In March, the exploring party came back unsuccessful and in rags. They had wandered far, but had not found the Mississippi. One crowning disaster now befell these exiles. Up to this time they had kept one little vessel of their fleet with them, which was to take them to the Mississippi so soon as its exact situation should be discovered. This vessel, in which their sole dependence lay, was now lost.
In desperate situations, desperate measures are alone to be availed of. La Salle's resolve was heroic. He determined to make a last effort to reach the Mississippi and the lakes. Indeed, there was now no hope of obtaining relief nearer than Canada, therefore to Canada he must go, leaving the colonists to await his return.
For this purpose La Salle chose twenty men, with whom he again set out from the fort on the 22d of April, 1686. Each man carried his own pack and weapons, and as the little band filed out upon the prairie, the hopes of the lost colony went forth with them in their desperate venture.
But these hopes sunk low when La Salle came back with only eight of the twenty who had gone with him. The explorers had penetrated as far as the country of the Cenis Indians,[4] when sickness and desertion had so crippled their strength as to make further progress hopeless for the time. They, however, procured some horses from the Indians which were brought back to the fort.
No other resource being open, La Salle once more essayed the task before him. In the straits in which he and his people were placed, his splendid qualities for leadership shine out of the gloom like a guiding star. The resources of the colony were nearly exhausted in fitting out previous parties, but the scanty stores were ransacked anew to equip those who were to be the saviors of the rest. The horses which La Salle had brought in were loaded with baggage and ammunition. All was ready. A midnight mass was solemnly said. La Salle spoke a few hopeful words to those who were to endure a suspense perhaps even greater than his own, and then, mastering his own feelings, he turned away to join his followers,—the forlorn hope of the expiring colony.
On the 15th of March, 1687, the hunters who were out killed a buffalo. The party therefore halted till the meat could be brought into camp. Here it was that the hatred, long nursed in secret, openly revealed itself in murder. Misery always begets quarrels, but in this case the sole incitement was revenge. La Salle had the unhappy faculty of making enemies, of whom his worst ones were then close at hand, and plotting for his life. A quarrel about the meat hastened the work on. Those who were faithful to La Salle became the conspirators' first victims. Three of these, whom La Salle had sent over to the hunters' camp, were butchered while they slept.
La Salle himself was encamped six miles distant from the place where these murders were committed. Growing uneasy at the long absence of the men he had sent away, he started with an Indian guide for their camp. A friar named Douay also accompanied him. This friar noted in La Salle's talk and manner the presentiment of coming evil. On reaching a point which he supposed to be near the hunters' camp, La Salle fired his musket as a signal. One of the conspirators showed himself, while the others lay hid in the long prairie-grass unobserved. La Salle fell into the snare thus set for him. While advancing toward the decoy, whose insolent replies angered him, La Salle constantly neared the ambuscade. Suddenly a shot was fired. When the smoke cleared away, La Salle was seen stretched lifeless upon the prairie. He was quite dead.[5] The bullet had gone through his brain.
Thus, in the prime of life, fell Robert Cavelier de La Salle, and thus again must history record its indignant protest in the death of a man of highest intellectual force, whose worth to the world was monumental as compared with that of the vulgar assassin who slew him.
Note.—The Colonists at St. Louis, except three or four who were carried into captivity, were all massacred by the Indians. A Spanish expedition in 1689 found the place a solitude. Those who escaped subsequently related what had occurred. Although this was the first white colony to be founded in Texas,[6] in itself it was an accident, no less productive of results, because it led the Spaniards to occupy the country in order to keep out intruders like La Salle. Geographical knowledge was also remarkably extended.