CHAPTER XXI.
1682, 1683.
ST. LOUIS OF THE ILLINOIS.
Louisiana.--Illness of La Salle: his Colony on the Illinois.--Fort
St. Louis.--Recall of Frontenac.--Le Febvre de la Barre.--Critical
Position of la Salle.--Hostility Of the New Governor.--Triumph of
the Adverse Faction.--La Salle sails for France.
Louisiana was the name bestowed by La Salle on the new domain of the
French crown. The rule of the Bourbons in the West is a memory of the
past, but the name of the Great King still survives in a narrow corner
of their lost empire. The Louisiana of to-day is but a single State of
the American republic. The Louisiana of La Salle stretched from the
Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains; from the Rio Grande and the Gulf to
the farthest springs of the Missouri.[245]
La Salle had written his name in history; but his hard-earned success
was but the prelude of a harder task. Herculean labors lay before him,
if he would realize the schemes with which his brain was pregnant. Bent
on accomplishing them, he retraced his course, and urged his canoes
upward against the muddy current. The party were famished. They had
little to subsist on but the flesh of alligators. When they reached the
Quinipissas, who had proved hostile on their way down, they resolved to
risk an interview with them, in the hope of obtaining food. The
treacherous savages dissembled, brought them corn, and on the following
night made an attack upon them, but met with a bloody repulse. The party
next revisited the Coroas, and found an unfavorable change in their
disposition towards them. They feasted them, indeed, but during the
repast surrounded them with an overwhelming force of warriors. The
French, however, kept so well on their guard, that their entertainers
dared not make an attack, and suffered them to depart unmolested.[246]
[Sidenote: ILLNESS OF LA SALLE.]
And now, in a career of unwonted success and anticipated triumph, La
Salle was arrested by a foe against which the boldest heart avails
nothing. As he ascended the Mississippi, he was seized by a dangerous
illness. Unable to proceed, he sent forward Tonty to Michilimackinac,
whence, after despatching news of their discovery to Canada, he was to
return to the Illinois. La Salle himself lay helpless at Fort Prudhomme,
the palisade work which his men had built at the Chickasaw Bluffs on
their way down. Father Zenobe Membré attended him; and at the end of
July he was once more in a condition to advance by slow movements
towards Fort Miami, which he reached in about a month.
In September he rejoined Tonty at Michilimackinac, and in the following
month wrote to a friend in France: "Though my discovery is made, and I
have descended the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, I cannot send you
this year either an account of my journey or a map. On the way back I
was attacked by a deadly disease, which kept me in danger of my life for
forty days, and left me so weak that I could think of nothing for four
months after. I have hardly strength enough now to write my letters, and
the season is so far advanced that I cannot detain a single day this
canoe which I send expressly to carry them. If I had not feared being
forced to winter on the way, I should have tried to get to Quebec to
meet the new governor, if it is true that we are to have one; but in my
present condition this would be an act of suicide, on account of the bad
nourishment I should have all winter in case the snow and ice stopped me
on the way. Besides, my presence is absolutely necessary in the place to
which I am going. I pray you, my dear sir, to give me once more all the
help you can. I have great enemies, who have succeeded in all they have
undertaken. I do not pretend to resist them, but only to justify myself,
so that I can pursue by sea the plans I have begun here by land."
This was what he had proposed to himself from the first; that is, to
abandon the difficult access through Canada, beset with enemies, and
open a way to his western domain through the Gulf and the Mississippi.
This was the aim of all his toilsome explorations. Could he have
accomplished his first intention of building a vessel on the Illinois
and descending in her to the Gulf, he would have been able to defray in
good measure the costs of the enterprise by means of the furs and
buffalo-hides collected on the way and carried in her to France. With a
fleet of canoes, this was impossible; and there was nothing to offset
the enormous outlay which he and his associates had made. He meant, as
we have seen, to found on the banks of the Illinois a colony of French
and Indians to answer the double purpose of a bulwark against the
Iroquois and a place of storage for the furs of all the western tribes;
and he hoped in the following year to secure an outlet for this colony
and for all the trade of the valley of the Mississippi, by occupying the
mouth of that river with a fort and another colony. This, too, was an
essential part of his original design.
But for his illness, he would have gone to France to provide for its
execution. Meanwhile, he ordered Tonty to collect as many men as
possible, and begin the projected colony on the banks of the Illinois. A
report soon after reached him that those pests of the wilderness the
Iroquois were about to renew their attacks on the western tribes. This
would be fatal to his plans; and, following Tonty to the Illinois, he
rejoined him near the site of the great town.
[Sidenote: "STARVED ROCK."]
The cliff called "Starved Rock," now pointed out to travellers as the
chief natural curiosity of the region, rises, steep on three sides as a
castle wall, to the height of a hundred and twenty-five feet above the
river. In front, it overhangs the water that washes its base; its
western brow looks down on the tops of the forest trees below; and on
the east lies a wide gorge or ravine, choked with the mingled foliage of
oaks, walnuts, and elms; while in its rocky depths a little brook creeps
down to mingle with the river. From the trunk of the stunted cedar that
leans forward from the brink, you may drop a plummet into the river
below, where the cat-fish and the turtles may plainly be seen gliding
over the wrinkled sands of the clear and shallow current. The cliff is
accessible only from behind, where a man may climb up, not without
difficulty, by a steep and narrow passage. The top is about an acre in
extent. Here, in the month of December, La Salle and Tonty began to
intrench themselves. They cut away the forest that crowned the rock,
built store-houses and dwellings of its remains, dragged timber up the
rugged pathway, and encircled the summit with a palisade.[247]
[Sidenote: LA SALLE'S COLONY.]
[Illustration: LA SALLE'S COLONY
on the Illinois,
FROM THE MAP OF
FRANQUELIN,
1684]
Thus the winter passed, and meanwhile the work of negotiation went
prosperously on. The minds of the Indians had been already prepared. In
La Salle they saw their champion against the Iroquois, the standing
terror of all this region. They gathered round his stronghold like the
timorous peasantry of the middle ages around the rock-built castle of
their feudal lord. From the wooden ramparts of St. Louis,--for so he
named his fort,--high and inaccessible as an eagle's nest, a strange
scene lay before his eye. The broad, flat valley of the Illinois was
spread beneath him like a map, bounded in the distance by its low wall
of woody hills. The river wound at his feet in devious channels among
islands bordered with lofty trees; then, far on the left, flowed calmly
westward through the vast meadows, till its glimmering blue ribbon was
lost in hazy distance.
There had been a time, and that not remote, when these fair meadows were
a waste of death and desolation, scathed with fire, and strewn with the
ghastly relics of an Iroquois victory. Now all was changed. La Salle
looked down from his rock on a concourse of wild human life. Lodges of
bark and rushes, or cabins of logs, were clustered on the open plain or
along the edges of the bordering forests. Squaws labored, warriors
lounged in the sun, naked children whooped and gambolled on the grass.
Beyond the river, a mile and a half on the left, the banks were studded
once more with the lodges of the Illinois, who, to the number of six
thousand, had returned, since their defeat, to this their favorite
dwelling-place. Scattered along the valley, among the adjacent hills,
or over the neighboring prairie, were the cantonments of a half-score of
other tribes and fragments of tribes, gathered under the protecting ægis
of the French,--Shawanoes from the Ohio, Abenakis from Maine, Miamis
from the sources of the Kankakee, with others whose barbarous names are
hardly worth the record.[248] Nor were these La Salle's only
dependants. By the terms of his patent, he held seigniorial rights over
this wild domain; and he now began to grant it out in parcels to his
followers. These, however, were as yet but a score,--a lawless band,
trained in forest license, and marrying, as their detractors affirm, a
new squaw every day in the week. This was after their lord's departure,
for his presence imposed a check on these eccentricities.
La Salle, in a memoir addressed to the Minister of the Marine, reports
the total number of the Indians around Fort St. Louis at about four
thousand warriors, or twenty thousand souls. His diplomacy had been
crowned with a marvellous success,--for which his thanks were due, first
to the Iroquois, and the universal terror they inspired; next, to his
own address and unwearied energy. His colony had sprung up, as it were,
in a night; but might not a night suffice to disperse it?
The conditions of maintaining it were twofold: first, he must give
efficient aid to his savage colonists against the Iroquois; secondly, he
must supply them with French goods in exchange for their furs. The men,
arms, and ammunition for their defence, and the goods for trading with
them, must be brought from Canada, until a better and surer avenue of
supply could be provided through the entrepôt which he meant to
establish at the mouth of the Mississippi. Canada was full of his
enemies; but as long as Count Frontenac was in power, he was sure of
support. Count Frontenac was in power no longer. He had been recalled to
France through the intrigues of the party adverse to La Salle; and Le
Febvre de la Barre reigned in his stead.
[Sidenote: LA SALLE AND LA BARRE.]
La Barre was an old naval officer of rank, advanced to a post for which
he proved himself notably unfit. If he was without the arbitrary
passions which had been the chief occasion of the recall of his
predecessor, he was no less without his energies and his talents. He
showed a weakness and an avarice for which his age may have been in some
measure answerable. He was no whit less unscrupulous than his
predecessor in his secret violation of the royal ordinances regulating
the fur-trade, which it was his duty to enforce. Like Frontenac, he took
advantage of his position to carry on an illicit traffic with the
Indians; but it was with different associates. The late governor's
friends were the new governor's enemies; and La Salle, armed with his
monopolies, was the object of his especial jealousy.[249]
Meanwhile, La Salle, buried in the western wilderness, remained for the
time ignorant of La Barre's disposition towards him, and made an effort
to secure his good-will and countenance. He wrote to him from his rock
of St. Louis, early in the spring of 1683, expressing the hope that he
should have from him the same support as from Count Frontenac;
"although," he says, "my enemies will try to influence you against me."
His attachment to Frontenac, he pursues, has been the cause of all the
late governor's enemies turning against him. He then recounts his voyage
down the Mississippi; says that, with twenty-two Frenchmen, he caused
all the tribes along the river to ask for peace; and speaks of his right
under the royal patent to build forts anywhere along his route, and
grant out lands around them, as at Fort Frontenac.
"My losses in my enterprises," he continues, "have exceeded forty
thousand crowns. I am now going four hundred leagues south-southwest of
this place, to induce the Chickasaws to follow the Shawanoes and other
tribes, and settle, like them, at St. Louis. It remained only to settle
French colonists here, and this I have already done. I hope you will not
detain them as _coureurs de bois_, when they come down to Montreal to
make necessary purchases. I am aware that I have no right to trade with
the tribes who descend to Montreal, and I shall not permit such trade to
my men; nor have I ever issued licenses to that effect, as my enemies
say that I have done."[250]
Again, on the fourth of June following, he writes to La Barre, from the
Chicago portage, complaining that some of his colonists, going to
Montreal for necessary supplies, have been detained by his enemies, and
begging that they may be allowed to return, that his enterprise may not
be ruined. "The Iroquois," he pursues, "are again invading the country.
Last year, the Miamis were so alarmed by them that they abandoned their
town and fled; but at my return they came back, and have been induced to
settle with the Illinois at my fort of St. Louis. The Iroquois have
lately murdered some families of their nation, and they are all in
terror again. I am afraid they will take flight, and so prevent the
Missouris and neighboring tribes from coming to settle at St. Louis, as
they are about to do.
"Some of the Hurons and French tell the Miamis that I am keeping them
here for the Iroquois to destroy. I pray that you will let me hear from
you, that I may give these people some assurances of protection before
they are destroyed in my sight. Do not suffer my men who have come down
to the settlements to be longer prevented from returning. There is great
need here of reinforcements. The Iroquois, as I have said, have lately
entered the country; and a great terror prevails. I have postponed going
to Michilimackinac, because, if the Iroquois strike any blow in my
absence, the Miamis will think that I am in league with them; whereas,
if I and the French stay among them, they will regard us as protectors.
But, Monsieur, it is in vain that we risk our lives here, and that I
exhaust my means in order to fulfil the intentions of his Majesty, if
all my measures are crossed in the settlements below, and if those who
go down to bring munitions, without which we cannot defend ourselves,
are detained under pretexts trumped up for the occasion. If I am
prevented from bringing up men and supplies, as I am allowed to do by
the permit of Count Frontenac, then my patent from the King is useless.
It would be very hard for us, after having done what was required, even
before the time prescribed, and after suffering severe losses, to have
our efforts frustrated by obstacles got up designedly.
"I trust that, as it lies with you alone to prevent or to permit the
return of the men whom I have sent down, you will not so act as to
thwart my plans. A part of the goods which I have sent by them belong
not to me, but to the Sieur de Tonty, and are a part of his pay. Others
are to buy munitions indispensable for our defence. Do not let my
creditors seize them. It is for their advantage that my fort, full as it
is of goods, should be held against the enemy. I have only twenty men,
with scarcely a hundred pounds of powder; and I cannot long hold the
country without more. The Illinois are very capricious and uncertain....
If I had men enough to send out to reconnoitre the enemy, I would have
done so before this; but I have not enough. I trust you will put it in
my power to obtain more, that this important colony may be saved."[251]
While La Salle was thus writing to La Barre, La Barre was writing to
Seignelay, the Marine and Colonial Minister, decrying his
correspondent's discoveries, and pretending to doubt their reality. "The
Iroquois," he adds, "have sworn his [La Salle's] death. The imprudence
of this man is about to involve the colony in war."[252] And again he
writes, in the following spring, to say that La Salle was with a score
of vagabonds at Green Bay, where he set himself up as a king, pillaged
his countrymen, and put them to ransom, exposed the tribes of the West
to the incursions of the Iroquois, and all under pretence of a patent
from his Majesty, the provisions of which he grossly abused; but, as his
privileges would expire on the twelfth of May ensuing, he would then be
forced to come to Quebec, where his creditors, to whom he owed more than
thirty thousand crowns, were anxiously awaiting him.[253]
Finally, when La Barre received the two letters from La Salle, of which
the substance is given above, he sent copies of them to the Minister
Seignelay, with the following comment: "By the copies of the Sieur de la
Salle's letters, you will perceive that his head is turned, and that he
has been bold enough to give you intelligence of a false discovery, and
that, instead of returning to the colony to learn what the King wishes
him to do, he does not come near me, but keeps in the backwoods, five
hundred leagues off, with the idea of attracting the inhabitants to him,
and building up an imaginary kingdom for himself, by debauching all the
bankrupts and idlers of this country. If you will look at the two
letters I had from him, you can judge the character of this personage
better than I can. Affairs with the Iroquois are in such a state that I
cannot allow him to muster all their enemies together and put himself at
their head. All the men who brought me news from him have abandoned him,
and say not a word about returning, _but sell the furs they have brought
as if they were their own_; so that he cannot hold his ground much
longer."[254] Such calumnies had their effect. The enemies of La Salle
had already gained the ear of the King; and he had written in August,
from Fontainebleau, to his new governor of Canada: "I am convinced, like
you, that the discovery of the Sieur de la Salle is very useless, and
that such enterprises ought to be prevented in future, as they tend only
to debauch the inhabitants by the hope of gain, and to diminish the
revenue from beaver-skins."[255]
In order to understand the posture of affairs at this time, it must be
remembered that Dutch and English traders of New York were urging on the
Iroquois to attack the western tribes, with the object of gaining,
through their conquest, the control of the fur-trade of the interior,
and diverting it from Montreal to Albany. The scheme was full of danger
to Canada, which the loss of the trade would have ruined. La Barre and
his associates were greatly alarmed at it. Its complete success would
have been fatal to their hopes of profit; but they nevertheless wished
it such a measure of success as would ruin their rival, La Salle. Hence,
no little satisfaction mingled with their anxiety when they heard that
the Iroquois were again threatening to invade the Miamis and the
Illinois; and thus La Barre, whose duty it was strenuously to oppose the
intrigue of the English, and use every effort to quiet the ferocious
bands whom they were hounding against the Indian allies of the French,
was, in fact, but half-hearted in the work. He cut off La Salle from all
supplies; detained the men whom he sent for succor; and, at a conference
with the Iroquois, told them that they were welcome to plunder and kill
him.[256]
[Sidenote: A NEW ALARM.]
The old governor, and the unscrupulous ring with which he was
associated, now took a step to which he was doubtless emboldened by the
tone of the King's letter, in condemnation of La Salle's enterprise. He
resolved to seize Fort Frontenac, the property of La Salle, under the
pretext that the latter had not fulfilled the conditions of the grant,
and had not maintained a sufficient garrison.[257] Two of his
associates, La Chesnaye and Le Ber, armed with an order from him, went
up and took possession, despite the remonstrances of La Salle's
creditors and mortgagees; lived on La Salle's stores, sold for their own
profit, and (it is said) that of La Barre, the provisions sent by the
King, and turned in the cattle to pasture on the growing crops. La
Forest, La Salle's lieutenant, was told that he might retain the command
of the fort if he would join the associates; but he refused, and sailed
in the autumn for France.[258]
Meanwhile La Salle remained at the Illinois in extreme embarrassment,
cut off from supplies, robbed of his men who had gone to seek them, and
disabled from fulfilling the pledges he had given to the surrounding
Indians. Such was his position, when reports came to Fort St. Louis that
the Iroquois were at hand. The Indian hamlets were wild with terror,
beseeching him for succor which he had no power to give. Happily, the
report proved false. No Iroquois appeared; the threatened attack was
postponed, and the summer passed away in peace. But La Salle's position,
with the governor his declared enemy, was intolerable and untenable; and
there was no resource but in the protection of the court. Early in the
autumn, he left Tonty in command of the rock, bade farewell to his
savage retainers, and descended to Quebec, intending to sail for France.
On his way, he met the Chevalier de Baugis, an officer of the King's
dragoons, commissioned by La Barre to take possession of Fort St. Louis,
and bearing letters from the governor ordering La Salle to come to
Quebec,--a superfluous command, as he was then on his way thither. He
smothered his wrath, and wrote to Tonty to receive De Baugis well. The
chevalier and his party proceeded to the Illinois, and took possession
of the fort,--De Baugis commanding for the governor, while Tonty
remained as representative of La Salle. The two officers could not live
in harmony; but, with the return of spring, each found himself in sore
need of aid from the other. Towards the end of March the Iroquois
attacked their citadel, and besieged it for six days, but at length
withdrew discomfited, carrying with them a number of Indian prisoners,
most of whom escaped from their clutches.[259]
[Sidenote: LA SALLE SAILS FOR FRANCE.]
Meanwhile, La Salle had sailed for France.
FOOTNOTES:
[245] The boundaries are laid down on the great map of Franquelin, made
in 1684, and preserved in the Dépôt des Cartes of the Marine. The line
runs along the south shore of Lake Erie, and thence follows the heads of
the streams flowing into Lake Michigan. It then turns northwest, and is
lost in the vast unknown of the now British Territories. On the south,
it is drawn by the heads of the streams flowing into the Gulf, as far
west as Mobile, after which it follows the shore of the Gulf to a little
south of the Rio Grande; then runs west, northwest, and finally north,
along the range of the Rocky Mountains.
[246] Tonty, 1684, 1693.
[247] "Starved Rock" perfectly answers, in every respect, to the
indications of the contemporary maps and documents concerning "Le
Rocher," the site of La Salle's fort of St. Louis. It is laid down on
several contemporary maps, besides the great map of La Salle's
discoveries, made in 1684. They all place it on the south side of the
river; whereas Buffalo Rock, three miles above, which has been supposed
to be the site of the fort, is on the north. The latter is crowned by a
plateau of great extent, is but sixty feet high, is accessible at many
points, and would require a large force to defend it; whereas La Salle
chose "Le Rocher," because a few men could hold it against a multitude.
Charlevoix, in 1721, describes both rocks, and says that the top of
Buffalo Rock had been occupied by the Miami village, so that it was
known as _Le Fort des Miamis_. This is confirmed by Joutel, who found
the Miamis here in 1687. Charlevoix then speaks of "Le Rocher," calling
it by that name; says that it is about a league below, on the left or
south side, forming a sheer cliff, very high, and looking like a
fortress on the border of the river. He saw remains of palisades at the
top, which, he thinks, were made by the Illinois (_Journal Historique,
Let._ xxvii.), though his countrymen had occupied it only three years
before. "The French reside on the rock (Le Rocher), which is very lofty
and impregnable." (_Memoir on Western Indians_, 1718, _in N. Y. Col.
Docs._, ix. 890.) St. Cosme, passing this way in 1699, mentions it as
"Le Vieux Fort," and says that it is "a rock about a hundred feet high
at the edge of the river, where M. de la Salle built a fort, since
abandoned." (_Journal de St. Cosme._) Joutel, who was here in 1687,
says, "Fort St. Louis is on a steep rock, about two hundred feet high,
with the river running at its base." He adds that its only defences were
palisades. The true height, as stated above, is about a hundred and
twenty-five feet.
A traditional interest also attaches to this rock. It is said that, in
the Indian wars that followed the assassination of Pontiac, a few years
after the cession of Canada, a party of Illinois, assailed by the
Pottawattamies, here took refuge, defying attack. At length they were
all destroyed by starvation, and hence the name of "Starved Rock."
For other proofs concerning this locality, see _ante_, 239.
[248] This singular extemporized colony of La Salle, on the banks of the
Illinois, is laid down in detail on the great map of La Salle's
discoveries, by Jean Baptiste Franquelin, finished in 1684. There can be
no doubt that this part of the work is composed from authentic data. La
Salle himself, besides others of his party, came down from the Illinois
in the autumn of 1683, and undoubtedly supplied the young engineer with
materials. The various Indian villages, or cantonments, are all
indicated, with the number of warriors belonging to each, the aggregate
corresponding very nearly with that of La Salle's report to the
minister. The Illinois, properly so called, are set down at 1,200
warriors; the Miamis, at 1,300; the Shawanoes, at 200; the Ouiatnoens
(Weas), at 500; the Peanqhichia (Piankishaw) band, at 150; the
Pepikokia, at 160; the Kilatica, at 300; and the Ouabona, at 70,--in
all, 3,880 warriors. A few others, probably Abenakis, lived in the fort.
The Fort St. Louis is placed, on the map, at the exact site of Starved
Rock, and the Illinois village at the place where, as already mentioned
(see 239), Indian remains in great quantities are yearly ploughed up.
The Shawanoe camp, or village, is placed on the south side of the river,
behind the fort. The country is here hilly, broken, and now, as in La
Salle's time, covered with wood, which, however, soon ends in the open
prairie. A short time since, the remains of a low, irregular earthwork
of considerable extent were discovered at the intersection of two
ravines, about twenty-four hundred feet behind, or south of, Starved
Rock. The earthwork follows the line of the ravines on two sides. On the
east, there is an opening, or gateway, leading to the adjacent prairie.
The work is very irregular in form, and shows no trace of the civilized
engineer. In the stump of an oak-tree upon it, Dr. Paul counted a
hundred and sixty rings of annual growth. The village of the Shawanoes
(Chaouenons), on Franquelin's map, corresponds with the position of this
earthwork. I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. John Paul and Col. D. F.
Hitt, the proprietor of Starved Rock, for a plan of these curious
remains and a survey of the neighboring district. I must also express my
obligations to Mr. W. E. Bowman, photographer at Ottawa, for views of
Starved Rock and other features of the neighboring scenery.
An interesting relic of the early explorers of this region was found a
few years ago at Ottawa, six miles above Starved Rock, in the shape of a
small iron gun, buried several feet deep in the drift of the river. It
consists of a welded tube of iron, about an inch and a half in calibre,
strengthened by a series of thick iron rings, cooled on, after the most
ancient as well as the most recent method of making cannon. It is about
fourteen inches long, the part near the muzzle having been burst off.
The construction is very rude. Small field-pieces, on a similar
principle, were used in the fourteenth century. Several of them may be
seen at the Musée d'Artillerie at Paris. In the time of Louis XIV., the
art of casting cannon was carried to a high degree of perfection. The
gun in question may have been made by a French blacksmith on the spot. A
far less probable supposition is, that it is a relic of some unrecorded
visit of the Spaniards; but the pattern of the piece would have been
antiquated, even in the time of De Soto.
[249] The royal instructions to La Barre, on his assuming the
government, dated at Versailles, 10 May, 1682, require him to give no
further permission to make journeys of discovery towards the Sioux and
the Mississippi, as his Majesty thinks his subjects better employed in
cultivating the land. The letter adds, however, that La Salle is to be
allowed to continue his discoveries, if they appear to be useful. The
same instructions are repeated in a letter of the Minister of the Marine
to the new intendant of Canada, De Meules.
[250] _Lettre de La Salle à La Barre, Fort St. Louis, 2 Avril, 1683._
The above is condensed from passages in the original.
[251] _Lettre de La Salle à La Barre, Portage de Chicagou, 4 Juin,
1683._ The substance of the letter is given above, in a condensed form.
A passage is omitted, in which La Salle expresses his belief that his
vessel, the "Griffin," had been destroyed, not by Indians, but by the
pilot, who, as he thinks, had been induced to sink her, and then, with
some of the crew, attempted to join Du Lhut with their plunder, but were
captured by Indians on the Mississippi.
[252] _Lettre de La Barre au Ministre, 14 Nov., 1682._
[253] _Lettre de La Barre au Ministre, 30 Avril, 1683._ La Salle had
spent the winter, not at Green Bay, as this slanderous letter declares,
but in the Illinois country.
[254] _Lettre de La Barre au Ministre, 4 Nov., 1683._
[255] _Lettre du Roy à La Barre, 5 Août, 1683._
[256] _Mémoire pour rendre compte à Monseigneur le Marquis de Seignelay
de l'État où le Sieur de Lasalle a laissé le Fort Frontenac pendant le
temps de sa découverte._ On La Barre's conduct, see "Count Frontenac and
New France under Louis XIV.," chap. v.
[257] La Salle, when at Mackinaw, on his way to Quebec, in 1682, had
been recalled to the Illinois, as we have seen, by a threatened Iroquois
invasion. There is before me a copy of a letter which he then wrote to
Count Frontenac, begging him to send up more soldiers to the fort, at
his (La Salle's) expense. Frontenac, being about to sail for France,
gave this letter to his newly arrived successor, La Barre, who, far from
complying with the request, withdrew La Salle's soldiers already at the
fort, and then made its defenceless state a pretext for seizing it. This
statement is made in the memoir addressed to Seignelay, before cited.
[258] These are the statements of the memorial addressed in La Salle's
behalf to the minister, Seignelay.
[259] Tonty, 1684, 1693; _Lettre de La Barre au Ministre, 5 Juin, 1684;
Ibid., 9 Juillet, 1684_.