USA > Ohio > History of Ohio; the rise and progress of an American state, Volume One > Part 9
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Nicolet's dazzling methods and shrewd diplomacy won many tribes to the fealty of France and a few years later the Jesuit priests celebrated mass, amid solemn services at the Sault St. Marie in the presence of two thousand naked savages.
CHAPTER V. LA SALLE DISCOVERS THE OHIO
W HILE the French explorers and missionaries were venturing on toward what they sup- posed would be the verge of the continent and were attracting the friendly attention of the astonished natives with spectacular ceremonies, a dreadful tragedy was being enacted in the Huron country. This was the western portion of the penin- sula between Lakes Huron and Ontario. It was the dwelling-land of the Hurons, equally known as the Wyandots. They were the old-time enemies of the Iroquois. A small nation, the allies and kindred of the Hurons, were the Petuns, commonly called the Tobacco Tribe, because of their custom of cultivating the nicotian leaf, which they bartered extensively with other tribes. This tribe immediately adjoined the Wyandots on the southwest. Next to the Petuns and east of the Hurons, on the northeastern end of Lake Erie and along the roaring gorge of the Niagara River lived the Neuter Nation, so called because they sought to remain passive in the war between the Iroquois and the Hurons.
In the year 1649-"in the dead of winter"-the Iroquois warriors invaded the Huron territory and with the fury of a hurricane swept down upon their towns:
" In their faces stern defiance, In their hearts the feuds of ages, The hereditary hatred, The ancestral threat of vengeance."
The Iroquois burned the palisades and huts of the Hurons, destroying some fifteen villages and slaughter- ing the inhabitants with indescribable cruelty. Many of the Hurons were carried off as captives, numerous
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bands who could escape, fled to the islands of Lake Huron and to the regions of Lakes Michigan and Superior, some of them finding refuge with tribes as distant as the Sioux, the Ottawas, the Iowas, and the Winnebagoes. Not a few sought and received pro- tection in the French Canadian settlements. It was literally the dispersion of a nation, and the Hurons were thereafter wanderers on the face of the earth. A few years later the Tobacco tribe and the Neuter Nation met the fate of the Wyandots. The destruc- tion of these three tribes by the Iroquois was complete, and the conquering Five Nations then commanded Canada north of Lake Erie.
Drunk with human blood and frenzied by their victories in the north, the irresistible Iroquois now turned fiercely upon their next door neighbors and hitherto friends, the Erigas or Eries, styled by the French the Cat Nation-Nation du Chat-from the custom the Eries had of wearing the skin of a species of panther or wildcat, an animal about the size of a fox that frequented the land of the Eries. The early Jesuit Relations speak of the Eries as the Riqueh- ronnons. The territory of this tribe lay immediately south of Lake Erie and extended from the Genesee River,-the frontier of the Five Nations,-across the northern portion of Ohio to the Miami River on the west. How far south their settlements reached is not definitely known, but probably more or less sparsely to the Ohio River. This Erie country, the Relations report, was a land of "unusual fertility with a climate neither too cold nor too warm." The history of this nation, previous to their being found in the location
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just designated, is involved in obscurity. The first glimpse we get of the Eries, indeed about all we learn of them, is from the Jesuits, who seem to have had no mission among the Eries but concerning whom they obtained their information from the Iroquois. As Champlain himself relates, the Eries were visited by the famous Brulé in the summer of 1615. This visit was for the purpose of getting the Eries to aid the French against the Iroquois. In this journey, it is claimed, Brulé landed on the southern shore of Lake Erie and if so was probably the first white man to stand upon the soil of Ohio.
The Eries doubtless came into northern Ohio from the west, being driven thither by their victorious enemies. The Eries were a populous and brave tribe. They had many permanent and strongly protected towns and villages, sheltering perhaps fifteen thousand people and mustering, according to the Jesuits, as reported by the Iroquois,-who would be very likely however, in this case, to exaggerate,-a force of four thousand warriors. At any rate the Eries were pecu- liarly skilled with the bow and arrow and were known as "far-famed archers" who fought like the wildcats from which they were named. The Senecas whose territory the Eries touched and with whom they had been on friendly terms, smoked the pipe of peace with the Eries while the other four tribes of the Five Nations were stealthily preparing for war. This was an oft- played act of treacherous diplomacy on the part of the Iroquois.
It was in 1655 that the Iroquois invaded the land of the Eries. It was a war to the knife, as briefly told
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in the Relations. As near as may be inferred from the meagre record of the Jesuits, the Iroquois embarked in canoes on Lake Erie and upon their landing,-pre- sumably near site of Erie, Pa .- the Eries,-those who were directly engaged in the strife,-retreated into the interior forests and finally took a stand in their chief town called Riqué, "at the place of the panther, " which was fortified by palisades of felled trees. It was a desperate and bloody siege. The Iroquois had the advantage in having firearms but the Eries could discharge six or seven volleys of poisoned arrows upon the assaulters before the latter could reload and fire again. The Iroquois lifted their canoes bottom up over their heads and shoulders, thus using them as shields to protect them from the continuous shower of poisoned darts. Finally the besiegers, thus run the Relations, planted their canoes on end against the palisades, mounted the cross bars like ladders, scaled the tree-made barricades and overpowered the brave defenders. The butchery was frightful, and the brutality of the victors is too awful to relate. The pitiless Iroquois "wrought such carnage among women. and children, the blood ran knee-deep in certain places." Squaws and papooses were slaughtered by the hundred with fiendish ingenuity and delight. The vanquished Eries fled south and west, large numbers of them were absorbed in the tribes of the conquerors. Indeed it was the policy of the Five Nations to replenish their losses in war by merging into their tribes the young braves captured from the enemy.
It was the absolute destruction of the Eries, who, says one author, "melted away like a dream," for
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the Cat Nation no longer appears as such in Indian history, and "no memorial of their race exists save the lake which bears their name." A brilliant histori- cal writer on Indian lore closes a lecture before the Buffalo Historical Society with this quotation touching the disappearance of the Eries:
" Ye say they have all passed away, That noble race and brave,
That their light canoes have vanished From off the crested wave.
That mid the forests where they roamed There rings no hunter's shout,
But their name is on our waters, And ye may not wash it out."
The unchecked power of the Long House now practically encircled Lake Erie. This Erie-Iroquois warfare is, so far as we have been able to learn, the first historic incident of importance occurring within the subsequent confines of our State. The event is at least our introduction to the Indian contest for suprem- acy in the Ohio country. Thus the great nations, the Hurons, Neuters, and Eries, not reckoning the Tobacco Tribe, had been annihilated. Three of the great nations named had a population estimated to be equal to that of the Iroquois, and the six nations destroyed by the Long House in the space of six years numbered in all not less than sixty thousand people. But it must be remembered these so-called "nations" were in reality nothing more than mere aggregations of villages and scattered families with no authorized controlling government or power. They were purely voluntary associations influenced or directed by the more or less self-constituted chiefs or leaders. We
h
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shall speak further of this later on. The Iroquois therefore had an overwhelming advantage in their perfected and perpetuated organization and sagacious leadership. Their warfare was a science against which their enemies struggled without system or premedita- tion.
Directly south of the Long House lay the Andastes or Conestogas. They comprised several small tribes on and near the Susquehanna, which name is also applied to them. The Andastes were along the valleys of the Allegheny and upper Ohio. The Cat Nation dispersed, the Iroquois turned their arms against the Andastes but the latter were scattered and almost unconquerable. They kept up a brave resistance for many years and it was not until 1672 that their destruc- tion was consummated.
We cannot follow the conquering career of the Iroquois, fascinating as the subject certainly would prove to be. Merely may we mention en passant that while they were successfully warring with the Hurons on the northwest, the Eries on the west, and the Andastes on the south, they were, in the decade 1662- 72, likewise, carrying their victorious arms to the northeast, compelling the Adirondacks to make igno- minious terms of peace and so intimidating them that the latter ever after refrained from entering the terri- tory of the Iroquois.
During this same period the restless people of the Long House invaded the New England colonies and made war on the tribes of the Massachusetts, Pawtuckets, Pennacooks, Kennebecks, Pokomtakukes. Quabaugs, Nipmucks and Nashaways. This war broke
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up many of the settlements of the tribes named and the retreating tribesmen were compelled to fall back upon the borders of the English plantations and seek protection from the colonists.
Amid these wars among the tribes, the French fur traders and explorers and the Jesuits were undaunted. With tireless energy and fearless persistency they con- tinued their perilous journeyings to the northwest, by way of the Ottawa River. With reluctance we pass over the recitals of these notable accounts, so thrillingly told at first hand in the Jesuit Relations, so faithfully summarized in Shea's "History of the Catholic Missions," and so graphically portrayed by the brilliant pen of Parkman.
The time had come for a grand play and Talon, the Intendant of New France, prepared to make it. In 1670 he sent Saint-Lusson to the Sault St. Marie, long before known, as we have seen, to the explorers and missionaries. It was the key-point in the Great Lakes region. The Jesuits had journeyed there many years before and the famous Father Marquette had already (1668) founded there a mission for the conversion of the Indian tribes in that vicinity. Through messen- gers sent broadcast, Saint-Lusson, an adept in Indian dialects, with a party of fifteen associates, soldiers and priests, including the interpreter Nicolas Perrot and the explorer Louis Joliet, had requested the presence of representatives of the Indian tribes. They assembled in various numbers from the Pottawat- tomies, Miamis, Sacs, Winnebagoes, Menomonies, Crees, Monsonis, Amikoues, Nipissings, and many more, fourteen tribes in all. This motley throng of
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several hundred forest savages assembled in their various scant costumes and gawdy adornments, to the natural music of the rippling waters of the rapids,
"With their weapons and their war-gear, Painted like the leaves of Autumn, Painted like the sky of morning, Wildly glaring at each other."
These swarmed about the Mission fort on the little hill, where a large cross, first blessed by the Jesuits, was raised and fastened in the ground. The French- men sang their triumphant hymn:
" The banners of Heaven's King advance, The mystery of the cross shines forth."
Then near the cross was reared a post bearing a metal plate inscribed with the French royal arms. A prayer was offered for the king. Then Saint-Lusson advanced, and holding his sword aloft in one hand and raising a sod of earth with the other, he formally, in the name of God and France, proclaimed possession of "Lakes Huron and Superior and all countries, rivers, lakes, and streams contiguous and adjacent thereunto, both those that have been discovered and those which may be discovered hereafter, in all their length and breadth, bounded on one side by the seas of the north and west and on the other by the South Sea;" etc. The French- men fired a salute and "the yelps of the astonished Indians mingled with the din." Little did those simple children of the forest realize that they were applauding a pageantry that preluded the doom of their race. Six centuries before, William the Norman Conqueror landed in Britain, and as the free-booter leaped upon the shore he stumbled and fell, but with
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French wit, which the Normans had picked up in their Gallic sojourn, he seized a handful of the soil and springing to his feet, holding the clod of England on high exclaimed: "See, by the grace of God, I already have the country in my grasp." From this latter incident and the one just related above, it would seem that the Latins were a close second to the Anglo- Saxons in the art of land-grabbing with spectacular accompaniments. But the Anglo-Saxon according to the results of history has the longer and tighter grip.
While the fur traders and the wood runners were tramping the forests in search of peltries and the mis- sionaries were setting up their altars at Indian centers and breaking the forest silence with the chanting of mass, and the singing of hymns, the explorers were tracing the rivers and lakes and dreaming of vast empires yet unentered and of that ignis fatuus, the northwest passage, that should open to them the wealth of the Orient.
The Ohio thus far was a fluvius incognitus. Rumors of its beauty and extent had often reached the French settlements on the St. Lawrence. It remained for La Salle to be its discoverer. His full name was Réné Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. Nature had formed him in her strongest mold, endowing him with powerful physique and courtly bearing. One with so striking an appearance and a name so euphoneous would naturally be expected to distinguish himself in some unusual way, and he does not disappoint us. He was born in the year 1643 in the city of Rouen, where just two centuries before, the ill-fated patriot- martyr, Joan of Arc met her tragic death at the stake.
b y 1, st h. ed se re of Lan ter ith
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At an early age La Salle joined the Jesuits and was by them educated, but his restless temperament was ill suited to the rigid religious life of that society, and he abandoned it in early manhood for a wider and more worldly career. From youth he had an unquenchable thirst for adventure and "an intense longing for action and achievement." An elder brother, Abbé Jean Cavelier, was a priest of the Saint Sulpice order, and had emigrated to Canada. Thither in 1666 Robert joined him. The Sulpitians had acquired proprietary and feudal rights in the Canadian country and estab- lished a seminary at Montreal, which town they had also founded. These Sulpitian priests bestowed their lands upon settlers who were thus induced to aid in building up a stronghold, that would offer a refuge from the hostile Indians, for Montreal was the outpost on the frontier of the Iroquois country and it was from Mon- treal that the French voyagers took their departure up the Ottawa River.
The Sulpitians gratuitously granted La Salle a tract of land some seven miles above Montreal at the entrance of the famous Rapids, through whose boiling waters steamers now slowly glide amid the excitement of the deck crowding passengers. This site and the rapids were named La Chine, in derision of the early dream of La Salle that by sailing up the Saint Lawrence and continuing west, on and on, he would reach the goal of all trade and fortune seekers-China.
La Salle entered enthusiastically upon the improve- ment of his new estate and urged other pioneers to unite with him. But "his thoughts flew far beyond, across the wild and lonely world that stretched toward
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the sunset." Among the many bands of Indians whose friendship he coveted and courted were some Senecas who told him of a river called the "Oyo, " -- the Ohio-rising in their country and flowing into the sea. La Salle took this to be the "Vermillion Sea" or the Gulf of California, and he resolved to embark upon a search "to unpathed waters, undreamed seas." La Salle was amply equipped by nature for such an undertaking. He had "the cravings of deep ambition and the hunger of an insatiable intellect." No obstacle daunted him-he was the personification of daring. He had become acquainted with Indian life and charac- ter and had acquired somewhat of the native tongues. The French governor of Canada, Courcelle, and his Intendant, Talon, readily gave La Salle requisite authority to proceed in his bold undertaking-indeed all that these officials did give him for the expedition was authority, for he was to defray his own expense. He sold his La Chine holdings and with the funds thus obtained bought four canoes with necessary supplies, and hired fourteen men as an escort.
Meanwhile the Sulpitians decided to send forth a party to establish missions in the northwest, as the Jesuits had done. This party having the conversion of the Indians for its purpose was headed by the Sulpi- tian priests Dollier de Casson, usually known as Dollier, and Brehan de Galinée, the latter a priest of much scholarship, a writer, a surveyor and map-maker. They procured three canoes and employed seven men as oarsmen. This party was united to that of La Salle, though the motives and destinations of the two companies were different. The combined expedition,
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comprising twenty-four men in seven canoes, bade fare- well to the foaming and roaring rapids and started upon their voyage, guided by a party of Senecas in two other canoes. Galinée wrote a complete account of the Sulpitian expedition, which includes La Salle's journey to the point where he and his companions parted in company from the priests. As stated by Galinée, after leaving La Chine the flotilla reached Irondequoit Bay on the south shore of Lake Ontario. At this point a band of Seneca Indians invited the voy- agers to one of their chief villages, some twenty miles south of Lake Ontario, and about the same distance east of the Genesee River. This village was known in the Seneca dialect as Gaosaehgaah, in Mohawk as Gannagaro. La Salle accepted the invitation thereby hoping to secure guides who could direct him to the Ohio. He was accompanied by Galinée, the reporter of the party. Dollier and most of the others remained behind on the lake shore to guard the canoes. La Salle and companions spent four or five weeks at the Seneca Village, but failed to get guides. No Seneca would risk the dangers of the trip. They warned La Salle against venturing into the region of the Toaguenha or the land of the Shawnees-"who were very bad people that would kill the French in the night." The Shawnees at this time, were located in Tennessee and Kentucky and along the Ohio River, especially at the mouths of the Miami and the Scioto, and were at enmity with the Iroquois. Later we shall see much of these Shawnee people. Moreover the Senecas claimed the explorers would run great risks "along the Ohio River" of meeting the Ontastois-probably the Andas-
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tes on the Allegheny-"who would surely break our heads." La Salle, Galinée and those with them rejoined Dollier on the lake shore and the entire party proceeded to the extreme western point of Ontario, now known as Burlington Bay. They started over the portage to Grand River, headed for Lake Erie when they reached an Iroquois village called Otina- watawa. During their stay at this village, Galinée relates that their Iroquois hosts brought in two captive Indians, a Nez Percez and a "Chaouanon." The generous captors presented the Nez Percez for a guide to the Sulpitians and the Chaouanon to La Salle for the same purpose. Chaouanon was the French name for Shawnee. This Shawnee said he could guide La Salle to the Ohio, which could be reached in six weeks.
It was in the last days of September that La Salle, Galinée and company arrived at Otinawatawa. They were delighted with their progress and the securing of guides and were about to set out on their western journey, when unexpectedly two Frenchmen arrived at the Iroquois settlement from the west. They were Louis Joliet and a companion, the former already fa- mous as an explorer, fur trader and guide. Joliet was returning from the Lake Superior region, where he had been, at the bequest of Talon, in search of the copper mines known to exist there. Joliet on his return, instead of following the Ottawa River route from Montreal as he had gone, had paddled his way back over the waters of Lakes Huron, St. Clair and Erie, "the discovery of which waterways alone would have given his name a place in history," for he has the reputation of being the first European to plow the
2 d e d
at of ed 110 as-
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waves of Lake Erie, though there certainly must have been many others long before him. From Lake Erie he ascended the Grand River to the portage for Lake Ontario and at Otinawatawa, met the party we have just followed from La Chine. Joliet explained to his French friends the direction of the long watercourse he had just covered. After due deliberation the Sul- pitians decided to continue on to the northwest along the route so recently traversed by Joliet. They would establish missions in the far off regions of the Great Lakes. La Salle's purpose on the contrary was the discovery of the Ohio, and he would therefore part company with the priests. As a farewell ceremony, Dollier said mass while his colleagues with La Salle and companions received the sacrament. This reli- gious service over, the two parties separated. The Sulpitians proceeded along the northern shore of Lake Erie, passed through the river and lake of St. Clair across Lake Huron, called by the French the Mer Douce, or fresh water sea, and thence pushed on to the Sault St. Marie, only to find that the Indian mis- sion business had been preëmpted by the zealous Jesuits who had practically assumed a monopoly of Indian conversion as the incorporated merchants had created a monopoly of the fur trade. The Sulpitian party was obliged to waive all missionary attempts and with no results from their expedition-save that Galinée preserved data for a map of the country traversed and wrote an account of the journey-they returned by the northern route of Georgian Bay, Lake Nipissing and the Ottawa River, arriving in Montreal in June, 1670.
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Whither went La Salle?
One of the deplorable lapses of history is the disap- pearance of La Salle for two years or more following his separation from Dollier and Galinée at Otinawatawa on September 30, 1669. For some twenty years, from his arrival in Montreal to his tragic assassination at the mouth of the Mississippi, La Salle is a fascinating figure in the annals of American exploration and dis- covery. It was his habit to take notes and make charts descriptive of his journeys and discoveries, and his memoranda furnished subsequent writers material for many a valuable and romantic volume. But the papers covering his first voyage, the one of all others that would most interest the student of Ohio History were lost or destroyed, and that loss has created the opportunity for much curious speculation and no little acrimonious discussion. Preserved contemporary writ- ings do not satisfactorily supply the omission. The Jesuit Relations in all of their voluminous and detailed extent do not so much as mention the name of La Salle. He was a Separatist from their society. He coopera- tively affiliated with their would-be emulators, the Sulpitians, and enrolled his name high in the hall of fame among the founders of colonial France and thus attained an enviable glory which the Jesuits did not seek to enlarge. The one to whom we are mainly indebted for publicity of what literature exists on the subject is Pierre Margry, a distinguished historian who was born in Paris in 1818, and there died in 1894. At the age of twenty-four years M. Margry became curator of the archives of the Ministry of Marine and was officially intrusted with the task of studying the colonial
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history of France in America, a study he enthusias- tically pursued for fifty years, until his death. He produced many volumes, the result of painstaking re- search. He unearthed all data discoverable concerning La Salle and especially sought to solve the riddle of his Ohio route. He published Galinée's account of the Sulpitian expedition which, as we have seen, faithfully carried La Salle from La Chine to his leave taking at Otinawatawa.
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