USA > Pennsylvania > Crawford County > Our country and its people. A historical and memorial record of Crawford County, Pennsylvania. > Part 4
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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 some 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. Returning to the land he commenced even wider search than de Vacca, and after three years of toilsome and fruitless wanderings, and incessant conflicts with the Indians, having crossed the Mississippi, and reached the great plains where grazed the countless herds of buffalo, finally, broken and dispirited by 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 over his bones. Having but one purpose, that of escape from this hated country, his surviving followers floated down the river and retired to Spanish settlements
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in Mexico. Thus ended miserably the greatest expedition hitherto at- tempted upon the Florida coast. For a score or more of years religionists from France and Spain attempted permanent lodgment upon this territory. In the town of St. Augustine was founded the oldest town in the United States. But instead of practicing the mild and gentle precepts of their Master, they were torn by mortal feuds, and a large proportion perished in their deadly and treacherous conflicts.
Thus, of the vast sums of money expended, and hardships endured, in which the greater part 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 exhib- ited a resolution, and unconquerable spirit by those proud cavaliers, who went forth clad in their habiliments of silk, rejoicing in their trailing plumes and glittering armor, truly worthy of a better cause. They expected to find great nations overflowing with gold and precious treasures, whom they could 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 imaginations, and the empire which they hoped to found vanished like the mists of the valley. Their cause was the cause of the gambler and the free- booter 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 colo- nies to take possession of and settle the American continent. Moved by a knowledge of the misfortunes which attended Spanish settlement far to the south, the French sought a far northern latitude, and though on the same parallel as Paris, was swept by blizzards and bound in icy fetters such as were wholly unknown in sunny France. This very circumstance may have defeated the entire French plans of colonization, and changed the whole course of empire upon this continent. For the French possessed, in an emi- nent degree, the spirit of colonization, and were eager to push plans of empire. Had the first adventurers seated themselves upon the Potomac or the James, or along the shores of the Carolinas, they would have found so genial a climate, and so similar to their own, that they would have gained a foothold so firm and so long in advance of the English that they probably would not have been supplanted.
The state of navigation at this time was so crude, the vessels so small
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and imperfect in construction, that a voyage on the open ocean across the Atlantic was attended with deathly perils, and solemn religious services marked the departure of the venturesome voyagers as they went down upon the seas, a large part 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 unmindful of the growth of his kingdom, seeing the activity of neighboring nations in sending out their subjects on voyages of discovery and coloniza- tion, dispatched Juan Verrazzani, a Florentine navigator, in 1524, in a single vessel, the Dolphin, to discover and take possession in the name of France of lands in the famed New World. After "as sharp and terrible a tempest as ever sailors suffered," Verrazzani 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 having made 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 mouth of the St. Lawrence. Returning to France with extravagant reports of the excel- lence of the country and the climate, he was dispatched in 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 win- tered 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 Roque as Governor of Canada. But strife ensuing, the attempt at colonization was abortive. This put an end to further attempts at settle- ment 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 other Christian Prince." The expedition, however, failed utterly, though the enterprise of private individuals in trading with the nations for rich furs had in the meantime proved successful. In 1603 Samuel Champlain was sent out, who carefully surveyed the river St. Law- rence and selected the site of Quebec as a proper location for a fort. At
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about the same time De Monte, a Huguenot of the King's household, was granted a commission 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. The expedition of De Monte, consisting of four ships, sailed in 1004, and the right of trade proving lucrative, the monopoly was revoked. But Champlain continued his explorations, embracing the St. John's River, Bay of Funday and Island of St. Croix. By the advice of Champlain, Que- bec was founded in 1608 by a company of merchants from Dieppe and St. Molo. In the following year Champlain explored the lake which bears his name, and, that he might secure the good will of the natives of Canada, he accompanied the Algonquins in a hostile campaign against the Five Nations, or Iroquois. This proved a fatal mistake, for it provoked the implacable hatred against the French of the powerful Indian confederacy which held in an iron grasp the whole stretch of country now the States of New York and Pennsylvania. Thus by an inscrutable Providence was France again cut off from taking that course of empire which would doubtless have given that nation preponderance upon this continent. Champlain was devoted to his religion, regarding "the salvation of a soul of more consequence than the conquest of an empire." His chosen servants, the Franciscans, later the Jesuits, assumed control of the missions to the Indians, and for a score of years threaded the mazes of the forests for new converts, pushing out along the great lakes by the northern shore, even to Huron, Michigan and Supe- rior; but in all their efforts to reclaim the Iroquois meeting with little suc- cess, 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 and Pottawattamies, 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 south, and this they were seized with a desire to explore.
In the spring of 1673 Jaques Marquette and M. Joliette, with attend- ants, 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
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waters and floated onward upon the current, the stream studded with islands and the shores adorned with goodly trees and clustering vines, until on the 17th of June, with "inexpressible joy and thankfulness to God for His mer- cies," they entered the lordly Mississippi. Marquette was frequently warned by the natives not to expose himself to the dangers of the voyage, and to desist from the further prosecution of his journey, but the reply of the pious priest was characteristic: "I do not fear death, and I would esteem it a hap- piness 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 south as the Arkansas. Here they were fiercely attacked by the natives. But Marquette boldly presented the pipe of peace, and called down the blessings 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. Fearing that they might hazard all by proceeding further, and being now satisfied that the river which they had found must empty into the Gulf of Mexico, having made a complete map of the portion thus far ex- plored, 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 satisfaction at the importance of his dis- covery, and extravagant in praise of the country which he had seen-"such grounds, meadows, woods, stags, buffaloes, deer, wildcats, bustards, swans, ducks, paroquetts, and even beavers," as he found on the Illinois River being nowhere equaled; yet he apparently felt a more serene and heartfelt satis- faction 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 Michi- gan 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 ascended the banks of a fast flowing stream to perform the rite. Not returning as he indicated he would, his followers, recollecting that he had spoken of his death, went to seek for him, and found him indeed dead.
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Hollowing a grave for him in the sand, they buried him on the very spot which his prayers had consecrated.
The report of the discovery of a great river to the west, draining bound- less territory, and 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 enterprise in his explorations along the shores of Ontario and Erie, and in his mercantile enterprises with the natives, was seized with the desire to follow the course of the Mississippi to its mouth. Returning to France he sought and obtained from Colbert authority to pro- ceed 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 of sixty tons, which he named the Griffin, and began the voyage up the great lakes now for the first time gladdened by so portentous a craft, the forerunner of a commerce whose white wings have come to enliven all its ways.
Arrived at Green Bay, he sent his boat back for supplies with which to prosecute his voyage down the broad bosom of the princely stream. 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 pres- ent 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 Recollect, Hennepin, to prosecute the explorations of the valley, La Salle set out with only three followers to make his way back through the somber 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 Crevecœur, upon the Illinois, he found it deserted, and his forces scattered, Tonti, whom he had left in charge, having been forced to flec. Not dismayed, he again returned to Frontenac, having fallen in with Tonti at Mackinaw. Again provided with the necessary supplies, but now with less cumbersome outfit, he started again, after having encountered discour- agements that would have broken the spirit of a less resolute man, in August,
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1681, and proceeded on his devious way. But now, instead of the course he 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 sufficient dimensions for his party, he commenced the voyage down the Mississippi, and reached the gulf without serious incident. Overjoyed at having brought his projects to a successful consummation, 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 possession of the country in all time to come. He thoroughly explored the channels which form the delta of the mouth of the stream, and having selected a place high and dry, and not liable to inundation, which they found by the elevation of the north star to be in latitude 27° north, they erected a column and a cross to which they affixed a signal bearing this inscription: "Louis le Grand. Roi de France et de Navarre, regne, le neuvieme. Avril, 1682." Then chanting the Te Deum Exaudiat, and the Domine salvam fac Regem, and shouting Vive le Roi to a salvo of arms. La Salle, in a loud 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. Louis the Great, by the grace of God King of France, and Navarre. Fourteenth 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, possession of this country of Louisiana." Here follows a de- scription 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, for the name of the river, in place of Mississippi. He claims besides that he and his com- panions are the first Europeans who have ascended or descended the stream. on the authority of the peoples who dwell there, a statement which would be uncertain of verification, and thus ends his process verbal. "hereby protesting against all those who may hereafter undertake 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,
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and of all that can be needed, I hereby take to witness those who hear me, and demand an act of the notary as required by law." In addition to this, 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 primus hoc flumen, inde ab Ilineorum Pago. Enavigavit, ejusque ostium fecit pervivum, nono Aprilis, Anni MDCL- XXXII."
By the terms of international law, recognized by all civilized peoples. 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 trib- utaries, even to their remotest limits, provided such lands had not been occu- pied by any Christian Prince. Had this claim been successfully vindicated Louisiana 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 Crawford 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 cross and performing religious rites which the well-known painting repeated on the greenbacks of our national currency has commem- orated. Had this claim of Spain been maintained by force and followed by settlement, the people of Crawford 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
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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 ship- wreck, dissensions among his followers and the tireless hostility of the sav- ages, his expedition came to an ignoble end, he himself fortunate in escaping with his life. May we not believe that Providence had other designs for this continent?
The third and last of the great European nations to engage in active colonization on the North American coast was England. For, though Hol- land and other European nations sent out colonies, 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 navi- gator. He accordingly 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. Frobisher followed, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half- brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, who aided Gilbert with his fortune, and his powerful influence at court, but perished by shipwreck without effecting a foothold upon the virgin soil. Under the patronage of Raleigh, Amidas and Barlow, in 1584, were sent, who made a lodgment on the Carolinas: but instead of observing seedtime and harvest, they wasted their energies in the vain search for gold, which they probably hoped to pick up in great nug- gets all along the shore, and their attempt at settlement came to naught. Not discouraged Raleigh fitted out another expedition which sailed 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 exist- ence for a short time, when, after vast expenditures, it was forever aban- doned. Hendrick Hudson, under the patronage of London merchants, and subsequently of the Dutch, made voyages of discovery, and in 1609 entered Delaware Bay and made a landing on the soil of what is Pennsylvania, en- tered New York Bay and ascended the Hudson 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 achieved.
But the English, having explored most of the coast from Halifax in
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Nova Scotia to Cape Fear in North Carolina, laid claim to all this stretchi 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 extend- ing from New York Bay to Canada, known as North Virginia, which was granted for settlement to the Plymouth Company, organized in the west of England, and the other reaching from the mouth of the Potomac south- ward 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 other's settlements. The language of these grants by James was remarkable for every quality of style but perspicuity. The London Company were to be limited between the thirty-fourth and forty-first degrees of north latitude, and the Plymouth Company between the thirty-eighth and forty-fifth degrees. It will thuis be seen that the two grants overlap each other by three degrees: but as neither company was to begin settlements within a hundred miles of the territory of the other it practically left the limits unconflicting. Previous to the active operations inaugurated by these companies frequent attempts had been made by the English at colonization; but hitherto, beyond a few fishing stations, and the fort which the Spanish continued to maintain at St. Augustine, no foothold had been gained by them along the whole stretch of the Atlantic, now occupied by the States of the Union. The London Company in 1607 sent one hundred and five colonists in three small ships under command of Christopher Newport, to make a settlement in Southı Virginia. Among the number was Bartholomew Gosnold, who was the real organizer of the company, and the renowned Captain John Smith, by far the ablest. They entered Chesapeake Bay, giving the names Charles and Henry, the names of King James' two sons, to the opposite capes at the entrance, and having moved up the James River selected a spot upon its banks for a capital of the future empire, which, in honor of the King, they called Jamestown. The seat here chosen became the seed of a new nation .: The encounter with the powerful war chief, Powhatan, and the romantic story of his gentle and lovely daughter, Pocahontas, will ever lend a charm to the early history of Virginia.
The Plymouth Company having made fruitless attempts to get a foot-
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hold upon their territory, applied to the King for a new and more definite charter. Forty of "the wealthiest and most powerful men in the realm asso- ciated themselves together under the name of the council of Plymouth Company, and to them James granted a new charter, embracing all the territory lying between the fortieth and forty-eighth degree of north latitude, and stretching away to the Pacific-a boundless grant, little comprehended by the King and his ministers, they believing that the South Sea, as the Pacific was designated, which had been seen by Balboa from a high moun- tain in the isthmus, was close at hand. In 1620 a band of English Puritans, who had been persecuted and harried for non-conformity to the English church, having escaped to Holland, and there heard flattering accounts of the New World, conceived the idea of setting up in the new country a home for freedom. Having obtained from the Council of Plymouth authority to make a settlement upon their grant, and having received assurance that their non-conformity would be winked at, a company of forty-one men, with their families, one hundred and one in all, "the winnowed remnants of the Pilgrims," embarked in the Mayflower, and after a perilous voyage of sixty- three days, landed on the shores of Massachusetts, at Plymouth Rock, and made a settlement which they called New Plymouth. Before leaving the ship they drew up, and the whole colony signed, a form of government, and elected John Carver Governor. The elder Brewster had accompanied them as their spiritual guide. And here in a mid-winter of almost Arctic fierce- ness, they suffered and endured; but sang the songs of freedom. By spring the Governor and his wife, and forty-one of their number, were in their graves; but not dismayed they observed seed time, and gathered in harvest; other pilgrims joined them; it also became the seed of a State.
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