USA > Mississippi > The pioneers, preachers and people of the Mississippi Valley > Part 7
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Approaching the tragie scene, he sees some eagles, and thinking carrion near, he fires a shot, as a signal to his friends, in case they have killed game and are within hearing. Silent in death, they are beyond all human summons. The doomed commander's signal serves only to insure and hasten his own fate. The conspirators hear it ; Duhaut and Larchevêque cross the river ; Duhaut hides in the reeds, and Larche- vêque shows himself at a little distance. La Salle calls out to him, asking after Moranget. The man
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answers, vaguely, rudely, and omitting the usual ges- ture of respect, that he is along the river. The punctilious and severe chief advances, as if to reprove or chastise the impertinent manner of his follower ; Duhaut takes fatal aim from his lair, and fires. His ball passes through the head of La Salle, and he falls without speaking a word.
Father Anastasius Douay, who was with his leader, prepares to share his fate, but on their telling him that he is safe, endeavors to do the last priestly offices for him. But the dying man can only feebly press the hand of the good father, in token that he under- stands him, and his spirit quickly passes. The death shot brings up the other conspirators; and they strip and insult the poor corpse. The surgeon, Liotot, laughs and mocks at it, and, in the excess of his bru- tal glee, cries out over and over again, "There thou liest, grand bashaw-there thou liest !" And they fling the naked body aside among the bushes, a prey to wild beasts ; though they do not prevent the sor- rowing priest from burying it afterward, and crecting a rude cross over it.
Thus died Robert Cavelier de la Salle, at a time when a fairer prospect than ever of some permanent success was opening before him. His faithful fol- lower, Joutel, who was one of the party, but not pre- sent at his death, thus delivers his funeral oration, with terse military frankness, mingled of praise and
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blame: " His constancy and courage, and his extra- ordinary knowledge in arts and sciences, which ren- dered him fit for anything, together with an indefati- gable body, which made him surmount all diffieul. ties, would have procured a glorious issue to his un- dertaking, had not all those excellent qualities been counterbalanced by too haughty a behavior, which sometimes made him insupportable, and by a seve- rity toward those under his command, which at last drew on him implacable hatred, and was the occasion of his death."
Few words may close this sad story. A swift re- tribution overtook Liotot and Duhaut, who were a little after slain in a quarrel, by Hiens, who remained among the Indians. Six of the party, all the conspi- rators having left them, reached, in July, a post esta- blished by Tonty at the mouth of the Arkansas, and proceeding onward, reached Fort St. Louis, thence went to Quebec, and thence to France ; hiding, with difficulty and equivocation, their heavy burden of sad news, until they first revealed it to the French king.
La Salle's little colony vanished away. The In- dians assaulted and took it, slaying all but four youths and a young girl, who were afterward rescued by a Spanish force from Mexico, sent to observe the French establishment.
Tonty had descended the Mississippi while La Salle
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was in Texas, but not finding him, left a letter for him with the Indians, who delivered it safe to Iber- ville, fourteen years after, when he entered the river. Then returning, he resumed the duties of his lieuten- ancy in Illinois ; and spent the remainder of his life, as far as is known, in military services in various parts of North America : a stout and faithful soldier to the last.
Not one written word from La Salle's pen has reached us. His papers perished in the lonely fort on Matagorda Bay. Nor have we even reports of his statements as to his views or motives ; for it was not his custom to speak of what he intended, but only to order what he desired, and thus it happens that our estimate of him must be based upon our scanty infor- mation of his actual achievements, preserved either by ill-informed or unappreciative friends, or unscru- pulous and cunning enemies.
We need not elaborate a description of his charac- ter; our story has sufficiently exhibited it. The les- sons of his life are easily read. It is true, that that haughty silence, that harsh, peremptory manner, were faults; but how manifold the excuses-how terribly complete the expiation ! Tenderly we would touch upon those errors, and would rather enlarge upon the unspotted honor, the far-seeing plans, the wise prac- tical sense, the tact and skill in governing and nego- tiating, and organizing, the stainless, impregnable
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courage, and, above all, that ealm, colossal power of will which impelled him so resistlessly through and over the opposition of so many foes, so many misfor- tunes, with an inserutable, gigantic momentum, like that by which the vast icebergs of the Arctic ride crashing through the thick fields of ironbound ice, with a force beyond human admeasurement, but calmly and steadily, as if floating in a summer sea. No grander model of superiority to the vicissitudes of human life is to be found in history.
Farewell, strong and brave man! From thee may we well learn a lesson of courage, of perseverance, of patient endurance and undying hope ; and if the perplexing question should arise within us, How can it be just that such heroic struggles should at last so utterly fail-why could not this noble life at last be crowned with peace and honor and happiness ? let Faith answer, from behind the mysterious veil of death-Ye shall know all, when ye come hither !
Lecture III.
THE
FRENCH IN ILLINOIS.
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THE IDYL OF AMERICA.
IN the history of the exploration and settlement of the great valley of the Mississippi, as far as we have hitherto examined it, the four predominant influences may be named as Romance, Religion, Ambition, and Greed, each conjoined with the others in varying pro- portions.
The early history of New England is a manifesta- tion of a stalwart courage that dared to face cold, hunger, peril, nakedness, and barbarism, solely for the maintenance of a faith dearer than life itself. But this unrelaxing sinewy exertion, this undaunted courage, this determined and irreversible resolve to live out the principles of religious belief, in things political and social as well as in things ecclesiastical -all these powerful and noble and lofty characteris- tics are combined with and colored by a certain de- gree of severity. The Puritan social life was rugged to hardness-stern, uninviting. None of its features were refined, delicate, genial. Sentiment was un- known to the majority, and ruled out for all. The
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temporal exigencies of the place and the time were too terrible and too pressing-the requisitions of the current Calvinism were too serious-too gloomy -to encourage or even to permit the expansion and development and cultivation of the more beautiful social faculties.
Nor did the origin, the process and the progress of the settlement of other parts of the continent, afford more space for the growth or exercise of these facul- ties. Further south, on the Atlantic coast, we see the workings of the European mercantile system, as modified by the colonial monopolies of the respective governments who sent or protected the settlers. New York was a depot and agency for the traffic of the Dutch West India Company. The spirit of the early lords of Virginia is well illustrated by the brutal ex- hortation of that nobleman who replied to the colo- nial representations of the wants of their souls, and their need of mental and spiritual improvement, by saying, " Damn your ' souls ;' make tobacco !" Caro- lina was an endeavor to realize the fantastic political dream of the philosopher Locke. In Florida and Louisiana, the predominating influences were the prominent traits of the rulers and people of the parent nations, reproduced with bad fidelity in the Ameri- can settlements which sprang up under their colonial monopolies : greed of gold, lust of landed property, pride of conquest, fanatical zeal. The transatlantic
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plantations were primarily to serve as distant gar- dens to the royal palaces of Europe, and secondarily, to spread the dominion of the Roman Catholic faith.
But we are, at this point, brought to the consider- ation of one beautiful exception to the remainder of all the broad continent. Not to a perfect Paradise --- not to a true and ideal Eden ; but yet to such a peaceful sunny spot, such a benign and kindly social life, such a scene of universal heartfelt instinctive courtesy, of patriarchal subordination, of mild and blessed neighborly virtue and forbearance, of harm- less, simple, sufficing pleasure, of perfect health, blooming, happy youth, unambitious, industrious manhood, quiet old age, as is nowhere else to be found throughout all the broad page of American history.
The conduct of the French toward the aborigines of this continent was far more humane and generous, wise and successful, than the policy of any other European nation. The Spaniards treated the Indians like slaves and beasts of burden, and with a cold- blooded, selfishi, blind brutality, which, by extermi- nating the unhappy race, exhausted its own materials and disappointed its own objects. The Anglo-Saxon, a man of higher grade, but not less self-contained, self-satisfied, exclusive, and resolute than the Span- iard, did not prove himself brutally bigoted and ava- ricious like him, in his intercourse with the red
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men, but only unconciliating, severe, exacting, and strangely inconsiderate of the defects and misfortunes of savage nature and savage education. Planting himself in the wilderness with all his institutions, his common law and statutory code, with the Mosaic in- tensifications which obscurity and distance allowed, he did what was fair, just, lawful and right, by his laws and according to his principles. And if the In- dians transgressed these, instead of inquiring under what code, or upon what violation of savage prin- ciples it was done, he stolidly inflicted a statutory English penalty ; and if this roused retaliation, the united colony, with the same stolid ignorance, re- torted by judicial and military devastations and mur- ders that might, it is true, temporarily quell opposi- tion by the death of their enemies or the intimidation of the survivors, but which always left alive the smoldering embers which kept up the constant and fiendish border warfare, and ever and anon blazed out into one of the frightful and perilous Indian wars.
The French were no whit less zealous for their re- ligion than the Spaniards ; beyond all comparison more so, as missionaries, than the English. Nor were they less eager than either for gain, for adventure, or for empire. But the genial social qualities, the inborn national adaptability and courtesy, even the less stringent sense of moral obligation, their greater
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habitude to feudal law, and their patient sub- jection to seignorial rights, which may be called faults or defects, gave them incalculable advantages in founding, maintaining, and cementing the public and individual intercourse which they so long main- tained with the Indians. In truth, had it depended alone on the success of alliances and cooperation with Indian tribes, instead of the fortunes of civilized war and the exigencies of European politics, it is well- nigh certain that the vast French belt of fortresses and settlements which so perilously girded in the Atlantic seaboard, would have fulfilled its purpose ; that the Englishi settlers would have been driven into the sea, exterminated, or reduced under the French power; and that the lilies of France, instead of the lion of England, would have waved over the whole vast domain of central North America during the latter half of the eighteenth century.
There is no more striking exemplification of the advantages in point of personal character thus as- cribed to the French, than the history of those set- tlements founded in Illinois by the successors of La Salle, during the period from about 1680 until the removal of so many of the French at the transfer of authority to British hands in 1765.
The way to the prairie land, it will be remembered, was pioneered by the saintly Marquette. Next came the indefatigable and far-seeing La Salle, and his
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faithful and no less indefatigable lieutenant, Henry de Tonty. These able leaders and skillful negotiators, and many more of like character and less renown, diffused among all the numerous tribes from the St. Lawrence to the upper waters of the distant Missouri, where the stout sieur Juchereau maintained his lonely trading-post, a spirit of friendly regard for the French, and of deep reverence for the great French king. And in the footsteps of trappers and traders there followed Jesuit missionaries of zeal as fervent and character as beautiful as the holy Marquette him- self : Allouez, his predecessor on Lake Superior, his successor on the alluvial lands that border the rivers of Illinois, and good Father Gravier, who founded the oldest permanent settlement in the great Missis- sippi Valley, the Village of the Immaculate Concep- tion of Our Lady, afterward named Kaskaskia. The time of the foundation of this ancient town is not positively ascertained ; but such data as have been determined seem to justify the belief that Philadel- phia, Detroit, Mobile, and Kaskaskia, were all founded in about the same year. Then came Father Pinet and Father Marest, preaching in like manner to the unsophisticated but most discouragingly vicious deni- zens of the woods, the doctrines of Jesus and of the Resurrection. These holy fathers built them little unpretending chapels of bark, and their humble sanctuaries were crowded with such numbers of
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natives that many were obliged to stand without the threshold.
Then, enticed by the stories that reached them, un- der the inclement sky and the strict feudal system of Lower Canada, of the good livers of this distant land, the mildness of its climate, the richness of its soil, the fruitfulness of its pastures and its groves, one straggler after another descended from those rigorous regions, navigating the vast circuit of the great lakes, and passing by Lake Michigan, across the portage from the Miamis to the Kankakee, or from the Chicago to the Illinois, and erected a humble home within that great expanse of low-lying, fertile soil now called the American Bottom. This region, beginning on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, nearly opposite to where its mild and placid stream is joined by the turbid waters of the Missouri, extending from this point sixty miles southward, and in width, from the river's bank to the bluff beyond, from five to eight miles-formed a tract of such fertility as is scarcely elsewhere to be found on earth. Here, surrounded by the exuberant products of nature, the French raised their half-wigwams, half-cabins, by driving corner posts into the ground, and then transverse laths-for they scarce deserved the name of beans -from one to another of these posts; plastering over these with the hand, a coating of "cat-and- clay," as the American settlers called it : soft clay
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worked up with prairie grass and Spanish moss. With this stucco upon the outside and the inside of the latticed walls, and neatly whitewashed, with roofs thatched with long grass carefully woven and matted together, and lasting, it is said, longer than shingles- with spacious piazzas all around the house-there presently arose picturesque villages, bordering a sin- gle street, so narrow that the settler might sit, smok- ing his pipe, beneath the shade of his piazza, and talk to his neighbor across the street in his ordinary tone of voice.
But let us orderly describe this simple and happy community in its prime-perhaps about the year 1750-their laws, their religion, their social organiza- tion, their manners, their occupations, their charac- ters. For the whole texture and character-the gross and the detail-are so utterly and diametrically op- posed to the ideas and conceptions of the descendants of English settlers, that the amplest delineation which the occasion admits may well fail to communicate a full comprehension of them.
The laws of the French settlements in Illinois were based upon the same great Roman code which under- lay the jurisprudence of all the south of Europe. But some considerations, either of expediency or libe- rality, caused the substitution of allodial titles to land for the feudal tenures of Canada ; that is, the settlers were permitted to own land very much as a New
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England farmer owns it, instead of being obliged to hold it at the pleasure of the feudal lord, in whom was vested the real ownership. Thus the villagers of Kaskaskia, and the other neighboring settlements of our " terrestrial paradise," as La Salle aptly termed these regions, possessed, at the time to which we refer, each his parcel of land, granted by government to all the village in common; one great traet for tillage, and one for pasture, separated by a fence, and stretch- ing back from the river bank to the limestone bluff. In this each family had a portion set apart for itself, and sacred from all intrusion. The village authori- ties, the senate of the settlement, enacted regulations requiring every family to commence planting, culti- vating and harvesting on certain fixed days. The consent of this same body, as representing the whole settlement, was required for the admission of any new settler to a share in the common field.
Of statute and common law, courts and attorneys, fees and pleadings, these fortunate people knew no- thing. Quarrels were as rare among them as in an af- fectionate family. No courts of law were established there until after the country passed into the possession of the British ; and after they were established, no ae- tions were brought before them until after the Anglo- Americans possessed the land. The sour, pugnacious litigations, as well as that much vaunted but very doubtful institution, the trial by jury, of the English.
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were an evil and a remedy equally foreign and terri- ble to the kindly disposition of the French. If any differences arose which the parties could not settle, they were referred to the arbitration of the priest, or, in the last resort, to that of the commandant at Fort Chartres, a mighty potentate, ruling, in name at least, territories vaster than most kingdoms, representing all the power and wisdom of the French king, and looked up to by the simple settlers as the perfection of all human strength and judgment.
The religion of this far-off prairie settlement was Catholic. A reverend Jesuit father, head of the col- lege established in Kaskaskia, and superior of all the missions in the valley, and the curate of the village, who received a small salary from the government, eked out by marriage and burial fees, and the gifts of his parishioners, were the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries in Illinois. Pomp and pride they had none ; devoted, poor and humble, it was the purity and goodness of their lives which gave them their powerful influence among their little flock. The people were sincerely religious after their kind ; and with the characteristic laxity of practice so ab- horred by the stricter followers of Calvin, after the services of the Sabbath were over, they devoted to quiet amusements and pleasures the remainder of the holy day.
They were ignorant of letters, and happy in their
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ignorance. The Jesuits established a few little schools, where were taught the elements of reading and writing ; and this was learning enough for the Frenchman of Illinois. The great world and its weighty affairs troubled him not. He supposed that the Pope managed all spiritual concerns, and Louis of France all temporal concerns. With their wisdom and power at the helm, represented by those two reve- rend and awful dignitaries, the curate and monsieur le commandant, he, the French settler in Illinois, was perfectly certain that all would go well ; he let the world wag on, and made himself happy with the tri- vial enjoyments brought by each peaceful day. He could read enough, and write enough, to draw, under- stand, and sign the simple instruments, which were all he needed, and to spell ont the stories of the saints, or a tale of the crusaders ; and more he needed not.
Each family held from one to three acres of land in the central part of the village. This was the pro- perty of the first settler of the name. Here the pa- triarch built his lowly cabin ; and as son or daughter married, another mud-walled and grass-roofed cabin arose near his own, and within the same inclosure. With each new marriage appeared a new home. These peaceful, easy lives, the pure, sweet air, the healthful out-door manners, and plain nutritious fo- rest food, prolonged life to a remarkable degree ; and
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thus around the house of the patriarch there gathered a dozen or a score, nay, forty or fifty dwellings of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, even to the fourth and fifth generations.
These communities were, perhaps, chiefly agricul- tural. Each family carefully tilled its separate allowance of the common field, and that wealthy soil repaid their neat though homely husbandry with plenteous and more than sufficient crops. Six hun- dred barrels of flour were shipped to New Orleans from the Wabash country alone, in 1746, besides hides, furs, tallow, wax, and honey.
But the first settlers had been the daring coureurs de bois, the runners of the woods, who had found their wild pleasures and their perilous profits in van- quishing the hardships and dangers of the pathless forest, the roaring rapid, the toilsome portage ; in the skillful but laborious occupation of the hunt ; and in trading with the fickle, treacherous and savage In- dians of those remote regions, from the Abenakis of New England and the Outaouacs, or Ottawas, of the St. Lawrence and Lake Huron, to the distant Sioux, or, as they were then termed, Nadouessions. And however quietly and easily the sons and grandsons of these roving men lived in the shaded cabin or the narrow, sunny street of Kaskaskia, or among the lux- uriant fields without ; however gaily their hours might pass amid the light labors of the day and the jovial
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dances of the evening ; there was scarce a young man in whom the wild longing for the forest and rivers did not at some time wake up. Then, in his frail ca- noe, he passed far up into the region of lakes at the head of the Mississippi, or the rugged, desolate plains upon the upper waters of the Missouri ; traversing the distant Sioux country, or even the rugged ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Hunting and trading, he returned with a canoe-load of furs ; floated afar off down to that great capital, New Orleans, or round by the bayous and creeks of the coast, to the distant city of Mobile ; exchanged his wild commodities for what- ever civilized merchandise seemed good unto him, and returned up the rapid river to his quiet prairie home, perhaps to refit and depart upon another ex- pedition to the Indian country ; perhaps to trado away the goods from below for produce, and return again to barter at the southern cities ; or perhaps to bury a bag of French livres and louis-d'ors, or Span- ish doubloons or dollars, beneath the floor of his home, and resume his labors in the fields.
Whether the young wanderer returned richer or poorer in purse, he brought home one certain and lasting treasure-a great store of wild tales of inci- dents by flood and field, his own strange and varied experiences, and many more, told him by the trap- pers of the mountains, the canoe-men of the river, and the various men he met in the cities of the south.
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The return of these travellers, after their long voy- age of twelve or twenty months, was-like every fes- tive occasion-celebrated by a ball ; for here, as eve- rywhere, dancing was a peculiar and prominent amusement of the light-hearted, social and active French. Word passed through all the settlement, of the return of the wanderers, and at once the place of entertainment was fitted up, and the arrangements made. Young and old, grandfather and grandchild, negro slave and fair maiden, all came to join in the festive scene. The entertainment was regul- lated with the same quaint municipal orderliness that controlled the operations of tillage and pasturage. Provosts were appointed, male and female ; usually some well-respected grandsire and grandam had charge of the ceremonial, saw that every lady was danced with and that every gentleman had his part- ner, that the negro slaves enjoyed their rightful equal share of liberty within the room, that even the little children had opportunity to frisk through their share of the dance among the rest ; and thus all passed in- nocently and gaily. At a given hour the company separated, and, joyous and satisfied, all went home. The ball-room was often graced by the reverend pre- sence of the priest of the village-for his simple pa- rishioners had no social amusements which he could not approve and witness-and in these rustic gaieties there was a degree of propriety and dignity-I might
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