USA > Indiana > Montgomery County > History of Montgomery County, together with historic notes on the Wabash Valley; gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic sources > Part 8
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
fourteen men than thirty-two with provisions. We said further that it would be quite impossible, if we delayed longer, to continue the voyage until the winter was over, because the rivers would be frozen over and we could not make use of our canoes. Notwithstanding these reasons, M. La Salle thought it necessary to remain for the rest of the men, as we would be in no condition to appear before the Illi- nois and treat with them with our present small force, whom they would meet with scorn. That it would be better to delay our entry into their country, and in the meantime try to meet with some of their nation, learn their language, and gain their good will by presents. La Salle eoneluded his discourse with the declaration that, although all of his men might run away, as for himself, he would remain alone with his Indian hunter, and find means to maintain the three missionaries - meaning me and my two clerical brethren. Having come to this con- clusion, La Salle called his men together, and advised them that he expected each one to do his duty; that he proposed to build a fort here for the security of the ship and the safety of our goods, and our- selves, too, in case of any disaster. None of us, at this time, knew that our ship had been lost. The men were quite dissatisfied at La- Salle's course, but his reasons therefor were so many that they yielded, and agreed to entirely follow his directions.
" Just at the mouth of the river was an eminence with a kind of plateau, naturally fortified. It was quite steep, of a triangular shape, defended on two sides by the river, and on the other by a deep ravine which the water had washed out. We felled the trees that grew on this hill, and eleared from it the bushes for the distance of two musket shot. We began to build a redoubt about forty feet long by eighty broad, with great square pieces of timber laid one upon the other, and then eut a great number of stakes, some twenty feet long, to drive into the ground on the river side, to make the fort inaccessible in that direc- tion. We were employed the whole of the month of November in this work, which was very fatiguing,- having no other food than the bears our savage killed. These animals are here very abundant, be- cause of the great quantity of grapes they find in this vicinity. Their flesh was so fat and Inscious that our men grew weary of it, and desired to go themselves and hunt for wild goats. La Salle denied them that liberty, which made some murmurs among the men, and they went unwillingly to their work. These annoyances, with the near approach of winter, together with the apprehension that his ship was lost, gave La Salle a melancholy which he resolutely tried to but could not con- ceal.
"We made a hut wherein we performed divine service every Sun-
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FORT MIAMIS.
day ; and Father Gabriel and myself, who preached alternately, care- fully selected such texts as were suitable to our situation, and fit to inspire us with courage, concord, and brotherly love. Our exhorta- tions produced good results, and deterred our men from their meditated desertion. We sounded the mouth of the river and found a sand-bar, on which we feared our expected ship might strike ; we marked out a channel through which the vessel might safely enter by attaching buoys, made of inflated bear-skins, fastened to long poles driven into the bed of the lake. Two men were also sent back to Mackinac to await there the return of the ship, and serve as pilots."
" M. Tonti arrived on the 20th of November with two canoes, laden with stags and deer, which were a welcome refreshment to our men. He did not bring more than about one-half of his men, having left the rest on the opposite side of the lake, within three days' journey of the fort. La Salle was angry with him on this account, because he was afraid the men would run away. Tonti's party informed us that the Griffin had not put into Mackinaw, according to orders, and that they had heard nothing of her since our departure, although they had made inquiries of the savages living on the coast of the lake. This confirmed the suspicion, or rather the belief, that the vessel had been cast away. However, M. La Salle continued work on the building of the fort, which was at last completed and called Fort Miamis.
" The winter was drawing nigh, and La Salle, fearful that the ice would interrupt his voyage, sent M. Tonti back to hurry forward the men he had left, and to command them to come to him immediately ; but, meeting with a violent storm, their canoes were driven against the beach and broken to pieces, and Tonti's men lost their guns and equipage, and were obliged to return to us overland. A few days after this all our men arrived except two, who had deserted. We pre- pared at once to resume our voyage; rains having fallen that melted the ice and made the rivers navigable.
" On the 3d of December, 1679, we embarked, being in all thirty- three men, in eight canoes. We left the lake of the Illinois and went up the river of the Miamis, in which we had previously made soundings. We made about five-and-twenty leagues southward, but failed to discover the place where we were to land, and carry our canoes and effects into the river of the Illinois, which falls into that of the Meschasipi, that is, in the language of the Illinois, the great river. We had already gone beyond the place of the portage, and, not know- ing where we were, we thought proper to remain there, as we were expecting M. La Salle, who had taken to the land to view the country.
* This is the beginning, at what is now known as Benton Harbor, Michigan.
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
We staid here quite a while, and, La Salle failing to appear, I went a distance into the woods with two men, who fired off their guns to notify him of the place where we were. In the meantime two other men went higher up the river, in canoes, in search of him. We all returned toward evening, having vainly endeavored to find him. The next day I went up the river myself, but, hearing nothing of him, I came back, and found our men very much perplexed, fearing he was lost. However, about four o'clock in the afternoon M. La Salle returned to us, having his face and hands as black as pitch. He carried two beasts, as big as muskrats, whose skin was very fine, and like ermine. He had killed them with a stick, as they hung by their tails to the branches of the trees.
" He told us that the marshes he had met on his way had compelled him to bring a large compass; and that, being much delayed by the snow, which fell very fast, it was past midnight before he arrived upon the banks .of the river, where he fired his gun twice, and, hearing no answer, he concluded that we had gone higher np the river, and had, therefore, marched that way. He added that, after three hours' march, he saw a fire upon a little hill, whither he went directly and hailed us several times; but, hearing no reply, he approached and found no per- son near the fire, but only some dry grass, upon which a man had laid a little while before, as he conjectured, because the bed was still warm. He supposed that a savage had been occupying it, who fled upon his approach, and was now hid in ambuscade near by. La Salle called out loudly to him in two or three languages, saying that he need not be afraid of him, and that he was agoing to lie in his bed. La Salle received no answer. To guard against surprise, La Salle cut bushes and placed them to obstruct the way, and sat down by the fire, the smoke of which blackened his hands and face, as I have already observed. Hav- ing warmed and rested himself, he laid down under the tree upon the dry grass the savage had gathered and slept well, notwithstanding the frost and snow. Father Gabriel and I desired him to keep with his men, and not to expose himself in the future, as the success of our enterprise depended solely on him, and he promised to follow our advice. Our savage, who remained behind to hunt, finding none of us at the portage, came higher up the river, to where we were, and told us we had missed the place. We sent all the canoes back under his charge except one, which I retained for M. La Salle, who was so weary that he was obliged to remain there that night. I made a little hut with mats, constructed with marsh rushes, in which we laid down together for the night. By an unhappy accident our cabin took fire, and we were very near being burned alive after we had gone to sleep."
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ABORIGINAL NAME OF "KANKAKEE."
Here follows Hennepin's description of the Kankakee portage, and of the marshy grounds about the headwaters of this stream, as already quoted on page 24.
" Having passed through the marshes, we came to a vast prairie, in which nothing grows but grasses, which were at this time dry and burnt, because the Miamis set the grasses on fire every year, in hunt- ing for wild oxen (buffalo), as I shall mention farther on. We found no game, which was a disappointment to us, as our provisions had begun to fail. Our men traveled about sixty miles without killing anything other than a lean stag, a small wild goat, a few swan and two bustards, which were but a scanty subsistence for two and thirty men. Most of the men were become so weary of this laborious life that, were it practicable, they would have run away and joined the savages, who, as we inferred by the great fires which we saw on the prairies, were not very far from us. There must be an innumerable quantity of wild cattle in this country, since the ground here is every- where covered with their horns. The Miamis hunt them toward the latter end of autumn."*
That part of the Illinois River above the Desplaines is called the Kankakee, which is a corruption of its original Indian name. St. Cosme, the narrative of whose voyage down the Illinois River, by way of Chicago, in 1699, and found in Dr. Shea's work of "Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi," refers to it as the The-a-li-ke, "which is the real river of the Illinois, and (says) that which we de- scended (the Desplaines) was only a branch." Father Marest, in his letter of November 9, 1712, narrating a journey he had previously made from Kaskaskia up to the Mission of St. Joseph, says of the Illi- nois River: "We transported all there was in the canoe toward the source of the Illinois (Indian), which they call Hau-ki-ki." Father Charlevoix, who descended the Kankakee from the portage, in his let- ter, dated at the source of the river Theakiki, September 17, 1721, says : " This morning I walked a league farther in the meadow, having my feet almost always in the water; afterward I met with a kind of a pool or marsh, which had a communication with several others of dif- ferent sizes, but the largest was about a hundred paces in circuit; these are the sources of the river The-a-ki-ki, which, by a corrupted pronun- ciation, our Indians call Ki-a-ki-ki. Theak signifies a wolf, in what language I do not remember, but the river bears that name because the Mahingans (Mohicans), who were likewise called wolves, had formerly
* Hennepin and his party were not aware of the migratory habits of the buffalo ; and that their scarcity on the Kankakee in the winter months was because the herds had gone southward to warmer latitude and better pasturage.
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
taken refuge on its banks."* The Mohicans were of the Algonquin stock, anciently living east of the Hudson River, where they had been so persecuted and nearly destroyed by the implacable Iroquois that their tribal integrity was lost, and they were dispersed in small fami- lies over the west, seeking protection in isolated places, or living at sufferance among their Algonquin kindred. They were brave, faithful to the extreme, famous scouts, and successful hunters. La Salle, ap- preciating these valuable traits, usually kept a few of them in his em- ploy. The "savage," or "hunter," so often referred to by Hennepin, in the extracts we have taken from his journal, was a Mohican.
In a report made to the late Governor Ninian Edwards, in 1812, by John Hays, interpreter and Coureur de Bois of the routes, rivers and Indian villages in the then Illinois Territory, Mr. Hays calls the Kankakee the Quin-que-que, which was probably its French-Indian name.+ Col. Guerdon S. Hubbard, who for many years, dating back as early as 1819, was a trader, and commanded great influence with the bands of Pottawatomies, claiming the Kankakee as their country, informs the writer that the Pottawatomie name of the Kankakee is Ky-an-ke-a-kee, meaning " the river of the wonderful or beautiful land,-as it really is, westward of the marshes. "A-kee," "Ah-ke" and "Aki," in the Algonquin dialect, signifies earth or land.
The name Desplaines, like that of the Kankakee, has undergone elianges in the progress of time. On a French map of Louisiana, in 1717, the Desplaines is laid down as the Chicago River. Just after Great Britain had secured the possessions of the French east of the Mississippi, by conquest and treaty, and when the British authorities were keenly alive to everything pertaining to their newly acquired possessions, an elaborate map, collated from the most authentic sources by Eman Bowen, geographer to His Majesty King George the Third, was issued, and on this map the Desplaines is laid down as the Illinois, or Chicago River. Many early French writers speak of it, as they do of the Kankakee above the confluence, as the "River of the Illi- nois." Its French Canadian name is Au Plein, now changed to Des- plaines, or Rivière Au Plein, or Despleines, from a variety of hard maple,- that is to say, sugar tree. The Pottawatomies called it She- shik-mao-shi-ke Se-pe, signifying the river of the tree from which a great quantity of sap flows in the spring.# It has also been sanctified by Father Zenobe Membre with the name Divine River, and by authors
* Charlevoix' "Journal of a Voyage to America," vol. 2, p. 184. London edition, 1761.
+ " History of Illinois and Life of Governor Edwards," by his son Ninian W. Edwards, p. 98.
# Long's Second Expedition, vol. 1, p. 173.
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NAMES OF THE ILLINOIS.
of early western gazetteers, vulgarized by the appellation of Kickapoo Creek.
Below the confluence of the Desplaines, the Illinois River was, by La Salle, named the Seignelay, as a mark of his esteem for the brilliant young Colbert, who succeeded his father as Minister of the Marine. On the great map, prepared by the engineer Franquelin in 1684, it is called River Des Illinois, or Macoupins. The name Illinois, which, fortunately, it will always bear, was derived from the name of the con- federated tribes who anciently dwelt upon its banks.
"We continued our course," says Hennepin, " upon this river (the Kankakee and Illinois) very near the whole month of December, at the latter end of which we arrived at a village of the Illinois, which lies near a hundred and thirty leagues from Fort Miamis, on the Lake of the Illinois. We suffered greatly on the passage, for the savages having set fire to the grass on the prairie, the wild cattle had fled, and we did not kill one. Some wild turkeys were the only game we secured. God's providence supported us all the while, and as we meditated upon the extremities to which we were reduced, regarding ourselves without hope of relief, we found a very large wild ox stick- ing fast in the mud of the river. We killed him, and with much diffi- culty dragged him out of the mud. This was a great refreshment to our men ; it revived their courage,- being so timely and unexpectedly relieved, they concluded that God approved our undertaking.
The great village of the Illinois, where La Salle's party had now arrived, has been located with such certainty by Francis Parkman, the learned historical writer, as to leave no doubt of its identity. It was on the north side of the Illinois River, above the mouth of the Vermillion and below Starved Rock, near the little village of Utica, in La Salle county, Illinois .*
"We found," continues Father Hennepin, " no one in the village, as we had foreseen, for the Illinois, according to their custom, had di- vided themselves into small hunting parties. Their absence caused great perplexity amongst us, for we wanted provisions, and yet did not dare to meddle with the Indian corn the savages had laid under ground for their subsistence and for seed. However, our necessity be- ing very great, and it being impossible to continue our voyage without any provisions, M. La Salle resolved to take about forty bushels of corn, and hoped to appease the savages with presents. We embarked again, with these fresh provisions, and continued to fall down the river,
* Mr. Parkman gives an interesting account of his recent visit to, and the identifi- cation of, the locality, in an elaborate note in his " Discovery of the Great West," pp. 221, 222.
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
which runs directly toward the south. On the 1st of January we went through a lake (Peoria Lake) formed by the river, about seven leagues long and one broad. The savages call that place Pimeteoui, that is, in their tongue, 'a place where there is an abundance of fat animals. '*
Resuming Hennepin's narrative: "The current brought us, in the meantime, to the Indian eamp, and M. La Salle was the first one to land, followed elosely by his men, which increased the consterna- tion of the savages, whom we easily might have defeated. As it was not our design, we made a halt to give them time to recover them- selves and to see that we were not enemies. Most of the savages who had run away upon our landing, understanding that we were friends, returned ; but some others did not come back for three or four days, and after they had learned that we had smoked the calumet.
"I must observe here, that the hardest winter does not last longer than two months in this charming country, so that on the 15th of Jan- uary there came a sudden thaw, which made the rivers navigable, and the weather as mild as it is in France in the middle of the spring. M. La Salle, improving this fair season, desired me to go down the river with him to choose a place proper to build a fort. We selected an eminence on the bank of the river, defended on that side by the river, and on two others by deep ravines, so that it was accessible only on one side. We cast a trench to join the two ravines, and made the eminence steep on that side, supporting the earth with great pieces of timber. We made a rough palisade to defend ourselves in case the Indians should attack us while we were engaged in building the fort ; but no one offering to disturb us, we went on diligently with our work.
* Louis Beck, in his " Gazetteer of Illinois and Missouri," p. 119, says: "The Indi- ans call the lake Pin-a-tah-wee, on account of its being frequently covered with a scum which has a greasy appearance." Owing to the rank growth of aquatic plants in the Illinois River before they were disturbed by the frequent passage of boats, and to the grasses on the borders of the stream and the adjacent marshes, and the decay taking place in both under the scorching rays of the summer's sun, the surface of the river and lake were frequently coated with this vegetable decomposition. Prof. School- craft ascended the Illinois River, and was at Fort Clark on the 19th of August, 1821. Under this date is the following extract from his "Narrative Journal ": "About 9 o'clock in the morning we came to a part of the river which was covered for several hundred yards with a scum or froth of the most intense green color, and emitting a nauseous exhalation that was almost insupportable. We were compelled to pass through it. The fine green color of this somewhat compact scum, resembling that of verdegris, led us at the moment to conjecture that it might derive this character from some mineral spring or vein in the bed of the river, but we had reasons afterward to regret this opinion. I directed one of the canoe men to collect a bottle of this mother of miasmata for preservation, but its fermenting nature baffled repeated at- tempts to keep it corked. We had daily seen instances of the powerful tendency of these waters to facilitate the decomposition of floating vegetation, but had not before observed any in so mature and complete a state of putrefaction. It might certainly justify an observer less given to fiction than the ancient poets, to people this stream with the Hydra, as were the pestilential-breeding marshes of Italy."-Schoolcraft's "Central Mississippi Valley," p. 305.
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FORT CREVECOEUR AND ITS LOCATION.
When the fort was half finished, M. La Salle lodged himself, with M. Tonti, in the middle of the fortification, and every one took his post. We placed the forge on the curtain on the side of the wood, and laid in a great quantity of coal for that purpose. But our greatest diffi- culty was to build a boat,-our carpenters having deserted us, we did not know what to do. However, as timber was abundant and near at hand, we told our men that if any of them would undertake to saw boards for building the bark, we might surmount all other difficulties. Two of the men undertook the task, and succeeded so well that we began to build a bark, the keel whereof was forty-two feet long. Our men went on so briskly with the work, that on the 1st of March our boat was half built, and all the timber ready prepared for furnishing it. Our fort was also very near finished, and we named it ' Fort Creve- cœur, ' because the desertion of our men, and other difficulties we had labored under, had almost ' broken our hearts.' *
" M. La Salle," says Hennepin, " no longer doubted that the Griffin was lost; but neither this nor other difficulties dejected him. His great courage buoyed him up, and he resolved to return to Fort Fron- tenac by land, notwithstanding the snow, and the great dangers attend- ing so long a journey. We had many private conferences, wherein it was decided that he should return to Fort Frontenac with three men, to bring with him the necessary articles to proceed with the discov- ery, while I, with two men, should go in a canoe to the River Me- schasipi, and endeavor to obtain the friendship of the nations who inhabited its banks.
" M. La Salle left M. Tonti to command in Fort Crevecœur, and ordered our carpenter to prepare some thick boards to plank the deck of our ship, in the nature of a parapet, to cover it against the arrows of the savages in case they should shoot at us from the shore. Then, calling his men together, La Salle requested them to obey M. Tonti's orders in his absence, to live in Christian union and charity; to be courageous and firm in their designs ; and above all not to give credit to false reports the savages might make, either of him or of their com- rades who accompanied Father Hennepin."
Hennepin and his two companions, with a supply of trinkets suitable
* "Fort Crevecœur," or the Broken Heart, was built on the east side of the Illi- nois River, a short distance below the outlet of Peoria Lake. It is so located on the great map of Franquelin, made at Quebec in 1684. There are many indications on this map, going to show that it was constructed largely under the supervision of La- Salle. The fact mentioned by Hennepin, that they went down the river, and that coal was gathered for the supply of the fort, would confirm this theory as to its location; for the outcrop of coal is abundant in the bluffs on the east side of the river below Peoria. There is also a spot in this immediate vicinity that answers well to the site of the fort as described by Fathers Hennepin and Membre.
6
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
for the Indian trade, left Fort Crevecoeur for the Mississippi, on the 29th of February, 1680, and were captured by the Sioux, as already stated. From this time to the ultimate discovery and taking possession of the Mississippi and the valleys by La Salle, Father Zenobe Membre was the historian of the expedition.
La Salle started across the country, going up the Illinois and Kan- kakee, and through the southern part of the present State of Michigan. IIe reached the Detroit River, ferrying the stream with a raft ; he at length stood on Canadian soil. Striking a direct line across the wilder- ness, he arrived at Lake Erie, near Point Pelee. By this time only one man remained in health, and with his assistance La Salle made a canoe. Embarking in it the party came to Niagara on Easter Monday. Leaving his comrades, who were completely exhausted, La Salle on the 6th of May reached Fort Frontenac, making a journey of over a thou- sand miles in sixty-five days, "the greatest feat ever performed by a Frenchman in America."
La Salle found his affairs in great confusion. His creditors had seized upon his estate, including Fort Frontenac. Undaunted by this new misfortune, he confronted his creditors and enemies, pacifying the former and awing the latter into silence. He gathered the fragments of his scattered property and in a short time started west with a com- pany of twenty-five men, whom he had recruited to assist in the prose- cution of his discoveries. He reached Lake Huron by the way of Lake Simcoe, and shortly afterward arrived at Mackinaw. Ilere he found that his enemies had been very busy, and had poisoned the minds of the Indians against his designs.
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