It will be observed that in both of the maps of 1697, extracts from which are given herewith, the Mississippi River is marked as continuing its course to the Gulf. This change is made to illustrate an interpolation in the text (pp. 249-312), borrowed from Father Membré’s Journal of La Salle’s descent of the river, as given in Le Clercq’s Premier Établissement de la Foi, p. 153. Sparks, in his Life of La Salle, was the first to point out this correspondence. Mr. J. H. Perkins, reviewing Sparks’s book in the North American Review in January, 1839 (reprinted in his Memoir and Writings, vol. ii.), on the “Early French Travellers in the West,” referring to the partial statements of the distrust of Hennepin in Andrew Ellicott’s Journal, and in Stoddard’s Sketches of Louisiana, makes, for the first time, as he thinks, a thorough critical statement of the grounds “for thinking the Reverend Father so great a liar.” Further elucidation of the supposed theft was made by Dr. Shea in his Discovery of the Mississippi, etc., p. 105, where, p. 83, he translated for the first time into English Membré’s Journal. The Membré narrative is much the same as a Relation de la Découverte de l’Embouchure de la Rivière Mississippi, faite par le Sieur de la Salle, l’année passée, 1682, preserved in the Archives Scientifiques de la Marine, and printed in Thomassy’s Géologie pratique de la Louisiane. Gravier, p. 180, holds it to be the work of La Salle himself (Boimare, Text explicatif pour accompagner la première planche historique relative à la Louisiane, Paris, 1868; cf. Gravier’s Appendix, no. viii). That there was a fraud on Hennepin’s part has been generally held ever since Sparks made his representations. Bancroft calls Hennepin’s journal “a lie.” Brodhead calls it an audacious falsehood. Parkman (La Salle, p. 226) deems it a fabrication, and has critically examined Hennepin’s inconsistencies. Gravier classes his narrative with Gulliver’s.
The excuse given in the Nouvelle Découverte for the tardy appearance of this Journal is, that fear of the hostility of La Salle having prevented its appearance in the Description de la Louisiane, that explorer’s death rendered the suppression of it no longer necessary. It is, moreover, proved that passages from Le Clercq are also appropriated in describing the natives and the capture of Quebec in 1628. The reply to this was that Le Clercq stole from a copy of Hennepin’s Journal, which had been lent to Le Roux in Quebec. These revelations led Shea seriously to question in his Mississippi if Hennepin had ever seen the upper parts of that river, and to suspect that Hennepin may have learned what he wrote from Du Lhut. Harrisse, p. 176, brings forward some new particulars about Hennepin’s relations with Du Lhut.
Dr. Shea’s later views, as expressed in his English translation (1880) of the Description de la Louisiane (1683), is that Hennepin’s manuscript or revamped copy of his earlier book, as prepared for the printer by himself, was subjected to the manipulations of an ignorant and treacherous editor, who made these insertions to produce a more salable book, and that Hennepin was not responsible for it in the form in which it appeared. Shea’s arguments to prove this opposite of the generally received opinion are based on inherent evidence in the insertions that Hennepin could not have written them, and on the material evidences of these questionable portions of the book having been printed at a later time than the rest of it, and in different type. The only rejoinder yet made to this exculpation is by Mr. E. D. Neill, in a tract on The Writings of Louis Hennepin, read before the Minnesota Historical Society in November, 1880, in which the conclusion is reached that “nothing has been discovered to change the verdict of two centuries, that Louis Hennepin, Recollect Franciscan, was deficient in Christian manhood.”
The Nouvelle Découverte was reset and reissued in 1698 at Amsterdam, with the same maps and a new title.
Copies: CB., L.
References: Shea, no. 2; Sabin, no. 31,350; Harrisse, no. 176; Ternaux, no. 1,110; O’Callaghan, no. 1,073; Muller, 1877, no. 3,666; Sparks, Catalogue, no. 1,211; Rich, 1832, 12s.; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. 1,538; Historical Magazine, vol. ii. pp. 24,346.
There was another edition, Voyage ou Nouvelle Découverte, at Amsterdam in 1704, with the same maps and additional plates, to which was appended La Borde’s Voyage.
Copies: BA., CB.
References: Shea, no. 3; Sabin, no. 31,352; Rich, 1830, no. 8; Historical Magazine, vol. ii. p. 347; Beckford, no. 676; Leclerc, no. 905, 60 francs; Stevens, vol. i. no. 1,436; Carter-Brown, vol. iii. no. 52.
The Hague and Leyden editions of the same year (1704) had an engraved title, Voyage curieux ... qui contient une Nouvelle Découverte, but were evidently from the same type, and also have the La Borde appended.