USA > Mississippi > The pioneers, preachers and people of the Mississippi Valley > Part 6
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Then La Salle, with a steady countenance, as in- differently as if they had been the mishaps of another, in turn related a still longer and heavier ca- talogue of misfortunes and disappointments. Father Membré says, in admiration, that though any one but he would have renounced the enterprise, he was " more resolute than ever to continue his work and complete his discovery."
We must here advert for a moment to the liar Hennepin, who had, during La Salle's absence, made an exploring voyage on the upper Mississippi, and endured a short captivity among the Indians. From this he had escaped, and a few weeks after La Salle's meeting with Tonty at Mackinaw, he passed that post, made the best of his way to Canada, and thence to Europe, where he afterward published an account of a pretended voyage down the Great River, in which he endeavored to rob La Salle of the glory of discovering its outlet.
Nothing could be done at Mackinaw for the great object of the persevering La Salle, so he and his party soon returned to Fort Frontenac. Here he rearranged all his finances, selected a strong body of Frenehmen and of New England Indians, Abenakis or Mohegans, with these returned to Niagara, and in August, 1681, embarked thence once more for the mysterious mouth of the "Hidden River," as the Spaniards named it; at last, after undaunted and
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indescribable exertions, this third time destined to succeed.
With fifty-four souls in all, including ten Indian women to cook, and three children, the expedition passed from the Miamis to the Chicago River, up this on the ice to the portage, down the Illinois to Lake Peoria, and thence by water, the river being open, toward the Mississippi. They swept past the . Fort of the Broken Heart, barely delaying to look in upon the garrison now reestablished there, and press- ing forward with happier auguries, glided down a deserted river-the Indians being at their distant winter hunting-grounds-and on the 6th of February, 1682, floated upon the long-desired stream, which La Salle now named the Colbert, after his staunch patron, the great French statesman.
They swept downward, with various adventure; fishing or hunting ; holding peaceful intercourse with many a savage tribe ; erecting a splendid cross, bear- ing the arms of France, near the mouth of the Ar- kansas River, in token of the proprietorship of the French king, and amid the ignorant rejoicing of the savages, who took the ceremony to be a show for their amusement, instead of a formal theft of their land, and after their departure carefully inclosed with palisades the ornamented cross.
Onward still; past the sun-worshipping Tensas, whose ceremonies, large canoes, and profound reve-
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rence for their chiefs, seemed to indicate that they were of kin to the brave and interesting tribe of the Natchez. Onward still, past the Natchez themselves; past the Koroas and the Quinipissas, and sundry other tribes ; past a village just plundered, and ten- anted by the corpses of the slain ; and now, all at once, the vast stream divides before them into three mighty channels. The brave commander's heart beats high, for he must be near the southern sea ; and sending detachments down the eastern and mid- dle channels, under Tonty and Dautray, he himself pursues the western, the largest. The muddy waves of the broad flood are gradually found to become brackish, and then quite salt ; and now the measure- less expanse of the Gulf of Mexico lies wide before them. The month of the Great River, the Hidden River, is found.
Of the emotions of the stern and lofty-minded La Salle, as he thus floated out toward the goal of his vast and long-pursued enterprise, no record exists. Whatever they were, his high and resolved features gave small trace of them; and speedily returning to the prosaic duties of the mere discoverer, he spends one day in exploring and sounding the river's mouths and the neighboring shores, and another in finding a spot dry and firm enough, amidst those dreary ex- panses of fat alluvium, all overgrown with rank sedge and reeds, to afford a site for a memorial column and
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its attendant cross, tokens of the empire of Christ, and of the great French king. "Henceforth," saith La Salle, "my God and my king are supreme forever over the innumerable souls and the immeasurable lands of this great continent."
Having selected a suitable place, on the 9th of April, 1682, La Salle draws up his whole party un- der arms ; they sing the Te Deum, the Exaudiat, and the Domine salvum fac Regem-thanking God, im- ploring his continued help for themselves, and then loyally asking it for their king, by the three sonorous old Latin chants. They fire a formal salute of mus- ketry, and shout Vive le Roi! Then the column is erected, and with a long enumeration of nations, and rivers, and lands, he formally proclaims that all the lands and waters of Louisiana, " along the River Col- bert or Mississippi, and rivers which discharge them- selves therein, from its source beyond the country of the Kious or Nadouessions, and this with their con- sent, and with the consent of the Motantecs, Illi- nois, Mesigameas, Natchez, and Koroas, as far as its mouth at the sea," are henceforth part of the realms of the king of France. And he demands of Jacques de la Metairie, the notary, his official certifi- cate of the transaction. The scribe draws up the in- strument, and it is signed by the notary himself, and by La Salle, Father Zenobius Membre, the missionary, Henry de Tonty, and the other French-
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men of the party, and delivered to the com- mander.
Then they erect a cross, bury at the foot of the tree to which it is attached a leaden plate, with an inscription commemorating their discovery and their claim ; chant more Latin hymns , shout again Vive le Roi ; and thus the Mississippi valley is made French for almost a century-until the peace of 1763.
But they are hard pressed for food ; and barely de- laying to finish the ceremony, must push rapidly up the river. This they do; and after a combat with the Quinipissas-the first into which La Salle had ever been driven with the Indians, so wise and skill- ful had been all his actions toward them-and after some suffering from hunger, the party proceeds safely on its return. At Fort Prudhomme, however, the in- trepid chief is stricken down by a wasting fever. He sends his faithful lieutenant, Tonty, with an account of his voyage and discovery, to Count de Frontenac, with orders to return at onee; and himself remains forty days on his sick-bed, under the care of the good priest Father Zenobius Membré, and was even then so worn down by illness that it was almost the end of September before he reached his establishment at the Miamis.
La Salle now purposes to return down the Missis- sippi during the next spring, and to establish a strong colony near its mouth. He sends Father Zenobius to
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France with full accounts of his doings hitherto ; but for nearly a year he is occupied-probably, for he has left no record of his deeds-in trading, travelling, and keeping up his influence and connections with the Indians, the plan of the colony being postponed or modified by circumstances, or, more probably, by his own thoughts.
For during the long months of that sojourn in the wilderness, the scheme of his Mississippi colony has grown and expanded within his mind. Twice has he proved his influence upon the rich and magnificent government of Louis the Fourteenth. Why should he not a third time look to a mighty empire for the assistance he needs, rather than to his small indivi- dual resources; and cross the ocean with a strong company in great ships, instead of boating obscurely down the vast wilderness river in frail canoes ?
He resolves to try; and leaving the Chevalier de Tonty his financial agent and lieutenant command- ing, he departs down the St. Lawrence, takes ship at Quebec, and lands at Rochelle, December 13th, 1683.
As usual, he find that his enemies have been ac- tive, and that fortune has aided them. Ilis munifi- cent patron, Colbert, is dead. De la Barre, now go- vernor of Canada, has written to the home govern- ment that La Salle stirs up Indian wars; that all his tales of discoveries are lies; that he has acted the part of a petty tyrant among those far-off wilder-
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nesses, with a small band of vagabond followers, steal- ing and fighting. But it was not such an attack as this which could obstruct La Salle. Aided by his friends, Father Zenobius Membré, and Count Fronte- nac, now returned to France, by the inherited pre- possessions of Colbert's son, the Duke de Seignelai, now high in office, and by his own inexhaustible en- ergy and strange power over the court, he goes straight on with his plans. The absurd slanders of the spiteful De la Barre die in silence; and the au- thority and means now confided to him were far greater than before.
The king gives him a free gift of a ship of six guns, and the use of three more, a thirty-six gun frigate, a transport of three hundred tons, and a ketch; and furnishes supplies, sea and land forces, colonists : in short, the whole personal and material constituents of a colony. And not only has La Salle the supreme command of this great expedition, but territorial ju- risdiction over all the great valley whither he is bound, and over all colonies established therein.
The reputation of the enterprise and its leader draw to him a number of volunteers, all respectable, and including several families, a brother of La Salle's, who was a priest, two of his nephews, and another relative, also a priest.
And even now, at this very moment, when the im- pregnable, steady energies and inexhaustible wise
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perseverance of this man seem at last to have brought him to a point promising the full reward of so many years of labor and incessant wanderings-even now opens the longest and saddest of all the long sad chapters of his fateful life. On the very point of em- barking, the careful chief, who had been forced to enlist his soldiers, mechanics, and laborers by means of others, found that these faithless hirelings had raked together the very scum of the sea-ports; giv- ing him for soldiers beggars, vagabonds, and cripples so deformed that they could not handle a musket ; for skilled artisans, men perfectly ignorant of their pretended trades. In urgent haste, he partly reme- dies the evil, but, as usual, must let much of it pass ; trusting, not without reason, to the calm and ready strength which has made head against so many trou- bles before. But another evil he cannot remedy. The generous king has appointed to the naval com- mand a Norman, M. de Beaujeu ; and it would be ungracious, and is now too late to endeavor to dis- place him : a little-minded, obstinate, quarrelsome, pompous man, ridiculously vain of his rank of cap- tain, snappish and irritable, of all men on earth the very one to be vexed at the silent, self-reliant, haughty reserve of La Salle. Even before sailing, this un- happy captain writes peevish and dissatisfied letters to the marine department. How fatally and bitterly the fool vented his spite afterward, will quickly appear.
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Let us hasten ; the narrative is painful ; who would protract the sorrowful story ? They had to return one hundred and fifty miles to replace a broken bow- sprit; then sailing again, La Salle, with wise and cautious speed, refused to stop uselessly at Madeira, and the wretched Norman, Beaujeu, and all the lazy ships' companies, murmured and were enraged. Then he positively forbade the sailors to subject his followers to the brutal abuses usual at crossing the tropic line, and they grumbled and complained still more. As the fleet approached St. Domingo, a storm scattered it; and eagerly seizing the opportunity of making trouble, the mean Beaujeu, instead of enter- ing Port de Paix, the rendezvous agreed upon, and where were the royal officers whom La Salle was to meet and who were ordered to aid and promote his designs, passed round the island and landed at Petit Goave, far to the southwest. And now, also, the in- scrutable purposes of God add to fierce tempests and hatefully perverse unfriends aboard, two other ene- mies. The Spaniards, now at war with France, sur- prise and seize his ketch, the St. Francis, with thirty tons of merchandise and military stores-a grievous loss, which would not have happened had Beaujeu put in at Port de Paix, as he should have done. But La Salle calmly adds the item to that long list of shipwrecks in Canada, and dismisses it from his mind. A wasting disease, however, is the second and
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worst of these added foes; and under the furious assault of a tropical fever, his life even is despaired of. But he is not yet to die ; we may even suppose that that powerful will urges him through this peril of disease : that he will not die-unless God so de- cree. And in three weeks, though yet feeble, he consults with the governor and intendant, who came to Petit Goave to meet him; takes on board provi- sions and domestic animals ; obtains sailing direc- tions, and hastens away ; for his miserable band of vagabond soldiers, living in licentious disorder, are diseased and dying, or desert the jangling and ill-omened fleet for the luxurious ease of St. Do- mingo.
Embarking in the slowest sailer, and taking the lead in her, he sets sail again ; coasts the southern shore of Cuba ; stops three days at the Isle of Pines ; weathers Cape Corientes, and then Cape San Anto- nio, and after being once driven back, steers north west into the great Gulf of Mexico, straight for the mouth of the Mississippi. They sail eight days, and now the soundings tell of land not far off. In two days more they discern it. Where are they ? Con- sulting and hesitating, they conclude that they are in the great Bay of Appalache; for the pilots at St. Domingo told them of strong currents, which they accordingly believe have carried them east- ward. Fatal error ! They were, doubtless, already
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far west of that strangely-hidden river, in one of the bays of the coast of Texas.
But thus they judge ; and coasting further west to find the Mississippi, they leave it yet further behind them. Sailing a whole week, they still imagine themselves in the Bay of Appalache. Sailing two weeks more, they become convinced of their error ; the coast trends southward; they are approaching Mexico. They turn about, and it is proposed to find the Mississippi by coasting eastward again. But Beaujeu flatly refuses, without a supply of provisions, which La Salle will not give, lest the wicked captain should sail away to France.
Returning, however, a little way up the coast, they enter Matagorda Bay, which La Salle names the Bay of St. Louis, and which he vainly hopes to find one of the mouths of the Mississippi. It is de- cided to disembark, and all the emigrants go ashore, leaving the crews only on board the ships. The neighborhood is explored, the harbor sounded, and the Aimable, the transport, ordered in. IIer captain, a brute or a villain, or more probably both, refuses a pilot, and running his vessel ashore, she bilges ; somne one takes pains to destroy her boat ; and the greater part of her cargo-the very sustenance of the colony-is lost. The Indians take some goods which float ashore; and a party of Frenchmen, sent to reclaim them, seizing some canoes and skins in repri-
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sal, the enraged savages make a night attack upon them, kill two and wound two more.
The demoniac cunning and ferocity of the red men thus cooperates with these devouring shipwrecks. And the colonists already begin to lament, to mur- mur, and to talk of returning to France. But their leader, though cruelly grieved, is not discouraged nor moved ; his fearless resolution is a tower of strength to all the band, and the enterprise proceeds.
Beaujeu departs, still angry and venomous, carry- ing away all the cannon balls for the eight great guns of the colony, because, forsooth, he would have had to move part of his cargo to get at them ; leaving on that wild and distant shore about two hundred souls, the small vessel, La Belle, and that portion of provi- sions and goods saved from the Spaniards and the sea.
This is in the middle of March, 1685. The com- mander orders a temporary fort to be constructed, and then explores the coast. Finding a pleasant site some distance west, he moves his colony thither, and in the course of July they are all there, their only misfortunes by the way, one death from the bite of a rattlesnake, and a conspiracy among the soldiers to murder their officers and run away, this last detected in time to crush it. On this new site are erected, with terrific labor, even fatal to some of the colonists, dwellings and a fort, named Fort St. Louis ; and La
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Salle, having thus provided for the security of his colony, prepares to make a journey by land for the hidden fateful river. In October, having been de- layed by his brother's sickness, he sets out, the Belle accompanying him part of the way by sea. On the first night six men, detached to take soundings, keep- ing careless watch, are murdered by the savages. The commander marches on eastward, discovers the Colorado, examines the eastern part of Matagorda Bay, and returns, after an absence of more than four months, with but eight of the twenty men who set out with him. Six are dead; one, a quarrelsome, vindictive villain, named Duhaut, deserted, and has returned alone some time before ; and the others are searching for the Belle, of which no news has been received. They came in next day ; nothing could be seen of her ; she was doubtless lost, and with her dis- appeared their last means of communicating with civilized men, unless by journeys scarcely less than sure to be fatal.
But such communication must be had. The neces- sity of it being recognized, the strong and calm com- mander quietly and quickly prepares for it, as coolly as if he were only intending to step across the fort ; gathering resolution-if, indeed, that indomitable will ever looked for encouragement at all-from the evident alternative of swift destruction. His journey shall be to the Illinois, where, in his strong hill fort,
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the valiant and faithful Tonty is sure to be at his post, waiting orders as directed-unless orders which cannot be disobeyed have summoned him away from all earthly obligations. Once in Illinois, he can ob- tain assistance there, and can send or go to Quebec or to France. Taking twenty men again, he sets out by land, in the end of April, 1686, leaving M. Joutel, as before, in command of the fort.
He returns in August, having travelled far up into the interior, and having there been delayed for two months and more by a violent fever. Their ammu- nition becoming exhausted, during this time, and being entirely dependent on hunting for provisions, they had uo alternative but to turn back. Of this second company of twenty, but eight returned ; four had deserted to the Indians, one was lost, one de- voured by an alligator, and the rest, being unable to endure the fatigue of the journey, had set out to return and were never heard of.
These failures cast a deep gloom over the little company in the fort, now reduced, by death and desertion, from about two hundred to forty; but, says Joutel in his journal, " the even temper of our chief made all men easy, and he found, by his great vivacity of spirit, expedients which revived the low- est ebb of hope." He had given up the Belle for lost, and therefore rejoiced exceedingly to find that his kinsman, M. Chefdeville, and some others of her
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crew, had escaped, and had saved his own clothes and part of his papers, although the little vessel her- self, as he had concluded, had perished.
La Salle at once set about building a storehouse, to keep his men employed ; and still retaining his in- tention of proceeding to the Illinois, they talked daily about the journey. Being taken ill, however, his stout-hearted lieutenant, Joutel, offered to go instead, if he might take fifteen men and the faithful Indian hunter, who had followed his chief to France and back to Mexico. But the commander recovers his health, and again-as he would have done a hundredth time, had he failed ninety-nine -- makes his arrangements and sets out, taking with him a third twenty men, and leaving thirteen men and seven women in the fort, with a considerable stock of provisions and arms.
Thus, on the 12th of January, 1687, departs Robert de la Salle, for the third time, from his little colony, as resolute and cool as ever; but the parting was saddened as if by presentiments of evil. " We took our leaves," says the veteran man of war, Joutel, " with so much tenderness and sorrow, as if we had all presaged that we should never see each other more."
And now the long, brave struggle with fate and with enemies, draws to its melancholy close. The little party, with their five horse-loads of provisions,
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disappears from the eyes of the Sieur Barbier, left commander of the scanty colony in the fort; and plunging into the woods, marches northeastward, across the pleasant prairies and through the open woods of Texas. They ford rivers and pass through swamps, often easing their progress by following buffalo paths; negotiate, as they go, with the In- dians, always friendly, but always on their guard ; and Nika, the hunter, ever purveys for them abun- dance of game.
On the 15th of March, La Salle sends Duhaut, the mutinous wretch before mentioned, Hiens, a German buccaneer, Liotot the surgeon, Nika the Indian, and his own footman, Saget, to bring in some provisions which he had concealed a few miles away, on his last journey. These they found spoiled by wet, and as they returned, Nika killed two buf- falo, and they sent the footman on to advise their commander to have the meat dried, and send horses for it. He does so, sending his nephew, Moranget, a violent and reckless young man, with several more of the party.
Moranget comes, and finds that Duhant and the rest are smoking the buffalo meat, and that, by the common right of hunters, they have laid by some marrow-bones and choice bits for themselves. In a sudden burst of unreasonable and inexplicable pas- sion, he reproves and threatens them, and seizes not
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only all the smoked meat, but all the tidbits which they had saved according to custom. This last offence filled up the cup of their anger, even to run- ning over ; for these three, the surgeon Liotot, Hiens, and Duhaut, fancied they had-and most probably had-other causes of complaint against the unhappy young man. With black looks, their hearts all boil- ing with hot wrath, but still withheld for the moment by lack of concert from wreaking the revenge for which they all thirst, they silently draw off, and con- sult apart upon the matter. Seared and hardened by crime, the inhuman wretches easily agree upon their measures. They will murder Moranget in his sleep, and so square their account with him. But, one of them suggests, the Indian and the footman are faith- ful-they will avenge the deed, or inform upon us. The answer is easy-they, too, will be asleep; we have only to kill them too. Accordingly, taking into their plot Teissier and Larchevêque, two more of the party, they wait, revelling in the devilish satis- faction of anticipated revenge, until their unsuspecting victims have eaten, and are peacefully asleep, dream- ing, doubtless, of distant homes and loving hearts in sunny France. Liotot, the surgeon, arises, takes an axe, and strikes Moranget many blows on the head; then leaving him, dispatches the Indian and the footman, who never stirred. But such was the vitality of the young officer, that, though mangled
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and speechless, he sat up, alive, a horrible spectacle of misery. The murderers oblige his fellow, De Marle, though not a conspirator, to put him out of his pain.
Crimes are seldom single. It needs not long reflec- tion to show them that they must do yet another mur- der, or suffer for those already done. They must kill La Salle too. And they will the more readily do this, because they have some harshness of his to punish. They would at once have set out to attack him, had not the river between them risen too high. But lie comes to them, as if impelled upon his fate. Uneasy at the delay of his nephew, and, as if under some presage of misfortune, or consciousness of fault in his own or his nephew's conduet, he asks his men if Liotot, Hiens, and Duhaut have not expressed some discontent. No one seems to know of it, and, his apprehensions increasing, he sets out on the third day to find his nephew.
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