History of Berrien and Van Buren counties, Michigan. With biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 2

Author: D.W. Ensign & Co. pub; Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Johnson, Crisfield
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia, D. W. Ensign & Co.
Number of Pages: 821

USA > Michigan > Van Buren County > History of Berrien and Van Buren counties, Michigan. With biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 2
USA > Michigan > Berrien County > History of Berrien and Van Buren counties, Michigan. With biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 2

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THE earliest white explorers of the country which is now the State of Michigan, as of all the regions lying on, and contiguous to, the great lakes of the Northwest, were traders, priests, and adventurers, who were all subjects of the king of France. The government of that country had moved with great energy to extend its power in America, and, as early as 1604, French colonists had settled in Acadia, now Nova Scotia. Quebec was founded in 1608, and from that point, and from Montreal, there were sent forth innumerable expeditions, led by Frenchmen, whose object was the opening of trade or the establishment of their flag and their religion among the Indian tribes of the remote regions stretching away from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi. Hunters and fur-traders were in most cases the first to penetrate the wilderness, but these were closely followed by missionaries of the Romish Church, usually accompanied by representatives of the military power of France. "The establishment of the mission was the precursor of military occupancy. The priest and the soldier went hand in hand ; and the cross and the fleur-de- lis were planted side by side."

The Franciscan fathers were the first to enter the new and promising missionary field ; and when, in the year

1615, Samuel de Champlain, the French Governor of Canada, led an expedition of discovery as far as the shores of Lake Manitoulin (the northern arm of Lake Huron), the priests of that order either accompanied him or fol- lowed immediately after, and established Catholic missions among the Huron tribes who lived there. But in 1625 the pioneer priests of the far-famed Jesuit order arrived in Canada, and they, by their fiery zeal and almost super- human energy, pushed aside the less aggressive Franciscans, and took the lead in the occupation of the missionary ground throughout the entire lake region. Sixteen years after the arrival of the Jesuits two of their number- Fathers Raymbault and Jogues-had reached the outlet of Lake Superior, and were bending all their energies to the task of converting the savages around the Saut Ste. Marie.

The route by which the early traders, priests, and expe- ditions reached Lake Huron and the waters above it was from Montreal by way of the Ottawa River, thence across to Georgian Bay and Lake Manitoulin, and along the shores of the latter to the Saut and Lake Superior. The route by way of. Niagara River and Lake Erie was con- sidered impassable, for on the shores of those waters dwelt the powerful and vindictive Iroquois, who were deadly enemies of the French ; and it was not until fifty-four years after Champlain's visit to Manitoulin that the first canoe bearing a white man (the fearless Joliet, on his return from Lake Superior) passed through the Detroit River into Lake Erie. A few months later two priests, Dollier de Casson and Galinée, crossing from the western end of On- tario to Erie, passed up over the same route, as will be mentioned in succeeding pages.

In 1654 the French fur-traders had penetrated to Green Bay, and Father Mercier was with them there, laboring to make Indian proselytes. This point had, however, been visited fifteen years earlier, by Jean Nicollet,* who pushed farther on, to the waters of the Wisconsin River, and after- wards lost his life among the Algonquins. In 1655, Jean de Quens, a missionary, was at Green Bay, and reported that large and powerful Indian tribes were there; one of which tribes, he said, numbered sixty villages. In the same year a large number of these savages, in fifty canoes, went

* An interpreter who had been employed at Three Rivers, on the St. Lawrence, and also among the Nipissing Indians.

HISTORY OF BERRIEN AND VAN BUREN COUNTIES, MICHIGAN.

Frontenac [Ontario], and from this marsh, into which they can enter, there is only a distance of a thousand paces to the river Divine [Desplaines], which can lead them to the river Colbert [Mississippi], and thence to the Gulf of Mexico." Of this map Parkman says that " it was evidently made be- fore the voyage of Joliet and Marquette [of which an ac- count is given below ], and after that voyage of La Salle in which he discovered the Illinois, or at least the Desplaines branch of it." It was in the year 1671 that La Salle made the voyage to which Parkman alludes as above, and which he further mentions as follows : " It appears that the inde- fatigable explorer embarked on Lake Erie, ascended the De- troit to Lake Huron, coasted the unknown shores of Mich- igan, passed the straits of Michillimackinac, and, leaving Green Bay behind him, entered what is described as an in- comparably larger bay,* but which was evidently the south- ern portion of Lake Michigan." This allusion to La Salle's coasting along unknown shores, and entering a " bay" in- comparably larger than Green Bay, indicates a strong prob- ability that very little, if anything, was known of the southern part of Lake Michigan at that time.

The voyage in which Joliet and Marquette discovered the Mississippi River, and to which reference has been made above, was accomplished by them in 1673. On the 17th of May in that year, with a company of five other French- men (seven in all), in two bark canoes, they set out from Point St. Ignace, skirted the north shore of Lake Michigan, passed through Green Bay to the mission at its head, thence up the Fox River, through Lake Winnebago, and across the portage to the Wisconsin River, down which they floated, until, on the 17th of June, they emerged upon the broad bosom of the Mississippi at Prairie du Chien. Then they drifted down its swift current by day, camping on the river bank at night (or sleeping in their canoes, moored in the stream, for fear of hostile Indians), for more than four weeks, until they reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, whence, on the 17th of July, they again turned their faces northward, and worked slowly and laboriously up the great river to the mouth of the Illinois, which they entered, and passed up to an Illinois village, mentioned by Marquette as Kaskaskia, which was near the site of the present village of Utica. There a chief offered to guide them to the great lake of the Illinois (Michigan). The offer was gladly ac- cepted ; the party followed up the Desplaines River and across the short portage to the present site of Chicago, t where they embarked on the lake, and reached the Green Bay mission in the latter part of September, after an ab- sence of about four months.

Father Marquette had formed the project of establishing a Jesuit mission at the Indian town which he had discov- ered on his return from the Mississippi, and had promised the Illinois chiefs that he would soon return to them for

that purpose. In pursuance of this plan, he set out from Green Bay mission on the 25th of October, 1674, accom- panied by two Frenchmen and a number of Pottawattamie and Illinois Indians; all embarked in ten canoes. They proceeded to Sturgeon Cove, crossed the portage, thence to . Lake Michigan, and paddled along the shore of the lake to the Chicago River, which they entered, and continued their way to a point some five or six miles inland, where they halted; for the holy father had become too sick and weak to proceed farther. His illness continued unabated, so that he was obliged to pass the winter in that place ; but at the end of March, 1675, having sufficiently recovered to be able to resume the journey, he started with his followers, descended the Desplaines River, and proceeded to the Illi- nois village by the route over which he and Joliet had re- turned from their Mississippi expedition in the fall of 1673.

He was received with great cordiality and rejoicing by the Indians of the Illinois tribe, and at a grand council, convened at his request, there were said to have been as- sembled five hundred chiefs and old men, three times that number of young men and warriors, and a vast concourse of women and children. Here he made his object known ; he " displayed four large pictures of the Virgin, harangued the assembly on the mysteries of the faith, and exhorted them to adopt it." In short, he there laid the foundation of a mission which he named the Immaculate Conception. . But his malady had returned in an aggravated form, and, feeling that his days were numbered and nearly finished, he decided to return at once to the north, hoping to reach St. Ignace, and to die there under the shadow of its mis- sion cross. So, about the middle of April, he set out, ac- companied by his two Frenchmen,-Pierre and Jacques,- and with several Indian guides, to go to Lake Michigan by a different route from that over which he had passed in his previous journeys, intending to strike the lake on its eastern side, and to pass northward along that shore to Michilli- mackinac.

The sick priest and his party took their way up the Illi- nois River to the mouth of the Kankakee (then called by the Indians Teankakeek ), and thence up the latter stream to a point near its head, where they landed and crossed a portage of five or six miles in length, which brought them to the waters of a stream to which they gave the name of " River of the Miamis," because they found the principal village of that Indian tribe located a short distance south of it, on the portage. The Indian name which Marquette bestowed on the river continued to be used by the French explorers and priests for something more than a quarter of a century after that time, and is found applied to the stream in their accounts of operations in this region until about the year 1703 ; but in the following pages the later and present name-St. Joseph-will be used without further explanation, to avoid obscurity of meaning, and circumlo- cution.

The place where the Jesuit and his followers reached the St. Joseph is at or near the present city of South Bend, Ind., and from that point they passed down the river in their canoes to its mouth, where the village of St. Joseph now stands. There is no doubt that Marquette and his two voyageurs were the first white men who explored this

* " Il reconnut une baye incomparablement plus large" is the lan- guage of the French account.

t It has been stated, in some accounts, that they returned by the St. Joseph River, but Parkman says distinctly that their route was by Chicago,-a fact which he learned from the original narrative, writ- ten in French. On his next journey Marquette returned by the St. Joseph.

DISCOVERIES AND EXPLORATIONS.

river for any considerable distance, and it is not improbable, though it is not certain, that they were the first of Euro- pean birth or descent who ever knew definitely of its ex- istence.

From the mouth of the St. Joseph, Marquette and his two French boatmen moved northward along the eastern border of the lake, where no sign of civilization or life re- lieved the dreary monotony of the wild and lonely coast. The priest, though rapidly sinking, still hoped to reach the shelter of his beloved St. Ignace; but when, on the 19th of May, they came to the mouth of a small stream that enters the lake a short distance south of Sleeping Bear Point, in the present county of Leelenaw, he felt that the hour of his departure was near at hand, and asked his companions to land, and take him on shore to die. They complied with his request, erected a rude shelter of bark near the shore, and tenderly brought him to it. Knowing that he had but a few hours more to live, he calmly gave directions as to the manner of his burial, administered the sacrament to his humble but faithful friends, and died the same night in perfect peace and with the names of the Saviour and the Blessed Virgin on his lips. His followers buried him there in accordance with his directions, and then, bidding adieu to the spot, hastened to Michillimackinac to recount the events of the journey and its sad ending to the holy fathers at St. Ignace. In the spring of the following year the remains of Marquette were disinterred by some Ottawa Indians, who had been his religious pupils at St. Esprit, and who carried the bones to St. Ignace, where they were buried with great solemnity and ceremony beneath the mission chapel.

Marquette's voyage down the St. Joseph was a most in- teresting event in itself, both because it was the first time that the river, from its mouth to the portage, had been passed over by Europeans, and because this had been done by the famous Jesuit in the last days of his life, when the chill and shadow of approaching dissolution was already upon him ; but it was still more important because by this means the route was discovered, over which the far more vigorous explorer, La Salle, was to pass, by way of the harbor and river of St. Joseph, to the Illinois, the Missis- sippi, and the sea.

La Salle at this time was living on his seignioral posses- sions at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, but the intelli- gence of Marquette's discovery had caused all his ambition for exploration to flame up anew, and he at once resolved to outdo the exploit of the Jesuit by following the Mis- sissippi from the country of the Illinois to its ocean outlet. He still believed that a passage might be found through it to the Vermilion Sea, and thence to China and Japan ; and he also had an eye to the vast and profitable trade which might be prosecuted with the tribes in its valley, of which trade it was a part of his project to secure a monop- oly. Besides, he would gain high honor and favor by ex- tending the dominion of his king and being the means of establishing the holy Catholic religion among the Indians of the remote West. He was always a zealous supporter of the Church, though he preferred that the missionary field should be occupied by the fathers of the Récollet order

rather than by the Jesuits, whom he thoroughly disliked and distrusted.

Having digested and matured his plans, he went to France in the year 1677 and procured an interview with the prime minister, Colbert, to whom he unfolded his views. He was well received, and with little difficulty ob- tained authority from the king to prosecute his proposed exploration, on condition that it was to be done at his own expense. His own slender resources being wholly insufficient for the purpose, he supplemented them by loans, which he obtained without great difficulty from his wealthy relatives and friends; and, having done this and completed all neces- sary preparations, he sailed from France for Canada, July 14, 1678, bringing with him tools, cordage, naval stores, and all the articles necessary for the building and equipping of a vessel or vessels upon the lakes, as well as a consider- able stock of merchandise suitable for Indian trade. There also came with him and in his employ thirty men-sailors, mechanics, and laborers-as assistants in the schemes he had in view ; and he was accompanied by Henri de Tonty,* an Italian officer, who had lost a hand in the wars of his native country. He was engaged by La Salle as a lieu- tenant or second in command, and he faithfully and fear- lessly performed the duties of that position.

On his arrival in Canada, La Salle lost no time in com- mencing preparations for the business he had in hand. He immediately sent out fifteen men to the " Lake of the Illi- nois,"t to open trade with the Indians and to collect pro- visions for the use of the expedition. Then he named the Niagara River as a point of rendezvous, and ordered the remainder of his company forward to that point, for which they started on the 18th of November. La Salle and Tonty followed soon after, and, having obtained the consent of the neighboring Indians, a stockaded warehouse was commenced and preparations were made for the building of a vessel on Lake Erie. This work was vigorously prosecuted during the winter, and at the opening of spring the vessel was launched in the Niagara River, about two leagues above the Falls. Soon afterwards she was moved up the river to Black Rock, and there completed, rigged, and equipped. She was of about forty-five tons' burdent and armed with five small cannon ; but the Indians who flocked to see her regarded her with as much wonder, admiration, and fear as if she had been a ship-of-the-line. She was named by her

# Several writers, in their accounts of La Salle's voyages, have spelled this name Tonti. Parkman, however, who has examined original documents bearing Tonty's signature, says he signed his name in the Gallicized form, which has accordingly been adopted in these pages.

t The earliest name given to Lake Michigan by the French was " Lake of the Illinois," because it afforded access to the country of the Illinois tribe of Indians. The Jesuit Allouez gave it the name of Lake St. Joseph, in 1676, and the Franciscan priest, Membre, who accompanied La Salle in his expedition of 1679, named it Lake Dau- phin. These names, however, do not appear to have been adopted to any great extent among the French. Allouez gave its Indian name as Machihiganing, but Dablon wrote it Mitchiganon.

# This is the tonnage given by Hennepin in his narrative of 1683. In a later edition he gives it as sixty tons, which many later writers have given as the correct size. Parkman, however, who is the highest authority in the matter, considers the smaller figure to be the correct one.

HISTORY OF BERRIEN AND VAN BUREN COUNTIES, MICHIGAN.

commander the " Griffin,"* and was the first sailing-vessel that ever floated on the lakes above Niagara.

The commander of the "Griffin" had encountered so many obstacles and delays in his preparations for the expe- dition, that nearly eight months elapsed from the time when the vessel's keel was laid before she was ready to commence her perilous voyage. Her company consisted of La Salle, twenty-nine French followers,-sailors, artisans, and other employés,-one Indian hunter of the Mohican tribe, well skilled in woodcraft, and three Franciscan friars, Fathers Louis Hennepin, Zenobe Membre, and Gabriel Ribourde, the first named being mentioned as the historian of the expedition.

On the 9th of August, 1679, the anchor of the " Griffin" was hoisted, her sails set to a favoring breeze, and she stood boldly out among the billows of Lake Erie, bound for a passage through unknown waters to a port (which she never reached) now known as the harbor of St. Joseph, on Lake Michigan. Three days were passed in traversing the length of Lake Erie, and on the fourth day the little craft entered Detroit River, where she took on board the lieutenant, Tonty, who had been sent on in advance early in the sum- mer to look after the men who had been ordered West in the preceding fall.

Passing up through the lake and river of St. Clair, the expedition emerged upon the waters of Huron, where a violent storm was encountered, during which the "Griffin" was in imminent danger of foundering ; but the gale finally abated, and in due time she came to anchor in front of the Jesuit mission of St. Ignace, at Michillimackinac. Here La Salle found four of the men whom he had sent forward to open trade and collect supplies. These had treacherously appropriated the merchandise entrusted to them, and had commenced trading on their own account. La Salle ar- rested them and took them on board, and, having learned that several other deserters were at the Saut Ste. Marie, he dispatched Tonty to that place with orders to capture them with their plunder, and then to proceed up the east shore of Lake Michigan and rejoin the party at the mouth of the Miamis (St. Joseph) River.

Having made these dispositions, La Salle left St. Ignace aud sailed westward to an island at the mouth of Green Bay, where he found several other men of his advance party, who had been faithful and had collected a large and valuable lot of furs. He therefore decided to send the ves- sel immediately back to Niagara with these furs, which were to be transported thence to Montreal to satisfy in part the demands of his many and clamorous creditors in Canada. So the merchandise was placed on board the " Griffin," and on the 18th of September she sailed for Niagara, with orders to return with all practicable dispatch to the St. Joseph River, where the party would be found awaiting her arrival.

When the " Griffin" and her crew had departed, La Salle, with the remainder of his company,-viz., the three friars, ten other Frenchmen, and the Mohican hunter,-left the island in four large canoes and proceeded southward. They

passed along the west shore of the lake, paddling by day and bivouacking on shore at night, always on their guard against savages, and sometimes compelled to remain for several days at a time on an island or the main land, on ac- count of storms upon the lake. Their progress was slow and laborious, but early in October they reached the place where Milwaukee now stands, and about a week later passed the present site of Chicago. If, from a point between these two places, they could have crossed the lake on a direct course to their destination at the mouth of the St. Joseph, it would have shortened their route and lightened their labor materially ; but this, of course, it would have been madness to attempt at that inclement season, even if their canoes had been burdened with none other than their living freight; but in this case they carried a heavy additional load, consisting of arms, merchandise, a blacksmith's forge, and a variety of other necessary implements and tools. So the voyagers kept on their way near the shore, around the southern curve of the lake (meeting near its head a large party of Outugamie or Fox Indians, who at first showed hostility, but were soon brought to apparent friendliness by a judicious display of force), turned northward, passed the present site of Michigan City and New Buffalo, and on the 1st of November moored their canoes in safety within the harbor of St. Joseph.

It was the intention of La Salle to make this the base of his operations and his vessel's principal port on Lake Michigan. In the royal permission given him to prosecute his discoveries he was empowered to built forts in the newly- found region, and to hold possession of them on certain spe- cified terms, and he was granted a monopoly of the traffic in buffalo-skins,-a new branch of trade which he expected to open in the Mississippi valley with enormous profit to himself,-but he was at the same time expressly prohibited from engaging in the fur-trade with the Ottawas or other Indian tribes of the upper lakes. We have seen, however, that one of his first acts was to violate this condition, by the collection of the large lot of furs with which the " Griffin" sailed from Green Bay, and there is no doubt . that it was his intention to continue the traffic in defiance of the prohibition, and to establish a post at this point to secure the trade of the Indian tribes of the neighboring country.

Immediately after his arrival he commenced the con- struction of a fort, or stockaded enclosure of logs, on the bluff bank of the St. Joseph, though his men demurred and objected strongly to the delay, wishing to push on at once to the Illinois villages, so as to procure provisions from that tribe before they set out for their winter hunting-grounds. La Salle, however, was immovable in his determination. It was necessary that such a work should be built for de- fense in case of emergency, and there was nothing to pre- vent its erection while they were waiting for the return of the " Griffin" and the arrival of Tonty from Michillimackinac. Tonty was to bring twenty-one men with him, and La Salle told his followers here that, though they should all desert him, he, with his Mohican hunter and the three priests, would remain until the arrival of the lieutenant and his party. The men yielded, and the construction of the fort went on. At the end of three weeks, when it was nearly

# So named in honor of Count Frontenac, whose crest bore the figure of a griffin. A carved figure of that imaginary monster adorned the prow of. the little vessel.

DISCOVERIES AND EXPLORATIONS.

completed, Tonty arrived, but had with him only ten men, the others having, on account of the failure of provisions, been left some thirty leagues to the northward to support them- selves by hunting. The commander immediately sent Tonty back with two assistants to bring them in, but their canoe was swamped in a gale, their arms and provisions lost, and the party returned in a condition bordering on starvation. The men who had been left behind, however (excepting two who had deserted), came in a few days afterwards.

The arrival of these detachments was gratifying to the commander, but he was yet very anxious on account of the " Griffin," which was still absent, though she had had more than time enough to complete her voyage from Green Bay to Niagara and thence back to the rendezvous. But he felt that he could wait no longer for her arrival, and there- fore made preparations for setting out on his way to the Mississippi, detaching two men from his party, however, with orders to go to Michillimackinac, there to intercept the vessel and pilot her to her destination. But they were to wait and watch in vain for the white wings of the " Griffin," for she had sunk to an unknown resting-place beneath the waters, and nothing was ever known of her fate.

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History of Berrien and Van Buren counties, Michigan. With biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 2

Author: D.W. Ensign & Co. pub; Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Johnson, Crisfield Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Philadelphia, D. W. Ensign & Co. Number of Pages: 821

Author: D.W. Ensign & Co. pub; Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Johnson, Crisfield
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia, D. W. Ensign & Co.
Number of Pages: 821