Chapter VI

THE DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT LAKES OF CANADA
AND OF THE HEADWATERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

WHILE the English were firmly establishing themselves in New England, and the Dutch and Swedes were struggling for the mastery in the present states of New York and Delaware, discoveries of vital importance were being made by the French in Canada, or as it was then called, New France. We have already mentioned Samuel Champlain, who accompanied both Pontgravé and De Monts in their early expedition to Maine, and was the author of the first scientific map of the St. Lawrence. It was this Champlain, a true hero of geographical discovery, who paved the way for the establishment of French power in Canada, and to whom we, as the successors of the French, owe an undying debt of gratitude.

In the winter of 1604, when the little settlement at Port Royal was struggling in that feeble infancy destined to be its only existence, Champlain made it the starting point for many a trip to the South, visiting Cape Cod――which his men named Cape Blanc, from its far-stretching white sands――long before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. In 1608, when Pourtrincourt, the successor of De Monts, had returned to France in disgust, and Henry Hudson was preparing for the great voyage resulting in the discovery of the river named after him, Champlain was starting with a few faithful followers on an overland journey through perfectly untrodden districts watered by the St. Lawrence.

On the 3d July, after crossing the whole of Maine in a north-westerly direction, so far as we can make out from fragmentary records of his work, Champlain reached Stadacona, where, it will be remembered, Cartier spent his first winter on the St. Lawrence, and at once set to work to erect a fort, to which the name of Quebec was given, either then or very shortly afterward.

Illustration: THE FIRST HOUSE ERECTED IN QUEBEC.

The winter was spent in winning the friendship of the Algonquin Indians, chief of the three races then occupying the basin of the St. Lawrence, and in learning from them the capabilities of their country. In a terrible struggle then going on between the Algonquins and their neighbors, the Iroquois, or Five Nations, Champlain was able to give both advice and material assistance, and, as a reward, he was escorted by the former, in the spring of 1610, up the St. Lawrence as far as its junction with the Iroquois, now the Richelieu River, ascending which he discovered Lake Peter, and came, after some little difficulty with the rapids, so characteristic of the tributaries of the great river, to the beautiful sheet of water now bearing his own name, and which has so often figured in the history of the struggle between the French and English in Canada.

Though prevented by the hostility of the Iroquois, or Five Nations ――occupying the whole of the South-west of Canada――from actually visiting them, Champlain, on this trip, approached very nearly the sources of the Hudson in the lofty Adirondack Mountains, on the south-west of the great lake, and in the north-eastern corner of the present State of New York, thus connecting his own work with that of his great Dutch contemporary.

The discovery of Lakes Peter and Champlain may be said to have closed the first chapter of our energetic hero’s career. On his return to Quebec, he found that De Monts’s commission, under which he had been acting, was revoked, compelling him to return to France to obtain fresh powers. In this he was unsuccessful; but he agreed with De Monts to persevere in his undertaking without royal patronage, and in 1610 we find him again on the St. Lawrence, prevented from pursuing his geographical researches by the fierce struggles still going on between the two native tribes, but binding the Algonquins yet further to his service by the efficient aid he was able to render to their cause.

Illustration: QUEBEC.

On the restoration of peace in 1611, Champlain, after having paid a second flying visit to France for supplies, ascended the St. Lawrence as far as its junction with the Ottawa, and founded the modern city of Montreal, near the hill which had been named Mont Royal by his predecessors. In 1613, leaving both his infant settlements in a flourishing condition, he started, accompanied by several Frenchmen and an Indian escort, on an exploring expedition up the Ottawa, having heard rumors that it came from a lake connected with the North Sea.

The early part of the voyage up the great tributary of the St. Lawrence was full of difficulty, owing to the number and force of the cataracts and rapids impeding navigation; but, now carrying their canoes through the woods, now dragging them with ropes through the foaming current, the explorers reached the home of a friendly chief, named Tessouant, only to learn from him that the information on which they had acted was false.

Returning to Quebec after this disappointing trip, Champlain again sailed to France in the hope of obtaining fresh recruits for his infant colonies. Aided by the powerful co-operation of the Prince of Condé, he succeeded in equipping a little fleet of four vessels. These, filled with emigrants――including four fathers of the Recollet order, the first missionaries to settle in Canada――all well provided with supplies for the ensuing winter, arrived safely at the mouth of the St. Lawrence early in May 1615, and on the 25th of that month we find the indefatigable explorer pushing on with a few picked men to the Lachine rapids, which had been fixed on as the rendezvous of the Indian tribes, who were again about to push forward against the Iroquois, encamped among the Great Lakes on the west, never yet visited by a European.

Here was an opportunity not to be lost, and Champlain at once offered to aid the Algonquins and Hurons in making the best disposition of their forces, if they on their part would allow him to join them. The compact was made, and, surrounded by the wild redskins in their picturesque war-paint and other martial trappings, the white men marched in a north-westerly direction――first up the Ottawa, and then, turning due west, past a number of small lagoons――till they came to Lake Nipissing (N. lat. 46° 16’ W. long. 80°), where the natives received them with eager hospitality.

After a rest of a couple of days, the dusky warriors and their pale-faced guests resumed their march, and following the course of a stream now known as the French river, they came to the present Georgian Bay, forming the eastern side of the great Lake Huron, called by the French traders of more modern times the Mer Douce, on account of the remarkable freshness and clearness of its waters. Crossing Georgian Bay in the native canoes near the island of Great Manitoulin, or the Sacred Island, running parallel with the western half of the northern coast, the invaders landed, and, marching northward, were soon joined by a fresh body of Algonquin warriors, with whom they passed several days in feasting and dancing, after which the combined forces turned their steps southward, reaching Lake St. Clair, lying between Lakes Huron and Erie, near the modern city of Detroit, in a few days. Here they came in sight of the first Iroquois fort, a primitive but well-built structure, skillfully defended by rows of modern palisades.

A fierce struggle ensued, in which Champlain was twice wounded, and the Iroquois warriors defended their town with such skill and bravery that the Canadian Indians were compelled to retreat. In this retreat Champlain suffered terribly, having been carried, as was each of the disabled warriors, in a small basket, his body being bound into a circular form with strong cords to make it fit into the cramped space. Released from this unusual position on arrival in the friendly Huron country, our hero and his men begged to be provided with guides and canoes for the return journey to Quebec; but they were refused, and the white men had to spend the whole of the winter among the frozen lakes.

In the spring of 1616, after making themselves well acquainted with the resources of the neighborhood in the frequent hunting excursions in which they took part, the little band of explorers managed to effect their escape, and, accompanied by a few friendly natives, made their way back to Quebec, where, for a time, Champlain had to give all his attention to the internal affairs of the colonies, now large communities, holding within their heterogeneous elements many a seed of discord. Trip after trip to France for supplies resulted in the arrival of many new emigrants, but it was long before peace was sufficiently established for any fresh exploring expeditions to be undertaken. Moreover, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Senecas, and Cayugas, the five nations forming the great Iroquois confederacy, elated by their victory, in spite of the well-organized expedition against them, advanced from their quarters on Lakes Erie and Champlain to within a short distance of the French outposts, resolving to involve the Algonquins and their white allies in one common doom.

In 1626 a noble, but, as it turned out, mistaken attempt at conciliation, made by Champlain, resulted in a terrible tragedy. Some captive Iroquois, who were about to be tortured by the Algonquins, were sent back to their own people uninjured, accompanied by an Algonquin chief and a Frenchman named Magnan, who had instructions to negotiate a peace between the rival tribes. This did not, unfortunately, suit the Algonquins, who had hoped with the aid of the French to exterminate the Iroquois, and they therefore sent a message to the latter, warning them that treachery was intended, and that the Frenchman and his companion were spies.

Arrived at the Iroquois camp, the two unlucky emissaries found a large pot boiling over a fire, and were invited to be seated. The chief was then asked if he was hungry, and on his saying yes, a number of armed Iroquois rushed upon him, cut slices from his body, and threw them into the pot. This awful torture was continued till he died in the greatest agony, when the Frenchman was put to death with torture, though of a somewhat less revolting form.

Illustration: INDIAN WARRIORS.

Gladly would Champlain, convinced of the fatal mistake he had made, have taken summary vengeance on the savage warriors, but, alas! he was powerless to do so. The few settlements at Ladoussac, Three Rivers, and other advanced points on the St. Lawrence, would have presented an easy prey to the Iroquois, and there were no forces at Quebec or Montreal fit to cope with the thousands who would have swept down upon the whites from the Lakes, at the first sign of weakness among them. At this very time, too, the English were casting longing eyes at the rich fur-yielding grounds of the Canadian backwoods, and would gladly have shared in the cod and whale fisheries of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A Huguenot refugee, named Kirk, actually obtained a commission from Charles I. to conquer Canada, and for that purpose anchored a little squadron at the mouth of the St. Lawrence in the summer of 1628, sending a summons to Quebec to surrender.

As a matter of course, Champlain, although literally driven to bay, with the Indians on one side and the English on the other, returned a spirited answer of defiance, which, to his surprise, resulted in the withdrawal of his enemies, who were totally ignorant of the real state of affairs. A year later, however, Kirk returned, this time sailing up the St. Lawrence, and casting anchor off Quebec. Resistance was hopeless, and Champlain was compelled to surrender his “capital;” but, struck by the noble bearing of his opponent, and by the courage with which he had evidently so long been waging a hopeless contest with the natives, Kirk granted the most liberal terms to the French, who were allowed to remain undisturbed in their homes, which were, moreover, now secured to them by English troops from the raids of the savages.

In the autumn of the year of the taking of Quebec, Kirk left that city under the charge of his brother Lewis, and returned to England, accompanied by Champlain, who hoped to obtain by diplomacy what he had been unable to gain by force; and so earnestly did he plead his cause with the French ambassador in London, that the affairs of New France were brought before the then all-powerful Cardinal Richelieu.

Convinced of the vast importance to his country of the fur-trade and fisheries of Canada, the French Minister negotiated with the English Court for the restoration of Canada, Acadia, and Cape Breton, and after much discussion they were transferred to the French Crown by the treaty of St. Germain de Sage, which put off for more than a century the establishment of the British dominion in Canada.

A year or two before this event, so auspicious to French interests in the West, a new association had been formed in France, known as the “Company of the Hundred Associates,” to whom Louis XIII. had given the whole of Canada and of Florida――though the latter, as we are aware, was already claimed by Spain――together with a monopoly of the fur-trade. The cod and whale fisheries of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, however, the French monarch reserved for himself.

The joy of the Company of the Hundred Associates, on the restoration of the privileges which had so suddenly been snatched away from them by Kirk, may be imagined. They at once elected Champlain Governor of New France, and he returned to his old home at Quebec in 1633, taking with him a large party of new settlers, including many Jesuits, who were to form the nucleus of a college for the education of the youth of Canada, from which missionaries were to be sent forth for the conversion of the natives.

Having patched up something of a peace with the Indians, and founded his college, Champlain prepared to continue that part of his work which was nearest his heart――the further exploration of the country; but before he could organize an expedition to the West, his career was cut short by death. He expired in December, 1635, having sown the seeds of the future greatness of Canada, and inaugurated a new era of geographical discovery.

Champlain was succeeded as Governor of Canada by M. de Montonaguy, a man of a very different stamp, who, while displaying great ability and address in his management of the internal affairs of the colony and his dealings with the treacherous Iroquois, did little to extend our knowledge of the country under his charge.

To continue our narrative of the progress of discovery in French America, we must leave the ruling powers to join two obscure Jesuit missionaries, named Brébœuf and Daniel, the advance guard of that heroic band of laborers for the faith of Christ who led the way in every early expedition from Canada, and with whose names is associated the origin of every great town on the vast inland seas which are now among the proudest possessions of England.

Brébœuf and Daniel, who had both already done good work among the natives, left Quebec on their joint mission in 1634, with a party of Huron Indians, and after just such another arduous journey through the forest and up the Ottawa as that taken by Champlain a few years before, they arrived safely on the banks of Georgian Bay. Here they pitched their tents, and in a short time they gathered about them a little band of converts to the Roman Catholic faith, for whose use a little chapel, built of the trunks of trees, was presently erected, which was dedicated to St. Joseph.

To this little center of civilization in the wilderness flocked many natives and Europeans alike, who were eager to lead a new life――the former won over by the hopes held out to them for the future, the latter eager to forget the past. First one and then another Christian village arose on the banks of the stream connecting Lakes Huron and Ontario, from which every now and then some worn father of the faith would pay a flying visit to Quebec, to return with fresh recruits. Such was the origin of St. Louis, St. Ignatius, St. Mary’s, and many another now flourishing town of Canada, which were yet in their infancy when the news of the great work going forward in the West reached the ears of the Pope himself. Struck by the vast field thus opened for the extension of the Roman Catholic religion, the Holy Father expressed his loving approval of the work of his children in the land of their exile. The King of France followed suit; the enthusiasm spread to his nobles, and, eager to win the favor of the heads of their church and of their native land, numbers of young French gentlemen of rank joined the missionary band, and devoted their wealth to its cause. The result was what might have been expected. Montreal became the headquarters of the Indian church, St. Mary’s, lying about half-way between it and Lake Huron, the rendezvous of the missionaries from distant points, who met three times a year to give an account of their progress.

Six years after the first arrival of Fathers Brébœuf and Daniel on Lake Huron, the missionary outposts had extended as far west as Green Bay, on the north-west of Lake Michigan; and though the iron belt of the Five Nations still kept the French from the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie, Brébœuf was able in 1641, accompanied by Father Joseph Marie Chaumonot, to visit the Onguiaharas, a neutral tribe living on a river of the same name, now the Niagara.

The Onguiaharas――who appear to have acted as mediators between the Iroquois and the Hurons and Algonquins, members of the rival tribes meeting in peace in their huts――informed Brébœuf that they were themselves at deadly war with a fierce nation living on the west, which they called the Fire Nation, and described as so reckless of human life, that the French did not care to venture among them while so much still remained to be done around the Great Lakes.

Though so near on this occasion to the now world-famous Falls of Niagara, Brébœuf does not appear either to have heard of them or to have visited them. He collected, however, a good deal of information respecting the habits of the natives, which are embodied in the charming _Relations des Jesuites_, from which the greater part of our early knowledge of the Canadian Indians is derived. In the same year (1641) of this first visit to the Niagara River, two missionaries, named Charles Raymbault and Claude Pigart, made their way to Lake Nipissing――the most north-westerly point reached by Champlain ――arriving there just in time to witness a grand native ceremony in honor of the dead, which they describe as extremely imposing.

Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS.

Lake Nipissing was on this occasion almost covered with the canoes of the warriors, moving solemnly toward that point of the shore where the souls of the departed were to be fêted. Under a long, rough shed, in coffins of bark, wrapped in costly furs, lay the decaying bones of those who had gone to the other world; and over them a song, half of triumph, half of regret, was sung by the warriors, the women accompanying them with a wailing cry, full of unutterable melancholy.

Illustration: INDIAN BURIAL GROUND.

When these heathen rites were over, the Jesuit fathers, who, with that earnestness and thoroughness which characterized their whole body, had prepared themselves for their mission by the study of the Nipissing language and the Nipissing mode of thought, came forward and addressed the assembled multitudes. They spoke of the Saviour of the white man and of the red, who came back from the grave after laying down His life for all mankind: and so worked upon the already melting mood of the hardy warriors of the West, that they obtained permission to dwell on the shores of Lake Nipissing――nay, more, an eager invitation from some Chippeway guests to visit them in their own homes beyond Lake Superior.

The eagerness with which this opening was seized may be imagined. The Chippewayans, or Athabascas, one of the four families of the great Finnish nation, occupied that great lone land stretching away beyond the north-western banks of Hudson Bay, which has even yet not been fully explored. In those vast solitudes, though the missionaries knew it not, dwelt many a strange tribe, living out its destiny in unconscious simplicity. There roamed the Copper, the Horn Mountain, and the Beaver Indians; the Strong-bows, the Dog-ribs, the Hares, the Red Knives, the Sheep, the Sarsis, the Brushwood, the Nagailer, and the Rocky Mountain Indians, waiting the advent of the fur-trader, from whom they were to receive their distinctive appellations, and to whom they were to yield up the treasures of their deserts and of their mountain fastnesses.

Taking a Jesuit named Isaac Jogues, as his companion, and leaving Pigart to continue his work among the Nipissings, Raymbault started for the North-west, and, crossing Lake Huron in a native canoe, the voyage occupying seventeen days, he arrived safely at the mouth of the straits connecting it with Lake Superior, where two thousand natives were eagerly awaiting his arrival.

The point of land on Lake Superior where the white men first stepped ashore appears to have been near the rapid known as the Sault Ste. Marie, at the beginning of the river St. Mary, through which the waters of Lake Superior flow into Lake Huron; and it was probably within sight of the gray and red sandstone cliffs called the Pictured Rocks, which now look down upon the boundary-line between British America and the United States, that Father Raymbault took up his abode, to begin his ministrations among the Chippewayans. Unfortunately, however, his health began to fail him before he had been at work a year, and, after a farewell visit to the Nipissing converts, he retired to Quebec to die.

Jogues, meanwhile, on whom his superior’s mantle should naturally have fallen, was working out a very different mission; and though the Chippewayans were not forgotten, and we find Ste. Marie again a missionary station a few years later, it was the fierce Iroquois who were next to receive a Christian minister among them. Sent down the St. Lawrence on a message connected with Raymbault’s work, the second missionary, a friendly Huron chief named Ahasisteri, two young French laymen, and some twenty-six Hurons, fell into the hands of a party of Mohawks, who had long been eager for a feast of human flesh, and looked upon the whites and their escort as lawful prey. To quote the quaint Father who sent home an account of the matter, if peace could not be made with the Iroquois, no Frenchman would be safe from “finding a tomb in the stomachs of these savages.”

That Jogues this time escaped this awful fate was indeed little short of a miracle. He was marched with his companions in misfortune through three Mohawk villages; he saw Ahasisteri burned to death, and one of his own young Indian converts tomahawked for making the sign of the cross on a baby’s forehead; yet, for some reason unexplained, his own life was spared, and having managed to get away from his party, he wandered about in the woods, carving the name of Christ on the bark of the trees, till he came in sight of the Dutch fort at Albany, and was received by its commandant, Van Cuyler, having been the first white man to cross the northern half of the present state of New York.

From Albany, Jogues was unable to return direct to Canada, either by sea or by land, and he therefore took ship for England, whence, after suffering many things at the hands of Falmouth wreckers, he managed to get back to the land of his adoption. Here he found all the French stations in a state of horror-struck excitement, owing to the increasing hostility of the Iroquois. A Father Bressain, who had fallen into one of their ambushes, had seen his Huron comrades killed and eaten, and had himself been rescued only at the last moment by Dutch traders. Other horrors, too terrible to be related, had been inflicted on the native converts to Christianity, and in 1645 a solemn assembly of all the French authorities was held at Three Rivers, with a view to the negotiation of peace with the terrible enemy. After much private consultation among themselves, and many a picturesque palaver with the Indian sachems, who came to the meeting decked out in all their finery, the French were cheered by the conclusion of “eternal peace” with the Five Nations. This peace actually lasted a whole year, and at the end of that year seemed so little likely to be broken, that Jogues, in spite of all his previous sufferings, resolved to venture again to the south of the St. Lawrence, and try to win over some of the Iroquois to Christianity.

In June, 1646, we find the heroic Jesuit embarking on the Iroquois, now the Richelieu, escorted by four warriors of that nation and two young Algonquins, his object being to found a church among the Onondagas. He arrived safely at a little village at the head of a small sheet of water connected with Lake Champlain, called by the natives Andiatarocté, or the Gate of the Lake, to which he gave the name of St. Sacrement. After a short cruise on the “Gate,” and the presentation of gifts to the Iroquois chiefs and elders who happened to be assembled on its banks, Jogues returned to the St. Lawrence to report progress, and in September of the same year――this time accompanied by a young Frenchman――he once more visited the Iroquois, intending to settle among them and teach them Christianity.

All went well at first, but at the beginning of 1647 Jogues received instructions from his superiors to go to the Mohawk country, with a view to insuring peace with its savage warriors, who were showing signs of breaking the solemn treaty made at Three Rivers. The Jesuit obeyed, though he is reported to have said, “I shall go, but I shall never return.” He was right. He had scarcely set foot among the Mohawks, before he and his fellow-countryman were taken prisoners, charged with having blighted the corn and caused a famine. Stripped half naked, they were dragged into a neighboring village and there put to death. Not until long afterward did any details of the tragedy reach Quebec. A Mohawk prisoner, taken in a struggle with the French on the St. Lawrence, and condemned to death for his share in an ambush into which the white men and some of their Algonquin allies had fallen, confessed before his torture began that he had himself killed Jogues, and another member of his tribe the missionary’s companion.

No more vivid picture of the struggle between savagery and civilization in the early days of Canada could be conceived, than the account sent home by a Jesuit of the young Mohawk’s death. This Mohawk had told how he and another had invited Jogues to supper, and when he arrived in the half-naked state to which he had been reduced, a savage, who had hidden behind the door of the tent where supper was prepared, started out and struck off the head of the unsuspecting guest. The head was stuck on the palisades of the village, as a warning to all other Europeans, and on the following day that of the young French layman was placed beside it.

One would have thought that, after this frank acknowledgment of his own share in the murder, no mercy would have been shown to the Mohawk. But here the true character of the Jesuits came out. Die he still must, and that at the hands of the Algonquins, with all the subtle cruelties in which they were adepts; but there was no reason for him to die in his sins. The short time before the execution was to take place was devoted to converting him to Christianity; and just before he was given up to the native chief who was to preside at his death, he was baptized Isaac, in memory of the man he had helped to martyr. Poor Isaac is said to have cried again and again on our Saviour in his agony, and to have said, when dying, “I have to thank Antaiok” (so he called the Frenchman who had taken him prisoner) “that I am going to heaven; I am very glad.”

The murder of Jogues was the signal for another Indian war; and for a time the French missionaries and laymen alike were absorbed in the primary duty of the defense of their own lives and of those dear to them. Through all the tumult and confusion which ensued, however, the geographical student may, by eager searching, trace the continuous opening up of new districts, and on the blank map which was spread out before us when we began our narrative, we may ♦jot down the names of many a river and lake almost unconsciously discovered by the white men, in the very height of their struggle.

♦ ‘dot’ replaced with ‘jot’

The storm broke first on the village of St. Joseph, now almost entirely Christianized. The able-bodied members of the community were away at the chase; the women and children fell an easy prey to the Mohawk warriors. Father Daniel, the head of the mission, while administering the last rites of the church to the dying and the dead, fell at last beneath the poisoned arrows of the Iroquois, and was finally dispatched by a blow from a hatchet. Next St. Ignatius and then St. Louis were overpowered, and in the latter our old friend Brébœuf and his companion Sallemand met their death, the first after three, the second after seventeen hours of torture.

From St. Louis, the tide of invasion swept westward to Georgian Bay, where the Hurons had made a feeble effort to rally. Again they were defeated, and in their despair they sent a message by Father Dreuillette, a zealous missionary who had long been at work among the north-west tribes, to New England, with an entreaty for succor. But, as we shall presently see when we return to the colonies on the coast, the energies of the newly-formed federation were all required to meet the necessities of home defense, and no help came to the sufferers in the north. Dreuillette worked his way back by a new route to the St. Lawrence, that was all. Three years of almost constant massacres, in which many a noble death was met, alike by native converts and their teachers, were at last succeeded by a lull. The Iroquois were sated with bloodshed; or, as some of the French authorities tell us, their hearts had been touched by the teaching of some of their prisoners. In any case, peace was made in 1650, and it was scarcely concluded, before a missionary was ready to risk his life by making a fresh effort to convert the men at whose hands his brethren had already suffered so much.

A certain Father Le Moyne, who had been the envoy intrusted by the Hurons with the ratifications of peace, pitched his tent on the Mohawk River, and a little later an Italian priest named Dablon, and a French missionary named Chaumonot, settled at Onondaga, chief village of the tribe of the same name dwelling on the banks of the Oswego, a river of the modern state of New York flowing into Lake Ontario. Wonderful to relate, they not only escaped death, but were received with eager welcome. A chapel sprang up as if by magic, and Chaumonot soon found himself in a position to visit the Senecas, the most powerful of the Five Nations, who lived far away in the west of the present State of New York, on a lake named after them, which is connected with Lake Ontario by the rivers Oswego and Seneca. Here, as at Onondaga, the natives seemed glad to receive the good tidings of the Gospel; but, as they declined to interpret “peace on earth” beyond the limits of their own tribe, and persecuted their neighbors the Eries with reckless cruelty, their missionary soon found himself at issue with them.

Disputes now arose, and of a little body of fifty Frenchmen who had settled on the Oswego, thinking the days of the old horrors were over, several were murdered. This, of course, aroused the terror and indignation of the survivors, who were compelled to make their escape as best they could, reluctantly accompanied by the missionaries. So ended the second attempt at converting the Iroquois; but not all the good seed sown was lost, and now and again, afterward, some fierce warrior of the Five Nations gave touching proof that he had not forgot the teaching of the good white men.

Meanwhile, the work of the missionaries in opening up the districts about the Great Lakes was being largely supplemented by energetic fur-traders, and in 1656 two young Frenchmen, accompanied by a number of Ottawas, appeared at St. Louis, astonishing their countrymen in that now flourishing settlement by the accounts they gave of yet other inland seas far away in the West, and yet other native tribes, differing in almost every respect, alike from the Hurons, Algonquins, and the Iroquois.

Here was a new field for missionary effort, and Dreuillette, the unsuccessful messenger to Maine, and Gareau, a Huron missionary, were chosen to lead the way in this fresh spiritual campaign. Accompanied by some of the Ottawas already mentioned, they were ascending the Ottawa, when they were attacked by the Mohawks, and Gareau was killed. Dreuillette, however, escaped, and advanced into the present Ontario, making his way thence to the banks of the Saguenay, long since discovered by Cartier, whence he undertook several short trips to the North-east, of which, however, few details have been preserved, though they greatly paved the way for the advance of the fur-trade.

While Dreuillette was laboring in the North, René Mesnard, who had been one of the missionaries to the Iroquois, excited by the accounts given by two fur-traders, who had spent a winter on the banks of Lake Superior, started to found a church among the fierce Sioux, or Dacotahs, dwelling in those remote districts. He reached the southern shores of Lake Superior in the autumn of 1660, and in the spring of the following year began his journey toward the modern state of Minnesota, which lies between the south-western extremity of the great lake and the Dakota territory. Letters describing his progress were occasionally received at Quebec, but they suddenly ceased; and after much anxiety on his account, rumors were brought in by traders that he had become separated from his companions, and lost his way in the forests on the south of the Bay of Chagwamegan, and must have perished miserably. The event proved that they were right. Mesnard’s body was found in the forest by a native, who long concealed the fact, lest he should be accused of the murder of the white man. The cassock and breviary of Mesnard having, however, been preserved as amulets by the Sioux, led to inquiries being made, and the truth was discovered.

In 1665, a fresh impulse was given to missionary effort in Canada by the transference of the country to a new West Indian Company, under the direct patronage of Louis XIV., who, recognizing the importance of the rich fur-yielding districts of New France, sent out a regiment to protect the traders. True, about this time New Netherland was conquered by the English, who thus became very formidable rivals to the French; but the Iroquois still separated the two European nations, and yet a little longer the evil day of the loss of Canada was deferred.

The first hero to go forth under the new government was Father Allouez, who, following in the footsteps of Mesnard, arrived on the banks of Lake Superior early in September, 1666. Embarking on its waters in a native canoe, he reached the village of Chagwamegan, on the bay of the same name, where members of no less than ten different native races were assembled, discussing how best to prevent a threatened war between the Sioux and the Chippewas.

Scarcely pausing to rest after his long journey, Allouez advanced into the very midst of the dusky crowd, and, partly by promises of present help against the common enemy, partly by his eloquent description of the joys of eternity to the true believer, he quickly made many converts. He had, as it were, dropped down from the skies, straight from the home of the Good Spirit. He was invited to remain; and accepting the hospitality tendered to him, he founded the mission of St. Esprit, to which, in an incredibly short space of time, flocked Hurons and Ottawas, with members of distant western tribes whose very names had never before been heard of; the Potawatomies, or worshipers of the sun, the Illinois, the Sacs, the Foxes, and many another race, sinking their differences for a time in their common eagerness to share the good tidings of great joy which the white man was said to have brought.

Now, for the first time, were heard whispers of the existence, not very far away from St. Esprit, of the great Father of Waters, the Mesipi, which flowed on and on forever to the south between vast prairies, where roamed the buffalo and the deer, where forests were almost unknown, and the wind swept unchecked over the tall whispering grasses.

Convinced that, from all he heard, the people on the Mesipi were ripe for the reception of the Gospel, and little dreaming of the identity of this great river with that of which the mouth had been discovered by De Soto so many years before, Allouez paid a visit to Quebec in 1668 to win recruits to go forth into the prairies. As usual, there were plenty of volunteers. Three short days after his arrival at the capital he was on his way back to Chagwamegan, accompanied by Louis Nicholas, and followed by Claude Dablon and James Marquette, who, as a preliminary step for the work before them, founded the mission of St. Mary’s on the Falls, between Lakes Superior and Huron, close to the spot where the Chippewayans had had their first interview with a white man a few years previously.

From St. Mary’s, which shortly became a rendezvous for young men anxious to help in the great movement, small parties went forth among the tribes dwelling on Lake Michigan, founding new missions on the site of the present Chicago, Milwaukee, etc.; and in 1669, Marquette, who to the zeal of a missionary added that of a geographical explorer, conceived the idea of navigating the great river. The Potawatomies assured him that the natives who dwelt on the Father of Waters would assuredly slay him, or, if he escaped their hands, he would be swallowed up by the monsters which haunted the deep places in the river. The French authorities were loth to consent to what seemed likely to end in a mere useless loss of life; but Marquette was resolute. He turned the long delay, before he could get permission to start, to account by learning something of the Illinois language, and in founding a kind of city of refuge for the scattered Hurons on the northern shores of Lake Michigan, which long formed a “key to the West, and rendezvous to the distant Algonquins under the protection of the French.”

In 1670, leaving Allouez and Dablon to continue their explorations in Eastern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, Marquette at last started for the South, accompanied by Joliet, a trader from Quebec, five young Frenchmen eager for adventure, and two Algonquin guides. Crossing Green Bay in birch-bark canoes, the little band of explorers ascended the Fox river, flowing into Lake Michigan on the west, for some little distance, and then crossed the country to the Wisconsin, on the banks of which they were very kindly received by a number of old men belonging to the Kickapoo, Mascoutin, and other tribes.

Here the guides, afraid to enter the Sioux territories and to face the horrors of the unknown South, returned to their homes, and the Europeans embarked alone upon the Wisconsin, down which they paddled for several days, eagerly scanning the prairies on either side for the first traces of the wild tribes of whom they had heard. Not a sign of human life was seen, however, until they came to the junction of the Wisconsin with the Mississippi itself. They found the great river without difficulty, and, to quote Marquette’s own words, “they happily entered it with a joy that can not be expressed.”

Down the glorious river, between the modern States of Iowa and Illinois, the two little canoes now floated, till, about sixty leagues below the mouth of the Wisconsin, our heroes noticed the trail of men on the western bank of the Mississippi. Determined at once to learn something of the people of the newly-discovered districts, Marquette and Joliet hastened to land, and, crossing one of the beautiful prairies of Iowa, they soon came to a group of three villages, one on the bank of a river, and two on a hill a little distance off. The river was the Moingona, now called Des Moines.

Four old men now advanced from the village on the stream, bearing with them the calumet of peace, a tobacco pipe, with a reed stem some two or three feet in length, ornamented with many colored feathers. Already familiar with this sign of amity, the white men knew they had now nothing to fear. The villagers were _Illinois_, which is the Indian word for “men;” and men they quickly proved themselves to be. Conducted to the wigwam of an aged chief, the French explorers were plied with eager questions; and when they told of the breaking of the power of the Iroquois by the “great Captain of the French,” the assembled “men” greeted the announcement with shouts of joy. Then followed the usual instruction in the broad truths of Christianity, and again the “men” rejoiced, doubtless connecting in their simple untutored minds the two items of good news. A grand feast was held in honor of those who had brought them, and when it was over, the visitors were escorted to their canoes by the chief and hundreds of his followers.

With a peace-pipe, the parting gift of the Illinois, hung round his neck as a charm against future dangers, Marquette continued his course, which now led him between the present States of Missouri and Illinois, among the weird perpendicular rocks forming so characteristic a feature of this part of the country, till he came to the junction of the Mississippi with its mighty and turbulent affluent, the Missouri, where the city of St. Louis now stands.

Illustration: THE MISSISSIPPI AT ST. LOUIS. (1885.)

Overwhelmed with delight at the beauty of the scene before him, Marquette could hardly refrain from entering the Missouri then and there, to trace it to its source; but curbing his ardor――to be, as he vainly hoped, indulged at some future time――he continued his course down the now greatly augmented Mississippi, passing its junction with the Wabash or Ohio, and the homes of the peaceful Shawanees, till, with Tennessee on one hand and Arkansas on the other, he approached the most northerly limit reached by De Soto. There could be no doubt now of the identity of the Father of Waters with the Miche Sepe to which the Spanish hero had been led with the remnant of his forces by his Chickasaw guides; and Marquette felt that his work was practically done. He determined, however, to enter the land of the Arkansas, and reached the village of the Mitchigamea (N. lat. 33°), where, for the first time on this wonderful trip, the natives came out against him with hostile intentions. Armed with bows and arrows, clubs, etc., the Arkansas warriors closed round the little birch-bark canoes in their own larger vessels, and it seemed for a moment as if the fate of the intruders was sealed; but, rising up among the gesticulating crowds, Marquette held his calumet aloft, and, as if by magic, the weapons sunk, and the yells of rage were converted into shouts of welcome.

Illustration: MOUTH OF THE OHIO RIVER.

On the following day, Marquette and his people were escorted, by the very men who had been so eager for their blood, to the village of Arkansea, and here, having learned that the Father of Waters pursued its course in a south-easterly direction to the Gulf of Mexico, our hero resolved to turn back. The return voyage up the Mississippi was little more than a repetition of the descent, till its junction with the Illinois was reached, when the canoes were embarked on the waters of the latter river, and a new land, consisting chiefly of extensive and fertile prairies, was entered. The men of Eastern Illinois showed themselves true brethren of the members of their tribe who had so hospitably received the French on the western side of the great river, and the explorers, after resisting all entreaties to take up their abode on the Illinois, were escorted in a north-easterly direction to Lake Michigan by way of Chicago, and arrived safely on the northern shores of Lake Michigan, after an absence of about two years.

A little later, Marquette went as a missionary to northern Illinois; and after converting many of the Indians about Chicago to the faith, he started for north-eastern Michigan, intending to found a mission there. Having set up an altar on the little river bearing his name, he asked his guides to leave him alone for a short time, and when they returned to seek him, he was found dead. He was buried in the sand near the town called after him, and is still revered by the natives and settlers of the Lake districts, many of whom are said to invoke the aid of St. Marquette when in danger in their frail canoes.

While Marquette’s career was thus cut short before he had even begun the realization of his dream of ascending the Missouri, the work he had commenced on the Mississippi was carried on by a man of a very different character. On his way back to Quebec, from his trip with Marquette, Joliet became acquainted with Robert Cavalier de la Salle, Governor of Frontenac, now Kingston, a French outpost on Lake Ontario, who had already made himself thoroughly acquainted with the immediate neighborhood. Fired by what he heard from Joliet, La Salle resolved to obtain permission from the King of France to go down the Mississippi, and open a trade in buffalo-hides with the Indians of the South. He hastened to France, and returned the same year, accompanied by an Italian soldier named Tonti, and provided with full powers from his sovereign.

The adventurers――with Father Hennepin, who accompanied them as missionary, and some sixty followers, including boatmen, hunters, and soldiers――began their journey, in the autumn of 1678, in a canoe built under La Salle’s direction at Kingston, which carried them safely down the Niagara river and across Lake Erie to Fonawauta Creek, near the Falls at the southern extremity of the lake. Here some months were spent in cultivating the friendship of the Senecas and constructing a little sailing vessel of sixty tons, to which the name of the _Griffin_ was given. The _Griffin_ was successfully launched on Lake Erie on the 7th August, 1679, and entering the narrow strait called Detroit, on which the city of the same name now stands, she rapidly carried the expedition into Lake Huron, and thence through the Straits of Mackinaw to Lake Michigan, on the north-eastern shores of which a little colony was planted.

Lake Michigan was now traversed, and, landing on the shores of Green Bay, La Salle made what turned out to be the fatal mistake of sending the _Griffin_ back to Niagara laden with furs, with orders for her captain to return with provisions with as little delay as possible. The _Griffin_, alas! went down with all on board before Niagara was reached; and, ignorant of her fate, La Salle, Tonti, Hennepin, and a few followers went down Lake Michigan to St. Joseph, on the south-eastern shores, whence they made many interesting excursions into Illinois, discovering Lake Peoria, and winning many friends, alike among the Illinois and the Miamis of Michigan.

As time went on, however, and no tidings came of the ill-fated _Griffin_, which had been constructed at the cost of so much time and labor, the spirits of the party began to sink――a fact to which the name of Crevecœur, given to a fort built near Lake Peoria, bore striking witness. After many a consultation as to the best course to pursue, it was resolved that La Salle should return to Frontenac to obtain news and supplies, and that, during his absence, Tonti and Hennepin should remain at Crevecœur with the greater number of the followers.

Tonti, though deserted by most of his men as soon as their leader’s back was turned, remained bravely at his post, until he was compelled to flee to Lake Michigan by an incursion of the Iroquois; while Hennepin, with two companions, descended the Illinois to its junction with the Mississippi, which he ascended till he reached the beautiful fall in N. lat. 45°, between the modern states of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and to which he gave the name of St. Anthony, after his patron saint. From the Falls, Hennepin made several excursions among the Sioux, by whom he was for some little time held captive; but, escaping from their hands unhurt, he returned to Green Bay by way of Wisconsin, and thence to Quebec.

Meanwhile, La Salle, on his arrival at Frontenac, found that he had been long supposed to be dead――that his creditors had seized his property――and that his good ship _Griffin_ had never reached Niagara. Cast down, but not in despair, at this accumulation of troubles, he succeeded in again collecting men and stores and rigging for a new vessel, with which he hastened back to Crevecœur, to find it, as we know, deserted. He ascertained, however, that Tonti was living among the ♦Potawatomies on Lake Michigan, and having erected a new fort some miles south of Crevecœur, which he called St. Louis, he rejoined his old comrade, and easily persuaded him to start on a fresh journey of discovery. Together the two heroes returned to the Illinois, and rapidly building a second vessel, they sailed in it, in 1682, on a voyage fruitful of the best results. Launched on the Illinois, the little bark floated without accident to its junction with the Father of Rivers, and thence on the broad waters of the parent stream, past the mouth of the Missouri, between Tennessee and Arkansas, and again between Arkansas and Mississippi, beyond the most southerly point reached by Marquette, past the spot where De Soto’s body was committed to the deep, until at last the final home of the Mississippi and its many tributaries was reached, and Frenchmen stood once more on the northern shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

♦ ‘Potawatamies’ replaced with ‘Potawatomies’

Having set up the arms of France in the low alluvial plains overlooking the gulf, and named the whole district Louisiana in honor of the French monarch, La Salle retraced his steps, and hastening to France with the good news of his successful trip, he was shortly placed in command of an important expedition for the colonization of newly-discovered districts.

Full of wild hopes of the great things he was now to achieve, La Salle sent a message to his old friend Tonti, begging him to meet him at the mouth of the Mississippi; but alas! the latter appeared alone at the rendezvous. Accompanied by twenty Canadians and thirty Indians, Tonti paddled down the now familiar Mississippi from Fort St. Louis with little difficulty, and awaited the coming of his old commander near the site of the present New Orleans. Day after day, week after week passed on, and no La Salle appeared. The four vessels bearing his little company of 280 persons, including two young relatives of the commander, named Cavalier and Moranget, were tossing about in the Gulf of Mexico, unable to make the land. La Salle, who believed he could have acted as pilot with the best results, was thwarted at every turn by Beaujeu, the admiral of the fleet, who, after passing between Florida and Cuba, insisted on maintaining a western course till he came to the Bay of Matagorda, in Texas.

Recognizing no landmarks, La Salle entreated Beaujeu not to disembark the forces without some further exploration of the coast; but he was unheeded. The boats were lowered, and the colonists were put on shore. The wrecking of the store-ship was the first disaster to overtake them; it was followed, as a necessary result, by famine and discontent, and in the midst of the confusion some Indians surprised the new-comers, and murdered two of them.

In this terrible crisis Beaujeu at last yielded to the superior experience of La Salle, who, restored to the command, had a fort constructed out of the wreck of the store-ship, and, leaving 230 persons in it, he started with sixteen picked men to try and find the Mississippi. His search was unsuccessful, and, fearing that the colony would suffer on the low lands by the bay, La Salle returned to the fort and superintended its removal to a hill near by, to which he gave the name of St. Louis, claiming the whole of the surrounding country as the property of the King of France.

The fort strengthened by outposts, the colonists cheered by brighter prospects, La Salle now again ventured to go on a quest for the Mississippi and the faithful Tonti, only to return four months later in rags. Again and again the same thing was repeated. Far away from the alluvial coast region, to the cross-timbers or wooded lands and prairies of Eastern Texas, and into the mountain districts of New Mexico in the West, tenanted by the Navajoes, Apaches, Utahs, Comanches, and other wild predatory tribes, the unsuccessful explorer led his few faithful followers, until at last he was compelled to give up all hope of finding the great river connected with so many hopes. He returned for the last time to Fort St. Louis to find it almost in ruins, and of the 230 colonists only thirty-six still alive, dissensions among themselves and famine having been the chief causes of this terrible state of things.

It was evidently useless to remain longer on the coast, and La Salle now came to the desperate resolution of making his way back to Canada on foot. With sixteen companions, he started for the work, supporting himself and his party by hunting the wild animals of the prairie; and but for treachery, among his followers, he would probably have lived to tell the tale of a journey of which every stage was full of the most thrilling adventure. As it was, however, the wanderers had not proceeded very far before La Salle’s nephew, Moranget, was murdered by two men named Dubaut and L’Archeveque, who had long cherished bitter feelings against the family, in whose enterprise they had embarked all their capital. La Salle, coming up soon after Moranget’s death, and missing him from among the party, put the simple question, “Where is my nephew?” The only reply was a loud report from the gun of Dubaut, and La Salle fell dead at his feet. His body and Moranget’s were stripped, and left on the prairie to be devoured by eagles and wild beasts, while the murderers calmly pursued their way. It is with little regret that we add that they were shortly afterward themselves slain by Indians, and that of the original party, seven only――fourteen long years after the starting of the original expedition――reached Arkansea, on the Mississippi, where they were kindly received by the Indians, who gave them a letter from Tonti to La Salle, which had been left with them when the former, having given up all hope of the arrival of his friend, had returned to the lakes of Canada.

Illustration: ASSASSINATION OF LA SALLE.

While La Salle was vainly struggling to accomplish the end for which he had sailed to Louisiana, the French were not idle in the North. In the rich peltries of the far West the fur-traders found a source of wealth rivaling even the mines of the South, and a class of men――unique alike in their manners and their experiences――sprang up, as it were, in the heart of the wilderness, to whom the name of _coureurs des bois_ was given. These rangers of the woods seem to have left behind them the European prejudice against the natives, and in their wild expeditions in remote tracts, and among distant tribes, they adopted the Indian mode of dress, contracted marriages with “squaws,” and brought up their half-caste children to lead a life differing but slightly, if at all, from that of their mothers’ relations. The usual result followed: the natives copied the vices of their visitors without their virtues, and but for the missionaries, who settled wherever there seemed to be a hope of winning even a few souls to God, natives and settlers would have been involved in one common ruin, alike of body and soul.

Little by little the traders and missionaries penetrated as far north as Hudson’s Bay, and as far west as the Saskatchewan, the shores of which were dotted with trading houses and chapels long before its very name was heard in Europe. Unfortunately, however, neither the seekers after souls nor the hunters of peltries were men to talk much of their exploits, and though fiction has drawn largely from life in the far West in these early days for thrilling situations, little is known of the facts of the first intercourse of the white man with the various races of the great western hyperborean group of nations. Not until the powerful rival of the French in the West, the Hudson’s Bay Company――of the growth of which particulars are given elsewhere――had sent forth its heroes on expeditions which were something more than trading excursions, did the first volumes appear of that extensive and fascinating literature of western travel from which the latter part of our narrative will be culled.

To atone for the reticence of the fur-trader and missionary in the far North-west, traveler after traveler succeeded Marquette and La Salle in exploring the great lakes of Canada and the shores of the Mississippi. Of these, one of the chief was Baron La Hontan, who, starting from Lake Michigan, went down the Wisconsin to the Mississippi, and is supposed to have very nearly approached the settlements of the Spanish New Mexico. In any case, he heard from some Indians, whom he called the Guaczitares――a name we altogether fail to recognize as that of any known tribe――of the existence of white men in the South; and, what was perhaps of more importance, he learned from some visitors to the Guaczitares that they came from a country beyond which lay high ♦mountains, only to be crossed with great difficulty, but that those who had crossed them had reached a big salt lake 300 leagues round, and with a wide opening to the south. From the mountains one great river flowed into the lake, and another eastward to the Miche Sepe. The big salt lake was probably that part of the sea now known as Queen Charlotte’s Sound, the river flowing into it the Columbia, and the mountain range the Rocky Mountains.

♦ ‘moutains’ replaced with ‘mountains’

On his return journey, La Hontan descended a river supposed to have been the second alluded to by the Indians, which brought him in five weeks to the Mississippi, ascending which he came to the port of Crevecœur, then still under the command of Tonti, so that he may be said in some sense to have bridged over the gap between the two expeditions of La Salle. With his name must be associated, however, that of Father Charlevoix, the well-known historian of New France, who made what may be called the grand tour of inland America, passing up the St. Lawrence, through the lakes, and then down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, meeting with few adventures on the way, but collecting vast stores of information respecting the manners and customs of the natives, and doing much to shake the narrow view hitherto entertained, alike of the extent and importance of the lands on the west of the Mississippi.