Compendium of history, reminiscence, and biography of Nebraska : containing a history of the state of Nebraska also a compendium of reminiscence and biography containing biographical sketches of hundreds of prominent old settlers and representative citizens of Nebraska, Part 5

Author: Alden Publishing Company
Publication date: 1912
Publisher: Chicago : Alden Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1402

USA > Nebraska > Compendium of history, reminiscence, and biography of Nebraska : containing a history of the state of Nebraska also a compendium of reminiscence and biography containing biographical sketches of hundreds of prominent old settlers and representative citizens of Nebraska > Part 5

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The rediscovery of the lower Mississippi re- mained for the gallant, daring and indefatigahle La Salle, to whose labors, privations and enter- prise the French settlements in the Mississippi valley are so largely indebted. La Salle was a poor man, for, having relinquished his patrimony on entering the Society of Jesus, on his honorable retirement from that order he had nothing. In 1667, having in the meantime crossed the seas to the new world in search of fortune, he appeared as a fur trader near what is now the city of Mon- treal. His business led him to explore both Lakes Ontario and Erie. Full of enthusiasm for discov- ery and for the colonization of the west, he re-

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turned to his native land for help and authority to act. He received the title of Chevalier and considerable grants of land in Canada, and re- turned in 1678. The same year he conveyed a party from Fort Frontenac (now Kingston, Canada) to the neighborhood of Niagara Falls in a vessel of ten tons. This was the first craft that ever sailed up the Niagara river. In 1679 he launched a vessel of some seventy tons burden. On the 7th of August of that year, amid the salvos of artillery, the chants of the Te Deum by the priests, and the plaudits of the people and In- dians, he sailed from the little harbor. He passed through Lake Erie and through the Detriot and St. Clair rivers into Lake Huron. Onward through the straits of Mackinaw into Lake Michi- gan his little vessel ploughed its way, and was the first to navigate a sailing craft upon the blue waters of the latter body of water. Coasting down its western shore, La Salle, in his bark, which he had called the Griffin, came to Green Bay, where he came to anchor. He had named his little craft in honor of the coat of arms of his patron, Comte de Frontenac, then governor of New France. It was LaSalle's intention to util- ize his vessel in a regular commerce between the Indians and the settlements, but was doomed to disappointment. Having loaded the vessel with furs and peltries, he ordered the crew to return with it to the Niagara river. He journeyed down to the head of Lake Michigan, and, passing up the St. Joseph river, discovered a portage over the swamps and prairies to the Kankakee river. He followed the latter stream to the Illinois, and pad- dled down the latter river until he reached a point about where now stands the city of Peoria. Mis- fortunes then accumulated upon the head of La Salle. His vessel was wrecked on its voyage down the lakes and its cargo of furs and pelts totally lost, and the expected stores upon which he had depended to found and keep his colony did not come. The men that were with him grew discontented and threatened to desert. Like a man, and a brave and energetic one, he went to work to carry out the object that he had come so far to accomplish. He built a fort just below Lake Peoria, to which he gave the appropriate name of Creve Coeur (Broken Heart). He sent Accault, Father Hennepin and others who had accompanied him on a voyage up the Mississippi. This expedition, as related further on, was very successful, it being the first party of white men to tread the shores of the Mississippi river near its head and to gaze upon the falls of St. Anthony. After their departure, La Salle set his men to work to build a barge or boat in which to descend the river, but as sails and cordage were necessary, he determined to make the journey back to Cana- da. It was in the depth of winter, and he could have no food but what he could gain by the chase, and no drink but what the streams would afford. Leaving the bulk of his little force under his lieutenant, Tonti, he started with three compan-

ions on this almost unparalleled journey through the wilderness. He accomplished his mission, but on returning to the fort which he had built and where he had left his men, he found it deserted. The party, who had been ordered before his de- parture to erect a new fort on the bluff, had been assaulted by a band of Pottawattamie Indians, and, becoming demoralized, had fled to the shores of Lake Michigan for safety. After wasting some time in a fruitless search for his men, LaSalle fin- ally, with the party brught with him, started on his long voyage down the Illinois and Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. April 9, 1682, he took pos- session of the whole country watered by the great river from its source to its mouth in the name of the king of France, Louis XIV.

Thus was the Mississippi river in its lower course rediscovered and taken possession of as French territory, and thus to La Salle belongs the honor of first navigating its length from the mouth of the Ilinois southward. He gave to this vast empire he had added to the French possessions in America the name of Louisiana in honor of the king, Louis XIV, and to the river which is now called the Mississippi the name of Colbert, after that able minister of finance of France, then one of the foremost men of Europe. He erected a col- umn or cross near the mouth of the river, bearing the leaden plate with an inscription, which may be translated as:

"Louis the Great, King of France and Navarre, Reigning April 9, 1682."

He found the three channels of the delta where- by the river empties into the Gulf of Mexico. In May, 1683, he returned to France to make a re- port of his valuable discoveries. In 1685 he re- turned from his native land with a fleet and with emigrants to colonize the country he had found. Owing to the flat, level country, where land min- gled with the water in marsh and swamp spread for hundreds of miles along the north coast of the gulf, he was unable to find the mouth of the river. After beating about for some time in search, he was finally abandoned by Beaujeau, who com- manded the fleet, who returned to France. With his store ship and two hundred and thirty emi- grants, La Salle was driven ashore and wrecked in Matagorda Bay, in what is now the state of Texas. He hastily constructed a fort of the scat- tered timbers of the vessel and formed a colony, to which he gave the name of St. Louis. This set- tlement, as if by accident, made Texas a part of Louisiana.

After a four-months' search, which he con- ducted in canoes, for the lost mouth of the river, which proved fruitless, the restless La Salle, in April, 1686, turned his steps toward New Mexico with twenty companions. He hoped to find the rich gold mines of that country, the Eldorado of the Spanish. The colony did not prosper in his absence. Sickness and death soon took off many of the poor emigrants, so that on his return to that place he found it reduced to about forty or

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fifty persons. Moving them to a healthier locali- ty, La Salle determined to travel across the coun- try on foot to the settlements on the Illinois and to Canada, and bring back emigrants and supplies. January 12, 1687, he started with sixteen men, leaving the fort and settlment in charge of Sieur Barbier. His little party passed the basin of the Colorado and reached a branch of the Trinity river, where, March 20, 1687, the brave and gal- lant La Salle was assassinated by three of his own party. One of his biographers, who calls him truly the father of the French settlements in Louisiana, says: "Not a hint appears in any writer that has come under our notice that casts a shade upon his integrity and honor. Cool and intrepid at all times, never yielding for a moment to despair or even despondency, he bore the heavy burdens of his calamities to the end, and his hopes only expired with his breath."

In the meantime, in 1680-81, Louis Hennepin, the Franciscan friar, started down the Illinois river to explore its mouth, and on reaching the Mississippi extended his explorations northward as far as the falls of St. Anthony, which he named. The war between the Iroquois and Brit- ish colonies on the one side and the French of Canada on the other commenced in 1689, and any further attempt at colonization of the lower Mississippi was interrupted, and for a number of years exploration and colonization in the west was at a standstill.

It is now time to trace the growth of the great French province of Louisiana in another quarter. This was the parent stem from which grew so many of the great and growing states of the northwest, foremost among which is Nebraska.

At the close of the seventeenth century France, by right of discovery and occupation, claimed not only Canada and Nova Scotia, then known as New France and Acadia, Hudson's Bay and New Foundland, but parts of Maine, Vermont and New York, together with the whole of the Missis- sippi valley and possessions on the Gulf of Mexi- co, including Texas as far south as the Rio del Norte. The English revolution of 1688, when William of Orange succeeded James II upon the throne of England, nor the peace of Ryswick in 1697, did not affect these possessions of France in the new world. At the period at the close of the great war which had just been brought to an end by the above treaty, in which so many powers were included, none of the possessions of France in the new world engaged the attention of the French government so much as Louisiana. In 1697 D'Iberville still further aroused the interest of the minister of the colonies and inspired the Comte de Pontchartrain with the idea of building a fort and making a settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi. Two vessels were fitted out, one under the command of the Marquis de Chateau- Morand and the other under D'Iberville. Both left France in October, 1698, to find the mouth of the river, and after touching at Pensacola entered

the delta of the Mississippi March 2, 1699. De Chateau-Morand soon went back to Hayti, but D'Iberville ascended the river as far as what is now known as Bayou Goula. At this point he met an Indian chief who handed him a letter, which was written by Tonti, the man who had left his post at Fort Creve Coeur, where he had been placed by LaSalle, and was addressed to the latter as governor of Louisiana. It read as follows:

"Sir- Having found the post upon which you had set up the king's arms thrown down by the driftwood, I caused another to be fixed on this side, about seven leagues from the sea, where I have left a letter in a tree by the side of it. All the nations have smoked the calumet with me; they are people who fear us exceedingly since you have captured this village. I conclude by saying it is a great grief to me that we will return with the ill fortune of not having found you after we had coasted with two canoes thirty leagues on the Mexican side and twenty-five on that of Flor- ida."

The receipt of this letter was twelve years after the death of La Salle and nineteen after he and Tonti had parted at the Peoria fort. Neither knew what had become of the other. Both had sought the other unavailingly. The letter is in- teresting as shedding some light on Tonti's con- duct, but more so for the peculiarity of the Indian keeping it so long.

D'Iberville again descended the Mississippi, and went to the bay of Biloxi, between the Mis- sissippi and Mobile rivers, where he erected a fort. Missions, trading posts and small settle- ments began to be founded from that time on in the province. As early as 1712 land titles were issued as far north as Kaskaskia in what is now Illinois. Other settlements arose along the Mis- sissippi at various points from the mouth of the Illinois southward. The French determined to circumvent the English colonies on the Atlantic coast by building a line of forts from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, as was once sug- gested to the French government by La Salle. Part of this plan was carried into execution. Fort Chartres was constructed on the east bank of the Mississippi in what is now Randolph coun- ty, Illinois, about sixty-five miles south of the mouth of the Missouri river. This was one of the strongest fortresses on the continent at the time, and its ruins were to be seen a hundred years later. It was the headquarters of the command- ant of Louisiana. Shortly after that, the villages of Cahokia, Prairie du Rocher and others sprang into existence. Fort Vincennes, on the Wabash, was founded in 1702. A monastery and college was established in 1712 at Kaskaskia, a very im- portant post at that time and afterward the capi- tal of the state of Illinois. The French laid claim to all the great Mississippi valley at that time. "France," says Bancroft, "had obtained, under Providence, the guardianship of this immense district of country, not, as it proved, for her own

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benefit, but rather as a trustee for the infant na- tion by which it was one day to be inherited."

By the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, France ceded to England her possessions in Hudson's Bay, Nova Scotia and New Foundland, but the former power retained the sovereignty of Canada and Louisiana. In 1711 the affairs of the latter were placed in the hands of a governor general, but this only lasted one year. The colony, not meet- ing the expectations of the government of the mother country, in 1712 was farmed out to a com- pany to be carried on by private capital.

In the year 1712 the entire province of Louisi- ana, including the vast country between the Rocky mountains on the west and the Alleghan- ies on the east, in fact the entire area drained by the Mississippi, was granted to Anthony Crozart, or Crozat, a wealthy French merchant of Paris. Within this grant was the whole of the territory which now forms the state of Nebraska. It was stipulated that every two years Crozart was to send two ships from France with goods and emi- grants. In his grant the river "heretofore called the Mississippi" is named "St. Louis," the "Mis- sourys" is called "St. Phillip" and the "Qua- bache" (the Wabash and Ohio united) is named "St. Jerome." Louisiana was made dependent upon the general government of New France (or Canada). The laws of Paris were to be observed. Crozart's patent extended for a term of sixteen years, but was resigned in 1717, after five years. Every Spanish port on the gulf was closed to its commerce, and the occupation of Louisiana was at that time deemed an encroachment upon Spanish rights by that proud nation. Soon after the relin- quishment of the Crozart charter the colony of Louisiana was granted to the Mississippi Com- pany, projected by the dreamer John Law, of South Sea bubble fame, with a complete monopo- ly of its trade and commerce, to declare and pros- ecute wars and appoint officers. This company established Fort Chartres, about sixty-five miles below the mouth of the Missouri, on the east side of the Mississippi. Mechanics, miners and arti- sans were encouraged to emigrate, and in 1717 the city of New Orleans was founded. The Illinois country received a considerable accession, and settlements now began to extend along the banks of the Mississippi.

In 1718 the new company sent eight hundred emigrants to Louisiana. These people Governor Bienville settled at what is now New Orleans, but three years later the remainder of these people, some two hundred, were found still encamped on the site of the future city, they not having energy enough to build houses for themselves. The larger part had died on account of the climate and malarious condition of the land. In May, 1720, the bubble burst, the land company went into bankruptcy, impoverishing France both in its public funds and private fortunes. The effect on the infant settlement in the new world was more disastrous if possible. The principal occu-

pation of the new settlers, like their Spanish neighbors, was the search for immense mines of gold and silver, for which they neglected the enormous natural agricultural resources of the country, now the granary of the world and the source of supply of the larger part of the cotton and cane sugar of commerce. The contrast was strong between the colonies of the Latin races and those of Anglo-Saxon origin.

In 1719 there arrived in what is now Illinois one Phillipe Francois Renault, who had been ap- pointed director general of the mines of Louis- iana. With him lie brought two hundred miners and artisans. The extent of the country explored at that time embraced among others the head- waters of the Minnesota and the Red river of the north, the tributaries of the Missouri, and even extended to the Rocky mountains.

About this time hostilities with the Indians broke out, and a war with Spain threatened the lower part of the province. From 1712 to 1746 the settlers in Louisiana fought with the savages. In the latter year, at Butte des Morts and on the Wisconsin river, the Fox Indians were defeated and driven westward. During this time, in 1729, the Natchez, Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians rose and massacred all within their reach. Military operations against them were taken. The Choc- taws were detached from the confederacy by the diplomacy of Le Sueur, the famous explorer, and the Natchez defeated. The latter's chief, Great Sun, and four hundred of his people were taken prisoners and sold as slaves in Hispaniola, now the island of San Domingo-Hayti. Thus perished this interesting tribe, who were at that time semi- civilized, or had a civilization of their own ap- proaching in some degree that of the Aztec of Mexico.

In 1719 Dutisne, a French officer, was sent from New Orleans by the governor of Louisiana into the country west of the Mississippi, and revisited a village of Osage Indians, five miles from the Osage river, "at eighty leagues above its mouth." Thence he crossed to the northwest one hundred and twenty miles over prairies abounding with buffaloes to some villages of the Pawnees. He traveled westward fifteen days more, which brought him to the Paloukahs, a warlike tribe of Indians. Here he erected a cross with the arms of the king September 27, 1719. It is thought that Dutisne set foot on Nebraska soil on this trip. If he did not, he could not have been far from the Nebraska line. From the writings of Charlevoix concerning these explorations, we quote the fol- lowing :

"We arrived at the mouth of the Missouri on October 10, 1721. I believe this is the finest con- fluence in the world. The two rivers are much the same in breadth, each about half a league, but the Missouri is by far the most rapid, and seems to enter the Mississippi like a conqueror, through which it carries its white waters to the other shore without mixing them; afterwards it gives

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its color to the Mississippi, which it never loses again, but carries it quite down to the sea. The Osages, a pretty numerous nation, settled on the side of a river which hears their name, and which runs into the Missouri about forty leagues from its junction with the Mississippi, send once or twice a year to sing the calumet amongst the Kaskaskias, and are actually there at present. I have just seen a Missouri woman who told me that her nation is the first we meet with going up the Missouri. This nation (the Missouri) is situ- ated eighty leagues from the confluence of the Missouri river with the Mississippi."

Charleviox also gives the first information we have of the tribes of Indians above the Missouri nation. Higher up we find the Cansez (Kansas) ; then the Octotatoes (Otoes), which some call the Mactotatas; then the Ajouez (Iowas) and Panis (Pawnees), a very populous nation divided into several cantons which have names very different from each other. All the people I have mentioned inhabit the west side of the Missouri, except the Ajouez (Iowas), which are on the east side, neighbors of the Sioux and their allies." An- other writer says: "It is evident that during the first half of the seventeenth century the country now forming the state of Nebraska was inhabited along its southern border by the Kansas Indians ; that the Platte river, then called the Rivere des Panis, was the home of the Pawnees, who also had villages to the northward at a point a considera- ble distance up the Missouri river. But to the westward, on the headwaters of the Kansas river, of the Platte river and of the Niobrara, lived the Padouchas, a tribe long since extinct.

In about 1721-24 the French, under M. de Bourgmont, erected a fort on an island in the Missouri river above the mouth of the Osage river, which post was called "Fort Orleans." But the stockade was attacked after its comple- tion and occupation, and all the garrison slain. Bourgmont, the builder of this Fort Orleans, be- fore its destruction, passed many leagues up to the northwest of this fort into the Nebraska and Kansas country, and made firm friends with the Padoucahs, who had previously been seen by Dutisne.

In 1732 the Mississippi Company surrendered their charter to the French government, and then came the bursting of the "Mississippi bubble." This company had held possession of Louisiana for fourteen years, and left it with a population of five thousand whites and half as many blacks. On the 10th of April, 1732, the French king de- clared the province free to all his subjects, with equal privileges as to trade and commerce. Though the company had done little for the en- during welfare of the Mississippi valley regions, yet it did something. The cultivation of tobacco and rice was introduced, the lead mines of Mis- souri were opened, and in the Illinois country the cultivation of wheat began to assume some im- portance, but the immediate valley of the Missouri

and the country to the west remained wholly in possession of the native tribes. For thirty years or more after this there was but little worthy of special mention that transpired in the upper por- tion of the Louisiana province. St. Genevieve, on the west side of the Mississippi, within what is now Missouri, was founded, and during 1762 the first village was established on the Missouri river, named "Village du Cote," now St. Charles, Mo. In the same year the governor general of Louis- iana granted to Laclede and others a charter under the name of the "Louisiana Fur Com- pany," which, among other things, conferred the exclusive privilege of trading with the Indians of the Missouri river. But just before this time, momentous events had transpired in Canada. This country was conquered by the English, and the province of Louisiana became the property of other powers.

A brief review of the events leading up to the transfer of Louisiana to Spain by the French will be appropriate in this connection. On the 10th of April, 1732, after the bursting of the "Mississippi bubble" and the surrender of the charter of the Mississippi Company, the control of the commerce of Louisiana reverted to the crown of France. Bienville remained as governor for the French king until 1735. In the meantime a jealousy and rivalry had sprung up between Louisiana and the English colonies on the Atlan- tic coast which became fierce and bitter. In 1753 the first actual conflict arose between the French and English colonists. The French exerted every effort to prevent the other colonists from attempt- ing to extend their settlements toward the Mis- sissippi. The avowal was made of the purpose of seizing and punishing any Englishman found in the Ohio or Mississippi valley. To carry out their purpose the French seized upon a piece of terri- tory claimed by Virginia, and, alive to their in- terests, protests were made by the colonists of Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. In 1753 Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, sent George Washington, then a young man of twenty-one, to the French commandant to demand by what right he invaded British soil in the time of peace be- tween France and England. Gardeur de St. Pierre, the French officer in command, was met near the headwaters of the Alleghany by the young colonist, after a difficult winter journey. Washington, on stating his demands, received the insolent answer that they would not discuss right, but as they had discovered the country they would hold it.

On the return of Washington in January, 1754, he made his report. Forces were raised, and, under Colonel Washington, marched upon the enemy. They had an action in western Penn- sylvania with some of the French troops, in which ten of the latter, with their commander, Jumonville, were killed. Some twenty French were made prisoners. The French receiving re- inforcements, Washington was forced to fall back

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before overwhelming numbers. At Green Mead- ows he erected a rude stockade which he called Fort Necessity. Here he was shortly after sur- rounded by a force consisting of some six hun- dred French and a hundred or two Indians. On the 3rd of July he was forced to capitulate, and July 4, 1754, the British troops (or rather the colonials) withdrew from the Ohio valley. War between England and France broke out in May, 1755. This conflict lasted in the colonies, with various fortunes, until February 10, 1763, when the treaty of Paris was signed by the warring powers of Europe. By this instrument France renounced all her title to New France, now Cana- da, and all the land lying east of the Mississippi river, except the island and town of New Orleans.

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Compendium of history, reminiscence, and biography of Nebraska : containing a history of the state of Nebraska also a compendium of reminiscence and biography containing biographical sketches of hundreds of prominent old settlers and representative citizens of Nebraska, Part 5

Author: Alden Publishing Company Publication date: 1912 Publisher: Chicago : Alden Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 1402

Author: Alden Publishing Company
Publication date: 1912
Publisher: Chicago : Alden Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1402