Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 4 (of 8) / French Explorations and Settlements in North America and Those of the Portuguese, Dutch, and Swedes 1500-1700

by Unknown

CHAPTER V.

DISCOVERY ALONG THE GREAT LAKES.

BY THE REV. EDWARD D. NEILL, A.B., ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA.

Corresponding Member Massachusetts Historical Society; Hon. Vice-President New England Historic Genealogical Society.

PURCHAS in his Pilgrimage quaintly writes, that “the great river Canada hath, like an insatiable merchant, engrossed all these water commodities, so that other streames are in a manner but meere pedlers.”[438]

This river of Canada, the Hochelaga of the natives, now known as the St. Lawrence, is the most wonderful of all the streams of North America which find their way into the Atlantic Ocean. Its extreme headwaters are on the elevated plateau of the continent, near the birthplace of the Mississippi, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and the Red River of the North, which empties into Hudson’s Bay. Expanding into the interior sea, Lake Superior, after rippling and foaming over the rocks at Sault Ste. Marie it divides into Lake Michigan and Lake Huron; and passing through the latter and Lake St. Claire[439] and Lake Erie, with the energy of an infuriated Titan it dashes itself into foam and mist at Niagara. After recovering composure, it becomes Ontario, the “beautiful lake,”[440] and then, hedged in by scenery varied, sublime, and picturesque, and winding through a thousand isles, it becomes the wide and noble river which admits vessels of large burden to the wharves of the cities of Montreal and Quebec; and until lost in the Atlantic, “many islands are before it, offering their good-nature to be mediators between this haughty stream and the angry ocean.”[441] The aborigines, who dwelt in rude lodges near its banks, chiefly belonged to the Huron or Algonquin family; and although there were variations in dialect, they found no difficulty in understanding one another, and in their light canoes they made long journeys, on which they exchanged the copper implements and agate arrow-heads of the far West for the shells and commodities of the sea-shore.[442]

Cartier, born at the time that the discoveries of Columbus were being discussed throughout Europe, who had toughened into a daring navigator, sailed in 1535 up the St. Lawrence, giving the river its present name, and on the 2d of October he reached the site now occupied by the city of Montreal. Escorted by wondering and excited savages, he went to the top of the hill behind the Indian village, and listened to descriptions of the country from whence they obtained caignetdaze, or red copper, which was reached by the River Utawas, which then glittered like a silver thread amid the scarlet leaves of the autumnal forest.[443] The explorations of the French and English in the western world led the merchants of both countries to seek for its furs, and to hope for a shorter passage through it to “the wealth of Ormus and of Ind.” Apsley, a London dealer in beads, playing-cards, and gewgaws in the days of Queen Elizabeth, wrote that he expected to live long enough to see a letter in three months carried to China by a route that would be discovered across the American continent, between the forty-third and forty-sixth parallel of north latitude.[444] The explorations of Champlain have been sketched in an earlier chapter.[445] To the incentive of the fur-trade a new impulse was added when, in the spring of 1609, some Algonquins visited the trading-post, and one of the chiefs brought from his sack a piece of copper a foot in length, a fine and pure specimen. He said that it came from the banks of a tributary of a great lake, and that it was their custom to melt the copper lumps which they found, and roll them into sheets with stones.

It was in 1611, when returning from one of his visits to France, where he had become betrothed to a twelve-year-old maiden, Helen, the daughter of a Huguenot, Nicholas Boullé, secretary of the King’s Chamber, that Champlain pushed forward his western occupation by establishing a frontier trading-post where now is the city of Montreal, and arranging for trade with the distant Hurons, who were assembled at Sault St. Louis.

Again in 1615, as we have seen, he extended his observations to Lake Huron, while on his expedition against the Iroquois. With the Hurons he passed the following winter, and visited neighboring tribes, but in the spring of 1616 returned to Quebec; and although nearly twenty years elapsed before his remains were placed in a grave in that city, he appears to have been contented as the discoverer of Lakes Champlain, Huron, and Ontario, and relinquished farther westward exploration to his subordinates.

The fur-trade of Canada produced a class of men hardy, agile, fearless, and in habits approximating to the savage.[446] Inured to toil, the voyageurs arose in the morning, “when it was yet dark,” and pushing their birch-bark canoes into the water, swiftly glided away, “like the shade of a cloud on the prairie,” and often did not break fast until the sun had been for hours above the horizon. Halting for a short period, they partook of their coarse fare, then re-embarking they pursued their voyage to the land of the beaver and buffalo, the woods echoing their chansons until the “shades of night began to fall,” when,

“Worn with the long day’s march and the chase of the deer and the bison,
Stretched themselves on the ground, and slept where the quivering firelight
Flashed on their swarthy cheeks, and their forms wrapped up in their blankets.”

Among the pioneers of these wanderers in the American forests was Étienne (Anglicized, Stephen) Brulé, of Champigny.[447] It has been mentioned that he went with Champlain to the Huron villages near Georgian Bay, but did not with his Superior cross Lake Ontario. After three years of roaming, he came back to Montreal, and told Champlain that he had found a river which he descended until it flowed into a sea,—the river by some supposed to be the Susquehanna, and the sea Chesapeake Bay.[448] While in this declaration he may have depended upon his imagination, yet to him belongs the undisputed honor of being the first white man to give the world a knowledge of the region beyond Lake Huron.

Sagard[449] mentions that this bold voyageur, with a Frenchman named Grenolle, made a long journey, and returned with a “lingot” of red copper and with a description of Lake Superior which defined it as very large, requiring nine days to reach its upper extremity, and discharging itself into Lake Huron by a fall, first called Saut de Gaston, afterward Sault Ste. Marie. Upon the surrender of Quebec, in 1629, to the English, Étienne Brulé chose to cast in his lot with the conquerors.[450] During the occupation of nearly three years the English heard many stories of the region of the Great Lakes, and they encouraged the aborigines of the Hudson and Susquehanna to purchase English wares.

The very year that the English occupied Quebec, Ferdinando Gorges and associates, who had employed men to search for a great lake, received a patent for the province of Laconia, and the governor thereof arrived in June, 1630, in the ship “Warwick,” at Piscataway, New Hampshire.[451] Early in June, 1632, Captain Henry Fleet, in the “Warwick,” visited the Anacostans, whose village stood on the shores of the Potomac where now is seen the lofty dome of the Capitol of the Republic. These Indians told Fleet that they traded with the Canada Indians; and on the 27th of the month, at the Great Falls of the Potomac, he saw two axes of the pattern brought over by the brothers Kyrcke to Quebec.[452]

About the time Quebec was restored to the French, on the 23d of September, 1633,[453] Captain Thomas Young received a commission from the King of England to make certain explorations in America.[454] The next spring he sailed, and among his officers was a “cosmographer, skilful in mines and trying of metals.” Entering Delaware Bay on the 24th of July, 1634, he sailed up the river, which he named Charles, in honor of the King, and by the 1st of September had reached the vicinity of the falls, above Trenton, the capital of New Jersey. In a report from this river, dated the 20th of October, he writes: “I passed up this great river, with purpose to have pursued the discovery thereof till I had found the great lake[455] from which the great river issues, and from thence I have particular reason to believe there doth also issue some branches, one or more, by which I might have passed into that Mediterranean Sea which the Indian relateth to be four days’ journey beyond the mountains; but having passed near fifty leagues up the river, I was stopped from further proceedings by a ledge of rocks which crosseth the river.”

He then expresses a determination the next summer to build a vessel above the falls, from whence he hoped to find “a way that leadeth into that mediterranean sea,” and from the lake. He continues: “I judge that it cannot be less than one hundred and fifty or two hundred leagues in length to our North Ocean; and from thence I purpose to discover the mouths thereof, which discharge both into the North and South Sea.”[456] The same month that Captain Young was exploring the Valley of the Delaware, an expedition left Quebec which was not so barren of results.

The year that Étienne Brulé came back from his wandering in the far West, in 1618, Jean Nicolet, the son of poor parents at Cherbourg, came from France, and entered the service of the fur company known as the “Hundred Associates,” under Champlain. For several years he lived among the Algonquins of the Ottawa Valley, and traded with the Hurons; and because of his knowledge of the language of these people, he was valued as an interpreter by the trading company. On the 4th day of July, 1634, on his eventful journey to distant nations, he was at Three Rivers, a trading post just begun. Threading his way in a frail canoe among the isles which extend from Georgian Bay to the extremity of Lake Huron, he, through the Straits of Mackinaw, discovered Lake Michigan, and turning southward found its Grand Bay, an inlet of the western shore, and impressive by its length and vastness.

Here were the Gens de Mer,[457] or Ochunkgraw, called by the Algonquins Ouinipegous or Ouinipegouek,—people of the salt or bad-smelling water; and the traders gave them the name of Puants.

Calling a council of these Winnebagoes and the neighboring tribes, and knowing the power of display upon the savage, he appeared before them in a grand robe of the damask of China, on which was worked flowers and birds of different colors, and holding a pistol in each hand,—a somewhat amusing reminder of the Jove of mythology, with his variegated mantle and thunderbolts. To many he seemed a messenger from the spirit-land; and the women and children, on account of his pistols, called him the man who bore thunder in his hands.[458]

Nicolet announced that he was a peacemaker, and that he desired that they should settle their quarrels and be on friendly terms with the French at Quebec. His words were well received, and one chief, at the conclusion of the conference, invited him to a feast, at which one hundred and twenty beaver were served. He came back to Three Rivers during the next summer, and renewed the interest in the discovery of a route to the Western Ocean, by the declaration that if he had paddled three days more on a large river (probably the Wisconsin), he would have found the sea. There was no design to deceive; but the great water at that distance was what has been called “the father of waters,” the Mississippi. Before December, 1635, he was appointed interpreter at the new trading-post of Three Rivers, and was there when, on Christmas Day, at the age of sixty-eight years, one who had been the life of the fur-trade and the Governor of New France, Samuel de Champlain, expired at Quebec. After the death of the fearless and enterprising Champlain, there was a lull in the zest for discovery, and then difficulties arose which for a time led to the abandonment of all the French trading-posts on the shores of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.

The Iroquois had for years longed to be revenged upon those who, with the aid of French arquebuses, had defeated them in battle. Friendly relations were established between them and the Dutch traders on the banks of the Hudson River; and for beaver skins, powder and firearms were received. With these they gratified their desire for revenge. They became a terror to the savage and civilized in Canada; and traders and missionaries, women and infants, fled from their scalping-knives.

The following graphic description of affairs was penned in 1653:—

“The war with the Iroquois has dried up all sources of prosperity. The beaver are allowed to build their dams in peace, none being able or willing to molest them. Crowds of Hurons no longer descend from their country with furs for trading. The Algonquin country is depopulated, and the nations beyond it are retiring farther away, fearing the musketry of the Iroquois. The keeper of the Company’s store here in Montreal has not bought a single beaver-skin for a year. At Three Rivers, the small means in hand have been used in fortifying the place, from fear of an inroad upon it. In the Quebec storehouse all is emptiness.”

At length, in the year 1654, peace was effected between the French and Iroquois, and traders again appeared on the upper lakes, and Indians from thence appeared at Montreal. In August, two Frenchmen accompanied some Ottawas to the region of the upper lakes; and in the latter part of August, 1656, these traders came back to Quebec with a party of Ottawas,[459] whose canoes were loaded with peltries; and about this time a trader told a Jesuit missionary that “he had seen three thousand men together, for the purpose of making a treaty of peace, in the country of the Gens de Mer.”

In 1659, while the new governor Argenson was experiencing the perplexities of administration at Quebec, the extremity of Lake Superior was reached by two energetic and intelligent traders,—Medard Chouart, known in history as Sieur des Groseilliers, and Pierre d’Esprit or Sieur Radisson. Chouart was born a few miles east of Meaux, and left France when he was about sixteen years of age, and became a trader among the Hurons. In 1647 he married the widow Étienne, of Quebec, the father of whom was the pilot Abraham Martin, whose baptismal name was given to the suburb of that city, the Plains of Abraham. She gave birth to a son in 1651, named after his father, and soon after died. Chouart, the Sieur des Groseilliers, then married Marguérite Hayet Radisson, and through her he became a sympathizer with the Huguenots.[460] His brother-in-law, Sieur Radisson, was born at St. Malo, France, and in 1656 married at Three Rivers, Canada, Elizabeth Herault; and after her death he espoused a daughter of the zealous Protestant, Sir David Kyrcke, to whose brothers Champlain had surrendered Quebec.

Pushing beyond Lake Superior, after travelling six days in a southwesterly direction, these traders found the Tionnotantés, a band incorporated with the Hurons, called by the French Petuns, because they had raised tobacco. These people dwelt in the country between the sources of the Black and Chippeway Rivers in Wisconsin, where they had been wanderers for several years. Driven from their homes by the Iroquois, they migrated with the Ottawas to the isles of Lake Michigan, at the entrance of Green Bay. Hearing that the Iroquois had learned where they had retreated, they descended the Wisconsin River until they found the Mississippi, and, ascending this twelve leagues, they came to the Ayoes (Ioway) River, now known as the Upper Iowa, and followed it to its source, being kindly treated by the tribes. Although buffaloes were in abundance, they were disappointed when they found no forests, and retracing their steps to the Mississippi, ascended to a prairie island above Lake Pepin, about nine miles below the mouth of the River St. Croix, and here they often received friendly visits from the Sioux. Confident through the possession of firearms, the Ottawas and Hurons conspired to drive the Sioux away, and occupy their country. The attack was unsuccessful, and they were forced to look for another residence. Going down the Mississippi, they entered one of the mouths of the Black River, near the modern city La Crosse, and the Hurons established themselves about its sources, while their allies, the Ottawas, continued their journey to Lake Superior, and stopped at a point jutting out like a bone needle,—hence called Chagouamikon.

Groseilliers and Radisson, while sojourning with the Hurons, learned much of the deep, wide, and beautiful river, comparable in its grandeur to the St. Lawrence,[461] on an isle of which they had for a time resided. Proceeding northward, these explorers wintered with the Nadouechiouec, who hunted and fished among the “Mille Lacs” of Minnesota, between the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers. The Sioux, as these people were called by traders, were found to speak a language different from the Huron and Algonquin, and to have many strange customs. Women, for instance, were seen whose noses had been cut off as a penalty for adultery, giving them a ghastly look. Beyond, upon the northwest shore of Lake Superior, about the Grand Portage, and at the mouth of a river which upon early maps was called Groseilliers, there was met a separated warlike band of Sioux, called Poualak, who, as wood was scarce in the prairie region, made fire with coal (charbon de terre), and lived in skin lodges, although some of the more industrious built cabins of mud (terre grasse), as the swallows build their nests. The Assinepoualacs, or Assineboines, were feared by the Upper, as the Iroquois were dreaded by the Lower, Algonquins.

After an absence of about a year, these traders, about the 19th of August, 1660, returned to Montreal with three hundred Indians and sixty canoes laden with a “wealth of skins,”—

“Furs of bison and of beaver,
Furs of sable and of ermine.”

The settlers there, and at Three Rivers, and at Quebec, were deeply interested by the tales of the vastness and richness of the new-found land and the peculiarities of the wild Sioux. As soon as the furs were sold and a new outfit obtained, Groseilliers, on the 28th of August, again took his way to the westward, accompanied by six Frenchmen, besides the aged Jesuit missionary René Menard and his servant Guérin.

Just beyond the Huron Isles and Huron Bay, which still retain their name, on the southern shore of Lake Superior, is Keweenaw Bay; and on the 15th of October, Saint Theresa’s Day in the calendar of the Church of Rome, the traders and René Menard, with the returning Indians, stopped, and here some traders and the missionary passed the winter among the Outaouaks.[462] Father Menard, discouraged by the indifference of these Indians, resolved to go to the retreat of the Hurons among the marshes of what is now the State of Wisconsin. He sent three Frenchmen who had been engaged in the fur-trade to inform them of his intention; but after journeying for some days they were appalled by the bogs, rapids, and long portages, and returned. Undaunted by their tale of the difficulties of the way, and some Hurons having come to visit the Outaouaks, he resolved to return with them. On the 13th of June, 1661, Menard and his servant, Jean Guérin, by trade a gunsmith, followed in the footsteps of their Indian guides, who, however, soon forsook them in the wilderness. For fifteen days they remained by a lake, and finding a small canoe in the bushes, they embarked with their packs; and week after week in midsummer, annoyed by myriads of mosquitoes, and suffering from heat, hunger, and bruised feet, they advanced toward their destination, and about the 7th of August, while Guérin was making a portage around a rapid in a river, Menard lost the trail. His servant, becoming anxious, called for him, yet there was no answer; and then he five times fired his gun, in the hope of directing him to the right path, but it was of no avail. Two days after, Guérin reached the Huron village, and endeavored without success to employ some of the tribe to go in search of the aged missionary.

Afterward Guérin met a Sauk Indian with Menard’s kettle, which he said he found in the woods, near footprints going in the direction of the Sioux country.[463] His breviary and cassock were said to have been found among the Sioux, and it is supposed that he was either killed, or died from exposure, and that his effects were taken by wandering Indians.[464] Perrot writes: “The Father followed the Ottawas to the Lake of the Illinois [Michigan], and in their flight to Louisiana [Mississippi] as far as the upper part of Black River.” Upon a map prepared by Franquelin, in 1688,[465] for Louis XIV., there is a route marked by a dotted line from the vicinity of Keweenaw Bay to the upper part of Green Bay. If Perrot’s statement is correct, Menard and his devoted attendant Guérin saw the Mississippi twelve years before Joliet and his companion looked upon the great river. The reports of Nicolet and Groseilliers led to a correction and enlargement of the charts of New France. On a map[466] accompanying the Historia Canadensis, by Creuxius, Lake Michigan is marked as “Magnus Lacus Algonquinorum, seu Lacus Fœtetium,” and a lake intended for Nepigon is called “Assineboines,” near which appear the nations Kilistinus and Alimibegôecus. The lake of the Assineboines is connected by a river with an arm of Hudson’s Bay called “Kilistonum Sinus;” and west of this is Jametus Sinus, or James’s Bay.

Pierre Boucher, an estimable man, sent by the inhabitants of Canada to present their grievances to the King of France, in a little book which in 1663 he published at Paris,[467] wrote: “In Lake Superior there is a great island which is fifty leagues in circumference, in which there is a very beautiful mine of copper.” He also stated that he had heard of other mines from five Frenchmen lately returned, who had been absent three years, and that they had seen an ingot of copper which they thought weighed more than eight hundred pounds, and that Indians after making a fire thereon would cut off pieces with their axes.

Groseilliers[468] returned to Canada, and on the 2d of May, 1662, again left Quebec, with ten men, for the North Sea, or Hudson’s Bay. His journey satisfied him that it was easy to secure the trade of the North by way of Lake Superior; but the Company of Canada, which had the monopoly of the fur traffic, looked upon Groseilliers’ plans for securing the peltries of distant tribes as chimerical. Thus disappointed and chagrined, Groseilliers next went to Boston, and presented his schemes to its merchants.

The Reverend Mother of the Incarnation, Superior of the Ursulines at Quebec, in allusion to him, wrote: “As he had not been successful in making a fortune, he was seized with a fancy to go to New England to better his condition. He excited a hope among the English that he had found a passage to the Sea of the North.” Passing from Boston to France, and securing the influence of the English ambassador at Paris, he went to London, and became acquainted with Prince Rupert, nephew of Charles I., who led the cavalry charge against Fairfax and Cromwell at Naseby. This brilliant man was now devoted to study and to the exhibition of the philosophical toy known to chemists as “Rupert’s drops;” but he was ready to indorse the project for extending the fur-trade, and seeking a northwestern passage to Asia. Men of science also showed interest in explorations which would enlarge the sphere of knowledge. The Secretary of the Royal Society wrote a too sanguine letter to Robert Boyle, the distinguished philosopher, and friend of the apostle Eliot. His words were: “Surely I need not tell you, from hence, what is said here with great joy of the discovery of a northwest passage, and by two Englishmen and one Frenchman, lately represented by them to his Majesty at Oxford, and answered by the grant of a vessel to sail into Hudson’s Bay and channel into the South Sea.” The ship “Nonsuch” was fitted out in charge of Captain Zachary Gillam, a son of one of the early settlers of Boston, and in this vessel Groseilliers and Radisson left the Thames in June, 1668, and the next September reached a tributary of Hudson’s Bay, which in honor of their chief patron was called Rupert’s River. The next year, by way of Boston, they returned to England, where their success was applauded; and in 1670 the trading company was chartered,—still in existence, and among the most venerable of English corporations,—known as “The Hudson’s Bay Company.”

While the Canadian Fur Company did not respond to the proposals of Groseilliers for the extension of commerce, the French Government, in view of the fact that the Dutch on the south side of the St. Lawrence and in the valley of the Hudson River had acknowledged allegiance to England, determined to show more interest in the administration of Canadian affairs, and Mézy having been recalled, hardly before his death, Daniel de Remi, Seigneur de Courcelles, was sent as provincial governor. They also created the new office of Intendant of Justice, Police, and Finance, and made Talon—a person of talent, experience, and great energy—the first incumbent. Arriving at Quebec in 1665, Talon took decided steps for the promotion of agriculture, tanneries, and fisheries, and was enthusiastic in the desire to see the white banner of France, with its fleur-de-lis, floating in the far West.[469]

In the autumn of 1668 he took with him to France one of the hardy voyageurs who had lived in the region of the lakes, and on the 24th of the next February he writes to Colbert, the Colonial Minister, that this man “had penetrated among the western nations farther than any other Frenchman, and had seen the copper mine on Lake Huron. The man offers to go to that mine and explore, either by sea, or by the lake and river, the communication supposed to exist between Canada and the South Sea, or to the region of Hudson’s Bay.”

During the summer of 1669 the active and intelligent Louis Joliet, with an outfit of four hundred livres, and one Peré, perhaps the same person who gave his name to a river leading from Lake Nepigon to Hudson’s Bay,[470] with an outfit of one thousand livres, went to search for copper on the shores of Lake Superior, and to discover a more direct route from the upper lakes to Montreal. Joliet went as far as Sault Ste. Marie, where he did not long remain; but in the place of a mine found an Iroquois prisoner among the Ottawas at that point, and obtained permission to take him back to Canada. In company with another Frenchman, he was led by the Iroquois from Lake Erie through the valley of the Grand River to Lake Ontario, and on the 24th of September, at an Iroquois village between this river and the head of Burlington Bay, he met La Salle with four canoes and fifteen men, and the Sulpitian priests, Galinée and De Casson, who on the 6th of July had left the post at La Chine.

La Salle, alleging ill health, at this point separated from the missionaries, and Joliet, before proceeding toward Montreal, drew a chart of the upper lakes for the guidance of the Sulpitians. By the aid of this the priests reached Lake Erie through a direct river, and near the lake they erected a hut and passed the winter. On the 23d of March, 1670, they resumed their voyage, and on the 25th of May reached Sault Ste. Marie, where there were about twenty-five Frenchmen trading with the Indians. Here was also the mission of the Jesuits among the Ottawas,—a square enclosure defended by cedar pickets twelve feet high, and within were a small house and chapel which had recently been built. Remaining but three days, they returned to Montreal by the old route along the French River of Lake Huron to Lake Nipissing, and thence by portage to the Ottawa River.

About the time of their arrival Talon had learned from some Algonquins that two European vessels had been seen in Hudson’s Bay, and he wrote to Colbert,—

“After reflecting on all the nations that might have penetrated as far north as that, I can fall back only on the English, who under the conduct of one named Desgrozeliers, in former times an inhabitant of Canada, might possibly have attempted that navigation, of itself not much known, and not less dangerous. I design to send by land some men of resolution to invite the Kilistinons, who are in great numbers in the vicinity of that bay, to come down to see us as the Ottawas do, in order that we may have the first handling of what the latter savages bring us, who, acting as retail dealers between us and those natives, make us pay for the roundabout way of three or four hundred leagues.”

To draw the trade from the English, it was determined to make an alliance of friendship with all the nations around Lake Superior. One of the Frenchmen[471] who roved among the tribes west of Lake Michigan, and in the valley of the Fox River, was Nicholas Perrot. Accustomed from boyhood to the scenes and excitements of frontier life, quick-witted, with some education, a leading spirit among coureurs des bois, and looked upon with respect by the Indians, he was an intelligent explorer of the interior of the continent. In the spring of 1670, when twenty-six years of age, Perrot left Green Bay with a flotilla of canoes filled with peltries and paddled by Indians. By way of Lake Nipissing he reached the Ottawa River, and descended to Montreal, and in July he visited Quebec. By the Intendant Talon he was invited to act as guide and interpreter to his deputy, Simon François Daumont, the Sieur Saint Lusson, who on the 3d of September was commissioned to go to Lake Superior to search for copper mines and confer with the tribes.

It was not until October that Perrot and Saint Lusson left Montreal. When Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron was reached, it was decided that Saint Lusson should here remain for the winter hunting and trading, while Perrot went on and visited the tribes of the Green Bay region. On the 5th of May, 1671, he met Saint Lusson at Sault Ste. Marie, accompanied by the principal chiefs of the Sauks, Menomonees, Pottawattamies, and Winnebagoes. After the delegates of fourteen tribes had arrived, a council was held, on the 14th of June, by Saint Lusson, in the presence of the Jesuits André, Claude Allouez, Gabriel Dreuilletes, and the head of the mission Claude d’Ablon, Nicholas Perrot the interpreter, Louis Joliet, and some fur-traders;[472] and a treaty of friendship was formed, and the countries around Lakes Huron and Superior were taken possession of in the name of Louis XIV., King of France. Talon announces the result of the expedition in these words:—

“Sieur de Saint Lusson is returned, after having advanced as far as five hundred leagues from here, and planted the cross and set up the King’s arms in presence of seventeen Indian nations,[473] assembled on this occasion from all parts, all of whom voluntarily submitted themselves to the dominion of his Majesty, whom alone they regard as their sovereign protector. This was effected, according to the account of the Jesuit Fathers, who assisted at the ceremony, with all the formality and display the country could afford. I shall carry with me the record of taking possession prepared by Sieur de Saint Lusson for securing those countries to his Majesty.

“The place to which the said Sieur de Saint Lusson has penetrated is supposed to be no more than three hundred leagues from the extremities of the countries bordering on the Vermillion or South Sea. Those bordering on the West Sea appear to be no farther from those discovered by the French. According to the calculation made from the reports of the Indians and from maps, there seems to remain not more than fifteen hundred leagues of navigation to Tartary, China, and Japan. Such discoveries must be the work of either time or of the King. It can be said that the Spaniards have hardly penetrated farther into the interior of South, than the French have done up to the present time into the interior of North, America.

“Sieur de Lusson’s voyage to discover the South Sea and the copper mine will not cost the King anything. I make no account of it in my statements, because, having made presents to the savages of the countries of which he took possession, he has reciprocally received from them in beaver that which replaces his outlay.”

The Hurons and Ottawas did not arrive in time to witness the formal taking possession of the country by the representative of France, having been detained by difficulty with the Sioux. About the year 1662, the Hurons, who had lingered about the sources of the Black River of Wisconsin, joined again their old allies, the Ottawas, who were clustered at the end of the beautiful Chegoimegon Bay of Lake Superior. The Ottawas lived in one village, made up of three bands,—the Sinagos, Kenonché, and Kiskakon. After this union, a party of Saulteurs, Ottawas, Nipissings, and Amikoués were securing white-fish not far from Sault Ste. Marie, when they discovered the smoke of an encampment of about one hundred Iroquois. Cautiously approaching, they surprised and defeated their dreaded foes, at a place to this day known as Iroquois Point, just above the entrance of Lake Superior.

After this, the Hurons, Ottawas, and Saulteurs returned in triumph to Keweenaw and Chegoimegon, and remained in quietness until a number of Hurons went to hunt west of Lake Superior, and were captured by some of the Sioux. While in captivity they were treated with kindness, asked to come again, and sent away with presents. Accepting the invitation, the Sinagos chief, with some warriors and four French traders, visited the Sioux, and were received with honor and cordiality. Again, a few Hurons went into the Sioux country, and some of the young warriors made them prisoners; but the Sioux chief, who had smoked the calumet with the Sinagos chief, insisted upon their release, and journeyed to Chegoimegon Bay to make an apology. Upon his arrival, the Hurons proved tricky, and persuaded the Ottawas to put to death their visitor. It was not strange that the Sioux were surprised and enraged when they received the intelligence, and panted for revenge. Marquette, who had succeeded Allouez at the mission which was between the Huron and Ottawa villages, in allusion to this disturbance, wrote:—

“Our Outaouacs and Hurons, of the Point of the Holy Ghost, had to the present time kept up a kind of peace with them [the Sioux], but matters having become embroiled during last winter, and some murders having been committed on both sides, our savages had reason to apprehend that the storm would soon burst on them, and they deemed it was safer for them to leave the place, which they did in the spring.”

The Jesuits retired with the Hurons and Ottawas, and more than one hundred and fifty years elapsed before another Christian mission was attempted in this vicinity, under the “American Board of Foreign Missions.” The retreating Ottawas did not halt until they reached an old hunting-ground, the Manitoulin Island of Lake Huron, and the Hurons stopped at Mackinaw. From time to time they formed war-parties with other tribes, against the Sioux. In 1674 some Sioux warriors arrived at Sault Ste. Marie to smoke the pipe of peace with adjacent tribes. At a grand council the Sioux sent twelve delegates, and the others forty. During the conference one of the opposite side drew near and brandished his knife in the face of a Sioux, and called him a coward. The Sioux replied he was not afraid, when the knife was plunged into his heart, and he died. A fight immediately began, and the Sioux bravely defended themselves, although nine were killed. The two survivors fled to the rude log chapel of the Jesuit mission, and closed the door, and finding there some weapons they opened fire upon their enemies. Their assailants wished to burn down the chapel, which the Jesuits would not allow, as they had beaver skins stored in the loft. In the extremity a lay brother of the mission, named Louis Le Boeme, advised the firing of a cannon shot at the cabin’s door. The discharge killed the last two of the Sioux.[474] Governor Frontenac made complaint against Le Boeme for this conduct, in a letter to Colbert.[475]

After the Iroquois had made a treaty of peace with the French, they did not cease to lurk and watch for the Ottawas as they descended to trade at Montreal, Three Rivers, or Quebec, and, as occasion offered, rob them of their peltries and tear their scalps from their heads. Governor Courcelles, in 1671, determined to establish a post on Lake Ontario which would act as a barrier between the Ottawas and Iroquois, and at the same time draw off the trade from the Hudson River.

Before entering upon his journey he had constructed a large plank flat-boat to ascend the streams,—a novelty which was a surprise. It was of two or three tons burden, and provided with a strong rope to haul it over the rapids and shoal places. On the morning of the 3d of June the expedition left Montreal, consisting of the flat-boat, filled with supplies and manned by a sergeant and eight soldiers, and thirteen bark canoes. The party numbered fifty-six persons, who were active and willing to endure the hardships of the journey. At night, with axe in hand, the men cut poles for a lodge frame, which they covered with bark stripped from the trees. The Governor, to protect himself from mosquitoes, had a little arbor made on the ground, about two feet high, and covered with a sheet, which touched the ground on all sides, and prevented the approach of the insects which disturb sleep and irritate the flesh. The second day of the voyage the flat-boat found difficulty in passing the first rapids, and Courcelles plunged into the water, and with the aid of the hardy voyageurs pushed the boat into smooth water. On the 10th of June the first flat-boat reached the vicinity of Lake Ontario, and the Governor two days after, in a canoe, reached the entrance of the lake. Here he found a stream with sufficient water to float a large boat, and bordered by fine land, which would serve as a site for a post. On the 14th, at the time that the deputy Saint Lusson, at Sault Ste. Marie, was taking possession of the region of Lake Superior, Courcelles was descending the rapids of the St. Lawrence on his return to Montreal.[476]

The report of this expedition was sent to Louis XIV., and it met with his approval; but for the benefit of his health Courcelles was permitted to return to France, and on the 9th of April, 1672, Louis de Buade, Count de Frontenac, was appointed Governor and Lieutenant-General in Canada and other parts belonging to New France. It was not until the leaves began to grow old that Frontenac arrived in Quebec, and, full of energy, was ready to push on the work of exploration which had been initiated by his predecessor. Upon the advice of the Intendant Talon, he soon despatched Louis Joliet to go to the Grand River, which the Indians alleged flowed southward to the sea. Joliet (often spelled Jolliet) was born in Canada, the son of a wagon-maker. In boyhood he had been a promising scholar in the Jesuits’ school at Quebec, but, imbibing the spirit of the times, while a young man he became a rover in the wilderness and a trader among Indians. Three years before his appointment to explore the great river beyond the lakes, he had been sent with Peré to search for a copper-mine on Lake Superior, and the year before he stood by the side of Saint Lusson as he planted the arms of France at Sault Ste. Marie.

It was not until Dec. 8, 1672, that he reached the Straits of Mackinaw, and as the rivers between that point and the Mississippi were by this time frozen, he remained there during the winter and following spring, busy in questioning the Indians who had seen the great river as to its course, and as to the nations on its shores. On May 17, 1673, he began his journey toward a distant sea. At Mackinaw he found Marquette, who became his companion, but had no official connection with the expedition, as erroneously mentioned by Charlevoix. With five voyageurs and two birch-bark canoes, Joliet and Marquette, by the 7th of June, had reached a settlement of Kikapous, Miamis, and Mascoutens, in the valley of the Fox River, and three leagues beyond they found a short portage by which they reached the Wisconsin River, and following its tortuous course amid sandbars and islands dense with bushes, on the 17th of June they entered the broad great river called the Mississippi, walled in by picturesque bluffs, with lofty limestone escarpment, whose irregular outline looked like a succession of the ruined castles and towers of the Rhine. In honor of his patron, Governor Frontenac, Joliet called it Buade, the Governor’s family name. Passing one great river flowing from the west, he learned that through its valley there was a route to the Vermeille Sea [Gulf of California], and he saw a village (which was about five days’ journey from another) which traded with the people of California.[477]

This river is without name on his map,[478] but on its banks he places villages of the Missouri, Kansa, Osages, and Pawnee tribes. The River Ohio he marked with the Indian name Ouabouskigou; and the Arkansas, beyond which he did not descend, and which was reached about the middle of July, he named Bazire, after a prominent merchant of Quebec interested in the fur-trade. After ascending the stream, he entered the Illinois River, which he designated as the Divine, or Outrelaise, in compliment, it is supposed, to Frontenac’s wife, a daughter of Lagrange Trianon, noted for her beauty, and Mademoiselle Outrelaise, her fascinating friend, who were called in Court circles “les divines.”[479] Upon the west bank of one of its tributaries, the Des Plaine River, there stands above the prairie a remarkable elevation of clay, sand, and gravel, a lonely monument which has withstood the erosion of a former geologic age. It was a noted landmark to the Indians in their hunting, and to the French voyageurs on their trading expeditions. By this Joliet was impressed, and he gave the elevation his own name, Mont Joliet, which it has retained, while all the others he marked on his map have been forgotten.[480] It was not until about the middle of August, 1674, that he returned to Quebec, and Governor Frontenac, on the 14th of November, writes to the French Government,—

“Sieur Joliet, whom Monsieur Talon advised me, on my arrival from France, to despatch for the discovery of the South Sea, returned three months ago, and found some very fine countries, and a navigation so easy through the beautiful rivers, that a person can go from Lake Ontario and Fort Frontenac in a bark to the Gulf of Mexico, there being only one carrying place, half a league in length, where Lake Ontario communicates with Lake Erie. A settlement could be made at this post, and another bark built on Lake Erie.... He has been within ten days’ journey of the Gulf of Mexico, and believes that water communication could be found leading to the Vermillion and California Seas, by means of the river that flows from the west, with the Grand River that he discovered, which rises from north to south, and is as large as the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec.

“I send you, by my secretary, the map[481] he has made of it, and the observations he has been able to recollect, as he lost all his minutes and journals in the wreck he suffered within sight of Montreal, where, after having completed a voyage of twelve hundred leagues, he was near being drowned, and lost all his papers, and a little Indian whom he brought from those countries.”

Governor Frontenac was satisfied with the importance of establishing a post on Lake Ontario, as Courcelles had suggested, and in the summer of 1673 visited the region. On the 3d of June he departed from Quebec, and at five o’clock in the afternoon of the 15th was received at Montreal amid the roar of cannon and the discharge of musketry. On the 9th of July he had reached a point supposed to be in the present town of Lisbon, in St. Lawrence County, New York, at the head of all the rapids of the St. Lawrence; and while sojourning there, at six o’clock in the evening two Iroquois canoes arrived with letters from La Salle, who two months before went into their country.

After exchanging civilities with the Iroquois, and guided by them, Frontenac was led into a beautiful bay about a cannon-shot from the River Katarakoui, which so pleased him as a site for a post, that he stayed until sunset examining the situation. The next day his engineer, Sieur Raudin, was ordered to trace out the plan of a fort, and on the morning of the 14th, at daybreak, soldiers and officers with alacrity began to clear the ground, and in four days the fort was finished, with the exception of the abatis. After designating the garrison and workmen who were to remain at the post, and making La Salle the commandant, on the 27th Frontenac began his homeward voyage, about the time that Joliet began to ascend the Mississippi from the mouth of the Arkansas.[482]

The reports of Joliet led to the formation of plans for the occupation of the valley of the Mississippi by the leading merchants and officers of Canada; and the application of Joliet, its first explorer, to go with twenty persons and establish a post among the Illinois, was refused by the French Government.[483]

Frontenac, in the fall of 1674,[484] sent La Salle to France. Under the date of the 14th of November, he wrote to Minister Colbert that La Salle was a man of character and intelligence, adapted to exploration, and asking him to listen to his plans. A few weeks before La Salle’s arrival in Paris, the Prince of Condé had fought a battle at Seneffe, and obtained a victory over the Prince of Orange and the allied generals, and every one was full of the praise of the King’s household guards, who without flinching remained eight hours under the fire of the enemy. La Salle could hardly have thought at that moment that the future was yet to reveal as his associates in the exploration of the distant valley of the Mississippi a gend’arme of his Majesty’s guard and a field chaplain of that bloody day.[485] In a memorial to the King, he asked for the grant of Fort Frontenac and lands adjacent, agreeing to repay Frontenac the money he had expended in establishing the post, to repair it, and keep a garrison therein at his own expense. He further asked, in consideration of the voyages he had made at his own expense during the seven years of his residence in Canada, that he might receive letters of nobility.[486] The King, upon the report of Colbert, accepted the offer, and on the 13th of May, 1675, conferred upon La Salle the rank of esquire, with power to attain all grades of knighthood and gendarmerie.[487] This year he came back to Canada in the same ship with Louis Hennepin, and going to Fort Frontenac in August, 1676, he increased the buildings, erected a strong wall on the land side, and strengthened the palisades toward the water. From time to time he had cattle brought thither from Montreal, and constructed barks to navigate the lake, keep the Iroquois in check, and deter the English from trading in the region of the upper lakes.[488] In November, 1677, he made another visit to France,[489] and obtained a permit, dated the 12th of May, 1678, allowing him to explore the western part of New France, with the prospect of penetrating as far as Mexico.[490] The expedition was to be at the expense of himself and associates, with the privilege of trade in buffalo skins, but with the express condition that he should not trade with the Ottawas and other Indians who brought their beavers to Montreal.

Frontenac was not only in full sympathy with La Salle, but with other enterprising adventurers, and there is but little doubt that he shared the profits of the fur-traders. About the time that La Salle was improving Fort Frontenac as a trading-post, Raudin,[491] the engineer who had laid out the plan of that fort, was sent by Frontenac with presents to the Ojibways and Sioux, at the extremity of Lake Superior.[492] A nephew of Patron, named Daniel Greysolon du Lhut,[493] and who had made two voyages from France before 1674, had then entered the army as squire of Marquis de Lassay, was in the campaign of Franche-Comté and at Seneffe, having now returned to Quebec was permitted to go on a voyage of discovery in the then unknown region where dwelt the Sioux and Assineboines.

On the 1st of September, 1678, with three Indians and three Frenchmen, Du Lhut left Montreal for Lake Superior, and wintered at some point on the shore of, or in the vicinity of, Lake Huron. On the 5th of April, 1679, he was in the woods, three leagues from Sault Ste. Marie, when he wrote in the third person to Governor Frontenac: “He will not stir from the Nadoussioux until further orders; and peace being concluded he will set up the King’s arms, lest the English and other Europeans settled toward California take possession of the country.”[494] On the 2d of July, 1679, Du Lhut planted the arms of France beyond Lake Superior, among the Isanti Sioux,[495] who dwelt at Mille Lacs, in what is now the State of Minnesota, and then visited the Songaskitons (Sissetons) and Houetbatons, bands of the Sioux, whose villages were one hundred and twenty leagues beyond. Entering by way of the St. Louis River, it would be easy, by a slight portage, to reach the Sioux village, which was at that time on the shores of the Sandy Lake of the Upper Mississippi.

Among those who went to the Lake Superior region at the same time as Du Lhut, were Dupuy, Lamonde, and Pierre Moreau, alias La Taupine, who had been with Saint Lusson at the planting of the French arms in 1671 at Sault Ste. Marie, and was trading among the Illinois when Joliet was in that country. In the summer of 1679 La Taupine returned, and it was rumored that he had obtained among the Ottawas in two days nine hundred beavers. Duchesneau, Intendant of Justice, feeling that Moreau had violated the law forbidding coureurs des bois to trade with the Indians, had him, in September, arrested at Quebec; but Moreau produced a license from Governor Frontenac, permitting him, with his two comrades, to go to the Ottawas, to execute his secret orders, and so was liberated. He had not left the prison but a short time when an officer and some soldiers came with an order from Frontenac to force the prison, in case he were still there. In a letter to Seignelay he writes: “It is certain, my Lord, that the said La Taupine carried goods to the Ottawas, that his two comrades remained in the country, apparently near Du Lhut, and that he traded there.”[496]

On the 15th of September Du Lhut had returned to Lake Superior, and at Camanistigoya, or the Three Rivers, the site of Fort William of the old Northwest Company, he held a conference with the Assineboines, an alienated band of the Sioux, and other northern tribes, and persuaded them to be at peace, and to intermarry with the Sioux. The next winter he remained in the region near the northern boundary of Minnesota; but in June, 1680, he determined to visit the Issati Sioux by water, as he had before gone to their villages by land.[497] With two canoes, an Indian as an interpreter, and four Frenchmen,—one of whom was Faffart, who had been in the employ of La Salle at Fort Frontenac,[498]—he entered a river eight leagues from the extremity of Lake Superior, now called Bois Brulé, a narrow, rapid stream, then much obstructed by fallen trees and beaver-dams. After reaching its upper waters a short portage was made to Upper Lake St. Croix, the outlet of which was a river, which, descending, led him to the Mississippi.

Two weeks after Du Lhut left Montreal to explore the extremity of Lake Superior, La Salle returned from France, accompanied by the brave officer Henry Tonty, who had lost one hand in battle, but who, with an iron substitute for the lost member, could still be efficient in case of a conflict. He also brought with him, beside thirty persons, a supply of cordage, anchors, and other material to be used at Fort Frontenac and on his proposed journey toward the Gulf of Mexico.

After reaching Frontenac, La Motte, who had been a captain in a French regiment, was sent in advance, with the Franciscan Hennepin and sixteen men, to select a site for building a vessel to navigate the upper lakes. On the 8th of January, 1679, La Salle and Tonty, late at night, reached La Motte’s encampment at the rapids below the Falls of Niagara, only to find him absent on a visit to the Senecas. The next day La Salle climbed the heights, and following the portage road round the cataract he found at the entrance of Cayuga Creek an admirable place for a ship-yard. La Motte having returned to his encampment, with La Salle and Tonty he visited the selected site, and Tonty was charged with the supervision of the ship-builders.

Four days later, the keel of the projected vessel was laid, and in May it was launched with appropriate ceremonies, and named after the fabulous animal—the symbol of strength and swiftness,—the “Griffin,” two of which were the supporters of the escutcheon of Count Frontenac. Tonty, on the 22d of July, was sent forward with five men to join fourteen others who had been ordered by La Salle to stop at the mouth of the Detroit River. On the 7th day of August the “Griffin” spread her sails upon her voyage to unknown waters whose depths had never been sounded, and early on the morning of the 10th reached Tonty and his party, who had anxiously awaited its coming, and received them on board. On the 10th of August, the day in the calendar of the Church of Rome devoted to the memory of the virgin Saint Clare, foundress of the Franciscan Order of Poor Clares, the vessel entered the lake called by the Franciscan priests after her, although now written St. Clair. On the 27th they reached the harbor of Mackinaw,—a point on the mainland south of the straits; and upon his landing La Salle was greatly surprised to find there a number of those whom he had sent, at the close of the last year, to trade for his benefit with the Illinois. Their excuse for their unfaithfulness was credence in a report that La Salle was a visionary, and that his vessel would never arrive at Mackinaw. Four of the deserters were arrested. La Salle, learning that two more—Hemant and Roussel, or Roussellière—were at Sault Ste. Marie, sent Tonty on the 29th with six men to take them into custody. While the lieutenant was absent on this errand, La Salle lifted his anchor and set sail for the Grand Bay, now Green Bay, where he found among the Pottawattamies still others of those whom he had sent to the Illinois, and who had collected furs to the value of twelve thousand livres. From this point he determined to pursue his journey southward in a canoe, and to send back the “Griffin” with the peltries here collected. On the 18th of September the ship—in charge of the pilot, a supercargo, and five sailors—sailed for the magazine at the end of Lake Erie, but it never came to Mackinaw. Some Indians said it had been wrecked, but there was never any certain information obtained. A Pawnee lad, fourteen or fifteen years of age, who was a prisoner among the Indians near a post established among the Illinois, reported that the pilot of the “Griffin” had been seen among the Missouri tribes, and that he had ascended the Mississippi, with four others, in two canoes, with goods stolen from the ship, and some hand-grenades. It was the intention of this party to join Du Lhut, and if they could not find him, to push on to the English on Hudson’s Bay. Meeting some hostile Indians, a fight occurred, and all the Frenchmen were killed but the pilot and another, who were sold as prisoners to the Missouri Indians. In the chapter on the exploration of the lakes, it is only necessary to allude to that portion of La Salle’s expedition which pertains to this region.

After La Salle had established Fort Crèvecœur among the Illinois, on the 29th of February, 1680, he sent Michel Accault (often spelt Ako) on a trading and exploring expedition to the Upper Mississippi. He took with him Anthony Augelle, called the Picard, and the Franciscan priest Louis Hennepin, in a canoe, with goods valued at about a thousand livres. In ascending the Mississippi the party was hindered by ice near the mouth of the Illinois River until the 12th of March, when they resumed their voyage. Following the windings of the Mississippi, La Salle mentions in a letter written on the 22d of August, 1682, at Fort Frontenac,[499] that they passed a tributary from the east called by the Sioux Meschetz Odéba,[500] now called Wisconsin, and twenty-three or twenty-four leagues above they saw the Black River, called by the Sioux Chabadeba.[501] About the 11th of April, at three o’clock in the afternoon, a war-party of Sioux going south was met, and Accault, as the leader, presented the calumet,[502] and gave them some tobacco and twenty knives. The Sioux gave up their expedition, and conducted Accault and his companions to their villages. On the 22d of April the isles in the Mississippi were reached, where two Sioux had been killed by the Maskoutens, and they stopped to weep over their death, while Accault, to assuage their grief, gave them in trade a box of goods and twenty-four hatchets. Arriving at an enlargement of the river, about three miles below the modern city of St. Paul, the canoes were hidden in the marshes, and the rest of the journey to the villages of Mille Lacs was made by land. Six weeks after they reached the villages, the Sioux determined to descend the Mississippi on a buffalo hunt, and Hennepin and Augelle went with the party.

When Du Lhut reached the Mississippi from Lake Superior, he found eight cabins of Sioux, and learned that some Frenchmen were with the party hunting below the St. Croix River. Surprised by the intelligence, leaving two Frenchmen to guard his goods, he descended in a canoe with his interpreter and his other two men, and on the morning of the third day he found the hunting camp and the Franciscan Hennepin. In a letter to Seignelay, written while on a visit in France, Du Lhut writes:—

“The want of respect which they showed to the said Reverend Father provoked me, and this I showed them, telling them he was my brother. And I had him placed in my canoe to come with me into the villages of the said Nadouecioux, whither I took him; and a week after our arrival I caused a council to be convened, exposing the ill treatment which they had been guilty of, both to the said Reverend Father and to the other two Frenchmen who were with him, having robbed them and carried them off as slaves,[503] and even taken the priestly vestments of said Reverend Father.

“I had two calumets, which they had danced to, returned, on account of the insults which they had offered, being what they hold most in esteem to appease matters, telling them I did not take calumets from the people who, after they had seen me and received my peace presents, and had been for a year always with Frenchmen, robbed them when they went to visit them. Each one in the council endeavored to throw the blame from himself, but their excuses did not prevent my telling the Reverend Father Louis that he would have to come with me towards the Outagamys [Foxes], as he did; showing him that it would strike a blow at the French nation, in a new discovery, to suffer an insult of this nature without manifesting resentment, although my design was to push on to the sea in a west-northwesterly direction, which is that which is believed to be the Red Sea [Gulf of California], whence the Indians who had gone to war on that side gave salt to three Frenchmen whom I had sent exploring, and who brought me said salt, having reported to me that the Indians had told them that it was only twenty days’ journey from where they were to find the great lake, whose waters were worthless to drink. They had made me believe that it would not be absolutely difficult to find it, if permission were given to go there.

“However, I preferred to retrace my steps, exhibiting the just indignation I felt, rather than to remain, after the violence which they had done to the Reverend Father and the other two Frenchmen who were with him, whom I put in my canoes and brought back to Michelimakinak.”

It was not until some time in May, 1681, that Du Lhut arrived at Montreal, and although he protested that his journey had only been in the interest of discovery and of peace-making with the tribes, the Intendant of Justice accused him of violating the King’s edict against trading with the Indians, and Frontenac held him for a time in the castle at Quebec, more as a friend than as a prisoner. It was but a little while before an amnesty came from the King of France to all suspected of being “coureurs des Bois,” and authorizing Governor Frontenac to issue yearly twenty-five licenses to twenty-five canoes, each having three men, to trade among the savages.

Duchesneau, the Intendant of Justice, still complained that the Governor winked at illicit trade, and on the 13th of November, 1681, he wrote to Seignelay, who had succeeded his father as Minister for the Colonies:—

“But not content with the profits to be derived within the countries under the King’s dominion, the desire of making money everywhere has led the Governor, Sieurs Perrot, Boisseau, Du Lhut, and Patron, his uncle, to send canoes loaded with peltries to the English. It is said that sixty thousand livres’ worth has been sent thither; and though proof of this assertion cannot be adduced, it is a notorious report.... Trade with the English is justified every day, and all those who have pursued it agree that beaver carried to them sells for double what it does here, for that worth fifty-two sous, six deniers, the pound, duty paid, brings eight livres there, and the beaver for Russia sells there at ten livres the pound in goods.”

On grounds of public policy Frontenac in 1682 was recalled, and De la Barre, his successor, in October of this year held a conference with the most influential persons, among whom was Du Lhut, who afterward sailed for France, and early in 1683[504] there wrote the letter to Seignelay from which extracts have been made.

The Iroquois having found it profitable to carry the beavers of the northwest to the English at Albany, determined to wage war against the tribes of the upper Lakes, seize Mackinaw, and drive away the French. Governor de la Barre, to thwart this scheme, in May, 1683, sent Oliver Morrel, the Sieur de la Durantaye, with six canoes and thirty good men, to Mackinaw, and the Chevalier de Baugy was ordered to the fort established by La Salle on the Illinois River, in charge of Tonty. As soon as Durantaye reached Mackinaw, he immediately sent parties to Green Bay to take steps to humble the Pottawattamies for the hostility exhibited toward the French. He afterward went down the west side of Lake Michigan, and Chevalier de Baugy proceeded on the other side, hoping to meet La Salle, who was expected to go to Mackinaw by following the eastern shore.

Du Lhut, upon his return from France, obtained a license to trade, and in August arrived at Mackinaw with men and goods for trading in the Sioux country[505] by way of Green Bay. Upon the 8th of the month he left Mackinaw with about thirty persons; and after leaving their goods at the extremity of the Bay, they proceeded, armed for war, to the village of the Pottawattamies, and rebuked them for the bad feelings which they had exhibited. Some Cayuga Iroquois in the vicinity captured five of the Wyandot Hurons that Du Lhut had sent out to reconnoitre, but avoided the French post. “The Sieur du Lhut,” writes the Governor to Seignelay, “who had the honor to see you at Versailles, happening to be at that post when my people arrived, placed himself at their head, and issued such good orders that I do not think it can be seized, as he has employed his forces and some Indians in fortifying and placing himself in a condition of determined defence.” Having been advised of the retreat of the Iroquois, Du Lhut proceeded toward the north to execute his design of stopping English trade in that direction. The project is referred to in a despatch of the Canadian to the Home Government in these words: “The English of Hudson’s Bay have this year attracted many of our northern Indians, who for this reason have not come to trade to Montreal. When they learned by expresses sent them by Du Lhut, on his arrival at Messilimakinak, that he was coming, they sent him word to come quickly, and they would unite with him to prevent all others going thither any more. The English of the Bay excite us against the savages, whom Sieur du Lhut alone can quiet.”

Departing from his first post at Kaministigouia, the site of which is in view of Prince Arthur’s Landing, he found his way between many isles, varied and picturesque, to a river on the north shore of Lake Superior leading to Lake Nepigon (Alepimigon). Passing to the northeastern extremity, he built a post on a stream connecting with the waters of the Hudson’s Bay, called after a family name, La Tourette. He returned the next year, if not to Montreal, certainly to Mackinaw. Keweenaw by this time had become a well-known resort of traders; and in its vicinity, in the summer of 1683, two Frenchmen, Colin Berthot and Jacques Le Maire, had been surprised by Indians, robbed and murdered. While Du Lhut was at Mackinaw, on the 24th of October, he was told that an accomplice, named Folle Avoine, had arrived at Sault Ste. Marie with fifteen Ojibway families who had fled from Chagouamigon Bay, fearing retaliation for an attack which they had made upon the Sioux during the last spring. There were only twelve Frenchmen at the Sault at the time, and they felt too weak, without aid, to make an arrest of Folle Avoine.

At the dawn of the next day after the information was received, Du Lhut embarked with six Frenchmen to seize the murderer, and he also gave a seat in his canoe to the Jesuit missionary, Engelran. When within a league of the post at the Sault, he left the canoe, and with Engelran and the Chevalier de Fourcille, on foot, went through the woods to the mission-house, and the remaining four—Baribaud, Le Mere, La Fortune, and Maçons—proceeded with the canoe.

Du Lhut, upon his arrival, immediately ordered the arrest of the accused, and placed him under a guard of six men; then calling a council, he told the Indians that those guilty of the murder must be punished. But they, hoping to exculpate the prisoner, said that the murder had been committed by one Achiganaga and his sons. Peré had been sent to Keweenaw to find Achiganaga and his children, and when he arrested them they acknowledged their guilt, and told him that the goods they had stolen were hidden in certain places. The powder and tobacco were found soaked in water and useless, and the bodies of the murdered were found in holes in marshy ground, covered with branches of trees to prevent them from floating. The goods not damaged were sold at Keweenaw, to the highest bidder among the traders, for eleven hundred livres, to be paid in beavers to M. de la Chesnaye. On the 24th of November Peré, at ten o’clock at night, came and told Du Lhut that he had found eighteen Frenchmen at Keweenaw, and that he had brought down as prisoners Achiganaga and sons, and had left them under a guard of twelve Frenchmen at a point twelve leagues from the Sault. The next day, at dawn, he went back, and at two o’clock in the afternoon returned with the prisoners, who were placed in a room in the house where Du Lhut was, and watched by a strong guard, and not allowed to converse with each other.

On the 26th a council was held. Folle Avoine was allowed two of his relatives to defend him, and the same privilege was accorded to the others. He was interrogated, and his answers taken in writing, when they were read to him, and inquiry made whether the record was correct. He being removed, Achiganaga was introduced, and in like manner questioned; and then his sons. The Indians watched the judicial examination with silent interest, and the chiefs at length said to the prisoners: “It is enough! You accuse yourselves; the French are masters of your bodies.”

On the 29th all the French at the place were called together. The answers to the interrogatories by the prisoners were read, and then by vote it was unanimously decided that they were guilty and ought to die. As the traders at Keweenaw desired all possible leniency to be shown, Du Lhut decided to execute only two,—man for man, for those murdered; and in this opinion he was sustained by De la Tour, the Superior of the Jesuit missionaries at the Sault. Folle Avoine and the eldest of Achiganaga’s sons were selected. Du Lhut writes: “I then returned to the cabin of Brochet

To Du Lhut must always be given the credit of being the first in the distant West, at the outlet of Lake Superior, to exhibit the majesty of law, under the forms of the French code. While some of the timid and prejudiced, in Canada and France, condemned his course as harsh and impolitic, yet, as the enforcer of a respect for life, he was upheld by the more thoughtful and reasonable.[506]

During the summer of 1683 (Aug. 10), René Le Gardeur, Sieur de Beauvais, with thirteen others who had a permit to trade among the Illinois, departed from Mackinaw, and early in December reached the lower end of Lake Michigan, and wintered in the valley of the Theakiki or Kankakee River. About the 10th of March, 1684, while on their way to Fort St. Louis, on the Illinois River, they were robbed by the Seneca Iroquois of their seven canoes of merchandise, and after nine days sent back to the Chicago River with only two canoes and some powder and lead. The Indians, on the 21st, approached and besieged Fort St. Louis,[507] which was gallantly defended by the Chevalier de Baugy and the brave Henry Tonty, the Bras Coupé (Cut Arm), as he was called by them, because he had lost his hand in battle.[508]

Upon the receipt of the news of this incursion, Governor de la Barre, under a pressure from the merchants of Quebec, whose goods were imperilled, determined to attack the Iroquois in their own country. Orders were sent to the posts of the upper lakes for the commandants to bring down allies to Niagara. While on his way, Du Lhut wrote to De la Barre:—

“As I was leaving Lake Alemepigon [Nepigon], I made in June all the presents necessary to prevent the savages carrying their beavers to the English. I have met the Sieur de la Croix, with his two comrades, who gave me your despatches, in which you demand that I omit no step for the delivery of your letters to the Sieur Chouart at the River Nelson. To carry out your instructions Monsieur Péré will have to go himself,[509] the savages having all at that time gone into the wilderness to gather their blueberries. The Sieur Péré will have left in August, and during that month will have delivered your letters to the said Sieur Chouart.[510]

“It remains for me to assure you that all the savages of the north have great confidence in me, and this makes me promise you that before two years have passed not a single savage will visit the English at Hudson’s Bay. This they have all promised, and have bound themselves thereto by the presents which I have given or caused to be given.

“The Klistinos, Assenepoualacs, Sapiniere, Opemens Dacheliny, Outouloubys, and Tabitibis, who comprise the nations who are west of the Sea of the North, having promised next spring to be at the fort which I have constructed near the River à la Maune, at the end of Lake Alemepigon,[511] and next summer I shall construct one in the country of the Klistinos, which will be an effectual barrier.... It is necessary, to carry out my promises, that my brother[512] should, in the early spring [of 1685], go up again, with two canoes loaded with powder, lead, fusils, hatchets, tobacco, and necessary presents.”

Durantaye, Du Lhut, and Nicholas Perrot left Mackinaw with one hundred and fifty Frenchmen and about five hundred Indians[513] to join De la Barre’s army; and they had not been six hours at Niagara, on the 6th of September, before orders were received that their services were not needed, as the French troops were suffering from sickness, and a truce had been made with the Iroquois.[514] Du Lhut and the other Frenchmen slowly returned to their posts, and when the new governor (Denonville) arrived, he wrote to De la Durantaye at Mackinaw, and sent orders to Du Lhut, who was at a great distance beyond, to inform him of the number of allies he could furnish in case of a war against the Iroquois.

Nicholas Perrot, in the spring of 1685, was commissioned to go to Green Bay and have chief command there, and of any countries he might discover.[515] He left Montreal with twenty men, and arriving at Green Bay, some Indians told him that they had visited countries toward the setting sun, where they obtained the blue and green stones suspended from their ears and noses, and that they saw horses and men like Frenchmen,—probably the Spaniards of New Mexico; and others said that they had obtained hatchets from persons who lived in a house that walked on the water in the Assineboine region,—alluding to the English established at Hudson’s Bay. At the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin rivers thirteen Hurons were met, who were bitterly opposed to the establishment of a post near the Sioux. After reaching the Mississippi, Perrot sent a few Winnebagoes to notify the Aiouez (Ioways) who roamed on the prairies beyond, that the French had ascended the river, and that they would indicate their stopping-place by kindling a fire. A place was found suitable for a post,[516] where there was wood, at the foot of a high hill (au pied d’une montagne), behind which there was a large prairie.[517] In eleven days a number of Ioways arrived at the Mississippi, about twenty-five miles above, and Perrot ascended to meet them; but as he and his men drew near, the Indian women ran up the bluffs and hid in the woods. But twenty of the braves met him and bore him to the chief’s lodge, and he, bending over Perrot, began to weep, and allowed the tears to fall upon his guest. After he had exhausted himself, the principal men continued this wetting process. Buffalo tongues were then boiled in an earthen pot, and after being cut into small pieces, the chief took a piece, and, as a mark of respect, placed it in Perrot’s mouth. During the winter Perrot traded with the Sioux; and by 1686 a post was established on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Pepin, just above its entrance, called “Fort St. Antoine.”[518]

Denonville discovered upon his arrival at Quebec that the policy which De la Barre had pursued in making peace had rendered the Iroquois more insolent, and had made the allies of the French upon the upper lakes discontented, on account of their long and fruitless voyage to Niagara. He therefore determined, as soon as he could gather a sufficient force, to march into the Iroquois country[519] “and not chastise them by halves, but if possible annihilate them.” Orders were again sent to the posts at Mackinaw and Green Bay to prepare for another expedition against the Seneca Iroquois. Perrot at the time he received the order to return was among the Sioux, and his canoes had been broken by the ice. During the summer of 1686 he visited the Miamis, sixty leagues distant. Upon his return he perceived a great smoke, and at first thought it was a war-party going against the Sioux. Fortunately he met a Maskouten chief, who had been at the post to visit him, and from him he learned that the Foxes, Kickapoos, Maskouten, and others had determined to pillage the post, kill its inmates, and then go forward and attack the Sioux. Hurrying on, he reached the post, and was told that on that very day three spies had been there and discovered that there were only six men in charge. The next day two more appeared, but Perrot had taken the precaution to put loaded guns at the door of each hut, and made his men frequently change their clothes. To the query of the savage spies, “How many French were there?” the reply was, “Forty, and that more were daily expected, who had been on a buffalo hunt, and that the guns were loaded and the knives well sharpened.” They were then told to go back to their camp and bring a chief of each tribe; and that if Indians in large numbers came they would be fired at.

In accordance with this message, six chiefs presented themselves, and after their bows and arrows had been taken from them, they were invited to Perrot’s cabin, where he gave them something to eat and tobacco to smoke. Looking at Perrot’s loaded guns, they asked “if he were afraid of his children?” He answered, “No.” They continued, “Are you displeased?” To this he said, “I have good reason to be. The Spirit has warned me of your designs; you will take my things away and put me in the kettle, and proceed against the Nadouaissioux. The Spirit told me to be on my guard, and he would help me.” Astonished at these words, they confessed he had spoken the truth. That night the chiefs slept within the stockade, and early the next morning a part of the hostile force came and wished to trade. Perrot had now only fifteen men, and arresting the chiefs, he told them he would break their heads if they did not make the Indians go away. One of the chiefs, therefore, stood on the gate of the fort and said to the warriors: “Do not advance, young men, the Spirit has warned Metaminens of your designs.” The advice was followed, and the chiefs, receiving some presents, also retired.

A few days after, Perrot returned to Green Bay in accordance with the order of the Governor of Canada. His position toward the Jesuits at this point was different from that of La Salle. This latter explorer had declared that the missionaries were more anxious to convert, at their blacksmith shop, iron into implements, to be exchanged for beaver, than to convert souls.

After being buried in the earth for years, there has been discovered a silver soleil or ostensorium, fifteen inches high, and weighing twenty ounces, intended for the consecrated wafer;[520] around the oval base of the rim is the following inscription in French: “This soleil was given by M^r Nicholas Perrot, to the mission of St. Francis Xavier, at the Bay of Puans, 1686.”[521]

Governor Dongan of New York, although an Irishman and Roman Catholic, was aggressive in the interests of England, and asserted the right of traders from Albany to go among the Indians of the Northwest. As early as 1685 he licensed several persons, among whom was La Fontaine Marion, a Canadian, to trade for beaver in the Ottawas country; and their journey was successful, and created consternation at Quebec. Governor Denonville wrote to Seignelay of the pretences of the English, who claimed the lakes to the South Sea. His language was terse and emphatic: “Missilimakinak is theirs. They have taken its latitude, have been to trade there with our Outawas and Huron Indians, who received them cordially on account of the bargains they gave by selling them merchandise for beaver at a much higher price than we. Unfortunately we had but very few Frenchmen there at that time.”

THE SOLEIL.

A despatch on the 6th of June, 1686, was sent to Du Lhut, that he should go and establish a post at some point on the shore of St. Clair River, between Lake Erie and Lake Huron, which would serve as a protection for friendly Indians, and a barrier to the English traders. After he had built the post he was ordered to leave it in command of a lieutenant and twenty-eight men, return to Mackinaw, and then take thirty men more to the post, which was called Fort St. Joseph. A party of English, under Captain Thomas Roseboome, of Albany, consisting of twenty-nine whites and five Indians, and La Fontaine as interpreter, in the spring of 1687 were arrested by Durantaye on Lake Huron, twenty leagues from Mackinaw, and their eau de vie (brandy) given to the Indians.

In June, Durantaye left Mackinaw with allies for Denonville, and was afterward followed by Perrot; and at Fort St. Joseph he met Du Lhut and Henry Tonty, who had arrived from Fort St. Louis with a few Illinois Indians.[522] After the united company had left this post, they met in St. Clair River a second party of Englishmen, consisting of twenty-one whites, six Indians, and eight prisoners, in charge of Major Patrick Macgregory, of Albany, a native of Scotland. These were also arrested, making about sixty then in the hands of the French.

On the 27th of June, Durantaye and associates, to the number of one hundred and seventy Frenchmen, and about four hundred Indians, arrived at Niagara. Sieur de la Foret, who had been with Tonty at Fort St. Louis, on the 1st of July reported their arrival to Denonville, then at Fort Frontenac. The Governor was pleased to hear of the capture of the English, and in a subsequent despatch wrote: “It is certain that had the two English detachments not been stopped and pillaged, had their brandy and other goods entered Michillimaquina, all our Frenchmen would have had their throats cut by a revolt of all the Hurons and Outaouas, whose example would have been followed by all the other far nations, in consequence of the presents which had been secretly sent to the Indians.”

BOTTOM OF THE SOLEIL.

On the 10th of July, as the Canadian and French troops entered Irondequoit Bay, they were elated by the approach, under sail, of the Indian allies from Mackinaw who on the 6th had left Niagara. On the 12th, the march to the Seneca village was begun; but the story of it has been told elsewhere.[523]

The officers who came from the posts of the upper lakes were well spoken of by Denonville. In one of his despatches he writes: “A half-pay captaincy being vacant, I gave it to Sieur de la Durantaye, who since I have been in this country has done good service among the Outawas, and has been very economical in labor and expense in executing the orders he received from me. He is a man of rank, unfortunate in his affairs, and who, by his great assiduity at Missillimakinak, efficiently carried out the instructions to seize the English; he arrested one of the parties within two days’ journey of Missillimakinak. Sieurs de Tonty and Du Lhut have acquitted themselves very well; all would richly deserve some reward.”

After the allies had left Niagara for the scene of battle, Greysolon de la Tourette, a brother of Du Lhut, described as “an intelligent lad,” arrived there from Lake Nepigon, north of Lake Superior, in a canoe, without an escort. Denonville a few weeks after wrote: “Du Lhut’s brother, who has recently arrived from the rivers above the Lake of the Allemepigons, assures me that he saw more than fifteen hundred persons come to trade with him, and they were very sorry he had not sufficient goods to satisfy them. They are of the tribes accustomed to resort to the English at Port Nelson and River Bourbon.”[524]

The destruction of the Seneca villages having been completed, Du Lhut, with his brave cousin Henry Tonty, returned in September to Fort St. Joseph,[525] near the entrance of Lake Huron, garrisoned at his own charges by coureurs des bois, who had in the spring sown some bushels of Turkey wheat. The next year, to allay the irritation of the Iroquois, Governor Denonville issued an order to abandon the fort, and on the 27th of August the buildings were destroyed by fire.

Perrot, in 1688, was ordered to return to his post on the Upper Mississippi, and take formal possession of the country in the King’s name. With a party of forty men, he left Montreal to trade with the Sioux, who, according to La Potherie, “were very distant, and could not trade with us easily, as the other tribes and the Outagamis [Foxes] boasted of having cut off the passage thereto.” Reaching Green Bay in the fall of the year, Perrot was met by a deputation of Foxes, and afterward visited their village. In the chief’s lodge there was placed before him broiled venison, and for the rest of the French raw meat was served; but he refused to eat, because, he said, “meat did not give him any spirit. But he would take some when they were more reasonable.” He then chided them for not having gone, as requested by the Governor of Canada, on the expedition against the Senecas. Urging them to proceed on the beaver hunt, and to fight only the Iroquois, and leaving a few Frenchmen to trade, he proceeded toward the Sioux country. Arriving at the portage, the ice formed some impediment, but, aided by Pottawattamies, his men transported their goods to the Wisconsin River, which was not frozen. Ascending the Mississippi, he proceeded to the post which he occupied before he was summoned to fight the Senecas.

As soon as the ice left the river, in the spring of 1689, the Sioux came down and escorted Perrot to one of their villages, where he was received with much enthusiasm. He was carried around upon a beaver robe, followed by a long line of warriors, each bearing a pipe and singing. Then, taking him to the chief’s lodge, several wept over his head, as the Ioways had done when he first visited the Upper Mississippi. After he had left, in 1686, a Sioux chief, knowing that few Frenchmen were at the fort, had come down with one hundred warriors to pillage it. Of this, complaint was made by Perrot, and the guilty leader came near being put to death by his tribe. As they were about to leave the Sioux village, one of his men told Perrot that a box of goods had been stolen, and he ordered a cup of water to be brought, into which he poured some brandy. He then addressed the Indians, and told them he would dry up their marshes if the goods were not restored, at the same time setting on fire the brandy in the cup. The savages, astonished, and supposing that he possessed supernatural powers, soon detected the thief, and the goods were returned.

On the 8th of May, 1689, at the post St. Antoine, on the Wisconsin side of Lake Pepin, a short distance above the Chippewa River, in the presence of the Jesuit missionary, Joseph J. Marest, Boisguillot,[526] a trader near the mouth of the Wisconsin River, Pierre Le Sueur, whose name was afterward identified with the exploration of the Minnesota, and a few others, Perrot took possession of the country of the rivers St. Croix, St. Pierre, and the region of Mille Lacs, in the name of the King of France.

When he returned to Montreal, he found a great change had occurred in political affairs. It had become evident that the Iroquois were mere agents of the English. The Albany traders had searched the land between the Hudson River and Lake Erie, and had made a report that the Valley of the Genesee was fertile and beautiful to behold, and every year an increasing number of pale-faces wandered among the Indian villages toward Lake Ontario. Old officers in Canada saw that their only hope was to destroy the source of supply to the Iroquois. The question to be determined was whether the King of France or the King of England should control the region of the Great Lakes. Chevalier de Callières, who had seen much service in Europe, and was in command of the troops in Canada, insisted that decisive steps should be taken. The crisis was hastened by the arrival of the intelligence that a revolution had occurred in England, and that William and Mary had been acknowledged. Callières wrote to Seignelay relative to the condition of affairs: “It would be idle to flatter ourselves with the hope to find them improved since the usurpation of the Prince of Orange, who will be assuredly acknowledged by Sir Andros,[527] who is a Protestant, born in the Island of Jersey, and by New York, the inhabitants whereof are mostly Dutch, who planted this colony under the name of New Netherland, all of whom are Protestant.”

He urged that the war should be carried into New York, and that a force be sent strong enough to seize Albany, and then to move down and capture Manhattan. “It will give his Majesty,” he said, “one of the finest harbors in America, accessible at almost all seasons, and it will give one of the finest countries of America, in a milder and more fertile climate than that of Canada.” The sequel was a conflict of drilled troops under European officers upon the borders of New England and New York.

[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]

1609-1640.—The Voyages of Champlain, as published in 1632 at Paris, are valuable in facts pertaining to discovery along the shores of Lake Champlain and Lake Huron; but the book is the subject of special treatment in another chapter.[528] The Grand Voyage of Sagard[529] contains little more than what may be found in Champlain and the Relations of the Jesuit missionaries. Charlevoix mentions that Sagard passed “some time among the Hurons, but had not time to see things well enough, still less to verify all that was told him.”

1640-1660.—Benjamin Sulté, in his “Notes on Jean Nicolet,” printed in the Wisconsin Historical Society Collections, viii. 188-194,[530] shows that Nicolet, the trader, must have visited Green Bay between July, 1634, and July, 1635, because this interval is the only period of his life when he cannot be found on the shores of the St. Lawrence. The recently published History of the Discovery of the Northwest in 1634 by Jean Nicolet, with a Sketch of his Life by C. W. Butterfield, Cincinnati, 1881, is a useful book, and gives evidence that Nicolet did not descend the Wisconsin River.

The Relations des Jésuites (of which a full bibliographical account is appended to the following chapter) are important sources for the tracing of these western explorations.

The Relation of 1640 has an extract from a letter of Paul Le Jeune, in which, after giving the names of the tribes of the region of the Lakes, he adds that “the Sieur Nicolet, interpreter of the Algonquin and Huron languages for Messieurs de la Nouvelle France, has given me the names of these natives he has visited, for the most part in their country.” This Relation shows how near an approach Nicolet made to discovering the Mississippi. See in this connection Margry’s “Les Normands dans l’Ohio et le Mississippi,” in the Journal général de l’Instruction publique, 30 Juillet, 1862. Shea, Mississippi Valley, p. xx, contends that Nicolet reached the river or its affluents. The Relation of 1643 records the death of Nicolet, with some particulars of his life.

For slight notices of the period, with dates of the departure and arrival of traders and missionaries, there is serviceable aid to be had from Le Journal des Jésuites publié d’après le Manuscrit original conservé aux Archives du Séminaire de Québec. Par MM. les Abbés Laverdière et Casgrain. Quebec, 1871.[531] Under date of Aug. 21, 1660, is noted the arrival of a party of Ottawas at Montreal, who departed the next day, and arrived at Three Rivers on the 24th, and on the 27th left. It adds: “They were in number three hundred. Des Grosilleres was in their company, who had gone to them the year before. They had departed from Lake Superior with one hundred canoes; forty turned back, and sixty arrived, loaded with peltry to the value of 200,000 livres. At Montreal they left to the value of 50,000 livres, and brought the rest to Three Rivers. They come in twenty-six days, but are two months in going back. Des Grosillers wintered with the Bœuf tribe, who were about four thousand, and belonged to the sedentary Nadouesseronons [Dakotahs]. The Father Menar, the Father Albanel, and six other Frenchmen went back with them.”

There appears to be no uniformity in the spelling of the name of Groseilliers. Under May, 1662, is this entry: “I departed from Quebek on the 3d for Three Rivers; there met Des Grosillers, who was going to the Sea of the North. He left Quebek the night before with ten men.” Under August, 1663, is the following: “The 5th returned those who had been three years among the Outaoouac; nine Frenchmen went, and seven returned. The Father Menar and his man, Jean Guerin, one of our donnés, had died,—the Father Menar the 7th or 8th of August, 1661, and Jean Guerin in September, 1662. The party arrived at Montreal on the 25th of July, with thirty-five canoes and one hundred and fifty men.” Of Creuxius’ Historia and its relations to the missionaries’ reports, there is an account in the next chapter.

1660-1680.—The documents from the French archives in the Parliament Library at Ottawa, Canada (copies in manuscript), and those translated and printed in the New York Col. Docs., vol. ix., give much information on this period; and so do the Jesuit Relations, and the first volume of the Collections edited by Margry and published at Paris in 1875.[532]

The Mémoire sur les Mœurs, Coustumes, et Réligion des Sauvages de l’Amérique septentrionale, par Nicolas Perrot, publié pour la première fois par le R. P. J. Tailhan, de la Compagnie de Jésus, Leipsic and Paris, 1864,[533] was examined by Charlevoix one hundred and fifty years ago, when it was in manuscript, and afforded him useful information. It is the only work referring to the traders at the extremity of Lake Superior between 1660 and 1670, and to the migrations of the Hurons from the Mississippi to the Black River, and from thence to Lake Superior. Much of interest is also derived from the Histoire de l’Amérique septentrionale. Par M. de Bacqueville de la Potherie, Paris, 1722, 4 vols.[534]

1680-1690.—There are differences of statements regarding the Upper Mississippi Valley, but nevertheless much information of importance, in the letter of La Salle from Fort Frontenac, in August, 1682,[535] in Du Lhut’s Mémoire of 1683, as printed by Harrisse,[536] and in Hennepin’s Description de la Louisiane.[537]

Perrot, in the work already quoted, gives the best account of this region from 1683 to 1690.

For the whole period of the exploration of the Great Lakes, the works among the secondary authorities of the chief value are Charlevoix in the last century, and Parkman in the present; but their labors are commemorated elsewhere.

[EDITORIAL NOTE.]

THE local historical work of the Northwest has been done in part under the auspices of various State and sectional historical societies. The Ohio Society, organized in 1831, became later inanimate, but was revived in 1868, and ought to hold a more important position among kindred bodies than it does. Mr. Baldwin has given an account of the historical and pioneer societies of Ohio in the Western Reserve and Northern Ohio Historical Society’s Tracts, no. 27; and this latter Society, organized in 1867, with the Licking County Pioneer Historical Society, organized the same year, and the Firelands Historical Society, organized in 1857, have increased the historical literature of the State by various publications elucidating in the main the settlements of the last century. The youngest of the kindred associations, the Historical and Geographical Society of Toledo, was begun in 1871. The State, however, is fortunate in having an excellent Bibliography of Ohio (1880), embracing fourteen hundred titles, exclusive of public documents, which was compiled by Peter G. Thomson; while the Americana Catalogues of Robert Clarke & Co., of Cincinnati, are the completest booksellers’ lists of that kind which are published in America. The Ohio Valley Historical Series, published by the same house, has not as yet included any publication relating to the period of the French claims to its territory. The earliest History of Ohio is by Caleb Atwater, published in 1838; but the History by James W. Taylor—“First Period, 1650-1787”—is wholly confined to the Jesuits’ missions, the wars of the Eries and Iroquois, and the later border warfare. (Field, Indian Bibliography, no. 1,535.) Henry Howe’s Historical Collections of Ohio, originally issued in 1848, and again in 1875, is a repository of facts pertaining for the most part to later times.

The Historical Society of Indiana, founded in 1831, hardly justifies its name, so far as appears from any publications. The chief History of Indiana is that by John B. Dillon, which, as originally issued in 1843, came down to 1816; but the edition of 1859 continues the record to 1856. The first three chapters are given to the French missionaries and the natives. (Field, Indian Bibliography, nos. 429, 430; Sabin, vol. v. no. 20,172.) A popular conglomerate work is The Illustrated History of Indiana, 1876, by Goodrich and Tuttle. A few local histories touch the early period, like John Law’s Colonial History of Vincennes, 1858; Wallace A. Brice’s History of Fort Wayne, 1868; H. L. Hosmer’s Early History of the Maumee Valley, Toledo, 1858; and H. S. Knapp’s History of the Maumee Valley from 1680, Toledo, 1872, which is, however, very scant on the early history.

In Illinois there is no historical association to represent the State; but the Historical Society of Chicago (begun in 1856), though suffering the loss of its collections of seventeen thousand volumes in the great fire of 1871, still survives.

The principal histories of the State touching the French occupation are Henry Brown’s History of Illinois, New York, 1844; John Reynolds’s Pioneer History of Illinois, Belleville, 1852, now become scarce; and Davidson and Stuvé’s Complete History of Illinois, 1673-1873, Springfield, 1874. The Historical Series issued by Robert Fergus pertain in large measure to Chicago, and, except J. D. Caton’s “Last of the Illinois, and Sketch of the Potawatomies,” has, so far as printed, little of interest earlier than the English occupation. H. H. Hurlbut’s Chicago Antiquities, 1881, has an account of the early discovery of the portage.

The Michigan Pioneer Society was founded in 1874, and has printed three volumes of Pioneer Collections, 1877-1880. The Houghton County Historical Society, devoting itself to the history of the region near Lake Superior,[538] dates from 1866. It has published nothing of importance. The State of Michigan secured, through General Cass, while he was the minister of the United States at Paris, transcripts of a large number of documents relating to its early history. The Historical Society of Michigan was begun in 1828, and during the few years following it printed several Annual Addresses and a volume of Transactions. Every trace of the Society had nearly vanished, when in 1857 it was revived. (Historical Magazine, i. 353.) The principal histories of the State are James H. Lanman’s History of Michigan, New York, 1839; Electra M. Sheldon’s Early History of Michigan, from the First Settlement to 1815, New York, 1856, which is largely given to an account of the Jesuit missions;[539] Charles R. Tuttle’s General History of Michigan, Detroit, 1874; James Valentine Campbell’s Outlines of the Political History of Michigan, Detroit, 1876. (Cf. Clarke’s Bibliotheca Americana, 1878, p. 92; 1883, p. 169; Sabin, Dictionary, vol. xii. p. 141.) A few of the sectional histories, like W. P. Strickland’s Old Mackinaw, Philadelphia, 1860, touch slightly the French period. A brief sketch of Mackinaw Island by Lieutenant Dwight H. Kelton, U. S. A., includes extracts from the registers of the Catholic Church at Mackinaw, and a list of the French commanders at that post during the eighteenth century.

The Historical Society of Wisconsin was founded in 1849, and reorganized in 1854. It has devoted itself to forming a large library, and has published nine volumes of Collections, etc. (Joseph Sabin in American Bibliopolist, vi. 158; Field, Indian Bibliography, no. 1,688). Mr. D. S. Durrie published a bibliography of Wisconsin in Historical Magazine, xvi. 29, and a tract on the Early Outposts of Wisconsin in 1873. A paper on the “First Page of the History of Wisconsin” is in the American Antiquarian, April, 1878. The principal histories of the State are I. A. Lapham’s Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 1846, which lightly touches the earliest period; William R. Smith’s Wisconsin (vol. i., historical; vol. ii., not published; vol. iii., documentary, translating in part the Jesuit Relations from the set in Harvard College Library), Madison, 1854; and Charles R. Tuttle’s Illustrated History of Wisconsin, Madison and Boston, 1875.

The Minnesota Historical Society was organized in 1849, and began the publication of its Annals in 1850, completing a volume in 1856. This volume was reissued in 1872 as vol. i. of its Collections, and includes papers on the origin of the name of Minnesota and the early nomenclature of the region, and papers by Mr. Neill on the French Voyageurs, the early Indian trade and traders,[540] and early notices of the Dakotas. In vol. ii. Mr. Neill has a paper on “The Early French Forts and Footprints in the Valley of the Upper Mississippi;”[541] and Mr. A. J. Hill has examined the geography of Perrot so far as it relates to Minnesota territory. In vol. iii. there is a bibliography of the State; in vol. iv., a History of St. Paul, by John Fletcher Williams, which but briefly touches the period of exploration. The State Historical Society of Minnesota lost a considerable part of its collections in the fire of March 11, 1881, which burned the State capitol,—as detailed in its Report for 1883.

The principal and sufficient account of the State’s history is Edward D. Neill’s History of Minnesota from the Earliest French Explorations, Philadelphia, 1858, which in 1883 reached an improved fifth edition, and is supplemented by his Minnesota Explorers and Pioneers, 1659-1858, published in 1881. In 1858 an edition was also issued, of one hundred copies, on large paper, illustrated with forty-five quarto steel plates, engraved from paintings chiefly by Captain Seth Eastman, U. S. Army.

The Historical Society of Iowa was founded in 1857, and began the publication of its Annals in 1863. The principal account of the State is C. R. Tuttle and D. S. Durrie’s Illustrated History of Iowa, Chicago, 1876.

There are a few more general works to be noted: John W. Monette’s History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Valley of the Mississippi, New York, 1846-1848;[542] S. P. Hildreth’s Pioneer History of the Ohio Valley, Cincinnati, 1848, which but cursorily touches the French period; James H. Perkins’s Annals of the West, Cincinnati, 1846, which brought ripe scholarship to the task at a time before the scholar could have the benefit of much information now accessible;[543] Adolphus M. Hart’s History of the Discovery of the Valley of the Mississippi, Cincinnati, 1852,—a slight sketch, as we now should deem it, but followed soon after by a more scholarly treatment in J. G. Shea’s Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, New York, 1852, to which a sequel, Early Voyages up and down the Mississippi, was published in 1861, containing the voyages of Cavelier, Saint Cosme, Le Sueur, Gravier, and Guignas, during the last years of the century; George Gale’s Upper Mississippi, Chicago, 1867,—a topical treatment of the subject; and Rufus Blanchard’s Discovery and Conquests of the Northwest, Chicago, 1880—the latest general survey of the subject. Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature, under the names of these several States, can often be usefully consulted.

THE ROUTES OF EARLY FRENCH EXPLORATIONS.

This sketch follows a modern map given by Parkman. There is a similar route-map given in the Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog., November, 1880, accompanying a paper by M. J. Thoulet. In the above sketch the portages are marked by dotted lines.

[JOLIET, MARQUETTE, AND LA SALLE.]

HISTORICAL SOURCES AND ATTENDANT CARTOGRAPHY.

BY THE EDITOR.

THE principal sources for the cartographical part of this study are as follows: The collection of manuscript copies[544] of maps in the French Archives which was formed by Mr. Parkman, and which he has described in his La Salle (p. 449), and which is now in Harvard College Library; a collection of manuscript and printed maps called Cartographie du Canada, formed by Henry Harrisse in Paris, and which in 1872 passed into the hands of Samuel L. M. Barlow, Esq., of New York, by whose favor the Editor has had it in his possession for study; the collection of copies made by Dr. J. G. Kohl which is now in the Library of the State Department at Washington, and which through the kind offices of Theodore F. Dwight, Esq., of that department, and by permission of the Secretary of State, have been intrusted to the Editor’s temporary care; and the collection of printed maps now in Harvard College Library, formed mainly by Professor Ebeling nearly a hundred years ago, and which came to that library, with all of Ebeling’s books, as a gift from the late Colonel Israel Thorndike, in 1818.[545]

The completest printed enumeration of maps is in the section on “Cartographie” in Harrisse’s Notes pour servir à l’histoire ... de la Nouvelle France, 1545-1700, Paris, 1872, and this has served the Editor as a convenient check-list. A special paper on “Early Maps of Ohio and the West” constitutes no. 25 of the Tracts of the Western Reserve and Northern Ohio Historical Society. It was issued in 1875, and has been published separately, and is the work of Mr. C. C. Baldwin, secretary of that Society, whose own collection of maps is described by S. D. Peet in the American Antiquarian, i. 21. See also the Transactions (1879) of the Minnesota Historical Society.

The main guide for the historical portion of this essay has been the La Salle of Parkman.[546]

There are in the Dépôt de la Marine in Paris two copies of a rough sketch on parchment, showing the Great Lakes, which were apparently made between 1640 and 1650. They have neither maker’s name nor date, but clearly indicate a state of knowledge derived from the early discovery of the Upper Lakes by way of the Ottawa, and before the southern part of Lake Huron had been explored, and found to connect with Lake Erie. The maker must have been ignorant of the knowledge, or discredited it, which Champlain possessed in 1632 when he connected Ontario and Huron. Indications of settlements at Montreal would place the date of this map after 1642; and it may have embodied the current traditions of the explorations of Brulé and Nicolet, though it omits all indications of Lake Michigan, which Nicolet had discovered. Though rude in many ways, it gives one of the earliest sketches of the Bras d’Or in Cape Breton. The channel connecting the Atlantic and the St. Lawrence, if standing for anything, must represent the Connecticut and the Chaudière. Dr. Kohl, in a marginal note on a copy of this map in his Washington Collection, while referring to the uninterrupted water-way by the Ottawa, remarks on a custom, not uncommon on the early maps, of leaving out the portages; and the same suspicion may attach to the New England water-way here given. A note on the map gives the distance as three hundred leagues from Gaspé to the extremity of Lake Ontario; two hundred more to the land of the buffaloes; two hundred additional to the region of apes and parrots; then four hundred to the Sea of New Spain; and thence fifteen or sixteen hundred more to the Indies. A legend in the neighborhood of Lake Superior confirms other mention of the early discovery of copper in that region: “In the little lake near the mountains are found pieces of copper of five and six hundred pounds’ weight.”

THE OTTAWA ROUTE, 1640-1650.

At a later day La Salle had learned, from some Senecas who visited his post at Lachine, of a great river, rising in their country and flowing to the sea; and, with many geographers of his day, captivated with a promised passage to India, he preferred to believe that it emptied into the Gulf of California.[547]

DOLLIER AND GALLINÉE’S EXPLORATIONS.

This is a reduced sketch of no. 1 of Mr. Parkman’s maps, which measures 30 × 50 inches. It has two titles: Carte du Lac Ontario et des habitations qui l’environne, ensemble les pays que Mess^rs Dolier et Galiné, missionnaires du séminaire de St. Sulpice, ont parcouru, and Carte du Canada et des terres decouvertes vers le lac Derié. Voir la lettre du M. Talon du 10 9^bre, 1670. The figures stand for the following names and legends:—

1. C’est ici qu’ils ont un fort Bel Establissement, une belle maison, et de grands dezerts semés de bled francois et de bled d’inde, pois et autres graines [referring to 70].

2. Baye des Puteotamites. Il y a dix Journées de Chemin du Sault ou sont les RR. S. PP. JJ. aux puteotamites, c’est a dire environ 150 lieues. Je n’ay entré dans cette Baye que jusques a ces Iles que J’ay marquées.

3. Ce lac est le plus grand de tous ceux du pays.

4. C’est icy qu’estoit une pierre qu’avoit tres peu de figures d’hommes, qui les Iroquois tenoient pour un grand Cap^ne, et a qui ils faisoient des sacrifices lorsqu’ils passoient par icy pour aller en guerre. Nous l’avons mis en pieces et jetté à l’eau.

5. Lac Derié, je non marque que ce que j’en ay veu en attendant que je voie le reste.

6. Grandes prairies.

7. Presqu’isle du lac D’Erie.

8. Prairies. Terres excellentes.

9. C’est icy que nous avons hyverne en le plus beau lieu que j’aye yen en Canada, pour l’abondance des arbres, fruittiers, aces, raisins, qui sy grande qu’on en pourroit vivre en faisant provision, grand chasse de serfs, Bisches, Ours, Schenontons, Chats, Sauvages, et Castors.

10. Grand chasse a ce petit misseau.

11. Toutes ces costes sont extrem^t pierreuses et ne laissent pas d’y avoir des bestes.

12. C’est dans cette Baye que estoit autrefois le pays de Hurons lorsqu’ils furent defaits par les Iroquois, et ou les RR. PP. Jesuites estoient fort bien establis.

13. Je n’ay point vu cette ance ou estoit autrefois le pays des Hurons, mais je vois qu’elle est encore plus profonde que je ne la desseins, et c’est icy apparamment qu’aboutit le chemin par ou Mr. Perray a passé.

14. L’embouchure de cette rivière fort difficile a trouver a neanmoins la petite isle qui la precede est fort remarquable par la grande quantité de ces isles de roche dont elle est composée qui deboutent fort loin au large.

17. Chasse d’originaux Bans ces isles.

18. Amikoue.

20. Portage trainage.

21. Sault. C’est dans cette Ance que les Nipissiriniens placent pour l’ordinaire leur village. Portage, 600 pas.

22. Lac des Nipissiriniens ou des Sorciers.

24. Rivier des vases.

24-25. In this space various portages are marked.

26. On entre icy dans la grande Riviere.

27. Mataouan.

28. C’est d’icy que Mr. Perray et sa Compagnie ont campé pour entrer dans le lac des Hurons, quand j’aurray vu le passage je le donneray mais toujours dit-on que le chemin est fort beau, et c’est icy que s’establiront les missionnaires de St. Sulpice.

29. Ganatse kiagourif.

30. Village de tanaouaoua.

31. C’est a ce village qu’estoit autrefois Neutre. Grand partie sesche par tout icy et tout le long de la R. rapide.

32. Bonne Terre.

33. Grand chasse. Prairies siches.

34. R. Rapide ou de Tinaatoua.

35. Il y a le long de ces ances quantité de petits lacs separés seulement du grand par des Chaussées de Sable. C’est dans ces lacs que les Sanountounans prennent quantité de poisson.

36. Sault qui tombe au rapport des Sauvages de plus de 200 pieds de haut.

37. Excellente terre.

38. Petit lac d’Erie.

39. Sault ou il y a grande pesche de barbues.

40. Gaskounchiakons.

41. Excellente terre. Village du R. P. Fremin. 4 villages des Sonountouans, les des grands sont chacun de 100 Cabannes et les autres d’environ 20 a 25 sans aucune fortification non pas mesme naturelle; il faut mesme qu’ils aillent chercher l’eau fort loing.

42. Il y a de l’alun au pied de cette montagne fortaine de bitume. Excellente terre.

43. R. des Amandes et doneiout. R. des Oiogouins.

44. Abondance de gibier dans cette riviere. Quoyqu’il ne paroisse icy que des Sables sur le bord du lac. Ces terres ne laissent pas d’etre bonnes dans la profondeur. R. Denon taché.

45. Kahengouetta. Kaouemounioun.

46. Otondiata.

47. Pesche d’anguille tout au travers de la riviere.

48. Islets de roches.

49. Depuis icy Jusques a Otondiata il y a de forts rapides a toutes les pointes, et des remouils dans toutes les ances.

50. Lac St. Francois.

51. Habitation des RR. PP. Jesuites.

52. La Madelaine.

53. Lac St. Louis.

54. Habitation du Montreal.

55. Lac des 2 montagnes.

56. Belle terre. Terres nayées. Bonnes terres. Il faut faire 5 portages du Costé du Nord portage pour monter au lac St. François, mais du costé du sud on n’en fait qu’un.

57. Long sault.

58. Ces 2 rivieres en tombant dans la grande font 2 belles nappes, portage 50 pas.

59. L’estoit icy qu’estoit autrefois la petite nation Algonquine.

60. Portage du sault de la Chaudiere 300 pas.

61. L’estoit icy ou estoit le fameus Borgne de l’isle dans les relations des RR. PP. Jesuites.

62. Le grand portage du sault des Calumets est de ce costé, pour l’eviter nous prismes de l’autre coste.

63. Il faut faire 5 portages de ce costé icy d’environ 100 pas chacun.

64. Portage apellé des alumettes 200 pas.

65. Tres grande chasse d’originaux autour de ce petit lac.

66. On dit que cette branche de la grande Riviere va aux trois rivières.

67. Grand rapides.

68. Portage 200 pas.

69. Lac Superieur.

70. Fort des S. RR^nds PP. Jesuites. Sauteurs.

71. Anipich.

72. R. de Tessalon. Mississague.

There are in the Kohl Collection, in the Department of State, two maps of Lake Ontario, of 1666, the original of one of which is credited to the Dépôt de la Marine.

He was determined to track it; and gaining some money by selling his grant at Lachine, and procuring the encouragement of Talon and Courcelles, he formed an alliance for the journey with two priests of the Seminary at Montreal, Dollier de Casson and Galinée, who were about going westward on a missionary undertaking. La Salle started with them on the 6th of July, 1669, with some followers, and a party of Senecas as guides. The savages led them across Lake Ontario to a point on the southern shore nearest to their villages, which the party visited in the hope of securing other guides to the great river of which they were in search. Failing in this, they made their way to the western extremity of the lake, where they fell in with Joliet, as mentioned in the preceding chapter. La Salle now learned Joliet’s route; but he was not convinced that it opened to him the readiest way to the great river of the Indians, though the Sulpitians were resolved to take Joliet’s route north of Lake Erie. When these priests returned to Montreal, in June, 1670, they brought back little of consequence, except the data to make the earliest map which we have of the Upper Lakes, and of which a sketch is given herewith.

This map of Galinée, says Parkman,[548] was the earliest attempt after Champlain to portray the great lakes. Faillon, who gives a reproduction of this map,[549] says it is preserved in the Archives of the Marine at Paris; but Harrisse[550] could not find it there. There is a copy of it, made in 1856 from the original at Paris, in the Library of Parliament at Ottawa.[551] Faillon[552] gives much detail of the journey, for the Sulpitians were his heroes; and Talon made a report;[553] but the main source of our information is Galinée’s Journal, which is printed, with other papers appertaining, by Margry,[554] and by the Abbé Verreau.[555]

The Michigan peninsula, which Galinée had failed to comprehend, is fully brought out in the map of Lake Superior which accompanies the Jesuit Relation of 1670-1671.[556] Mr. Parkman is inclined to consider a manuscript map without title or date, but called in the annexed sketch “The Lakes and the Mississippi” (from a copy in the Parkman Collection), as showing “the earliest representation of the upper Mississippi, based perhaps on the reports of the Indians.”[557] He calls it the work of the Jesuits, whose stations are marked on it by crosses. It seems however to be posterior to the time when Joliet gave the name Colbert to the Mississippi.

THE LAKES AND THE MISSISSIPPI.

This map bears legends or names corresponding to the following key: 1. Les Kilistinouk disent avoir veu un grand naviere qui hiverna à l’embouchure de ce fleuve; ils auroient fait une maison d’un coste et de l’autre un fort de bois. 2. Assinepouelak. 3. Oumounsounick. 4. Ounaouantagouk. 5. Chiligouek. 6. Outilibik. 7. Noupining-dachirinouek. 8. Ouchkioutoulibik. 9. Missisaking-dachiri-nouek. 10. Outaouak. 11. Michilimakinak. 12. Baye des Puans. 13. Oumalouminek. 14. Outagamik. 15. Nadouessi. 16. Icy mourut le P. Meynard. 17. Kikabou. 18. Ouenebegouk. 19. Pouteoutamic. 20. Ousakie. 21. Illinouek Kachkachki. 22. Mouingouea. 23. Ouchachai. 24. Ouemissirita. 25. Chaboussioua. 26. Pelissiak. 27. Monsoupale. 28. Paniassa. 29. Taaleousa. 30. Metchagamea. 31. Akenza. 32. Matorea. 33. Tamikoua. 34. Ganiassa. 35. Minou. 36. Kachkinouba.

What La Salle did after parting with the Sulpitians in 1669 is a question over which there has been much dispute. The absence of any definite knowledge of his movements for the next two years leaves ample room for conjecture, and Margry believes that maps which he made of his wanderings in this interval were in existence up to the middle of the last century. It is from statements regarding such maps given in a letter of an aged niece of La Salle in 1756, as well as from other data, that Margry has endeavored to place within these two years what he supposes to have been a successful attempt on La Salle’s part to reach the Great River of the West. If an anonymous paper (“Histoire de Monsieur de la Salle”) published by Margry[558] is to be believed, La Salle told the writer of it in Paris,—seemingly in 1678,—that after leaving Galinée he went to Onondaga (?), where he got guides, and descending a stream, reached the Ohio (?), and went down that river. How far? Margry thinks that he reached the Mississippi: Parkman demurs, and claims that the story will not bear out the theory that he ever reached the mouth of the Ohio; but it seems probable that he reached the rapids at Louisville, and that from this point he retraced his steps alone, his men having abandoned him to seek the Dutch and English settlements. Parkman finds enough amid the geographical confusions of this “Histoire” to think that upon the whole the paper agrees with La Salle’s memorial to Frontenac in 1677, in which he claimed to have discovered the Ohio and to have coursed it to the rapids, and that it confirms the statements which Joliet has attached to the Ohio in his maps, to the effect that it was by this stream La Salle went, “pour aller dans le Mexique.”[559]

The same “Histoire” also represents that in the following year (1671) La Salle took the course in which he had refused to follow Galinée, and entering Lake Michigan, found the Chicago portage, and descending the Illinois, reached the Mississippi. This descent Parkman is constrained to reject, mainly for the reason that from 1673 to 1678 Joliet’s claim to the discovery of the Mississippi was a notorious one, believed by Frontenac and by all others, and that there was no reason why La Salle for eight years should have concealed any prior knowledge. The discrediting of this claim is made almost, if not quite, conclusive by no mention being made of such discovery in the memorial of La Salle’s kindred to the King for compensation for his services, and by the virtual admission of La Salle’s friends of the priority of Joliet’s discovery in a memorial to Seignelay, which Margry also prints.[560]

In 1672 some Indians from the West had told Marquette at the St. Esprit mission of a great river which they had crossed. Reports of it also came about the same time to Allouez and Dablon, who were at work establishing a mission at Green Bay; and in the Relation of 1672 the hope of being able to reach this Mississippi water is expressed.

Frontenac on his arrival felt that the plan of pushing the actual possession of France beyond the lakes was the first thing to be accomplished, and Talon, as we have seen, on leaving for France recommended Joliet[561] as the man best suited to do it. Jacques Marquette joined him at Point St. Ignace. The Jesuit was eight years the senior of the fur-trader, and of a good family from the North of France.

JOLIET’S MAP, 1673-1674.

Key: 1. Les sauvages habitent cette isle. 2. Sauvages de la mer. 3. Kilistinons. 4. Assiniboels. 5. Madouesseou. 6. Nations du nord. 7. Lac Supérieur. 8. Le Sault St. Marie. 9. Missilimakinak. 10. Kaintotan. 11. Lac Huron. 12. Nipissing. 13. Mataouan. 14. Tous les poincts sont des rapides. 15. Les trois rivieres. 16. Tadoussac. 17. Le Saguenay. 18. Le Fleuve de St. Laurent. 20. Montroyal. 21. Fort de Frontenac. 22. Lac Frontenac ou Ontario. 24. Sault, Portage de demi lieue. 25. Lac Erie. 26. Lac des Illinois ou Missihiganin. 27. Cuivre. 28. Kaure. 29. Baye des Puans. 30. Puans. 31. Maskoutins. 32. Portage. 33. Riviere Miskonsing. 34. Mines de fer. 35. Riviere de Buade. 36. Kitchigamin. 37. Ouaouiatanox. 38. Paoutet, Maha, Pana, Atontanka, Illinois, Peouarea, 300 Cabanes, 180 Canots de bois de 50 pieds de long. 39. Minongio, Pani, Ouchagé, Kansa, Messouni. 40. La Frontenacie. 41. Pierres Sanguines. 42. Kachkachkia. 43. Salpetre. 44. Riviere de la Divine ou l’Outrelaize. 45. Riv. Ouabouskigou. 46. Kaskinanka, Ouabanghihasla, Malohah. 47. Mines de fer; Chouanons, terres eiseléez, Aganatchi. 48. Akansea sauvages. 49. Mounsoupria. 50. Apistonga. 51. Tapensa sauvages. 52 and 53 (going up the stream which is called Riviere Basire). Atatiosi, Matora, Akowita, Imamoueta, Papikaha, Tanikoua, Aiahichi, Pauiassa. 54. Europeans. 55. Cap de la Floride. 56. Mer Vermeille, ou est la Califournie, par ou on peut aller au Perou, au Japon, et à la Chine.

Their course has been sketched in the preceding chapter. They seemed to have reached a conviction that the Great River flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. Their return was by the Illinois River and the Chicag portage.[562] During the four months of their absence, says Parkman, they had paddled their canoes somewhat more than two thousand five hundred miles.

While Marquette remained at the mission Joliet returned to Quebec. What Joliet contributed to the history of this discovery can be found in a letter on his map, later to be given in fac-simile; a letter dated Oct. 10, 1674, given by Harrisse;[563] the letter of Frontenac announcing the discovery, which must have been derived from Joliet,[564] and the oral accounts which Joliet gave to the writer of the “Détails sur le voyage de Louis Joliet; and a Relation de la descouverte de plusieurs pays situez au midi de la Nouvelle France, faite en 1673,” both of which are printed by Margry.[565]

Within a few years there has been produced a map which seems to have been made by Joliet immediately after his return to Montreal. This would make it the earliest map of the Mississippi based on actual knowledge, and the first of a series accredited to Joliet. It is called Nouvelle découverte de plusieurs nations dans la Nouvelle France en l’année 1673 et 1674. Gabriel Gravier first made this map known through an Étude sur une carte inconnue; la première dressée par L. Joliet en 1674, après son exploration du Mississippi auec Jacques Marquette en 1673.[566] A sketch of it, with a key, is given herewith. The tablet in the sketch marks the position of Joliet’s letter to Frontenac, of which a reduced fac-simile is also annexed.

“In this epistle,” says Mr. Neill, “Joliet mentions that he had presented a map showing the situation of the Lakes upon which there is navigation for more than 1,200 leagues from east to west, and that he had given to the great river beyond the Lakes, which he had discovered in the years 1673-1674, the designation of Buade, the family name of Frontenac.[567] He adds a glowing description of the prairies, the groves, and the forests,” and writes of the quail (cailles) in the fields and the parrot (perroquet) in the woods. He concludes his communication as follows: “By one of the large rivers which comes from the west and empties into the River Buade, one will find a route to the Red Sea” [Mer vermeille, i. e. Gulf of California].

“I saw a village which was not more than five days’ journey from a tribe which traded with the tribes of California;[568] if I had arrived two days before, I could have conversed with those who had come from thence, and had brought four hatchets as a present. You would have seen a description of these things in my Journal, if the success which had accompanied me during the voyage had not failed me a quarter of an hour before arriving at the place from which I had departed. I had escaped the dangers from savages, I had passed forty-two rapids, and was about to land with complete joy at the success of so long and difficult an enterprise, when, after all dangers seemed past, my canoe turned over. I lost two men and my box in sight of the first French settlement, which I had left almost two years before. Nothing remains to me but my life, and the wish to employ it in any service you may please.” This Report was sent to France in November, 1674.

There is in Mr. Barlow’s Collection a large map (27 × 40 inches), which is held by Dr. Shea and General Clarke to be a copy of the original Joliet Map, with the Ohio marked in by a later and less skilful hand. A sketch of it is annexed as “Joliet’s Larger Map.”

A copy of what is known as “Joliet’s Smaller Map” is also in the Barlow Collection, and from it the annexed sketch has been made. This map is called Carte de la descouverte du S^r Jolliet, ou l’on voit la communication du Fleuve St. Laurens avec les Lacs Frontenac, Erie, Lac des Hurons, et Illinois ... au bout duquel on va joindre la Rivière divine par un portage de mille pas qui tombe dans la Rivière Colbert et se descharge dans le Sein Mexique. Though evidently founded in part on the Jesuits’ map of Lake Superior, it was an improvement upon it, and was inscribed with a letter addressed to Frontenac. The Valley of the Mississippi is called Colbertie; the Ohio is marked as the course of La Salle’s route to the Gulf;[569] the Wisconsin is made the route of Joliet.

Mr. Parkman describes another map, anonymous, but “indicating a greatly increased knowledge of the country.” It marks the Ohio as a river descended by La Salle, but it does not give the Mississippi.[570] Harrisse found in the Archives of the Marine a map which he thought to be a part of the same described by Parkman, and this was made by Joliet himself later than 1674.

There is in the Parkman Collection another map ascribed to Joliet, and called in the sketch given herewith “Joliet’s carte générale,” which Parkman thinks was an early work (in the drafting, at least) of the engineer Franquelin. It is signed Johannes Ludovicus Franquelin pinxit; but it is a question what this implies. Harrisse[571] thinks that Franquelin is the author, and places it under 1681. Gravier holds it to imply simply Franquelin’s drafting, and affirms that it corresponds closely with a map signed by Joliet, which has already been mentioned as his earliest. Mr. Neill says of this map that it “is the first attempt to fix the position of the nations north of the Wisconsin and west of Lake Superior. The Wisconsin is called Miskous, perhaps intended for Miskons; and the Ohio is marked ‘Ouaboustikou.’ On the upper Mississippi are the names of the following tribes: The ‘Siou,’ around what is now called the Mille Lacs region, the original home of the Sioux of the Lakes, or Eastern Sioux; the Ihanctoua, Pintoüa, Napapatou, Ouapikouti, Chaiena, Agatomitou, Ousilloua, Alimouspigoiak. The Ihanctoua and Ouapikouti are two divisions of the Sioux, now known as Yanktons and Wahpekootays. The Chaiena were allies of the Sioux, and hunted at that time in the valley of the Red River of the North. The word in the Sioux means ‘people of another language,’ and the voyageurs called them Cheyennes.”

WESTERN PORTION OF JOLIET’S LARGER MAP (1674).

A reduced sketch of the copy in the Barlow Collection. The river marked “Route du Sieur de la Salle” is seemingly drawn in by a later hand, and the stream is without the coloring given to the other rivers. In its course, too, it runs athwart the vignette surrounding the scale at the bottom of the map, as if added after that was made. It is Harrisse’s no. 203.

EASTERN PORTION OF JOLIET’S LARGER MAP (1674).

Mention may be made in passing of a small map within an ornamented border, and detailing the results of these explorations, which bears a Dutch title in the vignette, and another along the bottom in French, as follows: Pays et peuple decouverts en 1673 dans la partie septentrionale de l’Amerique par P. Marquette et Joliet, suivant la description qu’ils en ont faite, rectifiée sur diverses observations posterieures de nouveau mis en jour par Pierre Vander Aa à Leide.

JOLIET’S SMALLER MAP.

This is Harrisse’s no. 204. The original is in the Archives of the Marine at Paris; cf. Library of Parliament Catalogue, 1858, p. 1615; Parkman’s La Salle, p. 453.

BASIN OF THE GREAT LAKES.

A reduced sketch of no. 3 of the Parkman maps, which measures 30 × 44 inches. It is without title or maker’s name, and the figures stand for the names and legends as given below:

1. Pays des Outaouacs qui habitent dans les forets.

2. Par cette riviere on va aus assinepoüalac a 150 lieues vers le Noreouest ou il y a beaucoup de Castor.

3. Isle Minong ou l’on croyoit que fust la mine de Cuivre.

4. Par cette riviere on va pays des nadouessien a 60 lieues au couchant. Ils ont 15 villages et sont fort belligueux et la terreur de ces contrées.

5. Pointe du St. Esprit.

6. R. Nantounagan.

7. Autrefois les restes de la Nation Huronne sestoient refugiez icy et les Jesuites y avoient une mission. Maintenant les Nadouessien ostants aus Hurons la liberté de chasser aus castors, ses sauvages ont quitté et les Jesuites les ont suivie.

8. Toutes ses nations qui se sont retirées en ces pays par terreur des Iroquois ont une tres grande quantité de Castors.

9. Nation et riviere des Oumalouminec, ou de la folle auoine.

10. Outagamis.

11. R. Mataban.

12. Isles ou les Hurons se refugierent apres la destruction de leur nation par les Iroquois.

13. Les pp. Jesuites ont icy une mission.

14. Kakaling rapide de trois lieues de longuerer.

15. Kitchigamenqué, ou lac St. Francois.

16. Pouteatamis.

17. Oumanis.

18. Maskoutens ou Nation du feu.

19. Riviere de la Divine.

20. Les plus grands navires peuvent venir de la decharge du lac Erie dans le lac frontenac jusques icy et de ce marais ou ils peuvent entrer il n y a que mille pas de distance jusqu’a la riviere de la Divine qui les peut porter jusqu’a la riviere Colbert et de la golfe de Mexique.

21. Riviere Ohio ainsy apellée par les Iroquois a cause de sa beauté par ou le Sr. de la Salle est descendu.

22. Les Illinois.

23. Raye des Kentayentoga.

24. Les Chaoüenons.

25. Cette riviere baigne un fort beau pays ou l’on trouvé des pommes, des grenades, des raisins et d’autres fruits sauvages. Le Pays est decouvert pour la plus part, y ayant seulement des bois d’espace en espace. Les Iroquois ont détruit la plus grande partie des habitans dont on voit encore quelques restes.

26. Tout ce pays est celuy qui est aus Environs du lac Teiochariontiong est decouvert. L’hiver y est moderé et court; les fruits y viennent en abondance; les bœufs sauvages, poules dinde et toute sorte de gibier s’y trouvent en quantité et il y a encore force castor.

27. Baye de Sikonam.

28. Les Tionontateronons.

29. Detroit de Missilimakinac.

30. Missilimakinac mission des Jesuites. Detroit par ou le lac des Illinois communique avec celuy des Hurons, par ou passent les sauvages du midy quand ils vont au Montreal chargez de Castors.

31. Sault de Ste. Marie. Ce sault est un Canal de demie lieue de largeur par lequel le lac Superieur se decharge dans le lac Huron.

32. Dans ce lac on trouve plusieurs morceaux de cuivre rouge de rozette tres pure. Outakouaminan.

33. Sauteurs. Sauvages qui habitent aus environs du Sault Ste. Marie.

34. Bagonache.

35. Gens des Torres. Toutes ces nations vivent de chasse dans les bois sans villages, et la plus part sans cultivee la terre, se trouvans seulement a de certains rendezvous de festes et de foire de temps en temps.

36. Kilistinons.

37. Les Alemepigon.

38. Ekaentoton Isle.

39. Lieu de l’assemblée de tous les sauvages allans en traitte a Montreal.

40. Les Kreiss.

41. Cette riviere vient du lac Nipissing. R. des Francois.

42. Les Amicoue.

43. Les Missisaghé.

44. Lac Skekoven ou Nipissing.

45. Sorciers.

46. A cet endroit il y a plusieurs petits marais par ou l’on va dans le lac Nipissing en portant plusieurs fois les canots.

47. Nipissiens.

48. Sault au talc Mataouan.

49. Sault au lieure. Sault aux Allumettes. Isle du Borgne.

50. Sault des Calumets.

51. Riviere des Outaouacs ou des Hurons.

52. Les Sauvages Loups et Iroquois tirent d’icy la plus grande partie du Castor qu’ils portent aus Anglois et aus Hollandois.

53. Cette rivière sort du lac Taronto et se jette dans le lac Huron.

54. Chemin par ou les Iroquois vont aus Outaoüacs, qu’ils auroient mené trafiquer a la Nouvelle Hollande si le fort de Frontenac n’eust ésté basti sur leur route.

55, 56. Villages des Iroquois dont quantité s’habituent de ce côté depuis peu. Teyoyagon, Ganatchekiagon, Ganevaské, Kentsio.

57. Canal par ou le lac des Hurons se decharge dans le lac Erie.

58. Tsiketo ou lac de la Chaudiere.

59. Atiragenrega, nation detruite.

60. Antouaronons, nation detruite.

61. Niagagarega, nation detruite. Chute haute de 120 toises par ou le lac Erie tombe dans le lac Frontenac.

62. Les Iroquois font leurs pesches dans tous les marais ou etangs qui bordent ce lac, d’ou ils tirent leur principale subsistance.

63. Ka Kouagoga, nation detruite.

64. Negateca fontaine.

65. Tsonontouaeronons.

66. Goyogouenronons.

67. Les environs de ce lac et l’extremité occidentale du lac Frontenac sont infestes de gantastogeronons, ce qui en eloigne les Iroquois.

68. Ce lac n’est pas le lac Erie, comme on le nomme ordinnairement. Erie est une partie de la Baye de Chesapeack dans la Virginie, ou les Eriechronons ont toujours demeuré.

69. Riviere Ohio, ainsy dite a cause de sa beauté.

70. Lac Onia-sont.

71. Les Oniasont-Keronons.

72. Riviere qui se rend dans la baye de Chesapeack.

73. Cahihonoüaghé, lieu on la plus part des Iroquois et des Loups debarquent pour aller en traitte du Castor a la Nouvelle York par les chemins marques de double rangs de points.

74. Les plus grands bastimens peuvent naviguer d’icy jusque au bout du lac Frontenac.

75. Korlar.

76. Albanie, ci-devant Fort d’Orange.

77. Riviere du nord, ou des traittes ou Maurice.

78. Otondiata.

79. Tout ce qui est depuis la Nouvelle Hollande jusques icy et le long du fleuve St. Laurent est convert de bois. La terre y est bonne pour la plus part et produit de fort beau blé.

80. Riviere Onondkouy.

81. Lac Tontiarenhé.

82. Ohaté.

83. Lac et riviere de Tanouate Kenté.

84. En cet endroit la grande riviere se précipite dans un puis dont on ne voit pas sortir.

85. Sault des chats.

86. Petite nation.

87. Long sault.

88. R. et I. Jesus, Montreal, etc.

89. Lac Champlain.

90. Lac du St. Sacrement.

91. Montagnes ou l’on trouve des veines de plomb, mais peu abondante.

92. St. Jean rapide.

93. Riviere de Richelieu.

94. Sorel.

95. Sauvages apelles Mahingans, ou Socoquis.

96. Socoquois, Goutsagans, Loups.

97. Vershe Riviere [Connecticut].

Dr. Shea places this map after La Salle’s descent of the Mississippi, “as the Ohio at its mouth was not recognized at that time as the Ohio of the Iroquois.” See Margry, ii. 191.

Something now needs to be said regarding Marquette’s contribution to our knowledge of this expedition of 1673. He seems to have prepared from memory a narrative for Frontenac, which is printed in two different forms in Margry.[572] Dablon used this account in his Relation, and sent a copy of the manuscript to Paris;[573] but he seems also to have prepared another copy, which was, with the original map, confided finally to the Archives of the Collége Ste. Marie at Montreal, where Shea found it, and translated it for his Discovery of the Mississippi,[574] in 1853, giving with it a fac-simile of the map.[575]

Mr. Neill, in comparing this map with the earliest of Joliet’s, as reproduced by Gravier says: “Joliet marks the large island toward the extremity of Lake Superior known as Isle Royale; but he gives no name, and he indicates four other islands on the north shore.”

JOLIET’S CARTE GÉNÉRALE.

“This is a sketch reduced from the Parkman copy of the map, which measures 36 × 30 inches, and is called Carte genlle de la France sept^le contenant la descouverte du Pays des Illinois, faite par le S^r Jolliet; and is dedicated “A Monseigneur, Monseigneur Colbert, Conseiller du Roy en son Conseil Royal, Ministre et Sécrétaire d’Estat, Commandeur et Grand Trésorier des Ordes de sa Majesté, par son tres humble, tres obeiss^t, et tres fidelle serviteur, Duchesnau, Intendant de la Nouvelle France.” The figures stand for the following names and legends: 1. Alimouspigoiak. 2. Oussiloua. 3. Agatomitou. 4. Chaiena. 5. Ouapikouti. 6. Napapatou. 7. Pintoüa. 8. Ihanctoua. 9. Paoutek. 10. Maha. 11. Oloutanta. 12. Moengouena. 13. Ouatoutatoüaoü. 14. Grand Village. 15. Tanikoüa. 16. Acahichi. 17. Minouk. 18. Emmamoüata. 19. Akoraa. 20. Ototehiahi. 21. Tahenfa. 22. Europeans [sic]. 23. Mine de fer, Sable doré, Terre rouge ou siselée, Gouza. 24. R. Ouaboustikou. 25. Mataholi et Apistanga, 18 villages. 26. Chaoüanone, 15 villages. 27. Chaboüafioüa. 28. Mine de cuivre rouge. 29. Ilinois. 30. Riviere Miskous. 31. Mine de fer. 32. Maskoutens. 33. Outagami. 34. Puans. 35. Chaoüamigon. 36. Siou. 37. Assinibouels. 38. Lac des Assinibouels. 39. Minonk I. 40. Miscillimakinac. 41. Saut. 42. Missaské. 43. Amikoue. 44. Nipissink. 45. Mataouan. 46. Riviere des Outaouacks. 47. Kinté. 48. Ganateliftiagon. 49. Ganerafké. 50. I. Caiu-toton. 51. Fort Frontenac. 52. Teiaiagon. 53. Saût. 54. Sonontouans. 55. Oioguens. 56. Noutahe. 57. Onéoioutes. 58. Agnez. 59. Orange. 60. Hope. 61. Manate. 62. Lac St. Sacrémt. 63. Lac Champlain. 64. Ste. Terese. 65. Sorel. 66. Montreal. 67. Trois Rivieres. 68. Quebec. 69. Tadoussac. 70. R. St. Jean. 71. Ketsicagouesse. 72. Baye des Espagnols. 73. Terre Neuve. 74. Cape de Raze. 75. Plaisance. 76. I. la Magdelaine. 77. I. Brion. 78. I. aux oiseaux. 79. Cap Breton. 80. Canceaux. 81. Acadie. 82. Port Royal. 83. Baye des Chaleurs. 84. I. Bonventure. 85. I. Percée. 86. R. St. Jean. 87. R. Ste. Croix. 88. R. Etchemins. 89. R. Pintagouete. 90. Baston. 91. Miskoutenagach. 92. Ouabakounagon.

Marquette shows the large island only, but without a name. Joliet on the north shore of Lake Huron has three large islands,—one marked Kaintoton; Marquette has the same number, but without names. Parallel columns will show some other names of the two maps; the last three of each column referring to tribes between Green Bay and the Mississippi:—

Joliet’s Map.	Marquette’s Map.
1. Lac Superieur. 2. Lac des Illinois, ou Missihiganin. 3. Baye des Puans. 4. Puans. 5. Outagami. 6. Maskoutens.
07. Lac Superieur, ov De Tracy. 08. Lac des Illinois. 09. No name. 10. Pouteoutami. 11. Outagami. 12. Maskoutens.

Joliet gives the name Miskonsing to the river, and marks the portage; while Marquette gives no names. The country south of Lake Superior and west of Lake Michigan in Marquette is blank. In Joliet it is marked ‘La Frontenacie.’ West of Lake Superior in Marquette is a blank; in Joliet are several lakes and the tribe of Madouesseou. Joliet calls the Mississippi, Rivière de Buade, and Marquette names it R. de la Conception.”

The original French of the narrative as Shea found it at Montreal was printed for Mr. Lenox in 1855,[576] and bears the following title: Récit des voyages et des découvertes du P. J. Marquette en l’année 1673, et aux suivantes;[577] and the copy being defective in two leaves, this matter was supplied from the print of Thevenot, next to be mentioned.

The copy which Dablon sent to Paris was used by Thevenot, who gives it, with some curtailment, in his Recueil de voyages, published in Paris in 1681,[578] with the caption: “Voyage et découverte de quelques pays et nations de l’Amérique septentrionale par le P. Marquette et Sr. Joliet.”[579]

The Jesuits about this time made a map, which, from having been given in Thevenot as Marquette’s, passed as the work of that missionary till Shea found the genuine one in Canada. What was apparently the original of this in Thevenot is a manuscript which Harrisse[580] says was formerly in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, but cannot now be found. Mr. Parkman has a copy of it, and calls it “so crude and careless, and based on information so inexact, that it is of little interest.”[581]

MARQUETTE’S GENUINE MAP.

As engraved in Thevenot, this map differs a little, and bears the title: “Carte de la découverte faite l’an 1673, dans l’Amérique septentrionale. Liebaux fecit.” Sparks followed this engraving in the map in his Life of Marquette, and calls it, with the knowledge then current, “the first that was ever published of the Mississippi River.”[582]

Marquette’s later history is but brief. In the autumn of the next year (1674) he started to found a mission among the Illinois; but being detained by illness near Chicago, he did not reach the Indian town of Kaskaskia till the spring of 1675. His strength was ebbing, and he started with his companions to return to St. Ignace, but had only reached a point on the easterly shore of Lake Michigan, when he died, and his companions buried him beside their temporary hut. The next year some Ottawas who had been of his flock unearthed the bones and carried them to Michillimackinac, where they were buried beneath the floor of the little mission chapel.[583]

MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, 1672-1673.

This is a reduction of a manuscript map placed by Mr. Parkman in Harvard College Library, no. 5 of the series, entitled: Carte de la nouvelle decouverte que les péres Jesuites ont fait en l’année 1672, et continnuée par le P. Iacques Marquette de la mesme compagnie, accompagné de quelques françois en l’année 1673, qu’on pourra nommer en françois La Manitoumie a cause de la statue qui s’est trouvée dans une belle vallée, et que les sauvages vont reconnoistre pour leur divinitè, qu’ils appellent Manitou qui signifie esprit ou génie. A rude figure of this statue is placed on the map at 4, with this legend: “Manitou statue ou les sauvages font faire leurs adorations.” The other longer legends are: 1. “Nations qui ont des chevaux et des chameaux.” 2. “On est venu jusques icy a la hauteur de 33 deg.” 3. “Monsoupena, ils ont des fusila.” It will be seen that the return route of Marquette and Joliet is incorrectly laid down. Parkman’s La Salle, p. 65.

Thirty years ago there were statements made by M. Noiseux, late vicar-general of Quebec, to the effect that Marquette was not the first priest to visit the Illinois; but the matter was set at rest by Dr. Shea.[584] A renewed interest came in 1873 with the bicentennial of the discovery. Dr. Shea delivered an address on the occasion of the celebration,[585] and he also made an Address on the same theme before the Missouri Historical Society, July 19, 1878.[586] At the Laval University in Quebec the anniversary was also observed on the 17th of June, 1873, when a discourse was delivered by the Abbé Verreau.[587]

FORT FRONTENAC.

This sketch follows a plan sent by Denonville in 1685 to Paris, which is engraved in Faillon, Histoire de la Colonie Française, iii. 467. The key is as follows: 1. Four à chaux. 2. Grange. 3. Etable. 4. Logis. 5. Corps de garde. 6. Guerite sur la porte. 7. Boulangerie. 8. Palissade. 9. Moulin. 10. Mortier sans chaux. 11. Fondement bâti. 12. Haut de 4 pieds. 13. Haut de 12 pi^s. 14. A chaux et sable. 15. Puits. 16. Magasin à poudre. The peninsula extended into Lake Ontario. It is the fort as rebuilt of stone by La Salle. Cf. the paper on La Salle’s expenses on this fort, etc., in 2 Pennsylvania Archives, vi. 14, of which the original and other papers are given in Margry (i. 291).

New complications were now forming. The new governor, Frontenac, was needy in purse, expedient in devices, and on terms of confidence with a man destined to gain a name in this western discovery.[588] This was La Salle. Parkman pictures him with having a certain robust ambition to conquer the great valley for France and himself, and to outdo the Jesuits. Shea sees in him little of the hero, and few traces of a powerful purpose.[589] Whatever his character, he was soon embarked with Frontenac on a far-reaching scheme. It has been explained in the preceding chapter how the erection of a fort had been begun by Frontenac near the present town of Kingston on Lake Ontario. By means of such a post he hoped to intercept the trafficking of the Dutch and English, and turn an uninterrupted peltry trade to the French. The Jesuits at least neglected the scheme, but neither Frontenac nor La Salle cared much for them.[590] Fort Frontenac was the first stage in La Salle’s westward progress, and he was politic enough to espouse the Governor’s side in all things when disputes occasionally ran high. His becoming the proprietor of the seigniory, which included the new fort, meant the exclusion of others from the trade in furs, and such exclusion made enemies of the merchants. It meant also colonization and settlements; and that interfered with the labors of the Jesuits among the savages, and made them look to the great western valley, of which so much had been said; but La Salle was looking there too.[591]

In the first place he had strengthened his fort. He had pulled down the wooden structure, and built another of stones and palisades, of which a plan is preserved to us. He had drawn communities of French and natives about him, and maintained a mission, with which Louis Hennepin was connected. We have seen how in the autumn of 1677[592] he went once more to France, securing the right of seigniory over other posts as he might establish them south and west during the next five years. This was by a patent dated at St. Germain-en-Laye, May 12, 1678.[593] With dreams of Mexico and of a clime sunnier than that of Canada, La Salle returned to Quebec to make new leagues with the merchants, and to listen to Hennepin, who had come down from Fort Frontenac to meet him.[594] Mr. Neill (in the previous chapter) has followed his fortunes from this point, and we have seen him laying the keel of a vessel above the cataract.[595]

While this was going on La Salle returned below the Falls, and having begun two blockhouses on the site of the later Fort Niagara,[596] proceeded to Fort Frontenac. By spring Tonty had the “Griffin” ready for launching. She was of forty-five or fifty tons, and when she had her equipment on board, five cannon looked from her port-holes. The builders made all ready for a voyage in her, but grew weary in waiting for La Salle, who did not return till August, when he brought with him Membré the priest, whose Journal we are to depend on later, and the vessel departed on the voyage which Mr. Neill has sketched.[597]

After the “Griffin” had departed homeward from this region, La Salle and his canoes followed up the western shores of the lake, while Tonty and another party took the eastern. The two finally met at the Miamis, or St. Joseph River, near the southeastern corner of Lake Michigan.

They now together went up the St. Joseph, and crossing the portage[598] launched their canoes on the Kankakee, an upper tributary of the Illinois River, and passed on to the great town of the tribe of that name, where Marquette had been before them, near the present town of Utica.[599] They found the place deserted, for the people were on their winter hunt. They discovered, however, pits of corn, and got much-needed food. Passing on, a little distance below Peoria Lake they came upon some inhabited wigwams. Among these people La Salle learned how his enemies in Canada were inciting them to thwart his progress; and there were those under this incitement who pictured so vividly the terrors of the southern regions, that several of La Salle’s men deserted.

In January (1680) La Salle began a fortified camp near at hand, and called it Fort Crèvecœur,[600] and soon after he was at work building another vessel of forty tons. He also sent off Michel Accau, or Accault, and Hennepin on the expedition, of which some account is given by Mr. Neill, and also by the Editor in a subsequent note. Leaving Tonty in command of the fort, La Salle, in March, started to return to Fort Frontenac, his object being to get equipments for his vessel; for he had by this time made up his mind that nothing more would be seen of the “Griffin” and her return lading of anchors and supplies. For sixty-five days he coursed a wild country and braved floods. He made, however, the passage of a thousand miles in safety to Fort Frontenac, only to become aware of the disastrous state of his affairs,—the loss of supplies.[601] A little later the same sort of news followed him from Tonty, whose men had mutinied and scattered. His first thought was to succor Tonty and the faithful few who remained with him; and accordingly he started again for the Illinois country, which he found desolate and terrible with the devastations of the Iroquois. He passed the ruins of Crèvecœur, and went even to the mouth of the Illinois; and under these distressing circumstances he saw the Mississippi for the first time. Then he retraced his way, and was once again at Fort Miami. Not a sign had been seen of Tonty, who had escaped from the feud of the Iroquois and Illinois, not knowing which side to trust, and had made his way down the western side of Lake Michigan toward Green Bay.

La Salle meanwhile at Fort Miami was making new plans and resolutions. He had an idea of banding together under his leadership all the western tribes, and by this means to keep the Iroquois in check while he perfected his explorations southward. So in the spring (1681) he returned to the Illinois country to try to form the league; and while there first heard from some wandering Outagamies of the safe arrival of Tonty at Green Bay, and of the passage through that region of Hennepin eastward. Among the Illinois and on the St. Joseph he was listened to, and everything promised well for his intended league. In May he went to Michillimackinac, where he found Tonty and Membré, and with them he proceeded to Fort Frontenac. Here once more his address got him new supplies, and in the autumn (1681) he was again on his westward way. In the latter part of December, with a company of fifty-four souls,—French and savage, including some squaws,—he crossed the Chicago portage; and sledding and floating down the Illinois, on the 6th of February he and his companions glided out upon the Mississippi among cakes of swimming ice. On they went.[602] Stopping at one of the Chickasaw bluffs, they built a small stockade and called it after Prudhomme, who was left in charge of it. Again they stopped for a conference of three days with a band of Indians near the mouth of the Arkansas, where, on the 14th of March, in due form, La Salle took possession of the neighboring country in the name of his King.[603] On still they went, stopping at various villages and towns, securing a welcome by the peace-pipe, and erecting crosses bearing the arms of France in the open squares of the Indian settlements. On the 6th of April La Salle divided his party into three, and each took one of the three arms which led to the Gulf. On the 9th they reunited, and erecting a column just within one of the mouths of the river, La Salle formally took possession of the great Mississippi basin in the name of the French monarch, whom he commemorated in applying the name of Louisiana to the valley.[604]

Up the stream their canoes were now turned. On reaching Fort Prudhomme La Salle was prostrated with a fever. Here he stayed, nursed by Membré,[605] while Tonty went on to carry the news of their success to Michillimackinac, whence to despatch messengers to the lower settlements. At St. Ignace La Salle joined his lieutenant.

For the events of these two years we have two main sources of information. First, the “Relation de la descouverte de l’embouchure de la Rivière Mississipi dans le Golfe de Mexique, faite par le Sieur de la Salle, l’année passée, 1682,” which was first published by Thomassy;[606] the original is preserved in the Archives Scientifiques de la Marine, and though written in the third person it is held to constitute La Salle’s Official Report, though perhaps written for him by Membré.[607] Second, the narrative ascribed to Membré which is printed in Le Clercq’s Établissement de la Foi, ii. 214, and which seems to be based on the document already named.[608]

In addition to this there is the paper of Nicolas de la Salle (no kinsman of the explorer), who wrote for Iberville’s guidance, in 1699, his Récit de la découverte que M. de la Salle a faite de la Rivière de Mississipi en 1682.[609]

La Salle’s future plans were now clearly fixed in his own mind, which were to reach from Europe the Mississippi by sea, and to make it the avenue of approach to the destined colonies, which he now sent Tonty to establish on the Illinois. With as little delay as possible, he went himself to join his deputy. In December they selected the level summit of the scarped rock (Starved Rock), on the river near the great Illinois town, and there intrenched themselves, calling their fort “St. Louis.” Around it were the villages and lodges of near twenty thousand savages, including, it is estimated, about four thousand warriors. To this projected colony La Salle was under the necessity of trying to bring his supplies from Canada till the route by the Gulf could be secured,—that Canada in which he had many enemies, and whose new governor, De la Barre, was hostile to him, writing letters of disparagement respecting him to the Court in Paris,[610] and seizing his seigniory at Fort Frontenac on shallow pretexts. Thwarted in all efforts for succor from below, La Salle left Tonty in charge of the new fort,[611] and started for Quebec, meeting on the way an officer sent to supersede him in command. From Quebec La Salle sailed for France.[612]

At this time the young French engineer, Franquelin, was in Quebec making record as best he could, from such information as reached headquarters, of the progress of the various discoverers. There are maps of his as early as 1679 and 1681 which are enumerated by Harrisse.[613] Parkman is also inclined to ascribe to Franquelin a map with neither date nor author, but of superior skill in drafting, which is called Carte de l’Amérique septentrionale et partie de la meridionale ... avec les nouvelles decouvertes de la Rivière Mississipi, ou Colbert. It records an event of 1679 in a legend, and omits the lower Mississippi; which would indicate that the record was made before the results of La Salle’s explorations were known.[614] A sketch of the Map of 1682 is given herewith from a copy in the Barlow Collection.

MAP OF 1682.

From La Salle, on his arrival in Quebec late in 1683, Franquelin undoubtedly got new and trustworthy information of that explorer’s expedition down the Mississippi; and this he embodied in what is usually known as Franquelin’s Great Map of 1684. It professed to have been made in Paris, and as Franquelin was not in that city in 1684, Harrisse contends that it was the work of De la Croix upon Franquelin’s material. It is called Carte de la Louisiane, ou des voyages du Sieur de la Salle et des pays qu’il a découverts depuis la Nouvelle-France jusqu’au Golfe de Mexique, les années 1679-80-81 et 82, par Jean-Baptiste Louis Franquelin, l’an 1684, Paris. It was formerly in the Archives du Dépôt de la Marine; but Harrisse[615] reports it as missing from that repository, and describes it from the accounts given by Parkman and by Thomassy.[616] A manuscript copy of this map was made for Mr. Parkman, which is now in Harvard College Library, and from this copy another copy was made in 1856, which is now in the Library of Parliament at Ottawa. Mr. Parkman’s copy has been used in the annexed sketch.

FRANQUELIN’S 1684 MAP.

Harrisse says that De la Croix made the Carte de l’Amérique septent^le,[617] which also purports to be Franquelin’s, and shows the observations of “douze années.” Harrisse places this map also in 1684, for the reason that a third map by Franquelin, Carte de la Amérique septentrionale,[618] is dated 1688, and claims to embody the observations of “plus de 16 années,” giving names and legends not in the earlier ones.[619]

“It indicates,” says Mr. Neill, “the post which had been recently established by Du Lhut near the lower extremity of Lake Huron, and gives the present name, Manitoulin, to the large island of Lake Huron, and marks on the west shore a Baye de Saginnam. It places the mission on the south shore of Sault Ste. Marie, and names the rivers and points on the north and south shores of Lake Superior. A stream near the present northern boundary-line of the United States is called ‘R. des Grossillers,’ after the first explorer of Minnesota. The river entering Lake Superior at the present Fort William is ‘Kamanistigouian, ou Les Trois Rivières.’ Isle Royale is called ‘Minong;’ upon the northeast part of ‘Lac Alepimigon’ is Du Lhut’s post, ‘Fort La Tourette.’ At the portage between the sources of the St. Croix and a stream entering Lake Superior is ‘Fort St. Croix,’ which Bellin says was afterward abandoned. The St. Croix River is called ‘R. de la Magdelaine.’ At the lower extremity of Lake Pepin is ‘Fort St. Antoine;’ and the site of the present town of Prairie du Chien, near the mouth of the Wisconsin, appears as ‘Fort St. Nicolas,’ named in compliment to the baptismal name of Perrot. The Minnesota River is marked ‘Les Mascoutens Nadouescioux,’ indicating that it ran through the country of the Prairie Sioux. After Pierre Le Sueur had explored this river, De l’Isle, in his map of 1703, gives it the name of St. Pierre, as it is supposed in compliment to Le Sueur.”

A map of the next year (1689), also in the Archives, claims to be based on “Mémoires et relations qu’il a eu soin de recueillir pendant pres de 17 années.” Harrisse thinks this also a copy by De la Croix, and notes others of the probable dates of 1692 and 1699 respectively.[620] Harrisse also records[621] a manuscript map, “composée, corrigée, et augmentée sur les journaux, mémoires, et observations les plus justes qui en ont été f^tes. en l’année 1685 et 1686,” which is also preserved in the French Archives; and a Carte Gēralle du voyage que Mons^r De Meulles ... a fait; ... commencé le 9^e Novembre et finy le 6^e Juillet, 1686,[622] which was dedicated to Seignelay in the same year.

Parkman[623] says of the maps of Franquelin subsequent to his Great Map of 1684, that they all have more or less of its features, but that the 1684 map surpasses them all in interest and completeness.

It is convenient to complete here this enumeration of the maps of the western lakes and the Mississippi basin before we turn to La Salle’s explorations from the Gulf side.

One of the earliest of the printed maps is that called Partie occidentale du Canada, ou de la Nouvelle France, ou sont les nations des Ilinois, de Tracy, les Iroquois, et plusieurs autres peuples, avec la Louisiane nouvellement découverte, ... par le P. Coronelli, corrigée et augmentée par le Sr. Tillemon à Paris, 1688, of which the annexed sketch follows a copy in Harvard College Library. This was united with the Partie orientale in 1689 in a single smaller map.[624]

FRANQUELIN’S 1688 MAP.

CORONELLI ET TILLEMON, 1688.

The routes of several of the early explorers, like those of Du Lhut, Joliet, and Marquette (1672), and La Salle (1679-1680), are laid down on a manuscript map, Carte des parties les plus occidentales du Canada, par le Père Pierre Raffeix, S. J.,[625] which is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and of which a sketch as “Raffeix, 1688,” is given on the next page.

A map of Lakes Ontario and Erie, by the Père Raffeix, is in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris;[626] and from a copy in the Kohl Collection at Washington the sketch on page 234 is taken. It is called, Le Lac Ontario avec les lieux circonvoisins et particulierment les cinq Nations Iroquoises.

Another map, thought to be the work of Raudin, Frontenac’s engineer,[627] should be found in the Archives of the Marine, but according to Harrisse it is not there.[628] The Barlow Collection, however, has a map which Harrisse believes to be the lost original; a sketch of the western part is given herewith.[629] It also gives the eastern seaboard with approximate accuracy, but represents Lake Champlain as lying along the headwaters of the Connecticut and the Hudson. Lake Erie is a squarish oblong, larger than Ontario, and of a shape rarely found in these early maps. In the upper lakes it resembles the map of 1672-1673, which Harrisse[630] also found missing from the Bibliothèque Nationale.

The maps which pertain to Hennepin and Lahontan are separately treated on a later page.

RAFFEIX, 1688.

This sketch is from a copy in the Kohl Washington Collection. There is another copy in the Barlow Collection. The original is in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. (Harrisse, Notes, etc., no. 238.) It is marked, Parties les plus occidentales du Canada, Pierre Raffeix, Jesuite. Harrisse puts it under 1688; Kohl says between 1681 and 1688. The lines of exploration, as indicated on it, are explained in the marginal inscriptions as follows:—

Voyage et premiere descouverte de la riviere de Mississipi faite par le P. Marquette, Jesuitte, et Mr. Jolliet, en 1672.

(—.—.) signifie l’allée.

(.....), le retour.

Ils furent jusques pres du 32 degré d’elevation. (.——.) Mr. du Lude, qui le premier a esté ches les Sious ou Nadouesiou en 1678, et qui a esté proche la source du Mississipi, et qui ensuitte vint retirer le p. Louis [Hennepin], qui avoit esté fait prisonnier ches les Sious au P., et sen reviendre finir leur descouverte par ou le P. Marquette et Mr. Jolliet commencer la leur.

(..—..—) Voyage de Mr. de la Salle en 1679, qui ariva au fond du lac des Illinois et qui voula commencer un petit fort, et une barque a Crevecoeur, d’ou le Pere Louis [Hennepin] partit pour aller en haut a la descouverte. Mr. de la Salle escrit qu’en 1681 il descendit sur le Mississipi, et qu’il a esté jusqua la mer.

(E) Voyage a faire et plus facile pour descouvrir tout le Missĩpi en venant du lac Ontario au bourg des Senontonans et de la en E.

(F) 1. De l’Embouchure de cette petite riviere jusqu’aux Assinipouals et aleurs lacs Ilne a que 100 lieues.

2. Le pais des Assinipouals qui est le plus a l’ouest est un pais de continuelles prairies cõme tout le long du Missĩpi, et l’on y voit quelque fois passer dans un jour plus de 2 a 3,000 beufs sauvages. Il faut remarquer que osté la forme exacte de lacs que le peu de temps na pas permis de rechercher et que l’on trouve dans d’autres cartes; les rivieres y sont marques avec beaucoup de soin.

Pierre Raffæix, Jesuitte.

La Salle once in Paris (1684) succeeded in obtaining an interview with the King, to whom he then and subsequently in Memorials,[631] which have been saved to us, presented an ambitious scheme of fortifying the Mississippi near its mouths, and of subjugating the neighboring Spanish colonies, of whose propinquity he had very confused notions, as Franquelin’s map showed.

ONTARIO AND ERIE, BY RAFFEIX, 1688.

Peñalosa was at the same time pressing on the Court a plan for establishing a French colony at the mouth of the Rio Bravo. La Salle’s personal address, too, turned the scales against La Barre.

Accordingly, La Forest, the rejected commander of Fort Frontenac, was sent back to Canada with letters from the King commanding the Governor to make restitution to La Salle’s lieutenant both of Fort Frontenac and of Fort St. Louis. La Salle’s shining promises so affected Louis, that the King gave him more vessels than he asked for; and of these one, the “Joly,” carried thirty-six guns, and another six.[632] Among his company were his brother Cavelier and two other Sulpitian priests, and three Recollects, Membré, Douay, and Le Clercq.

A captain of the royal navy, Beaujeu, was detailed to navigate the “Joly,” but under the direction of La Salle, who was to be supreme. La Salle’s distrust and vacillation, and Beaujeu’s jealousy and assumptions boded no good, and a dozen warm quarrels between them were patched up before they got to sea.[633]

PART OF RAUDIN’S MAP.

Harrisse says: “This is the only map in which the name Bazire is given to the Arkansas River. Bazire was a merchant of Canada who in 1673 supported Frontenac in his design of building Fort Frontenac, with which Raudin had also a great deal to do.” This follows the Barlow original. There is in the Parkman Collection a copy of a part of it by Harrisse.

There was not a little in all this to point to a state of mental unsoundness in La Salle. At a late day Joutel, a fellow-townsman of La Salle, destined to become the expedition’s historian, joined the fleet at Rochelle, and on the 24th of July (1684) it sailed, only to put back, four days later, to repair a broken bowsprit of the “Joly.” Once again they put to sea.

LA SALLE’S CAMP.

This is a reduced sketch from a copy in the Barlow collection of a Plan de l’entrée du lac ou l’on a laissé Mon^r de la Salle, which is preserved in the Archives of the Marine. It is Harrisse’s no. 226. The key is as follows: 1. Le camp de M. de la Salle. 2. Endroit ou la flutte c’est perdue. 3. La frigatte la “Belle” mouillée. 4 and 5. Cabannes des sauvages.

Everything still went wrong. The leaders chafed and quarrelled as on land.[634] The Spaniards captured their smallest vessel.[635] At Santo Domingo the Governor of the island and his officers joined in the quarrel on the side of La Salle, who now fell prostrate with disease. When he recovered he set sail again with his three remaining ships on the 25th of November, coasted the southern shore of Cuba, and on New Year’s Day (1685) sighted land somewhere near the River Sabine. He supposed himself east of the Mississippi mouths, when in fact he was far to the west of them. He knew their latitude, for he had taken the sun when there on his canoe voyage in 1682; but he had at that time no means of ascertaining their longitude. The “Joly” next disappeared in a fog, and La Salle waited for her four or five days, but in vain. So he sailed on farther till he found the coast trending southerly, when he turned, and shortly after met the “Joly.” Passages of crimination and recrimination between the leaders of course followed.[636] La Salle all the while was trying to make out that the numerous lagoons along the coast were somehow connected with the mouths of the Mississippi, while Beaujeu, vexed at the confusion and indecision of La Salle’s mind, did little to make matters clearer. They were in reality at Matagorda Bay. Trying to make an anchorage within, one of the vessels struck a reef and became a total wreck, and only a small part of her cargo was saved.[637] La Salle suspected it was done to embarrass him; and landing his men, he barricaded himself on the unhealthy ground, amid a confusion of camp equipage, including what was saved from the wreck. A swarm of squalid savages looked on, and saw a half-dozen of the Frenchmen buried daily. The Indians contrived to pilfer some blankets, and when a force was sent to punish them they killed several of the French. Beaujeu offered some good advice, but La Salle rejected it; and finally, on the 12th of March the “Joly” sailed, and La Salle was left with his forlorn colony.[638] Beaujeu steered, as he thought, for the Baye du St. Esprit (Mobile Bay [?]); but his belief that he was leaving the mouths of the Mississippi made him miss that harbor, and after various adventures he bore away for France, and reached Rochelle about the 1st of July. With him returned the engineer, Minet, who made on the voyage a map of the mouths of the Mississippi doubly interpreted,—one sketch being based on the Franquelin map of 1684, as La Salle had found it in 1682; and the other conformed to their recent observations about Matagorda, into whose lagoons he made this great river discharge.[639]

CARTE DE LA LOUISIANE, BY MINET, 1685.

This is a reduced sketch from a copy (Barlow Collection) of the original in the Archives of the Marine, giving two plans of the mouth of the river,—the one in the body of the map as “La Salle le marque dans sa carte,” and the other (here put in the small square), “Comme nous les avons trouvez.” It is Harrisse’s no. 225.

It soon dawned upon La Salle that he was not at the Mississippi delta; and it was imperative that he should establish a base for future movements. So he projected a settlement on the Lavaca River, which flowed into the head of the bay; and thither all went, and essayed the rough beginnings of a post, which he called Fort St. Louis.[640] He was also constrained to lay out a graveyard, which received its tenants rapidly. As soon as housing and stockades were finished, La Salle, on the last day of October (1685), leaving Joutel in command, started with fifty men to search for the Mississippi.

The first tidings Joutel got of his absent chief was in January (1686), when a straggler from La Salle’s party appeared, and told a woeful story of his mishaps. By the end of March La Salle himself returned with some of his companions; others he had left in a palisaded fort which he had built on a great river somewhere away. While on his return he detached some of his men to find his little frigate, the “Belle,” which he had left at a certain place on the coast. These men also soon appeared, but they brought no tidings of the vessel. The loss of her and of what she had on board made matters very desperate, and La Salle determined on another expedition, this time to the Illinois country and to Canada, whence he could send word to France for succor. On the 22d of April they started,—La Salle, his brother Cavelier, the Friar Douay, and a score or so others.

Joutel was still left in command; and a few days later the appearance of six men, who alone had been saved from the wreck of the “Belle,” and reached the fort, confirmed the worst fears of that vessel’s fate. Meanwhile La Salle was experiencing dangers and evils of all kinds,—the desertion and death of his men, and delays by sickness, and the spending of ammunition. Once again there was nothing for him to do but to return to Joutel, and so with eight out of his twenty men he came back to the fort. The colony had dwindled from one hundred and eighty to forty-five souls, and another attempt to secure succor was imperative. So in January (1687) a new cheerless party set out, Joutel this time accompanying La Salle; and with the rest were Duhaut, a sinister man, and Liotot the surgeon. For two months it was the same story of suffering on the march and of danger in the camp. Then quarrels ensued; and the murder of La Salle’s nephew and two others who were devoted to him compelled the assassins to save themselves by killing La Salle himself; and from an ambuscade Duhaut and Liotot shot their chief. The party now succumbed to the rule of Duhaut. They ranged aimlessly among the Indians for a while, and fell in with some deserters of La Salle’s former expedition now living among the savages. One of these conspired with Hiens, one of those privy to La Salle’s death, and killed the assassins Duhaut and Liotot. Joutel with the few who were left now parted amicably with Hiens and the savage Frenchmen, and pushed their way to find the Great River. At a point on the Arkansas not far from its confluence with the Mississippi, they were rejoiced to find the abode of two of Tonty’s men. This sturdy adherent of La Salle’s fortunes had been reinstated, as we have seen, by the King’s order, in the command of the fortified rock on the Illinois, and had in due time, after the return of Beaujeu to Rochelle, got the news of La Salle’s landing on the Gulf. In February, 1686, he had started down the river with a band of French and Indians to join his old commander. He reached the Gulf,[641] but of course failed to find La Salle; and returning, had left several men in the villages of the Arkansas, of whom Couture and another now welcomed Joutel and his weary companions. After some delay the wanderers floated their wooden canoe down the Arkansas, and then began their weary journey up the Great River, and by the middle of September they reached the Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. They found Tonty absent, and Bellefontaine in command. They foolishly thought to increase their welcome by presenting themselves as the forerunners of La Salle, who was on the way,—tidings which kept all in good spirits except the Jesuit Allouez, who happened to be in the fort, and was ill, for he was conscious of his machinations against La Salle, and dreaded to encounter him.[642] Cavelier and Joutel soon started for the Chicago portage. A storm on the lake impeded them subsequently, and they came back to the fort to find Tonty returned from Denonville’s campaign against the Senecas.[643] The same deceit regarding La Salle’s fate was practised on Tonty, and he gave them money and supplies as to La Salle’s representatives, only to learn a few months later, when Couture came up from the Arkansas, of La Salle’s murder. The wanderers, however, had now passed on, had reached Quebec in safety, still concealing what they knew, and not disclosing it till they reached France; and even in France there is a suspicion that Cavelier held his peace till he had secured some property against the seizure of La Salle’s creditors. Why Joutel connived at the deception is less comprehensible, for otherwise he bears a fair name. No representations of his, however, could induce the King to send succor to the hapless colony; and all the result, so far as known, of the tardy acknowledgment of La Salle’s death was an order sent to Canada for the arrest of his murderers.

The story which Couture told to Tonty in September inspired that hero with a determination to try to rescue La Salle’s colony on the Gulf. So in December he left his fortified rock, with five Frenchmen and three others. Late in March he was on the Red River, where all but two of his companions deserted him. He was himself finally, by the loss of his ammunition, compelled to turn back, but not till he had learned of the probable death of Heins.[644] In September he reached his fort on the Illinois; and here, with La Forest, he continued to live, holding the seigniory jointly under a royal patent, and trading in furs, till 1702, when the establishment was broken up.[645] Tonty now joined D’Iberville in Louisiana, and of his subsequent years nothing is known. The French again occupied his rocky fastness; but when Charlevoix saw it, in 1721, it was only a ruin.

The fate of the Texan colony is soon told. The Spaniards who had searched for it by sea had always missed it, though they had found the wrecked vessels.[646] A Frenchman, probably a deserter from La Salle, fell into the Spaniards’ hands in New Leon. From him they learned its position, and despatched under the Frenchman’s guidance a force to capture it. They found the fort deserted, and three dead bodies a little distance off. From the Indians they learned of two Frenchmen who were living with a distant tribe. They sent for them under a pledge of good treatment; and when they came, they proved to be L’Archevêque, one of Duhaut’s accomplices, and one of the stray deserters whom Joutel had discovered after the murder. They told a story of ravages from the small-pox and of slaughter by the savages. A few of the colonists had been saved by the Indian women; but these were subsequently given up to the Spaniards, and they added their testimony to the sad and ignominious end of the colony.

It is necessary to define the historical sources regarding this hapless Texan expedition, about the purpose of which there have been some diverse views lately expressed. It is clear that under cover of a grand plan of Spanish conquest, La Salle had dazed the imagination of the King in memorials,[647] which may possibly have been only meant to induce the royal espousal of his more personal schemes. Shea contends that La Salle’s real object was not to settle in Louisiana, but to conquer Santa Barbara and the mining regions in Mexico, and to pave the way for Peñalosa’s expedition.[648]

For the broader relations of the expedition to the earlier explorations of 1682, we must go to a source of the first importance preserved in the Archives of the Marine. It is entitled Mémoire envoyé en 1693 sur la découverte du Mississipi et des nations voisines par le Sieur de la Salle, en 1678, et depuis sa mort par le Sieur de Tonty, and is printed by Margry;[649] and Parkman calls it excellent authority. Out of this and an earlier paper, written in Quebec in 1684,[650] a book, disowned by Tonty, as Charlevoix tells us, was in part fabricated, and appeared at Paris in 1697 under the title of Dernières découvertes dans l’Amérique septentrionale de M. de la Salle, mises au jour par M. le Chevalier Tonti, gouverneur du Fort St. Louis, aux Islinois.[651] Parkman[652] calls it “a compilation full of errors,” and does not rely upon it. Shea says of it that, “although repudiated by Tonti, it must have been based on papers of his.” It has been held apocryphal by Iberville and Margry; but Falconer, La Harpe, Boimare, and Gravier put trust in it.

It is thought that a Journal by Joutel was written in part to counteract the statements of the Dernières découvertes. This Joutel paper was given first in full by Margry,[653] and Parkman[654] says of it that it seems to be “the work of an honest and intelligent man.”[655] It was printed in Paris in 1713, but abridged and changed in a way which Joutel complained of, and bore the title, Journal historique du dernier voyage que feu M. de la Salle fit dans le Golfe du Mexique, pour trouver l’embouchure du Mississipi. Par M. Joutel.[656]

To these there are various supplemental narratives, with their interest centring in the death of La Salle.[657] Joutel gives an account of the scene as he learned it at the time.[658] Tonty’s account was at second hand. Douay saw the deed, and what he reported is given in Le Clercq’s Établissement de la Foi.[659] A document in the Archives of the Marine—Relation de la mort du Sr. de la Salle, suivant le rapport d’un nommé Couture, à qui M. Cavelier l’apprit en passant au pays des Akansa—is given by Margry;[660] and Harrisse thinks that it merits little confidence.

Cavelier is known to have made a report to Seignelay; and his rough draft of this was recovered in 1854 by Parkman,[661] who calls it “confused and unsatisfactory in its statements, and all the latter part has been lost,” the fragment closing several weeks before the death of his brother.[662]

The character of Beaujeu has certainly been put in a more favorable light by the publication of Margry, and the old belief in his treachery has been somewhat modified.[663]

The Spanish account of the fate of the colony is translated from Barcia’s Ensayo cronologico de la Florida,[664] in Shea’s Discovery of the Mississippi;[665] and Margry[666] adds to our knowledge, as does Buckingham Smith in his Coleccion.[667]

It remains now to speak of the Collections which have been formed, and the theories regarding these Western explorations which have been maintained, by M. Pierre Margry, who has occupied till within a few years the office of archivist of the Marine and Colonies in Paris, having been for a long period assistant and principal. Margry may be said to have discovered what that department contained in manuscripts relating to the explorations of the Mississippi Valley and River, particularly as regards La Salle’s agency. On more than one occasion he has done good service in helping to enrich the archives of New York[668] and Canada with copies of documents known to him,—so far, apparently, as they did not interfere with his own projects of publication. His position created relations for him with other departments of the French Government, and his eager discernment found an abundance of manuscript treasures even in private hands. These he assiduously gathered, and on a few occasions he published papers[669] which seemed to indicate more than he chose to disclose explicitly; for his fellow-students were not quite satisfied, and longed for the documents which had yielded so much. As the guardian of the public archives, he was by office the agent and servant of the public; but other investigators, it is feared, failed, through obstacles thrown in their way, to profit as they might by what that office contained. There is in the Sparks Collection of Manuscripts in Harvard College Library a volume of copies of such documents as could be found in the Paris Archives which that historian intended to use in another edition of his Life of La Salle. While Mr. Sparks was regretting that not a single document or letter in the hand of the great explorer had come down to us, enough to fill a large volume was immured in these Paris Archives. At a later day Mr. Parkman, in turn, failed of access to documents which were of the first importance to him, and he was obliged to make the best use he could of what it was possible to obtain. Environed by these disadvantages Mr. Parkman published, in 1869, his Discovery of the Great West. In his Preface, speaking of the obscurity which had enshrouded the whole subject, he referred to the “indefatigable research of M. Pierre Margry, Assistant-Custodian of the Archives of the Marine and Colonies at Paris, whose labors as an investigator of the maritime and colonial history of France can be appreciated only by those who have seen their results.”

Gravier about the same time referred to the twenty years of study which had made M. Margry the most learned of students of La Salle’s history.

It was evident that investigators could not profit by this accumulation of material, unless M. Margry’s hopes of publication were realized. He refused offers to purchase. In conjunction with M. Harrisse, an effort was made by him in 1870-1871 to enlist the aid of the United States Congress; but a vote which passed the Senate failed in the House. The great fire at Boston in 1872 stayed the progress which, under Mr. Parkman’s instigation, had been made to insure a private publication. At last, by Mr. Parkman’s assiduous labors in the East, and by those of Colonel Whittlesey, Mr. O. H. Marshall, and others in the West, and with the active sympathy of the Hon. George F. Hoar, a bill was passed Congress in 1873, making a subscription for five hundred copies of the intended work.[670]

With this guaranty M. Margry put to press the series of volumes entitled Mémoires et documents pour servir à l’histoire des origines Françaises de pays d’outre-mer: découvertes et établissements des Français dans l’ouest et dans le sud d’Amérique septentrionale. The first volume appeared in 1876. It contained an Introduction by M. Margry, and was prefixed by a very questionable likeness of La Salle,—the picture (of which nothing was said by the editor) having no better foundation than the improbable figure of the explorer in a copperplate, published some years after his death, representing the scene of his murder, and of which a fac-simile is annexed.[671] Of the intended volumes, three are devoted to La Salle, and appeared between 1876 and 1878: vol. i., Voyages des Français sur les grands lacs, et découvertes de l’Ohio et du Mississippi, 1614-1684; vol. ii., Lettres de La Salle, et correspondance relative à ses entreprises, 1678-1685 (these include letters also preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale); vol. iii., Recherche des bouches du Mississipi et voyage à travers le continent depuis les côtes du Texas jusqu’à Québec.

The later volumes (the Editor has seen in Mr. Parkman’s hands the proofs of vols. iv. and v., and there is to be one more) pertain to Iberville and the following century; but a volume of the early cartography is promised as a completion of the publication. On the issue of these three volumes Mr. Parkman in considerable part rewrote his Discovery of the Great West, and republished it in 1879 as La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West. In his Preface he speaks of the collection of documents in Margry’s keeping “to which he had not succeeded in gaining access,” and which, besides the papers in his official charge, included others added by him from other public archives and from private collections in France. “In the course of my inquiries,” says Mr. Parkman, “I owed much to [M. Margry’s] friendly aid; but his collections as a whole remained inaccessible, since he naturally wished to be the first to make known the results of his labors.”

LA SALLE.

This follows a design given in Gravier (pp. 1, 202), which is said to be based on an engraving preserved in the Bibliothèque de Rouen, entitled Cavilli de la Salle François,—and is the only picture meriting notice, except possibly a small vignette of which Gravier gives a fac-simile in his Cavelier de la Salle. Mr. Parkman has a photograph, given to him by Gravier, of a modern painting drawn from the first of these two pictures. In the Magazine of American History, May, 1882, there is an engraving, “after a photograph of the original painting,” leading the reader to suppose a veritable original likeness to have been followed, instead of this photograph of a made-up picture.

It was fortunate that in regard to one point only this deprivation had led Mr. Parkman astray in his earlier edition; and that was upon La Salle’s failure to find the mouth of the Mississippi in 1684, and the conduct therewith of Beaujeu. Mr. Parkman has testified to the authenticity of the La Salle letters in the North American Review, December, 1877, where (p. 428) he says: “The contents of these letters were in good measure known through a long narrative compiled from them by one of the writer’s friends, who took excellent care to put nothing into it which could compromise him. All personalities are suppressed. These letters of La Salle have never been used by any historical writer.” Margry’s publication has been reviewed by J. Thoulet in the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, November and December, 1880, where a modern map enables the reader to track the explorer’s course. A sketch of this map is given on an earlier page.

The severest criticism of Margry’s publication has come from Dr. Shea, in a tract entitled The Bursting of Pierre Margry’s La Salle Bubble, New York, 1879,—a paper which first appeared in the New York Freeman’s Journal. Margry is judged by his critic to have unwarrantably extended the collection by repeating what had already elsewhere been printed, sometimes at greater length.[672] The “bubble” in question is the view long entertained by Margry that La Salle was the real discoverer of the Mississippi, and which he has set forth at different times in the following places:—

1. “Les Normands dans les vallées de l’Ohio et du Mississippi,” in the Journal general de l’instruction publique, July-September, 1862, placing the event in 1670-1671.

2. Revue maritime et colonial, Paris (1872), xxxiii. 555.

3. La priorité de La Salle sur le Mississipi, Paris, 1873,—a pamphlet.

4. The preface to his Découvertes, etc., 1876.

5. A letter in the American Antiquarian (Chicago, 1880), ii. 206, which was addressed to the Wisconsin Historical Society (Collections, ix. 108), and which first appeared in J. D. Butler’s translation in the State Journal, Madison, Wisconsin, July 30, 1879.

Margry, who has wavered somewhat, first claimed that La Salle reached the Mississippi by the Ohio in 1670; and later he has contended for the route by the Illinois in 1671. He bases his claim upon four grounds:—

First, upon a Récit d’un ami de l’Abbé de Galinée, 1666-1678 (printed in the Découvertes, etc., i. 342, 378),[673] which is without date, but which Margry holds to be the work of Abbé Renaudot, derived from La Salle in Paris in 1678, wherein it is stated that La Salle, after parting with Dollier and Galinée, made a first expedition to the Ohio, and a second by the Illinois to the Mississippi.

Second, upon a letter of La Salle’s niece, dated 1756 (i. 379), which affirms that the writer of it possessed maps which had belonged to La Salle in 1676, and that such maps showed that previous to that date he had made two voyages of discovery, and that upon these maps the Colbert (Mississippi) is put down.

Third, upon a letter of Frontenac in 1677 to Colbert (i. 324), which places, as is alleged, the voyage of Joliet after that of La Salle; but at the same time (ii. 285) he prints a paper of La Salle virtually admitting Joliet’s priority.

Fourth, upon the general antagonism between the Jesuits, who espoused Joliet’s claim, and the merchants, who were, with La Salle, the adherents of the Sulpitians and Recollects.

Sides have been taken among scholars in regard to the irrefragability of these evidences, but with a great preponderance of testimony against their validity.

The principal supporter of Margry’s view (though Henri Martin has adopted it) has been Gabriel Gravier in the following publications:—

1. Découvertes et établissements de la Cavelier de la Salle de Rouen dans l’Amérique du nord, Paris, 1870.

2. Cavelier de la Salle de Rouen, Paris, 1871, p. 23. This work is in good part a commentary on Parkman, to whom it is dedicated.

3. “La route du Mississipi,” in the Compte rendu, Congrès des Américanistes, Nancy, 1878, placing it in 1666.

4. In Magazine of American History, viii. 305 (May, 1882).

Views in support of the prior discovery of Joliet and Marquette, and opposed to the claim for La Salle, are given in the following places, without enumerating Charlevoix, Sparks, and the other upholders of the Joliet discovery, before Margry’s theory was advanced:—

1. Tailhan, as editor of Perrot’s Sauvages, Paris, 1864, p. 279.

2. Verreau, Voyage de MM. Dollier et Galinée, p. 59.

3. Parkman, La Salle.

4. Faillon, in his Colonie Française en Canada, iii. 312; while at the same time he testifies to Margry’s labors in vol i. p. 24.

5. Harrisse, Notes, etc., sur la Nouvelle France, 1872, p. 125, where he reviews the controversy; and again in the Revue maritime et coloniale (1872), xxxii. 642.

6. J. Brucker, Jacques Marquette et la découverte de la vallée du Mississipi, Lyons, 1880, taken from Les études réligieuses, vol. iv.

7. H. H. Hurlbut, in Magazine of American History, September, 1882.

8. John G. Shea, in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Collections, vii. 111; and in the Bursting of the La Salle Bubble, already referred to. In his edition of Le Clercq, ii. 89, he speaks of the theory as “utterly absurd.”

[FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN]

AND HIS REAL OR DISPUTED DISCOVERIES.

BY THE EDITOR.

THE life of this Recollect missionary is derived in its particulars mainly from his own writings; and the details had never been set forth in an orderly way till Dr. J. G. Shea in 1880 prefixed to a new translation of Hennepin’s first book a satisfactory sketch. He seems to have been born in Hainault, though precisely when does not appear. Felix Van Hulst, in the title of his tract, gives the date approximately: Notice sur le Père Louis Hennepin, né à Ath (Belgique) vers 1640. Liege, 1845. He early joined the Franciscans, served the Order in various places, travelled as he could, was inspired with a desire to see the world, and felt the impulse strongest when, at Calais, he listened to the narratives of sea-captains who had returned from long voyages. This inclination prompted him to continued missionary expeditions, and to attendance upon armies in their campaigns. In 1675 Frontenac succeeded in his attempt to recall to Canada the Recollects, as a foil to the Jesuits; and among the first of that Order to go was Hennepin, who crossed the ocean in the same ship with La Salle, the ambitious explorer, and De Laval, the new Bishop of Quebec. According to his own account, Hennepin had his first quarrel with La Salle about some girls who were on their way to reinforce the family life of the new colony.[674]

La Salle enjoyed their dances, and Hennepin, as their spiritual guide, kept them under restraint. This, at least, is the Recollect story of the origin of La Salle’s enmity for the missionary.

From Quebec Hennepin continued his missionary wanderings, sometimes to remote stations, and at one time, in the spring of 1677, among the Iroquois,—not going, however, to Albany, as has been sometimes asserted. (Cf. Brodhead’s New York, ii. 307; Hist. Mag. x. 268.) Next he accompanied La Salle in his explorations west. Of Niagara he offers us the earliest picture in his 1697 publication,—of which a reduced fac-simile is here given. Others are in Gay’s Pop. Hist. U. S., ii. 511; Shea’s Hennepin, p. 379, and in his Le Clercq, ii. 112; and in the Carter-Brown Catalogue, vol. ii. no. 561. The original cut was repeated in the later editions and translations of Hennepin. These Falls had been indicated on Champlain’s map, in 1632, with the following note: “Sault d’eau au bout du Sault [Lac] Sainct Louis fort hault, où plusiers sortes de poissons descendans s’estourdissent.” This was from the natives’ accounts. Ragueneau, in the Relation of 1648, was the first to describe them, though they had been known by report to the Jesuits some years earlier (Parkman’s Jesuits, p. 142). Lalemant, in 1641, called them Onguiaahra. Ragueneau gave them no definite altitude, but called them of “frightful height.” Hennepin, in his 1683 book, calls them five hundred feet, and in 1697 six hundred feet high, and describes a side-shoot on their western verge which does not now exist. Sanson, in his map of 1657, had somewhat simplified Ragueneau’s name into Ongiara; but Hennepin gives the name in its present form. There is a great variety in the early spelling of the name. (See Canadian Journal, 1870, p. 385.) The word is of Iroquois origin, and its proper phonetic spelling is very like the form now in use (Parkman, La Salle, p. 126; O’Callaghan, Col. Doc., index, 465). Hennepin had also been anticipated in a brief notice by Gendron, in his Quelques Particularites, etc., 1659. Hennepin’s account is also translated in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., v. 47. His engraving was reproduced, in 1702, in Campanius’ work on New Sweden.

Hennepin accompanied La Salle to the point where Fort Crèvecœur was built, on the Illinois, and parting from La Salle here in February, 1680, he pursued his further wandering down the Illinois to the Mississippi, and thence up to the Falls of St. Anthony, which were named by him in reference to his being a Recollect of the province of St. Anthony in Artois. On the 3d of July, 1880, the bi-centenary of the discovery of these Falls was observed, when C. K. Davis delivered an historical address. Thence, after being captured by the Sioux and rescued by a party under Du Lhut,[675] Hennepin made his way to the Wisconsin, passed by Green Bay, and reached Quebec. He soon after returned to France, where, on the 3d of September, 1682, he obtained the royal permission to print his first book, which was issued from the press Jan. 5, 1683.

From this point his story[676] can be best followed in connection with the history of his books, and as they are rare and curious, it has been thought worth while to point out a few of the repositories of copies, which are indicated by the following heavy-faced letters:—

BA.	Boston Athenæum.
BPL.	Boston Public Library.
C.	Library of Congress.
CB.	Carter-Brown Library, Providence.
HC.	Harvard College Library.
HCM.	Henry C. Murphy.
L.	Lenox Library, New York.

For full titles, see the Bibliography in Shea’s edition of the Description of Louisiana, and the article “Hennepin,” in Sabin’s Dictionary. Cf. also Brunet, Supplément, 598.

I. DESCRIPTION DE LA LOUISIANE.

This first book was entitled Description de la Louisiane nouvellement découverte au Sud-Oüest de la Nouvelle France. Les Mœurs des Sauvages. Par le R. P. Louis Hennepin, Paris, 1683. Pages 12, 312, 107. Some copies are dated 1684.

Copies: BA., C., CB., HC., L. (both dates).

References: Shea (ed. of Hennepin), nos. 1, 2; Sabin, Dictionary, no. 31,347; Ternaux, Bibliothèque Amér. no. 985; Harrisse, Notes sur la Nouv. France, nos. 150, 352; Carter-Brown Catalogue, vol. ii. no. 1,266, with fac-simile of title; Hist. Mag., vol. ii. no. 24 (by Mr. Lenox), 346; Dufossé, Americana, 70 francs, with genuine map, and 40 or 50 francs with fac-simile; Leclerc, Bibl. Americana, nos. 897, 898 at 90 and 150 francs; Rich, Catalogue (1832), no. 402, 12s.

The map, of which a section is herewith given in fac-simile, measures 10.2 X 17.2, “Guerard inven. et fecit. Roussel sculpsit,” and is often wanting. Cf. Harrisse, no. 352; Hist. Mag., vol. ii. 24.

Harrisse (no. 219; also see no. 238) cites a map preserved in the Dépôt des Cartes de la Marine, which seems to embody the results of Hennepin’s discoveries.

The next edition (Paris, 1688) shows the same pagination, with some verbal changes in the text, and is accompanied by the same map.

Copies: B.A., CB., HC.

References: Shea, no. 3; Sabin, no. 31,348; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,354; Hist. Mag. vol. ii. p. 346; Harrisse, no. 160; O’Callaghan, Catalogue, no. 1,068; Beckford, Catalogue, no. 674, bought by Quaritch, who advertised it at £3 3s.

HENNEPIN, 1683.

An extract from the Carte de la Nouvelle France et de la Louisiane, nouvellement découverte, dediée au Roy l’an 1683. Par le Révérend Père Louis Hennepin, Missionaire Recollect et Notaire Apostolique, belonging to the Description de la Louisiane, 1683. There is a full fac-simile in Shea’s translation of this book, and another one was made in 1876 by Pilinski, in Paris (36 copies). The letter A near a tree signifies “Armes du Roy telle qu’elle sont gravée sur l’escorce d’un chesne.” This map (Harrisse, no. 352) seems to resemble closely a map described by Harrisse (no. 219), as indicating the discoveries of Du Lhut, of which there is a copy in the Barlow Collection.

The following translations may be noted:—

English.—Some portions of Hennepin’s first work had been translated in Shea’s Discovery of the Mississippi, pp. 107-145; but no English translation of the whole work appeared till Dr. Shea edited a version in 1880, comparing Hennepin’s text with the second publication of that missionary (issued in 1697) with the La Salle documents, published by Margry, and with other contemporaneous papers.

Dutch.—The engraved title, Ontdekking van Louisania; the printed title, Beschryving van Louisania. It appeared at Amsterdam in 1688, under the same covers with a Dutch version of Denys’ Coast of North America, accompanied by a map which is a reduction of the map of the 1683 edition, and is called “Kaart van nieuw Vrankrijk en van Louisania;” together with four plates.

Copies: CB., HC., L.

References: Shea, no. 5; Sabin, no. 31,357; Harrisse, no. 161; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,355, with fac-simile of title; Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 24; O’Callaghan, no. 1,069; Stevens, Historical Collections, vol. i. no. 1,433; Muller, Books on America, 1870, no. 908, and 1877, no. 1,395.

It is usually priced at from $8 to $10.

German.—There were two editions,—Beschreibung der Landschaft Louisiana, to which was appended a German version of Marquette’s and Joliet’s exploration, published at Nuremberg in 1689. It should have two maps.

Copies: CB., L.

References: Shea, no. 6; Ternaux, no. 1,041; Carter-Brown, vol. ii no. 1,379; O’Callaghan, no. 1,071; Muller, 1877, no. 1,399.

The other German edition of the same title appeared at Nuremberg in 1692.

Copies: CB., L.

References: Shea, no. 7; Harrisse, no. 163; Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 24; Sabin, no. 31,364.

Italian.—Descrizione della Luigiana. Rendered by Casimiro Freschot, and published at Bologna in 1686, with a map.

Copies: CB.

References: Shea, no. 4; Harrisse, no. 157; Sabin, no. 31,356; Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 346; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,326; Ternaux, no. 1,012; Leclerc, no. 900; 60 francs.

An abridgment was printed in Il Genio Vagante, Parma, 1691, with a map, “Nuova Francia e Luigiana.” Cf. Harrisse, no. 365.

In this earliest work of Hennepin the Mississippi, it will be seen by the map, forms no certain connection with the Gulf of Mexico, but is connected by a dotted line, and there is no claim for explorations further south than the map indicates. Hennepin’s later publications have raised doubts as to the good faith of his narrative of discoveries on the Upper Mississippi. Harrisse (no. 150), for instance, says “Cette Relation de 1683 n’est en réalité qu’une pâle copie d’un des mémoires de Cavelier de la Salle;” and goes on to deny to Hennepin the priority of giving the name of Louisiana to the country. La Salle and others of his contemporaries threw out insinuations as to his veracity, or at least cautioned others against his tendency to exaggerate. (Cf. Neill, Writings of Hennepin.) The publication of an anonymous account of La Salle’s whole expedition in Margry’s Découvertes et Établissements des Français, has enabled Dr. Shea, in his edition of Hennepin, to contest Margry’s views of Hennepin’s plagiarism, and to compare the two narratives critically; and he comes to the conclusion that probably Hennepin was La Salle’s scribe before they parted, and that he certainly contributed directly or indirectly to La Salle’s despatches what pertains to Hennepin’s subsequent independent exploration,—thus making the borrowing to be on the part of the anonymous writer, who, if he were La Salle, did certainly no more than was becoming in the master of the expedition to combine the narratives of his subordinates. It is Shea’s opinion, however, that the Margry document was not written by La Salle, but by some compiler in Paris, who used Hennepin’s printed book rather than his notes or manuscript reports. Margry claims that this Relation officielle de l’enterprise de La Salle, de 1678 à 1681, was compiled by Bernou for presentation to Colbert. Parkman thinks, as opposed to Shea’s view, that Hennepin knew of the document, and incorporated many passages from it into his book (La Salle, pp. 150, 262). Dr. Shea sided with the detractors of Hennepin in his earlier Discovery of the Mississippi; but in this later book he makes fair amends for what he now considers his hasty conclusions then. Cf. further Sparks’s Life of La Salle, and the North American Review, January, 1845. Mr. Parkman’s conclusion is that this early book of Hennepin is “comparatively truthful.”

II. NOUVELLE DÉCOUVERTE.

According to Hennepin’s own story, some time after his first book was published, he incurred the displeasure of the Provincial of his Order by refusing to return to America, and was in more ways than one so pursued by his superior that in the end he threw himself on the favor of William III. of England, whom he had met at the Hague. Hennepin searched Amsterdam for a publisher of his new venture, but had to take it to Utrecht, where it came out, in 1697, with a fulsome dedication to the English king. It is called in the printed title (the engraved title is abridged): Nouvelle Découverte d’un très grand Pays, situé dans l’Amérique, entre le Nouveau Mexique et la Mer glaciale, Utrecht, 1797, pp. 70, 506, with two maps and two plates, one being the earliest view of Niagara Falls, as given on p. 86.

HENNEPIN, 1697.

This is an extract from the second of Hennepin’s maps, Carte d’un très grand pays entre le Nouveau Mexique et la Mer glaciale, dediée à Guillaume III.... à Utreght. The same plate was used in later editions (1698, 1704, 1711, etc.), with additions of many names, and some topographical changes, and alterations of place of publication. Those of 1698 have à Utreght in some cases, and in others à Amsterdam.

HENNEPIN, 1697.

Extract from Carte d’un très grand pais nouvellement découvert dans l’Amérique septentrionale, entre le Nouveau Mexique et la Mer glaciale, avec le Cours du Grand Fleuve Meschasipi ... à Utreght. The same plate was used for the editions, à Leiden, 1704, etc. The plate was re-engraved with English names for the English editions.

Copies: BA., CB., HC.

References: Shea, no. 1; Sabin, no. 31,349; Ternaux, no. 1,095; Harrisse, no. 175; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,513; Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 346; Beckford, no. 675, bought by Quaritch, and advertised by him at £4 4s.; Stevens, vol. i. no. 1,434; Leclerc, no. 902, 80 francs; Harrassowitz, Catalogue, 1883, no. 58, 50 marks; Brinley, Catalogue, no. 4,491. It is usually priced in English catalogues at two or three guineas.

The portions repeated in this book from the Description de la Louisiane are enlarged, and the “Mœurs des Sauvages” is omitted.

It will be observed that in both of the maps of 1697, extracts from which are given herewith, the Mississippi River is marked as continuing its course to the Gulf. This change is made to illustrate an interpolation in the text (pp. 249-312), borrowed from Father Membré’s Journal of La Salle’s descent of the river, as given in Le Clercq’s Premier Établissement de la Foi, p. 153. Sparks, in his Life of La Salle, was the first to point out this correspondence. Mr. J. H. Perkins, reviewing Sparks’s book in the North American Review in January, 1839 (reprinted in his Memoir and Writings, vol. ii.), on the “Early French Travellers in the West,” referring to the partial statements of the distrust of Hennepin in Andrew Ellicott’s Journal, and in Stoddard’s Sketches of Louisiana, makes, for the first time, as he thinks, a thorough critical statement of the grounds “for thinking the Reverend Father so great a liar.” Further elucidation of the supposed theft was made by Dr. Shea in his Discovery of the Mississippi, etc., p. 105, where, p. 83, he translated for the first time into English Membré’s Journal. The Membré narrative is much the same as a Relation de la Découverte de l’Embouchure de la Rivière Mississippi, faite par le Sieur de la Salle, l’année passée, 1682, preserved in the Archives Scientifiques de la Marine, and printed in Thomassy’s Géologie pratique de la Louisiane. Gravier, p. 180, holds it to be the work of La Salle himself (Boimare, Text explicatif pour accompagner la première planche historique relative à la Louisiane, Paris, 1868; cf. Gravier’s Appendix, no. viii). That there was a fraud on Hennepin’s part has been generally held ever since Sparks made his representations. Bancroft calls Hennepin’s journal “a lie.” Brodhead calls it an audacious falsehood. Parkman (La Salle, p. 226) deems it a fabrication, and has critically examined Hennepin’s inconsistencies. Gravier classes his narrative with Gulliver’s.

The excuse given in the Nouvelle Découverte for the tardy appearance of this Journal is, that fear of the hostility of La Salle having prevented its appearance in the Description de la Louisiane, that explorer’s death rendered the suppression of it no longer necessary. It is, moreover, proved that passages from Le Clercq are also appropriated in describing the natives and the capture of Quebec in 1628. The reply to this was that Le Clercq stole from a copy of Hennepin’s Journal, which had been lent to Le Roux in Quebec. These revelations led Shea seriously to question in his Mississippi if Hennepin had ever seen the upper parts of that river, and to suspect that Hennepin may have learned what he wrote from Du Lhut. Harrisse, p. 176, brings forward some new particulars about Hennepin’s relations with Du Lhut.

Dr. Shea’s later views, as expressed in his English translation (1880) of the Description de la Louisiane (1683), is that Hennepin’s manuscript or revamped copy of his earlier book, as prepared for the printer by himself, was subjected to the manipulations of an ignorant and treacherous editor, who made these insertions to produce a more salable book, and that Hennepin was not responsible for it in the form in which it appeared. Shea’s arguments to prove this opposite of the generally received opinion are based on inherent evidence in the insertions that Hennepin could not have written them, and on the material evidences of these questionable portions of the book having been printed at a later time than the rest of it, and in different type. The only rejoinder yet made to this exculpation is by Mr. E. D. Neill, in a tract on The Writings of Louis Hennepin, read before the Minnesota Historical Society in November, 1880, in which the conclusion is reached that “nothing has been discovered to change the verdict of two centuries, that Louis Hennepin, Recollect Franciscan, was deficient in Christian manhood.”

The Nouvelle Découverte was reset and reissued in 1698 at Amsterdam, with the same maps and a new title.

Copies: CB., L.

References: Shea, no. 2; Sabin, no. 31,350; Harrisse, no. 176; Ternaux, no. 1,110; O’Callaghan, no. 1,073; Muller, 1877, no. 3,666; Sparks, Catalogue, no. 1,211; Rich, 1832, 12s.; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. 1,538; Historical Magazine, vol. ii. pp. 24,346.

There was another edition, Voyage ou Nouvelle Découverte, at Amsterdam in 1704, with the same maps and additional plates, to which was appended La Borde’s Voyage.

Copies: BA., CB.

References: Shea, no. 3; Sabin, no. 31,352; Rich, 1830, no. 8; Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 347; Beckford, no. 676; Leclerc, no. 905, 60 francs; Stevens, vol. i. no. 1,436; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 52.

The Hague and Leyden editions of the same year (1704) had an engraved title, Voyage curieux ... qui contient une Nouvelle Découverte, but were evidently from the same type, and also have the La Borde appended.

Copies: CB., L., HCM.

References: Shea, nos. 4, 5; Sabin, no. 31,353; Historical Magazine, vol. ii. 25.

The Amsterdam edition of 1711 was called Voyages curieux et nouveaux de Messieurs Hennepin et de la Borde, with oblong title, folded in, which seems to be the only difference from the 1704 editions.

Copies: BA., CB., HC.

References: Shea, no. 6; Sabin, no. 31,354; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 153.

In 1712 another Amsterdam edition was called Voyage ou Nouvelle Découverte.

Copy: CB.

References: Shea, no. 7; Sabin, no. 31,355; Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 347; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 168; Stevens, vol. i. no. 1,438.

Hennepin’s book also appeared in the third edition, at Amsterdam (1737), of Bernard’s Recueil de Voyages au Nord, vol. ix., with a map called “Le Cours du fleuve Mississipi, 1737.” Cf. Shea, no. 8; Sabin, no. 4,936; Historical Magazine, ii. 25. It also appeared at Amsterdam in 1720, in Relations de la Louisiane et du Fleuve Mississippi (Dufossé, 1878, no. 4,577), and again in 1737 in connection with a translation of Garcilasso de la Vega (Dr. O’Callaghan in Historical Magazine, ii. 24). An abridgment appeared in Paris, in 1720, under the title, Description de la Louisiane, par le Chevalier Bonrepos, pp. 45 (Lenox in Historical Magazine, ii. 25).

The following translations may be noted:—

Dutch.—1. Nieuwe Ontdekkinge, etc., Amsterdam, 1699.

Copy: CB.

References: Shea, no. 9; Sabin, no. 31,359; Harrisse, no. 183.

2. Nieuwe Entdekkinge, etc., Amsterdam, 1702. It follows the 1697 French edition, with the same maps and plates, and has Capiné’s book on the Spanish West Indies appended.

Copies: BA., CB., L.

References: Shea, no. 10; Sabin, no. 31,360; Lenox in Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 25; Muller, 1870, no. 912, and 1877, no. 1,397; Brinley, no. 4,493; O’Callaghan, no. 1,076; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 23.

3. Aenmerkelyke Voyagie, etc., Leyden, 1704.

Copy: CB.

References: Shea, no. 11; Sabin, no. 31,361; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. nos. 53, 54; Stevens, vol. i. no. 1,437; Muller, 1870, no. 913, and 1877, no. 1,398.

4. Aanmerkkelyke Voyagie, etc., Rotterdam, 1704. It is usually found with Benzoni’s West-Indise Voyagien, and also in Van der Aa’s Collection of Voyages, 1704.

Copies: C., CB., L.

References: Shea, nos. 12, 13; Sabin, no. 31,362; Lenox in Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 25.

5. Nieuwe Ontdekkinge, etc. Amsterdam, 1722.

Copy: CB.

References: Shea, no. 14; Sabin, no. 31,363.

English.—Discovery of a Large, Rich, and Plentiful Country, etc., London, 1720.

Copies: BA., CB., HC.

References: Shea, no. 2; Sabin, nos. 20,247, 31,373; Historical Magazine, vol. i. p. 347; Rich, no. 12; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 267.

This is an abridgment.

German.—1. Neue Entdeckung, etc. Bremen, 1699.

Copies: CB., L.

References: Shea, no. 15; Historical Magazine, vol. i. p. 347, vol. ii. p. 25; Sabin, no. 31,367; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,572; Harrisse, no. 185; Stevens, vol. i. no. 1,435.

2. Beschreibung der Grosser Flusse Mississipi. Dritte Auflage, Leipzig, 1720.

Copy: L.

References: Lenox in Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 25.

3. Neue Reise Beschreibung, etc., Nürnberg, 1739.

Copy: CB.

References: Shea, no. 16; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 604.

4. Neue Entdeckung, etc., Bremen, 1742.

Copy: CB.

Reference: Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 708.

Spanish.—Relaçion, etc., Brusselas, 1699.

Copies: HC., CB., L. An abridgment by Sebastian Fernandez de Medrano.

References: Shea, no. 1; Sabin, no. 31,374; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,573; Lenox in Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 25; Ternaux, no. 1,126.

It has the same map with the 1697 French edition, with an Italian label, “Carta geografica de un Pais,” etc., pasted over the French title.

III. NOUVEAU VOYAGE.

It has been customary to bestow upon this volume a similar distrust as upon the preceding; but Dr. Shea contends that the luckless treatment of the Nouvelle Découverte by a presumptuous editor was also repeated with this. It was entitled, Nouveau Voyage d’un Pais plus grand que l’Europe, Utrecht, 1698. The work was made up from Le Clercq, and included the treatise on the Indians which had been omitted in the Nouvelle Découverte, of which this volume may be considered the supplement.

Copies: BA., CB.

References: Shea, no. 1; Sabin, no. 31,351; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,537; Harrisse, no. 177; Beckford, no. 677, bought by Quaritch, who priced it at £4 4s.; Leclerc, no. 904, 70 francs; Rich, no. 455; Ternaux. no. 1,111.

The Nouveau Voyage was also included in an abridged form in the second (1720) and third (1734) editions of the Recueil de Voyages au Nord, published by Bernard at Amsterdam. Cf. Shea, 2 and 3.

It was also issued in the following translations:—

Dutch.—Engraved title, Reyse door nieuwe Ondekte Landen. Printed title, Aenmerckelycke Historische Reijs Beschryvinge, Utrecht, 1698. The map reads, “Carte d’un Nouveau Monde entre Le Nouveau Mexique et la Mer glaciale. Gasp. Bouttals fecit.”

Copies: BA., CB.

References: Shea, no. 4; Sabin, no. 31,358; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,539, with fac-simile of title; Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 347; Harrisse, no. 179; Trömel, no. 425; O’Callaghan, no. 1,075; Muller, 1877, no. 1,396.

English.—In the Archæologia Americana, vol. i.

German, I.—Neue Reise Beschreibung, übersetzt durch M. J. G. Langen, Bremen, 1698.

Copy: CB.

References: Shea, no. 5.; Sabin, no. 31,365; Ternaux, no. 1,049, of doubtful date; Harrisse, no. 165; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,540.

2. Reisen und seltsehme Begebenheiten, etc., Bremen, 1742.

References: Shea, no. 6; Sabin, no. 31,369.

IV. COMBINATION.

The Nouvelle Découverte and the Nouveau Voyage were combined in an English translation issued under the following title: A new Discovery of a Vast Country in America, extending above four thousand miles between New France and New Mexico, etc., London, 1698. It contains—part i., a translation of the Nouvelle Découverte; part ii., in smaller type and new paging, a version of the Nouveau Voyage; the rest of the volume in the type of part i. and continuing its paging, being an account of Marquette’s voyages. Another edition of the same year shows a slight change of title, with alterations in part i. and part ii. rewritten. Still another issue conforms in title to the earliest, but in body, with a slight correction, to the second edition. The engraved title of the first edition is given herewith. This picture is a re-engraving reversed of the one on the title of the Nouvelle Découverte of 1697.

Copies: BPL., CB., HC.

References: Shea, nos. 1, 2, 3; Sabin, nos. 31,370, 31,371; Ternaux, nos. 1,010, 1,119; Historical Magazine, vol. i. p. 347; Field, Indian Bibliography, no. 685; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. nos. 1,535, 1,536; Rich, no. 456; Brinley, no. 4,492; Harrisse, no. 181; Menzies Catalogue, no. 915.

In the next year (1699) there was a reprint of the second issue of the preceding year.

Copy: BA.

References: Shea, no. 4; Sabin, no. 31,372; O’Callaghan, no. 1,074; and Historical Magazine, vol. ii p. 74; Menzies, no. 916.

BARON LA HONTAN.

A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL NOTE BY THE EDITOR.

LA HONTAN, a young Gascon, born about 1667, had come to Canada in 1683, and from being a common soldier, had by his ability risen to an officer’s position. He became a favorite of Frontenac, and was selected by him to bear the despatch to Paris which conveyed an account of Phips’s failure before Quebec in 1690. He was not long after made deputy-governor of Placentia, where he quarrelled with his superior and fled to France; and here, fearing arrest, he was obliged to escape beyond its boundaries. After the Peace of Ryswick he sought reinstatement, but was not successful; and it is alleged that his book, which he now published, was in some measure the venting of his spleen. It appeared in 1703, at La Haye, as Nouveaux Voyages dans l’Amérique septentrionale, qui contiennent une Relation des différens Peuples que y habitent, in two volumes (the second entitled Mémoires de l’Amérique septentrionale, ou la suite des Voyages), with twenty-six maps and plates (Sabin, vol. x. nos. 38,635-38,638; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 36; Quaritch, 25 shillings; Leclerc, no. 737, 40 francs). Another edition, in somewhat larger type and better engravings, with a vignette in place of the sphere on the title, appeared the same year. Dr. Shea is inclined to think this the authorized edition, and the other a pirated one, with reversed cuts. La Hontan, being in London, superintended an edition published there the same year in English, called New Voyages to North America (in Harvard College Library; cf. Brinley Catalogue, no. 101; Field, Indian Bibliography, no. 852; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 39), likewise in two volumes, but containing in addition a Dialogue between La Hontan and a Huron Indian (the Rat), which had not been included in the Hague edition, and which was the vehicle of some religious scepticism. There were thirteen plates in vol. i., and eleven in vol. ii., and La Hontan speaks of them as being much better than those of the Holland edition (Sabin, vol. x. no. 38,644). This same Dialogue was issued separately the next year (1704) at Amsterdam in French,—Dialogue du Baron de La Hontan et d’un Sauvage dans l’Amérique; and also, with a changed title (Supplément aux Voyages du Baron La Hontan), as the third volume or “suite” of the Voyages, and sometimes with added pages devoted to travels in Portugal and Denmark (Sabin, vol. x. nos. 38,633, 38,634, 38,637; Field, no. 853; Leclerc, nos. 738, 739; Muller, Books on America, 1872, no. 864). These editions are found with the dates also of 1704 and 1705. What is called a “seconde Édition, revue, corrigée, et augmentée,” with twenty-seven plates (but not from the same coppers, however, with the earlier issues), and omitting the “Carte générale,” appeared likewise at La Haye in 1705 and 1706. This is professedly “almost recast, to make the style more pure, concise, and simple, with the Dialogues rewritten.” The Denmark and Portugal voyage being omitted, it is brought within two volumes, the second of which is still called Mémoires, etc. (Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 68). There were later French editions in 1707, 1709, and 1715, and at Amsterdam in 1721, with the “suite,” dated 1728, three volumes in all, and sometimes all three are dated 1728; and still other editions are dated 1731 and 1741 (Sabin, vol. x. no. 38,640, who says it is quite impossible to make a clear statement of all the varieties of these several editions; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 689). The English version appeared again at London in 1735 (Menzies, no. 1,178; Brinley, no. 101; Sabin, vol. x. nos. 38,645, 38,646, who says there are various imprints; and it is also included in Pinkerton’s Voyages, vol. xiii.). There are also a German edition, Des beruhmten Herrn Baron de La Hontan Neueste Reisen, 1709 (Sabin, vol. x. no. 38,647; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 123; Stevens, Bibl. Hist., no. 2,505), and a Dutch, Reizen van den Baron van La Hontan, 1739 (Sabin, vol. x. no. 38,648; Stevens, no. 2,506).

PART OF LA HONTAN’S MAP.

This is the western part of the Carte Générale de Canada, which appeared in the Nouveaux Voyages, La Haye, 1709, vol. ii., and was re-engraved in his Mémoires, Amsterdam, 1741, vol. iii.

PART OF LA HONTAN’S MAP.

A middle section from his “Carte Générale de Canada,” in his Nouveaux Voyages, La Haye, 1709, vol. ii.; re-engraved in the Amsterdam, 1741, edition of the Mémoires, vol. iii.

LA HONTAN’S MAP.

A fac-simile of the frontispiece to La Hontan’s New Voyages, London, 1703. It was less carefully drawn in the re-engraving of smaller size for the Mémoires de l’Amérique, vol. ii., Amsterdam; and still another plate of the same map will be found in the 1709 and 1715 La Haye editions.

The book is thought to have been edited by Nicolas Gueudeville; or at least his hand is usually recognized in the customary third volume of some of the editions. Faribault (p. 76) says that a bookseller in Amsterdam knew that the Dialogue was added by Gueudeville, in whose Atlas, Amsterdam, 1719, as well as in Corneille’s Geographical Dictionary, the accounts given of La Hontan’s Rivière Longue are incorporated.

LA HONTAN’S RIVIERE LONGUE.

Fac-simile of the map in the Nouveaux Voyages, La Haye, 1709, i. 136. He reports that the river was called by some the Dead River, because of its sluggish current.

As early as 1715-1716 there was a general discrediting of the story of La Hontan, as will be seen by letters addressed by Bobé to De l’Isle, the French geographer, and printed in the Historical Magazine, iii. 231, 232; but the English geographer, Herman Moll, in his maps between 1710 and 1720, was under La Hontan’s influence. Another English cartographer, John Senex (1710), accepted the La Hontan story with considerable hesitation, and later rejected it. Daniel Coxe, in his Carolana (1727), quite unreservedly accepted it; and the Long River appears as Moingona in Popple’s Atlas, in 1733.

The German geographer, Homann, of Nuremberg, was in some degree influenced; and the French cartographer De l’Isle sometimes accepted these alleged discoveries, and again discarded them; but the careful work of Bellin, in Charlevoix’s Nouvelle France, did much to relegate La Hontan to oblivion. Charlevoix himself says: “The great liberty which La Hontan gives his pen has contributed greatly to make his book read by people not informed to separate truth from falsehood. It fails to teach the well-informed, and confuses others. The episode of the voyage up the Long River is as fabulous as the Barataria of Sancho Panza.” (Cf. Shea’s ed., i. 86, with Shea’s note, iii. 286.) The Long River some years later, however, figured in the map which illustrates Samuel Engel’s Extraits raisonnés des Voyages faits dans les parties septentrionales, published at Lausanne, and again in 1765, and again in 1779, and of which there is also a German translation. At a later date Carver accepted the accounts of this western river as genuine, and identified it with the St. Peter’s,—a belief which Long again, in his Expedition to St. Peter’s River, wholly rejected. (Cf. also J. H. Perkins in the North American Review (1839), vol. xlviii. no. 98, where it is thought possible; and the paper by H. Scadding in the Canadian Journal, 2d series, vol. xiii. pp. 240, 396.) Parkman expresses the present view of scholars when he says (La Salle, p. 458) that La Hontan’s account of the Long River is a sheer fabrication; but he did not, like Hennepin, add slander and plagiarism to mendacity. Again, in his Frontenac (p. 105), he calls La Hontan “a man in advance of his time, for he had the caustic, sceptical, and mocking spirit which a century later marked the approach of the great Revolution. He usually told the truth when he had no motive to do otherwise, and yet was capable at times of prodigious mendacity,” for his account of what “he saw in the colony is commonly in accord with the best contemporary evidence.” There are some exceptions to this view. Gravier speaks of La Hontan as “de bonne foi et de jugement sain”!

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