St. Ignace became once more the starting point of an important expedition, though La Salle, before sending the Griffin back, sailed in her as far as the Bay of Puans, where many of his furs were collected. He parted with this good ship in September. She pointed her prow eastward, and he turned south with fourteen men in four canoes, carrying tools, arms, goods, and even a blacksmith's forge.
Through storm, and famine, and peril with Indians they labored down the lake, and did not reach the place where they were to meet Tonty until the first of November. La Salle had the three Récollet friars with him. Though one was a man sixty-four years old, he bore, with his companions, every hardship patiently and cheerfully. The story of priests who helped to open the wilderness and who carried religion to savages is a beautiful chapter of our national life.
Tonty was not at the place where they were to meet him. This was the mouth of the St. Joseph River, which La Salle named the Miamis. The men did not want to wait, for they were afraid of starving if they reached the Illinois country after the Indians had scattered to winter hunting grounds. But La Salle would not go on until Tonty appeared. He put the men to work building a timber stockade, which he called Fort Miamis; thus beginning in the face of discouragement his plan of creating a line of fortifications.
Tonty, delayed by lack of provisions and the need of hunting, reached Fort Miamis with his men in twenty days. But the Griffin did not come at all. More than time enough had passed for her to reach Fort Niagara, unload her cargo, and return. La Salle watched the lake constantly for her sails. He began to be heavy-hearted for her, but he dared wait no longer; so, sending two men back to meet and guide her to this new post, he moved on.
Eight canoes carried his party of thirty-three people. They ascended the St. Joseph River to find a portage to the head waters of the Illinois. This brought them within the present state of Indiana; and when they had reached that curve of the river where South Bend now stands, they left St. Joseph to grope for the Theakiki, or Kankakee, a branch called by some Indians the Illinois itself.
La Salle became separated from the party on this portage, eagerly and fearlessly scouring the woods for the river's beginning. Tonty camped and waited for him, fired guns, called, and searched; but he was gone all night and until the next afternoon. The stars were blotted overhead, for a powder of snow thickened the air, weirdly illuminating naked trees in the darkness, but shutting in his vision. It was past midnight when he came in this blind circle once more to the banks of the St. Joseph, and saw a fire glinting through dense bushes.
"Now I have reached camp," thought La Salle, and he fired his gun to let his people know he was approaching. Echoes rolled through the woods. Without waiting for a shot in reply he hurried to the fire. No person was near it. The descending snow hissed, caught in the flames. Here was a home hearth prepared in the wilderness, and no welcome to it but silence. La Salle called out in every Indian language he knew. Dead branches grated, and the stream rustled betwixt its edges of ice. A heap of dry grass was gathered for a bed under a tree by the fire, and its elastic top showed the hollow where a man had lain. La Salle put some more wood on the fire, piled a barricade of brush around the bed, and lay down in a place left warm by some strolling Indian whom his gun had frightened away. He slept until morning. In the afternoon he found his own camp.
From the first thread of the Kankakee oozing out of swamps to the Indian town on the Illinois River where Marquette had done his last missionary work, was a long canoe journey. It has been said the rivers of the New World made its rapid settlement possible; for they were open highways, even in the dead of winter guiding the explorer by their frozen courses.
The Illinois tribe had scattered to their hunting, and the lodges stood empty. La Salle's men were famished for supplies, so he ventured to open the covered pits in which the Indians stored their corn. Nothing was more precious than this hidden grain; but he paid for what he took when he reached the Indians. This was not until after New Year's day. He had descended the river as far as that expansion now called Peoria Lake.