History of Greene County, together with historic notes on the northwest and the state of Ohio, Part 5

Author: R. S. Dills
Publication date: 1881
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1037

USA > Ohio > Greene County > History of Greene County, together with historic notes on the northwest and the state of Ohio > Part 5

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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

all returned toward evening, having vainly endeavored to find him. The next day I went up the river myself, but hearing nothing of him, I came back, and found our men very much perplexed, fearing he was lost. However, about four o'clock in the afternoon M. La Salle re- turned to us, having his face and hands as black as pitch. He carried two beasts as big as muskrats, whose skin was very fine and like ermine. He had killed them with a stick as they hung by their tails to the branches of the trees.

" He told us that the marshes he had met on his way had compelled him to bring a large compass; and that, being much delayed by the snow, which fell very fast, it was past midnight before he arrived upon the banks of the river, where he fired his gun twice, and hearing no answer, he concluded that we had gone higher up the river, and had, therefore, marched that way. IIe added that, after three hours' march, he saw a fire upon the hill, whither he went directly and hailed us several times; but hearing no reply, he approached and found no per- son near the fire, but only some dry grass, upon which a man had laid a little while before, as he conjectured, because the bed was still warm. He supposed that a savage had been occupying it, who fled upon his approach, and was now hid in ambuscade near by. La Salle called out loudly to him in two or three languages, saying that he need not be afraid of him, and that he was agoing to lie in his bed. La Salle re- ceived no answer. To guard against surprise, La Salle cut bushes and placed them to obstruct the way, and sat down by the fire, the smoke of which blackened his hands and face, as I have already observed. Having warmed and rested himself, he laid down under the tree upon the dry grass the savage had gathered and slept well, notwithstanding the frost and snow. Father Gabriel and I desired him to keep with his men, and not to expose himself in the future, as the success of our enterprise depended solely on him, and he promised to follow our ad- vice. Our savage, who remained behind to hunt, finding none of us at the portage, came higher up the river, to where we were, and told us we had missed the place. We sent all the canoes back under his charge except one, which I retained for M. La Salle, who was so weary that he was obliged to remain there that night. I made a little hut with mats, constructed with marsh rushes, in which we laid down to- gether for the night. By an unhappy accident our cabin took fire, and we were very near being burned alive after we had gone to sleep."

Here follows Hennepin's description of the Kankakee portage, and of the marshy grounds about the headwaters of the stream, as already quoted on page 24.

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ABORIGINAL NAME OF "KANKAKEE."

"Having passed through the marshes, we came to a vast prairie, in which nothing grows but grasses, which were at this time dry and burnt, because the Miamis set the grasses on fire every year, in hunt- ing for wild oxen (buffalo), as I shall mention farther on. We found no game, which was a disappointment to us, as our provisions had begun to fail. Our men traveled about sixty miles without killing anything other than a lean stag, a small wild goat, a few swan and two bustards, which were but a scanty subsistence for two and thirty men. Most of the men were become so weary of this laborious life that, were it practicable, they would have run away and joined the savages, who, as we inferred by the great fires which we saw on the prairies, were not very far from us. There must be an innumerable quantity of wild cattle in this country, since the ground here is every- where covered with their horns. The Miamis hunt them toward the latter end of autumn."

That part of the Illinois River above the Desplaines is called the Kankakee, which is a corruption of its original Indian name. St. Cosme, the narrative of whose voyage down the Illinois River, by way of Chicago, in 1699, and found in Dr. Shea's work of " Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi," refers to it as the The-a-li-ke, " which is the real river of the Illinois, and (says) that which we descended (the Desplaines) was only a branch." Father Marest, in his letter of November 9, 1712, narrating a journey he had previously made from Kaskaskia up to the Mission of St. Joseph, says of the Illinois River : "We transported all there was in the canoe toward the source of the Illinois (Indian), which they call Han-ki-ki. Father Charlevoix, who descended the Kankakee from the portage, in his let- ter, dated at the source of the river Theakiki, September 17, 1721, says : " This morning I walked a league farther in the meadow, hav- ing my feet almost always in the water; afterward I met with a kind of a pool or marsh, which had a communication with several others of different sizes, but the largest was about a hundred paces in circuit ; these are the sources of the river The-a-ki-ki, which, by a corrupted pronunciation, our Indians call Ki-a-ki-ki. Theak signifies a wolf, in what language I do not remember, but the river bears that name because the Mahingans (Mohicans), who were likewise called wolves, had formerly taken refuge on its banks." The Mohicans were of the Algonquin stock, anciently living east of the Hudson River, where they had been so persecuted and nearly destroyed by the implacable Iroquois that their tribal integrity was lost, and they were dispersed in small families over the west, seeking protection in isolated places,

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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

or living at sufferance among their Algonquin kindred. They were brave, faithful to the extreme, famous scouts and successful hunters. La Salle, appreciating these valuable traits, usually kept a few of them in his employ. The "savage," or "hunter," so often referred to by Hennepin, in the extracts we have taken from his journal, was a Mohican.

In a report made to the late Governor Ninian Edwards, in 1812, by John Hays, interpreter and Coureur de Bois of the routes, rivers and Indian villages in the then Illinois Territory, Mr. Hays calls the Kankakee the Quin-que-que, which was probably its French-Indian name. Col. Guerdon S. Hubbard, who, for many years, dating back as early as 1819, was a trader, and commanded great influence with the bands of Pottawatomies, claiming the Kankakee as their country, informs the writer that the Pottawatomie name of the Kankakee is Ky-an-ke-a-kee, meaning "the river of the wonderful or beautiful land-as it really is, westward of the marshes. "A-kee," "Ah-ke" and "Aki," in the Algonquin dialect, signifies earth or land.

The name Desplaines, like that of the Kankakee, has undergone changes in the progress of time. On a French map of Louisiana, in 1717, the Desplaines is laid down as the Chicago River. Just after Great Britain had secured the possessions of the French east of the Mississippi, by conquest and treaty, and when the British authorities were keenly alive to everything pertaining to their newly acquired possessions, an elaborate map, collated from the most authentic sources by Eman Bowen, geographer to His Majesty King George the Third, was issued, and on this map the Desplaines is laid down as the Illinois, or Chicago River. Many early French writers speak of it, as they do of the Kankakee above the confluence, as the "River of the Illinois." Its French Canadian name is Au Plein, now changed to Desplaines, or Rivière Au Plein, or Despleines, from a variety of hard maple-that is to say, sugar tree. The Pottawatomies called it She- skik-mao-shi-ke Se-pe, signifying the river of the tree from which a great quantity of sap flows in the spring. It has also been sanctified by Father Zenobe Membre with the name Divine River, and by authors of early western gazetteers, vulgarized by the appellation of Kickapoo Creek.

Below the confluence of the Desplaines, the Illinois River was, by La Salle, named the Seignelay, as a mark of his esteem for the bril- liant young Colbert, who succeeded his father as Minister of the Marine. On the great map, prepared by the engineer Franquelin in 1684, it is called River Des Illinois, or Macoupins. The name Illinois,

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NAMES OF THE ILLINOIS.

which, fortunately, it will always bear, was derived from the name of the confederate tribes who anciently dwelt upon its banks.

"We continued our course," says Hennepin, "upon this river (the Kankakee and Illinois) very near the whole month of December, at the latter end of which we arrived at a village of the Illinois, which lies near a hundred and thirty leagues from Fort Miamis, on the Lake of the Illinois. We suffered greatly on the passage, for the savages having set fire to the grass on the prairie, the wild cattle had fled, and we did not kill one. Some wild turkeys were the only game we secured. God's providence supported us all the while, and as we meditated upon the extremities to which we were reduced, regarding ourselves without hope of relief, we found a very large wild ox sticking fast in the mud of the river. We killed him, and with much difficulty dragged him out of the mud. This was a great refreshment to our men ; it revived their courage-being so timely and unexpect- edly relieved, they concluded that God approved our undertaking.

The great village of the Illinois, where La Salle's party had now arrived, has been located with such certainty by Francis Parkman, the learned historical writer, as to leave no doubt of its identity. It was on the north side of the Illinois River, above the mouth of the Ver- mill.on and below Starved Rock, near the little village of Utica, in La Salle county, Illinois.

" We found," continues Father Hennepin, "no one in the vil- lage, as we had foreseen, for the Illinois, according to their custom, had divided themselves into small hunting parties. Their absence caused great perplexity amongst us, for we wanted provisions, and yet did not dare to meddle with the Indian corn the savages had laid under ground for their subsistence and for seed. However, our neces- sity being very great, and it being impossible to continue our voyage without any provisions, M. La Salle resolved to take about forty bushels of corn, and hoped to appease the savages with presents. We embarked again, with these fresh provisions, and continued to fall down the river, which runs directly toward the south. On the 1st of January we went through a lake (Peoria Lake) formed by the river, about seven leagues long and one broad. The savages call that place Pimeteoui, that is, in their tongue, 'a place where there is an abun- dance of fat animals.' "

Resuming Hennepin's narrative : "The current brought us, in the meantime, to the Indian camp, and M. La Salle was the first one to land, followed closely by his men, which increased the consternation of the savages, whom we easily might have defeated. As it was

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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

not our design, we made a halt to give them time to recover them- selves and to see that we were not enemies. Most of the savages who had run away upon our landing, understanding that we were friends, returned ; but some others did not come back for three or four days, and after they had learned that we had smoked the calumet. " I must observe here, that the hardest winter does not last longer than two months in this charming country, so that on the 15th of Jan- uary there came a sudden thaw, which made the rivers navigable, and the weather as mild as it is in France in the middle of the spring. M. La Salle, improving this fair season, desired me to go down the river with him to choose a place proper to build a fort. We selected an eminence on the bank of the river, defended on that side by the river, and on two others by deep ravines, so that it was accessible only on one side. We cast a trench to join the two ravines, and made the eminence steep on that side, supporting the earth with great pieces of timber. We made a rough palisade to defend ourselves in case the Indians should attack us while we were engaged in building the fort ; but no one offering to disturb us, we went on diligently with our work. When the fort was half finished, M. La Salle lodged himself, with M. Tonti, in the middle of the fortification, and every one took his post. We placed the forge on the curtain on the side of the wood, and laid in a great quantity of coal for that purpose. But our greatest difficulty was to build a boat-our carpenters having deserted us, we did not know what to do. However, as timber was abundant and neur at hand, we told our men that if any of them would under- take to saw boards for building the bark, we might surmount all other difficulties. Two of the men undertook the task, and succeeded so well that we began to build a bark, the keel whereof was forty-two feet long. Our men went on so briskly with the work, that on the 1st of March our boat was half built, and all the timber ready pre- pared for furnishing it. Our fort was also very near finished, and we named it 'Fort Crevecoeur,' because the desertion of our men, and other difficulties we had labored under, had almost 'broken our hearts.' "

"M. La Salle," says Hennepin, " no longer doubted that the Griffin was lost; but neither this nor other difficulties dejected him. His great courage buoyed him up, and he resolved to return to Fort Fron- tenac by land, notwithstanding the snow, and the great dangers attend- ing so long a journey. We had many private conferences, wherein it was decided that he should return to Fort Frontenac with three men, to bring with him the necessary articles to proceed with the discovery,

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A GREAT FEAT.

while I, with two men, should go in a canoe to the River Meschasipi, and endeavor to obtain the friendship of the nations who inhabited its banks.

"M. La Salle left Tonti to command in Fort Crevecoeur, and ordered our carpenter to prepare some thick boards to plank the deck of our ship, in the nature of a parapet, to cover it against the arrows of the savages in case they should shoot at us from the shore. Then, calling his men together, La Salle requested them to obey M. Tonti's orders in his absence, to live in Christian union and charity ; to be courageous and firm in their designs, and above all not to give credit to false reports the savages might make, either of him or of their comrades who accompanied Father Hennepin."

Hennepin and his two companions, with a supply of trinkets suit- able for the Indian trade, left Fort Crevecoeur for the Mississippi, on the 29th of February, 1680, and were captured by the Sioux, as al- ready stated. From this time to the ultimate discovery and taking possession of the Mississippi and the valleys by La Salle, Father Zenobe Membre was the historian of the expedition.

La Salle started across the country, going up the Illinois and Kan- kakee, and through the southern part of the present State of Mich- igan. He reached the Detroit River ; ferrying the stream with a raft, he at length stood on Canadian soil. Striking a direct line across the wilderness, he arrived at Lake Erie, near Point Pelee. By this time only one man remained in health, and with his assistance La Salle made a canoe. Embarking in it the party came to Niagara on Easter Mon- day. Leaving his comrades, who were completely exhausted, La Salle on the 6th of May reached Fort Frontenac, making a journey of over a thousand miles in sixty-five days, "the greatest feat ever performed by a Frenchman in America."

La Salle found his affairs in great confusion. His creditors had seized upon his estate, including Fort Frontenac. Undaunted by this new misfortune, he confronted his creditors and enemies, pacifying the former and awing the latter into silence. He gathered the frag- ments of his scattered property and in a short time started west with a company of twenty-five men, whom he had recruited to assist in the prosecution of his discoveries. He reached Lake Huron by the way of Lake Simcoe, and shortly afterwards arrived at Mackinaw. Here he found that his enemies had been very busy, and had poisoned the minds of the Indians against his designs.

We leave La Salle at Mackinaw to notice some of the occurrences that took place on the Illinois and St. Joseph after he had departed

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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

for Fort Frontenac. On this journey, as La Salle passed up the Illi- nois he was favorably impressed with Starved Rock as a place present- ing strong defences naturally. He sent word back to Tonti, below Peoria Lake, to take possession of " The Rock " and erect a fortifi- cation on its summit. Tonti accordingly came up the river with a part of his available force and began to work upon the new fort. While engaged in this enterprise the principal part of the men re- maining at Fort Crevecoeur mutinied. They destroyed the vessel on the stocks, plundered the storehouse, escaped up the Illinois River and appeared before Fort Miami. These deserters demolished Fort Miami and robbed it of goods and furs of La Salle, on deposit there, and then fled out of the country. These misfortunes were soon fol- lowed by an incursion of the Iroquois, who attacked the Illinois in their village near the Starved Rock. Tonti acting as mediator, came near losing his life at the hand of an infuriated Iroquois warrior, who drove a knife into his ribs. Constantly an object of distrust to the Illinois, who feared he was a spy and friend of the Iroquois, in turn exposed to the jealousy of the Iroquois, who imagined he and his French friends were allies of the Illinois, Tonti remained faithful to his trust until he saw that he could not avert the blow meditated by the Iroquois. Then, with Fathers Zenobe Membre and Gabriel Rebourde, and a few Frenchmen who had remained faithful, he escaped from the enraged Indians and made his way, in a leaky canoe, up the Illinois River. Father Gabriel one fine day left his com- panions on the river to enjoy a walk in the beautiful groves near by, and while thus engaged, as he was meditating upon his holy call- ing, fell into an ambuscade of Kickapoo Indians. The good old man, unconscious of his danger, was instantly knocked down, the scalp torn from his venerable head, and his gray hairs afterward exhibited in tri- umph by his young murderers as a trophy taken from the crown of an Iroquois warrior. Tonti, with those in his company, pursued his course, passing by Chicago, and thence up the west shore of Lake Michigan. Subsisting on berries, and often on acorns and roots which they dug from the ground, they finally arrived at the Pottawatomie towns. Previous to this they abandoned their canoe and started on foot for the Mission of Green Bay, where they wintered.

La Salle, when he arrived at St. Joseph, found Fort Miamis plun- dered and demolished. He also learned that the Iroquois had attacked the Illinois. Fearing for the safety of Tonti, he pushed on rapidly, only to find, at Starved Rock, the unmistakable signs of an Indian slaughter. The report was true. The Iroquois had defeated the Illi-

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DESCRIPTION OF THE MISSOURI.

nois and driven them west of the Mississippi. La Salle viewed the wreck of his cherished project, the demolition of the fort, the loss of his peltries, and especially the destruction of his vessel, in that usual calm way peculiar to him; and, although he must have suffered the most intense anguish, no trace of sorrow or indecision appeared on his inflexible countenance. Shortly afterward he returned to Fort Miamis. La Salle occupied his time, until spring, in rebuilding Fort Miamis, holding conferences with the surrounding Indian tribes, and confeder- ating them against future attacks of the Iroquois. He now abandoned the purpose of descending the Mississippi in a sailing vessel, and de- termined to prosecute his voyage in the ordinary wooden pirogues or canoes.

Tonti was sent forward to Chicago Creek, where he constructed a number of sledges. After other preparations had been made, La Salle and his party left St. Joseph and came around the southern extremity of the lake. The goods and effects were placed on the sledges pre- pared by Tonti. La Salle's party consisted of twenty-three French- men and eighteen Indians. The savages took with them ten squaws and three children, so that the party numbered in all fifty-four persons. They had to make the portage of the Chicago River. After dragging their canoes, sledges, baggage and provisions about eighty leagues over the ice, on the Desplaines and Illinois Rivers, they came to the great Indian town. It was deserted, the savages having gone down the river to Lake Peoria. From Peoria Lake the navigation was open, and embarking on the 6th of February, they soon arrived at the Mis- sissippi. Here, owing to floating ice, they were delayed till the 13th of the same month. Membre describes the Missouri as follows: " It is full as large as the Mississippi, into which it empties, troubling it so that, from the mouth of the Ozage (Missouri), the water is hardly drinkable. The Indians assured us that this river is formed by many others, and that they ascend it for ten or twelve days to a mountain where it rises; that beyond this mountain is the sea, where they see great ships; that on the river are a great number of large villages. Although this river is very large, the Mississippi does not seem aug- mented by it, but it pours in so much mud that, from its mouth, the water of the great river, whose bed is also slimy, is more like clear mud than river water, without changing at all till it reaches the sea, a distance of more than three hundred leagues, although it receives seven large rivers, the water of which is very beautiful, and which are almost as large as the Mississippi." From this time, until they neared the mouths of the Mississippi, nothing especially worthy of note occurred.

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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

On the 6th of April they came to the place where the river divides itself into three channels. M. La Salle took the western, the Sieur Dautray the southern, and Tonti, accompanied by Membre, followed the middle channel. The three channels were beautiful and deep. The water became brackish, and two leagues farther it became perfectly salt, and advancing on they at last beheld the Gulf of Mexico. La Salle, in a canoe, coasted the borders of the sea, and then the parties assembled on a dry spot of ground not far from the mouth of the river. On the 9th of April, with all the pomp and ceremony of the Holy Catholic Church, La Salle, in the name of the French king, took pos- session of the Mississippi and all its tributaries. First they chanted the " Vexilla Regis " and "Te Deum," and then, while the assembled voyagers and their savage attendants fired their muskets and shouted " Vive le Roi," La Salle planted the column, at the same time pro- claiming, in a loud voice, "In the name of the Most High, Mighty, Invincible, and Victorious Prince, Louis the Great, by the Grace of God King of France and of Navarre, Fourteenth of that name, I, this 9th day of April, one thousand six hundred and eighty-two, in virtue of the commission of His Majesty, which I hold in my hand, and which may be seen by all whom it may concern, have taken, and do now take, in the name of His Majesty and his successors to the crown, possession of this country of Louisiana, the seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the people, nations, provinces, cities, towns, villages, minerals, fisheries, streams and rivers, within the extent of the said Louisiana, from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, otherwise called Ohio, as also along the river Colbert, or Mississippi, and the rivers which discharge themselves therein, from its source beyond the country of the Nadonessious (Sioux), as far as its mouth at the sea, and also to the mouth of the river of Palms, upon the assurance we have had from the natives of these countries that we were the first Europeans who have descended or ascended the river Colbert (Mississippi) ; hereby protesting against all who may hereafter undertake to invade any or all of these aforesaid countries, peoples or lands, to the prejudice of His Majesty, acquired by the consent of the nations dwelling herein. Of which, and of all else that is needful, I hereby take to witness those who hear me, and demand an act of the notary here present."

At the foot of the tree to which the cross was attached La Salle caused to be buried a leaden plate, on one side of which were engraven the arms of France, and on the opposite the following Latin inscrip- tion :

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TAKING POSSESSION OF LOUISIANA.

LVDOVICUS MAGNUS REGNAT. NONO APRILIS CIO IOC LXXXII. ROBERTVS CAVALIER, CVM DOMINO DETONTI LEGATO, R. P. ZENO- BIO MEMBRE, RECCOLLECTO, ET VIGINTI GALLIS PRIMVS HOC FLVMEN, INDE AB ILINEORVM PAGO ENAVAGAVIT, EZVQUE OSTIVM FECIT PERVIVM, NONO APRILIS ANNI.

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History of Greene County, together with historic notes on the northwest and the state of Ohio, Part 5

Author: R. S. Dills Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1037

Author: R. S. Dills
Publication date: 1881
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1037