USA > Michigan > Cass County > History of Cass county, Michigan > Part 3
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As has been said, the works of the Mound-Builders are neither numerous nor extensive in the lake region. They are sufficient, however, to identify the people who constructed them with the people who made the mighty inclosures and reared the colossal temple mounds which appear in great numbers farther south.
Small mounds are to be found in almost every town- ship in Cass County. There are a number in Volinia, most of which are near the Dowagiac Creek, and several in Porter Township, one of the best being on the farm of Samuel Rinehart. In Howard Town- ship, two mounds have been excavated. One of them, in Section 21, a half mile east of Barren Lake, was opened in 1834, in the presence of quite a number of people, the work being superintended by Dr. Winslow, of Niles. This was undoubtedly the first mound ex- cavated in Cass County. A quantity of human bones was discovered, fragments of coarse pottery and some other articles. Another tumulus, on the farm of R. East, in this township, was excavated by Amasa Smith and his sons, Ezekiel C. and Zenus. A large number of human skeletons were found (over a hundred, it is said), buried in a circle, with their heads toward a common center. Many of the skulls bore the marks of weapons, which indicated that death had ensued from violence. Those who saw them inferred that the skeletons were those of men who had died in battle. All had evidently been buried at the same time.
Most interesting of the Mound-Builders' works in Cass County are those in Pokagon. A cluster of five mounds may be seen by the roadside a half mile east of Sumnerville, and not far away, is a faintly-visible embankment inclosing nearly half an acre of ground. On a ridge running east and west on the farm of
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
William G. Potter, a half mile north of Champagne Lake, are a number of excavations, somewhat resem- bling rifle-pits, which are supposed to be of ancient and artificial production. The largest mounds in the county are those upon the farm of Joseph Walter. Three beautiful and regular mounds occur here, situ- ated in a line from east to west. A short distance south of them is a well defined ditch which forms a perfect horseshoe, measuring about one hundred and sixty feet in length by one hundred feet in width. It is flanked upon the north by a line of ditch extending parallel with its longest diameter, a distance of per- haps two hundred feet. There is no trace of embank- ment in connection with the excavations. For what purpose the horseshoe-shaped inclosure was made by the ancient people can, of course, only be conjectured. There is no probability, however, that it was designed, as many suppose it to have been, for a work of defense.
One of the three large mounds which have been mentioned was excavated in September, 1878, by Dr. E. J. Bonine, of Niles, who operated under the aus- pices of the Smithsonian Institution. It was a mound about thirteen feet high (originally it must have been of greater altitude), and the diameter of its base was about fifty feet. On the summit of the mound, within the memory of the settlers, stood a burr-oak tree four feet in diameter, and probably three hundred years old. A shaft was sunk by the excavators into the center of the mound, which was found to be composed throughout of the same soil as that of the surrounding plain-a rich black loam. Almost invariably the hu- man remains found under the mounds rest upon the natural surface of the earth, the mounds simply being heaped over them, but in this case the interment was several feet below the original level. Several skele- tons were found, being those of men, women and children, a number of fragments of pottery, a curious bone or ivory ornament, bearing some resemblance to a walrus tooth, several amulets pierced with holes, through which thongs had doubtless once been placed to attach them to the person, several bone implements and five copper hatchets of fine edge and good forma- tion. Portions of the skeletons were in a good state of preservation. The femur, or thigh bone, of one of the males, which Dr. Bonine has now in his possession, is of great size and indicates that its owner must have been at least seven feet in height. Curiously enough, in the same tomb were found the bones of a very small child, a child which could not have measured more than eight or nine inches in height. They were more perfectly preserved than those of the adults.
The mound from which these remains were taken, after their sepulture of perhaps a thousand years, was undoubtedly the monument and the grave of a
ruler and the members of his family. Nearly all of the mounds in Cass County are of the class to which archæologists have given the name of sepulchral mounds, although it is possible a few of them may conceal the altars of the ancient people-rude hearths of clay or stone.
CHAPTER II.
FRENCHI EXPLORATION AND OCCUPATION.
Jacques Cartier the Pioneer of New France-Champlain -He Wins the Friendship of the Algonquins and Provokes the Hlatred of the Iro- quots-Effect upon Future French Exploration and Colonization- Le C'aron-Rellglous Zeal of French Explorers-The Iluguenots Excluded from New France-Breben, Daniel, Lallemand-Raym- bault and Jouges-Claude Allouez-Pere Marquette-llis Passage down the St. Joseph River in 1675-1Iis Death on the Shore of Lake Michigan-La Salle-He Builds Fort Miamis at the Mouth of St. Joseph in 1679-flis Journey across the Michigan l'eninsula in 1680 -Frequent Subsequent Visits to the St. Joseph Founding of De- troit by De la Motte Cadillae-The Mission of St. Joseph Estab- lished-A Mission near the Site of Niles-The Miamls and the Pot- tawatomies.
TN 1534, Jacques Cartier, sailing from France, entered and explored the Gulf and the River St. Lawrence-to the former of which he gave the name of his patron saint. Returning to France, he made another voyage to the New World in 1536, this time, ascending the " great River of Canada " to the site of Montreal, which city, when it came into existence, took its name from the elevation near by, which Car- tier called Mount Royal. In 1541, this explorer, under the patronage of Sieur de Roberval, a French nobleman, attempted to plant a permanent colony upon the St. Lawrence, but the project failed.
For nearly seventy years, no further attempt was made on the part of the French to colonize America, or that part of it which Cartier had called New France.
In 1608,* however, Samuel de Champlain founded the settlement of Quebec.
An episode in the career of Champlain (interesting to those who are fond of tracing tremendous results to apparently insignificant causes) determined the direc- tion of future French exploration. To secure and augment the friendship of the Indians ( Algonquins) by whom he found himself surrounded, Champlain, during the same year in which he arrived, joined them in an expedition against their enemies, the Iroquois, who had a strong-hold upon the banks of the lake which bears his name. In the battle which ensued, the allied forces were the victors. The event secured for three generations the alliance of the Algonquins and the implacable hatred of the Iroquois. t
* Thils was only one year later than the establishment of the first permanent English settlement npon the Atlantic coast Jamestown, Va ,-nod only forty- three years later than the founding of the first Spanish settlement-the oldest city in America-St. Augustine, Fla.
t James R. Albach's Annals of the West.
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY. MICHIGAN.
The French would doubtless have entered zealously into the exploration of the region to the southward had not their implacable and powerful foe formed a barrier. Their alliance with the Algonquins, how- ever, left often to them the vast interior lake country, occupied principally by the western tribes of the Algon- quin nation, and so this region became a field for their exploration and colonization.
Champlain, in 1611, established a trading-post on the site of Montreal, and, in 1615, he made an expe- dition to the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. In the same year he led an army of 2,500 Algonquin war- riors against the Iroquois, and was compelled to retire without gaining the conquest he had hoped to. The barrier interposed between the French and the south- ern region remained unbroken.
In 1616, Le Caron, with two companions, pene- trated the wilderness to Lake Huron, and for ten years they there labored as missionaries among the Indians. They were Franciscans. The means, the devotion, and the discipline of this order proved in- adequate to the carrying-on of its self-imposed task, and the missions established under its authority ulti- mately passed into the possession of the Jesuits.
Through all the history of French discovery, ex- ploration and colonization in America runs the story of religious zeal and martyrdom. Wherever the Bourbon lilies were planted as the standard of France, there was found also the cross of the Society of Jesus and of the Holy Catholic Church. The indomitable pioneers of France in the New World were more largely actuated by religious motives than by personal ambition or commercial enterprise. Champlain re- garded " the salvation of a soul worth more than the conquest of an empire," and those who followed after him were sustained amidst their toils and privations by the thought that they might Christianize a heathen race-win the wild denizens of the dark "forest con- tinent " to the Church of Rome. But the very zeal with which the explorers and pioneers of France were inspired, and which furnished them the motive for penetrating the wilderness of the northwest was coupled naturally with an intolerance which not im- probably prevented France from maintaining an ascendancy upon American soil. Cardinal Richelieu, the champion of absolutism in France, had turned his attention as early as 1627 to the New France, and under his patronage a splendid and powerful organiza- tion was formed for the purpose of colonizing on a grand scale the new possessions. Upon this company, of " the hundred associates " was conferred sovereignty over all the French territory in America. The colo- nies to be planted by " the hundred associates " were to be exclusively French in nationality, and Catholic
in religion. Champlain was made the civil and mili- tary Governor of the colony, and the Jesuits were chosen as the guardians of its spiritual welfare. Under · this arrangement the Huguenots were, of course, rigorously excluded. They were the most enterprising class in France, and the most strongly inclined to im- migration. Had they been permitted to people the shores of the New France, it is possible that the whole destiny of the French in America might have been changed. Francis Parkman gives it as his opinion that " had New Franee been thrown open to Huguenot emi- gration, Canada would never have become a British province; that the field of Anglo-American settlement would have been greatly narrowed, and that large portions of the United States would, at this day, have been occupied by a vigorous and expansive French population."
In 1634, Brebeuf and Daniel, and later Lallemand, passed, by way of the Ottawa River, Lake Huron and the Sault Ste. Marie,* to Lake Superior, and es- tablished missions in the country of the Hurons, which tribe, at that time, according to Jesuit authorities, numbered 30,000 souls. Raymebault and Jouges fol- lowed in 1640, and were probably the first Europeans who set foot upon the soil now included within the boundaries of Michigan. These Jesuit missionaries carried the tidings of salvation to the Western tribes five years before Elliott preached to the Indians within a few miles of Boston Harbor. In the following year, Jouges and one of his fellow-missionaries were capt- ured and tortured by the Iroquois. Daniel was killed in 1648, and a year later the same savage enemy laid waste several of the missions and burned at the stake the two Jesuits, Brebeuf and Lallemand. In the en- suing Huron-Iroquois war, nearly all of the devoted apostles of Catholicism fell as martyrs of their faith. The advance of the French explorers was temporarily checked; but no obstacles could discourage and no horrors dismay the brave spirits who had entered upon the task of carrying to the inhabitants of the wilder- ness what they devoutly believed to be the only true religion. With the terrible fate of their brothers fresh in their minds, the Jesuits pressed on, with al- most superhuman zeal, to plant the holy cross and the golden lilies upon the shores of the Western waters.
Rene Menard (or Mesaard) was probably the first of the Jesuits who visited the West after the close of the Indian war. IIe founded a mission upon the south shore of Lake Superior in 1660, and in the following year had fallen a victim to the Indians, or, at least, such was the supposition, his breviary and cassock afterwardl being found in the possession of the Sioux. In 1665, Claude Allouez was sent out to the far West.
* Falls of the River St. Mary's, between Lakes Huron and Superior.
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
He visited the great fresh-water sea (called by thie Indians Gitchi Gomee, which Longfellow translates " Big Sea Water " or "Shining Big Sea Water ") and named it, in honor of the new Viceroy of the French province, Lac Tracy au Superieur. Landing at the chief village of the Chippewas, on the bay of Chego- imegon, he established a mission, and, on behalf of the French colony, made with the Chippewas, the Potta- watomies, Sacs, Foxes and the Illinois, an alliance against the Iroquois. The next year, at the western extremity of the lake, he came in contact with the Sioux, and received from them information of a vast and mysterious river that flowed southward, which they called "Messipi." Allouez returned to Quebec, filled with wonder at the marvelous stories he had heard of the Father of Waters, and dreaming, doubt- less, of the splendor and vastness of the future French dominion and Catholic triumph.
In 1668, Jacques (or James) Marquette and Claude Dablon arrived at the Sault, and established the mis- sion of St. Marie. Marquette advocated with entliu- siasm the exploration of the Mississippi, and the proj- ect was furthered by Talon, the Intendant under Tracy, who was ambitious to extend the power of France. On the 13th of May, 1673, Marquette, Joliet and five voyageurs, embarking in two birch- bark canoes at Michilimackinac (or Mackinaw, as it is now called), made their way across Lac des Illinois, or Lake Michigan, to Green Bay. From thence they passed, by way of the Fox River, to a great Indian town, where dwelt together, in harmony, numbers of the Miami,* Mascoutin and Kickapoo nations. Al- louez had preached here, but beyond the village no explorer had penetrated. Marquette and his compan- ions pressed on, through the wilderness, over lakes and dismal marshes, until they reached the westward flowing Wisconsin. Committing themselves to the current, they floated onward until, upon the 17th of June, their boat shot out athwart the broad bosom of the Mississippi. But we cannot follow the brave and pious voyageur in his inspiring and joyous journey. He went nearly as far South as the mouth of the Arkansas, and was the discoverer of the Des Moines, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio Rivers. The party re- turned, laboriously working their way against the current of the great river, to the mouth of the Illi- nois, which they entered. At a village, which Mar- quette called Kaskaskia (near the site of the present village of Utica), an Indian chief offered to guide them to the lake of the Illinois ( Michigan). The offer was accepted, and the voyageurs, passing up the Des-
plaines River and across the portage to the site of Chicago,* entered the lake and made their way to the mission station on Green Bay, which was reached in September.
Marquette, ever on the alert to advance the cause of his religion, had determined to found a mission at the Indian village on the Illinois, and had promised the chiefs that he would soon return to them for that pur- pose. With this object in view he set out from Green Bay October 25, 1674, with a flotilla of ten canoes manned by Frenchmen and Illinois and Potta- watomie Indians. Following the west shore of the lake, they entered the Chicago River, and had pro- ceeded up the stream but a few miles when Marquette became so sick that he could go no further. The little party went into camp, and the Father's illness continuing unabated, they remained there through the winter, sustaining life upon the game which abounded in that region. In the early spring of 1675, how- ever, the missionary had so far recovered that he was able to resume his journey, descending the Des- plaines River, and reached the Illinois village by the route over which he and Joliet had returned from their voyage to the Mississippi in 1673. Before a vast concourse of the red men, Marquette unfolded the plan of Christian salvation and laid the foundation of a mission which he named the Immaculate Conception. The missionary, however, felt that his malady must soon prove fatal, and he made preparations to return to the North-to St. Ignace. About the middle of April, he set out with his escort of Frenchmen and Indians for Lake Michigan by a route which no white man had ever traveled.
The now dying priest, led by Indian guides, pro- ceeded up the Illinois to the mouth of a stream the Indians called Teankakeek (the Kankakee of our day), which they followed to a portage communicating with the stream now known as the St. Joseph. The priest named this water-course the "River of the Miamis,"t because he found the Indians of this nation upon its banks, and one of their principal vil- lages a few miles south of it upon the portage.
Marquette and his companions were the first white men who passed over the St. Joseph River. They came to it at, or very near, the site of South Bend, and steered their canoes to its mouth upon Lake Michigan, where the village of St. Joseph now stands, and thence made their way northward along the east- ern shore of the lake, the priest hoping before his life ebbed away to reach the mission of St. Ignace.
" There were probably but few of the Miamis at this village, and those who were there doubtime soon returned to the shores of Lake Michigan and the vicinity of the St. Joseph River, which conotry, as will be bereafter shown, they occupied for a considerable period.
" Some writers have stated that Marquette and Jollet returned to Lake Michigan by way of the St. Joseph River. Parkman is the authority for the statement above given. It was while returning from his second journey, In 1675, that Marquette pissed down the St. Joseph. Hinvidt to the site of Chicago, in 1073, was ou loubtediy the first one made by a European.
+This name was not superseded by the present one until about the year 1703.
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY. MICHIGAN.
Slowly and patiently paddling their frail canoes along the border of the lake, they reached a point about one hundred and seventy-five miles from the mouth of the St. Joseph, within the bounds of the present county of Leelenaw, and here, upon the wild and lonely coast, surrounded only by a few Indians and his fellow-voy- agers, and distant a hundred miles from his beloved mission station, Marquette died. The time was even- ing, the day May 19, 1675. One account says : " Leaving his men with the canoe he went a little way apart to pray, they waiting for him. As much time passed and he did not return, they called to mind that he had said something of his death being at hand, and anxiously went to seck him. They found him dead ; where he had been praying he died." He was buried near the mouth of a little stream which was afterward given, and, for many years, bore his name. But his bones were not to be long left in the desolate solitude where he died. They were disinterred in the following spring by some Ottawa Indians who had been converted by him, and carried to St. Ignace, where they were with due ceremony committed again to the earth. The grave of the missionary and explorer long lost has been, in recent years, discovered and marked with an appropriate monument, which serves to remind the visitor to St. Ignace of the early history of the Northwest, and of one of the foremost pioneers of France. The religious zeal and energy, the wonderful devotion and self-denial of the Jesuits, was finely exemplified in Father Marquette. He sought nothing for himself; he dared all things for the church ; his whole being was merged in it. When warned of dangers that lay before him in the vast wilderness, and urged to turn back, he replied that the salvation of souls was at stake, for which he would be overjoyed to give his life. His mind was not influ- enced by the important discovery of the Mississippi, which opened up the great valley to the enterprise of his countrymen ; "but," said he, "if my perilous journey had been attended with no other advantage than the salvation of one soul, I would think my peril sufficiently rewarded."
Following Marquette came two French explorers, differing widely from him and from, each other-La Salle and Hennepin.
Robert Chevalier Sieur de la Salle, the most famous explorer of the Northwest and of the Mississippi Valley, came to Canada in 1667, and en- gaged in the fur trade. IIe bad been educated under the Jesuits. He afterward publicly denounced and was very hostile toward the order, although he remained a stanch supporter of the Catholic faith. La Salle's ambition was aroused by the discoveries which Marquette and Joliet reported, and he resolved
to win renown for himself in the wild regions which had been the scenes of his predecessors' exploits. He held to the quite popular opinion that the Mississippi flowed west or southwest to the Pacific Ocean, afford- ing a passage by which China and Japan could be conveniently reached from the New France. This outlet of the great river he had an ambition to dis- cover, and he was still further incited to become an explorer by visions of vast wealth, which he believed could be acquired in a monopoly of the fur trade with the Indian nations of the hitherto unknown interior. Obtaining the assistance of Frontenac, the Governor General of Canada, and the approval of his king, he immediately began preparations for his voyage.
In September, 1678, La Salle met at Fort Fron- tenac the Recollet Friar Hennepin, who was to be his co-laborer and rival, having received from his superiors authority to take charge of the religious concerns of the expedition. On the 26th of January, 1679, at the mouth of the Cayuga Creek, on the American side of the Niagara, about six miles above the Falls, La Salle laid the keel of the Griffin .* Upon the 7th of August, 1679, the little barge was ready to sail, and with the singing of Te Deums and the discharge of arquebuses, she began her voyage. Hers was the first sail that cast a shadow upon the waters of Lake Erie, or that traversed the lakes be- yond. Over the swelling billows of Erie, through the straits and the little lake, which La Salle named Sainte Claire, t and through Lake Huron to Michili- mackinac, the voyagers sailed under pleasant skies and with favoring winds, except during the last few on IIuron, when they "were troubled by a great storm, dreadful as those upon the sea."
La Salle remained at Michilimackinac from the 27th of August until the latter part of September, and founded there a fort. From Michilimackinac he went to Green Bay, and finding there a large quan- tity of furs which had been collected by his men, he determined to load the Griffin with them and send her back to Niagara. Upon the 18th of September, the little barque set sail for her return voyage, her crew having orders from La Salle to bring her back with all possible despatch, to meet him at the mouth of the River of the Miamis (the St. Joseph). La Salle had now remaining a party of fourteen men, three Friars, Hennepin, Membre and Ribourde, ten other Frenchmen and a Mohican Indian, who had been em- ployed as a hunter. This little company, imme- diately after the departure of the Griffin, set out in canoes for the St. Joseph River, proceeding slowly
*The name was bestowed upon the vessel In honor of Frontenac In whose crest the Griffio wan a conspicuous Agure. A carved Griffin adorned the prow of the boat.
+The lake was entered upon the 12th of August, which in the Catholle calendar is Saint Claire's Day.
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HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
south ward along the western shore of Lake Michigan -the same wild, deserted shore along which Mar- quette had voyaged in 1675. Their progress was slow as their canoes were heavily laden with merchan- dise and provisions, arms, ammunition, implements of labor and a blacksmith's forge. At night, they bivoucked on the bank of the lake. It was the mid- dle of October before they reached the site of Chi- cago, and the 1st of November when they arrived at the St. Joseph. Their journey had been made a perilous one by the prevalance of storms, and once they met Indians who evinced hostility ; but they came in contact with others who were very friendly. They would doubtless have died of famine had it not been for the liberality of the latter in supplying them with food. La Salle's men were anxious to push for- ward to the Illinois River, and it was with difficulty they could be restrained. The leader desired to make the mouth of the St. Joseph his base of operations on Lake Michigan, and there to await the coming of Tonti, his Lieutenant, from Michilimackinac, with a company of twenty-one men. The same royal author- ity which had empowered him to prosecute his discov- eries, had given La Salle permission to build forts at such points as he thought proper, in the country he explored. He decided to erect one at the mouth of the St. Joseph, while awaiting Tonti's arrival, and immediately began the work. The men who had at first been mutinous, finally yielding to his will, when they found that neither persuasion nor threats could induce him to penetrate the country to the Illinois villages. The fort was a small stockade. La Salle named it Fort Miamis, probably from the fact that the Miami Indians were living in the region roundabout. This was the first French post established within the limits of the lower Peninsula of Michigan, although several had been founded upon the opposite shores.
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