USA > Illinois > Chapters from Illinois history > Part 11
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war, and charged him with falsehood. The men sent from Mackinac in the fall were detained at Montreal, and the Governor gave ready credence to all charges against them or their employer. He determined to bring La Salle to Quebec and to take possession of his establish- ment on the Illinois River. To arrange this and other matters he commissioned an officer to proceed to Macki- nac and points beyond.5
This person, whose name was to be connected with the Illinois country and with the beginning of Chicago, was Olivier Morel Sieur de La Durantaye. Born at Gasure in the ancient bishopric of Nantes, February 17, 1640, of an old and noble family, he grew to manhood in his native France, and at the age of 22 commenced his long career of faithful military service to his king. He attained the rank of lieutenant in the fine infantry regiment which bore the name of its Colonel, Sieur de Chambelle, and in 1665 was appointed one of its cap- tains. The same year he exchanged into the famous regiment of Carignan-Salières that he might proceed with it to Canada where it was sent to bring the Iroquois to terms. After peace was concluded he returned with his company to France, but the charms of the New World led him thither again. In 1672 the Intendant Jean Talon granted him a concession near the River Richelieu of seventy arpents of land, which he was engaged in cultivating when the course of events brought him into the service of the government again.6 His commission from La Barre, dated March 1, 1683, recites that he was selected because a man of experience, worth and approved wisdom was needed to carry out the instruc- tions which he would receive. Fourteen days later the Governor, fearing lest the work he had planned was too
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much for one person to accomplish, commissioned as Durantaye's lieutenant the Chevalier Louis Henri de Baugy, a young officer, son of a royal counselor, who had arrived from France the preceding autumn.7
La Salle meanwhile not realizing the storm which was brewing at Quebec but uneasy because of the non-arrival of his men, determined to appeal directly to La Barre. On the 2nd of April, 1683, he wrote from Fort St. Louis a pathetic letter, setting forth his reverses and his resolve, notwithstanding, to meet his obligations. He recounted his great discovery; the building of the fort, and the assembling of the Indians; set forth his future plans, and besought the Governor not to delay parties going from the post to the settlements. Another detach- ment was ready to set out to bring back supplies of ammunition, but feared that they might be detained on the charge of illegal trading. La Salle assured La Barre of the falsity of any such allegation, informed him that these supplies were absolutely necessary for the defence of the fort which was on the eve of being attacked, and begged him to permit all of the people belonging there to return.8 In the hope that he had thus made certain of fair treatment, La Salle permitted André Eno and Jean Filastreau to take the route for Montreal with a load of peltries belonging to Tonty and Jacques Cauchois, which they had generously permitted to be exchanged for powder and ball for the common defence. In May came the rumor that the Iroquois were on the warpath, and the Miamis who had returned to their villages to gather their corn were so alarmed that they resolved to flee to far distant parts. Such a course would have disinte- grated La Salle's colony, and he went at once to the St. Joseph region, assembled the Miami chiefs and persuaded
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the tribe to retire in a body to Fort St. Louis. Then he descended the stream to its mouth with the intention of going to Mackinac and thence to Montreal, to see the Governor. He was delayed at Fort Miami four days by bad weather. The fourth evening some Kiskakon sav- ages who had been trading with the Miamis brought the tidings that the latter had come upon the recent trail of an army of Iroquois one of whose parties had slain a Miami hunter, while chasing a deer near their camp. La Salle had promised the Illinois at Fort St. Louis to retrace his steps at the first sure intelligence of the approach of the Iroquois, and therefore changed his plans forthwith and returned with the Miamis. These were divided into the Ouiatenons from about the Kanka- kee portage, the Pepikoia who dwelt midway between this point and the mouth of the St. Joseph, and the Tchatchaking who were near Lake Michigan, and fol- lowed its coast in their retreat. The others came to join them as soon as they heard that the Iroquois were near. Each sub-tribe had intended to take its own route, lest their crossing the country together, should too greatly tax its resources. But they now preferred, as the chron- icler aptly says, to risk a scarcity of provisions by their union, rather than to become bread for the Iroquois by marching separately.9
The motley host of from four thousand to forty-five hundred souls pursued its course around the southern end of Lake Michigan and along its western shore. The country was so rich in game as to supply their wants without difficulty, although as many more natives were dependent upon the same region for their sustenance. There was a busy scene at the Chicago portage when the Miamis arrived and by degrees passed on down the Des
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Plaines. La Salle himself halted here at the little stock- ade with a log house within its enclosure which two of his men had erected at this point during the winter of 1682 and 1683.10 This was the first known structure of anything like a permanent character upon the site of Chicago, and the first habitation of white men there since Marquette's encampment in the winter of 1674. It was an outlying post of Fort St. Louis, established for the procuring of beaver and other furs, and its occupants at this time were Jacques Cauchois, the faithful attendant of La Salle in his illness on the Mississippi, and an Indian whose name has not been preserved.11 Disappointed in his hope of a personal interview with La Barre, the earliest opportunity to communicate with him was seized by La Salle who now sent his two Chicago colonists to Montreal with all the peltries they could carry.12
By the hand of Cauchois he forwarded a second letter to the Governor dated " Du portage de Checagou 4 Juin, 1683," which is probably the first document wholly writ- ten at that place, and comes next in point of time to that portion of Marquette's journal actually indited there. In this epistle La Salle plainly tells La Barre that the detaining of all the men who had gone to Montreal had caused a lack of everything needful, and that these two now came to procure means for the actual defence of the fort against formidable enemies. He asks him to have the goodness to permit them to return with their charge, and with as many others as Cauchois might persuade to accompany them. After recounting what had taken place since his last communication and the straits the colony was in, he reproachfully says; "But, monsieur, it is in vain that we risk our lives here and that I exhaust myself to fulfill the wishes of His Majesty, if, at the
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settlements below, all the measures are thwarted which I take to procure success, and if on far fetched pretexts those are kept back who go to obtain the supplies with- out which we cannot defend ourselves. It is useless for the King to permit me to build forts and to do what is necessary for the accomplishment of my design, if I am prevented from bringing arms, powder and lead here." Again, changing his tone, he shows that he has only twenty Frenchmen at the fort with but a hundred pounds of powder and bullets in proportion, and that unless he has more he cannot withstand an attack. And he closes with an earnest appeal to La Barre to save the post as the key to a country capable of becoming a powerful colony which will always honor him as its preserver in its infancy.13 In a memorandum added to the letter he says he has learned from Tonty that an armed band of the Illinois went on the warpath against the Iroquois and their allies ten days before, and just as he was closing, another dispatch from Tonty arrived, brought by two of his men to the Chicago portage, to tell La Salle that, unless he came back at once, the Illinois would forsake them to go to some region beyond the reach of the Iroquois. The war party previously spoken of had returned, having met forty of the enemy and captured one whom they offered to Tonty to put to death. He declined, telling them it was not the custom of the French to kill their prisoners of war; but he feared to ask clemency for the Iroquois lest it should seem that the whites were in sympathy with the Five Nations, as La Salle's enemies were continually alleging. The luckless captive therefore "was burned in the ordinary manner," says La Salle, "he having been presented to the Shawa- noes, who put him to the fire."" To neither of these
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letters does the stolid old soldier who sat in the chair of state in the Governor's chateau at Quebec seem to have made any reply. Five months after the last was written, he sent copies of both to the Minister Colbert, and asserted that La Salle's head was turned, that his discov- ery was false, and that he was setting up an imaginary kingdom. So far was La Barre from realizing his own shameful conduct that he gloated over the failure of La Salle's men to return to him, and rejoiced that he was deprived of the means necessary to maintain his post, which he contemptuously spoke of as inore than five hun- dred leagues distant from Quebec. 15
La Salle's previous visit to the Chicago portage was made in mid-winter,16 when one could not easily deter- mine the character of the region. On this occasion he came in the early summer, 17 and doubtless then prepared or obtained the facts for his description of the place, probably written later in 1683. He says: "The portage de Checagou is an isthmus of land at forty-one degrees and fifty minutes north latitude to the west of the lake of the Illinois, which is reached by a channel formed by the meeting of many rivulets or rainfalls of the prairie. It is navigable about two leagues to the border of the prai- rie a quarter of a league westward. There is there a lit- tle lake divided into two by a beaver dam about a league and a half in length, whence there flows a little stream which, after meandering half a league among the rushes, falls into the river Checagou, and by it into the river Illi- nois. This lake, when filled by the great rains of sum- mer or the floods of spring, flows into the channel leading to the lake of the Illinois, the surface of which is seven feet lower than the prairie in which the former lake lies. The river Checagou does the same in the spring when its
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channel is full; it discharges by this little lake a part of its waters into the lake of the Illinois. And at this time, which would be the summer, Jolliet says that a little canal a quarter of a league long from this lake to the basin which leads to the lake of the Illinois, would enable barks to enter the Checagou and descend to the sea. That perhaps might happen in the spring, but not in summer, because there is then no water in the river as far as Fort St. Louis, where the navigation of the Illinois commences in summer time and thence is good as far as the sea. It . is true, there is besides a difficulty that this ditch would not be able to remedy, which is that the lake of the Illi- nois always forms a bank of sand at the entrance of the channel leading from it. And I greatly doubt, whatever any one says, whether this could be swept away or scat- tered by the force of the current of the Checagou, if made to flow there, since much stronger ones in the same lake have not been able to do it. Furthermore, the utility of it would be small, since I doubt whether, when all was completed, a vessel would be able to ascend against the great flood which the currents cause in the Checagou in the spring, much more violent than those of the Rhone. Then it would be for only a little time, and at most for only fifteen to twenty days a year, after which there would be no more water. What confirms me besides in the opinion that the Checagou would not be able to keep the mouth of the channel clear, is that the lake is full of ice which blocks the navigable openings at the time in question, and when the ice is melted, there is not water enough in the Checagou to prevent the sand from stop- ping up the channel. Indeed I would not have mentioned this matter, if Jolliet had not proposed it, without having sufficiently guarded against the difficulties." 18 The chan-
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nel first spoken of is the present Chicago River, the little lake is Mud Lake, since drained away, and the then Che- cagou is now the Des Plaines, whose spring floods rushing through the Chicago River to Lake Michigan are but a thing of yesterday, while the sand bar at the junction of river and lake is not yet forgotten. In every particular the description coincides so exactly with the existing or former characteristics of the place that it alone deter- mines the location of the Chicago portage within the lim- its of the present city of the name, beyond the shadow of a doubt. It speaks also of the power of the man who, amid all of the cares then pressing upon him, could make such a careful topographical examination of this important point. We may imagine him as he completes it, after his men have embarked for Montreal and his Miami allies have journeyed onward down the Des Plaines, once more alone upon the site of Chicago, whence he takes his soli- tary way to Fort St. Louis.
Recurring now to events at Quebec, La Barre had inatured his instructions to Durantaye and delivered them to him under date of April 21, 1683. These describe him as the bearer of the Governor's commission to the Ottawas, the Miamis and other distant people, and direct him to establish good relations with them, to repress the coureurs de bois, and to bear to Sieur de La Salle the orders of La Barre, in whose behalf also he was to seek out the Illinois, if this could easily be done. At Mackinac he was to inquire whether it was true that La Salle had set himself up as a potentate among the Miamis and towards the head of Green Bay, had plun- dered some French canoes bearing the permits of Fron- tenac, and had issued permits in his own name. If Durantaye found proof of these charges, and La Salle
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was within reach, he was to go in person with his lieu- tenant and four or five canoes and read and place in the hands of La Salle the Governor's order to immediately report to him, and to make La Salle understand that if he did not obey he would be arrested. If the proofs were not conclusive, or La Salle was too far away, Durantaye was to send him and his companions the letters which the Governor had written them by De Baugy, who at the same time could bear La Barre's dispatches to the Illi- nois. De Baugy was also instructed to take occasion to withdraw young Nicolas La Salle from the company of the elder La Salle, and to send him to the Governor. Just as La Barre was completing this document he had a fresh access of rage against La Salle upon learning that he had brought the Shawanoes, who were declared ene- mies of the Iroquois, into a union with the Miamis and the Illinois. And he added a peremptory command to Durantaye to go or send De Baugy to the mission at Green Bay to entreat the Reverend Father Nouvel to accompany one of them to the Miamis, to tell them that the Governor had made peace for them with the Iroquois, but could not maintain it unless they separated from the Shawanoes, and to do the same with the Illinois if they could be reached.19 The false charges against La Salle and the misconception of his plans revealed in these instructions so worked upon the aged Governor's mind that later he prepared dispatches to La Salle ordering him to leave the West at once and come to Quebec to render an account of his pretended discovery.20 La Barre had by this time so firmly persuaded himself of the falsity of the account of the Mississippi voyage that he took the posi- tion that La Salle's patent from the King, of May 12, 1678, which provided that the discovery must be accom-
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plished within five years, was really null and void. Insisting, therefore, that all of La Salle's privileges were forfeited, and that he had no right to be in the Illinois country at all, the governor issued another order to Dur- antaye and De Baugy, telling them to exercise the authority he had given them, without any preliminary, and to compel La Salle to depart from the West and to report to him. And he enjoined all of the comrades of La Salle to separate from him and to give him no further recognition. This cruel decree was dated May 9, 1683, three days before the patent could expire, even if the mouth of the Mississippi had not been discovered.21
Durantaye and De Baugy set out from Quebec April 23d, and came to Montreal, where the Governor, who fol- lowed them thither, issued this latest order. They left this place May 12th, and spent thirteen days in traversing the nine leagues of rapids to Lachine. Hence they departed May 25th, arrived at Sault Ste. Marie June 26th, and at Mackinac the 2d of July.22 We have a very interesting letter from De Baugy to his brother, de- scribing the journey, written "à Messilimakina, ce 7 Juillet, 1683," in which he says that the journey is very fatiguing, there being twenty-eight portages and about sixty places where the canoes have to be drawn through the rapids and lifted over the rocks. De Baugy served his apprenticeship to "these little machines," as he calls the canoes, and learned to handle the paddle, but suffered grievously from the flies at the carrying places in the woods. He was looking forward hopefully to the journey which lay before him of more than two hundred leagues, to his winter quarters among the Illinois Indians, a very numerous nation in a beautiful country where there are great prairies. With pleasurable anticipation
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he remarks that one sees there quantities of huge wild oxen and turkeys, and that there is good cheer in that land. But it was necessary that he should reach it scon, because he had orders to make M. de La Salle, who was there, come down to render an account of his actions. To this letter a postscript dated July 22d was added, say- ing that the writer believed that during the following winter he would be engaged in warfare with the sav- ages, who might take his life, though this did not trouble him so much. But what he dreaded most, as he was just departing in his "little machines," was the flies, which tormented a person so cruelly that one did not know what to do. 23
Durantaye accompanied De Baugy as far as the mis- sion at the foot of Green Bay, whence in August the lat- ter set out for the Illinois country,24 doubtless taking the route of the Chicago portage. La Salle meanwhile was at Fort St. Louis, encouraging his colonists to make clear- ings and plant crops, and preparing concessions of land to his employés and creditors and to religious orders. The names of twenty or more of these early settlers or grantees of land in what is now Illinois are preserved in the records of the Superior Council of Quebec, where they may be seen to-day. Among them are Riverin, Pierre Chenet François Pachot, Chanjon, François Hazeur, Louis Le Vasseur, Mathieu Martin, François Charron, les Sieurs d'Artigny and La Chesnaye, Jacques de Faye, Pierre Le Vasseur, Michel Guyon, Poisset, André de Chaulne, Marie Joseph le Neuf, Michel de Gréz Philipes Esnault, Jean Petit, René Fezeret, les Sieurs Laporte, Louvigny et de St. Castin, François de La Forest, Henri de Tonty, and the Jesuit Fathers.25 But the lack of sup- plies, the failure of his parties to return, and the hostility
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of the Governor, which he could no longer doubt, ren- dered his position intolerable. He resolved to proceed to France and appeal in person to the K.ng.26 Everything was put in the best possible condition at the fort, his peo- ple there were promised early supplies, and Tonty was placed in command.27 In the latter part of the month of August, 1683,28 La Salle, with some of his Frenchmen and two Shawanoes, departed from his rocky citadel and ascended the River Illinois. Fourteen leagues from the fort29 or about midway between the Fox and Kankakee rivers, he saw another party approaching, and soon was greeted by a young officer, who announced himself as the bearer of the orders of the Governor of New France. It was De Baugy, at last arrived in the land of the Illinois, who now delivered to La Salle La Barre's harsh edict of May 9, 1683,30 and thus made the first service of a legal writ within the territory now comprised in the State of Illinois.31 It more than confirmed La Salle's gravest apprehensions, and must have been a severe blow to him. But he treated the deputy with great courtesy, and gave him letters recommending Tonty to receive him well and to live in great harmony with him. So La Barre's agent passed on to the fort, where Tonty says he did receive him as he was directed, but drily observes that it was not much trouble for his chief to be obliged to make the journey, since he was on his way when the order reached him. 32
La Salle continued his route to the Chicago portage, which he reached by the Ist of September, and on that day wrote a letter to the inhabitants of Fort St. Louis which brings the situation very vividly before us. It is dated "at Checagou," the Ist of September, 1683, and begins with an expression of gratitude to his people at
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the rock for their fidelity, and a promise to reward them therefor as soon as he shall have scattered the little storm, as he hopes to do. He tells them that Rolland is awaiting him at Missilimackinac with a good cargo,33 and he is taking there with him La Fontaine, La Violette, the Sieur d'Autray, and the two Shawanoes whom he will send back to bring them some of it. He assures them that from the King, who is the greatest and most just prince of the universe, they have cause to expect only the recompense due to the courage they have shown in the discovery and the making of the post, and urges them to work, since the gain of their cause and his own depends on their establishment. They should therefore all settle themselves on large clearings, and if there remains any- thing to be done at the fort, they should work at it as at a thing for their true interests. He proposes to return by sea in the spring, and they will have merchandise and all their requirements, and even something to drink his health with, as Rolland has saved him a barrel of whisky. They must be united and follow Tonty's counsel and orders. And one thing of great consequence is to gather as many buffalo skins as possible for which Boisrondet (his commissary at the fort)34 will give for the larger two beaver skins, and for the smaller, one. They must always speak with great respect of the Governor, and obey his orders, even if he were to command them to abandon the fort, and do nothing that looks like plotting and combining. This letter is addressed to Antoine Brossard, one of his Mississippi party, and all other inhabitants residing at Fort St. Louis in Louisiana, and is signed; "Your most humble and most affectionate serv- ant de La Salle."35 It is his farewell to the region in which he had toiled and suffered, hoped and sorrowed in
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the cause of civilization in the West, of which he was the pioneer. As he pursued the long and weary way which led to the settlements on the St. Lawrence, the beautiful land of the Illinois must have been often in his thoughts. He never failed to sound its praises in all that he wrote thereafter, and it held a most important place in his future plans which always contemplated his return thither, but fate was adverse, and he never saw it more.
At Fort St. Louis, De Baugy and Tonty were exer- cising a divided authority, the one representing La Barre and the other La Salle, and the latter's advice that they should live in harmony was not strictly followed. When Tonty found his associate doing his utmost to create dis- affection among the colonists, and Durantaye, who made them occasional visits, sparing no trouble in the same direction, the sturdy defender of the rights of his absent leader took them both to task. Quarrels followed, and they passed the winter in discord.36 As spring approached the rumors of an Iroquois invasion postponed from the preceding year were revived. La Barre's animosity to La Salle had led the Five Nations to believe that he was without the pale of the government, and that they were free to attack his settlement and wreak upon the Illinois tribes their ancient grudge, which had been aggravated by the death of one of their chiefs at Mackinac at the hands of an Illinois warrior.37 The traders, however, who held permits from La Barre, felt perfectly secure, and did not hesitate to invade the territory of La Salle, whom all the Governor's friends felt privileged to rob.38 A party of fourteen Frenchmen accordingly set out from Mack- inac as early as August 10, 1683, with the express pur- pose of trading in the Illinois country, under the lead of René Le Gardeur, Sieur de Beauvais. They were sup-
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