French Pathfinders in North America

by William Henry Johnson

La Salle and his party, meanwhile, were roaming wearily from tribe to tribe, usually fighting their way, always seeking the Mississippi. At last they came to a large river which at first they mistook for it. Here La Salle built a stockade and left some of his men, of whose fate nothing was afterward heard. Then he set out to return to Fort St. Louis, as he called his little fort on Lavaca. One day in March he reappeared with his tattered and footsore followers, some of them carrying loads of buffalo-meat.

Surely the condition of affairs was dismal in the extreme. More than a year gone, and as yet the Frenchmen did not even know where they were. The fierce heat of another summer was near. Still La Salle, with his matchless courage, so soon as he recovered from a fit of illness, formed a desperate resolve. He would start out again, find the Mississippi, ascend that river and the Illinois to Canada, and bring relief to the fort. This time the party was composed of twenty men, some of them clad in deerskin, others in the garments of those who had died. On April 11 they started out.

Months went by. Then, to the surprise of those in the fort, one evening La Salle reappeared, followed by eight men of the twenty who had gone out with him. One had been lost, two had deserted, one had been seized by an alligator, and six had given out on the march and probably perished. The survivors had encountered interesting experiences. They had crossed the Colorado on a raft. Nika, La Salle's favorite Shawanoe hunter, who had followed him to France and thence to Texas, had been bitten by a rattlesnake, but had recovered. Among the Cenis Indians, a branch of the Caddo family, which includes the famed Pawnees, they met with the friendliest welcome and saw plenty of horses, silver lamps, swords, muskets, money, and other articles, all Spanish, which these people had obtained from the fierce Comanches, who had taken them in raids on the Mexican border. They also met some of the Comanches themselves and were invited to join them in a foray into New Mexico. But La Salle had, necessarily, long since given up his mad scheme of conquest and was thinking only of extricating himself from his pitiable dilemma.

This seems to have been the first meeting of Frenchmen with mounted Indians of the plains. The possession of horses, which had strayed or been stolen from Spanish settlements, had transformed these wild rovers from foot-travelers, such as Cabeza de Vaca and Coronado found them, having no other domestic animals than dogs, into matchless horsemen and the most dangerous brigands on the continent, capable of covering hundreds of miles in an incredibly short space of time. Splendid specimens of savage manhood, presenting the best type of the Shoshonee stock, they amply avenged the terror which the sight of mounted Spaniards at first struck into the hearts of the aborigines, by harrying the colonists and laying the border in blood and ashes, as they sometimes do to this day.[1]

From the Cenis villages, where they bought five horses, the Frenchmen went as far, perhaps, as the Sabine River, encamped there for two months, detained by La Salle's illness with fever, and then, on account of their weakened condition, returned to Fort St. Louis.

A deeper pall of gloom settled upon the little band of exiles. They had now been two years on that forlorn spot, and still they had not even found their way out. From one hundred and eighty their number had dwindled to forty-five. Clearly, there was but one thing to be done. If anybody was to remain alive, the journey to Canada must be accomplished, at all costs. This time La Salle determined to take Joutel with him, leaving Barbier in command of the little party in the fort.

The New Year, 1687, came, and a few days later, with sighs and tears, the parting took place which many felt was for all time, and the travelers went away in mournful silence, with their meagre outfit packed on the horses, leaving Barbier to hold the fort with his little band of twenty persons, including all the women and children and a few disabled men.

We shall not attempt to trace closely the movements of the travelers. For more than two months they journeyed in a northeasterly direction. At the best, they were in wretched plight, with nothing for shoes but raw buffalo-hide, which hardened about the foot and held it in the grip of a vise. After a while they bought dressed deerskin from the Indians and made themselves moccasins. Rivers and streams they crossed, two or three at a time, in a boat made of buffalo-hide, while the horses swam after them. They met Indians almost daily and held friendly intercourse with them.[2]