the Indian drew a rough map on birch bark, a copy ofwhich is still in existence. Could this be the long-desired route tothe Pacific? He hoped it and was resolved to ascertain the truth. Butfirst he must get leave and an outfit. Having made the long anddangerous journey in his birch-bark canoe, that is, gone from LakeNipigon into Lake Superior, traversed the entire length of the lakes, and then descended the St. Lawrence to Quebec, he laid before theFrench governor, Beauharnais, his plan for reaching the Pacific by thenet-work of lakes and rivers north and west of Lake Superior. TheGovernor approved, but Vérendrye, applying to the King for men andmeans, got nothing but a grant {316} of the monopoly of the fur-tradenorth and west of Lake Superior. He must raise the money himself. With difficulty and at exorbitant rates of interest, he obtainedadvances from Quebec merchants and set out, June 8, 1731, with histhree sons and a nephew, LaJemeraye. At the close of the season hebuilt his first fort, St. Pierre, on Rainy River. The next year heestablished his second fort, St. Charles, on the southwest shore of theLake of the Woods. 

Terribly embarrassed by lack of money, he returned to Quebec andrepresented his deplorable situation. The Governor reported it to theKing, but could get no more from him than the renewal of the fur-trademonopoly. Undaunted, Vérendrye persisted, though obliged to suspendexploration and devote himself for a while to trading, in order tosecure money. There was enough to dishearten a man of less than heroicstuff. In 1736, his eldest son, with a Jesuit priest and twentyothers, was surprised and massacred by the Sioux on an island in theLake of the Woods. Also he was harassed by creditors and compelledrepeatedly to make the long and tedious journey to Montreal. In spiteof all these mishaps, he pushed his posts gradually westward and by1738 {317} he had established six, viz. , St. Pierre, on Rainy Lake; St. Charles, on the Lake of the Woods; Maurepas at the mouth of theWinnipeg River; Bourbon on the east shore of Lake Winnipeg; La Reine onAssiniboine River; and Dauphin on Lake Manitoba. 

In 1738 he made a bold push for the Pacific, with fifty persons, Frenchand Indians. After many devious wanderings, seeking a band that couldconduct him to the Western Ocean, he reached the Mandans, on the upperMissouri, the singularly interesting people among whom Lewis and Clarkspent the winter sixty-six years later. But, having been robbed of thepresents which he had provided, he was unable to get a guide to leadhim further and was obliged to return. The journey was made inmidwinter and was full of frightful hardships. 

His eldest surviving son, Pierre de la Vérendrye, full of his father'sspirit, devoted himself to the same quest. He had with him his brotherand two other men. They started from Fort La Reine, reached theMandans, and pushed on to the West. All through the summer, autumn, and early winter they toiled on, going hither and yon, beguiled by theusual fairy-tales of tribesmen. {318} At last, on New Year's day, 1743, two hundred and fifty years after the Discovery, doubtless firstof all white men, they saw the Rocky Mountains from the east. Thisprobably was the Big Horn Range, one hundred and twenty miles east ofthe Yellowstone Park. Finding this tremendous obstacle across theirpath to the Pacific, they turned back. On July 12 they reached LaPrairie, to the great joy of their father, who had given them up forlost. 

A later Governor of Canada not only ignored the heroic services of theVérendryes, but seized their goods, turned over their posts to another, and reduced them to poverty. 

It was a long time before their work was taken up, and it remained fora man of another race to accomplish what they had so bravely strivenfor. Alexander Mackenzie, a Scotch Highlander by birth, was anenergetic young agent of the Montreal Company in the Athabasca region. He determined to undertake certain explorations. In June, 1789, he setout from Fort Chippewyan, on the south shore of Lake Athabasca, withfour birch canoes and a party of white men and several Indians, including a guide and interpreter. Going down Snake River, theexplorers reached Great {319} Slave Lake, then entered a heretoforeunknown river, the one which now bears the name of its discoverer, andfollowed it until, on July 12, they sighted the Arctic Ocean, filledwith ice-floes, with spouting whales between. 

In October, 1792, he set out, determined this time to reach the PacificOcean. He left Fort Chippewyan, skirted the lake to Slave River, thenascended its southwest tributary, Peace River. He wintered on thisstream in a trading-house which he had sent an advance party to build, employed in hunting and trading. In May, having sent back a largecargo of furs to Fort Chippewyan, he started up the river with a partyof seven white men and two Indians. The voyagers traveled in a birchcanoe twenty-five feet long, "but so light that two men could carry heron a good road three or four miles without resting. " "In this slendervessel, " he says, "we shipped provisions, goods for presents, arms, ammunition, and baggage, to the weight of thirty thousand pounds, andan equipage of ten people. "

The difficulties and dangers were tremendous. Paddling and pushing andpoling up the rocky bed of a swift stream abounding in rapids, theymade slow progress. More than once the canoe {320} was broken. Portages were often necessary. Again and again the crew, exhausted andtheir clothing in tatters, sullenly insisted that there was no choicebut to turn back. But Mackenzie was a man of indomitable courage andall the persistency of the Scotch race. He had already shown thisquality by taking the long journey and voyage from the wilds ofAthabasca to London, in order to study the use of astronomicalinstruments, so that he might be qualified to make scientificobservations. Now he would not hear of turning back. 

So the discouraged party, animated by Mackenzie, pushed on, climbedover the dividing mountains, and came upon the head-waters of a streamflowing westward, the one now called Fraser River. After following itfor several days, they struck off through dense forests, sometimes ondizzy trails over snow-clad mountains, until they reached a rapidriver. On this they embarked in two canoes with several natives, andthus reached the ocean--_the Pacific_!

Vérendrye's dream was realized at last. The continent had been spannedfrom East to West. 

Twelve years later the same thing was done within the territory of theUnited States by Lewis {321} and Clark, at the head of an expeditionsent out by President Jefferson. They spent the winter among theMandan Indians, the interesting people with whom the Vérendryes hadcome in contact. A note is added in which some information is givenabout them. 

NOTE ON THE MANDANS

These Indians first became known to white men through the expedition ofthe elder Vérendrye. They showed themselves hospitable and friendly tohim, as they always have been to our race, and they aided his sons intheir efforts to reach the Western Sea. Next we have quite fullreferences to them in the journals of Lewis and Clark. These explorerswere sent out by President Jefferson in 1803, immediately on thecompletion of the Louisiana Purchase, to get a better knowledge of thenorthern portion of the vast territory recently acquired, with aparticular view to developing the fur-trade and to opening a route tothe Pacific. All these ends were accomplished with a degree of successthat made the enterprise one of the greatest achievements in ourhistory. The explorers, having ascended the Missouri in their boats, and finding themselves, as winter came on, near the Mandan villages, {322} decided to remain there until the spring. Accordingly theypassed the winter, 1803-4, among these interesting tribesmen. It beinga part of their prescribed duty to keep full journals of all that theyexperienced or saw, they have left extended accounts of the people andtheir customs. 

Thirty-four years later George Catlin, a famous artist and student ofIndian life, who spent many years in traveling among the wild tribes ofthe West and in describing them with pen, pencil, and brush, came amongthe Mandans. He was so much impressed with them as a singular andsuperior people that he remained among them a considerable time, painted many of their men and women, studied and made drawings of someof their singular ceremonies, and devoted a large part of his twovolumes to a highly interesting account of what he saw among them. 

Catlin certainly was wholly free from the silly prejudice expressed inthe familiar saying, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian. " His twovolumes, "The North American Indians, " furnish "mighty interestingreading. " As we accompany him in his long journeys by canoe and onhorseback and read his descriptions of the tribes he visited and thewarriors and chiefs he learned to know, and of whom he has left uspictures, it is a satisfaction to feel that we are traveling with a manwho looked on the Indian as a human being. Sometimes we are inclinedto suspect that, in the enthusiasm of his artistic nature, he idealizedhis subject and viewed him with a degree of sentiment as remote fromthe truth in one direction as {323} was the hostile prejudice of theaverage white man in the other. We know that he either did not see orpurposely ignored certain aspects of Indian life, notably the physicaldirt and the moral degradation. 

When he comes to the Mandans, this disposition to make heroes of hissubjects fairly runs away with him. No language is strong enough to dojustice to his admiration of some of them. We easily let pass suchphrases as the "wild and gentlemanly Mandans, " for many observers havereported that there is a native dignity and courtesy about the trueIndian. But there are other things which make it plain that Catlin, inhis extravagant admiration, where his Indian friends were concerned wasincapable of discriminating between the noble and the base. Here is aninstance:

A certain chief of the Mandans, Mah-to-toh-pa (the Four Bears), wasvery friendly to Catlin, who painted his portrait, and who speaks ofhim in terms of unbounded admiration. He gave his artist friend ahandsomely embroidered deerskin shirt on which he had depicted inIndian fashion his various achievements. One, of which he wasespecially proud, he recounted at length to Catlin, acting it outbefore him, and he in turn relates it to his readers. 

Mah-to-toh-pa had a brother slain--in open fight, let us remember--by aRickaree, who left his lance sticking in the dead man. Mah-to-toh-pafound the body, drew out the lance, and carried it to his village, where it was recognized as the property of a famous warrior namedWon-ga-tap. He kept the bloodstained weapon, {324} vowing that someday he would with it avenge his brother's death. Four years passed by, and still he nursed his wrath. Then one day he worked himself up to afrenzy and went through the village crying that the day of vengeancehad come. 

Off he started across the prairie alone, with a little parched corn inhis pouch, went two hundred miles, traveling by night and hiding byday, until he reached the Rickaree village. Knowing it and thelocation of Won-ga-tap's lodge--which suggests that he had visited theplace in some friendly relation--he entered at dusk and loitered aboutfor a time, and then through rents in the covering watched Won-ga-tapsmoke his last pipe and go to bed by the side of his wife. ThenMah-to-toh-pah went in, coolly seated himself by the smouldering fire, and, using the privilege of Indian hospitality, helped himself to meatthat was in a kettle over the embers, and ate a hearty meal. 

"Who is that man who is eating in our lodge?" asked the wife severaltimes. 

"Oh, let him alone. No doubt he is hungry, " the easy-going Won-ga-tapanswered. 

His meal finished, the intruder helped himself to his host's pipe, filled and lighted it, and began to smoke. When he had finished, hegently pushed the coals together with his toes, so that he got a betterlight and was able to discern the outline of his intended victim'sbody. Then he rose softly, plunged his lance into Won-ga-tap's heart, snatched off his scalp, and ran away with it and with the drippinglance. 

{325}

In a moment the Rickaree camp was in an uproar. But before pursuerswere started the assassin was far out on the plains. The darknessprotected him, he successfully eluded pursuit, returned safely to hishome, and entered the village, triumphantly exhibiting Won-ga-tap'sscalp and the fresh blood dried on his lance. 

This story, which Catlin says is attested by white men who were in theMandan village at the time, may stand as a notable instance of savagevengefulness and daring, cunning and treachery, but it will scarcelyserve to make us believe in Catlin's "noble Mandan gentlemen, " of whomhe puts forward Mah-to-toh-pa as a conspicuous example. 

When we read Lewis and Clark's account of the Mandans, we are in quiteanother atmosphere, not that of romance but of simple reality. Theyspent several months among them, on the friendliest terms, and theyspeak kindly of them, but do not disguise the brutality of savage life. Between these two authorities we have ample information, from oppositepoints of view. 

The first thing that would impress a visitor with the fact that he hadcome among a peculiar people, is the character of their dwellings, absolutely unlike any used by any other tribe, either of the woods orplains, except their near neighbors and friends, the Minitarees. Thelodge is a circular structure, set in an excavation about two feetdeep. A framework of stout posts supports a roof of poles convergingtoward the centre, where an opening is left for the entrance of lightand the escape of smoke. On these poles brush is spread, and over this{326} earth is laid to the depth of about two feet. In this earthgrass grows abundantly, and thus a Mandan village presents theappearance of an assemblage of green mounds. 

Lewis and Clark were much impressed with the fearlessness of the Mandanwomen in crossing the Missouri, even when it was quite rough, in atub-like boat consisting of a single buffalo-hide stretched under aframe-work of wicker. [1] Catlin saw the same boat in use, and itafforded him confirmation for a peculiar theory which he advanced. 

He was much surprised at the light complexion of the Mandans generallyand at the fact that he actually saw some blue eyes and gray eyes amongthem and some whitish hair. These circumstances seemed to him to pointclearly to an admixture of European blood. He wrote at a time whenfanciful theories about the native Americans were much in vogue. Hehad read somewhere that a Welsh prince, Madoc, more than two hundredyears before the time of Columbus, sailed away from his country withten ships. By some unexplained process, he traced him to America. Then he supposed him to ascend the Mississippi as far as the mouth ofthe Ohio and there to found a colony. This, being entirely cut offfrom communication with the mother country, was compelled to allyitself with the nearest Indians and took wives among them. From theseunions sprang a mixed race, the Mandans, who eventually formed a {327}separate tribe and were gradually driven up the Missouri to the pointwhere he found them. 

There is not any doubt of the large admixture of European blood amongthe Mandans, and it is easily accounted for. Catlin does not seem tohave known of any white visitors before Lewis and Clark. But we haveseen that the Vérendryes reached these people a full hundred yearsbefore Catlin's day. There is every reason for believing that, fromthat time, white hunters and traders never ceased to visit them. TheseIndians being, from the first, very hospitable and friendly, theirvillages were favorite resorts for fur-traders, who took up their abodeamong them for several years at a time and married there. One caneasily see that, in the course of a hundred years, there would beseveral generations of mixed blood, and that, through inter-marriages, there would probably be few families whose color would not be lighterin consequence. The persons whose peculiar whitish hair Catlinnoticed, undoubtedly were albinos, a class of persons in whom thenatural coloring of the hair is wanting and the eyes are red or pink. 

The Mandans probably are nothing more than an interesting tribe ofIndians who, through long intermingling with the white race, haveundergone considerable lightening of their original color. 

A year after Catlin's visit his Mandan friends experienced a frightfulcalamity. A trading steamboat brought the small-pox to them, and, ashappened in the case of many other tribes in the West, its ravages werefearful. Not being protected by vaccination, and knowing nothing {328}of the treatment of the disease, the poor creatures died horribly. Nota few, in the height of their fever, threw themselves into the Missouriand so found a quicker and easier death. Nearly the whole tribeperished. 

The remnant, along with that of their long-time friends and neighbors, the Minitarees, may be found to-day at Fort Berthold, in North Dakota. 

[1] We may remember that La Salle and his followers found Indians onthe plains of Texas crossing rivers in boats made of buffalo-hide. 

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BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

The Origin of the American aborigines is treated briefly by Dr. JohnFiske in "The Discovery of America, " Chapter I, and at great length andwith wide research by Mr. E. J. Payne in his "History of the New WorldCalled America. "

Their Distribution, also sketched by Dr. Fiske, is satisfactorilydetailed by Dr. D. G. Brinton in his "Races and Peoples. "

Those who may wish to study Indian Social Life in its primitiveconditions will do well to read the work of Baron de Lahontan, recentlyedited by Dr. R. G. Thwaites. He was among the earliest writers onaboriginal affairs, and his "New Voyages to North America" gives theresults of travel and observation about the years 1683-1701. "ThreeYears' Travels through North America, " by Jonathan Carver, relates aninteresting experience among the Indians between the years 1766 and1768. Some of his general remarks, however, are drawn from thepreceding writer. An inexhaustible store of information on thissubject is found in the famous "Jesuit Relations, " which have beenedited, in an English translation, by Dr. Thwaites. For ordinaryreaders, however, the very interesting treatment by Dr. Fiske, in thechapter already cited, and especially by {330} Mr. Francis Parkman, inthe Introduction to his "The Jesuits in North America, " will amplysuffice. 

In the same chapters will be found a satisfactory account of theIroquois League. Students, however, who may wish to go to thefountain-head are referred to Mr. Lewis Morgan, whose work, "The Leagueof the Iroquois, " is the accepted authority. 

As to Cartier, Ribaut, Laudonnière, Champlain, and La Salle, the writerhas not gained any new light by referring to the original documents, and has drawn his material chiefly from that great master, Parkman, bywhom the first four are treated in his "Pioneers of France in the NewWorld, " and the last-named in his "La Salle and the Discovery of theGreat West. "

The story of the Jesuit missionaries runs through what is practically awhole library, the "Jesuit Relations. " Parkman, in a volume devoted tosetting forth the nobler aspects of their work, "The Jesuits in NorthAmerica, " does ample justice to the heroism of the best of thesepioneers. 

For Radisson the only authority is himself. His "Voyage, " notpublished until after it had lain in manuscript two hundred andtwenty-five years, and of which but two hundred and fifty copies are inexistence, is one of the quaintest of books and "mighty interestingreading. "

The story of Joliet and Marquette's exploration is told mostinterestingly by Dr. Thwaites, in his "Father Marquette, " and byParkman, in his "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West. " Theobservations of {331} Jonathan Carver, who went over a part of theirroute about one hundred years later, throw much interesting light onsome of their experiences. 

Father Hennepin receives ample justice from Parkman in his account ofthe opening of the Great West. Readers, however, who may desire afirst-hand acquaintance with the erratic friar will find curious, muchof it stolen, reading in his "New Discovery in North America, " his"Description of Louisiana, " and his "Curious Voyage. "

In Dr. Thwaites's "Rocky Mountain Exploration" may be read the story ofthe heroic Vérendryes and dauntless Alexander Mackenzie. 

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INDEX

ABNAKIS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

ACADIA, old name for Nova Scotia and adjacent region, 106. 

ACCAU, a companion of Father Hennepin in exploration, 293. 

ACOMANS, a tribe of Pueblo Indians, 10. 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT, story of fountain of immortality, 78, note. 

ALGONQUINS, one of the great divisions of the Indian race, 4, its rangeand its families, 7; close allies of the French, 114; shiftless andimprovident, often relieved by them, 124; those of Massachusettsthriftier, 109, note. 

ALLOUEZ, FATHER, noted missionary; one of his speeches, 147. 

ANNAPOLIS, originally Port Royal; re-named for Queen Anne, 111. 

APACHES, an offshoot of Athapascan stock, 7. 

APPALACHEE, probably southwestern Georgia, supposed to be rich in gold, 82. 

ASSICKMACK, Indian name for whitefish, 206; much prized, 206, note. 

ATHAPASCANS, a native stock; one of the larger divisions of Indianrace, 7. 

AUBRY, NICHOLAS, his perilous adventure, 106. 

AYLLON, LUCAS VASQUEZ DE, his treachery punished, 70. 

BASQUES, early activity of, on northern coasts of America, 53; resistthe royal monopoly of fur-trade, 122. 

BAYAGOULAS, THE, a tribe on the Mississippi, 281. 

BERING SEA, probably once dry land, 3. 

BIENVILLE, JEAN BAPTISTE LEMOYNE DE, comes to Louisiana, 280; foundsNew Orleans, 183; adversity in closing years, 285. 

BILOXI, site of first French settlement on Gulf of Mexico, 282. 

BIMINI, fabled fountain of immortality, 78. 

BOISRONDET, SIEUR DE, narrow escape from starvation, 247. 

BRANT ROCK, Champlain's stop there, 109. 

BRÉBEUF, FATHER, an early French missionary, 152. 

BRETONS, THE, early frequented the Newfoundland fisheries, 54. 

BRULÉ, ÉTIENNE, Champlain's interpreter, 133. 

CALUMET, or peace-pipe, old description of, 178, note. 

CAP BLANC, name which Champlain gave to Cape Cod, 110. 

CAP ROUGE, fortified by Cartier; seat of Roberval's settlement, 63. 

CARTIER, JACQUES, his first voyage, 54; his duplicity, 55; believedthat he had found sea-route to India, 56; in second voyage explored theSt. Lawrence, 57; names Mont Royal (later Montreal), 60; his fearfulexperience, 61; his treachery, 62; his last voyage futile, 62. 

CARVER, JONATHAN, early traveler, describes remains of ancientfortification, 301, note; and Falls of St. Anthony, 306, note. 

CAT ISLAND (Ile des Chats), origin of name, 281. 

CATLIN, GEORGE, 322; his theory of the origin of the Mandans, 326. 

CAVELIER, ROBERT, SIEUR DE LA SALLE. _See_ La Salle. 

CAYUGAS, a tribe of the Iroquois League, 9. 

CENIS INDIANS, branch of Caddo (Pawnee) family, visited by La Salle, 269. 

CHALEUR, BAY OF, name how originating, 54. 

CHAMPLAIN, SAMUEL DE, his birth, 104; takes part in the Religious Warsin France, 104; sails to the West Indies, 104; suggests a Panama Canal, 105; sails for Canada, 105; conceives a plan of colonization, 105;makes a settlement at mouth of St. Croix River, 107; cruel winter, 108;visits and names Mt. Desert, 108; explores New England coast, 108;welcomed by natives in Plymouth Harbor, 109; trouble with Indians atNausett, 110; transfers settlement to Port Royal, 110; second voyage toNew France, 119; seeks sea-route to China, 119; explores the St. Lawrence, 120; seeks to establish stronghold on the inland waters, 120;eager to promote conversion of the Indians, 120; overcomes resistanceof Basques to fur-trade monopoly, 123; quells mutiny of his men, 124;great suffering in first winter at Quebec, 124; goes with war-party ofAlgonquins into Iroquois country, 125; hostile encounter on LakeChamplain, 128; disastrous results of his success, 130; his secondfight with Iroquois, 131; founds Montreal, 133; second raid intoIroquois country, 133, names Lake Huron, 134; Iroquois palisaded town, 136; his unsuccessful attack on, 137; wounded, 138; lost in the woods, 140; returns to Quebec, 142; a prisoner at London, 143; dies, 143. 

CHARLEVOIX, FATHER, sent out to explore route to Pacific, 314. 

CHATHAM HARBOR, scene of Champlain's fight with Indians, 111. 

CHICAGO, La Salle near the site of, 236. 

CHICKASAWS, a branch of the Maskoki family, 181; hostile to the French, 253, note. 

CHICORA, native name of coast region of South Carolina, 69. 

CHIEFS, INDIAN, how chosen, 34. 

CHIPPEWAYS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

CHOCTAWS, a Maskoki tribe, 9, who sided with the French, 253, note. 

CHRISTINOS, or Crees, an Indian tribe on Lake Superior, 210. 

CLAN, a group of families of common blood, 20. 

COLIGNY, ADMIRAL, sends a second expedition to Florida, 77. 

COLUMBIA AND SACRAMENTO VALLEYS, Indians inhabiting, lowest specimensof the race, 10. 

COMANCHES, Indian tribe of Shoshonee stock, 10; visited by La Salle, 269; their fine horsemanship, 270; jockeying, 270, note. 

CONESTOGAS, a Huron-Iroquois tribe, 9. 

COPPER, in large quantities, seen by Radisson, 207. 

COROAS, Indian tribe on the Lower Mississippi, attack La Salle, 256. 

COUNCIL, An Indian, how conducted, 32. 

COUREURS DE BOIS, their origin and influence, 114; their mode of life, 189. 

COUTURE, a companion of Father Jogues, 156. 

CREEKS, a Maskoki tribe, 9. 

DAGONOWEDA, a sachem of the Onondagas, who proposed union, 17. 

DAKOTA, or SIOUX, the, a native stock; its range, 10. 

DANIEL, FATHER, an early French missionary, 152. 

DAVOST, FATHER, an early French missionary, 152. 

DES PLAINES RIVER, route used by Joliet and Marquette in returning, 183; followed by La Salle, 245. 

DISTRIBUTION of various Indian tribal families, 7. 

DIVINATION by Indian sorcerer, 126. 

DU GAY, a companion of Father Hennepin in exploration, 293. 

DU LHUT, DANIEL GREYSOLON, noted leader of coureurs, 190, his testimonyto having found Hennepin among the Sioux, 297. 

DULUTH, CITY OF, for whom named, 190. 

DUTCH PROTESTANTS try to effect the release of Father Jogues, 159;ransom him and send him to Europe, 160. 

EMPEROR, none in North America, 15. 

ERIES, a Huron-Iroquois tribe, 8. 

ESKIMO, descendants, perhaps, of ancient "Cave-men, " 5. 

EUROPEANS, their early mistakes as to Indian life, 16. 

FAMILY, THE, the root of all society, 18; the family-tie the centralprinciple of Indian social life, 20. 

FILLES À LA CASSETTE sent out to New Orleans by Louis the Fourteenth, 284. 

FISHERIES, NEWFOUNDLAND, early attracted European visitors, 53. 

FISKE, The late Dr. John, his theory about the Eskimo, 6. 

FIVE NATIONS, THE, what tribes constituted, 9; only friends of theEnglish, 114. 

FLORIDA, as understood by Spaniards; extent, 90. 

FORT CAROLINE, the fort built by Laudonnière on the St. John's, 82;great misery through want and sickness, 86; distress relieved by comingof Ribaut, 89; massacre, 90 _et seq. _

FORT CRÈVECOEUR built, 240, origin of name, 240; destroyed, 242. 

FORT FRONTENAC (on site of Kingston) built, 228; turned over to LaSalle, 229. 

FORT MIAMI, at mouth of St. Joseph River, 245, 256. 

FORT ORANGE, Dutch settlement on site of Albany, 159. 

FORT ROSALIE, on the Lower Mississippi; slaughter at, 253, note. 

FORT ST. LOUIS, at Lavaca, Texas, built, 266. 

FORT ST. LOUIS, on the Illinois, built, 256. 

FRANCE desirous of christianizing the natives, 120. 

FRENCH attitude to Indians; how necessarily different from the Spanish, 47. 

FRENCHMEN, what they achieved in North and Northwest, 45; theirmaterial object, Furs, 46; their conduct contrasted with Spaniards', 46. 

FRONTENAC, LOUIS DE BUADE, COUNT OF, comes to Canada, 227; makesalliance with La Salle, 227; opposed by fur-traders, 228; recalled, 255. 

FUNDY, BAY OF, how name originated, 110. 

FUR-TRADERS classified, 188. 

FURS, great object of French commercial activity, 188. 

GASPÉ, French sovereignty first asserted at, 55. 

GOUPIL, a companion of Father Jogues; his death, 158. 

GOURGUES, DOMINIQUE DE, takes ample vengeance on the Spaniards at FortCaroline, 96. 

GOVERNMENT, INDIAN, what it was like, 29. 

GRAND COUNCIL of Iroquois League, how composed, 31. 

"GRIFFIN, " THE, first vessel on the Upper Lakes, 233. 

GROSEILLERS, SIEUR DES, title assumed by Médard Chouart, co-explorerwith Radisson of Lake Superior, 199. For rest, _see_ Radisson. 

GUNS sold to Iroquois by Dutch, 131. 

HAKLUYT, RICHARD, a chronicler of old explorations, 86. 

HAWKINS, SIR JOHN, founder of English African slave-trade, relieves thedistressed Frenchmen, 88. 

HELPFULNESS, MUTUAL, characteristic of Indian life, 41. 

HENNEPIN, FATHER Louis, comes to Canada, 290; describes Niagara Falls, 291; describes a council of Senecas, 292; is sent to explore the UpperMississippi, 293; his fraud, 294; captured by Sioux, 298; hisexperiences among the Sioux, 298 _et seq, _; sees and names Falls of St. Anthony, 306; rescued by Du Lhut, 308. 

HIAWATHA inspires the union of Iroquois tribes, 27. 

HIAWATHA, Poem of, recalled by Radisson's descriptions, 207, 210, 215. 

HOCHELAGA, Indian name for site of Montreal, 105. 

HOUSEHOLD life of Indians based on community-idea, 38; very sociable, 40. 

HOUSES, INDIAN, how built and arranged, 37. 

HUDSON BAY FUR COMPANY, its organization by whom suggested, 191. 

HURON-IROQUOIS, a native stock; its tribes, 8. 

HURON INDIANS, more advanced than Algonquins, 134; Champlain visitstheir country, 134. 

IBERVILLE, PIERRE LEMOYNE DE, comes to Louisiana, 280. 

ILE DES CHATS (Cat Island), why so called, 281. 

ILLINOIS INDIANS, branch of Algonquin Family, harassed by Iroquois andSioux, 238, 244 _et seq. _

INDIANS, probable origin of, 3; of one blood, 4. 

IROQUOIS, one of the great divisions of the Indian race, 4; IROQUOISLEAGUE, 27 _et seq. _, why relentless towards Hurons and Eries, 28. 

"JESUIT RELATIONS, " Value of, as historical material, 149. 

JESUITS, Great activity of, in early history of Canada, 149; theirpolicy to establish missions, 151. 

JOGUES, FATHER, Jesuit missionary, discovers Lake George, 149; hisheroism, 158; his pathetic end, 164. 

JOLIET, Louis, 171; sent with Father Marquette to explore theMississippi, 172; their route, 172 _et seq. _, meet with friendlyIllinois, 177; receive gift of peace-pipe, 178; pass Missouri and OhioRivers, 180; in danger, above mouth of Arkansas River, 181; saved byexhibiting peace-pipe, 181; start on return voyage, 182; what theyaccomplished, 183; Joliet's misfortune, 184; Marquette's death, 184. 

JOUTEL, a lieutenant of La Salle, in command of fort, 267. 

KANKAKEE RIVER, route followed by La Salle, 237. 

KASKASKIA, famous village of the Illinois, visited by Joliet andMarquette, 183. 

KEOKUK, site of, near place where Joliet and Marquette met friendlyIllinois, 179. 

KEWEENAW POINT, its wealth in copper, 210. 

KICKAPOOS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

KING, none in North America, 15. 

"KING PHILIP, " Mistake as to, 15. 

KINGSTON, Ontario, Fort Frontenac near the site of, 228. 

LA BARRE, successor of Frontenac as Governor of Canada, hostile to LaSalle, 257. 

LA CHINE, how name originated, 226. 

LAKE CHAMPLAIN discovered by Champlain, 127. 

LAKE GEORGE, route through, the Indian thoroughfare, 127, note. 

LAKE NIPISSING, on the Ottawa River route, 133. 

LAKE PEPIN, for whom called, 301; remains of ancient fortificationnear, 301, note. 

LAKE SIMCOE, on route of Hurons to Iroquois country, 135. 

LAKE SUPERIOR explored by Radisson and Groseillers, 201 _et seq. _

LA SALLE, SIEUR DE, early connection with the Jesuits, 225; comes toCanada, 225; goes exploring, 226; becomes a supporter of Frontenac, 227; goes to France and wins the King, 228; in command of FortFrontenac, 229; his ambition, 229; visits France and procuresextraordinary commission, 230; begins his great exploration, 231, builds stronghold at mouth of Niagara River, 232; builds first vessellaunched on Upper Lakes, 233; sails on his great enterprise, 234; the"Griffin, " 235; goes in canoes down Illinois River, 238; allies himselfwith the Illinois, 239; builds Fort Crèvecoeur, 240; reaches theMississippi, 245; starts for the Gulf of Mexico, 250; adventures by theway, 251 _et seq. _, reaches the Gulf, 254; bestows the name Louisiana, 254; hardships and hostility on return voyage, 255; goes to France, 257; appears on coast of Texas, 261, his purpose, 262; his difficultiesand his dilemma, 263 _et seq. _; mistake of his pilots, 264; loss of hisvessels, 264, 265; loss of men by sickness and Indians, 266; buildsfort at Lavaca, 266; vainly seeks the Mississippi, 266 _et seq. _; setsout for Canada, 272; assassinated, 275; what he had achieved, 275; bywhom his plan was carried out, 278 _et seq. _

LAUDONNIÈRE, RENÉ DE, an officer under Ribaut, 68; goes in command of asecond expedition to Florida, 77; seizes Outina, 86; releases him, 87;declines proposal of Hawkins to carry him and his men home, 88; buys avessel from him, 89; escapes the massacre, 94. 

LAVACA, Texas, site of La Salle's fort, 266. 

LE CARON, friar, discoverer of Lake Huron, 133, 149. 

LE JEUNE, an early French missionary, winter's experience withhunting-party of Algonquins, 150. 

LENAPE, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

LÉRY, BARON DE, an early adventurer, left cattle on Sable Island, 103. 

LEWIS AND CLARK sent out to explore route to Pacific, 321; winter amongMandans, 321, note. 

LIPANS, an offshoot of Athapascan stock, 7. 

LONG HOUSE, THE, Indian name of Iroquois League, 28. 

LOUISIANA, the name given by La Salle, 254. 

MACKENZIE, ALEXANDER, discovers Mackenzie River, 318; reaches thePacific, 320. 

MANDANS, Indian tribe, first visited by Vérendrye, 317; by Lewis andClark, 321, note; by George Catlin, 322; his enthusiasm about them, 323; his peculiar theory of their origin, 326; their singulardwellings, 325; story of a Mandan's revenge, 323. 

MANHATTAN ISLAND first occupied by Dutch as a trading-post, 130, note. 

MANITOU, Indian for "spirit, " 126. 

MARQUETTE, FATHER, missionary and explorer. _See_ Joliet. 

MARRIAGE must not be between two persons of same clan, 22. 

MASCOUTINS, western Algonquins, 174. 

MASKOKI, a native stock; its tribes and its range, 9. 

MASSACRE ISLAND (Dauphin Island), why so called, 280. 

MATAGORDA BAY, Texas, scene of La Salle's landing, 261. 

MATANZAS INLET, French Huguenots butchered there by Menendez, 95. 

MAUNDEVILLE, SIR JOHN, story of fountain of immortality, 78, note. 

MAY, RIVER OF, now called the St. John's, 67. 

"MEDICINE, " in what sense the word used, 138, note. 

MEMBRÉ, FATHER, accompanies La Salle down the Mississippi, 251, hisdescription of the Arkansas Indians, 251. 

MENENDEZ, PEDRO, DE AVILES, appointed Spanish Governor of Florida, 83;attacks Ribaut's vessels off the St. John's, 89; founds St. Augustine, 90; surprises Fort Caroline, 92; massacres the garrison, 93, andshipwrecked crews of Ribaut's vessels, 94. 

MIAMIS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

MICHILLIMACKINAC, trading-post and mission-station, 235. 

MICMACS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

MILLE LACS, a lake in Minnesota, 301. 

MILWAUKEE, La Salle near the site of, 236. 

MISSIONARIES, ROMAN CATHOLIC, unselfish devotion of, 147 _et seq. _

MISSISSIPPI RIVER, western boundary of Maskoki group, 9. 

MISSOURI RIVER, Mouth of, first seen by Joliet and Marquette, 180. 

MITCHIGAMEAS, a branch of the Maskoki family, 181. 

MOBILE settled, 283; first capital of Louisiana, 283. 

MOHAWKS, a tribe of the Iroquois League, 9. 

MOHEGANS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

MONOPOLY OF FUR-TRADE, evils of, 122. 

"MONTEZUMA, EMPEROR, " Mistake as to, 15. 

MONTREAL founded by Champlain, 133. 

MONTS, SIEUR DE, an associate of Champlain, 106. 

MOQUIS, a tribe of Pueblo Indians, 10. 

MUSKHOGEES (same as Creeks), a Maskoki tribe, 9. 

NANTICOKES, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

NARRAGANSETTS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

NATCHEZ INDIANS visited by La Salle, 252; described by Father Gravier, 253, note; their subsequent history, 253, note. 

NAUSETT HARBOR, Champlain's trouble there with Indians, 110. 

NAVAJOES, an offshoot of Athapascan stock, 7. 

NEW BISCAY, northern province of Mexico, 262. 

NEW FRANCE, FATHER OF, title of Samuel de Champlain, 104. 

NEW ORLEANS founded, 283; early struggles, 285. 

NIAGARA FALLS described by Father Hennepin, 232. 

NICOLLET, JEAN, ambassador to Winnebagoes, 169; reaches WisconsinRiver, 171. 

OHIO RIVER, Mouth of, first seen by Joliet and Marquette, 180. 

ONEIDAS, a tribe of the Iroquois League, 9. 

ONONDAGAS, a tribe of the Iroquois League, 9; in what sense leadingtribe, 31. 

ONONTIO, Indian name for French Governor, 177. 

ORATORS, Indian, how trained, 33. 

OTTAWA RIVER, Indian route followed by Champlain, 133. 

OTTIGNY, a lieutenant under Laudonnière, 77. 

OUTINA, an Indian chief, dupes the Frenchmen into fighting his battles, 85. 

PACIFIC, THE, reached by northern route, 320. 

PASSAMAQUODDIES, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

PAWNEES, a native stock; its range, 10. 

PEORIA, the first habitation of white men in Illinois near the site of, 241. 

PEQUOTS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

PHRATRY, a group of clans, 23. 

"PICTURED ROCKS, " THE, described by Radisson, 208. 

PIERRIA, ALBERT DE, left in command of the fort at Port Royal, 71;murdered by his own men, 73. 

POCAHONTAS, not a princess, 16. 

PONTGRAVÉ, an associate of Champlain, 105. 

PORT ROYAL, Nova Scotia, settled, 108; abandoned, 115. 

PORT ROYAL, South Carolina, named by Ribaut, 69. 

PORT ST. LOUIS, name which Champlain gave to site of Plymouth, 109. 

PORTAGE, CITY OF, site described by Jonathan Carver, 174, note. 

POTTAWATTAMIES, a friendly Algonquin tribe, 248. 

POWHATANS, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

PUEBLO INDIANS, THE, a native stock; some of its tribes, 10. 

QUEBEC (Indian, Kebec, "The Narrows"), founded by Champlain, 123, slowgrowth of, 142. 

QUINIPISSAS, Indian tribe above site of New Orleans, attack La Salle, 256. 

RADISSON, PIERRE ESPRIT, comes to Canada, 191; his adventure andcapture, 191; his escape and re-capture, 196, his second escape, 198, why he is not better known, 200; starts for the Upper Lakes, 201;perilous adventures by the way, 201; enters Lake Superior, 206;describes the "Pictured Rocks, " 208; builds a fort on Lake Superior, 211; describes a famine, 212; witnesses interesting games, 218; bringsto Montreal an enormous canoe-fleet loaded with skins, 221; offers hisservices to the English King, 221. 

RIBAUT, CAPTAIN JEAN, his first expedition to America, 67; comes, withlarge colony, to Fort Caroline, 89; goes with his whole force to attackMenendez, at St. Augustine, 90; is overtaken by hurricane, driven downthe coast and wrecked, 91; crews massacred, 91 _et seq. _

RIBOURDE, FATHER, murdered, 247. 

RICHELIEU OR SOREL RIVER, route followed by Champlain, 115. 

ROBERVAL, SIEUR DE, vainly attempts to colonize Canada, 63. 

ROCHE, MARQUIS DE LA, story of his disastrous venture, 102. 

ROCKY MOUNTAINS, THE, western boundary of Dakota-Sioux, 10; discovered, 318. 

SABLE ISLAND, southeast of Nova Scotia, 102. 

SACS AND FOXES, Algonquin tribes, 7; slaughter of, 173. 

SACHEMS, who they were, 31. 

ST. ANTHONY, FALLS OF, discovered and named, 306. 

ST. AUGUSTINE founded, 90. 

ST. CROIX RIVER, Mouth of, place of Champlain's first settlement, 107. 

ST. JOHN'S BLUFF, site of first fort on the St. John's River, 79. 

ST. LAWRENCE, Gulf and River, why so named, 57. 

SAULT STE. MARIE, furthest western post of French missionaries, 45; amissionary's description of, 206, note. 

SAVANNAH RIVER, southern boundary of Algonquins, 7. 

SEMINOLES, a Maskoki tribe, 9. 

SENEGAS, a tribe of the Iroquois League, 9. 

SEVEN CITIES OF CIBOLA, 69, note. 

SHAWNEES, an Algonquin tribe, 7. 

SHOSHONEES, a native stock; its range, 10. 

SIX NATIONS, THE, what tribes included, 9. 

STADACONÉ, Indian village, near site of Quebec, 58. 

"STARVED ROCK, " probable site of La Salle's Fort St. Louis, 256. 

SUSQUEHANNOCKS, a Huron-Iroquois tribe, 9. 

TADOUSSAC, early post, well situated for fur-trade, 121. 

TAENSAS INDIANS visited by La Salle, 251; described, 253, note. 

THIMAGOAS, an Indian tribe in Florida, 80. 

THREE RIVERS, one of earliest French posts on the St. Lawrence, 191. 

THWAITES, DR. REUBEN GOLD, authority on colonial history, his judgmentas to Radisson, Preface; recites tradition of slaughter of Sacs andFoxes, 173. 

TONTY, HENRI DE, La Salle's faithful lieutenant, 237; tryingexperiences in the Illinois country, 245 _et seq. _; his efforts torescue La Salle and his men, 276 _et seq. _

TOTEM, a clan-symbol used by Indians, 21. 

TRENT RIVER, on route of Hurons to Iroquois country, 135. 

TRIBE, THE, an aggregation based on the family-tie, 23; in some aspectsan ideal republic, 36. 

TUSCARORAS, a tribe of the Iroquois League, 9. 

VASSEUR, a lieutenant under Laudonnière, 80. 

VÉRENDRYE, PIERRE GAULTIER DE VARENNES DE LA, his early experiences, 314; his efforts to reach the Pacific, 315, establishes a chain ofposts, 316; disappointed of reaching the Pacific, 317. 

VÉRENDRYE, PIERRE DE LA, son of former, discovers the Rocky Mountains, 318. 

"VERMILION SEA, " old name for Gulf of California, 175. 

VERMILION RIVER, Rock at mouth of, probable site of La Salle's Fort St. Louis, 256. 

"VIRGINIA SEA, " old name for the Atlantic, 175. 

VOYAGEURS, who they were, their influence, 114. 

WILD RICE, THE, or MENOMONIE, Indians, an Algonquin branch, welcomeJoliet and Marquette, 172. 

WINNEBAGOES, branch of the Dakotas or Sioux, 170. 

YAZOOS, Indian tribe, hostile to the French, 253, note. 

ZUNIS, a tribe of Pueblo Indians, 10.