Around and under the protection of this fortification was soon gathered a motley gathering of the Illinois, and fragments of other tribes, all looking to him as their feudal lord; and to these followers, by virtue of his seigniorial rights, he began to grant parcels of land, and soon had the nucleus of a colony of some 20,000 souls, numbering about 4,000 warriors.
But, while thus engaged in the wilderness, matters in Canada were looming up adversely to his interests. His friend and patron, Count Frontenac, had been recalled to France, and the man who succeeded him as Governor-General, one de La Barre, was prejudiced against the explorer and constantly misrepresenting him to the home government in France. Furthermore, emboldened by the tone of the King’s letter, who had been led to condemn La Salle’s doings and plans, La Barre, with other associates, seized Fort Frontenac (which was La Salle’s property), despite the remonstrances of the creditors and mortgagees; sold his stores for their own benefit, and turned his cattle to pasture on the growing crops. The position of La Salle became intolerable, cut off from his supplies, for which he entreated Governor La Barre in vain, threatened with an onslaught of the Iroquois, and unable to afford his own Indian allies the help which he had promised them, he had no other resource than to leave his wilderness colony in faithful Tonti’s care, and cross the ocean again to face his enemies before the Court and King.
La Salle’s third return visit to France. So, early in the autumn of 1683, he again turned his face homeward. Quite to his surprise, as we may well imagine, La Salle found that the time of his return was fortuitous. His old friends rallied around him; his enemies seemed, for the moment, to have lost their influence against him. Best of all, both the King and his Ministers were in better humor with him than, from the tone of recent home correspondence, he had reason to expect. The country was now at war with Spain, and the trend of official opinion chimed in very happily with the proposals which he had to offer for the consideration of King and Ministry.
These proposals were (1) to establish a fortified post upon the Gulf of Mexico, within one year after his arrival there; (2) to fortify on the Mississippi, about fifty leagues above its mouth, and there collect an army of over 15,000 Indians; thus commanding the whole river valley, and forming a base for military operations against the Spaniards in the most northern province of Mexico. His plan also embraced the adding (on his way) 50 buccaneers at St. Domingo, and 4,000 Indian warriors from his Fort St. Louis on the Illinois. For this design, he asked for a vessel of 30 guns, a few cannon for the forts, and 200 men, to be raised in France, armed, paid, and maintained at the King’s expense. If, by peace with Spain, he was prevented for more than three years from the full execution of this contract, he bound himself to refund to the Crown all the costs of the enterprise, or forfeit the government of the posts thus established. The scheme which he thus outlined to the French monarch and his Minister Seignelay, of bidding defiance to Spanish incursions, and of controlling the entire trade and colonization of the entire Mississippi valley, was most gladly and promptly accepted by them. La Forest, La Salle’s lieutenant, being then in Paris, was dispatched to Canada, empowered to recover and reoccupy, in La Salle’s name, the Forts Frontenac and St. Louis of the Illinois, from which he had been dispossessed by Governor La Barre; and to the latter the King personally wrote, ordering him to restore to La Salle, or his representative, all the property of which he had been unjustly deprived. As to the equipment of the expedition, he was given four vessels, instead of the two for which he had asked, viz., the Joly, a 36-gun ship of the royal navy, a 6-gun ship, a store-ship, and a ketch. Soldiers were enrolled, besides 30 volunteers, many of whom were gentlemen and of the better class of the bourgeois; several families, and girls matrimonially inclined, as colonists; together with pilots, mechanics, laborers, and six friars and priests of the Sulpitian and Récollet orders.[22]
Unfortunately, the expedition, from the first, was hampered with a divided command. La Salle’s request had been for its sole command, with a subaltern officer, one or two pilots, and entire control of the route they should take, and of the troops and colonists on land. But the command of the ships was given, by the Minister, to one Beaujeu, an old and experienced officer of the royal navy—and even before the expedition set sail, a collision of opinions and authority arose between the two heads of the expedition, which imperiled its success.[23]
Finally, on the 24th of July, 1684, the expedition sailed, from Rochelle. Its further history is to be found in the following pages of Joutel’s Journal.
Biographical Note.
Henri Joutel, the writer of this narrative, was a native of Rouen, in France. His father had formerly been head-gardener to Henri Cavelier, the uncle of René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, the explorer, whose presence and projects for a new voyage to the Mississippi were the engrossing subjects of interest to his fellow townsmen of Rouen just at the time of Joutel’s return from a seventeen years’ service in the army.[24]
Being then in the prime of his young manhood, of an adventurous spirit, unhampered by family responsibilities, and free for any new employment, he very naturally became a volunteer in the enterprise of his distinguished fellow-townsman. He evidently possessed a fair education for that day, and a character for reliability and experience, which, together with his personal and business qualifications, rendered him most acceptable to La Salle’s projected undertaking. His social position in his native town, if we may infer from the title of “Mr.” usually prefixed to his name, was that of a bourgeois—that class in the community which for centuries has been the mainstay and source of France’s stability and prosperity. In the mixed military and naval expedition which sailed under La Salle’s orders, his position seems not to have been that of a commissioned officer, though he styles himself in his Journal, “a Commander,” but rather that of a personal lieutenant and confidant[25] of the Commander-in-Chief—in other words, a superintendent of such matters as pertained to the provisioning, sheltering, and general care and regulation of the interests and comfort of the settlers, both male and female, who formed a part of the expedition.