USA > Illinois > Chapters from Illinois history > Part 4
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In 1671 Allouez was summoned to Sault Ste. Marie, to attend the formal taking possession of the country for France by St. Lusson, and his name appears among the official witnesses of that imposing ceremony.15 On this occasion he made an address to the awe-stricken natives, being selected, says the chronicler, because his knowl- edge of their language and customs would enable him to give them an idea of the grandeur of that incomparable monarch, Louis the Fourteenth. Allouez justified his selection by a panegyric upon his sovereign, which was received by the assembled warriors with admiration and surprise that there could be a man upon earth so great, so rich and so powerful as the King of France.16 The mis- sionary returned to his Wisconsin field, raised a lofty cross at the Fox village as a sign that he took pos- session of the lands of the infidels in the name of Jesus Christ, and looked forward in hope to the spread of his faith even to the famous river named Mississippi, and perchance as far as the South Sea.17 Hence he was sum- moned to the Illinois Mission to fill the vacancy made by the death of Marquette, and responded like a soldier tak- ing the place of a comrade fallen in battle. 18 In the bark huts of La Pointe, and by the rapids of Sainte Marie, Allouez and Marquette had planned and prayed for this mission in the land of the Illinois, and it was very fitting that one should succeed the other there.
Allouez embarked from St. François Xavier in Octo- ber, 1676, with two companions in a canoe, intending to winter with the Illinois. Soon the ice which formed early in the season prevented their progress, and they were delayed until February. Then fitting their little craft with sails, they skimmed the frozen surface of La Baye des Puans in this improvised ice boar, made the portage
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of a league and a half from the very deep bay since named Sturgeon, and on the eve of St. Joseph, the patron of all Canada, found themselves on the waters of Lake Michigan. They gave it the name of that great saint, and resolved thenceforth to call it Lake St. Joseph, but the white man's baptism proved ineffectual, and never supplanted the red man's title. They advanced, coast- ing along vast prairies stretching away beyond their sight, occasionally seeing trees standing in such regular order that they seemed to have been planted to form shady alleys, and near these, little streams and herds of deer feeding quietly on the young grass. As the good priest gazed at the shores of the long-looked-for land, he tells us that he often said, "Benedicite Opera Domini Domino." In April, 1677, the party entered at last "the river which leads to the Illinois," undoubtedly the stream now flowing through Chicago. Upon the site of this city they met cighty Indians of the country, whose chief came towards them, with a firebrand in one hand and in the other a feathered calumet, in which he lit the tobacco and presented the pipe of peace to the lips of Allouez, who was obliged to pretend to smoke. The chief led him to his wigwam, gave him the place of honor, and begged him to go to the village of this band, which apparently was at some distance from the mouth of the river, and probably near the portage where Mar- quette had passed the winter of 1675.19 Allouez, consent- ing, remained with them a little time, and then pushed on to his goal at Kaskaskia, the great town of the Illi- nois, then situated about four miles below the present city of Ottawa on the Illinois River,20 which he reached on April 27th, and entered the cabin in which Marquette had lodged. Eight tribes were now gathered here, who
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received the missionaries' instructions with favor and looked on reverently, while on the 3d of May, the feast of the Holy Cross, he erected in the midst of the town a cross twenty-five feet high to take possession of these tribes also in the name of Jesus Christ. Allouez had made this journey only to acquire the necessary informa- tion for the perfect establishment of the mission, and soon returned to La Baye des Puans, leaving the Illinois eager to see him again.21
The following year he came among them prepared for a two years' stay, and entered zealously upon the work of the conversion of these tribes. But, in 1679, he retired to his Wisconsin mission upon hearing of the approach of La Salle, who believed that the Jesuits were unfriendly to him, and that Allouez in particular had sought to defeat his plans.22 This state of things illustrates the change which was already occurring in this newly-found land. The era of the discoverer and the missionary was giving place to that of the explorer and the colonist, whose prototype was La Salle.
The great man who now appears upon the scene was born in Rouen, the ancient capital of Normandy. A parish register there preserved records the christening- of Robert Cavelier on the 22d day of November, 1643, in the church of Saint Herbland, which once stood within a stone's throw of the noble cathedral of that venerable city.23 It is supposed that his family owned a landed estate called La Salle, and that from this the youth took the name which was to supersede that given him in bap- tism.2+ His full signature was Robert René Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, but he dropped one appellation after another until he used only the title by which he will be forever known, and signed himself simply De La Salle. 25
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At the age of twenty-three he came to Canada and obtained the grant of a seignory on the island of Montreal at the place afterwards called Lachine. Here he heard the Indian tales of a mighty river far to the westward, and dreamed of a waterway to China, and hence he embarked in July, 1669, on his first voyage to the West, with two priests, De Galinée and De Casson, from whom he parted company at the west end of Lake Ontario.26 During the next two years La Salle was incessantly traversing the wilderness, sometimes with Frenchmen, sometimes with Indians only, and sometimes alone, "with no other guide" says one who knew him well, "than a compass and his own genius." It is quite certain that in this period he discovered the Ohio and followed it to the rapids at the site of Louisville. It is claimed that he discovered the Illinois River also, and was the first of white men to visit the place where Chicago stands, but the evidence does not warrant this assumption.27 At all events these explorations revealed to La Salle the character of the country south of the Great Lakes, and it is possible that while engaged in them he reached some portion of the prairie land. In his memorial presented to the king in 1678, when he had himself made no western journey, except in these years, La Salle speaks like an eye-witness of the region to the west and south of the Lake of the Illinois. He describes it as "so beautiful and so fertile, so free from forests, and so well supplied with prairies, brooks and rivers, so abounding in fish, game and venison, that one can find there in plenty and with little trouble all that is needed for the support of flourishing colonies there." 28 These colonies he resolved to plant in that fair land and to win for France a new domain.
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The Jesuits opposed La Salle because they wished to be both church and state among the natives, and the Canadian merchants were hostile because they desired a monopoly of trade. But Count Frontenac, Governor General of Canada, was his friend, and a visit to France in 1675 secured his grant of a seignory at the entrance to Lake Frontenac, now Ontario.29 Here La Salle built a stone fort, armed it with cannon and named it after his patron Fort Frontenac.30 From this point it is. probable that in 1677 he sent a party to obtain informa- tion concerning the region west of Lake Michigan, under the leadership of Michel Ako, a native of Poitou. This hardy explorer visited the Illinois country in the spring of 1678, and thus early must his name be associated with the region in which he was in later years to find a home. 31 La Salle made his new post the base of his operations, but for their successful prosecution he required further royal authority. Going again to France in the autumn of 1677, he obtained from Louis XIV authority to make discoveries and to build forts in the western parts of New France, through which it was believed a way might be found to Mexico. He returned in September, 1678, with a small party enlisted in his service, and among them was one man who was equal to an army.$2 Henri de Tonty, born in Italy, but long a soldier of France, became La Salle's most devoted friend and most trusted lieutenant, and deserves to have a place in the annals of the West second only to that of his great commander. Tonty's father, once governor of the Italian city of Gaeta, was concerned with his son in a revolt at Naples against the Spanish rule. They took refuge from polit- ical troubles in France, where the elder Tonty became eminent as a financier and originated the Tontine form
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of life insurance which perpetuates his name. The son served two years in the French army as a cadet, then made seven expeditions on ships of war and galleys in the marine service, and rejoined the land forces at Mes- sina, where he became lieutenant to the commander of twenty thousand soldiers. When the enemy attacked the post of Libisso, his right hand was shot away by a gren- ade, and he was taken prisoner. Exchanged after six months captivity, he went to France and received a grant of three hundred livres from the King. Returning to the field he made a campaign in Sicily as a volunteer, and at the peace which soon followed was deprived of employ- ment by the discharge of the troops. Coming to Paris to seek occupation, he attracted the favorable notice of Prince Conti, who recommended him to La Salle. Such, in brief, is the history of Tonty prior to his arrival in that new world in which he was to play such a prominent part. 33 La Salle lay ill at Quebec for six weeks after his landing, upon which he had sent a canoe express to Frontenac for news of his affairs. It brought back a letter from Michel Ako and his comrades informing him that they had discovered copper in their wanderings, and had reached the land of the Illinois in the preceding spring, and had traded with the natives for a quantity of buffalo skins.34 From his sick bed he issued orders for a party of fifteen to set out in canoes laden with valuable merchandise, to go to the Illinois in the neighborhood of the Mississippi to establish friendly relations with those savages, and to gather supplies in anticipation of his com- ing to prosecute his discoveries. A second advance party was sent to the Niagara River under La Motte de Lus- sière, another recruit just arrived from France. Louis Hennepin, a friar of the Récollet order, obtained leave
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to go with them, and thus became the first of Europeans to behold the mighty cataract of which he wrote the ear- liest published description. La Salle accompanied by Tonty soon followed, and while treating with the Seneca Indians for leave to build a vessel above the falls and a fort at the mouth of the river, his pilot disobeyed his express orders and caused the shipwreck of the vessel containing the outfit of the expedition. Undismayed by this great misfortune, the dauntless leader established his second fortified post upon the high point now occupied by Fort Niagara, and gave it the name of his friend, the Prince de Conti. Then leaving Tonty, as his lieutenant. to complete the construction of a schooner above the falls, he returned to Fort Frontenac to replace the equip- ment so needlessly destroyed, making the journey of two hundred and fifty miles on foot in mid-winter over the ice of Lake Ontario. His preparations completed, the summer of 1679 found La Salle again at Niagara. Tonty had finished the vessel which was named Le Griffon in allusion to the arms of Count Frontenac, which had two griffins as supporters. On August 7th they embarked, in the presence of several Iroquois warriors and their prisoners just brought from the Illinois country, on Lake Conti, which we call Lake Erie, in this tiny craft of forty-five tons burthen. 35 She was the pioneer of our lake marine, and it was perhaps a prophetic circumstance that above the flying griffin on her prow was carved an eagle, the symbol of the nation yet unborn, of whose vast com- merce she was a forerunner.
Arrived at Mackinac, where Le Griffon rode at anchor amid a hundred bark canoes, La Salle was extremely dis- appointed at meeting the greater part of his advance party, whom he supposed to have long since established
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themselves among the Illinois. They had lost faith in the enterprise, and had halted at this place, where they had wasted and consumed his supplies, and six had deserted, taking valuable merchandise with them. Two of these recreants were reported to be at Sault Ste. Marie, and La Salle promptly sent Tonty with six men in pursuit of them. Tonty, in his account of this expe- dition, says, with military brevity: "M. de La Salle sent me to the Sault Ste. Marie, thirty leagues away, to look for the said deserters. I left on the 29th, and having taken the said deserters I brought them with me to Mis- sillimackinac, where I arrived the 17th of September." La Salle had already sailed, leaving orders for Tonty to join him at the mouth of the River of the Miamis, now the St. Joseph. At the entrance to Green Bay, on Pottawat- tamie Island, inhabited by Indians of that name, La Salle was agreeably surprised to find Michel Ako with his party who had visited the Illinois and brought thence a quan- tity of valuable peltries. He resolved to send his vessel back in charge of the pilot with five men to discharge part of her cargo at Mackinac, and the peltries at the storehouse he had built at the head of Lake Erie, and to return to Mackinac, there to await his further direc- tions. On September 18th Le Griffon fired a farewell salute, and with a favoring breeze from the west- ward set sail on the voyage which was to prove her final one. 86
La Salle pushed on with fourteen men, among whom were the three friars, Louis Hennepin, Zenobe Membré and Gabriel de La Ribourde, along the western shore of Lake Michigan, called by him Lake Dauphin. The party traveled in four canoes, which frail craft, besides the human freight, were deeply laden with a forge and its
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appurtenances, carpenter's and sawyer's tools, arms and merchandise. A terrible storm at the outset caused sad forebodings for the fate of the vessel, and delayed them for days. Great gales impeded their progress, failure of provisions brought them almost to the starvation point, and encounters with occasional bands of Indians com- pelled them to stand to their arms until the calumet which the Pottawattamies of Green Bay had given La Salle brought peace and concord. For a time they coasted the high bluffs which afforded them hardly a place to land, but as their little fleet advanced towards the south they found the country always more beautiful and the climate more temperate, with a great abundance of game.37 They had reached at last the land of the Illinois, to which La Salle probably made his first visit in the night encampments of this part of the journey, and one of these may well have been on the site of Chicago. At the foot of Lake Michigan, they fell in with a party of one hundred and twenty-five savages of the Outagami tribe from the Fox River of Green Bay. Their petty thefts from the Frenchmen at night provoked prompt action from La Salle, who seized one of their chiefs and threatened to put him to death unless the stolen goods were restored. The savages showed fight, but quickly yielded and made full redress. Then becoming very friendly, they urged La Salle to remain with them, tell- ing him that the Illinois had resolved to massacre the French because their Iroquois prisoners had informed them that Frenchmen had counseled the Five Nations to make war on the prairie tribes. La Salle suspected that his enemies were at work, but resolved to pursue his route, and thanking the Outagamies, told them that he did not fear the Illinois, and that he knew he would
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bring them to reason by friendship or by force. Then skirting the southern end of the lake, he came on the Ist of November to the river mouth, which he had appointed as the place of rendezvous with Tonty. 38
All was silent about the natural harbor into which the St. Joseph flows, and no sign of man was seen. The trusty lieutenant, with the twenty men, who were to come from Mackinac along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, had not arrived. La Salle's party wished to hasten on to the Illinois country before the approaching winter set in, but their leader would not desert his rear guard. To occupy his men, he fortified a triangular eminence at the entrance of the stream with squared beams and palisades, naming the post Fort Miami, and constructed near by a bark chapel for the priests, and a storehouse for the goods which he still expected his ves- sel to bring. For her safety he sounded the channel, planting at its approach tall poles made conspicuous by bear-skin pendants, and lining its course with buoys, and sent two men to Mackinac to guide her to this haven. On the twelfth of the month Tonty arrived with one-half of his companions, leaving the remainder to secure pro- visions by hunting, and bringing the ominous news that Le Griffon had not touched at Mackinac, nor had she been heard of anywhere along the lake. La Salle lin- gered until the last moment, still hoping to see the long- looked-for sail appear, while Tonty went back for the remainder of his force. 30
At the distance of eight leagues his canoe upset, and he with his comrades barely reached the shore. All their supplies being lost, they retraced their course, and living for three days upon acorns, found their way to the fort again. Here the commander, hanging letters to the
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trees with instructions for the pilot, if he should yet come, reluctantly gave the order on December 3d to embark upon the quiet waters of the River of the Miamis. The ice beginning to form in the stream threatened to bar the way to the Illinois, and La Salle could not wait longer for Tonty's hunting party. Two of them deserted, but the remainder soon followed the main body, which paddled steadily up the river seventy miles or more. They were seeking the now historic portage, at the point where the River St. Joseph, which has retained the name that Allouez endeavored to confer upon Lake Michigan, makes its nearest approach, in its great curve from south to north, to the headwaters of the Kankakee. They went beyond it, and were recalled by the Mohegan, who had been absent hunting, and brought word that the rest of Tonty's men were waiting for them at the proper crossing. This was very near the site of the present city of South Bend, Indiana, west of which a little lake forms one source of the Kankakee, dis- tant barely three miles from the St. Joseph, with marshy ground intervening. At this portage the whole party assembled, twenty-nine Frenchmen in all, and one Indian called Le Loup, the Mohegan hunter, and traversed the plain dreary with the bones and carcasses of buffalo, find- ing on its western verge a mixed village of savages of the Miami, Mascouten and Ouiatenon tribes. La Salle, with pathetic trust in the coming of those in the vessel, marked their road and again left letters on the trees at the landing place for their benefit.40 It was an indication of the troubles which the leader was to experience from some of his faithless followers, that as they were making this crossing in single file, a man named Duplessis, marching behind La Salle, raised his gun to shoot him,
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but was prevented by one of his companions. This dastardly act, originating apparently in causeless discon- tent, did not become known to La Salle or Tonty until a long time after. 41
On the 6th of December they were afloat upon the Kan- kakee branch of the Illinois River, which they found nav- igable for canoes a hundred paces from its source. They followed it through vast marshes and around long wind- ings which made a day's journey but a few miles advance, and saw on every hand a wilderness of morass and rushes. For many miles there was no firm ground save an occasional hummock of frozen earth barely large enough for a sleeping place and camp fire. When they emerged from the desolate region of the Kankakee marshes they found before them great open plains cov- ered with tall dry grass; and they knew that they had at last reached the true land of the Illinois, the prairie country of which they had heard so much. Their expec- tations of game were disappointed, for the autumnal fires, lit by the natives while hunting, had driven away the buffalo. In a journey of more than sixty leagues they shot only two lean deer, some swans and two wild geese, a meager support for so large a party. Two-thirds of the men, dissatisfied from lack of food, planned to de- sert and join the Indians, whom they saw now and then in the distance hovering about the burning prairies, but La Salle divined and frustrated the scheme. When their need was sorest, however, they found an enormous buffalo mired on the bank of the river. Twelve men with difficulty dragged the huge creature to the solid ground with their strongest rope, and its flesh furnished abun- dant supplies. So these explorers voyaged on, passing on the one hand the sites of the future cities of Momence
1
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and Kankakee, and on the other the inflowing stream of the Iroquois, a memory forever of those terrible warriors who were the scourge of the Illinois. 42
As they came from the southeast another stream from the north glided into the Kankakee, and below this junc- tion with the Des Plaines they were on the course of Jol- liet and Marquette. The valley before them was the bed of an ancient river far greater than the Illinois. Nine leagues farther on they descended a rapid, and in four leagues more they reached the river then called the Pestegonki, and in modern times the Fox. The plain on which the city of Ottawa lies was untenanted, and two leagues lower down, where Buffalo Rock lifts its long plateau above the surrounding valley, their canoes came to the shore at the ancient village of the Kaskaskias, once the home of Marquette and of Allouez. The latter, to whom the news that La Salle was on the way had been brought on Christmas eve, by some young Indians who had met the party, had departed with a wandering band of Miamis and Mascoutens and Ouiatenons.43 The other inhabitants had already scattered, and when La Salle arrived on the last day of the year" the village was empty. Not a soul appeared from any of the four hun- dred and sixty lodges which stood in rows upon the bank. These structures, Hennepin says, were built like long arbors covered with double mats of flat rushes woven so closely that neither wind nor snow nor rain could pene- trate them. Each lodge had five or six fires, and each fire one or two families who dwelt together in great accord, putting to shame the Christians in the matter of brotherly love.45 All of this fraternal band had gone to the localities where they usually passed the winter in hunting. They had left in their caches or hiding places
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underground a store of Indian corn for seed in the spring and for their subsistence until the harvest. This was very precious to them, and no greater offence could be given than to encroach upon it. Nevertheless, his need was so great that La Salle resolved to take thirty minots from this sacred hoard, hoping by some means to appease the Illinois. 46
With this provision they embarked again on New Year's Day, 1680, after Hennepin had celebrated the mass, and in touching words, as he says, had exhorted one of the deserters who had returned and the other mal- contents to be patient and trust in Providence, and had wished a Happy New Year to La Salle and all the party, and he and the other priests had embraced them all most affectionately. They dropped down the stream, leaving on the left hand the tall cliff which was to bear Fort St. Louis upon its summit, and be known in our day as Starved Rock, and the little River Aramoni comning from the south, which we call the Vermilion. For four days they floated onward, rounding the great bend of the Illi- nois and advancing southward. At the end of the fourth day, while traversing the expanse of the river called by the savages Pimiteoui, that is, in their tongue; "A place where there is abundance of fat beasts," they saw the smoke of campfires rising through the evening air. At nine the next morning, as they plied their paddles by the shore, they saw before them on both banks of the river where it leaves the lake, a number of pirogues, or large wooden canoes, and eighty lodges full of savages. These did not perceive the approach of the French until they had doubled a point behind which the encampment lay, and bore down upon the astonished natives, their fire- arms ready for action, eight canoes abreast, sweeping
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