Magazine of western history, illustrated, Vol. I, No. 1, November 1884

by Various

We must not forget the nature of the French Government when contemplating the history of Canada. The king was absolute, not only in public but in private affairs. When he said: “I am the State,” he expressed a fact, and not a fiction or a boast. The men and women of the kingdom were subject to the will of one man, even in their personal relations and occupations. In Canada nothing escaped the supervision of his officers, who were equally absolute, which explains why permission was necessary to engage in any enterprise.

The two parties left Montreal in July, 1669, La Salle having four canoes and fourteen men, the Sulpitians three canoes and eight men. They reached Ironduquoit Bay, in New York, on the 10th of August, making a portage to the Genesee valley and some Indian towns near Victor Station and Boughton Hill, sixteen miles southeasterly from Rochester. The savages told La Salle that the Ohio had its rise three days’ journey from “Sonnontouan,” or the country of the Senecas. After a month’s travel they would reach the Hon-ni-as-ant-ke-rons, and the Chouanons (Shawnees); after passing them and a great fall or chute, there were the Outagamies (Pottawatomies), and the country of the Is-konsan-gos, with plenty of deer, buffaloes, thick woods, and an immense population.

The Jesuits had a mission at “Gannegora,” the Indian name of a town and a fort near Boughton Hill, but were absent when La Salle and the Sulpitians arrived there. The Indians discouraged them from taking the Genesee route to the Ohio, representing that it required six days’ journey of twelve leagues or thirty-six miles each. Charlevoix affirms that the Genesee is navigable for canoes sixty leagues or one hundred and eighty miles, and from thence it is only ten leagues or thirty miles by land to the Allegheny or Ohio, river of the Iroquois. Mr. Marshall has shown that this portage was in Allegany County, New York, from near Belvidere to Olean.

By the united efforts of the Jesuits, the Dutch and the Senecas, they were persuaded to relinquish this route and hasten back to their canoes, to avoid violence on the part of the savages. They coasted along the south shore of Lake Ontario, passing the Niagara without examination, and reached Burlington Bay on the 22d of September. DeNonville, in 1687, states that La Salle had houses and people at Niagara in 1668.—(Historical Documents, vol. 1, p. 244). If this is true, La Salle must have been well acquainted with the portage to Lake Erie, around the falls. Why he should have selected the more difficult route by way of Burlington Bay, and a portage of fifteen miles to Grand River, is nowhere explained.

Not far from the head of the bay was the village of Tenouatouan, on the path to Grand River. Here the party met Joliet and a few Indians, on his return from Mackinaw. He had been sent by the intendant to find the copper mines of Lake Superior, and appears to have been the first Frenchman to have navigated Lake Erie. He took that route home at the instigation of the Ottawas, and of an Iroquois prisoner he was taking home to his people.

According to Galinée, when they were fifty leagues west of Grand River, this Iroquois became alarmed on account of the Andasterrionons, Errionons, Eriqueronons, or Eries of the south shore, with whom the Senecas were at war. They were thus obliged to leave their canoes and make the journey to Tenouatouan by land.

La Salle’s plan might have been to cross from Lake Ontario to Grand River, down it to the lake, thence along the north shore of Erie to the mouth of the Maumee River, on the route referred to by him in 1682; up this stream to the portage at Fort Wayne, and down the waters of the Wabash into an unknown world.

In a subsequent letter written from Illinois he speaks of this route, and also in his memorial to Frontenac in 1677, as the best one for traffic between the Great River and Canada, though it does not appear that he ever passed over it.—(Western Reserve Historical Society, Tract 25). Joliet was likewise ambitious of the glory of discovering the Great River, of which the Jesuit missionaries and the Indians gave glowing descriptions. He seems to have persuaded Galinée and DeCasson that this was the better route. La Salle and the Sulpitians here became alienated, and after attending mass separated on the 30th of September, they to find Lake Erie and the Ottawas of Mackinaw; he to pursue his original design. He had been for some days sick of a fever, which Galinée attributed to the sight of several rattlesnakes. He declared it to be so late in the season that his voyageurs, not accustomed to such a rigorous climate, would perish in the woods during the winter.

From the hour of this separation we are without explicit information of his journeyings for a term of nearly three years. During this period the exploration of the Ohio country was effected, and in the opinion of M. Margry, the Mississippi was discovered by him, in advance of Joliet and Marquette. These wanderings, of which after two hundred years we know very little, show more originality of design, more audacity in execution, and a more pertinacious resolution under difficulties, than his later achievements on the Mississippi. No one has set up against him a rival claim to the discovery of the Ohio. His heirs, his admirers, and his countrymen should cherish the memory of that discovery as the most wonderful of his exploits. The historical obscurity which has befallen these expeditions is a painful fact, but is in some measure compensated by a glamour of romance, which deepens with the lapse of time. On seeing his favorite plan of an advance by the north shore of Lake Erie frustrated, he may have determined to brave all dangers and enter the lake by way of Niagara. There are many plans which he may have determined upon, of which we can only form a vague conjecture. He may have turned his canoes along the north shore, and spent the winter in hunting in that country. Color is given to this surmise by the statement of Nicholas Perrot that he met La Salle on the Ottawa in 1670, but this is not probable. Taken in the order of the anonymous relation, he was on a river which ran from east to west, before passing to Onontague (Onondaga), but there is no water route passable from Lake Ontario to the Ohio which would pass Onondaga. It is far more probable that the enthusiastic young explorer entered Niagara River with his Shawnee guide and made the portage to Lake Erie. He could soon find one of the portages to the waters of the Ohio, spoken of by the Senecas. One of them was from Lake Erie near Portland and Westfield, N. Y., of six or seven leagues (eighteen to twenty-one miles), to Chatauqua Lake. Another, of about the same length, answers also to their directions, which was afterward the usual route from Erie to French Creek, at Waterford in Pennsylvania. By either of these routes he might have been on the Allegheny, with his goods and canoes, in ten or twelve days, if the weather was good. He would, however, have here been among the Andasterrionons, who were probably the Eries or Errieronons, with whom the Senecas were then at war. These Indians had been represented at “Gannegora” as sure to kill the Frenchmen if they went among them.

Gravier has a theory that instead of Onontague or “Gannontague,” mentioned in the memoir of the friend of Galinée, we should read Ganestogue or “Ganahogue,” the ancient name of the Cuyahoga. It is not improbable that the guide of La Salle knew of this route, along which, ascending the Cuyahoga from Cleveland, the party would be enabled to reach the waters of the Muskingum, by a portage of seven miles at Akron, and from thence the Ohio, at Marietta. La Salle states that after he reached the Ohio, according to the anonymous account, but one very large river was passed on the north shore before reaching the falls. If he failed to recognize the Scioto as a very large river, there is only the Great Miami which meets his description.