USA > Mississippi > A history of the Mississippi valley, from its discovery to the end of foreign domination. The narrative of the founding of an empire, shorn of current myth, and enlivened by the thrilling adventures of discoverers, pioneers, frontiersmen, Indian fighters, and homemakers > Part 2
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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
I
ON THE BRIM OF THE GREAT BASIN.
The First Coureur-de-Bois and His Fate-Adventures of Jean Nicolet-An Ambassador with two Pistols- The Courageous Traders Who First Reached the Mississippi-A Trading Station that Was a "First Chance" for Warriors as Well as Peaceful Indians- The Notable Manner in Which the La Chine Rapids Were Named.
The connected historical story of the Mississippi valley begins with the training of the first coureur de bois, Etienne Brule, for it was through the enterprising, adventure-loving spirit of this notable class of French- men, the coureurs de bois, that civilized people were first led to make permanent settlements within the Great Basin. The Spanish under De Soto had discov- ered, it is true, the Mississippi in 1541 (as shall be told
I
A History of the
further on), but nothing came of that expedition save only as the story of it served to inspire one of the great- est of French explorers, more than a hundred years later, the Sieur de la Salle.
It was Samuel de Champlain who made a coureur de bois of Etienne Brule-who, in fact, originated the coureur de bois system of exploration. Champlain founded the city of Quebec in 1608, making of it, at first, a fur-trading station, but hoping that in the end it would become the capital of a new great French empire. In the year 1609 he discovered Lake Champlain, while on the war path with an Algonquin party, and there, in 1610, not far from the St. Lawrence, he captured an Iroquois brush fort, and killed all but one of the garri- son that numbered 100.
In celebrating this victory, of 1610, Iroquet, the In- dian chief, gave a young savage named Savignon to the French as a pledge of future friendship and Champlain in return gave Etienne Brule to Iroquet.
So far as the records show Etienne Brule was the first Frenchman to join the Sauvages-the wild men of America, and fully to adopt their manner of life. He became one of, as well as one with, them, but he was nevertheless a Frenchman still, and kept his eyes open for his own advantage, and for that of his country. He became a woods ranger and trader on his own account, and an interpreter and ambassador among the Indians for the benefit of his countrymen.
Save only as he showed to Champlain the advan- tage of having men trained in that fashion among the Indians, Etienne Brule did but little to lead his countrymen toward the Mississippi Valley. There is
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Mississippi Valley.
no record of his having so much as heard of the great stream, though he did, very likely, wander as far west as Lake Superior, for he said he was on the shores of a great lake where native copper was found in nuggets, and he brought a nugget to Quebec to prove the story. He might have accomplished more, for his enterprise was praiseworthy, but he got in trouble with some Hu- rons, east of Lake Huron, presumably over some red sweetheart, and they killed and ate him. And that was the fate of not a few woods rangers who came after him.
In the meantime another French youth, Jean Nico- let, had come to join Champlain. He arrived in 1618. Because Brule had been serviceable while living among the Indians, Champlain determined to give Nicolet a similar training, and for nine years he lived with the Indians to the eastward of Lake Huron, "undergoing such fatigues as none but eye witnesses can conceive; he often passed seven or eight days without food, and once, full seven weeks with no other nourishment than a little bark from the trees," as an old Jesuit "Relation" says. He had there "his own separate cabin and house- hold, and fishing and trading for himself."
In 1633 Nicolet returned to the St. Lawrence settle- ments, and in 1634 was sent to explore the region be- yond Lake Michigan. The Indians had been telling of the wonders of that country ever since Champlain ar- rived among them, and Nicolet had returned with a fixed belief that either the Chinese or the Japanese came to that country every year to trade. At any rate it was a people, the Indians said, that used huge wooden ca- noes instead of little portable canoes of birch bark, and
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the French thought the huge wooden canoes must be ships.
Nicolet started on July 7, 1634, with a party of In- dians and priests who were bound for Georgian Bay (p. 99, vol. viii., Thwaite's edition of Jesuit “Rela- tions"), and the party was thirty days on the road.
With seven Huron Indians for company, Nicolet went first to the Sault Sainte Marie, a noted gathering place for western tribes, but finding no Asiatics there, nor any one that looked like them, he paddled around to Green Bay, on the northwest corner of Lake Michi- gan, where a still more populous region was found, be- cause of the wild rice growing in the lakes, and in the still waters beyond.
Here a real test of Nicolet's ability as an ambassa- dor was to be made. For the Indians were utter stran- gers to him and his Hurons, and their language was wholly different.
First of all he landed and "fastened two sticks in the earth, and hung gifts thereon, so as to relieve these tribes from the notion of mistaking them for enemies." When the presents had been discovered and carried away, a lone Huron went in search of the tribe to say by the sign language that a man of the people who man- ufactured the presents wished to come and deliver many more things of the same kind. This message was kindly received and "they dispatched several young men to meet the manitouriniou-that is to say, 'the wonderful man.'"
"The news of Nicolet's coming quickly spread to the villages round about, and there assembled four or five thousand men." Nicolet dressed himself in "a
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Mississippi Valley.
grand robe of China damask, all strewn with flowers and birds of many colors." Then with a pistol in each hand, he approached the great throng, fired off blank cartridges in his weapons, and finally gravely seated himself in the place left vacant for him.
The "squaws and children fled screaming," but the warriors were so highly pleased that they gave him a feast in which, as he was careful to report, no less than I20 beavers were eaten.
From Green Bay Nicolet went up Fox River to the Mascoutin Indians, whose language he understood. Of them he learned that no Asiatics came to the region. The "strange people" of whom he had heard were Naduesiu (Sioux) Indians, and their large wooden ca- noes were dugouts-big logs cut to canoe shape. They lived on a great river, not a great sea, and the Indians said Nicolet could reach this great river by a journey of three days from where he was then encamped. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Nicolet went on to visit this Sioux tribe, for in the Jesuit "Relation" for 1640, the writer gives a list of the Indian nations around the upper lakes, which includes the Sioux, and says of the list :
"Sieur Nicolet has given me the names of these na- tions, which he himself has visited, for the most part in their own country."
The next to explore the region south and west of Lake Superior were Menard Chouart des Grosseilliers and Pierre Esprit Radisson. Grosseilliers, as a servant of the Jesuit missionaries, was in 1645, employed among the Hurons near Georgian Bay, Lake Huron. He returned to the St. Lawrence settlements in 1646,
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and remained there until 1654, when the call of the wilds-the memory of unrestrained freedom and the beckoning smiles of the Indian maidens-could be no longer resisted. In company with Sieur Radisson, a close personal friend (he had married Radisson's sis- ter), Grosseilliers started for the region where Nicolet had seen 120 beavers served at an impromptu feast.
This journey was one of the most daring known to the history of exploration in any country. For the Iroquois, since the days of their defeats by Champlain, had procured (of the Dutch), and learned to use fire arms. With these new weapons they had crossed the lakes and literally swept the Huron and Algonquin vil- lages from the face of the earth. Even the Esquimo on the shores of Hudson's Bay had felt the power of the Iroquois warriors, while the French themselves had been slaughtered beneath the walls built to guard Mon- treal, Three Rivers and Quebec. The whole region between the St. Lawrence and the Laurentian Moun- tains, the Saguenay River and Lake Huron, was, in 1654, left to the undisturbed possession of the furry and feathered animals, save only as Iroquois bands con- tinually prowled to and fro along the streams.
So complete had been the disaster wrought by the Iroquois-so terrified were the Indians of all other tribes-that during the year 1653 not a single skin was brought to Montreal, and "in the Quebec warehouse there is nothing but poverty."
Nevertheless on August 6, 1654, Grosseilliers and Radisson paddled away from Montreal and disappeared up the Ottawa. The daring of the Yankee pioneers who, like Boone and Robertson, plunged alone into the
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wilds has been praised in the highest terms, and with good reason. But the dangers of one man travelling alone through the forest were far less than those of these two men paddling with trade goods up an open waterway that was the regular highway of the enemy.
On leaving Montreal, Grosseillier and Radisson promised to return in a year. They failed to do so and, naturally, they were mourned as dead. But at the end of August, 1656, they returned accompanied by fifty canoes laden with furs. "Their arrival," says the Jesuit Relation, "caused the country universal joy," and they "landed amid the stunning noise of cannon."
In 1659 these two woods rangers went again to the wilds of Lake Superior and they came back safe on August 21, 1660. They had "wintered with the Nation of the Ox" (i. e., the Sioux), and had visited a remnant of the Hurons whom they found living on "a beautiful river, large, wide, deep, and worthy of comparison with our great river St. Lawrence." (vol. xlv., pp. 163, 235; Thwaite's edition, Jesuit "Relations").
Radisson, in an account which was printed after- wards, says: "We went to the great river * which we believe runs towards Mexico." The "Rela- tions" just quoted adds that "our Frenchmen visited. the forty villages of which this (Sioux) nation is com- posed."
Any unprejudiced reading of these "Relations," and of Radisson's account, shows conclusively that these two intrepid woods rangers were on the Mississippi river.
From the Jesuit "Relation" of 1656-7 it appears that a Jesuit priest may have passed over the brim of
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Mississippi Valley.
the Mississippi Valley still earlier. This "Relation" re- cords "some peculiarities of the Iroquois country" as observed by Jesuit missionaries sent to the Onondaga region under the lead of Father Francois le Mercier. One of them saw a spring from which flowed a sub- stance that "ignites like brandy, and boils up in bubbles of flame when fire is applied to it. * Our sav- ages use it to grease their heads and bodies." It is believed that this was a petroleum spring in Alleghany county, New York, the water of which flows to the Alleghany river.
In 1665 Father Allouez established a mission at a place called La Pointe, on Lake Superior, near where Ashland, Wisconsin, now stands, and while there he wrote of the great river under the name it now bears- "Messipi"-that being the Indian word meaning great water.
And then came La Salle. Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle was born in Rouen, France, on No- vember 21, 1643. He attended a Jesuit school there until 15, and then went to Paris and prepared to join the Order ; but after taking preliminary vows left them, and, according to the best authorities, came to Montreal in the spring of 1666.
Montreal was then the frontier settlement of New France, and the prowling Iroquois often murdered Frenchmen within the shadows of its forts. Neverthe- less La Salle, having a small capital, bought a tract of land at the head of the rapids now called La Chine. Here he laid out a palisaded village, and built for his own use a comfortable log house. He intended, at that time, to make a considerable settlement and a trading
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A History of the
station on his land; and it was then one of the best sites in America, for such an enterprise.
For his house stood at the foot of a long still water in the St. Lawrence and it was but a step to the Ottawa. Whether the Indians and coureurs de bois came with their furs by one route or the other, La Salle offered them what our mine saloonkeeper called the "First Chance."
At the same time, however, this was probably the most dangerous spot in New France, for if the fur sellers found there their "first chance" so, too, might the blood-thirsty Iroquois. It was characteristic of the man to select the most advantageous point regardless of its dangers.
La Salle, as eventually appeared, had a mind for other work than that of trading hatchets and brandy for furs. In the fall of 1668 some Seneca Indians came to his station, remained with him on the most friendly terms all winter and told him of a great river to the south of their country which ran away to the west and south, and finally emptied into the salt sea.
"La Salle's imagination took fire." He supposed the river emptied into the Pacific. In the spring he sold out all his holdings, went to Quebec, applied for a commission to go exploring, and got it. It was in the days when Jean Baptiste Talon was "Intendant"-a sort of deputy governor of Canada-and Talon was determined that "the lilies of France must go wher- ever man could carry them."
La Salle hoped to carry them to China, by the way of the Seneca's great river, and he was willing to pay
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Mississippi Valley.
his own expenses. He was therefore just the kind of a man that Talon was looking for.
How La Salle bought an outfit that loaded four canoes, and hired fourteen men, and on July 6, 1669, started for Lake Ontario need not be told in detail. But it is worth mention that at the head of Lake On- tario he met a woods ranger named Louis Joliet who had been hunting for Etienne Brule's copper mine on the shores of Lake Superior.
The copper mine was not found, but Joliet had come down from Mackinac by way of the Detroit river and Lake Erie, and was the first white man to pass that way.
From the head of Lake Ontario, La Salle went to Onondaga, where he obtained a guide, and thence to a point on a branch of the Ohio river supposed to be "six or seven leagues from Lake Erie." This he followed into the "the Beautiful River" itself, and eventually reached the falls where Louisville now stands.
At this point he was obliged to turn back because his men had deserted him. It was an ominous be- ginning of a great life work.
La Salle's reception when he returned to Montreal alone, was humiliating. In establishing the post at the head of the rapids above Montreal he had incurred the bitter enmity of all the traders doing business from Montreal to Quebec. They cowered in the shadow of the forts; he had dared to build his store leagues away in the wilderness. His bravery made conspicu- ous their cowardice; his position enabled him to se- cure the very cream of the trade. The enmity had been intense, but now, here was the Sieur de la Salle, back
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A History of the
from a voyage in which he had hoped to reach China, baffled, and not with a franc left of all that he had obtained from the sale of his well-located trading sta- tion. The tumble of water over which his lost home looked was the only China he had discovered. It was a good joke on La Salle. They would, and they did, call those rapids China-"La Chine"-to irritate him. And as La Chine they are known to this day.
Nevertheless, while the traders sneered, Jean Bap- tiste Talon, the intendant, saw that the man who would sink his all in such an expedition, was worthy of con- sideration; and he enabled the discomfited La Salle to try once more. But for this expedition, few words will suffice. La Salle went up to the head of Lake Michigan and crossed to the water shed of the Mis- sissippi. The account of the journey says he went to a river "which flowed from east to west"-presum- ably the Kankakee. He followed it until it was joined by another river coming from the northwest. This was probably the Des Plaines. La Salle, like Grosseil- liers and Radisson, viewed a part of the great valley, but so far he had accomplished nothing toward set- tling it.
Comparisons are instructive, however odious. In 1634 when Champlain sent Nicolet to visit the Indians on the west side of Lake Michigan, the inhabitants of Massachusetts thought they had shown great en- terprise in establishing a trading station on the Pis- cataqua river where Dover, New Hampshire, now stands; while the Virginia settlers had recently sent an exploring expedition to learn whether a river emp- tied into Delaware Bay.
II
JEAN BAPTISTE TALON. Intendant of New France. From the portrait by Hamel.
II
FIRST EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
The Facts about Joliet's Expedition Down the Mississippi
with Father Marquette as Chaplain of the Com- pany-The Kindly Illinois Indians and Their Calu- met-Two Views of a River "Monster"-Tennessee Indians Whom White Men Had Visited-Fate of the Valiant Quapaws-A Far-Reaching Mishap to Joliet.
To the honor of Jean Baptiste Talon, Intendant of Canada from 1665 to 1675, (save for a few months), be it remembered that he not only saw the value of the broad western domain where Grosseil- lier and Radisson first carried French trade, but he took steps to possess it.
In 1670, when he sent La Salle on the voyage by the way of Lake Michigan and the Illinois, toward
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A History of the
the Mississippi, he sent Daumont de Saint-Lusson to Lake Superior to hunt for the copper mine that Jo- liet had failed to find, and further than that to take formal possession of the upper lake region in the name of the king. Saint Lusson was in command, but the experienced Joliet was guide, and without mishap they reached the Sault Sainte Marie, erected a cross on a hill, blessed it, sang the Vexilla Regis, planted a cedar post to which was attached a metal plate bear- ing the royal arms, sang the Exaudiat, and then Saint Lusson, with a sword in one hand and a fresh sod in the other, uttered a fierce gust of words by which he said he took possession not only of the up- per great lakes, but of "all countries, rivers, lakes and streams contiguous and adjacent thereunto," includ- ing not only those his countrymen had already dis- covered, but "those which may be discovered here- after."
This was done on May 5, 1671. It had taken the French government thirty-seven years to follow the trail of Nicolet as far as the Sault Sainte Marie.
On the return of this party to the lower St. Law- rence, Talon determined on one more exploration of the region; and Louis Joliet was chosen to lead the expedition.
In order to show that Louis Joliet and not some other man was chosen to lead, we will quote the orig- inal sources of information. It is a matter of great importance because it was this expedition that did first explore the Mississippi.
Among the Paris documents printed in volume ix. of the "New York Colonial Manuscripts" are found
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Mississippi Valley.
(pp. 90-94) some "Extracts of the Memoirs of Mon- sieur de Frontenac to the Minister," Frontenac be- ing Governor of Canada and Colbert the "minister." On page 92 is this sentence regarding an act of the Governor: "He has likewise judged it expedient for the service to send Sieur Joliet to the country of the Maskouteins, to discover the South Sea, and the great river they call the Mississippi."
In volume Iviii. of Thwaite's edition of the Jesuit "Relations," pp. 93, 95, is a letter from Father Claude Dablon, the Superior of the Order at Quebec, dated August 1, 1674, which says that "two years ago" it was "decided that it was important * to ascer- tain into what sea falls the great river, about which the Sauvages relate so much. For this purpose they could not have selected a person endowed with bet- ter qualities than is Sieur Joliet, who has travelled much in that region, and has acquitted himself in this task with all the ability that could be desired."
In the introduction which Father Claude Dablon wrote to Marquette's journal of this expedition, as printed in the "Relations," vol. lix., pp. 87, 89, are these words :
"In the year 1673, Monsieur The Count de Fron- tenac, Our Governor, and Monsieur Talon then Our Intendant, Recognizing The Importance of this dis- covery * these gentlemen, I say, appointed at the same time for this undertaking Sieur Joliet, whom they considered very fit for so great an enter- prise; and they were well pleased that Father Mar- quette should be of the party."
Let there be no mistake about Father Marquette.
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(pp. 90-94) some "Extracts of the Memoirs of Mon- sieur de Frontenac to the Minister," Frontenac be- ing Governor of Canada and Colbert the "minister." On page 92 is this sentence regarding an act of the Governor: "He has likewise judged it expedient for the service to send Sieur Joliet to the country of the Maskouteins, to discover the South Sea, and the great river they call the Mississippi."
In volume lviii. of Thwaite's edition of the Jesuit "Relations," pp. 93, 95, is a letter from Father Claude Dablon, the Superior of the Order at Quebec, dated August 1, 1674, which says that "two years ago" it was "decided that it was important *
* to ascer- tain into what sea falls the great river, about which the Sauvages relate so much. For this purpose they could not have selected a person endowed with bet- ter qualities than is Sieur Joliet, who has travelled much in that region, and has acquitted himself in this task with all the ability that could be desired."
In the introduction which Father Claude Dablon wrote to Marquette's journal of this expedition, as printed in the "Relations," vol. lix., pp. 87, 89, are these words :
"In the year 1673, Monsieur The Count de Fron- tenac, Our Governor, and Monsieur Talon then Our Intendant, Recognizing The Importance of this dis- covery * these gentlemen, I say, appointed at the same time for this undertaking Sieur Joliet, whom they considered very fit for so great an enter- prise; and they were well pleased that Father Mar- . quette should be of the party."
Let there be no mistake about Father Marquette.
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He was the friend and companion as well as the as- sistant of Joliet. They had often consulted about this expedition before Joliet obtained his com- mission, and it had been fully understood that Joliet should take him along. But one might as well give the credit of the battle of Manila to the chaplain of the flagship as to give Marquette the credit of the first exploration of the Mississippi River. The man of the expedition was Joliet. And yet a statue has been erected in the capitol at Washington to the honor of the chaplain.
With his outfit in two canoes, and five able cou- reurs de bois to help him, Louis Joliet left Quebec on an unnamed day in the fall of 1672, and on December 8 arrived at the mission of St. Ignace, in the strait of Mackinac, where he found Father Marquette and the Indian converts celebrating the feast of the Immacu- late Conception.
At this mission the winter was passed, because the journey was to be made by water; but on "The 17th of May, 1673, we started," and "the joy that we felt animated our courage and rendered the labor of pad- dling from morning till night agreeable." So wrote Father Marquette. "We were going to seek unknown countries." They crossed Lake Michigan and visited the wild rice Indians on Green Bay, who, when they learned the object of the expedition, "were greatly surprised." The route lay through "Nations who never show mercy to strangers," they said; moreover "the great river" was full of monsters that destroyed canoes and men together, and there was one particular demon-when the Indians spoke of him the mere
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