After the allies had left Niagara for the scene of battle, Greysolon de la Tourette, a brother of Du Lhut, described as “an intelligent lad,” arrived there from Lake Nepigon, north of Lake Superior, in a canoe, without an escort. Denonville a few weeks after wrote: “Du Lhut’s brother, who has recently arrived from the rivers above the Lake of the Allemepigons, assures me that he saw more than fifteen hundred persons come to trade with him, and they were very sorry he had not sufficient goods to satisfy them. They are of the tribes accustomed to resort to the English at Port Nelson and River Bourbon.”[524]
The destruction of the Seneca villages having been completed, Du Lhut, with his brave cousin Henry Tonty, returned in September to Fort St. Joseph,[525] near the entrance of Lake Huron, garrisoned at his own charges by coureurs des bois, who had in the spring sown some bushels of Turkey wheat. The next year, to allay the irritation of the Iroquois, Governor Denonville issued an order to abandon the fort, and on the 27th of August the buildings were destroyed by fire.
Perrot, in 1688, was ordered to return to his post on the Upper Mississippi, and take formal possession of the country in the King’s name. With a party of forty men, he left Montreal to trade with the Sioux, who, according to La Potherie, “were very distant, and could not trade with us easily, as the other tribes and the Outagamis [Foxes] boasted of having cut off the passage thereto.” Reaching Green Bay in the fall of the year, Perrot was met by a deputation of Foxes, and afterward visited their village. In the chief’s lodge there was placed before him broiled venison, and for the rest of the French raw meat was served; but he refused to eat, because, he said, “meat did not give him any spirit. But he would take some when they were more reasonable.” He then chided them for not having gone, as requested by the Governor of Canada, on the expedition against the Senecas. Urging them to proceed on the beaver hunt, and to fight only the Iroquois, and leaving a few Frenchmen to trade, he proceeded toward the Sioux country. Arriving at the portage, the ice formed some impediment, but, aided by Pottawattamies, his men transported their goods to the Wisconsin River, which was not frozen. Ascending the Mississippi, he proceeded to the post which he occupied before he was summoned to fight the Senecas.
As soon as the ice left the river, in the spring of 1689, the Sioux came down and escorted Perrot to one of their villages, where he was received with much enthusiasm. He was carried around upon a beaver robe, followed by a long line of warriors, each bearing a pipe and singing. Then, taking him to the chief’s lodge, several wept over his head, as the Ioways had done when he first visited the Upper Mississippi. After he had left, in 1686, a Sioux chief, knowing that few Frenchmen were at the fort, had come down with one hundred warriors to pillage it. Of this, complaint was made by Perrot, and the guilty leader came near being put to death by his tribe. As they were about to leave the Sioux village, one of his men told Perrot that a box of goods had been stolen, and he ordered a cup of water to be brought, into which he poured some brandy. He then addressed the Indians, and told them he would dry up their marshes if the goods were not restored, at the same time setting on fire the brandy in the cup. The savages, astonished, and supposing that he possessed supernatural powers, soon detected the thief, and the goods were returned.
On the 8th of May, 1689, at the post St. Antoine, on the Wisconsin side of Lake Pepin, a short distance above the Chippewa River, in the presence of the Jesuit missionary, Joseph J. Marest, Boisguillot,[526] a trader near the mouth of the Wisconsin River, Pierre Le Sueur, whose name was afterward identified with the exploration of the Minnesota, and a few others, Perrot took possession of the country of the rivers St. Croix, St. Pierre, and the region of Mille Lacs, in the name of the King of France.
When he returned to Montreal, he found a great change had occurred in political affairs. It had become evident that the Iroquois were mere agents of the English. The Albany traders had searched the land between the Hudson River and Lake Erie, and had made a report that the Valley of the Genesee was fertile and beautiful to behold, and every year an increasing number of pale-faces wandered among the Indian villages toward Lake Ontario. Old officers in Canada saw that their only hope was to destroy the source of supply to the Iroquois. The question to be determined was whether the King of France or the King of England should control the region of the Great Lakes. Chevalier de Callières, who had seen much service in Europe, and was in command of the troops in Canada, insisted that decisive steps should be taken. The crisis was hastened by the arrival of the intelligence that a revolution had occurred in England, and that William and Mary had been acknowledged. Callières wrote to Seignelay relative to the condition of affairs: “It would be idle to flatter ourselves with the hope to find them improved since the usurpation of the Prince of Orange, who will be assuredly acknowledged by Sir Andros,[527] who is a Protestant, born in the Island of Jersey, and by New York, the inhabitants whereof are mostly Dutch, who planted this colony under the name of New Netherland, all of whom are Protestant.”
He urged that the war should be carried into New York, and that a force be sent strong enough to seize Albany, and then to move down and capture Manhattan. “It will give his Majesty,” he said, “one of the finest harbors in America, accessible at almost all seasons, and it will give one of the finest countries of America, in a milder and more fertile climate than that of Canada.” The sequel was a conflict of drilled troops under European officers upon the borders of New England and New York.
[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]
1609-1640.—The Voyages of Champlain, as published in 1632 at Paris, are valuable in facts pertaining to discovery along the shores of Lake Champlain and Lake Huron; but the book is the subject of special treatment in another chapter.[528] The Grand Voyage of Sagard[529] contains little more than what may be found in Champlain and the Relations of the Jesuit missionaries. Charlevoix mentions that Sagard passed “some time among the Hurons, but had not time to see things well enough, still less to verify all that was told him.”