Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

The whole party met again at Fort Smith on the Mississippi, and made their way thence to the western coast by what had now become quite a well-known track. Disgusted with the poor results obtained, however, Major Long shortly afterward accepted the command of yet another expedition, the aim of which was to explore the vast tracts watered by the northern tributaries of the Mississippi, and which, though the property of the United States, were as yet practically unknown.

The explorers this time started from a village on the Ohio, from which they made their way across the province of the same name and part of Indiana to Lake Michigan, witnessing in their wanderings many terrible scenes of cruelty. The Potawatomies, inhabiting the high table-lands of this fertile district, are said to have tortured their captives and devoured their flesh with a savage cruelty quite equal to any thing ever witnessed elsewhere by European travelers; and it was with a feeling of intense relief that the white men turned aside, after entering the marshy districts bordering on Lake Michigan, to visit the mission station founded long ago by their fellow-countryman, Carey, the great Apostle of the Indians, who did for the neglected redskins of the present century what the good old Jesuit priests had done for their ancestors.

At this little oasis in the wilderness, fifty acres had already been cleared and six log-huts built, in one of which some fifty or sixty Indian children were being educated, their parents and chiefs encouraging their teachers in every possible way, though not themselves converts either to the civilization or to the religion of the white men. From the mission station the expedition proceeded through forests and across a rich fertile country of oak-openings and prairies, succeeded by swampy plains, till they found themselves on the southern shores of Lake Michigan, which presented the appearance of a vast ocean stretching away in an unbroken expanse as far as the eye could reach.

Huge broken bowlders of granite, piles of sand and pebbles, rolling waves and white-crested breakers, added to the impression first received, and it was difficult to believe that this troubled sea was but one of that long series of fresh water lakes from which issues the mightiest artery of North America, the St. Lawrence of many memories.

Reluctantly turning his back on the grand scene just described, Long now led his party in a south-westerly direction toward the Mississippi, passing near the site of the present Chicago, and crossing the fertile prairies of Illinois, where not a tree breaks the solemn monotony of the wilderness. As the Father of Waters was approached, however, the whole character of the country changed; hill and vale, forest and clearing, alternating with wildly picturesque rocks and mountains, between which the majestic volume of the river rolls in irresistible majesty.

Embarking on the broad basin of the now well-known river, the travelers commenced their actual explorations by struggling upward till they came to its junction with the Minnesota, or St. Peter’s River, its largest tributary north of the Missouri, and which joins it near the Falls of St. Anthony. The Minnesota had never yet been followed to its source; and, entering it, Long slowly ascended it to its head-waters, now in a south-westerly, now in a westerly direction, on the borders of the Dakota territory, where he altered his course to due north, and quickly reached the small group of lakes from which issues the mighty Red River of the North, and which may be said to be set in an ever-shifting framework of swamps and flooded streams. Here are interlocked the head-waters of the northern tributaries of the Mississippi, of the St. Lawrence, and of many a minor stream; and—strange phenomenon even in this land of physical wonders—no lofty ridge marks the watershed behind them. The heads of all the rivers are connected by canals, and canoes can shoot from one great artery to another with no change of level to mark the transition.

After a good deal of intercourse with our old friends the Sioux, the explorers launched their canoes on the Red River, and ascended it to the great Lake Winnipeg, or the Lake of the Assiniboins, connected by a number of small lakes and rivers with Hudson’s Bay, and considered the largest, though scarcely the most important of the inland seas belonging to British North America.

From Lake Winnipeg the explorers descended the river of the same name, passing through scenery wilder and grander than any yet visited by them, and going through many a peril among the constant succession of cascades and cataracts, but arriving in safety at the Lake of the Woods, that small sheet of water destined to become so famous in the controversy relating to the boundary between the United States and the Hudson’s Bay territories.

The Lake of the Woods, then surrounded by a deserted wilderness of rock and forest, was carefully examined, and from it the party made their way in a north-easterly direction to Lake Superior, the whole route consisting of little more than a series of lakes, streams, and swamps, broken by an occasional portage or bar of land, over which the canoes had to be dragged. All difficulties were, however, successfully overcome; the existence of more than one continuous water-passage from west to east was proved beyond a doubt, and little more in the way of actual discovery was left to be done by future expeditions.

In 1830, however, it was found desirable to send an expedition to the North-west, with a view to restoring peace between the Chippeways and Sioux; and the leader selected—the Schoolcraft who had been mainly instrumental in organizing the trip made a few years previously by Cass—received instructions to combine with his negotiations an exhaustive survey of the upper waters of the Mississippi. He reached Lake Superior in safety in 1830, but the waters of the rivers above it were so low at that time that nothing definite could be accomplished.