USA > Illinois > Marshall County > Records of the olden time; or, Fifty years on the prairies. Embracing sketches of the discovery, exploration and settlement of the country, the organization of the counties of Putnam and Marshall, biographies of citizens, portraits and illustrations > Part 3
USA > Illinois > Putnam County > Records of the olden time; or, Fifty years on the prairies. Embracing sketches of the discovery, exploration and settlement of the country, the organization of the counties of Putnam and Marshall, biographies of citizens, portraits and illustrations > Part 3
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During Marquette's residence in that region he learned of the existence of a great sea or river away to the west, the Indian descriptions of which varied greatly; also, that great tribes of Indians inhabited this far off region, among them the Winnebagoes, or sea tribe, who had never seen the face of white man, nor heard of the Gospel.
In 1634 Jean Nicolet, a Frenchman who had come to Canada in 1618, was sent to the Green Bay country to visit the Winnebagoes. He was the first white man they had ever seen. To produce the greatest possible effect, "when he approached their town he sent some of his Indian at- tendants to announce his coming, put on a robe of damask, and firing his pistols, advanced to meet the expectant crowd. The squaws and children fled, screaming that it was a manitou [god] or spirit, armed with
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RECORDS OF THE OLDEN TIME.
. thunder and lightning; but the chiefs and warriors regaled him with so bountiful a hospitality that a hundred and twenty beavers were devoured at a single feast."
Paul Le Jeune in 1640 also wrote of the sea tribe, or Winnebagoes, and their mighty water, or sea.
Nicolet undertook to visit this far away region. Ascending Fox River, he crossed the portage to the Wisconsin, and thence floated down to where his guides assured him he was "within three days of the great water," which he mistook for the sea; but he returned without visiting it.
About this time the Governor of New France, excited by vague reports of a great unknown river in the far West, and believing it might empty into the Pacific or the South Sea, set on foot an expedition to solve the . question and open up new territories for his sovereign. He cast about for some one qualified to undertake this expedition, and settled upon Louis Joliet, a daring fur trader of Quebec and a native Canadian, educated by the Jesuits for the priesthood; and to accompany him as priest, the equally venturesome and brave Marquette was chosen. Their outfit was simple, consisting of two birch-bark canoes and a supply of smoked meat and Indian. corn. On the 17th of May, 1673, they set out from Mackinaw · with five French Canadians as assistants, and passing the straits, and along . the northern shores of Lake Michigan, reached Green Bay and sailed up Fox River to a village of the Miamis and Kickapoos. Here Marquette was delighted to find a beautiful cross in the middle of the town, orna- mented with white skins and bows and arrows, offerings of the heathen to their Manitou, or god. The pioneers were regaled with mineral waters, and instructed in the secrets of a root which cured the bite of the rat- tlesnake. Marquette assembled the chiefs and pointed out Joliet to them as an envoy of France, while he introduced himself as an embassador of God to enlighten them with the Gospel. Two guides were furnished to conduct them to the Wisconsin River. The guides led them across the . portage between the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, and left them to launch their barques on its unknown waters and float to regions where white men had never yet ventured. As they started on that strange voyage, they remembered the warnings received at an Indian village a few days before, on Fox River, where they tarried. The chiefs advised them "to go no further; that the banks of the great river were inhabited by ferocious tribes, who put all strangers to death; that the river was full of frightful monsters, some of which were large enough to swallow a canoe with all its
31
DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
contents; that at a high cliff by the river side lived a demon, whose roar was so loud as to shake the earth and destroy all boats passing up or down the stream; and ,that the great river was full of cataracts and whirl- pools which would surely engulf and destroy. them."
But Father Marquette had before starting. put all his, trust in the "Blessed Virgin," and made a solemn vow that if he discovered the great river he would give it the name of "The Conception," in her honor. So the, voyagers floated on, and were not afraid. After four days of rapid sailing. they reached the mouth of the river, and on their right lay the ter- raced plain afterward the site of the fort and city of Prairie du Chien. A couple of days they tarried, and then launched their frail barques on the broad bosom of the "Father of Waters," "with a joy that could not be expressed."
Turning southward, they paddled down the rapid stream, their voyage unrelieved by the faintest trace of civilized life, but encountering at inter- vals and viewing with wonder great herds of buffalo. Marquette describes the fierce yet stupid and bewildered look, the mixture of fear and defiance" of the old bulls of the herds who stood staring at the intruders through the tangled manes of their bushy heads as the canoes floated past.
They proceeded with extreme caution, not, knowing what moment the savage war-whoop might startle their ears, the prelude to their capture or speedy death; landing at night to cook their meals, and hiding their retreat as well as they could, or anchored in the stream, always keeping a sentinel on watch.
Thus they journeyed a fortnight without meeting a human being, when on the 25th of. June they saw foot-prints of men in the mud on the west branch of a stream. Joliet and Marquette followed the trail at a hazard- ous venture across a prairie two leagues, when they discovered an Indian village on the banks of. a river, probably near the present site of Burling- ton, Iowa. .. Here they found a tribe of Illinois Indians, and were welcomed in the fashion of these people. "An extensive feast of, four courses was set. First came a wooden bowl of Indian meal, boiled with grease, the master of ceremonies feeding his guests like infants, with a spoon; next a platter of fish, the same functionary carefully removing the bones with his fingers and blowing on the morsels to cool them before placing them in the strangers' mouths. A large dog, killed for the occasion, furnished the next course; but not relishing this, a dish of fat buffalo meat ended the feast."
1
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RECORDS OF THE OLDEN TIME.
Next morning, escorted by six hundred of the people, the Frenchmen re- turned to the river and resumed their journey.
They passed the mouth of the Illinois, discovering "The Ruined Castles," as they named the fantastic markings of the rocks at that point, produced by the action of the elements. The superstitious fears of the Canadian attendants were here aroused by the sight on the face of the rock of a pair of painted monsters, "with horns like a deer, red eyes,, and a beard like a tiger ;- the face resembled that of a man, the body was covered with scales, and the tail was so long that it passed entirely around the body, over the head and between the legs, ending like that of a fish." This rock .was near the site of the present city of Alton, and represented the Indian manitou, or god.
Soon after passing these monsters they encountered another terror, -a torrent of yellow mud, rushing across the current of the clear, blue Missis- sippi, boiling, surging, and sweeping in its course logs, branches, and uprooted trees. "This was the great Missouri River, where that savage stream, descending in its mad career through a vast unknown region of barbarism, poured its turbid floods into the bosom of its gentle sister." Their light canoes were whirled on the surface of the muddy. vortex like dry leaves in the eddies of an angry brook.
They passed the lonely forest which covered the site of the future city of St. Louis, passed the mouth of the river upon which the Indians be- stowed the well-deserved name of "Ohio," meaning "Beautiful River," and still floating onward, reached the region of perpetual summer, the reedy, marsh-lined shores buried in dense forests of cane, with its tall, straight stems and feathery foliage, -the land of cotton and sugar.
Above the mouth of the Arkansas they found a tribe of Indians who had evidently been in communication with Europeans, for they were armed with guns, knives and hatchets, wore garments of cloth, and carried their gunpowder in bottles of thick glass. Here they were cheered by the in- telligence that they were only ten days from the mouth of the great river, when in fact more than one thousand miles remained to be traversed ere its waters found an outlet and mingled with those of the Gulf of Mexico.
Floating down the stream day after day, past marsh-lined shores covered with evergreens, from which depended long streamers of funereal moss, the dreary monotony and awful stillness almost frightened them, and they grew strangely.superstitious. Near the mouth of the Arkansas River they landed at an Indian village, and found the inhabitants intensely
33
MARQUETTE'S RETURN-UP THE ILLINOIS.
hostile, threatening extermination; but a little strategy saved them. A few days later they encountered another tribe of naked savages, who proved as hospitable as the others were hostile. They were feasted pro- fusely, and in return Marquette made them some simple presents and set up a large cross on shore.
By this time they were convinced the Mississippi neither flowed into the Pacific Ocean nor the Gulf of California, and disheartened by reports of savage tribes below, and wearied with their long voyage, Marquette determined on returning, and on the 17th of June the voyagers turned their prows up the stream. The fierce rays of the sun beat upon their unprotected heads, and Marquette was prostrated with dysentery, which came near ending his life; but his strong constitution carried him through until a healthier climate was reached, when he rapidly recovered.
VOYAGE UP THE ILLINOIS RIVER.
These intrepid travelers had discovered the Mississippi, and rode upon its broad bosom from the Wisconsin to within a few hundred miles of its mouth, passing successively, at the confluence of each with the majestic stream upon which they journeyed, the Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas and other mighty rivers, and were now about to extend their discoveries by a voyage up the Illinois, whose limpid waters and wood-crowned hills no white man had ever yet beheld. They entered its mouth probably in August, 1673, and followed its course, "charmed as they went with its placid waters, its shady forests, and rich plains grazed by the bison and the deer."
The beauty of the river was highly extolled by Marquette. He says: "Nowhere on this journey have I seen a more pleasant country than on the banks of that river. The meadows are covered with wild oxen, stags, wild goats, and the rivers and lakes with bustards, swans, ducks and beavers. We saw, also, an abundance of parrots. Several small rivers fall into this, which is deep and broad for sixty-five leagues, and therefore navigable all the year long."
On the way they stopped at a place ever afterward famous in the annals of western discovery,-the great Illinois Town (near Utica, in
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RECORDS OF THE OLDEN TIME.
LaSalle County), called "Kaskaskia," a name afterward transferred to a French village in another part of Illinois. Here a young chief with a band of warriors offered to guide the explorers to Lake Illinois (now Lake Michigan), whither they went, and coasting its shores, reached Green Bay at the end of September, having, in an absence of about four months, paddled in their canoes a distance of over two thousand five hundred miles, traversed the Wisconsin, the Illinois and Lake Michigan, discov- ered the Mississippi, and explored the great valley for two-thirds of its entire length from north to south.
Marquette rested awhile from the severe strain to his mental and physical organization resulting from his long and perilous expedition, and then resumed his labors among the Indians. He visited the Illinois tribes again, established "missions " at several places in the Northwest, and finally, when, old and worn out, as he was traversing the southern shore of Lake Michigan, deatlı overtook him. Retiring to pray, as was his wont, and being absent longer than usual, his attendants sought his retreat and found him dead upon his knees. His faithful Indians placed the remains in a rude bark coffin and bore him upon their shoulders for sixty miles, to his friends, where he was accorded Christian burial. Afterward the little chapel be- neath which he was interred was burned down, the mission was moved elsewhere, and for many years the site of his grave was lost, until acci- dent revealed it. Nearly two hundred years later a project was set on foot to erect a monument to his memory, but which has not at this writ- ing been carried into effect.
It is said that for many years after the death of Marquette, French sailors on the lakes kept his picture nailed to the masthead of their ves- sels, as a guardian angel, and when overtaken by storms, would pray to him, beseeching him to calm the winds and still the troubled waters, that they might reach port in safety.
Joliet, on leaving Marquette at Green Bay, at the conclusion of their eventful voyage, started to Quebec to make his official report to Governor Frontenac; but at the foot of the rapids of La Chine his canoe was over- turned, two of his men drowned and all his papers lost, himself narrowly escaping. In his letter to Count Frontenac, he says : "I have escaped every peril from Indians, I have passed forty-two rapids, and was on the point of disembarking, full of joy at the final completion of so long and difficult an enterprise, when my canoe capsized, and I lost two men and
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THE DEATH OF JOLIET.
my box of papers within sight of the French settlements which I had left two years before."
After a long and useful life in the employ of his government, he died in 1699 or 1700, and was buried on one of the Islands of Mignon.
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RECORDS OF THE OLDEN TIME.
CHAPTER V.
CAVELIER DE LA SALLE.
N 1643 was born at Rouen, France, Robert Cavelier, known as La Salle. He had wealthy parents, and was well educated. A Catholic, his training was conducted by the Jesuits, but he seems not to have been over-zealous in his religion. He had an older brother in Canada, and to him he sailed to view the new country and carve out a career for himself. Soon after his arrival his genius began to manifest itself. The priests of St. Surplice, of which order his brother was a member, desired to establish a line of posts along the great lakes to the farthest limits of French discovery, to secure the fur trade and control the Indians. Young La Salle was chosen to lead this enterprise. He did his work well, and in the meantime mastered the Iroquois and seven or eight other Indian languages and dialects. He had heard of a river which the Indians called the Ohio, which he was told by them rose in their country, flowing into the sea, but its mouth was eight or nine months' journey from them. He concluded that the Ohio and Mississippi merged into one, and, thus united, flowed into the " Vermillion Sea" or Gulf of California, and must be the long-sought route to China. After many de- lays, he succeeded in fitting out an expedition, descended the Ohio to the falls at Louisville, and returned. During the years 1669-70 and '71, La- Salle's whereabouts seem to have been an enigma to all historians. He has left records which establish a possibility that he discovered the Illi- nois and even the Mississippi Rivers, before Joliet and Marquette, but there is nothing positive to assure it. It is agreed that he seceded from an expedition of Jesuits organized at Fort St. Louis, Sept. 30, 1669, near the head of Lake Ontario, and, receiving the blessings of the priests, left them, ostensibly to return to Montreal. It seems that he busied himself in active explorations, kept a journal, and made maps, which were in ex- istence in the hands of his neice, Madeline Cavelier, as late as 1756, and then disappeared. It is claimed that among these papers was a statement showing that after leaving the priests he went from Lake Erie down the
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THE EXPLORATIONS OF LA SALLE.
Ohio, and thence followed the Mississippi to the thirty-third parallel ; also, another statement that in the winter of 1669-70 he embarked on Lake Erie, passed around to Lake Michigan, crossed over to a river flowing westward (the Illinois), and following it down, entered a larger one flow- ing south (the Mississippi), and descended it to the thirty-sixth degree of latitude, where he stopped, assured that it discharged itself, not into the Gulf of California, but that of Mexico. As he and the priests had started on the same mission, that of discovering the great river, it may be that this report was manufactured so as to take the glory of this first dis- covery away from them; but La Salle was a man of a far higher order of integrity and character than this supposition would imply. That he dis- covered the Ohio is certain, but whether he saw the Illinois before Joliet and Marquette is doubtful, and the alleged voyage by him to the Missis- sippi is still more so.
In 1678 La Salle seemed to have determined upon achieving what Champlain had vainly attempted-the opening of a passage across the continent to India and China, to occupy the Great West, develop its re- sources, and anticipate the English and Spanish in its possession; and now that he was convinced that the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, he would establish a fortified post at its mouth, thus securing the outlet for the trade of the interior, and check the progress of the Span- iards, the enemies of his king. Spain already laid claim to the mouth of the Mississippi and what afterward came to be known as Louisiana, by virtue of discovery, and the ambitious Count Frontenac, Governor Gen- eral of Canada, determined to prevent an extension of their territory, worked out the plan before referred to, and selected La Salle as the right man to execute it.
He chose his men for the voyage, but when all was in readiness Fron- tenac had not the necessary means, and La Salle was obliged to seek aid in France. There, also, he received nothing better than the privilege of doing anything he could for the glory of France, at his own expense ! Not only that, he was limited in the accomplishment of his mighty schemes to five years' time. His relatives, who were rich, finally helped him to money, and he sailed to Canada with thirty men, sailors, carpenters and laborers, among whom was the afterward famous Henry de Tonti, an Italian officer, one of whose hands had been blown off in the Sicilian wars, and he wore a substitute of iron.
La Salle needed a priest for his exploring party, and Father Louis
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RECORDS OF THE OLDEN TIME.
Hennepin was secured for that service. When arrayed for his journey the priest wore a coarse gray capote with peaked hood, sandals on his feet, the cord of St. Francis about his waist, and a rosary and crucifix hanging at his side. He carried a sort of portable altar with him, which he could strap on his back like a knapsack. The party rendezvous was at Fort Frontenac, where Kingston now stands. La Salle at once dispatched fifteen men in canoes to Lake Michigan, to open a trade with the Indians and collect provisions, while La Motte and Hennepin, with a crew of men in a small vessel, were sent up the Niagara River, and after many hard- ships discovered the Great Falls. In the meantime La Salle, sailing with the Tinto to bring supplies to the advance party at Niagara, had suffered the loss of his vessel, which was wrecked, and he reached the rendezvous at Niagara on foot. But not discouraged; he set about the construction of a fort and palisade, and also a new vessel, the Griffin. Leaving his men at work, he made his way back to Frontenac, a distance of two hun- dred and fifty miles, through snow and over ice, for fresh supplies. He returned in July, the Griffin was launched, and they sailed away Au- gust 7, 1679, in all thirty-four men. He made his voyage around the lakes to Green Bay, and loading the Griffin with furs, sent her back to appease his clamorous creditors. She foundered on the way, and was never more heard of.
La Salle, with fourteen men in four canoes, now started southward on Lake Michigan, and after escaping perils by storm and suffering from hunger and cold, reached St. Joseph, on the southern shore of the lake, in safety. Here Tonti was to have joined him with twenty men, but did not arrive until twenty days afterward; bringing a sad tale of disaster to his men and loss of supplies.
.On the 8th of December, 1679, La Salle, with a party of thirty-three persons, ascended the St. Joseph until the well-known portage was reached, where they dragged their canoes a distance of five miles to the waters of the Kankakee, a confluent of the Illinois, down which they paddled. While looking for the crossing La Salle was lost in a snow storm, remain- ing out one day and a night before reaching camp.
"The stream, which at its source is narrow and fed by exudations from a spongy soil, widens quickly into a river, down which they floated through a lifeless solitude of dreary, barren oak openings. At night they built fires on the ground, made firm by frost, and bivouacked among the rushes. A few days brought them to the prevailing characteristic scenery of the
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THE EXPLORATIONS OF LA SALLE.
Illinois. On the right and left stretched boundless prairies, dotted with leafless groves and bordered by gray forests, scorched by the fires kindled in the dried grass by Indian hunters, and strewn with the bleached skulls and bones of innumerable buffalo. At night the horizon glowed with distant fires, and by day the savage hunters could be descried roaming on the verge of the prairies."
This soon changed to woody hills, which from their summits disclosed a rolling sea of dull gray prairie, recently swept by fire, and everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, a boundless pasture for vast herds of rumi- nant animals.
They passed the mouth of Fox River, the future site of Ottawa, saw Buffalo Rock towering isolated in the valley, and below it the far-famed Starved Rock, a lofty cliff, crested with trees that overhung the rippling current, while before them spread the broad valley of the river, along whose right 'bank was the "Great Illinois Town," or chief village of the Illinois Indians, containing, according to Hennepin, four hundred and sixty lodges. The town was deserted. The people had gone away on their annual fall hunt, but La Salle supplied himself with corn from their caches, and pursued his voyage to perhaps near the mouth of what is now Bureau Creek, where he landed, and sent out a party to hunt buffalo-a herd being seen a short distance from the river. Two animals were killed, when the hunters returned to camp. The following day being New Year's, Jan. 1st, 1680, the voyageurs went on shore at a point thought by some writers to have been in the vicinity of Hennepin, where they set up an altar and celebrated mass.
Re-embarking, the party passed down the river, through what are now Marshall and Putnam counties, on the 1st, 2d and 3d days of January, 1680, two hundred years ago, and on January 4th entered Lake Pimiboni, "a place where there are many fat beasts," or Peoria Lake, and thence down to the lower end, where La Salle proposed to erect a fort. The na- tives who met him were kind, but told of adjoining tribes who were hostile.
Continuing their journey, and passing through a somewhat narrow ` passage, they rounded a point, and beheld about eighty wigwams along the bank of the river. The Indians crowded the shore at the unwonted sight, while La Salle marshalled his men, and with the canoes abreast and every man armed, pulled into the bank and leaped ashore. The In- dians were disposed to resent the strange intrusion, but La Salle held
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RECORDS OF THE OLDEN TIME.
aloft the calumet, the Indian sign of peace, and the amicable token was accepted, and a feast of welcome was spread for the weary voyagers.
The Indians, as a token of highest courtesy, conveyed the food to the mouths of their guests, and rubbed their feet with bear's grease. When these somewhat extravagant courtesies were over, and all had eaten to repletion, La Salle told whence he came and whither he was going ; spoke of the great king, his master, who owned all the country, and gra- ciously promised them protection provided they remained his friends; to all of which they assented.
La Salle had left behind him in Canada some bitter and relentless ene- mies, who had followed him even to this remote region in the West. During his first night here, an emissary from them, a Mascoutin chief, and four or five Miamis, came bringing knives, hatchets and kettles to the Illi- nois, and while La Salle was in his camp, after leaving the tribe who had been feasting him, and whose friendship he thought he had secured, these intriguers assembled the chiefs in secret conclave and denounced La Salle as a spy from the Iroquois, the deadly foe of the Illinois.
Hennepin, in his work printed in 1724, charges the Jesuits with being at the bottom of this work, naming Allouez, a prominent member of that order, and La Salle's enemy, as one of the prime movers.
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