[4] It must be remembered that the voyage of the priest Marquette, and the fur-trader Joliet, in 1673, had reached the Mississippi, down which they sailed as far as the mouth of the Arkansas. At that point, thinking that they had sufficiently established the fact that the waters of the Mississippi discharged, not into the Gulf of California, but into the Gulf of Mexico (although they were then really only within seven hundred miles of its mouth) they returned to Canada and so reported.
[5] One account describes his route as being by way of Lake Chautauqua into the valley of the Alleghany, thence via the Ohio river to Louisville; and, in the following year, the crossing of Lake Erie, from south to north, and via the Detroit river to Lake Huron; thence into Lake Michigan and the Chicago river, and across the short portage to the Illinois river.
[6] La Salle had, in the parlance of the present day, “made himself solid” with the Governor, by his active participation in Frontenac’s plans for the enlargement of the French power in Canada; especially in the matter of holding a council with the Iroquois, at Onondaga, where a treaty of peace was secured from that powerful and warlike tribe, which seemed to ensure peace for many years.
[7] La Salle’s Patent of Nobility is given in the second volume of this series, “Shea’s Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley,” from Paris Doc. in Sec’y’s Office, Albany, vol. ii, pp. 8–11.
[8] Capt. Tonti (or Tonty, as he signed his name in its Gallicized form) was an Italian (the son of the financier who instituted that form of life-insurance known as the Tontine), an ex-officer in the Sicilian wars, where, by the explosion of a grenade, he lost one of his hands. This loss was supplied, in some measure, by an artificial hand of iron, or some other metal, over which he always wore a glove, and the weight of which was, in one or two instances at least, felt by the savages who tried to intimidate him. Tonti’s name will survive in history as that of La Salle’s most faithful and courageous friend and lieutenant, and one who, by reason of his noble qualities is entitled to our admiration and respect. See also Parkman’s La Salle (Champlain edit., i, 129).
[9] Hennepin was a Jesuit priest, a courageous and rather able man, to whose memoirs we are indebted for much information concerning La Salle’s and other early explorations; though the value of his writings is much impaired by his tendency to tell large stories, and to claim for himself the credit which belonged to others; a tendency which seemed to increase more and more with each successive edition of his book.
[10] The animus of this enmity, which persistently followed La Salle for the rest of his life, is fully explained on pp. 101–104 of Parkman’s La Salle, Champlain edition, vol. i.
[11] La Salle often prophesied, says Parkman (La Salle, i, 149), that he “would make the griffin fly above the crows,” i. e., that he would make the influence of Frontenac triumph over that of the Jesuits.
[12] Green Bay was a mission among several Indian tribes of Lake Michigan, established by the Jesuit fathers, Allouez and Dablon, 1669–70.
[13] By the terms of his patent from the King, this was clearly an infringement of the monopoly belonging to the Montreal colony, and was subsequently used against him by his enemies, as well as being the primal cause of his loss of the Griffin.