As early as 1635 Jean Nicollet had reached Lake Michigan, and so successful was he in his explorations of the rivers and lakes that it has been supposed that he was the original white discoverer of the Mississippi. Plausible as this would seem, historians have conclusively disproved his claims; and that honour must be divided between the two famous explorers Joliet and Marquette.[246] Louis Joliet was a layman, though connected by early training with the Jesuits; he was a Canadian born, and had been employed by the Intendant Talon to discover copper in the neighbourhood of Lake Superior. His companion, Jacques Marquette, was a Jesuit in priest's orders; he was a man of pure and saintly life, and within his delicate body there burnt a fiery spirit of endeavour to convert, a spirit which consumed him, as it were, so that his life was but a brief one in labouring for his faith. He landed in Canada in 1666; two years later he was sent forward into the almost unknown wilds and established himself on Lake Superior, teaching both the Hurons and the Illinois. It was indeed from the latter that he first heard of the Mississippi. Being forced by the savages to retire from this outpost, he and his little following took refuge in 1670 at the mission station of St Ignace, now known as Mackinaw. It was here that Marquette determined to make an expedition for the discovery of the great river of which he had heard. He has left an account of his journeyings written from memory, as unfortunately he lost his papers on his return. "I embarked with M. Joliet, who had been chosen to conduct this enterprise, on the 13th May 1673, with five other Frenchmen, in two bark canoes. We laid in some Indian corn and smoked beef for our voyage. We first took care, however, to draw from the Indians all the information we could concerning the countries through which we had designed to travel, and drew up a map, on which we marked down the rivers, nations, and points of the compass to guide us in our journey."[247] The discoverers followed the route laid down by others as far as Lake Winnebago, but no white man had up to that time crossed over to the river Wisconsin. Canoeing down that stream, hardly realising where fortune was leading them, the plucky Jesuit and his companions were carried out on the face of the broad waters of the Mississippi on 17th June 1673. "We met from time to time monstrous fish, which struck so violently against our canoes that at first we took them to be large trees, which threatened to upset us. We saw also a hideous monster; his head was like that of a tiger, his nose was sharp and somewhat resembled a wild cat; his beard was long; his ears stood upright; the colour of his head was grey, and his neck black."[248] But even this terrible apparition did not discourage them, and they still pushed on, hoping at first that the great river would bear them into the Gulf of California. They passed the mouths of the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Ohio, and came to the Arkansas; here they learnt their mistake. "We judged by the compass that the Mississippi discharged itself into the Gulf of Mexico. It would, however, have been more agreeable if it had discharged into the South Sea or Gulf of California."[249] They turned back, therefore, having found out what they wanted to know, and "we considered that the advantage of our travels would be altogether lost to our nation if we fell into the hands of the Spaniards, from whom we could expect no other treatment than death or slavery."[250] Neither Marquette nor Joliet reaped any great advantage during their lifetime for their plucky endeavour, but they have had and will have the respect of those who come after them. Marquette made one more voyage on the stream that was his own. His burning zeal for the faith made him set out in the winter of 1674-5 to carry the Christian religion to the Indians of the Illinois River. He returned to Lake Michigan in the May of 1675, but he was a dying man. Death came suddenly, and his companions rapidly interred him far away from his friends; but so great was the love inspired by this faithful priest amongst the savages that they fetched his bones and laid them, with every sign of affection, respect, and grief, in the little mission-chapel where he had laboured for the faith.
Marquette was followed by a man whose name is even better known, but who was cast in a different mould. Réné Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was born at Rouen and had landed in Canada in the same year as Marquette. His object was to discover a route to the East, and the name that he gave to his seignory, La Chine, testifies to this desire. He began his work of discovery in 1669, and in the next two years he passed from Lakes Ontario and Erie right through the Illinois country, finally discovering the Ohio. In 1675 he took up his seignory on the Cataraqui River at Fort Frontenac. He was only thirty-two years of age, but he had already made himself famous. He was a man of strong character, and as such had many enemies amongst his fellow French Canadians; his want of sympathy turned men against him, and his want of tact wounded their feelings. To the Jesuits he was most unwelcome, for they recognised in him a rival discoverer; with the merchants and traders he was no less unpopular, a fact which was possibly intensified by his seignory being one of the best positions in New France for pecuniary gain. He was in every way an austere man, solitary and self-communing; and as his mind was filled with ambitions and even statesmanlike conceptions for New France, it is not surprising that the trading element and even his own followers failed to understand him. From 1675 to 1677 this man of extraordinary energy employed himself in commerce with the Indians by means of vessels of his own construction on Lake Ontario; but such work was too petty for La Salle. He therefore, in 1678, obtained from Louis XIV. permission "to labour at the discovery of the Western parts of New France through which to all appearance a way may be found to Mexico,"[251] in addition to which La Salle was strengthened in his possession of Fort Frontenac and was granted the privilege of constructing forts if necessary on his expeditions. On his enterprises he was accompanied by Henri de Tonty, an Italian officer and ever faithful to La Salle, and by Father Hennepin, a brave Flemish friar, whose overwhelming vanity tempted him in later years to try to rob his leader of the honour of first reaching the sea by the Mississippi River.
The early efforts of La Salle were unsatisfactory. He built a fort at Niagara and constructed a vessel called the Griffin, which foundered on Lake Michigan and left him in a hostile country swarming with savages, without supplies, and with mutinous followers. Nevertheless he kept on and descended the Illinois River, determined to reach the Gulf of Mexico. In 1680 his men began to desert, but Tonty and a faithful few assisted him to construct Fort Crèvecœur on the Illinois. Here the discoverer left his lieutenant for a time while he returned to Canada for supplies. The men mutinied, abandoned the fort, and followed La Salle with the intention of murdering him. Meantime he had sent out an expedition under Father Hennepin which had been captured by the Sioux Indians on the Upper Mississippi in what is now Minnesota. The Flemish friar and his followers were rescued by a Canadian backwoodsman, Du Luth, and Hennepin returned to France to write his account of the Mississippi.
Father Membré has left a record of La Salle's great expedition. "M. La Salle having arrived safely at Miamies on the 3rd of November 1681, began with his ordinary activity and vast mind to make all preparations for his departure.... The whole party consisted of about fifty-four persons, including the Sieur de Tonty and the Sieur Dautray, the son of the late Sieur Bourdon."[252] The expedition safely passed the mouths of the Missouri and Ohio; after building a fort, the adventurers reached the Arkansas, where they were welcomed by the Indians, who knew nothing of white men. "The Sieur de la Salle took possession of this country with great ceremony. He planted a cross and set up the king's arms, at which the Indians showed a great joy.... On our return from the sea we found that they had surrounded the cross with a palisade."[253] Passing still farther south, "we arrived on the 6th of April at a point where the river divides into three channels. The Sieur de la Salle divided his party the next day into three bands, to go and explore them. He took the western, the Sieur Dautray the southern, the Sieur Tonty ... the middle one."[254] On the 9th of April the three parties met on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. This success was marked by the ceremony of planting the cross and raising the arms of France. La Salle took possession of the river and all the country round in the name of the king, and amidst a volley of muskets a leaden plate inscribed with the action and the names of the discoverers was deposited in the ground. Such was the foundation of the French in Louisiana. La Salle and his party returned to the North, but he was not the man to rest upon his laurels, for in the autumn of 1682 and the spring of 1683 he is to be found busily establishing a French colony on the Illinois. Fort Louis was built on a rocky summit and promised to be a most important station in the future, always on the one condition that the connection with Canada was in no way broken, or even threatened.
Perpetual envy and jealousy tended to keep Canada weak and the French in the West powerless. When La Salle returned he found himself surrounded by enemies, and without his friend and supporter, Count Frontenac, who had retired to France. Seeing no chance of accomplishing anything in Canada, La Salle sailed to Europe to put his version of the story before King Louis. He reached Versailles at exactly the right moment for his fortunes. France and Spain in 1683 were again on the verge of war; and even before La Salle's arrival, Seignelay, the son of the late grim Colbert, had proposed to Louis a scheme for the seizure of some port on the Gulf of Mexico so as to discomfit Spain. La Salle was heard with respect and attention, and was, in fact, welcomed as the very man required to carry out the prearranged plans of the king and his minister. All La Salle's possessions in Canada were restored, and he was commissioned to conduct a party for the purpose of colonising some strip of territory upon the Mexican Gulf. The scheme was from the outset hopeless. La Salle may have seen that it was the last toss of the dice, fortune or ruin. He may have been blinded by his successful discovery; but it is impossible to imagine that a man who had always kept his ends clearly in view, and who had accurately measured the means to attain them, should now have embarked blindly upon so hazardous a task. Whatever his private opinions were, he readily undertook the leadership in conjunction with Admiral Beaujeu. The party embarked in four vessels, and sailed from La Rochelle on July 24, 1684. At the very outset their troubles began. One of the most important of the vessels carrying their supplies was captured by a Spanish buccaneer. The other three ships managed to reach San Domingo, where the little band of soldiers, artizans, and women were kept in idleness for two months owing to their leaders being stricken with fever. At last on January 1, 1685, La Salle brought the expedition to the shores of Texas, where the colony was settled within a palisade at a point called Fort St Louis. The distress of the settlement was terrible, and still further intensified by the realisation of their distance from Canada. In October, La Salle, driven to despair, set out to discover a way to the outposts of the northern colony. In March 1686 he was back again, but unsuccessful. Having rested for a month, he once more started for Canada, but after wandering until October he returned to the settlement utterly baffled. What was worse still was that he found a heavy mortality amongst the colonists; out of one hundred and eighty who had originally started he now had but forty-five followers, and very few of these he could really trust. All his ships were lost, escape to France was impossible, starvation stared them in the face. The only thing to do was to try to cut a way through to Canada. On January 7, 1687, La Salle, his brother, two of his nephews, and half his party set out; mutiny was evident from the beginning, and on March 19th, ambushed by his own men, the daring explorer was murdered. His brother, one of his nephews, and Jontel, who told the tale, escaped, and succeeded after terrible suffering in reaching Canada.
Louis XIV. and his ministers were far too busy at home to care about the death of one who had dared so much for France. The insane idea of Louis' European policy blinded him to the prospects of an empire in the West, which La Salle might, had he been properly supported, have made so great. The people in authority in Canada were equally oblivious to the loss of one of Canada's greatest sons. They were too envious of this remarkable man who had done so much. One man, however, remembered his old master. Henri de Tonty, the faithful friend, had set out in 1686 to find this man whom he regarded with such affection. When he discovered that La Salle had been murdered, he did what he knew his great leader would have done and turned his attention to the rescue of the remnant at Fort St Louis. His efforts were unavailing, for the Spaniards had learnt, and from them Tonty heard, that the few who had remained on the shores of Texas had been annihilated by the Indians. Thus the grandiose schemes of La Salle appeared to end in failure, mystery, and death; but like his forerunner Marquette, his name still lives in Canada, where the names of his detractors have long since been forgotten. La Salle will be remembered as one of the boldest explorers, as a man who, even above any Englishman of his day, really grasped the imperial idea of a New France beyond the sea. He was the first to realise the great conception of uniting the French settlement from the snow-clad plains of Canada to the sunny shores of Mexico; and he it was who saw that should this dream be turned to reality, the Anglo-Saxon people would be confined to the narrow strip along the coast, and the illimitable expanses of the North American continent, with the enormous wealth of the West, would be the inheritance of the Gallic race.
There were, however, a few Frenchmen who had glimmerings of the dream of La Salle. As early as 1686 a party under Du Luth established a French outpost between Lakes Huron and Erie. Eight years later La Mothe Cadillac urged upon the French government the importance of holding this post, which in fact controlled the outlet of the two lakes. The consent of those in authority having been obtained, the French began in 1701 the erection of the city of Detroit. The Iroquois at last realised what was happening; they saw that, just as Fort Frontenac some years before had very seriously curtailed their rights of hunting and had indeed endangered their power, so now that they might again be trapped. To prevent this, on July 19, 1701, they ceded their hunting grounds to the King of England, retaining the right of free hunting. They were not versed in European politics; nor did they know that the magnificent Louis was gradually being ruined by William III. and Marlborough. The war of the Spanish Succession, fought for the most part in the Netherlands and Spain, had a vital effect upon those Iroquois nations of the Western prairies. The victories of Marlborough brought to England many possessions, and amongst them those lands which had been so trustingly conceded in 1701.
The Treaty of Utrecht, although it brought peace after a long and expensive war, may be said to mark a new epoch in the stories of both British and French colonial expansion. This epoch is not one of peace in the true sense; the actual fighting, when it occurred, was not always sanctioned by the home government; but the period was one of aggression on the part of the French in Canada and resistance on the part of the British colonists along the Eastern seaboard.
FOOTNOTES:
[239] Bateson, Cambridge Modern History (1905), vol. vii. p. 70.