USA > Pennsylvania > Greene County > History of Greene County, Pennsylvania > Part 4
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search for gold and booty. In his adventures he had traversed the whole southern border of what is now the United States, crossed the Mississippi, bent his steps onward to the Rocky Mountains, gladly performing the offices of a slave for sustenance and the poor boon of life, and arrived at last in Mexico, whence he returned to Spain. Undismayed by the ill-fortune of others, and thirsting for riches. which he might have for the seizing, Hernando de Soto, invested with the patent of power and the title of Governor General of Cuba and Florida, with about a thousand followers in ten vessels, set sail in 1539 well armed, and provided with the implements of mining, even to bloodhounds for capturing slaves, and chains for securing them. The first night on shore he was attacked by the Indians lying in wait for him, and driven in disgrace to his ships. Return- ing to the land he commenced even wider search than de Vacea ,and after three years of toilsome and fruitless wanderings, and incessant conflicts with Indians, having crossed the Mississippi and reached the great plains where grazed the comitless herds of buffalo, final- ly, broken and dispirited at finding neither the wealth of gold which he sought, nor the empire which he coveted, he died, and the waters of the Mississippi roll perpetually above his bones. Having but one purpose, that of escape from this hated country, his surviving fol- lowers floated down the river, and retired to Spanish settlements in Mexico. Thus ended miserably the greatest expedition hitherto attempted upon the Florida coast. For a score or more of years religionists from Spain and France attempted permanent lodgement upon this territory, in which the town of St. Augustine was founded.
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at present the oldest town in the United States. .But instead of practicing the mild and gentle precepts of their Master, they were torn by mortal fends, and a large proportion perished in their deadly and treacherons conflets.
Thus, of the vast sums of money expended and hardships en- dured, in which the greater portion of the southern half of our country was overrun, and perpetual and wasting warfare for a quarter of a century was prosecuted with the natives, nothing good or lasting was the result, though there was exhibited a resolution and unconquerable spirit by those proud cavaliers who went forth clad in their habiliaments of silk, rejoicing in their trailing plumes and glittering armor, truly worthy of a better canse. They expected to find great nations overflowing with gold and precious treasures, whom they could easily overcome and despoil, where they might set up a kingdom. Unhappily for them they found no such people; the gold they coveted existed only in their own heated imagination, and the empire which they hoped to fond vanished like the mists of the valley before the breath of a summer morn. Their canse was the cause of the gambler and the freebooter in every country and in every age, and the lesson is one which the race may well take to heart.
Of the great European nations, France was the next to send out colonies to take possession of, and settle the American continent. Moved by a knowledge of the misfortunes which had attended Span- ish settlements far to the south, the French sought a far northern latitude, and thongh on the same parallel as Paris, was swept by blizzards, and bonnd in icy fetters such as were wholly unknown in sunny France. This very circumstance may have defeated the en- tire French plans of colonization, and changed the whole course of empire upon this continent. For the French possessed, in an eminent degree, the spirit of colonization, and were eager to push plans of empire. Had the first adventurers seated themselves npon the Po- tomac or the James, or along the shores of the Carolinas, they would have found so genial a climate and similar to their own, that they would have gained so firm a foothold and so long in advance of the English, that they would probably not have been supplanted.
The state of navigation at this time was so crude, the vessels so small and imperfect in construction, that a voyage on the open ocean, across the Atlantic, was attended with deadly perils, and solemn re- ligious services marked the departure of the venturesome voyagers as they went down upon the seas, a large proportion of whom never emerged from the waves. . Fishermen from Brittany, in France, as early as 1504, had discovered the rich fishing grounds on the Banks of Newfoundland, and had visited and named Cape Breton, a name which it still retains. Francis I. of France, a sovereign not un. mindful of the growth of his kingdom, seeing the activity of neigh.
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boring nations in sending out their subjects for voyages of discovery and colonization, dispatched Juan Verrazzani, a Florentine navigator. in 1524, in a single vessel, the Dolphin, to discover and take posses- sion, in the name of France, of lands in the famed New World. After "as sharp and terrible a tempest as ever sailors suffered," Ver- razzani arrived upon the coast, touched at the Carolinas, at Long Island, at Newport, and skirted the coast to the fiftieth degree north, when he returned without making a settlement. Ten years later, in 1534, Jaques Cartier was dispatched by Chabot. Admiral of France, on an expedition to the Northwest, and arrived at the month of the St. Lawrence. Returning to France with extravagant reports of the excellence of the country and the climate, he was dispatched on the following year with three large ships, and upon his arrival on St. Lawrence-day, gave that name to the Gulf which he had entered, and the river which drains the great lakes. Ascending the river, he visited Hochelaza, now Montreal, and wintered at the Isle of Orleans. The cold was intense, in marked contrast to his former visit, which was in the heat of summer, and his followers, suffering from scurvy and the severity of the climate, clamored to be led back to France. In 1540, Cartier was again sent out, and now with five ships, and Francis de la Rogne as Governor of Canada. But strife ensuing, the attempt at colonization was abortive. This put an end to further attempts at settlement in this latitude for upwards of half a century.
In 1598, the great Sully, under Henry IV. of France, dispatched the Marquis de la Roche, of Brittany, to take possession of Canada and other countries "not possessed by any Christian Prince." The expedition, however, failed utterly, though the enterprise of private individuals in trading with the natives for rich furs had in the mean- time proved snecessful. In 1603, Samuel Champlain was sent out, who carefully explored the river St. Lawrence, and selected the site of Quebec as a proper location for a fort. At about the same time De Monts, a Huguenot of the King's household, was granted a com- mission to assume the sovereignty of Acadie, from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree of north latitude, which meant from the latitude of Delaware Bay to the north pole,-a glorious empire if it could be held and peopled. But the trouble with all the European sovereigns in drawing patents for slices of the New World, was that they did what was charged upon the greedy countryman when offered tobacco -bit off more than he could chew. The expedition of De Monts, consisting of four ships, sailed in 1604, and the right of trade proving Incrative, the monopoly was revoked. But Champlain continued his explorations, embracing the St. John's River, Bay of Fundy and Island of St. Croix. By the advice of Champlain, Quebec was founded in 1608 by a company of merchants from Dieppe and St. Molo, In the following year Champlain explored the lake which
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bears his name, and, that he might secure the good will of the natives of Canada, he accompanied the Algonquins on a hostile campaign against the Five Nations, or Iroquois. But this proved a fatal mis- take; for it provoked the implacable hatred against the French of that powerful Indian confederacy which held in an iron grasp what is now the States of New York and Pennsylvania. Thus, by an inserutable Providence, was France again cut off from taking that course of empire, which would doubtless have given that nation pre- ponderance upon this continent. Champlain was devoted to his re- ligion, regarding "the salvation of a soul of more consequence than the conquest of an empire." His chosen servants, the Franciscans, but later the Jesnits, assumed control of the missions to the Indians, and for a score of years threaded the mazes of the forest for new con- verts, pushing out along the great lakes by the northern shore, even to Huron, Michigan and Superior; but in all their efforts to reclaim the Iroquois meeting with little success, and suffering, at the hands of these savages, whippings, and torments, and death. With the tribes of the north and west, even to the Chippewas, Pottawatamies, Sacs and Foxes, and Illinois, they had better fortune, and with them made alliances against the Iroquois. From the Sioux they learned that there was a great river to the sonth, and this they were seized with a desire to explore.
In the spring of 1673, Jaqnes Marquette and M. Joliet, with attendants, embarked in two bark canoes at Mackinaw, and passing down the lake to Green Bay, entered the Fox River. Toilsomely ascending its current to its head waters, they bore with difficulty their canoes across the ridge which divides the waters of the great lakes from the gulf, and having reached the sources of the Wisconsin River, launched their frail boats upon its turbid waters, and floated onward upon the current, the stream studded with islands and the shores adorned with goodly trees and creeping vines, until, on the 17th of June, with "inexpressible joy and thankfulness to God for his mercies." they entered the Mississippi. Marquette was fre- quently warned by the natives not to expose himself to the dangers of the voyage, and to desist from the further prosecution of his jour- ney; but the reply of the pions priest was characteristic: " I do not fear death, and I would esteem it a happiness to lose my life in the service of God."
Passing, in turn the Des Moines, the Missouri, with its turbid stream, the Ohio gently rolling, they proceeded as far sonth as the Arkansas. Here they were fiercely attacked by the natives. But Marquette boldly presented the pipe of peace, and called down the blessing of heaven upon his enemies, in return for which the old men received him, and called off their braves who were intent upon blood. But now the dangers seemed to thicken as they descended.
lee. off Were courcy
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Fearing that they might hazard all by proceeding further, and being now satisfied that the river must empty into the Gulf of Mex- ico, having made a complete map of the portion thus far explored, Marquette determined to return and report his great discoveries to Talon, the intendant of France. With incredible exertion they forced their way against the current of the Mississippi, up the Illinois, across the portage, down the Fox by the same course that they had come, and reached Green Bay in safety. Though filled with satis- faction at the importance of his discovery, and extravagant in praise of the country which he had seen -- " snch grounds, meadows, woods, stags, buffaloes, deer, wildcats, bustards, swans, ducks, paroquetts, and even beavers," as he found on the Illinois River being nowhere equalled :-- yet he apparently felt a more serene and heartfelt satis- saction, in the fact that the natives had brought to him a dying infant to be baptized, which he did about a half an hour before it died, which he asserts God was thus pleased to save, than in all the far reaching consequences of his expedition. On the 18th of May, 1675, as he was passing up Lake Michigan with his boatmen upon the eastern shore, he proposed to land and perform mass. With pious
and devoted steps leaving his attendants in the boat, he aseended the banks of a fast flowing stream to perform the rite. Not returning as he had indicated he would, his followers, recollecting that he had spoken of his death, went to seek him, and found him indeed dead. Hollowing a grave for him in the sand, they buried him on the very spot which his prayers had consecrated.
In commenting upon the devotion and loyalty of these pious men -- Marquette, and his associates. Hildreth justly remarks, " Now and then he would make a voyage to Quebee in a canoe, with two or three savages, paddle in hand, exhausted with rowing, his feet naked, his breviary hanging about his neck, his shirt unwashed, his cassoek half torn from his lean body, but with a face full of content, charmed with the life he led, and inspiring by his air and his words a strong desire to join him in his mission. And Charlevoix, in his annals, even more vividly describes the character of these devoted men. " A peculiar unction" he says, " attached to this savage mission, giving it a preference over many others far more brilliant and more fruit- ful. The reason no doubt was, that nature, finding nothing there to gratify the senses or to flatter vanity-stumbling blocks too common even to the holiest-grace worked without obstacle. The Lord, who never allows himself to be ontdone, communicates himself without measure to those who sacrifice themselves without reserve; who, dead to all, detached entirely from themselves and the world, possess their souls in unalterable peace, perfectly established in that childlike spirituality which Jesus Christ has recommended to his disciples, as that which ought to be the most marked trait of their character.
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Such is the portrait of the missionaries of New France drawn by those who knew them best. I myself knew some of them in my youth, and I found them such as I have painted them, bend- ing under the labor of a long apostleship, with bodies exhausted by fatigues and broken with age, but still preserving all the vigor of the apostolic spirit." It should be added to this picture of the labors of the priests, that of all the heathen in any part of the world to whom the gospel has been sent, none were more difficult to reach and in- doctrinate in its mild and gentle spirit, than the North American Indians.
The report of the discovery of a great river to the west, draining boundless territory, and opening a highway to the gulf, aroused cupidity, and the desire to enlarge the dominion of France. Robert Cavalier de La Salle, who had already manifested remarkable enter- prise in his explorations along the shores of Ontario and Erie, and in his mercantile enterprises with the natives, was seized with the de- sire to follow the course of the Mississippi to its mouth. Returning to France he sought and obtained from Colbert authority to proceed with his explorations, and take possession of the country in the name of France. Returning to Fort Frontenac with the Chevalier Tonti, and a picked band, he ascended to the rapids of Niagara, passed around the falls with his equipment, built a vessel ofsixty tons which he named the Griffin, and began his voyage up the great lakes, now for the first time gladdened by so pretentious a craft, the forerunner of a commerce whose white wings has come to enliven all its ways.
Arrived at Green Bay, he sent back his craft for supplies with which to prosecute his voyage down the great valley of the prince of streams. Caught in one of those storms which lurk in the secret places of these lakes, the little vessel was lost on its return voyage. Waiting in vain for tidings of his supplies he crossed over to the Illinois River, and in the vicinity of the present town of Peoria, he erected a fort, which, in consonance with his own disappointed spirit, he named Creve-cœur, the Broken Heart. Leaving Tonti and the Recol- lect, Hennepin, to prosecute the explorations of the valley, La Salle set out with only three followers to make his way back through the sombre forests which skirt the lakes, to Fort Frontenac at the mouth of Lake Ontario. In the meantime Hennepin explored the Illinois and the Mississippi to the Falls of St. Anthony, accounts of which on his return to France he published. Gathering fresh supplies and men, La Salle started again upon his arduous and perilous voyage; but upon his arrival at Fort Crevecoeur, upon the Illinois, he found it deserted and his forces scattered, Tonti, whom he had left in charge, having been forced to flee. Not dismayed, again he returned to Frontenac, having fallen in with Tonti at Macinaw. Again pro- vided with the necessary supplies, but now with less cumbersome
.
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outfit, he started again, after having encountered discouragements that would have broken the spirit of a less resolute man, in August, 1681, and proceeded on his devions way. But now instead of the course which they had before pursued he moved up the Chicago River on sledges, and, having passed the portage, found Fort Crevecœur in good state of preservation. Having here constructed a barge of suf- ficient dimensions for his party he commenced his voyage down the Mississippi, and reached the Gulf without serious incident. Over- joyed at finally having brought his projects to a successful consum- mation he took possession of the river, and all the vast territory which it drained .- large enough to constitute several empires like France,-with a formal pomp and ceremony which was sufficient, if it were to depend on pomp and ceremony, to have insured the pos- session of the country in all time to come. They thoroughly ex- plored the channels which form the delta at the month of the stream, and having selected a place high and dry, and not liable to inunda- tion, which they found by the elevation of the north star to be in latitude twenty-seven degrees north, they erected a column and a cross to which they affixed a signal bearing this inscrip- tion, "Louis le Grand. Roi de France et de Navarre, regne, le nenvieme, Avril, 1682." Then chanting the Te Denm, Exandiat, and the Domine salvum fac Regem, and shonting Vive le Roi to a salvo of arms, La Salle, in a lond voice, read his process verbal, as though all the nations of the world were listening: " In the name of the most high, mighty, invincible, and victorious prince, Lonis the Great, by the grace of God King of France. and Navarre, Four- teenth of the name, this ninth day of April. 1682, I, 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 now do take. in the name of his majesty and of his successors to the crown, pos- session of this country of Louisiana." And here follows a descrip- tion of the rivers, and countries drained by them, which he claims; and that all this is by the free consent of the natives who inhabit these lands, a statement which would probably have been difficult of verification, and in his verbal process he inserts the name Colbert. the king's minister, in place of Mississippi. He claims besides that they are the first Enropeans who have ascended or descended the stream, on the authority of the peoples who dwell there, a statement which would also be uncertain of verification, and thus ends his pro- cess, " hereby protesting against all those who may hereafter under- take to invade any or all of these countries, people or lands above described to the prejudice of the right of his majesty, acquired by the consent of the nations herein named. Of which, and of all that can be needed. I hereby take to witness those who hear me. and de- mand an act of the notary, as required by law," In addition to this,
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he caused to be buried at the foot of the cross a leaden plate with this inscription in Latin: " Ludovicus, magnus Reget. Nono Aprilis MDCLXXXII. Robertus Cavellier, cum Domino de Tonty Legato R. P. Zenobi Membré, Recollecto, et viginti Gallis primns hoe flumen, inde ab Ilineorum Pago, Enavigavit, ejusque ostium fecit pervivum, nono Aprilis, Anni MDCLXXXII."
By the terms of the law, recognized by all civilized nations, the nation whose subjects were the discoverers of the mouth of a river, could rightfully lay claim to all the territory drained by that river, and all its tributaries even to their remotest limits. Hlad this claim been successfully vindicated, Louis-iana would have been bounded by the Alleghany Mountains on the east, the Rocky Mountains on the west, and would have embraced the bulk of the territory now the United States, and thus Pennsylvania would have been despoiled of a large proportion of its proud domain, and Greene County been a vicinage of France. But the claim of La Salle was not well founded, he not having been the original discoverer. For de Soto, a hundred and forty years before, had discovered the river, and, through his followers, had traced it to its mouth, and had taken possession of the river in the name of the King of Spain, with even greater pomp and ceremony than La Salle, setting up the eross and performing religious rites which the well known painting repeated on the greenbacks of our national currency has commemorated. Had the claim of Spain been maintained by force, and followed by settlement, the people of Greene County would to-day be under the dominion of Spain, or of a Spanish speaking people. But if, by the failure of Spain, the French had been successful in establishing their claims, then the Bourbon lilies would have succeeded to power here, and French would have been the language. As we shall soon see, the chances by which it escaped that sway, were, for a time, quite evenly balanced between the French and the English.
La Salle returned to France with great expectations of empire for his country. With a fleet of thirty vessels, and people for a large colony, he set sail for the new possessions, four of which under his immediate command steered direct for the Gulf of Mexico, with the intention of entering the mouth of the Mississippi River; but he failed to find the entrance, and, after suffering untold hardships and privations on the coast of Texas by shipwreck, dissension among his followers, and the tireless hostility of the savages, his expedition eame to an ignoble end, he himself fortunate in escaping with his life. May we not believe that Providence had other desigus for this continent?
The third, and last of the European nations to engage in active colonization on the North American coast, was England. For, though Holland, Denmark, and other European nations sent out col-
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onies, they all became subject to the English. Henry VII., who had turned a deaf ear to the appeals of Columbus, saw with envy what he thought were great advantages being secured to neighboring nations through the discoveries of the great navigator. He accord- ingly lent a ready ear to the Cabots, of Bristol, his chief port. As early as 1497 they set out to share in New World enterprise, and in their voyages explored the coast from Labrador to the Carolinas, and subsequently South America, giving name to the great river of the south, Rio de la Plata. Forbisher followed, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, halt-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, who aided Gilbert with his for- tune and his powerful influence at Court, but perished by shipwreck without effecting a foothold upon the virgin soil. Under the patron- age of Raleigh, Amidas and Barlow in 1584 were sent, who made a lodgment on the shores of the Carolinas; but instead of observing seed-time and harvest, they wasted their energies in the vain search for gold, which they probably hoped to pick up in great nuggets, and their attempt at settlement came to naught. Not discouraged Raleigh fitted out another expedition under Sir Richard Grenville, and exhausted his great fortune in the enterprise. A lodgment was made at Roanoke, but the colony planted held a sickly existence for a short time, when, after incurring vast expense, it was forever
abandoned. Hendrick Hudson, under the patronage of London merchants, and subsequently of the Dutch, made voyages of dis- covery, and in 1609 entered Delaware Bay, and made a landing on the soil of what is Pennsylvania, entered New York Bay, and ascended the IIndson River, to which he gave his name, and took possession of all this country in the name of the Dutch, in whose employ he was then sailing. As yet nothing permanent by way of settlement had been acheived.
But the English having explored most of the coast from Halifax in Nova Scotia, to Cape Fear in North Carolina, laid elaim to all this stretch of the coast, and indefinitely westward. In the reign of the feeble and timid James I., this immense country was divided into two parts, the one extending from New York Bay to Canada, known as North Virginia, which was granted for settlement to the Ply- month Company organized in the west of England, and the other reaching from the mouth of the Potomac southward to Cape Fear, was called South Virginia, and was bestowed upon the London Company composed of residents of that city. It will thus be seen that a belt of some two hundred miles was left between the two grants so that they should have no liability to encroach upon each others settlements. The language of these grants by James was remarkable for every quality of style but clearness and perspicnity. The London Company were to be limited between thirty-fourth and forty-first de- grees of north latitude, and the Plymouth Company between the
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