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 4
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Tuscarora Village
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TIVER
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Lewiston
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Mississippi Valley.
In the midst of such contests with his enemies, La Salle, not at all daunted or discouraged, went to France once more, obtained a new commission, and came back not only to explore the whole length of the Mississippi, but to build the chain of forts and trad- ing stations already mentioned along the route to the mouth of the Great River. He was particularly anx- ious for an establishment at the mouth of the Missis- sippi because he could there rule and trade free from the attacks of the hosts on the St. Lawrence.
This great work was to be done, however, with- out any financial aid from the government, and one gets a curious view of La Salle's character, and of the business methods of the day, from a statement of the way he raised money for the enterprise. He borrowed 11,000 livres from a merchant named Fran- cois Plet, agreeing to pay forty per cent interest, and he pledged Fort Frontenac, the magnificent establish- ment yielding 25,000 livres annual income, for the paltry loan of 14,000 livres, on which, presumably, he paid the same deadly rate of interest.
La Salle returned from France late in 1678. Hav- ing obtained the needed loans he sent fifteen men to the Lake Michigan region to trade with the Indians in order that he might make the money to pay the enormous interest on his loans. On November 18, another party, under an assistant named La Mott sailed for Niagara river (where they arrived on De- cember 6), to build a fort that would control the portage around the Niagara Falls, and a ship with which to navigate the lakes above.
This fort was the second built according to La
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Salle's plan for adding the Mississippi Valley to the dominions of France. The point selected was at the little hamlet called La Salle opposite Cayuga Island in the Niagara River. The Seneca Indians "betrayed a sullen jealousy." They had been in trade themselves. They were middlemen between the western Indians and the settlements on the Hudson. Among them were two missionaries from Quebec who were sided with the enemies of La Salle, and who did all they could to excite the astute chiefs still further. But La Salle went to the principal village and soothed them into consenting to his work.
Then a disaster came on the heels of this success. A vessel loaded with rigging for the new ship La Salle was building above the falls was wrecked. It is charged that the pilot wrecked her in the interests of La Salle's enemies, and it is certain that his enemies were eager and unscrupulous, while he never had the skill to bind his men to him.
Out of the wreck La Salle saved but little. Mean- time his men were in a turmoil. Under the strain La Salle's health failed, but he kept the work moving, being aided by a most capable lieutenant named Tonti, a notable man in a variety of ways-a man who had placed an iron hand on the end of his arm because his natural hand had been shot away in battle, and who had a will to match the new member thus obtained.
La Salle, being obliged to go back to Ft. Frontenac for more rigging, left Tonti in command. The work went on more smoothly thereafter, for Tonti kept the gang in awe by a free use of his iron fist.
Accordingly, when the ice broke up in the spring
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FORT MAGARA.
Taken from the British side of the river in 1813. This plate illustrates frontier fort building, stockades, block-houses, etc.
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Mississippi Valley.
of 1679, the new ship-the first ever placed on Lake Erie-was launched, and fitted with the rigging and five small cannon which La Salle brought for her. She carried as a figure head a rudely carved griffin, and she was named the Griffin, because Frontenac's coat of arms bore a griffin.
"La Salle had often been heard to say that he would make the griffin fly above the crows"-would "make Frontenac triumph over the Jesuits." He got the ship ready for her voyage, but he had to tell his company, meantime, that all his property in Canada, including Ft. Frontenac, had been seized by his cred- itors, who had become frightened by the persistent rumors kept going by his enemies, that the enterprise was visionary, and that La Salle would never return. Those whom he called "the crows" were enemies not to be despised.
Though in a most desperate condition of affairs, La Salle pushed on. A storm on Lake Huron fright- ened all hands save one, until they all knelt to pray. But the pilot,-wicked, capable sailor that he was- held her nose to the wind and cursed the sniffling mob that grovelled at the foot of an image of St. Anthony of Padua.
A Recollet friar, named Louis Hennepin, was chap- lain of the expedition, and its historian. He says he bribed St. Anthony into stilling the tempest, but we will believe that the good salt sea sailor who stood at the helm, brought the Griffin out of the trouble.
La Salle escaped the gale, but only to find more trouble. Mackinac was then the resort of the unli- censed traders and coureurs-de-bois who bought and
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sold where they could. They carried their furs to Albany quite as often as to Quebec; for Dutch rum would exhilerate as well as French brandy, and Dutch maidens were not to be ignored or despised. Moreover furs bought more of the joys of life in Albany than in Quebec.
These reckless woods rangers saw that La Salle would interfere with their Albany trade, and probably with their other trade. With one accord, therefore, they conspired to ruin the trade of the fifteen advance agents of La Salle who had stopped there on their way to the tribes furthest west. And they succeeded well. It was a mission station, but it was also a trad- ing station, and the dwelling place of many Indians. "Brandy and squaws abounded," says an old account. Aided by the Indians the coureur-de-bois persuaded several of the fifteen to dispose of La Salle's goods in ways that profited him not a sou. Others took the goods to the wilds and went trading on their own ac- count-stole the goods outright.
La Salle was anxious to return to Ft. Frontenac, and leave Tonti to go ahead and build a fort among the Illinois Indians, but the desertion of these advance agents compelled him to remain with the expedition to reprieve the loss their treachery had brought upon him. So he sailed over to Green Bay, where he found that an unnamed remnant of his fifteen had been faith- ful, and had collected a "large store of furs."
Encouraged by this good fortune, for the profit on the furs would partly repair his losses, La Salle took four canoe loads of supplies from the Griffin, and loading her with furs sent her back to Niagara, while
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Mississippi Valley. 1251999
he went forward with the four canoes to build a fort among the Illinois Indians. The Griffin was to bring, for a return cargo, besides ordinary supplies, the rig- ging for another ship which La Salle purposed build- ing for use on the Mississippi.
On September 18, 1679, the Griffin made sail for the East. La Salle, on the same day, paddled away toward the head of Lake Michigan, and after a jour- ney that was made most woeful by the mutinous con- duct of his men, he reached the St. Joseph's river.
Because La Salle's men were always mutinous it may be well to consider here the reason for the trouble. The words of the man, uttered when his friends accused him with harshness, tell the whole story. He said:
"The facility I am said to want is out of place with this sort of people, who are libertines, for the most part ; and to indulge them means to tolerate blasphemy, drunkenness, lewdness and a license incompatible with order. The debaucheries, too common with this rabble, are the source of endless delays and frequent thieving ; and finally, I am a Christian, and do not want to bear the burden of their crimes."
A chief characteristic of this man is therein por- trayed. He was sincere.
On reaching the St. Joseph this much harassed, most unhappy but conscience-clear La Salle found relief in the work of building a fort not far from the modern town of St. Joseph, Mich., near the mouth of the stream. It was the third of the line of forts that he intended to stretch to the mouth of the Missis- sippi. Others had proclaimed the sovereignty of France-had written a title in the air-but La Salle
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was taking actual possession, and it was work worth while.
From this fort, named Miami, La Salle went up the St. Joseph to the site of the present city of South Bend, Indiana, where a portage led him to the Kan- kakee river. It is to be noted that in crossing this portage one of his men tried to shoot La Salle in the back, but was stopped in time.
On January 5, 1680, the party crossed Peoria Lake and found an Indian village where Peoria, Ill., now stands, and with these people-members of the Illinois tribe-La Salle easily made peace.
And yet, though hundreds of leagues from Que- bec, La Salle found he was not wholly beyond reach of his enemies in that town. While he negotiated for permission to establish a trading station and build a ship, an emissary of the enemy-a chief known as Monso, with five Miamis, came to the village by night, and told the Illinois that La Salle was a spy of the dreaded Iroquois. And still greater trouble followed, when six of his men deserted, and another gave him a dose of poison.
Nevertheless La Salle persevered. The poison did not kill him. The emissaries of his enemies fled, and he was able to secure the confidence of the Illinois. Then he went to a point below the camp where he found a low hill with a deep ravine on each side, and a marsh, 200 yards wide, between it and the river. There he built a stout palisade fort, with musket-proof houses in the angles for his men. For himself and Tonti he provided tents in the open center of the fort.
Two facts about this fort are remarkable. He
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Mississippi Valley.
named it Crevecoeur-Broken Heart-and he lived in a tent while he lodged his men in comfortable, musket- proof barracks. Moreover it was the fourth fort in the long line from Montreal.
And it is not to be forgotten that when the fort was done La Salle began the work of building a forty- ton ship for navigating the Mississippi, and he himself, to animate his men, took hold of the back-breaking whip-saw to cut the logs into planks. It was character- istic of the man. By February 1, 1680, the hull of the new ship was half done.
And all this was done in spite of the fact that nothing had been heard from the Griffin, with her precious cargo of furs to be carried down, and her equally precious up-cargo of rigging that was im- peratively needed for the new ship. For La Salle had determined not only to load this ship with skins on the Mississippi, but to sail in her to France.
And not only did La Salle keep working on; he sent, on the last day of February, 1680, an expedition to explore the Mississippi from the mouth of the Illinois up, in order that he might learn its resources, and give some of his men the experience necessary to make them pilots.
Michael Accau was in charge of this expedition, and he was assisted by one Du Gay, but the priest Hennepin was sent along to write the account, and he wrote it as if he was the leader.
Hennepin's account occupies much space in the histories of the French in America. But the expedition did little that was more important than to visit and name the falls of St. Anthony. Hennepin described
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the country, and the Sioux Indians among whom he was a prisoner for a time, but he strove to obtain honors that he had not earned by asserting that he went to the mouth of the Mississippi, and he is now known to have been a most "impudent liar." (Park- man. )
Meantime the Griffin with her cargo of rigging for the new ship did not come. La Salle had hoped for her coming even after the lake froze over, but she had gone where he nor "the crows" would ever see her. Her fate is a mystery. Some think she foundered in a gale, others that Indians captured and destroyed her with all hands, and a few supposed that the pilot ran away with her and tried to carry her cargo to the English at Hudson's Bay. But we will not believe that the salt sea sailor who stood firm at the tiller openly cursing the cowards who grovelled in abject terror-we never will believe that such a man was a traitor. The Griffin foundered, with the pilot stand- ing at the tiller, looking the gale in the eye with full confidence that the God of the gale would do what was right.
Having at last lost all hope of the Griffin, La Salle started (March 1, 1680), with five companions back to get another outfit. In that journey wherein the waters were covered with ice "too weak to bear them and too strong to permit them to break a way with their canoes;" where the temperature was often low enough to freeze their clothing stiff as they emerged from a ford; where they waded day after day through knee-deep crusted snow, there is one memorable fact. La Salle led the way, breaking the path that the
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Mississippi Valley.
journey might be easier for the others. He would never shirk any labor helpful to his purpose. He was, too, a man of such marvelous physical powers that he reached his fort on the Niagara River in good condi- tion, although four of his companions had been obliged to stop by the way, and the last one was left at Niag- ara while La Salle went on.
La Salle had not only lost the Griffin; a consign- ment of goods worth 22,000 livres, that was on the way to him from France, was lost, through the stranding of the ship. Worse yet, two coureurs-de-bois brought a letter from Tonti (whom he had left in command at Ft. Crevecoeur), saying that all the garrison but four or five men had mutinied, destroyed the fort and stores, and had fled.
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Nevertheless La Salle enlisted twenty-five new men, obtained another outfit, and in August, 1680, started again. Having learned that several of the mutineers were coming east by the way of the north shore of Lake Erie, and that they had determined to kill him, if they could meet him, La Salle was careful to meet them. Two of them he killed, and the others he sent as prisoners to Montreal.
Without further incident worth mention La Salle arrived at the point on the Illinois river where Utica now stands; but instead of finding a plain "swarming with wild human life," he found charred remains of burned cabins, and the ground between strewn with the remains of human bodies. Flocks of ravens and buz- zards rose, and "wolves in multitude fled," when he landed.
The Iroquois had come, (sent by Jesuit priests,
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Parkman says), and failing to capture as many of the Illinois as they hoped, had not only destroyed the huts and caches, but had ravaged the nearby cemetery, to set up the dry skulls on poles and scatter the other bones to the winds.
Tonti, and the faithful four or five could not be found. The hull of the new ship was not destroyed, but all the iron bolts and spikes had been carried away. So La Salle turned back to pass the winter at Ft. Miami, on Lake Michigan.
As a side light on the character of this man La Salle, it must be told that while he was in the midst of his search among the ghastly relics of Iroquois barbarism for traces of his missing friend and com- panion, night came on and an enormous comet was seen flaming in the sky. The pious Increase Mather of Boston on seeing it "thought it fraught with terrific portent to the nations of the earth," and nearly all men cowered at sight of it; but La Salle "coolly noted down the phenomenon as an object of scientific curiosity."
As a small relief to his ever present burden of disappointment, La Salle found "allies close at hand," during the winter. The Puritans of Massachusetts had fought out King Philip's War, and a band of Abenakis had fled for refuge to the Miamis of the region where Ft. Miami stood. A small village was close at hand. The New England refugees, "with one voice promised to follow La Salle, asking no recompense but to call him their chief, and yield to him the love and admira- tion which he rarely failed to command from the hero- worshiping race." So says Parkman. Few passages of higher praise can be found in the story of La Salle.
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Mississippi Valley.
It is equally honorable to the refugees. But it does not read so well in the story of the Puritans.
A treaty pledging the allegiance of the Miamis to the French interests was easily made, but before La Salle could start again for the Mississippi he was obliged to return still once more to the St. Lawrence "to appease his creditors," and "collect his scattered resources."
"Any one else would have thrown up his hand and abandoned the enterprise; but, far from this, with a firmness and constancy that never had its equal, I saw him more resolved than ever to continue his work," wrote a friend.
La Salle left Ft. Miami at the end of May, 1681, and in due time reached Montreal. There, in spite of two years of disaster, and in spite of debts that bore in- terest at forty per cent., he once more obtained the means for a voyage, How it was possible for him to do so under the circumstances is worth considera- tion. The explanation is given in a memoir written by La Salle in 1684, and now to be found in vol. ix. pp. 216-221, "New York Colonial Documents." It is a statement of the profits made in the trade with the Indians. He says :
To drive a profitable trade, 20,000 livres must be expended in France in the purchase of the following assortments :
Five pipes (tonneau) of brandy at the rate of two hundred livres the pipe; five pipes (tonneau) of Wine at 40 li. the pipe ; 2,000 ells of blue poitou Serge at 2 li. the ell; 1,000 ells of Iro- quois blanketing at 2 li., Ios. the ell; 1,800 white shirts (chemises) at 30 sous; five hundred pairs stockings at I li., 5s. the pair ; 2,000 pounds of small kettles at I liv., 5s. the pound; two hundred pounds of large black glass beads at Ios. the pound ; a thousand axes for the trade at 7 and 8 sous the pound ; 4,000
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pounds of powder at 10 and 12 sous the pound; 7,000 pounds of ball and 3,000 pounds of lead at 120 liv. the thousand; 1,200 guns at 10 liv. each ; 2,400 flattins at 30 sous the dozen; 100 dozen steels (Battes-feu) at I liv. 5s. the dozen; 50 dozen of large tinned looking glasses (mirrors fer-blanc) at I liv. Ios. the dozen; 50 pounds of vermilion at 3s. the pound; 250 ells of scarlet stuff (ecarlatine) at 4 liv. the ell; and 400 pounds of tobacco at 17 sous.
These things, carried to the Indians, will produce as follows:
They get a pint of brandy for a beaver; and consequently, were only two and a half pipes (tonneau) of it sold, allowing the remainder for the expense of the fort and the pay of the soldiers and sailors to whom it is sold at one hundred sous the quart, the ten barrels, retailing to the Indians at the rate of one hundred quarts to the barrel and of four beavers per quart, would produce four thousand beavers, at four livres a piece, or an equivalent in other peltry, which would amount to sixteen thous- and livres, and leaves, consequently, fifteen thousand livres profit.
The wine would also serve to pay the expenses of freight and wages at the rate of 40 sous the quart.
The ell of Poitou serge sells for six francs to the Indians, and that of Iroquois blanketing for eight livres, and consequently on these two articles there would be a profit of thirteen thousand livres.
The shirts sell for at least one hundred sous, and the stock- ings for eight livres, so that on these two articles there is more than four thousand livres gain.
Kettles sell at four francs the pound, and consequently there would be 5,500 livres profit on that article.
Glass beads sell at eight francs the pound, and axes at thirty sous apiece, so that these two articles would leave a profit of two thousand livres.
Powder sells at 40 sous the pound, and lead at twenty sous, which would make on these two articles over thirteen thousand livres.
Guns sell at 24 livres each, and therefore would produce 2,400 liv. more than their cost.
Tobacco sells at eight francs per pound, it would therefore give over 2,000 liv. profit.
On the scarlet stuff (ecarlatine), one-half would be gained, which would be worth one thousand livres.
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Mississippi Valley.
The profit is proportionably greater on the other articles, such as knives, vermilion, steel, etc.
He showed conclusively that for every franc inves- ted the trade would yield an ecu, or about sixty cents net profit per year, or say, 300 per cent. His Canadian supporters were all practical traders-they knew that he was within the facts in this statement of the profits in the trade with the Indians, and they, of course, en- dorsed it when he sent it to France.
Accordingly, in September, 1681, he was found in the harbor where Toronto now stands, making the por- tage to Lake Simcoe, in order to go forward via Geor- gian Bay, and while there he wrote:
"I hope this business will turn out well; for I have M. de Tonti, who is full of zeal, thirty Frenchmen, all good men, without reckoning such as I cannot trust; and more than 100 Indians, some of them Shawanese and others from New England, all of whom know how to use guns."
They were at Ft. Miami in December and on the 2Ist the party began crossing the south end of the lake to the Chicago river. There, where many things are made in this day, they made sleds on which they placed their canoes and baggage, and dragging these, they passed over the route of the great modern drainage canal, and followed down the frozen Illinois till they found open water in Lake Peoria. Here they embarked and on February 6, 1682, floated out on the broad Mississippi.
It was late in La Salle's day of life, but for a brief time the sun broke through the clouds. For a few days he was to travel with the tide unbuffeted.
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On February 24 a landing was made at the Third Chickasaw Bluff, (in the northwestern part of Shelby county, Tennessee), and the party encamped to hunt for game. Here one Pierre Prudhomme was lost in the forest. Signs of Indians had been seen in the vicinity, and because of this fact La Salle with part of his crew built a wooden fort while the others hunted for the lost man. And when he was found at last, his name was given to the fort to commemorate the successful result of the search. This was the fifth fort in the line which La Salle was building between Montreal and the mouth of the Mississippi.
Again La Salle embarked. "and with every stage of his adventurous progress the mystery of this vast new world was more and more unveiled." He met the Arkansas and the Natchez Indians, and took possession of their lands with the usual ceremonies, while the Indians looked on with pleasure because they did not comprehend the meaning of the ceremonies.
Then on April 6, 1682, they reached the place where the mighty stream divided itself into three channels and flowed away into the Gulf of Mexico.
For three days the party cruised about the verge of the Gulf and then going to a low dry hillock, on the bank of the river, they erected a wooden column, on which they carved the arms of France, and these words :
Louis le Grand, Rey de France et de Nevarre, Regne :
Le Neuvieme Avril, 1682.
Then in the usual form the whole magnificent basin of the Great River was claimed for the crown of "Louis le Grand," and named Louisiana in his honor.
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NOUVELLE
FRANCE
SUPERIEUR
HURON
DESILINOIS
FRONTENAC?
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VIRGIN
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FRANQUELIN'S MAP, 1684.
MER VERMEILLE
Mississippi Valley.
La Salle had reached the river's mouth. He was the first to explore the land there, and the first to claim the whole watershed of the great river. He had also built a fort on the bank of the river, and another fort on one of the tributaries. By these things done he had filed in the name of France, a good preliminary claim on the whole magnificent valley. From the oil spring in Alleghany County, New York, to the dividing of the waters of Two Oceans Creek in Wyoming; from the Wisconsin lakes where the honking wild goose nested and the Sioux ranged free, to the tide swept marshes of the Gulf of Mexico, Louis the XIV now reigned by virtue of the work of Rene-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle.
Fortunately for American civilization there was no other Frenchman in America equal to this one, and not from all France, was his equal to follow him to America.
Few words are needed to tell the remainder of the story of La Salle. He returned up the river, and at Starved Rock, on the Illinois, near the modern village of Utica, built another fort which he called St. Louis. It was the sixth of his chain. Here he gathered a colo- ny of Indians of various tribes and granted lands to his followers, as he had a legal right to do. But in the meantime the enemies of the enterprise had succeeded in having Frontenac recalled. A Governor, La Barre, was appointed who antagonized La Salle as much as he could. In desperation La Salle left his colony and went to France.
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