The White and the Gold (60 page)

He had much bad news to tell. His brother, the Montreal Sulpician, had ordered all the pelts stored at Fort Frontenac to be seized and sold at auction in Quebec. Of the amount realized, which was considerable, La Salle himself had been allowed only 14,990 livres. François Plet, maker of loans at 40 per cent interest, had come over from France to protect his investment and had located himself at Fort Frontenac, where he was watching everything that happened with what might be termed a 40-per-cent eye. This last item of news did not seem to disturb La Salle very much. He liked Plet, even though the latter had cheated him in the sale of a cheap grade of cloth at an exorbitant price. The material was so shoddy that it became a byword in the colony, being called “Iroquois cloth.” Other creditors in the colony were clamoring for dividends—among them Migeon de Branssat, Giton, and Peloquin.

What course should they follow now? The indomitable La Salle declared that they must go on. They had the
Griffin
, they had food in the hold, they had a stout crew. They had nothing to lose but their debts.

There has never been a story to excel that of La Salle. It was adventure piled on adventure, misfortune added to misfortune, curious quirk imposed on twist of malign circumstance. It was a tale in which stout friends and unrelenting enemies played their parts, an epic of cruelty and suffering and privation. Through it all La Salle displayed a grim determination to succeed in spite of everything and a courage which at times strains credulity and defies comparison.

When the
Griffin
reached the head of the Lakes, the La Salle party found themselves balked at every turn by open opposition. The Jesuits, who had come to distrust and even hate Frontenac, regarded this partner and favorite of the governor with an equal degree of resentment. Even the Indians had been poisoned against him in advance. In spite of the suspicion they encountered at every step, La Salle and his companions threw themselves into the fur trading with so much success that the hold of the
Griffin
became filled with prize pelts. La Salle decided then to send the ship back so that the cargo could be used to pay off the most pressing of his debts.

After the departure of the
Griffin
with its vital cargo the explorer took various steps in preparation for the main effort. He made himself familiar with the course of the Illinois and at a strategic point near what is now Peoria he built a strong post and called it Fort Crèvecoeur. The construction of a new ship to be used in the navigation of the Mississippi was begun. Father Hennepin was sent off with two companions to follow the Illinois to its source.

In the meantime disturbing rumors began to percolate down from Michilimackinac and Green Bay to the effect that the
Griffin
had been lost with all on board. Leaving Tonty in charge at Fort Crèvecoeur, La Salle set out on foot with a few companions only to discover what had happened.

This reckless journey proved to be a long series of adventures. He reached his headquarters at Fort Frontenac finally with one distressing fact established: the
Griffin
had vanished; no one knew where or when or how. Obviously it had foundered on its way down from the head of the Lakes and the crew had been lost. The only other explanation was that it had been scuttled by the malice of his enemies and all trace of it skillfully covered up. The first seems to
have been the truth, although it took nearly three hundred years for the fate of the vessel to be determined. Less than a quarter of a century ago six skeletons were found in a cave on a Lake Huron island. The crew of the
Griffin
had consisted of Pilot Luc as master, four sailors, and a boy; as further proof the hull of a ship was found nearby at the bottom of the lake. This evidence seems to be reasonably conclusive.

When La Salle reached Fort Frontenac there was news of other disasters to greet him. A ship coming out from France had been wrecked in the St. Lawrence and everything it held, including supplies for his use to the value of 22,000 livres, had been lost. The supply depot he had left on the Niagara had been broken open and rifled. The final blow which this seventeenth-century Job was called upon to bear was news from the West that most of the men under Tonty at Fort Crèvecoeur had mutinied. They had destroyed the fort and carried off all the goods which had been stored there. The mutineers, it developed, were on their way east and were planning to attack and destroy Fort Frontenac. They had even announced their purpose of killing La Salle himself to prevent any reprisals on his part. La Salle resolved the last menace by waylaying the mutineers. Two of them were killed and the rest were made prisoners.

The great explorer now faced difficulties which seemed insurmountable. The arrangements made in the West for the proposed expedition down the Mississippi had been nullified by the mutiny. His supply depots had been wiped out, his main base at Fort Crèvecoeur had been burned to the ground, his men had scattered. His creditors and ill-wishers were either exulting over his misfortunes or clamoring for their money. All he could hope for was to find the hull of the unfinished vessel on the Illinois and to meet with the ever-reliable Tonty.

Somehow he overcame all these difficulties. He placated his creditors by sheer vigor of argument. He secured from unstated sources the funds to provide for a new start. He gathered together a party of twenty-five men and on the tenth of August, 1680, he started off again.

La Salle reached the Illinois country on the heels of a major tragedy. The Illinois Indians had been scattered, their great city on
the river (it was spoken of as a city because of the density of its population) had been destroyed with a fury which passes belief. Only blackened ruins and mutilated bodies remained where once this teeming community of friendly aborigines had stood. The silence of death and desolation reigned over that once fruitful countryside.

The perpetrators of this unprovoked attack had been the Iroquois. After wiping out the Cat People and the Andastes, the
Ongue Honwe
had been left without a purpose; no foes to overcome, no new worlds to conquer. This was a situation which the fierce warriors of the Long House could not abide. They were men of the conqueror breed, like the fighting armies from the heart of Asia which had come so often on their irresistible way to shake the very pillars of civilization. The leaders had cast their eyes on the West, where the Illinois lived in peace and prosperity. Distance held no terrors for these indomitable men.

It seems possible that the selection of the Illinois as the next victims was due to the friendship they had displayed from the start for the white men. Back of the ceaseless war-making of the Five Nations was hate of the interlopers, these men of white skin with their superior weapons who had come to steal the land from its rightful owners. The thought may have been expressed in the council house at Onondaga that to destroy the Illinois would be to serve notice on all men of red skin: make no peace with these grasping strangers who come in the guise of gods but with conquest in their hearts, or feel the might of the Five Nations.

La Salle’s arrival followed soon after the departure of the triumphant Iroquois. There was something strange and macabre about the sight that greeted him. The Iroquois, as he learned later, had found the great canton practically deserted. They killed the few old people who had lacked the strength to flee and then, for fuller measure, dug up the graveyards and disinterred the moldering bones of the dead. From the burial scaffolds they tore down the bodies of the recently deceased. These grisly trophies had been mutilated with incredible savagery. The skulls of the long dead had been nailed to the tops of charred stakes, to stare with empty sockets at this sudden terror which was robbing the grave of its sanctuary.

Not a living soul was encountered in the wide district where the fury of the conquering bands had been vented. Where was Tonty? Had he and his few faithful followers been among the victims of the
murderous onslaught? If this proved true, it would be for La Salle the final blow, the one loss for which there could be no compensation.

But Tonty was not dead. He had striven fearlessly to act as mediator between the Illinois and the invading hordes and had been close to death on several occasions. The Illinois had been filled with suspicion, conceiving the idea that this iron-handed man had been sent ahead by the Iroquois to spy out the land. While still convinced of this, they seized the supplies of the Frenchmen and even destroyed the forge and tools to which Tonty had clung in the hope of using them in the construction of the new ship. His efforts to avert a clash failing, he fought bravely with the Illinois and survived by luck which verged on the miraculous. He found his way back finally to Michilimackinac.

La Salle perceived at once the need to defend this beautiful and fruitful country against further aggression, and to that end he called a meeting of the tribes thereabouts. With all of his usual eloquence he succeeded in persuading them to lay aside their intertribal feuds and join in the common cause. The leaders of the assembled tribesmen seconded his efforts, professing the utmost confidence in him. “We make you the master of our beaver and our lands, of our minds and our bodies!” they cried. The tribes thus cemented into an alliance included what was left of the unfortunate Illinois, the Shawnees, the Miamis, the Mascoutins, and even some fragments of eastern tribes who had fled westward to escape the enmity of the Iroquois.

Having thus created a measure of defense against further attack, La Salle journeyed north to Michilimackinac. There, to his great joy, he found Tonty and what was left of his party.

Everything had gone wrong with La Salle up to this point, and the usually resolute leader had been sunk deep in despair. Finding the Man with the Iron Hand alive was sufficient to balance the scales. With Tonty beside him he felt that he could face the future with confidence. With the armor of his faith refurbished and shining brightly again, he returned to Fort Frontenac to start over again.

It seems necessary at this point to pause for reflection on the extraordinary course La Salle was following. At every stage of his adventures the courage and determination of this man shine in conspicuous splendor. No more daring human being, surely, ever lived. He was impervious to disappointment, immune to the shafts of ill fortune. This must be conceded. But what of him as an organizer?
The regularity with which his plans fell apart could not have been due always to bad luck.

It has already been said that he had a genius for making enemies. They sprang up wherever he went. This could not have been due entirely to the machinations of the Jesuits who feared and hated him. It was the iron quality of the man himself which set so many to working against him; his willingness to ride roughshod over everything.

Unquestionably there was lack of care and foresight in his planning. Why otherwise would it have been necessary for him to halt so often and take those interminable journeys back to his base in the face of desperate weather and always in personal jeopardy?

By way of contrast there was no fuss, no delay, no turning back on the part of Marquette and Joliet. That unpretentious pair had quietly loaded two canoes and set off on their mission.

In fairness to La Salle, however, it must be assumed that he had more than exploration on his mind. It would not be enough to trace out the course of the Mississippi. That river and the rolling lands lying back of it must be claimed for France and the first steps taken to plant the fleur-de-lis firmly on its banks.

It was late in the fall of 1681 that the expedition started which was to crown the long series of failures with the shining chaplet of success. La Salle, who never seemed to fail in what might be termed the promotional aspects of his plans, had smoothed away his financial difficulties. He had even secured fresh backing from a source which must have seemed the least likely of all: from the shrewd François Plet himself. That hard-bitten investor, Cousin Plet, was doing what the cautious man so often does when he has once made a rash investment: he was throwing good money after bad. La Salle made a will in his favor, it is true, but as clever a man as Plet might have suspected that what the explorer would have to leave would resemble nothing so much as a wheel of cheese in which a family of mice had spent the winter. By wile and perhaps by guile La Salle had found all the supplies he would need and had hired an ample party of men.

There were a dozen canoes in the long line which took to the water at Green Bay. In the party were twenty-three Frenchmen,
eighteen Indians of the Abnaki and Mohegan tribes, ten squaws, and three children. La Salle could not cut down to the levels of efficiency and easy subsistence; he must travel in state, with his helpers and vassals about him. The Sire de Beaujeu, who will appear on later pages, expressed it this way: “He is a man who wants smoke.”

The weather was good, the men were in good spirits, all the portents were favorable. In this spirit of confidence they crossed the Chicago River, reached and passed the Illinois, left Lake Peoria behind them. On February 6 they sighted for the first time the broad surface of the mighty Mississippi.

An early spring was vouchsafed to help and encourage them. There was softness in the air when they passed the junction point where the brown and sluggish Missouri swelled the volume of the parent stream. A month later they reached the Arkansas, and the promise of summer was all about them. The trees were green, the songs of awakened nature came from the woods, flocks of migratory birds filled the skies.

The most interesting of their adventures was a visit to what seemed a new civilization, the main town of the Taensas. It consisted of dwellings of baked mud with rounded domes, grouped in circular form about the temple of the tribe and the house of the venerable chief. The Taensas were sun worshipers, a form of religion new to the Frenchmen. This was their first contact with the customs which had crept north from the lands of the Aztec. A perpetual fire burned in the temple, and there was a niche on which no eyes rested save those of the priests and in which the wealth of the tribe and their prized relics were kept. The rites practiced were cruel, including human sacrifice.