The White and the Gold (58 page)

But La Salle realized quickly that still larger sums would be needed. He decided to sell the balance of his land and found a purchaser in Jean Milot, a resident of the town, who paid him twenty-eight hundred livres, a generous enough deal. Now the indomitable La Salle had sufficient ready money to make a start. He went posthaste to Quebec to secure the necessary permit from the governor. This was in 1668, and Courcelle was still in office. The latter not only extended every encouragement but suggested that he join forces with another expedition which the Sulpicians were sending out to open a mission among the Shawnee Indians. Dollier de Casson, soon to succeed Queylus, had been placed in charge. These two men, the youthful dreamer and the gigantic ex-cavalryman who had turned
from war to serve the Prince of Peace, found themselves at once in complete accord.

On July 6, 1669, the combined expedition started out. La Salle had four canoes and fourteen men, Dollier de Casson three canoes and seven men. Some of the Senecas who had remained all this time at La Salle’s seigneury went along as guides. Despite the strength of the party, it proved to be a hazardous undertaking from the very beginning. The Iroquois were turning hostile and they detained the French party for a full month in the Seneca village of Tsonnontonan. Getting away finally, La Salle led his men across the Niagara River, hearing in the distance the roaring of the Great Falls. By the end of September they had reached the Indian village of Ganastogue, close to the site of the modern city of Hamilton, Ontario. Here La Salle was told by a Shawnee prisoner of a direct route to the Ohio which would not take longer than six weeks.

It happened also that Louis Joliet joined them here on his way back to Quebec to report to Talon on his quest for copper mines. Joliet was full of praise for the friendly Indians he had found in the land where the three Great Lakes touched, particularly the Potawatomi, all of whom were thirsting for the white man’s gospel.

A clash of wills arose at this point between La Salle and Dollier de Casson. There was no room in the mind of La Salle for anything but the purpose with which he had started, and nothing but chains on his ankles could have held him back. On the other hand, the Sulpician was certain that the hand of God was in this meeting with Joliet. How otherwise could it have come about that they should meet in the middle of this huge continent when there were trails and waterways galore to follow? Joliet, coming straight to this exact point like iron filings to a magnet, had been guided by the divine will so that they, Dollier and his men, would hear what he had to tell of the spiritual needs of these great tribes. To Dollier it was a Macedonian call. It was God’s desire that he change his course and carry the gospel instead to the Potawatomi.

This gentle priest, who was as stout in his faith as he was powerful of body (he could have raised La Salle from the ground on the palm of one hand), did not allow himself to engage in any arguments. His eyes were filled with a steady and exultant light. Although the anxious month they had spent as semi-prisoners had supplied the best of reasons for traveling in force, La Salle gave up the effort to keep the Sulpician party with him. It was with regret, but with no
diminution of his resolve to follow his star, that he saw the equally determined Dollier lead his party westward. Deserted by some of his men who had lost all stomach for such adventures, La Salle calmly turned his canoes in a southerly direction. He must find that direct route to the Ohio.

He was away for two years, and there is considerable doubt as to how he employed all of that time. It is certain that he reached the Ohio and continued down that broad and powerful stream. Some historians have contended that he went as far as the junction with the Mississippi, but there does not seem any reasonable ground for assuming that he progressed as far as that. A paper prepared by La Salle himself some years later affirms that he reached the Ohio and followed it until a waterfall, which he describes as
fort haut
, made it impossible to continue. This must have been the falls above Louisville.

Other writers have read into the scanty bits of evidence which survive (La Salle’s own notes of this period are lost) that he followed his exploration of the Ohio by turning north to Lake Michigan, and that he then pursued the course of the Illinois River until it was joined by another which flowed southeasterly and must, therefore, have been the Mississippi. This would make him the discoverer of that mighty river and take the credit away from Marquette and Joliet (not to mention the shadowy claims of Radisson), who found it two years later. There does not seem any clear justification for placing this additional laurel wreath on the La Salle brow. The evidence, in fact, points the other way. He himself did not make any such claim, nor did he ever dispute the right of the others to priority of discovery.

The Jesuits were turning to exploration with all the vigor they had shown in earlier years in their missionary work. This had become necessary because they were now laboring with tribes far afield. Their missions clustered about the upper lakes, but far beyond Michilimackinac and Green Bay were regions where the buffalo roamed in countless herds and where the Indians had never heard the white man’s gospel. It had become a duty, therefore, to reach these distant lands so that the ignorant tribes could be redeemed. They heard the stories which the natives were telling of the Mississippi
and reached the resolution to locate it and trace it to where it emptied into the sea.

For this purpose they selected Louis Joliet, who had been responsible for Dollier’s change of plan. Joliet was Canadian-born (Quebec, 1645) and of humble birth. His father had been a wagon maker in the employ of the Company of One Hundred Associates, by which token it may be taken for granted that he had been poorly paid all his life. The son was given a good education by the Jesuits on the expression of his desire to become a priest. He had a great desire for learning and a keen mind to assimilate what he was taught. In particular he had an aptitude for mathematics and he distinguished himself in debates at the school where he had been placed.

Like La Salle, however, young Joliet found the lure of the West irresistible. When twenty-one years of age he decided he must renounce his ambition to become a priest. His Jesuit instructors, sensing in him the kind of energy which could be better employed in other work, consented to this change of plan. They even aided and encouraged him when he took to the life of a fur trader in the West.

To accompany the virile and experienced Joliet, they selected one of their order, a priest named Jacques Marquette. Father Marquette, born at Laon and educated at Nancy, had come to Canada in 1666 and after some years spent in studying Indian languages had founded the mission at St. Ignace. He was a gentle and eloquent man. His frailness of physique was not considered a handicap, for it was realized that men of limited virility often survived the strains and privations of the wilds better than those of rugged frame and greater strength.

Joliet and Marquette were, in point of fact, a perfect combination: the one keen, alert, experienced in woodcraft, the other sustained by a spiritual force which impressed even the savage tribes they were destined to encounter.

They set out on May 17, 1672, in two canoes and with five companions. Encountering on their way such strange tribes as the Wild-Rice Indians, the long-haired Miamis, the uncouth Mascoutins, and the wild Kickapoos, they came one month later to a spot of great beauty where the Wisconsin, which they had been following for a considerable time, joined a new river, one which seemed to roll along with a sense of purpose, even a consciousness of ultimate destiny.

This was the Mississippi. The Indian guides indicated by gesture and much eloquence of speech that this was indeed the Father of Waters. The Indians themselves were awed by it and urged the white travelers to go no farther. The two explorers, realizing that they had attained the first part of their objective, were not to be dissuaded by the tales of terror and violence that the guides poured into their ears.

They followed the course of this mighty river until they reached the mouth of the Arkansas. It was rich country through which they had been gliding, and the Indians they encountered seemed to live in comfort and plenty. On one occasion the white men were given a feast of several courses, beginning with a dish of Indian corn, followed with fish from which all the bones had been removed, a roasted dog, and a platter of buffalo meat, fat and strong and to the white palates decidedly rancid.

On reaching the Arkansas they decided to turn back. They had been convinced by visual evidence of one point which La Salle had discovered by deductive reasoning, that the Mississippi did not turn eastward to the Vermilion Sea but flowed instead to the Gulf of Mexico. The river was the dividing line of the continent. It would have been abundantly clear to them, if they had been concerned with such matters, that with the placing of the fleur-de-lis above forts at intervals along its course, France could cut off her rivals from the greater half of the continent which lay westward.

Marquette and Joliet returned to their starting point by way of the Illinois River, reaching Green Bay before the end of September and after a journey of twenty-five hundred miles in all, a truly titanic feat. Joliet continued on at once for Quebec to carry a report to Frontenac and the heads of the Jesuit Order. By an ironic twist of bad fortune, this intrepid traveler got into his first serious difficulties when he reached the Lachine Rapids just below Montreal. After passing safely no fewer than forty-two rapids, by his own count, his canoe was overturned in the Lachine. Two of his companions were drowned, and all the papers he carried, including his own notes and those of Father Marquette, were lost.

Father Marquette returned to his mission work at the head of the lakes. He had for a long time desired to open the Mission of the Immaculate Conception in the country watered by the Illinois. Although fully aware that the rigors and hardships he had survived on the Mississippi had taken heavy toll of his strength, he set out
again to accomplish this purpose. Returning to St. Ignace, he died on the way on May 20 at a small island near the mouth of the river now named after him.

Before setting out on his final journey, Father Marquette had written another report of the discovery of the great river which he sent to his superiors at Quebec. This reached its destination, and so a detailed report of this epic accomplishment was preserved.

Joliet led an active life thereafter, although his collaboration with Marquette remained the high mark of his career. In 1675 he married Claire Françoise Bissot and raised a family of seven children. He made at least one voyage to Hudson’s Bay and was a strong advocate of measures to recover that great trading field for France. As a reward for his services he was granted the Mingan Islands along the north shore of the St. Lawrence and later the island of Anticosti. He moved his family to Anticosti and made it his permanent home. Sustaining losses through the English invasion, he was said to have spent his last years in poverty. He died in 1700.

The turning point in the career of René Robert Cavelier de la Salle came with the arrival of Frontenac as governor of Canada. The young explorer had returned from the wilds, filled with a new purpose, a grand plan by which the whole of the West could be secured for France. He saw every step by which this could be accomplished. First the great river would have to be explored from source to mouth. Forts would then be erected at strategic points to be used in the dual role of trading posts and units of defense. This would fence the English and the Spanish into the territory of the eastern seaboard.

It was a grandiose conception. Although other French Canadians with vision would share this dream, notably the sons of Charles le Moyne, it is La Salle who must be given the credit for originating the plan.

La Salle returned, therefore, from his long exploration of the West, his whole being filled with the vision. It was fortunate that the new governor, who had arrived while he was away, was a kindred spirit. Where or when La Salle first met the Comte de Frontenac is not known, but it must have been at Quebec and at an early moment. La Salle, the most impatient of men, was disposed to
trample on obstacles and to rebel at the unnecessary loss of a day or an hour. It is safe to assume that he took the first opportunity to meet the new governor and enlist his support.

An alliance was established between them at once. Frontenac, his energies and ambitions blunted by the long years in which he had vegetated with nothing serious to engage his mind and nothing constructive to occupy his hands, had plenty of the fire and fury of the trail blazer in him still. It was not hard for La Salle to convince him that a western empire was to be won by seizing control of the Mississippi; and incidentally to show him the personal wealth to be achieved at the same time.

The establishment of the fort at Cataraqui may have been part of the program they discussed between them. The feeling in the colony was not unanimous in praise of this remarkable achievement of Frontenac. Most of those engaged in the fur trade were certain that he was attempting to establish a new monopoly. To the merchants of Montreal the presence of the fort at Cataraqui was a serious threat. Even men of the high caliber of Charles le Moyne and Jacques le Ber changed from a dubious support to open opposition.

To meet this antagonistic attitude La Salle went to France the following year. He took to court a proposition: place the new fort in his hands with an ample stretch of territory about it, islands and mainland, and he would pay back out of his own purse the ten thousand francs of government money which had been spent in the building of it. In addition he would guarantee to maintain at his own expense a garrison there as numerous as that of Montreal. He promised also to send out artisans and build a church when the number of inhabitants at the post reached a total of one hundred.

The offer was accepted. All that the youthful La Salle, fired now with new zeal and determination, had to do was to raise the necessary funds. He had nothing in his own purse but he had wealthy relatives and connections. His brothers contributed more generously than might have been expected in view of their attitude over his share in the family estates. Afterward they declared that his operations in New France had cost them five hundred thousand livres; and, needless to state, they were very bitter about it. A cousin, François Plet, loaned him eleven thousand livres, demanding interest at the rate of 40 per cent. Cousin Plet received no interest and did not get his money back, and it is not hard to withhold sympathy from him in his losses. Some outsiders contributed shares amounting
to over twenty thousand livres. La Salle now had ample funds. He paid the government the stipulated sum and returned to Canada to claim Fort Frontenac and the lands adjoining it.