USA > Michigan > Cass County > History of Cass county, Michigan > Part 4
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94
Fort Miamis was nearly completed when, after the lapse of three weeks from the time of La Salle's coming to the St. Joseph, Tonti arrived at the head of a re-enforcing party. The entire force now con- sisted of thirty-three men. On the 3d of December, they were mustered, ready for departure; the fort was deserted, and the company embarking in canoes, made their way slowly up the sinnous channel of the St. Joseph, and thus was resumed the " great voyage and glorious undertaking " of the ambitious La Salie. On reaching the abrupt turn in the river near the site of South Bend, Ind., they crossed by way of the portage which Marquette had traveled, to the Kankakee, and descending that stream, reached the Illinois. At the confluence of the rivers, they found the clustering villages of the Illinois, but they were deserted, and hence La Salle passed on to Peoria Lake. Here he
met with many of the natives who received him with friendly manner. It was not long, however, before they grew suspicious, and threatened the safety of the explorers. It has been averred that Allouez, the Jesuit, who was then in the country, sent Mascou- tin emissaries to them who prejudiced their minds against La Salle by telling them that he was the friend of the Iroquois. His own men, too, become discontented, and some of them deserted. Attempts were made to poison him. He was filled with anxiety in regard to the fate of the Griffin, of which he had received no intelligence since his departure from Green Bay, and he had a foreboding that he must soon turn back and abandon for the time the prosecution of his cherished plans. The fort which he built at the foot of Peoria Lake he named Crevecœur (the Broken Heart.)
But in spite of the dangers, the difficulties and dis- couragements with which La Salle found himself sur- rounded, it was very far from his purpose to relinquish the project of exploration. He set about building a vessel to take the place of the Griffin, instructed Hen- nepin to familiarize himself with the Illinois, left Tonti in command of the fort and started with a small party of men upon a journey of at least twelve hun- dred miles on foot, through the wilderness, to Canada. Ile needed sails, rigging, and an anchor for the little vessel of which he had laid the kecl, and he had also to procure additional means and enlist new men to aid him in carrying on his great project. This daring journey of La Salle's led the indomitable explorer through, or at least very near, to the territory now in- cluded in the bounds of Cass County.
La Salle, with four French companions and the Mohican hunter, who has been alluded to, left Fort Crevecœur March 2, 1680, and arrived at Fort Miamis three weeks later. From this point they pursued as direct a route as possible to the Detroit River. They were the first white men who crossed the great penin- sula from lake to lake. This stage of the now almost inconceivable journey, made two hundred years ago, is graphically described by Parkman, who translates and paraphrases the French manuscript journal of La Salle, entitled Relation des Decouvertes.
"They were detained," says he, " till noon of the 25th (of March in making a raft to cross the St. Joseph. Then they resumed their march, and as they forced their way through the brambly thickets, their clothes were torn, and their faces so covered with blood, that they could hardly know each other, Game was very scarce, and they grew faint with hun- ger. In two or three days, they reached a happier region. They shot deer, bears and turkeys in the woods, and fared sumptuously. But the reports of B
18
HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY. MICHIGAN.
their guns fell on hostile ears. *
* On the evening of the 28th, as they lay around their fire, under the shelter of a forest, by the border of a prairie, the man on guard shouted an alarm. They sprang to their feet, and each, with gun in hand, took his stand behind a tree, while yells and howlings filled the sur- rounding darkness. A band of Indians were unon them, but seeing them prepared, the cowardly assail- ants did not await to exchange a shot."
The scene of this occurrence could not have been far from the northeast corner of Cass County. La Salle had surely not progressed far from the mouth of the St. Joseph in three and a half days. Allowing that he had made fifteen miles per day, which, consid- ering the season and the condition of the country, is a liberal estimate, the explorer and his party would, by the time of this alarm, have penetrated the forest no further than the dividing line of Cass and St. Joseph Counties. It is not improbable that the prairie by which the men were encamped, on the night of the 28th of March, was Prairie Ronde, in the southwest- ern corner of the present county of Kalamazoo, or it may possibly have been Little Prairie Ronde, in Vo- linia Township, Cass County.
Parkman's account of the journey continues : "They crossed great meadows, overgrown with rank prairie grass, and set it on fire to hide the traces of their pass- age. La Salle bethought himself of a device to keep their skulking foes at a distance. On the trunks of trees, from which he had strippel the bark, he drew, with charcoal, the marks of an Iroquois war party, with the usual signs for prisoners and for scalps, hop- ing to delude his pursuers with the belief that he and his men were a band of those dreaded warriors. Thus over snowy prairies and half-frozen marshes, wading sometimes to their waists in mud, water and bulrushes, they urged their way through the spongy, saturated wilderness. During three successive days, they were aware that a party of savages were dogging their tracks. They dared not make a fire at night, lest the light should betray them, but, hanging their wet clothes on the trees, they rolled themselves in their blankets and slept together on piles of spruce and pine boughs. But the night of the 2d of April was excessively cold. Their clothes were hard frozen, and they were obliged to kindle a fire to thaw and dry them. Scarcely had the light begun to glimmer through the gloom of the evening when it was greeted from the distance by mingled yells, and a troop of Mascoutin warriors rushed toward them. They were stopped by a deep stream, a hundred paces from the bivouac of the French, and La Salle went forward to meet them. No sooner did they see him, and learn that he was a Frenchman. than they cried that they were friends
and brothers, who had mistaken him and his men for Iroquois, and, abandoning their hostile purpose, they withdrew peacefully. Thus his device to avert danger had well-nigh proved the destruction of the whole party. Two days after this adventure, two of the men fell ill from fatigue and exposure, and sustained themselves with difficulty until they reached the banks of a river, which was probably the Huron. Here the sick men rested, and their companions made a canoe. There were no birch trees, and they were forced to use elm bark. which, at that early season, would not slip freely from the wood until they loosened it with hot water. Their canoe being made, they embarked in it, and for a time floated prosperously down the stream, when at length the way was barred by a matted barricade of trees fallen across the water. The sick men could now walk again, and pushing eastward through the forest, the party soon reached the banks of the Detroit." *
Crossing the river upon a raft, the little company made their way through the woods to Lake Erie, along the north shore of which they passed, in a canoe, to Niagara. From thence, with three fresh men, La Salle proceeded to Fort Frontenac, where he arrived on the 6th of May. During sixty-five days (from the time he left Fort Crevecœur, on Peoria Lake) he had traveled more than a thousand miles, through a wil- derness inhabited only by wild beasts and wild men. At the foot of Lake Erie, on the spot where the Grif- fin was built, he learned of the loss of the vessel, with her cargo of furs, and also of the wreck of a ship from France freighted with his merchandise. At Fron- tenac, he received other discouraging tidings. Pushing on to Montreal, additional misfortunes were thrust upon his knowledge. His creditors had become im- patient and his property had been seized.
The heart of La Salle remained resolute in spite of the complication of troubles which surrounded him. In spite of his impaired credit, he succeeded in emyloying twenty-five men-soldiers, voyageurs, ship- builders and other mechanics and a surgeon, and was able to purchase such supplies as he needed. Then he set out upon the long, weary journey to the Illinois country with the firm determination of now complet- ing the work he had been compelled to abandon in the spring and of realizing the great project to which he had dedicated his energies and his life-the explora- tion of the Mississippi. At the very outset he received news of appalling nature. When he reached Fort Frontenac, he found a letter from Tonti awaiting him, in which the faithful Italian lieutenant stated that nearly all the men left with him at Fort Crevecœur had deserted, after destroying the fort, that they had
" Discovery of the Great West, pp. 179-181.
19
HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
also razed to the ground Fort Miamis, and then going to Michilimackinac had seized La Salle's property, and left for the East with the avowed purpose of taking their master's life should they meet him upon the lakes. Almost any other heart than La Salle's would have been crushed by this last information, but he was not to be deterred from his purpose, even by the complete destruction of all that his past labors had accomplished. He set out upon Lake Ontario, met a party of the treacherous villains, boldly attacked them, killed several and took the others as prisoners to Frontenac, there to await such sentence as the Governor should think proper to pronounce upon them. Again, he set his face toward the West. He left Frontenac on the 10th of August, and, upon the 4th of November, was at the mouth of the St. Joseph. The ruins of the fort corroborated what Tonti had written him. He pressed forward, by way of the St. Joseph and the Kan-ka-kee to the Illinois River. Passing by the ruined Fort Crevecœur, he followed the Illi- nois to its mouth, and beheld for the first time the mighty Father of Waters. But this moment which La Salle had looked forward to through all his trials with the liveliest anticipations, brought little of joy to him. His mind was filled with anxiety in regard to Tonti and Hennepin. He conjectured that the latter was upon the Upper Mississippi (for he had instructed him to explore that river to the northward as well as to traverse the Illinois), but Tonti, to whom he had been warmly attached, he feared had met with death. Along the Illinois he had found terrible destruction. The Iroquois had made an invasion of the country, and the villages of their enemies were now only blackened ruins amidst which lay the bones of hundreds of Illinois victims. He not unnaturally supposed that his lieutenant had met with the same terrible fate which had overtaken his Indian friends. Tonti had, in fact, been captured by the fierce Iro- quois, and, narrowly escaping death, and passing through many vicissitudes, finally made his way to Michilimackinac, where La Salle met him in June, 1681.
In the meantime, however, the great explorer was ignorant of his whereabouts and even of his existence.
Again we find La Salle upon the St. Joseph. He returned there from the Illinois in January, 1681. A small party of men, whom he had left at the mouth of the river in charge of stores in November, re-enforced by a number of the original force who had been left at Michilimacinac-in all eighteen souls-under command of Sieur de la Forest, had rebuilt Fort Miamis, cleared a considerable space around it for planting in the following spring, and had made a saw-pit from which they had turned out nearly all of
the timber and planks necessary for the construction of a vessel. Here, at the mouth of the St. Joseph, two centuries ago, was presented the first well-defined picture of civilization in what is now the Lower Penin- sula of the State of Michigan-the home of nearly a million and a-half of people. The little stockade was the abiding-place of twenty-five white men during the winter of 1680-81. Near by was a group of Indian wigwams occupied by Mohicans and Abenakis, who, driven from their ancestral lands near the Atlantic, had sought a refuge in the Far West, and located for the winter under the protection of the French fort. The winter months passed slowly and without notable incident. Preparations were made for resuming ex- ploration in the spring. The master and leading spirit of the company employed the days and nights in devising plans for future action, and in speculating upon the attainment of the end for which he had striven. " He might," says Parkman, " have brooded on the redoubled ruin that had befallen him-the desponding friends, the exulting foes, the wasted energies, the crushing load of debt, the stormy past, the black and lowering future. But his mind was of a different temper. He had no thought but to grap- ple with adversity, and out of the fragments of his ruin to rear the fabric of a triumphant success."
When the first of March came, although there was still snow upon the ground, La Salle, with nineteen men, started on a mission to the Illinois Indians, to induce them to make peace with the other tribes and to locate in the region about Fort Crevecœur (or its site) under French protection. Accomplishing the object he sought, the party returned to Fort Miamis. An expedition for a similar purpose was made later in the spring to the great village of the Miamis on the portage between the St. Joseph and the Kanka- kee. The conference with the Miamis was success- ful, and La Salle congratulated himself on having won the friendship of the two most powerful tribes through whose country he must pass to the Missis- sippi. But before commencing his great undertaking he had to return again to Montreal. The long, weary journey was made, and in November, 1681, La Salle returned to Fort Miamis, accompanied by Tonti, whom he had found in June at Michilimack- inac. A month was spent at the mouth of the St. Joseph in preparation for the great expedition.
This spot must ever retain an interest as the scene of La Salle's frequent visits, the place at which he passed most of his time in the Northwest, and where this daring but unfortunate explorer, the chief of the pioneers of France in America., matured the project which led him to the mouth of the majestic river.
On the 21st of December, the first detachment of
20
HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
the exploring company commanded by Tonti left Fort Miamis, coasted along the south shore of the lake, and landed at the mouth of the Chicago River. There they were joined in a few days by the remainder of the force under La Salle. They reached the Mississippi on the 6th of February, and on the 6th of April, 1682, after many adventures, La Salle discovered the three passages by which the Father of Waters debouches into the Gulf of Mexico. On the 9th, in sight of the blue expanse of the sea, with great pomp and cere- mony, in the name of Louis XIV, King of France, he took possession of all the lands watered by the great river, bestowing upon the vast region the name of Louisiana.
In September, La Salle reached and descended the St. Joseph River on his way to Montreal (as he supposed), it being his intention to return to France, but at Michilimackinac he received tidings which turned him back to the Illinois country.
Once more he ascended the St. Joseph-late in the fall of 1682-and this was destined to be his last view of the beautiful sinuous stream with whose gentle meanders and forest-clad banks he had become so familiar. IIe returned to Lake Michigan in the fall of 1683, but by way of the Chicago portage, journeyed to Quebec, and from there sailed to France. He never again visited the northern region of America, but he made an expedition to the Gulf of Mexico, landed in Texas, and was there basely assassinated by some of his own men on the 19th of March, 1687.
It does not appear that Fort Miamis was regularly occupied either as a military post or a base of supply by the French, after La Salle's final departure .* Com- paratively little is known of the history of the French in this immediate region during the century following La Salle's explorations. In a subsequent chapter, we shall lay before the reader what information we have from various sources upon the mission of St. Joseph located at Fort Miamis about the beginning of the eighteenth century, and in the meantime conclude this chapter with a rapidly drawn outline of the French occupation of Michigan.
The Mission of St. Ignace was founded at the Straits of Michilimackinac in 1671. The surround- ing region was known by the latter name, and the same appellation was given to the military post estab- lished there in 1680 -- a post which became one of the most important in the whole lake region. Up to this time, no French garrison had been established upon the Detroit River, although the eligibility of the loca-
tion had long before been noted by explorers, and the project of founding a settlement discussed by several of the Governors of New France. In 1686, Greysolon de Lhut, at that time commandant of Michilimackinac, was ordered by Gov. Gen. Denonville to establish a fortified post on "d'etroit,"* near Lake Erie. De Lhut, however, used his own discretion in so far that he located the post near the foot of Lake Huron (where Fort Gratiot was built in 1814, by an Ameri- can officer). Two years after it was built, this fort, which was named St. Joseph, t was evacuated and burned by Baron La Hontan, who succeeded De Lhut as its commandant. Soon after Fort Detroit was built upon the eastern shore of the lake, but, like Fort St. Joseph, it soon passed out of existence, and now no man knows exactly where it stood.
It is probable that about this time a few French- men located on the Detroit River, on or near the site of the future city, but they were not permanent set- tlers. If there was any structure like a fort there, it must have been merely a post of the Coureurs des bois and not recognized by the government. One reason why the French had not built a stockade and located a garrison at this commanding point was because they had, in the Ottawa River, a more direct] route from Montreal to Michilimackinac, and the upper lakes than the Straits and Lake St. Clair afforded. Some time in the year 1700, Antoine de la Motte Cadillac. who had become, in 1694, the commandant at Michili- mackinac, recognized the fact, as others had before him, that the Detroit was the gateway in the direct route between the English Colonies and the Iroquois country on the one side, and the western lakes on the other, and that, however little the French themselves might need the strait, it was necessary that they should guard it against their allied enemies. Cadillac went to France to procure the full measure of author- ity, which he wanted, and, obtaining it, returned to Canada in March, 1701. On the 24th of July, in the same year, he arrived at the site of Detroit, then occupied by an Indian village, and there founded the first permanent settlement in Michigan. It was the plan of Cadillac to gather all of the Indians of the lake region about Detroit, for purposes of trade, and he was largely successful, although his efforts were strongly opposed by the Jesuit influence. The com- pany which formed the settlement at Detroit con- sisted of about fifty soldiers and as many Canadian merchants and mechanics, a Jesuit who went out as a missionary to the Indians, and a Recollet priest who
*Some writere have stated that Fort Miamis was maintained as a French post up to the time of the Revolutionary war. This is u manifest error. There wwe no garrison at the mouth of the St Joseph when Charlevoix visited the spot in 1721. It had been removed, says Judge Campbell in his "Outlines of History," to South Bond. The Jesnit mission of St. Joseph was founded about the year 1700.
*D'etroit is the French word for strait.
+ Fort St. Joseph has been often confounded with Fort Minmis-owing doubtless to the fact that the latter was on the St. Joseph River.
This wasn Iloron village, and was called Touchsa Grondie (or Tjugh-sagh- ron-diel. It was probably established my early as 1655, but not permnoently occupied.
21
HISTORY OF CASS COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
was Chaplain. Under Cadillac, the principal officer was Alphonse de Tonti, a brother of Henri de Tonti, the companion of La Salle. A fort was erected and named after the French Minister, Fort Pontchartrain. Detroit immediately became, and long remained, a post of large commercial consequence, and under the patronage of "the Company of the Colony of Can- ada," an organization which had, by royal authority, a monopoly of the fur trade, it was in fact the center of commerce in the great Northwest. Five years after it was established, over two thousand Indians were living in the vicinity of Detroit. In 1712, it became the scene of terrible carnage. In the absence of the friendly Indians, the Foxes and Mascoutins be- sieged the garrison, which was, at that time, under command of M. du Buisson, and were in turn be- sieged by the allies of the French when they returned, and upward of a thousand of their number killed, the massacre being attended with circumstances of the most horrible atrocity.
About the time that Detroit was settled, the mouth of the St. Joseph, where La Salle and his followers had so often been, and where they passed one long, dreary winter, again became the scene of French activity. The Miamis, who left the country in 1681, returned about ten years later, and the Jesuits, ever zealous to make proselytes of the natives, soon after established among them the mission of St. Joseph. It is probable that, at the same time, the name St. Joseph was bestowed upon the river which, in the earlier period of French exploration, had been called the River of the Miamis. The exact date of the founding of the mission is not known, but most writers place it in the year 1700 .* The earliest men- tion of it that has been discovered occurs in a letter from the Jesuit. Joseph T. Marest, to the Governor General of Canada, dated Mıchilimackinac, August 16, 1706. After mentioning a plot of the Ottawas (which had been temporarily frustrated) for a joint attack with the Sacs and Foxes upon the Miamis of the St. Joseph, the writer says : " I asked the savages if I could send a canoe manned with Frenchman to the River St. Joseph with any degree of safety. They replied that I could, and urged me to do so, seeming to take an interest in the fathers who are there. The truth is, they do not feel at liberty to make war upon the Miamis, while the missionaries remain there, and for that reason would prefer that they should come to u8. I had previously engaged some Frenchmen to carry the news to the River St. Joseph, and to relieve
our fathers if they were in any difficulty ; but one of them has been so much intimidated by the represen- tations of his friends that he dare not trust himself among the savages."
" As affairs are at present, I do not think the removal of the fathers is advisable for that (St. Josephi) is the most important post in all this region, except Michili- mackinac; and if the Ottawas were relieved from the existence of the mission, they would unite so many tribes against the Miamis that in a short time they would drive thein from this fine country. * I * have at last found another Frenchman who is willing to go to the River St. Joseph, and I hope the four will now depart immediately. We have reason to feel anxious concerning the safety of the Fathers on account of so many war parties going down on that side. At last we shall have news from St. Joseph unless our men find too many dangers in the way."
The Miamis abandoned the St. Joseph Valley and the country contiguous to the head of Lake Michigan in 1707, and it is probable that the Pottawatomnies who succeeded them in its occupation came very soon after their departure. The Jesuit mission was con- tinued among the Pottawatomies. In 1712, it was reported by Father Marest as being in a very flour- ishing condition and the most important mission on the lakes, except Michilimackinac. Its condition,. one might judge from these words, was as favorable in 1712 among the Pottawatomies as in 1706 among the Miamis. It had probably been continued without any intermission. A military post, too, had by this time been established at St. Joseph, and a little colony of Canadian traders had an existence under the pro- tection of the soldiery, and its members doubtless did more toward degrading the Indians than the pious Jesuits did toward their elevation. The Pottawato- mies, however, were as a nation more tractable and more inclined to profit by religious teachings than were the Miamis, or, for that matter, any of the other tribes of the Northwest. Years after the Jesuits left them, and, in fact, down to the time when the tribe emigrated to the far West, a large number of them, including some of the chiefs, remained earnest adher- ents to the faith their ancestors had learned of the Jesuits at the old mission of St. Joseph .*
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.