USA > Illinois > Chapters from Illinois history > Part 5
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forward on the swift river current. Tonty was on the left of the line, and La Salle on the right, who, causing his men to call to the Indians to ask whether they wished peace or war, was the first to leap ashore, and his com- panions followed him. 47
Some of the Illinois ran to their arms, but most took to flight with horrid cries and howlings. La Salle might have reassured them by showing his calumet, but feared this might be considered a sign of weakness. His party halted, preserving a warlike attitude, but he restrained his men from attacking the savages whom they might easily have defeated, although many times their number. One of the chiefs of the Illinois, who was on the other side of the river, perceived that it was not the purpose of the white men to slay them, and prevented his young warriors from discharging their arrows across the river. Those on the side where they had landed sent two of the chief men of the village to show the pipe of peace from the summit of a hill. This being graciously accepted, great joy ensued, and messengers were sent to recall those who had run away, but some had fled so fast and far that they did not return from their hiding places until three days after. Membré and Hennepin, taking the children by the hand and going to the wigwams of the parents, aided in the restoration of confidence, and when the dancing and feasting were over, made known to them that the Récollets had come not to gather beaver, but to give them a knowledge of the great Master of Life, and to be of the number of their greatest friends. A loud chorus of voices replied "Tepatouï Nicka," which means, "Well, my brother, my friend, thou hast done very well"; and while some rubbed the limbs of the good priests with bear's oil and buffalo grease to relieve.
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their fatigue, others presented them some flesh to eat, putting the three first morsels into their own mouths with much ceremony, which, says Hennepin, is considered a great piece of civility by them.
La Salle, now for the first time among the Illinois in their own land, proceeded forthwith to hold a council with the head men summoned from the two villages situ- ated on either side of the river. After making them presents of Martinique tobacco and hatchets, he informed them of the necessity which had compelled him to take from their winter stores the corn which he still had in his canoes. He offered to return it, if it could not be spared, or to give in exchange things of which they were in want, but warned them that if they could not furnish him with the necessary provisions, he must pass on to their neighbors the Osages to purchase what he required, and leave with them the blacksmith whom he had brought to mend axes and other instruments for the Illi- nois.48 This was a shrewd suggestion for they greatly needed the services of this artificer, nor would their jeal- ousy permit such a prize to go to another tribe. They gladly accepted the payment offered for their precious corn, adding to the amount already taken, and prayed the Frenchmen to establish themselves among them. This La Salle told them he was willing to do, upon the understanding that he could not make war upon the Iroquois who were subjects of the King and therefore his brethren. He advised the Illinois to make peace with the Five Nations, and offered his services to bring this about. But he deftly suggested that should these war- riors, despite his remonstrances, come to attack the Illinois in their homes, he would defend them, provided they would permit him to build there a fort in which he
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would be able with his few Frenchmen to make head against the Iroquois. He promised to furnish them with arms and ammunition upon condition that they should use them only to repel their enemies and not against those tribes who were living under the protection of the King whom the Indians call the Great Chief, who was beyond the sea. He added that their treatment of his party would determine the coming of many more of his nation, who would protect them and furnish all that they needed in exchange for their peltries; although the dis- tance of New France, the difficult way by river and rapid, the extent and perils of the great lakes, hindered their bringing goods by that route. To overcome this obstacle he had resolved to build a great canoe to descend their river to the sea, to obtain more quickly and more easily such merchandise for them. But as this work would require much expense and labor, he wished before com- mencing it to ascertain from them if their river was navigable, without fall or rapid, and if they knew whether other Europeans dwelt at its mouth.
The Illinois agreed to his propositions, promised to satisfy him in all respects, and having postponed the details of the affair until spring when their chiefs would reassemble, gave him a glowing description of the width and beauty and easy navigation of the great river which La Salle called the Colbert and the Meschasipi, and of its tributaries. They assured him that there were no Euro- peans upon the river, and had there been, they would not have failed to go to trade with them as the sea was only distant twenty days' journey in their pirogues. Some of their slaves, whom they had taken in war on the coast, said they had seen vessels far out in the sea which made discharges that resembled thunder.49 This information
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doubtless increased La Salle's eagerness to reach the Gulf before any other explorer should discover the mouth of the Father of the Waters, and as he lay down to rest that night he must have felt that the events of his first day among the Illinois had made easier the way to his wished-for goal.
Twenty-four hours, however, brought a change. The next evening, Monso, a chief of the Miamis, arrived at the Indian lodges, accompanied by five or six young men bearing kettles, hatchets and knives, as gifts to open the hearts of the Illinois to his words. He assembled their sachems in the night, and assured them that La Salle was going to join their enemies on the banks of the great river, furnishing arms and ammunition in order to unite them with the Iroquois and surround and exterminate the Illinois. He described La Salle as a friend of the Iroquois, in whose country he had a fort and whom he supplied with guns and powder, and warned his troubled hearers that the only way to avoid ruin was to prevent or delay the proposed voyage of La Salle, a part of whose men would soon desert him, and that they should believe nothing which he told them. After saying many such things this emissary of evil departed before daybreak, lest his machinations should be discovered. La Salle's remarkable influence over the native mind, of which his career furnishes so many examples, stood him in good stead here. An Illinois chieftain, named Omoahoha, whom the French leader had won over on his arrival by a present of hatchets and knives, came to him the next morning and secretly informed him of all that had occurred. La Salle thanked him, and to secure his con- tinued services in this regard made him a further gift of powder and shot. It seemed apparent that the Miamis
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had been instructed and sent by Frenchmen jealous of the success of La Salle; since Monso had never met him, and had never been within four hundred leagues of Fort Frontenac, and yet spoke of both with the familiarity of long acquaintance. Later La Salle received information that Monso's party had been sent by Allouez from the village of the three tribes to which he retired when he left the Kaskaskia town, and thereupon laid this plot at the door of the Jesuits.50 At the time, however, he was uncertain whether the blow had been struck by them or by the traders at Mackinac with whose business he was likely to interfere. He was much disquieted by the affair, knowing the suspicious nature of the savages, and that his men had received bad impressions liable to lead them to desert as their comrades had done at Mackinac. There was little time to indulge in foreboding, as the same day, after the noon-tide meal, La Salle and his people were invited to a feast by Nicanapé, brother of the head chief of the Illinois.51 When the company were seated in their entertainer's wigwam, Nicanapé made them a very different address from that which they had heard the day of their arrival. He told them that he wished to cure them of their mad desire to descend the great river which no one had done save to perish, that its banks were peopled with numerous nations who would destroy the French, its water alive with monsters, crocodiles and serpents, and its lower portion full of falls and precipices, and ending in a gulf where the stream disappeared under ground. Two or three of La Salle's men who understood the Indian tongue were visibly affected by this harangue. Their leader knowing it was not the custom of the savages to interrupt such dis- courses, and that by doing so he would only increase the
-
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suspicions of his disaffected people, suffered the dusky orator to finish his speech in peace When the time came to reply, La Salle calmly assured Nicanapé that he and his party were very much obliged for the news he had given them, because they would win so much more glory as they found more difficulties to overcome, that they served the greatest of captains across the sea, and deemed themselves happy to die in bearing his name to the ends of the earth. But he feared that what they had heard was only a friendly device to prevent their leaving the Illinois, or rather the artifice of an evil spirit who had given them some distrust of the Frenchmen, and if the Illinois were really friendly they should not conceal the grounds of their disquietude which he would endeavor to remove; otherwise there would be reason to believe that their professed friendship was of the lips only. Nicanapé made no answer. and changed the sub- ject by presenting food to his guests. 52
After the barbaric feast was over, La Salle resumed his discourse, and told the listening redskins that he did not wonder that their neighbors were jealous of the advantages which trade with the French would bring them, nor that reports should be spread to his disadvan- tage, but he was surprised that the Illinois should give these credence and conceal them from a man who had so frankly revealed all his plans to them. Then addressing himself directly to Nicanapé, and overwhelming the astonished savage by his unsuspected knowledge of the intrigue, he cried; "I was not asleep, my friend, when Monso spoke to you at night and in secret to the prejudice of the French, whom he represented to you as spies of the Iroquois. The presents which he made to persuade you to believe his lying tales are still hidden under the earth
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in this wigwam. Why did he take to flight immediately after? Why did he not speak by daylight, if he had only the truth to tell? Do you not see that when I came among you I could have slain your people, and in the confusion of your camp could have done alone what he would persuade you I will accomplish with the aid of the Iroquois? At this very hour could not my party put to death you old men while your young men are away hunt- ing? Do you not know that the Iroquois whom you fear have experienced the valor of the French, and that we should not need their aid if we wished to make war on you? But to satisfy you entirely, run after this man while I wait here to convict and confound him. How does he know me, since he has never seen me, and how does he know the plots which he says I have formed with the Iroquois whom he knows as little as he does me? Look at our stores. They are only tools and merchandise which we can use simply to do you good, but neither for attack nor retreat. ''53
This bold stroke made La Salle master of the situation. The natives sent runners after Monso to bring him back, but the snow which had fallen heavily the night before covered his footprints and prevented their overtaking him. This was fortunate for the unsuccessful ambassa- dor, since the Illinois were so incensed against him that they would have slain him, had he fallen into their hands. This danger averted, the cloud lifted, but only for a day. The following night, six of the Frenchmen, who were on guard, deserted their comrades and fled into the wilder- ness.54 It is almost incredible that they should have taken this desperate step without some assurance of pro- tection and aid, which they may have had from the same agency which sent Monso to the lodges of the Illinois.
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He certainly was advised of the approaching desertion when he came there, and it is possible that the returned runaway whom Hennepin found in camp on New Year's Day was the medium of communication between La Salle's enemies and his dissatisfied men. 55 At all events this recreant band followed the route which Monso had taken the preceding night, with the purpose of finding shelter in his village, either of their own motion, or because of some invitation secretly given to them.56 Their farewell piece of malignity was the putting of some noxious compound into La Salle's camp kettle, by which, upon taking his soup next day, he was so poisoned that most alarming symptoms followed. His life was saved by an antidote which a friend had given him in France.57 One of the comrades of the deserters states that they departed because La Salle wished to make them con- struct sledges to draw his merchandise and stores to the Illinois village, apparently that at which they had obtained the supplies of corn. But this is probably a mere excuse. He gives their names as Chartier, Bari- bault, Lacroix, Duplessis, Monjault, and La Rousselière. 58 Duplessis was the would-be assassin of La Salle at the Kankakee portage,59 and La Rousselière was one of the two deserters at Mackinac who were brought back from the Sault Ste. Marie by Tonty.60 Willingly would that fearless soldier have gone on their trail again, and compelled the return of the whole party, or punished them as they deserved, but the danger of revealing their disunion to the savages forbade. This defection was a sore blow to La Salle, and when, in the gray of the morning he made the rounds of the encampment and found no sentry at his post, and the quarters of these men empty, he might well have despaired of his under-
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taking. But he bore up bravely and forthwith aroused his remaining followers, and informing them of what had happened, directed that they should pretend to the natives that it was by his order that these persons had gone in pursuit of the lying Monso, and that he had caused them to do so by night, lest some one of the Illinois should precede them to warn the fugitive. Then he begged them to pay no attention to the tales of Nica- napé, and gave them his word that all who desired should return to Canada in the spring safely and in good repute, while if they left him then, it would be at the peril of their lives and of punishment on their arrival at Que- bec. 61 They seemed but faint-hearted, however, and, realizing the little dependence that could be placed upon them, he determined to separate them from the Indians that he might have them under better control. Without the two pit sawyers who were among the deserters it was hardly possible to construct a vessel to go to the sea, and it seemed wisest to establish a fortified post at once. To this end La Salle told his men that they were in danger while among the Illinois of an attack from the Iroquois, who would surely vent their rage upon the French, and that their only safeguard was to entrench themselves in some position easy of defence, such as the one he had found near at hand. His arguments convinced them, and they undertook with a good grace a task very severe for so small a company.62
The spot which La Salle had chosen was on the left bank of the Illinois River about two and a half miles below its exit from Pimiteoui Lake.68 A great thaw which fortunately set in opened the river from the lake to the place selected, whither the party went with all their canoes on the evening of the 15th of January,
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1680. It was a low hill a little more than a mile from the Indian village, two hundred paces distant from the bank of the river which spread to its foot in the time of heavy rains. Two ravines, broad and deep, encompassed two other sides, and half of the fourth, the protection of which was completed by a trench which joined the ravines. Their outer slopes which served as a counter- scarp were bordered with stout chevaux de frise. All sides of the hill were made more steep, and the earth from the trench was used for a parapet on the summit capable of covering a man. Heavy timbers were joined around the lower part of the elevation in which were set upright joists united by cross pieces mortised into beams projecting from the thickness of the parapet. Thus substantial walls were made in front of which were planted pointed stakes twenty-five feet high, one foot in diameter, buried three feet in the earth and bolted to cross pieces from the tops of the joists, the whole com- posing a formidable palisade. The interior of the fort thus constructed was an irregular square. In two of the angles protected by logs thick enough to be shot-proof were the quarters of the men, and the Récollet friars occupied a cabin covered with boards in the third. The magazine, solidly built, and the forge, were placed in the fourth angle along the side which looked towards the forest. In the center were pitched the tents of Tonty and La Salle. 6%
Thus was completed the fourth of that chain of for- tresses between the St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Mex- ico, which La Salle's far-reaching plans contemplated. To Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario and Fort Conti on the River Niagara and Fort Miami was added Fort Crèvecœur on the Illinois. Its construction further-
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more signalized the establishment of white men upon the soil of Illinois, in whose history the date of January 15, 1680, when La Salle's party assembled at the site of this fort to undertake its erection thus marks an era. It was named Crèvecœur, for other than the romantic reason usually given for the title. It is true that the Récollet friar, Christian Le Clercq, who was not, how- ever, of the party, in his "First Establishment of the Faith in New France," published in 1691, says, La Salle called the fort Crèvecœur on account of many vexations experienced there, adding that these never shook his firm resolve; and that Hennepin in his New Discovery, published in 1698, says, they named it the fort of Crève- cœur because the desertion of their men and the many other difficulties they labored under had almost broken their hearts.65 But on the other hand, Hennepin in his earlier and more reliable Description of Louisiana, pub- lished in 1683, does not give this reason; Tonty does not mention it in either of his authentic accounts of the fort dated in 1684 and 1693; and La Salle himself, although frequently alluding to Crèvecœur in his letters, one written in the year of its building, never gives this mean- ing to the name.66 John Gilmary Shea suggests that as Louis XIV had recently demolished Fort Crèvecœur, a stronghold in the Netherlands near Bois le Duc, captured by him in 1672, the name may have been a compliment to that monarch, and this view is strengthened by the researches of H. A. Rafferman who has found proof that Tonty had taken part in the capture of the Netherland Crèvecœur.67 So La Salle's faithful lieutenant may have named it from the scene of his service. Or, as it was furthermore a name of high renown among the ancient nobility of France, it may have been selected by
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La Salle, like that of Fort Conti, in compliment to one of his noble friends at court. Certainly there is no likeli- hood that such a leader under such circumstances would have further discouraged his followers by thus emphasiz- ing his misfortunes which were not so great to him then as they afterwards became. It has been thought that La Salle was now convinced of the loss of his vessel, and so was broken hearted.68 But he was not in fact hopeless in regard to her at this time, and did not abandon all expec- tation of seeing her again, until months after this period. The weight of the evidence seems to be against the com- mon theory in regard to the origin of this name.
While the work on the fort was progressing La Salle again turned his thoughts to the construction of a vessel to descend the Mississippi. As it would cause the loss of a year's time to wait for other pit sawyers from Mon- treal, he said to his men that if one of them would attempt to cut plank he would assist. Two volunteered and succeeded so well, that the building of a vessel of forty-two feet keel, and twelve feet beam was undertaken and pushed so rapidly that all the planks were sawed, all the wood ready, and the vessel on the stocks and sheathed to the string piece by the Ist of March.69 She needed iron and cordage and sails which could only be obtained from Le Griffon, if she were still afloat, or Fort Fron- tenac. La Salle resolved to undertake the long journey to the latter place to obtain tidings of his bark and sup- plies for his expedition, leaving Tonty in command at Crèvecœur. But first he earnestly desired to restore the spirits of his men who were still cast down by the accounts the natives had given them of the dangers of the Mississippi voyage. Fortune favored him by an encounter with a young Illinois warrior on the way to
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the village in the advance of a war party returning from the Gulf. La Salle, while shooting wild turkeys two leagues from the fort, fell in with this herald and gave him a turkey, which the hungry savage proceeded at once to boil in the kettle which he carried with him. While his meal was preparing, the shrewd Frenchman questioned him about the Mississippi, assuming to have a general knowledge of the subject. The unsuspicious Indian drew a map of the great river and its tributaries with charcoal upon birch bark, said that he had traversed it throughout in his pirogue, and that as far as the sea there was neither fall nor rapid, and gave the names of the tribes who dwelt near it. La Salle, by the present of a hatchet, bound him to secrecy as to their meeting, and took him to the fort to spend the following day. Early in the morning the French leader appeared at the Indian village and found that one of their principal men was giving a feast of bear's meat, to which he was invited. As they were assembled for this purpose in a lodge, he arose in their midst and smilingly informed them that the Providence which watched over his party had at his prayer revealed to him the truth concerning the grand river, the streams which fell into it, and the nations living along its banks. Then he launched into the description which he had only received the evening before, and as the wondering natives marked its accuracy from point to point, they placed their hands upon their mouths in token of admiration, and at its close freely admitted its correctness, and that they had concealed the truth in order to keep the white men always with them. 70 This put a little heart into La Salle's men, who were still further encouraged by the corroborating testimony of savages from other tribes who now began to arrive at
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the little timber fortress on the banks of the Illinois. Strange news traveled fast even through the wilderness, and in hardly more than a month from the arrival of the Frenchmen at Pimiteoui, tidings of their coming had reached the Chickasaws, the Arkansas and the Osages in the south, and bands from all of these nations had set up their wigwams around Fort Crèvecœur. Although their speech differed from that of the Illinois, their sign language easily made it plain that the great river was navigable, and that the strangers, whose approach had been made known everywhere, would be well received along its shores. La Salle gave them all presents, and promised to bring an abundance of hatchets, knives, needles and awls to them and their neighbors to whom he sent this good news. They departed well satisfied, earnestly assuring their generous host of a cordial wel- come to the expedition when it should reach their ter- ritories.71
A few days later a more remarkable embassy arrived, consisting of two chiefs of a people calling themselves the Matoutentas who lived a hundred leagues toward the sunset. One of them wore at his belt a horse's foot, taken, he said, in a country five days' journey west of his home, where the inhabitants fought on horseback, had lances and wore long hair, unlike the Illinois whose locks were closely shorn. These chiefs were probably from one of the villages of the Mandans on the Missouri River, and the equestrian warriors of whom they spoke were one of the mounted tribes of the great plains, or the Spaniards, of New Mexico as the French believed. They also had heard of the white men and wished to gaze upon their faces and to receive gifts of their wonderful imple- ments of iron and steel. But a week behind these dele-
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