He may also have concluded to spend the winter in Ohio, where game was abundant and beavers numerous, an event to which I have referred in connection with the axe marks. We have no reliable evidence that he was at Montreal between July, 1669, and August, 1672. The records of Villemarie, quoted by Faillon, contain the first solid proof of his presence on the St. Lawrence, after he departed with Galinée and DeCasson. During this period we may be certain he was not idle. It is far from certain how many men he had, but the anonymous relation affirms that he was deserted by twenty-three or twenty-four of them after leaving the Falls of the Ohio. Where did he get these additional recruits? In the absence of historical proof, it is reasonable to infer that, when he left the Sulpitians, he moved southwesterly in accordance with his instructions, and did not turn back to Montreal. His honor, his interest and his ambition all forced him in one direction, toward the country where he was directed to go and to stay, as long as he could subsist.
What the Abbé Faillon states in the third volume of his French Colonies (page 312) confirms this supposition. According to this authority, about four months after La Salle’s departure, which would be in November, 1669, a part of his men returned, having refused to follow him. He himself could not have returned at this time without observation and public discredit.
Such a brief and fruitless effort to reach the Great South Sea could not have escaped the notice of historians. It is not probable that his foreman, Charles Thoulamion, or his surgeon, Roussilier, (Histoire Colonie Francais, vol. 3, p. 290) were among those wanting in courage to follow him. Some soldiers were of the party, furnished by Talon, who would be likely to remain by force of military discipline.
There are many threads of this tangled skein, which can not yet be drawn out. In the first volume of the Margry documents (pages 371–78) may be seen a long recital by a friend of the Abbé Galinée, already referred to, whose name is a subject of conjecture, but presumed by Mr. Parkman to have been the second Prince of Conti, Armand de Bourbon, a friend of La Salle, seventeen or eighteen years of age, purporting to be the substance of conversations with La Salle, which must have taken place as late as 1677, when he was in France. One portion of this paper is styled a “Life of La Salle,” a large part of which is occupied by his troubles with the Jesuits. “He (La Salle) left France at twenty-one or twenty-two years of age, in 1665, well instructed in matters in the new world, with the design of attempting new discoveries. After having been some time in Canada he acquired some knowledge of the languages, and traveled northward, where he found nothing worthy of his attention, and resolved to turn southward; and having advanced to a village of savages on the Genesee, where there was a Jesuit, he hoped to find guides, etc.” * * * * * “M. de la Salle continued his route from ‘Tenouatoua’ upon a river which goes from east to west, and passed to Onondaga (Onontague), then to six or seven leagues below Lake Erie; and having reached longitude 280° or 283°, and to latitude 41°, found a sault, which falls toward the west into a low, marshy country, covered with dry trees, of which some are still standing. He was compelled to take the land, and following a height, which led him very far, he found savages who told him that very far from there the same river, which was lost in the low, marshy country, reunited in one bed. He continued his way, but as the fatigue was great, twenty-three or twenty-four men, whom he had brought thus far, left him all in one night, regained the river, and saved themselves, some in New Holland and others in New England. He found himself alone at four hundred leagues (twelve hundred miles) from his home, where he failed not to return, reascending the river, and living by hunting, upon herbs and upon what the savages gave him, whom he met on the way. After some time he made a second attempt, on the same river, which he left below Lake Erie, making a portage of six or seven leagues (eighteen or twenty-one miles), to embark on this lake, which he traversed toward the north” into lakes Huron and Michigan, and thence to the Illinois.
Aside from the indefinite phrases of this paper, it is characterized by so many geographical errors that it would possess little value without the support of the following statement of La Salle himself:
In the year 1667 and following years he La Salle made many voyages, at much expense, in which he was the first discoverer of much country south of the great lakes, between them and the great river, Ohio. He followed it to a place where it falls from a great height into marshes, in latitude 37°, after having been enlarged by another very large river, which comes from the north, and all these waters, according to appearances, discharge into the Gulf of Mexico, and here he hopes to find a communication with the sea.
No conjecture respecting La Salle’s operations on the Ohio has yet been formed that reconciles these conflicting accounts.
In nothing direct from his pen does La Salle refer to the desertion of his men after leaving the falls of the Ohio. According to the supposed recital of Armand de Bourbon, he had made a long journey from thence by land, the direction of which is not known. He may have been at that time in Kentucky or Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, or Ohio. If he proceeded westerly he was constantly increasing the distance from Montreal, and whether he was north or south of the Ohio it is scarcely credible that he should find his way back alone in the winter of 1669–70. In the spring of 1681 he made that sad trip from “Crèvecœur” to Niagara, with an Indian and four men, which occupied sixty-five days. It would consume fully as much time to return from the falls of the Ohio. He could not have examined the country near the river, below the falls, or he would not have reported that it is a vast marsh, with intricate channels, along which it flowed a great distance before uniting in a single bed. He could not have traveled far west of the meridian of the falls without hearing of the Mississippi, and making an effort to reach it, for it was only through this river that he then expected to reach the Red Sea on the route to China.
La Salle could not have explored the falls very minutely, and have spoken of them as very high, nor of the country below as a vast marsh with numerous and intricate channels. If, in his land journey, he had gone in a northwesterly direction, he would have struck the Wabash or its main branches in about one hundred and twenty-five miles. In a southwesterly direction, the Cumberland and the Tennessee are rivers of equal magnitude, the waters of which he must have encountered in a few days’ travel.
Whatever Indians he met would be closely questioned, and if they communicated anything, the Great River must have been the first object of their thoughts. An observation of either of these three rivers by La Salle, in the lower part of their course, or even second-hand information respecting them from the savages, must have led a mind so acute as his, sharpened by his purposes and his surroundings, to the conclusion that he was near the Mississippi.