USA > Wisconsin > Buffalo County > History of Buffalo County, Wisconsin > Part 17
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language. He attributed his ill success at conversion to the na- tion stupidity of the Indians.
The love between him and his Indian father was not very great, but Quasicoudi (Wassicoody) the principal chief of the Sioux of this region was the friend of the three Frenchmen, and told Aquipaguetin and the rest, in full council, that they were like a dog who steals a piece of meat from a dish and runs away with it. When Hennepin complained of hunger, the Indians promised him that early in the summer he should go on a buffalo hunt with them, and have food in abundance. But when the time came he objected, partly for fear of Aquipaguetin's revenge for what the great chief had said, partly for other reasons. He gave out that he expected " spirits," that is Frenchmen, to meet him at the mouth of the Wisconsin, bringing a supply of goods for trading with the Indians. He insists, and letters of La Salle' seem to confirm, that the latter promised to send traders to that place. The Indians believed him and by good luck the assertion answered its purpose and was verified, at least as far as the ap- pearance of Frenchmen was concerned. The Indians went down Runi River, the outlet of Mille Lac, and encamped across the Mis- sissippi near the junction of the two rivers. Hennepin, afraid of being left alone, begged the Indians, as they passed him, canoe after canoe, to take him along, but they would not do it. Neither would Accau and Du Gay do so, and the former told the mis- sionary, that he had paddled him long enough already. Finally two Indians took compassion on him and brought him to the en- campment, where Du Gay tried to excuse himself but Accau did not. In spite of its being a hunting camp starvation reigned in it, and the three white men had nothing to live on but unripe ber- ries, which made them sick.
By the favor of the chief Quasicoude already mentioned, Hen- nepin and Du Gay were permitted to look after the expected Frenchmen; Accau preferred to stay with the Indians. The two men were furnished with a gun, a canoe and a knife, also a robe or cover of beaver-skin.
The two travelers soon reached the falls, which Hennepin named after the patron saint he had selected, St. Anthony of Padua. Hennepin's description of the falls is brief but sufficiently accu- rate. In the first edition of his book he estimates their height as
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from forty to fifty feet, but in that of 1697 he adds ten feet to that estimate. As the situation changes rapidly, on account of the softness of the underlying stone, we may concede Hennepin's first estimate, since 1821, according to Schoolcraft, the perpendicular fall was still forty feet.
He and Du Gay paddled down the river for sixty leagues; in the heat of July without killing any large game except one deer, the meat of which soon spoiled in the hot air. The turtles, on which they had to rely, did not often wait to be caught, and so there was considerable fasting. One day they had caught a large turtle of the snapping kind. Du Gay went in pursuit of buffalo 'on a neighboring prairie, and the friar, while watching the turtle, suddenly saw his canoe out in the current. He put the turtle on its back, pulled off his gray habit of St. Francis, put it upon the turtle and some stones on it to keep it down, and then swam for the canoe, which he had to push to the shore, as it would have upset, if he had attempted to get into it in the river, and then paddled back.
About the time of his return to the turtle he saw buffalo com- ng down to the river when he called for Du Gay and both pursued the game of which they killed a young cow, which they had to cuit up in the water near an island where she had fallen. It is rather surprising that they did not know enough of wood craft to smoke the meat of the cow, which, of course, soon spoiled. They had fish-hooks but were not alway successful in their operations, though one day they caught a very large cat-fish. At other times the fishing eagles dropped them their prey, and one day they lived on the remainder of a shovel-nosed sturgeon from which they chased an otter.
Hennepin does not seem to have had much of an eye for beauty, since he never mentions the picturesque landscape through which the Mississippi flows at the places they had to pass. But he had at least some occasion to think of other things than the beauties of the scenery. One day they were overtaken by old Aquipaguetin and ten Indians. The old chief wanted to be the first to meet the expected traders. He stopped with the two travelers for a short colloquy. Three days after he returned in ill humor having found no traders on the spot indicated. He gave Hennepin a severe scolding but offered no further violence.
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They now resolved to join a party of Sioux hunting on what they call the Bull River, now the Chippewa. By this they would avoid falling in with straggling parties of Indians, and secure a supply of meat. Accau, their companion, was with this party, whom they followed on their hunt along the Mississippi. The hunt proved successful. One day an alarm was given. The warriors rushed toward the supposed point of danger, but found only two women of their own tribe, who brought some news. A war-party of Sioux on their way towards Lake Superior had met "five spirits" that is five Europeans. The curiosity of the white men to find out to what nationality each of the separate parties belonged was mutual. Hennepin and Du Gay returned with the Indians up the river, and near St. Anthony they met Daniel Greysolon Du Lhut with four well-armed Frenchmen.
As I shall devote an extra chapter to Du Lhut, I will here say but so much of him as relates to his meeting with Hennepin and his companions. While the latter were in June, 1680, in the Sioux village at Mille Lac, Du Lhut set out from Lake Superior with four men, by ascending the Bois Brule or Burnt Wood River and after having cut some trees and opened about one hundred beaver dams reached the head of navigation, (by canoe of course), made a portage to what was most probably the Upper St. Croix Lake, descended its outlet and came to the St. Croix River, which he de- scended, and where he must have met the war party mentioned above. He was afraid that the three white men, of whom he had heard were either Spaniards or Englishmen, who were rivals with the French in the Indian trade. When he saw Hennepin, his mind was at rest, and the meeting was mutually cordial .. They followed the Indians to their villages where a feast of honor was given to them, at which one hundred naked guests were seated, and where Quasicoude placed before Hennepin a bark dish contain- ing a mess of smoked meat and wild rice.
The travelers staid for some time, but with the approach of Autumn they departed. The Sioux did not object, since they were now reasonably sure of their return with goods for trading. As the party passed the falls of St. Anthony, the men stole two buf- falo robes hung up in honor of the spirit (wa-kon) of the cataract. Du Lhut reproached them because they endangered by this fool- ish act the safety of the whole party, but the men pleaded their
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need and were refractory. The party proceeded in ill humor but were soon diverted by the excellent hunting on the way. But once they were scared, when, some distance above the mouth of the Wisconsin they saw a war-party of the Sioux approach, while the French were just smoking the meat of a buffalo they had killed. On this occasion Hennepin, according to his own state- ment, displayed his habitual officiousness by instructing Du Lhut, who knew much more about such matters than the meddlesome friar, how to behave towards the Indians. Everything, however, passed off peaceably and the Sioux went down the river after some enemy or other without even mentioning the stolen buffalo robes. After various minor adventures Green Bay mission, a station 'of the Jesuits, was reached. Its existence is wholly ignored by Henne- pin, who was too much bigoted in favor of his own order, to men- tion the rival missionaries, although it is very probable that he enjoyed their hospitality. Equally ill-mannered he behaved in regard to the Jesuit establishment at Michillimackinac, which they soon after reached and where they spent the winter. Of those stationed there he mentioned only the Jesuit Pierson, who was a Fleming like himself and who skated with him and kept him com- pany in fishing through a hole in the ice. In the spring Henne- pin descended Lake Huron, followed the Detroit to Lake Erie, and proceeded thence to the Niagara, where he made a closer examina- tion of the falls, and then proceeded to Lake Ontario, and then finally to Fort Frontenac. His brother missionary there, Buisset, had been told Hennepin had been hanged with his own cord of St. Franciscus. From Frontenac he went to Montreal, where he met Count Frontenac, the governor, who treated the friar, whom everybody seems to have considered as lost, with great civility and condescension.
To quote Parkman, "La Salle and the discovery of the Great West:" " And here we bid farewell to Father Hennepin: "Prov- idence, he (Hennepin) writes preserved my life, that I might make known my great discoveries to the world." He soon after went to Europe, where the story of his travels found a host of readers, but where he died at last (1699) in deserved obscurity. But although we might also part with this man, who certainly once and possibly oftener, set foot upon the soil of this county at least one hundred and seventy years before it bore its name, we can not
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do so without giving credit to those whom he forgot to mention, or slandered and wanted, in the second edition of his book espe- cially, to deprive of the honors unquestionably due to them, but arrogated to himself. The man's great fault was an inordinate self-esteem or conceit.
I quote from Parkman: " When the later editions of his book appeared, doubts had been expressed of his veracity. 'I here protest to you, before God,' he writes, addressing the reader, that my narrative is faithful and sincere, and that you may be- lieve everything related in it.' "And yet (says Parkman) we shall see, this reverend father was the most impudent of liars; and the narrative he speaks of is a rare monument of brazen mendacity." It is however not so much his first book in which he did not claim much more than what might have been true, only ignoring Accau and Du Gay and making himself the sole actor, almost of all the adventures, for which Parkman accuses him as quoted, but the later editions of the same in which he claimed to have descended to the mouth of the Mississippi, and returned to the place of his capture within the time of forty-tree days, counting from the time of his beginning the voyage down the Illinois, the last day of February to the twelfth day of April. It would certainly not be worth mentioning the fabrications of the conceited monk, if it were not for the fact, that this monstrous fable is even now repeated as truth by some authors. The refutation by Parkman is before me, but is too long and too much interwoven with other parts of the work to be understood by itself alone. I will try and state the matter in such a way as to make it understood by every in- telligent reader.
1. The exploration for which Hennepin arrogates all the merit was part of the enterprise of La Salle, without whose muni- ficence Hennepin would never have seen either the Illinois or the Mississippi.
2. The expedition was not under the command of Hennepin but under that of Accau. The latter had been selected because he spoke several Indian languages. He and Du Gay were of higher rank than the common followers of La Salle.
3. In the first edition of his book Hennepin, though failing to do justice to the others, still did not tell anything very surpris- ing or improbable, and that edition, though by no means faultless,
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is on the whole reliable. When he wrote it Marquette's book and maps had just come out of the press and were not generally known and could not be used for Hennepin's purpose, if he had that pur- pose at that time.
4. In 1697, about two years before his death Hennepin had all the possible chances for manufacturing any story. In 1682 La Salle had descended the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, and had on the ninth day of April of that year taken possession of what he called Louisiana, and which meant all the land drained by the Mississippi, and any and all of its tributaries. On this ex- pedition he was accompanied by Zenobe Membre who described it chronologically. His book or manuscript was used by Le Clerk and from 'Le Clerk Hennepin stole whole passages without any alterations except fitting the story to suit his own circumstances. Le Clerk had accompanied La Salle on his last expedition, in which the great leader was murdered by a gang of his men. After his return to France, or at least to civilization, Le Clerk wrote a book called " Etablissement de la Foie," in which he had violently attacked the Jesuits. This book was suppressed by order of the king but some copies escaped destruction. Parkman in criticizing Hennepin had compared it with Hennepin's work, second edition, and he says: " The records of literary piracy may be searched in vain for an act of depredation more recklessly impudent.".
5. What I have related above, coming from historians who had direct accession to the original work, and which is but a con- densation of what I found, may be considered as nearly true as I could make it, seeing there was considerable controversy in the matter.
6. Hennepin dedicated his later editions to William III of England, and was not allowed to return to Canada, nor, probably, to France. This protected him among those with whom he staid, the Dutch, and as it gave him an air of being a presecuted 'man contributed not a little to procure readers for his book.
Those more curious may consult:
La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, by Francis Parkman. Little, Brown & Co., Boston (1886.)
Discovery of the Mississippi, by J. G. Shea, New York, 1852. DANIEL GREYSOLON DU LUTH.
This man, whose name has become familiar to the present
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generation by the fact that the great " Zenith City" of the central northwest, the metropolis of the Lake Superior country, was named after him, has some not too remote, connection with the history of our county and its neighborhood. We find him in 1680 rescuing Hennepin and his two companions from their captivity among the Sioux, and returning with them by way of the Mississippi, the Wis- consin and the Fox River, to Green Bay and to Mackinaw. At that time it is most probable that he hunted for Buffalo, as he and his men needed provisions, either on this or the opposite side of the river, but it is more probable that he kept to this side, as affording better opportunities from Lake Pepin to Trempealeau, for avoiding the Sioux, whom he had reason to believe to be offended at the theft of two buffalo robes, taken by two of his men from some arrangement sacred to the wa-kon, or spirit, of the Falls of St. Anthony. A war party of that tribe did indeed overtake him some distance above the mouth of the Wisconsin, but they were probably ignorant of this grave offense, as they said nothing about it, and did not molest the Frenchman. This appears to have been the only time that he was on the Mississippi, and we may now look into the other parts of his biography as far as they are known to us.
In the following narrative I thought it best to transcribe from " La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West," one of the vol- umes of a work entitled " France and England in North America " a Series of Historical Narratives by Francis Parkman (Little, Brown & Co., Boston.) I do this first because I can not find any reliable short account of the adventures of Du Luth in this coun- try anywhere else, second because I consider the work of Mr. Park- man impartial, candid and critically reliable beyond any others on the subject that I had the good fortune to get acquainted with.
Mr. Parkman says of Du Luth:
This bold and enterprising man, stigmatized by the Intendant Duchesneau as a leader of coureurs de bois, was a cousin of Tonty, born at Lyons. He belonged to that caste of lesser nobles. whose name was legion, and whose admirable military qualities shone forth so conspicuously in the wars of Louis XIV. Though his enterprises were independent of those of La Salle, they were at this time carried on in connection with Count Frontenac and certain merchants in his interest, of whom Du Luth's uncle, Patron, was
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one; while Louvigny, his brother-in-law, was in alliance with the governor, and was an officer of his guard. Here, then, was a kind of family league, countenanced by Frontenac and acting conjointly with him, in order, if the angry letters of the Intendant are to be believed, to reap a clandestine profit under the shadow of the gov- ernor's authority, and in violation of the royal fordinances. The rudest part of work fell to the share of Du Luth, who with a per- sistent hardihood, not surpassed, perhaps, even by La Salle, was continually in the forest, in the Indian towns, or in reinote wilder- ness outposts planted by himself, exploring, trading, fighting, rul- ing lawless savages, and whites scarcely less ungovernable, and on one or more occasions varying his life by crossing the ocean to gain interviews with the colonial minister Seignelay, amid the splendid vanities, of Versailles. Strange to say, this man of hardy enterprise was a martyr to the gout, which for more than a quarter of a cen- tury grievously tormented him, and which even the intercession of the Iroquis saint Catherine Tegah Kouita failed to cure him. He was, without doubt, a habitual breaker of the ordinances regulating the fur-trade; yet his services were great to the colony and to the crown, and his name deserves a place of honor among the pioneers of American civilization.
When Hennepin met him, he had been about two years in the wilderness. In September 1678 he left Quebec, for the purpose of exploring the region of the Upper Mississippi and establishing relations of friendship with the Sioux and their kindred, the Assiniboins. In summer 1679 he visited three large towns of the eastern division of the Sioux, including those visited (involunta- rily) by Hennepin in the following year, and planted the king's arms in all of them.
Early in the autumn he was at the head of Lake Superior holding a council with the Assiniboins and the lake tribes, and inducing them to live at peace with the Sioux. In all this he acted in a public capacity, under the authority of the governor; but it is not to be supposed that he forgot his own interests, or those of his associates. The intendant angrily complains that he aided and abetted the coureur de bois in their lawless courses and sent down in their canoes great quantities of beaver-skins consigned to the merchants in league with him, under cover of whose names the governor reaped his share of the profits.
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What relates to Du Luth's actions in the rescue of Hennepin and his party, has been related under that head. The following is from an annotation in the book of Mr. Parkman above named:
The facts concerning Du Luth have been gleaned from a variety of sources, chiefly the letters of his enemy Duchesneau, who always puts him in the worst light, especially in his despatch to Seignelay of Nov. 10th, 1679, when he charges both him and the governor with carrying on an illicit trade with the English of New York. Du Luth himself in a memoir dated 1685 strongly denies these charges. Du Luth built a trading fort on Lake Superior called Cananistigoyan or Kamalastigouia. It was on the Northside, at the mouth of a river entering Thunder Bay, where Fort William now stands. In 1684 he caused two Indians, who had murdered several Frenchmen on Lake Superior, to be shot. He displayed in this affair great courage and coolness, undaunted by the crowd of excited savages, who surrounded him and his lit- tle band of Frenchmen.
The long letter, in which he recounts the capture and execu- tion of the murderers, is still extant. Duchesneau makes his con- duct on this occasion the ground of a charge of rashness. In 1686, Denonville, then governor of the colony, ordered him to fortify the Detroit, that is, the strait between Lakes Erie and Huron. He went thither with fifty men and built a palisade fort, which he oc- cupied for some time. In 1687, he, together with Tonty and Du- rantaye, joined Denonville against the Senecas, with a body of In- dians from the Upper Lakes. In 1689, during the panic of the Iroquois invasion of Montreal, Du Luth with twenty-eight Cana- dians, attacked twenty-two Iroquois in canoes, received their fire without returning it, bore down upon them, killed eighteen of them, and captured three, only one escaping. In 1695 he was in command at Fort Frontenac. In 1697, he succeeded to the com- mand of a company of infantry, but was suffering wretchedly from the gout at Fort Frontenac. In 1710, Governor Vaudreuil in a dispatch to the Minister Ponchartrain announced his death as occurring in the previous winter, and added the brief comment, "c'etait uh tres honnete homme," (he was a very honest man.) Other contemporaries speak to the same effect. Mr. Dulhut Gen- tilhomme'Lionnais, qui a beaucoup de merite at de capacite. (La Hontan I, 103 (1703.) " Le Sieur du Lut, homme d'esprit et d'ex-
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perience." (Le Clerk II, 137.) Charlevoix calls him " one of the bravest officers the king has ever had in this colony." His name is variously spelt Du Luc, Du Lud, Du Lude, Du Lut, Du Lhut and Du Luth; a great compliment, by the way, to the schooling of the Canadian French of his times. I have adopted the last of these spellings, because it is the one agreeing most closely with the common spelling of the name of the city of Duluth. Park- man spells the name Du Lhut, which is probably the better French.
On a contemporary map. by the Jesuit Raffeix, representing the routes of Marquette, La Salle and Du Luth, are the following words, referring to the last named discoverer, and interesting in connection with Hennepin's statements: Monsieur Du Luth was first among the Sioux in 1678, and came near the source of the Mississippi, where he went afterwards to rescue Father Hennepin, who was a prisoner among the Sioux. (Translated from the French by myself.) One of his (Du Luth's) men was named. Pepin; hence, no doubt, the name of Lake Pepin.
CAPTAIN JONATHAN CARVER.
Among the early explorers of this particular part of the New World, the Upper Mississippi Valley, there was one who was not prejudiced by the sordid desire for gain, nor by any fanatical no- tion of how good the world would be, if it had only been formed on his own particular model, but who seems to have expected the Indian to be nothing but an Indian, a savage sort of mankind, yet still not to be blamed for what he could not help being. If Carver was colored or tainted with some of the prejudices of his Puritan ancestors, he did not expect everybody to share the same. His previous career as an officer in a colonial regiment during the French and Indian war, in which he had served during the whole period until the surrender of Canada in 1760, by which all the country to the Mississippi came into the possession of Great Brit- ain, seems to have expanded his mental horizon, and directed his attention to things entirely different from those contemplated by the traders and missionaries, who had previously penetrated to the Sioux and other Northwestern Indians. The following is a short sketch of his life and his explorations: ยท
Jonathan Carver was a lineal descendant of John Carver, the - first governor of Plymouth colony. His grandfather was William
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Carver, of England, who was a captain in the army of King Wil- liam during the campaign in Ireland, and afterwards an officer in the colony of Connecticut. His father was a justice of the peace at Canterbury, Connecticut, where Jonathan was born. When Jonathan was fifteen years old, his father died. At the age of eighteen he purchased an ensign's commission in one of the Con- necticut regiments. He had before studied medicine, but his rov- ing disposition led him to abandon that profession, the study of which seems, however, to have put him in the possession of literary accomplishments. He served with distinction under Abercromby and Amherst, and very narrowly escaped being killed in the mas- sacre of Fort William Henry in 1757, and was present in the battle at the Heights of Abraham, and at the surrender of Montreal and all Canada. He left Boston in June, 1776, and arrived at Macki- naw, then the most distant post of the British, in August following. Having made arrangements with Col. Rogers. the governor or com- mandant of that post for having certain articles for the Indian trade or for presents to the Indians sent ahead of himself to the Falls of St. Anthony, he sailed to Green Bay, and thence up Fox River. While on this river he stopped at the principal town of the Winnebagoes where for four days he was hospitably entertained by Ho-po-ko-e-kah the widow of a Frenchman named De Kaury, who had been mortally wounded at Quebec and died at Montreal. She was at that time the principal chief of the tribe, and her des- cendants retained that dignity for several generations. From there he proceeded to the town of the Sacs at Prairie du Sac, which he describes as the largest and best built Indian town he ever saw. It contained, he says, about ninety houses, each large enough for several families, built of hewn planks, neatly jointed and covered so completely with bark, as to keep out the most penetrating rains. Before the doors were placed comfortable sheds in which the inhabitants sat, when the weather would permit, and smoked their pipes. The streets were both regular and spacious, appear- ing more like a civilized town than the abode of savages. Mr. Strong thinks this description somewhat exaggerated, since in less than thirty years afterwards only a few remains of fire-places and posts were to be seen. Without disputing Mr. Strong's remarks, it may as well be confessed that Carver must have seen many In- dian towns before the one he here describes, and if he was so much
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