This is a reduced sketch from a copy (Barlow Collection) of the original in the Archives of the Marine, giving two plans of the mouth of the river,—the one in the body of the map as “La Salle le marque dans sa carte,” and the other (here put in the small square), “Comme nous les avons trouvez.” It is Harrisse’s no. 225.
It soon dawned upon La Salle that he was not at the Mississippi delta; and it was imperative that he should establish a base for future movements. So he projected a settlement on the Lavaca River, which flowed into the head of the bay; and thither all went, and essayed the rough beginnings of a post, which he called Fort St. Louis.[640] He was also constrained to lay out a graveyard, which received its tenants rapidly. As soon as housing and stockades were finished, La Salle, on the last day of October (1685), leaving Joutel in command, started with fifty men to search for the Mississippi.
The first tidings Joutel got of his absent chief was in January (1686), when a straggler from La Salle’s party appeared, and told a woeful story of his mishaps. By the end of March La Salle himself returned with some of his companions; others he had left in a palisaded fort which he had built on a great river somewhere away. While on his return he detached some of his men to find his little frigate, the “Belle,” which he had left at a certain place on the coast. These men also soon appeared, but they brought no tidings of the vessel. The loss of her and of what she had on board made matters very desperate, and La Salle determined on another expedition, this time to the Illinois country and to Canada, whence he could send word to France for succor. On the 22d of April they started,—La Salle, his brother Cavelier, the Friar Douay, and a score or so others.
Joutel was still left in command; and a few days later the appearance of six men, who alone had been saved from the wreck of the “Belle,” and reached the fort, confirmed the worst fears of that vessel’s fate. Meanwhile La Salle was experiencing dangers and evils of all kinds,—the desertion and death of his men, and delays by sickness, and the spending of ammunition. Once again there was nothing for him to do but to return to Joutel, and so with eight out of his twenty men he came back to the fort. The colony had dwindled from one hundred and eighty to forty-five souls, and another attempt to secure succor was imperative. So in January (1687) a new cheerless party set out, Joutel this time accompanying La Salle; and with the rest were Duhaut, a sinister man, and Liotot the surgeon. For two months it was the same story of suffering on the march and of danger in the camp. Then quarrels ensued; and the murder of La Salle’s nephew and two others who were devoted to him compelled the assassins to save themselves by killing La Salle himself; and from an ambuscade Duhaut and Liotot shot their chief. The party now succumbed to the rule of Duhaut. They ranged aimlessly among the Indians for a while, and fell in with some deserters of La Salle’s former expedition now living among the savages. One of these conspired with Hiens, one of those privy to La Salle’s death, and killed the assassins Duhaut and Liotot. Joutel with the few who were left now parted amicably with Hiens and the savage Frenchmen, and pushed their way to find the Great River. At a point on the Arkansas not far from its confluence with the Mississippi, they were rejoiced to find the abode of two of Tonty’s men. This sturdy adherent of La Salle’s fortunes had been reinstated, as we have seen, by the King’s order, in the command of the fortified rock on the Illinois, and had in due time, after the return of Beaujeu to Rochelle, got the news of La Salle’s landing on the Gulf. In February, 1686, he had started down the river with a band of French and Indians to join his old commander. He reached the Gulf,[641] but of course failed to find La Salle; and returning, had left several men in the villages of the Arkansas, of whom Couture and another now welcomed Joutel and his weary companions. After some delay the wanderers floated their wooden canoe down the Arkansas, and then began their weary journey up the Great River, and by the middle of September they reached the Fort St. Louis of the Illinois. They found Tonty absent, and Bellefontaine in command. They foolishly thought to increase their welcome by presenting themselves as the forerunners of La Salle, who was on the way,—tidings which kept all in good spirits except the Jesuit Allouez, who happened to be in the fort, and was ill, for he was conscious of his machinations against La Salle, and dreaded to encounter him.[642] Cavelier and Joutel soon started for the Chicago portage. A storm on the lake impeded them subsequently, and they came back to the fort to find Tonty returned from Denonville’s campaign against the Senecas.[643] The same deceit regarding La Salle’s fate was practised on Tonty, and he gave them money and supplies as to La Salle’s representatives, only to learn a few months later, when Couture came up from the Arkansas, of La Salle’s murder. The wanderers, however, had now passed on, had reached Quebec in safety, still concealing what they knew, and not disclosing it till they reached France; and even in France there is a suspicion that Cavelier held his peace till he had secured some property against the seizure of La Salle’s creditors. Why Joutel connived at the deception is less comprehensible, for otherwise he bears a fair name. No representations of his, however, could induce the King to send succor to the hapless colony; and all the result, so far as known, of the tardy acknowledgment of La Salle’s death was an order sent to Canada for the arrest of his murderers.
The story which Couture told to Tonty in September inspired that hero with a determination to try to rescue La Salle’s colony on the Gulf. So in December he left his fortified rock, with five Frenchmen and three others. Late in March he was on the Red River, where all but two of his companions deserted him. He was himself finally, by the loss of his ammunition, compelled to turn back, but not till he had learned of the probable death of Heins.[644] In September he reached his fort on the Illinois; and here, with La Forest, he continued to live, holding the seigniory jointly under a royal patent, and trading in furs, till 1702, when the establishment was broken up.[645] Tonty now joined D’Iberville in Louisiana, and of his subsequent years nothing is known. The French again occupied his rocky fastness; but when Charlevoix saw it, in 1721, it was only a ruin.
The fate of the Texan colony is soon told. The Spaniards who had searched for it by sea had always missed it, though they had found the wrecked vessels.[646] A Frenchman, probably a deserter from La Salle, fell into the Spaniards’ hands in New Leon. From him they learned its position, and despatched under the Frenchman’s guidance a force to capture it. They found the fort deserted, and three dead bodies a little distance off. From the Indians they learned of two Frenchmen who were living with a distant tribe. They sent for them under a pledge of good treatment; and when they came, they proved to be L’Archevêque, one of Duhaut’s accomplices, and one of the stray deserters whom Joutel had discovered after the murder. They told a story of ravages from the small-pox and of slaughter by the savages. A few of the colonists had been saved by the Indian women; but these were subsequently given up to the Spaniards, and they added their testimony to the sad and ignominious end of the colony.
It is necessary to define the historical sources regarding this hapless Texan expedition, about the purpose of which there have been some diverse views lately expressed. It is clear that under cover of a grand plan of Spanish conquest, La Salle had dazed the imagination of the King in memorials,[647] which may possibly have been only meant to induce the royal espousal of his more personal schemes. Shea contends that La Salle’s real object was not to settle in Louisiana, but to conquer Santa Barbara and the mining regions in Mexico, and to pave the way for Peñalosa’s expedition.[648]
For the broader relations of the expedition to the earlier explorations of 1682, we must go to a source of the first importance preserved in the Archives of the Marine. It is entitled Mémoire envoyé en 1693 sur la découverte du Mississipi et des nations voisines par le Sieur de la Salle, en 1678, et depuis sa mort par le Sieur de Tonty, and is printed by Margry;[649] and Parkman calls it excellent authority. Out of this and an earlier paper, written in Quebec in 1684,[650] a book, disowned by Tonty, as Charlevoix tells us, was in part fabricated, and appeared at Paris in 1697 under the title of Dernières découvertes dans l’Amérique septentrionale de M. de la Salle, mises au jour par M. le Chevalier Tonti, gouverneur du Fort St. Louis, aux Islinois.[651] Parkman[652] calls it “a compilation full of errors,” and does not rely upon it. Shea says of it that, “although repudiated by Tonti, it must have been based on papers of his.” It has been held apocryphal by Iberville and Margry; but Falconer, La Harpe, Boimare, and Gravier put trust in it.