While La Salle was vainly struggling to accomplish the end for which he had sailed to Louisiana, the French were not idle in the North. In the rich peltries of the far West the fur-traders found a source of wealth rivaling even the mines of the South, and a class of men—unique alike in their manners and their experiences—sprang up, as it were, in the heart of the wilderness, to whom the name of coureurs des bois was given. These rangers of the woods seem to have left behind them the European prejudice against the natives, and in their wild expeditions in remote tracts, and among distant tribes, they adopted the Indian mode of dress, contracted marriages with “squaws,” and brought up their half-caste children to lead a life differing but slightly, if at all, from that of their mothers’ relations. The usual result followed: the natives copied the vices of their visitors without their virtues, and but for the missionaries, who settled wherever there seemed to be a hope of winning even a few souls to God, natives and settlers would have been involved in one common ruin, alike of body and soul.
Little by little the traders and missionaries penetrated as far north as Hudson’s Bay, and as far west as the Saskatchewan, the shores of which were dotted with trading houses and chapels long before its very name was heard in Europe. Unfortunately, however, neither the seekers after souls nor the hunters of peltries were men to talk much of their exploits, and though fiction has drawn largely from life in the far West in these early days for thrilling situations, little is known of the facts of the first intercourse of the white man with the various races of the great western hyperborean group of nations. Not until the powerful rival of the French in the West, the Hudson’s Bay Company—of the growth of which particulars are given elsewhere—had sent forth its heroes on expeditions which were something more than trading excursions, did the first volumes appear of that extensive and fascinating literature of western travel from which the latter part of our narrative will be culled.
To atone for the reticence of the fur-trader and missionary in the far North-west, traveler after traveler succeeded Marquette and La Salle in exploring the great lakes of Canada and the shores of the Mississippi. Of these, one of the chief was Baron La Hontan, who, starting from Lake Michigan, went down the Wisconsin to the Mississippi, and is supposed to have very nearly approached the settlements of the Spanish New Mexico. In any case, he heard from some Indians, whom he called the Guaczitares—a name we altogether fail to recognize as that of any known tribe—of the existence of white men in the South; and, what was perhaps of more importance, he learned from some visitors to the Guaczitares that they came from a country beyond which lay high [♦]mountains, only to be crossed with great difficulty, but that those who had crossed them had reached a big salt lake 300 leagues round, and with a wide opening to the south. From the mountains one great river flowed into the lake, and another eastward to the Miche Sepe. The big salt lake was probably that part of the sea now known as Queen Charlotte’s Sound, the river flowing into it the Columbia, and the mountain range the Rocky Mountains.
[♦] ‘moutains’ replaced with ‘mountains’
On his return journey, La Hontan descended a river supposed to have been the second alluded to by the Indians, which brought him in five weeks to the Mississippi, ascending which he came to the port of Crevecœur, then still under the command of Tonti, so that he may be said in some sense to have bridged over the gap between the two expeditions of La Salle. With his name must be associated, however, that of Father Charlevoix, the well-known historian of New France, who made what may be called the grand tour of inland America, passing up the St. Lawrence, through the lakes, and then down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, meeting with few adventures on the way, but collecting vast stores of information respecting the manners and customs of the natives, and doing much to shake the narrow view hitherto entertained, alike of the extent and importance of the lands on the west of the Mississippi.
CHAPTER VII.
EARLY EXPLORATIONS IN CALIFORNIA, NEW MEXICO, AND ARIZONA.
HAVING traced the course of early discovery from the most southerly point of Florida to the mouths of the Mississippi on the west, and up the Atlantic coast to the 60th parallel of north latitude, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the central table-lands of North America in Minnesota and down the Father of Waters to the sea, we will complete our survey of the work done in the first two centuries after the discovery of Columbus by turning to the South-west, which from the first presented special difficulties to the explorers, on account of the rugged nature of its scenery and the persistent hostility of its inhabitants.
From Mexico went forth the first authenticated expeditions for the exploration of the districts now forming the south-western states of North America, and to the restless ambition of Cortes may be traced much of the hatred of the white man which still distinguishes the Apaches, Pueblos, Shoshones, and other aboriginal tribes of New Mexico, Arizona, and California.