USA > Illinois > Chapters from Illinois history > Part 6
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23
71
THE LAND OF THE ILLINOIS
gates from the west came others from the far north, who dwelt near the sources of the Mississippi and were spoken of as the Chaa, which, perhaps, is a variation of an Algonquin name for the Sioux. They invited the party to visit their country, whose attractions, as they alleged, were a wealth of beaver and other furs, and its nearness to the western sea.72
Almost at the same time the advent of the Miamis, the new neighbors of the Illinois on the east, in pacific guise brought relief to La Salle and his allies. These Indians, of the same stock as the Illinois and speaking almost the same tongue, formerly established on the Fox River of Wisconsin, had fled across the Mississippi through fear of the Iroquois, and had been at enmity with the Illinois. An advance party had removed to the River St. Joseph, and the main body were preparing to follow. In their new home they were exposed to the machinations of the Iroquois incited by La Salle's enemies. Fears of their hostility had been increased by the Monso incident, but were now allayed by their willingness to be friends. The two tribes joined in the calumet or peace dance, and formed a league against the Iroquois, which La Salle confirmed by presents to both parties.73 This surprising concourse of representatives of so many nations, so quickly assembled from all points of the compass, amen- able to control and eager to trade, must have greatly encouraged La Salle in his plans for commercial and political supremacy in the valley of the Mississippi. The picturesque gathering around Fort Crèvecœur indicated what might take place at each of the points he desired to occupy, if fortune would but favor the brave and the deserving.
The priests during the construction of the fort had had
72
CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
public prayers in their cabin every morning and evening, and held mission services for the French and the Illinois Indians who came in crowds, but the lack of wine pre- vented the celebration of the mass. Father Membré made his headquarters at the Indian village near by where the chief, named Oumahouha or the Wolf, had lodged him and considered him as one of his children, his paternal affection being quickened by a timely pres- ent of three axes from La Salle, given to secure attention to the wants of his adopted son. Membré desired to have the mission to the Illinois, that he might convert that numerous nation comprising by his estimate some seven or eight thousand souls. He rapidly acquired their language, but his first experience of their ways almost changed his resolve to live among them." Father Ribourde preferred to stay at the fort,75 while for Henne- pin another destiny was preparing. The cunning sav- ages from the upper Mississippi had either met with French explorers before, or very quickly divined that trade and discovery were their ruling motives. The peltries and the route to the western ocean, which they promised to visitors to their land, were temptations too strong to be resisted. La Salle determined, while he himself was absent on his necessary journey to and from Fort Frontenac, to send a party to their homes, and it was decided that Hennepin should be one of the number.
The leader of the expedition was Michel Ako, a native of Poitou in France, of whom we shall hear more in con- nection with the early days of Illinois, and with him was Antony Auguel, of the province of Picardy, surnamed Le Picard du Gay. They were two of La Salle's best and bravest men.76 Ako was fairly versed in the language of the Illinois and of the Sioux, and had successfully
73
THE LAND OF THE ILLINOIS
executed various commissions among the natives for La Salle, who describes him as prudent, brave and cool. To him was entrusted goods worth a thousand livres, of the kind most esteemed among the savages, and the invalu- able calumet as a protection and a token of their peaceful purpose.77 La Salle tells us simply, but with perhaps a touch of sarcasm, that Hennepin offered to make this voyage to gain the opportunity of carrying the gospel to the peoples who had never heard it, and to make the acquaintance of those among whom he expected soon to establish himself to preach the faith.78 But the voluble priest himself informs us fully of the difficulty with which he was brought to this laudable resolution. After La Salle had arranged for his going, he offered to take Membré's place among the Illinois, while the latter should go in his stead to the upper Mississippi. Mem- bré, however, prudently decided that he would rather bear the ills he had than fly to the Sioux whom he knew not of. Hennepin then concluded that an affection of the gums which had troubled him for a year or more had become so serious that he was obliged to return to Canada to be cured, and suggested that he should go and come back with La Salle. 79 But his inflexible commander replied, that if he refused to make the voyage, his cler- ical superiors would be informed that he was the cause of the want of success of the new missions. The venerable Ribourde, who had been his master during his novitiate in the convent of Bethune in the province of Artois, and who volunteered to come and aid him the next year, begged him to proceed, saying that if he died of his infirmity God would be one day glorified by his apostolic labors; and that he would have many monsters to over- come and precipices to pass, and knew not a word of the
74
CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
language of the nations whom he was going to try to win to God, but with courage he would gain as many victories as combats. Hennepin yielded to this advice, to the sat- isfaction of La Salle, who gave him for his own use a small supply of knives, awls, tobacco, beads and needles, assuring him that he would have given more had he been able. All of their companions escorted the travelers to the place of embarkation. Father Gabriel gave his bless- ing in the words of Scripture; "Be of good courage and let your heart be comforted"; the farewells were spoken, and the reluctant apostle took his place in the canoe which quickly disappeared down the river. 80
The party left Fort Crèvecœur on February 29, 1680, and toward evening met a number of the Illinois return- ing to the village in their pirogues loaded with buffalo meat. They used every effort to induce the trio to turn back. The Picard would have yielded, but Ako, who deemed his honor pledged to carry out the enterprise, seconded by Hennepin, resolutely proceeded on his way. They likened the Illinois River, to which La Salle had given the name of Seignelay, in honor of the son-in- law and successor of the great minister Colbert, to the Seine at Paris in width and depth. Its bordering hills covered with fine trees, and occasionally separated by marsh land, they climbed to behold from their summits prairies extending further than the eye could reach, studded at intervals with groves seemingly planted in regular order.81 About five miles from its mouth on the 7th of March they met the tribe of the Tamaroa Indians, to the number of two hundred families or more, who wished to take them to their village west of the Missis- sippi, and some sixteen miles below the mouth of the Illinois. When they declined, these savages believing
75
THE LAND OF THE ILLINOIS
that they carried supplies to their enemies pursued them in their heavy wooden pirogues. Unable to overtake the lighter craft of birch bark, they sent some of their young men by land to waylay the white men at a narrow part of the river. But the wary Ako, noticing the smoke of the encampment where these warriors lay ready to discharge a shower of arrows, crossed the stream to an island on the other side, and halted to rest, trusting to the watch- fulness of a little dog they had brought with them, to apprise them if the savages attempted to swim across. The next day they came to the mouth of the Illinois, and noted in the angle on its south side a flat precipitous rock forty feet in height, very well suited for building a fort, 82 which La Salle afterwards planned to do;83 and on the opposite shore fields as it were of black earth, all ready for cultivation and very advantageous for the existence of a colony. The floating ice detained them here until March 12th, when they turned the prow of their canoe into the Mississippi and commenced its ascent. As they followed the great windings of the mighty river, paddling against its powerful current, they observed the bluffs on either side approaching the banks near the mouth of the Illinois, and elsewhere receding, leaving great open meadows between them and the river. These were cov- ered with an infinite number of buffalo; and the whole country beyond the bluffs seemed so fine and pleasant that Hennepin says, one might justly call it the Delight of America.84 With this compliment to the land of the Illinois, the vain, good - natured and sadly unreliable friar passes beyond its confines and ceases to be con- nected with its story. We need not follow him in his adventures among the Sioux with whom Ako remained for a time, ultimately returning to the Illinois country,
76
CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
while Hennepin and Du Gay made their way to Canada, and thence returned to France.
On the Ist of March, the day after the departure of Ako's party for the Upper Mississippi, La Salle himself set out for Frontenac with six of his strongest French- men, and a savage called the Wolf,85 in two canoes. The rapid current kept the river free from ice in the neigh- borhood of Crèvecœur, but an hour's paddling brought them to the frozen waters of Pimiteoui Lake. They could not abandon their canoes, since the careful leader designed to send these back filled with corn, and there- fore built two sledges on which they placed the canoes and lading and dragged them over the snow for fifteen miles or more. La Salle encouraged his men with the hope of open water at the end of the lake, but with keen disappointment they found the ice there and beyond too weak to bear their weight, and too strong for their bark canoes to sever. After a desolate night's encampment they took up their line of march through the leafless woods on the river bank, and toiled onward, mid-leg deep in snow, carrying their canoes and equipage for four leagues or more. This dreary day's journey brought them at evening to some deserted Indian cabins, where they thankfully took shelter from a heavy rain which fell all night. The third day they were able to navigate the river for four hours, occasionally breaking their way with poles through frozen places until they encountered ice a foot in thickness, so rough and full of air holes as to be impassable. Another detour of two leagues of sledging over icebound marshes ended at a point where the flow- ing current permitted another embarkation. In the after- noon masses of drifting ice obliged them to land from time to time till these passed by, and nightfall compelled
77
THE LAND OF THE ILLINOIS
another wintry camp in the forest. The following morn- ing they made a portage of half a league, continued their route by a side channel for two leagues more, sometimes rowing, sometimes parting the ice by dint of sturdy blows from hatchet and club, and sometimes wading knee deep in the icy stream, towing their canoes. Then they resumed their toilsome progress with the sledges until the evening of the 5th, when a snowstorm set in which caused a three days' halt. On the 9th the severe cold glazed the surface of river and prairie, and they mounted their snowshoes and proceeded at a rapid pace. They traversed eight leagues that day, and six the next, and at sunset of March roth saw before them the lodges of the great Indian village from whose subterranean hiding places they had taken a supply of corn as they passed down the Illinois.86 Ten days of exhausting labor and privation had been spent in the arduous journey from near Peoria Lake to a point within a few miles of the site of the city of Ottawa, a distance which we now pass over in three hours. The contrast illustrates the difference between transportation by canoe and by rail.
A great rain during the two days following opened the river, but the sheets of ice crowded amid the islands and sandbanks below the Indian village heaped upon one another with a mighty noise until huge dams were formed. La Salle despaired of sending timely supplies to his people at Crèvecœur because of these obstacles and because not a soul was in the village; he could not take their corn except by purchase and there was no prospect of any of the Illinois returning at such an inclement season. Nevertheless, a trail in the snow which they had crossed suggested that some natives might be hunt- ing in that region. A fire of reeds was kindled in the
78
CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
hope that the smoke, visible from afar on the prairies, might attract attention; and such was the result. The next day, as the restless La Salle was exploring the neighborhood, while his men were smoking the flesh of a buffalo they had slain, he saw approaching two natives who had seen the distant column of vapor as they roamed the snowy waste. They were soon followed by Chas- sagoac, the chief of the Illinois, who was known to be well disposed towards the French. His name seems to be another form of the word "Chicago," and the similar- ity of title and description goes far to identify him with the chief called Chachagouessiou, who accompanied Mar- quette from Sturgeon Bay to the Chicago portage only six years before. Each is spoken of as the leading man among the Illinois, and each is said to be very friendly to the French. Chassagoac had not previously met any of La Salle's party, and must therefore have been acquainted with other Frenchmen, who not improbably were Marquette and his companions. And the variation in the names as they appear in the manuscripts is not greater than might be expected in the attempts of differ- ent writers to represent the same Indian sounds. 87, La Salle, with politic generosity, presented, from his small store, a red blanket, a kettle, and some hatchets and knives to Chassagoac, and then told him that the French at Crèvecœur were in want of provisions, and prayed him to furnish these, promising recompense on the return of the party from Frontenac. Chassagoac readily
assented and loaded one of the canoes with corn. This La Salle directed two of his men to take back to Crève- cœur, keeping four Frenchmen and the Indian with him.88
A long conference ensued between the white leader and the chief of the red men on the shore of the lonely
79
THE LAND OF THE ILLINOIS
river under the inclement sky. All that had taken place at the villages near Crèvecœur, which Chassagoac had not visited that season, was duly recounted to him, and then La Salle spoke of the future. We can see him pac- ing back and forth through the snow, oblivious of his wintry surroundings, of his scanty resources, and of the sore need of his people at the fort, while, with the light of inspiration on his brow, he unfolds his far-reaching plans to one whose co-operation would be of special value. He tells of his designs to make a lasting peace between the tribes of the Illinois and the fierce warriors of the Six Nations, to find the mouth of the Great River, and to bring arms and merchandise and many of his people to form an establishment among the Illinois, so soon as this great discovery should be made. The listening savage, wrapped in his blanket by the campfire, nods approval as the orator goes on, and soon, in a burst of unwonted enthusiasm, evoked by the ardent eloquence which found its way to the savage heart so well, pledges his influence in behalf of the French, confirms all that La Salle has recently heard concerning the Mississippi, and assures him that everything in his power shall be done to bring his enterprise to a happy ending.89 The news of impend- ing events so important and so beneficial to his tribe con- soled Chassagoac for the departure of his new friend, and the parties to this sudden alliance, which went far to cir- cumvent the machinations of La Salle's enemies, bade each other farewell.
The four hardy voyageurs and their native comrade had meanwhile taken one canoe and their supplies as far as the rapids, four leagues above the village, at what is now known as North Kickapoo Creek. Here La Salle joined them, and they embarked on the river on the 16th
80
CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
of March, continuing this route on the following day and advancing a dozen leagues, although the masses of ice often obliged them to travel on shore. The next morn- ing the river was so solidly frozen that it was navigable no further. They hid their canoe on what is now called Treat's Island, just above the junction of the Du Page with the Illinois; and continued their journey on foot. Laden with their outfit, they plodded on through melting snow, and across a great marsh until at noon of the 22d the deep and rapid waters of the Little Calumet brought them to a halt. It was necessary to build a raft, but only oak trees could be found, and the wood of these was not sufficiently buoyant. At length by binding the driest branches and bunches of rushes together with twisted willows, they made shift to reach the opposite bank, standing deep in the water on this frail support. The next day a similar contrivance carried them over the Grand Calumet, and two ponds or sloughs encountered in their course, and at evening they were greeted by the waves of Lake Michigan breaking in surf upon its shores. Fol- lowing its strand, they arrived on March 24th at the River St. Joseph, where Fort Miami gave them shelter.90
Here La Salle found the two men, Nicolas Laurent dit La Chapelle and Noël Le Blanc, whom he had sent the preceding autumn from this same place to meet his ves- sel. They increased his anxiety concerning her by reporting no news of her at Michillimackinac, which place they had left more than three months after she should have touched there. But, on the other hand, there was some ground for hope, because they had made the tour of the entire lake without finding any wreckage, nor had any been seen by the many Indians and French- men whom they met at different points along their route.
81
THE LAND OF THE ILLINOIS
But some of the natives told an ominous tale of three can- non shots in the night, the sound of which was borne to their wigwams by a great wind from the southwest. The ever-sanguine La Salle, however, reasoned that a gale from that direction might have prevented the vessel's coming to anchor at Michillimackinac and carried her beyond that island, whence she had held on her way down Lake Huron, and refused to admit that she could have been wrecked. 91
These men also brought the unwelcome tidings that disaster had happened to La Salle's affairs at Quebec through the intrigues of his opponents, among whom his own brother was conspicuous. The undaunted chieftain only set his face more resolutely eastward. He ordered La Chapelle and Le Blanc to follow the route of the Kankakee and report to Tonty at Fort Crèvecœur, and sent directions by them to his faithful lieutenant to visit the great Indian village, inspect a high rock in its neigh- borhood, and build a strong fort upon it. He resolved to change the location of his Illinois citadel, because the Illinois wished that he should build it near their great village, as he learned, doubtless, at his interview with Chassagoac. The new site was not the bold bluff over- looking the valley of the Illinois River for miles in either direction, known in our time as Starved Rock, which was later to bear the structure known as Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. At this period the great Indian village was some eight miles above this point, and the high rock in its neighborhood referred to by La Salle was probably that known to-day as Buffalo Rock, or one of the bluffs near it. 92
With his little party of five La Salle built a raft, crossed the St. Joseph, plunged into the almost impenetrable
S2
CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
forests of what is now southern Michigan, and despite famine, storm, sickness and Indian alarms, found his way to the strait between Lakes Huron and Erie, from which the city of Detroit takes its name. Still unwilling to give up Le Griffon, he sent two of his men, Hunault and Collin, to Mackinac to obtain the latest information con- cerning her, and with the other three rafted across the strait and followed the shore of Lake Erie on foot, until the illness of two of his comrades compelled him with the other to build a canoe, by means of which the party reached the Niagara, April 21st. Some of his men had wintered in a cabin above the cataract, perhaps at the shipyard of Le Griffon. No word of her had come to them, but they told him of fresh misfortunes. The ship St. Pierre, in which were sent from France more than twenty thousand francs' worth of merchandise for him, had foundered in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and all the cargo was lost, and of twenty workmen whom she had brought for his new colony, sixteen had gone back to Europe, discouraged by the current reports that he would never return. Of his stores on the Niagara, a part had been stolen, and the rest were exposed to the same risk, for he had no one there to trust. His companions also were completely exhausted, and not one could go with him further. But taking three fresh men from those who had spent the winter there, he crossed Lake Ontario in a steady downpour of rain, and on the 6th day of May Fort Frontenac welcomed its unconquerable commander. In sixty-seven days and over more than five hundred leagues of country, he had performed a journey which the official relation calls the most laborious ever under- taken by any Frenchman in America. 93
From Fort Conti La Salle sent back D'Autray with
83
THE LAND OF THE ILLINOIS
three soldiers, La Violette, Dulignon and Pierre You, and La Salle's servant, La Brie, in two canoes laden with arms and supplies, and means for the completion of the bark at Crèvecœur. He directed the young leader to take with him three more of their men whom he would meet on the way and the two whom he had sent to Mack- inac, and to warn Tonty of the march of the Iroquois against the Illinois, and to remain neutral in the impend- ing conflict. As soon as he arrived at Frontenac, he sent his lieutenant who had been commanding there, François Daubin, Sieur de La Forest, who held of him the island of Belle Isle, at the entrance of Lake Ontario, with five men to overtake D'Autray's party and bear tidings to Tonty that La Salle was coming with all speed to his aid. Next he dispatched a canoe to Quebec for additional men, but of the whole party brought by the St. Pierre to join him, one named Pinabel alone came to accompany him to the Illinois country. He learned withal that some canoes ascending the St. Lawrence laden with his goods had been lost in the rapids, and that dire confusion pre- vailed in his affairs at Montreal. A brief visit to that place enabled him in eight days time to restore order and secure fresh supplies, and he returned with all speed to Frontenac to complete his preparations for a second journey to the land of the Illinois. Here, on July 22d, arrived Nicolas Laurent, dit La Chapelle, again the bearer of evil tidings, and with him Jacques Messier and Nicolas Crevel, a colonist at Frontenac, who had met the others on their way. The first two had been sent by Tonty to report that most of the men left at Crèvecœur had, while Tonty was obtaining provisions at the great Illinois village, pillaged the magazine, dismantled the fort, and decamped with all the peltries and supplies.
84
CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
They had taken the route to Montreal, and some of them had already been seen on Lake Frontenac. La Salle set forth at once to intercept them. Two of his colonists sent by La Forest met him on the way, bringing the further information that these deserters had demolished Fort Miami and robbed the storehouses at Mackinac and Niagara, and while eight of them had fled towards New York, twelve were coming to slay him.
La Salle lay in wait for them, and made his dispositions with such skill that two of the miscreants were slain and the others were taken in irons to the dungeon of Fort Frontenac. Hence, on August 10, 1680, he departed with five and twenty men to the relief of the loyal Tonty. On the 15th he reached Teioiagon, an Iroquois village not far, perhaps, from the site of Toronto, and made it his headquarters till the 22d, while his effects were trans- ported by land to Lake Simcoe, which he called Lake Toronto. As he reached its shore on the 23d, two more of his deserters, making their way to Montreal, fell into his hands. One, Gabriel Minime, who had left him at Mackinac, was permitted to re-enter his service. The other, Grandmaison, escaped with his portion of the stolen furs. But they also brought sad news to La Salle, and he was compelled at last to believe that his woes had culminated in the total loss of Le Griffon and her cargo. These men had met some Pottawattamie Indians, who told them that two days after the bark left the island where La Salle bid her farewell September 18, 1679, a great gale arose. The pilot, who had anchored off the north shore of the lake under the shelter of a headland near the wigwams of these savages, determined to pro- ceed to Mackinac, despite their warnings that a mighty tempest was raging in the open lake, which was white
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.