ROBERT CAVELIER, SIEUR DE LA SALLE,
THE FIRST EXPLORER OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI
La Salle's Early Association with the Jesuits.—His Domain in Canada.—He starts on an Exploring Expedition.—Disappears from View.—The Favor of Frontenac.—La Salle's Extraordinary Commission.—Niagara Falls.—The First Vessel ever launched on the Upper Lakes.—Great Hardships of the Journey.—Arrival in the Country of the Illinois.—Fort Crèvecoeur built.—Perilous Journey back to Canada.—La Salle starts again for the Illinois Country.—Iroquois Atrocities and Cannibalism.—La Salle goes as far as the Mississippi and returns.—Tonty's Perilous Experiences.—Boisrondet's Ingenuity saves his Life.—La Salle journeys down the Great River.—Interesting Tribes of Indians.—The Ocean!—Louisiana named.—Hardships of the Return Journey.—Fort St. Louis built.
Robert Cavelier, more generally known as La Salle, at the first was connected with the Jesuits, but left the Society of Jesus and, at the youthful age of twenty-three, came to Canada to seek his fortune. He had an elder brother among the priests of St. Sulpice. These, being anxious to have a fringe of settlements outside of their own as a sort of screen against Indian attacks, granted to La Salle a quite considerable tract a few miles from Montreal. Here he laid out a village surrounded by a palisade and let out his land to settlers for a trifling rent.
With a view to exploration, he at once began to study the Indian languages. Like Champlain and all the early explorers, he dreamed of a passage to the Pacific and a new route for the commerce of China and Japan. The name which to this day clings to the place which he settled, La Chine (China), is said to have been bestowed by his neighbors, in derision of what they considered his visionary schemes.
After two or three years La Salle, beginning his real life-work, sold his domain and its improvements, equipped a party, and started out into the wilderness. We trace his route as far as the Seneca country, in western New York. Then for two years we lose sight of him altogether. This time he passed among the Indians; and there is the best reason for believing that he discovered the Ohio River and, quite probably, the Illinois.
When Joliet and Marquette ascertained that the outlet of the Great Water was in the Gulf of Mexico, their discovery put an end to the fond hope of establishing a new route to East India and China by way of the Mississippi, but it inspired a brilliant thought in La Salle's mind. Why should France be shut up in Canada, with its poverty, its rigorous climate, its barren soil, covered with snow for half the year? Why not reach out and seize the vast interior, with its smiling prairies and thousands of miles of fertile soil, with the glorious Mississippi for a waterway? She already held the approach at one end, namely, through the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. Let her go forward on the path which lay open before her. To realize this splendid dream became the purpose of his life.
The coming of Count Frontenac to Canada as its governor was a boon to La Salle. Both were essentially men of the world, with ambitions of their own. Both were strong men, daring, ardent, and resolute; and both heartily hated the Jesuits and were hated by them with equal fervor. Both, too, were men of small means who aimed at vast results. In short, they were kindred spirits. But the one was Governor of Canada, and the other was an almost penniless adventurer. This fact determined their relations. La Salle became a partisan of Frontenac, siding with him against certain fur-traders and the Jesuits. Frontenac became the protector of La Salle, backing his schemes with his influence and giving him a strong recommendation to the King.
Now, Frontenac had built a fort near the lower end of Lake Ontario, about the site of Kingston. It had the look of being a great public benefit, for it would help to hold the Iroquois in check and it would cut off trade from the English. On these grounds the expense of building it was justified. But the Jesuits and the fur-traders were opposed to it, the fur-traders because they foresaw the loss of a large part of their trade. Indians bringing their annual canoe-loads of peltry to market would not take the long trip to Montreal and Quebec, if they could barter them off at a much nearer point. They suspected, with good reason, that this new fort, erected ostensibly for the defence of the country, was really meant to cut off from them the trade that came down the Lakes and turn it into the hands of the Governor and those who might be in secret league with him.
The feeling was very strong, and attempts were made to induce the King to have the obnoxious fort demolished. Just then La Salle sailed for France with strong letters from Frontenac. Imagine the rage of his opponents when he returned not only master of the fort, but a titled man, the Sieur de La Salle, with the King's patent in his pocket giving him a princely grant of many square miles on the mainland and the adjacent islands!
But how was a needy adventurer to raise the money to pay for the fort and to do all the high-sounding things that he had promised the King? He counted on raising money on the strength of his great expectations. He was not disappointed. His friends and relatives rejoicing in his good fortune, which they naturally hoped to share, lent large sums of money to enable him to carry out his agreement with his royal master. Now he began piling up a mass of debts that alone would have crushed a common man. He had, besides, a tremendous combination to fight, nearly all the merchants of the colony, backed by the influence of the Jesuits.