During Tonty's occupancy of Fort St. Louis in the period following the death of La Salle a number of travelers passed between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi by the Chicago-Illinois route the records of whose experiences are still preserved. One of the most interesting of these narratives is that of Joutel, the companion of Cavelier.[64] Their party comprised the sole survivors of La Salle's ill-fated Texan expedition who returned to France and civilization. They came, a band of five forlorn fugitives, up the Mississippi and the Illinois, arriving at Fort St. Louis in September, 1687. Carefully concealing the fact of La Salle's death, they obtained means to continue their journey, and soon set out for Lake Michigan accompanied by a dozen savages who carried their goods and baggage, because of the lack of water in the Des Plaines. On the twenty-fifth they arrived at Chicago and there found a canoe left by some Frenchmen who had recently passed down to Fort St. Louis. Their lack of experience as canoemen, together with contrary winds and bad weather, caused a delay of eight days at this place. Meanwhile the season was advancing and their scanty supply of provisions was being consumed. The state of mind to which they were reduced is naively shown by the record of Joutel that one of the party, having shot at some chickens and cracked his gun, "was so provoked that it gave him a fever."
[64] For the story of Cavelier's party see Joutel's Journal printed in Margry, III, 89-535. An abridged and distorted English translation of the Journal was published in 1714, and this was reprinted at Albany in 1906 under the editorial direction of Henry Reed Stiles.
Finally they embarked on the lake and advanced some eight or ten leagues along the shore to the northward, striving to come to the villages of the Pottawatomies, where they hoped to procure a fresh supply of food. The effort was a pitiful failure. Starvation lay before them; the loss of a year of time with the consequently lessened prospect of affording succor in season to the survivors of La Salle's colony in Texas, and the danger of the discovery of their guilty secret concerning their leader's fate, awaited their return to Fort St. Louis.
They decided, however, to turn back. It was a dejected party we may well believe, which came early in October to the entrance of the Chicago River. Here they made a cache in which they concealed their goods, put their canoe upon a scaffold, and retraced their steps to Fort St. Louis. In this place they passed the winter, and from them we get our fullest description of the fort, and of the manner of life that prevailed there. Some three weeks after their arrival at the fort Tonty returned from his participation in Denonville's famous campaign against the Iroquois. From Fort St. Louis he had led sixteen Frenchmen and two hundred Indians to share in this distant enterprise. With a baseness which is difficult to excuse the fugitives deceived him concerning the death of La Salle, and after accepting his hospitality through the winter secured from him, on the assumption that La Salle was still alive, a considerable quantity of furs and other supplies.
Taking advantage of the spring floods they set out once more for Chicago, March 21, 1688. They arrived on March 29, after a toilsome journey. Because of the swiftness of the river they were compelled to wade in the water, pulling their canoes, much of the way. Joutel avers that he suffered more on this short trip than he had done before since his departure from the Gulf of Mexico. Again bad weather compelled them to delay at Chicago, this time for ten days. There was little game and they had only corn meal to eat. But Providence furnished them "a kind of manna" to eat with their meal, which appears from the description to have consisted of maple sap. They also procured in the woods garlic and other edible plants, and Joutel records that Chicago takes its name, as they were informed, from the profusion of garlic growing in the surrounding woods.[65]
[65] Margry, III, 485.
The members of Joutel's party passed on to Canada, and here we may leave them to pursue their way, burdened with their terrible secret, as best they may. Our interest meanwhile shifts to the story of Father Pinet and his mission of the Guardian Angel. We have seen that commerce and the Cross entered the upper Mississippi Valley together in 1673, in the persons of Joliet and Marquette. During the succeeding years the efforts of the servants of the Cross to gain control of this region were scarcely less zealous than were those of the devotees of trade. The missionary accompanied, sometimes even preceded, the explorer in his journeys, seeking everywhere to introduce the doctrine of the true faith and win the natives to the Church. The representatives of the Jesuit order were the most active agents of the Church in this work of proselyting. Under its auspices Marquette had established the Illinois Mission. Its vicissitudes of fortune were as various as those of La Salle himself, but, on the whole, it was as successful as any in all the annals of Catholic missions to the red man.[66]
[66] For the history of the Illinois Mission see Shea, Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States, chaps, xxii, xxiii.
We are more particularly concerned with that portion of the work of the Jesuits among the Illinois which pertains to the mission of the Guardian Angel at Chicago.[67] This was established in 1696 by Father Pierre Pinet, who had been stationed at Mackinac for a couple of years. According to the Jesuit records, however, Pinet was soon driven from Chicago and his mission broken up by no less a person than Count Frontenac, governor of New France.[68] An appeal to Bishop Laval resulted in a cessation of Frontenac's opposition, which, in the eyes of Pinet's associates, amounted to persecution. The mission of the Guardian Angel was accordingly resumed in 1698, but two years later it was permanently abandoned.
[67] For a brief biographical sketch of Pinet see Jesuit Relations, LXIV, 278. Various references to Pinet scattered throughout the Jesuit Relations have been collected by Frank R. Grover in his lecture on Pinet and his mission of the Guardian Angel of Chicago, published by the Chicago Historical Society in 1907.