CHAPTER XXII.

1680-1683.

LA SALLE PAINTED BY HIMSELF.

Difficulty of knowing him; his Detractors; his Letters; vexations

of his Position; his Unfitness for Trade; risks Of Correspondence;

his Reported Marriage; alleged Ostentation; motives of Action;

charges of Harshness; intrigues against him; unpopular Manners; a

Strange Confession; his Strength and his Weakness; contrasts of his

Character.

We have seen La Salle in his acts. While he crosses the sea, let us look

at him in himself. Few men knew him, even of those who saw him most.

Reserved and self-contained as he was, with little vivacity or gayety or

love of pleasure, he was a sealed book to those about him. His daring

energy and endurance were patent to all; but the motive forces that

urged him, and the influences that wrought beneath the surface of his

character, were hidden where few eyes could pierce. His enemies were

free to make their own interpretations, and they did not fail to use the

opportunity.

The interests arrayed against him were incessantly at work. His men were

persuaded to desert and rob him; the Iroquois were told that he was

arming the western tribes against them; the western tribes were told

that he was betraying them to the Iroquois; his proceedings were

denounced to the court; and continual efforts were made to alienate his

associates. They, on their part, sore as they were from disappointment

and loss, were in a mood to listen to the aspersions cast upon him; and

they pestered him with letters, asking questions, demanding

explanations, and dunning him for money. It is through his answers that

we are best able to judge him; and at times, by those touches of nature

which make the whole world kin, they teach us to know him and to feel

for him.

[Sidenote: CHARGES AGAINST LA SALLE.]

The main charges against him were that he was a crack-brained schemer,

that he was harsh to his men, that he traded where he had no right to

trade, and that his discoveries were nothing but a pretence for making

money. No accusations appear that touch his integrity or his honor.

It was hard to convince those who were always losing by him. A

remittance of good dividends would have been his best answer, and would

have made any other answer needless; but, instead of bills of exchange,

he had nothing to give but excuses and explanations. In the autumn of

1680, he wrote to an associate who had demanded the long-deferred

profits: "I have had many misfortunes in the last two years. In the

autumn of '78, I lost a vessel by the fault of the pilot; in the next

summer, the deserters I told you about robbed me of eight or ten

thousand livres' worth of goods. In the autumn of '79, I lost a vessel

worth more than ten thousand crowns; in the next spring, five or six

rascals stole the value of five or six thousand livres in goods and

beaver-skins, at the Illinois, when I was absent. Two other men of mine,

carrying furs worth four or five thousand livres, were killed or drowned

in the St. Lawrence, and the furs were lost. Another robbed me of three

thousand livres in beaver-skins stored at Michilimackinac. This last

spring, I lost about seventeen hundred livres' worth of goods by the

upsetting of a canoe. Last winter, the fort and buildings at Niagara

were burned by the fault of the commander; and in the spring the

deserters, who passed that way, seized a part of the property that

remained, and escaped to New York. All this does not discourage me in

the least, and will only defer for a year or two the returns of profit

which you ask for this year. These losses are no more my fault than the

loss of the ship 'St. Joseph' was yours. I cannot be everywhere, and

cannot help making use of the people of the country."

He begs his correspondent to send out an agent of his own. "He need not

be very _savant_, but he must be faithful, patient of labor, and fond

neither of gambling, women, nor good cheer; for he will find none of

these with me. Trusting in what he will write you, you may close your

ears to what priests and Jesuits tell you.

[Sidenote: VEXATIONS OF HIS POSITION.]

"After having put matters in good trim for trade I mean to withdraw,

though I think it will be very profitable; for I am disgusted to find

that I must always be making excuses, which is a part I cannot play

successfully. I am utterly tired of this business; for I see that it is

not enough to put property and life in constant peril, but that it

requires more pains to answer envy and detraction than to overcome the

difficulties inseparable from my undertaking."

And he makes a variety of proposals, by which he hopes to get rid of a

part of his responsibility to his correspondent. He begs him again to

send out a confidential agent, saying that for his part he does not want

to have any account to render, except that which he owes to the court,

of his discoveries. He adds, strangely enough for a man burdened with

such liabilities, "I have neither the habit nor the inclination to keep

books, nor have I anybody with me who knows how." He says to another

correspondent, "I think, like you, that partnerships in business are

dangerous, on account of the little practice I have in these matters."

It is not surprising that he wanted to leave his associates to manage

business for themselves: "You know that this trade is good; and with a

trusty agent to conduct it for you, you run no risk. As for me, I will

keep the charge of the forts, the command of posts and of men, the

management of Indians and Frenchmen, and the establishment of the

colony, which will remain my property, leaving your agent and mine to

look after our interests, and drawing my half without having any hand in

what belongs to you."

La Salle was a very indifferent trader; and his heart was not in the

commercial part of his enterprise. He aimed at achievement, and thirsted

after greatness. His ambition was to found another France in the West;

and if he meant to govern it also,--as without doubt he did,--it is not

a matter of wonder or of blame. His misfortune was, that, in the pursuit

of a great design, he was drawn into complications of business with

which he was ill fitted to grapple. He had not the instinct of the

successful merchant. He dared too much, and often dared unwisely;

attempted more than he could grasp, and forgot, in his sanguine

anticipations, to reckon with enormous and incalculable risks.

Except in the narrative parts, his letters are rambling and

unconnected,--which is natural enough, written, as they were, at odd

moments, by camp-fires and among Indians. The style is crude; and being

well aware of this, he disliked writing, especially as the risk was

extreme that his letters would miss their destination. "There is too

little good faith in this country, and too many people on the watch, for

me to trust anybody with what I wish to send you. Even sealed letters

are not too safe. Not only are they liable to be lost or stopped by the

way, but even such as escape the curiosity of spies lie at Montreal,

waiting a long time to be forwarded."

[Sidenote: HIS LETTERS INTERCEPTED.]

Again, he writes: "I cannot pardon myself for the stoppage of my

letters, though I made every effort to make them reach you. I wrote to

you in '79 (in August), and sent my letters to M. de la Forest, who gave

them in good faith to my brother. I don't know what he has done with

them. I wrote you another, by the vessel that was lost last year. I sent

two canoes, by two different routes; but the wind and the rain were so

furious that they wintered on the way, and I found my letters at the

fort on my return. I now send you one of them, which I wrote last year

to M. Thouret, in which you will find a full account of what passed,

from the time when we left the outlet of Lake Erie down to the sixteenth

of August, 1680. What preceded was told at full length in the letters my

brother has seen fit to intercept."

This brother was the Sulpitian priest, Jean Cavelier, who had been

persuaded that La Salle's enterprise would be ruinous, and therefore set

himself sometimes to stop it altogether, and sometimes to manage it in

his own way. "His conduct towards me," says La Salle, "has always been

so strange, through the small love he bears me, that it was clear gain

for me when he went away; since while he stayed he did nothing but cross

all my plans, which I was forced to change every moment to suit his

caprice."

There was one point on which the interference of his brother and of his

correspondents was peculiarly annoying. They thought it for their

interest that he should remain a single man; whereas, it seems that his

devotion to his purpose was not so engrossing as to exclude more tender

subjects. He writes:--

"I am told that you have been uneasy about my pretended marriage. I had

not thought about it at that time; and I shall not make any engagement

of the sort till I have given you reason to be satisfied with me. It is

a little extraordinary that I must render account of a matter which is

free to all the world.

"In fine, Monsieur, it is only as an earnest of something more

substantial that I write to you so much at length. I do not doubt that

you will hereafter change the ideas about me which some persons wish to

give you, and that you will be relieved of the anxiety which all that

has happened reasonably causes you. I have written this letter at more

than twenty different times; and I am more than a hundred and fifty

leagues from where I began it. I have still two hundred more to get

over, before reaching the Illinois. I am taking with me twenty-five men

to the relief of the six or seven who remain with the Sieur de Tonty."

This was the journey which ended in that scene of horror at the ruined

town of the Illinois.

[Sidenote: CHARGED WITH OSTENTATION.]

To the same correspondent, pressing him for dividends, he says: "You

repeat continually that you will not be satisfied unless I make you

large returns of profit. Though I have reason to thank you for what you

have done for this enterprise, it seems to me that I have done still

more, since I have put everything at stake; and it would be hard to

reproach me either with foolish outlays or with the ostentation which is

falsely imputed to me. Let my accusers explain what they mean. Since I

have been in this country, I have had neither servants nor clothes nor

fare which did not savor more of meanness than of ostentation; and the

moment I see that there is anything with which either you or the court

find fault, I assure you that I will give it up,--for the life I am

leading has no other attraction for me than that of honor; and the more

danger and difficulty there is in undertakings of this sort, the more

worthy of honor I think they are."

His career attests the sincerity of these words. They are a momentary

betrayal of the deep enthusiasm of character which may be read in his

life, but to which he rarely allowed the faintest expression.

"Above all," he continues, "if you want me to keep on, do not compel me

to reply to all the questions and fancies of priests and Jesuits. They

have more leisure than I; and I am not subtle enough to anticipate all

their empty stories. I could easily give you the information you ask;

but I have a right to expect that you will not believe all you hear, nor

require me to prove to you that I am not a madman. That is the first

point to which you should have attended, before having business with me;

and in our long acquaintance, either you must have found me out, or else

I must have had long intervals of sanity."

To another correspondent he defends himself against the charge of

harshness to his men: "The facility I am said to want is out of place

with this sort of people, who are libertines for the most part; and to

indulge them means to tolerate blasphemy, drunkenness, lewdness, and a

license incompatible with any kind of order. It will not be found that I

have in any case whatever treated any man harshly, except for

blasphemies and other such crimes openly committed. These I cannot

tolerate: first, because such compliance would give grounds for another

accusation, much more just; secondly, because, if I allowed such

disorders to become habitual, it would be hard to keep the men in

subordination and obedience, as regards executing the work I am

commissioned to do; thirdly, because the debaucheries, too common with

this rabble, are the source of endless delays and frequent thieving;

and, finally, because I am a Christian, and do not want to bear the

burden of their crimes.

[Sidenote: INTRIGUES AGAINST HIM.]

"What is said about my servants has not even a show of truth; for I use

no servants here, and all my men are on the same footing. I grant that

as those who have lived with me are steadier and give me no reason to

complain of their behavior, I treat them as gently as I should treat the

others if they resembled them, and as those who were formerly my

servants are the only ones I can trust, I speak more openly to them than

to the rest, who are generally spies of my enemies. The twenty-two men

who deserted and robbed me are not to be believed on their word,

deserters and thieves as they are. They are ready enough to find some

pretext for their crime; and it needs as unjust a judge as the intendant

to prompt such rascals to enter complaints against a person to whom he

had given a warrant to arrest them. But, to show the falsity of these

charges, Martin Chartier, who was one of those who excited the rest to

do as they did, was never with me at all; and the rest had made their

plot before seeing me." And he proceeds to relate, in great detail, a

variety of circumstances to prove that his men had been instigated first

to desert, and then to slander him; adding, "Those who remain with me

are the first I had, and they have not left me for six years."

"I have a hundred other proofs of the bad counsel given to these

deserters, and will produce them when wanted; but as they themselves are

the only witnesses of the severity they complain of, while the witnesses

of their crimes are unimpeachable, why am I refused the justice I

demand, and why is their secret escape connived at?

"I do not know what you mean by having popular manners. There is nothing

special in my food, clothing, or lodging, which are all the same for me

as for my men. How can it be that I do not talk with them? I have no

other company. M. de Tonty has often found fault with me because I

stopped too often to talk with them. You do not know the men one must

employ here, when you exhort me to make merry with them. They are

incapable of that; for they are never pleased, unless one gives free

rein to their drunkenness and other vices. If that is what you call

having popular manners, neither honor nor inclination would let me stoop

to gain their favor in a way so disreputable: and, besides, the

consequences would be dangerous, and they would have the same contempt

for me that they have for all who treat them in this fashion.

"You write me that even my friends say that I am not a man of popular

manners. I do not know what friends they are. I know of none in this

country. To all appearance they are enemies, more subtle and secret than

the rest. I make no exceptions; for I know that those who seem to give

me support do not do it out of love for me, but because they are in some

sort bound in honor, and that in their hearts they think I have dealt

ill with them. M. Plet will tell you what he has heard about it himself,

and the reasons they have to give.[260] I have seen it for a long time;

and these secret stabs they give me show it very plainly. After that, it

is not surprising that I open my mind to nobody, and distrust everybody.

I have reasons that I cannot write.

"For the rest, Monsieur, pray be well assured that the information you

are so good as to give me is received with a gratitude equal to the

genuine friendship from which it proceeds; and, however unjust are the

charges made against me, I should be much more unjust myself if I did

not feel that I have as much reason to thank you for telling me of them

as I have to complain of others for inventing them.

[Sidenote: HIS MANNERS.]

"As for what you say about my look and manner, I myself confess that you

are not far from right. But _naturam expellas_; and if I am wanting in

expansiveness and show of feeling towards those with whom I associate,

_it is only through a timidity which is natural to me, and which has

made me leave various employments, where without it I could have

succeeded_. But as I judged myself ill-fitted for them on account of

this defect, I have chosen a life more suited to my solitary

disposition; which, nevertheless, does not make me harsh to my people,

though, joined to a life among savages, it makes me, perhaps, less

polished and complaisant than the atmosphere of Paris requires. I well

believe that there is self-love in this; and that, knowing how little I

am accustomed to a more polite life, the fear of making mistakes makes

me more reserved than I like to be. So I rarely expose myself to

conversation with those in whose company I am afraid of making blunders,

and can hardly help making them. Abbé Renaudot knows with what

repugnance I had the honor to appear before Monseigneur de Conti; and

sometimes it took me a week to make up my mind to go to the

audience,--that is, when I had time to think about myself, and was not

driven by pressing business. It is much the same with letters, which I

never write except when pushed to it, and for the same reason. It is a

defect of which I shall never rid myself as long as I live, often as it

spites me against myself, and often as I quarrel with myself about it."

[Sidenote: HIS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS.]

Here is a strange confession for a man like La Salle. Without doubt, the

timidity of which he accuses himself had some of its roots in pride; but

not the less was his pride vexed and humbled by it. It is surprising

that, being what he was, he could have brought himself to such an avowal

under any circumstances or any pressure of distress. Shyness; a morbid

fear of committing himself; and incapacity to express, and much more to

simulate, feeling,--a trait sometimes seen in those with whom feeling is

most deep,--are strange ingredients in the character of a man who had

grappled so dauntlessly with life on its harshest and rudest side. They

were deplorable defects for one in his position. He lacked that

sympathetic power, the inestimable gift of the true leader of men, in

which lies the difference between a willing and a constrained obedience.

This solitary being, hiding his shyness under a cold reserve, could

rouse no enthusiasm in his followers. He lived in the purpose which he

had made a part of himself, nursed his plans in secret, and seldom asked

or accepted advice. He trusted himself, and learned more and more to

trust no others. One may fairly infer that distrust was natural to him;

but the inference may possibly be wrong. Bitter experience had schooled

him to it; for he lived among snares, pitfalls, and intriguing enemies.

He began to doubt even the associates who, under representations he had

made them in perfect good faith, had staked their money on his

enterprise, and lost it, or were likely to lose it. They pursued him

with advice and complaint, and half believed that he was what his

maligners called him,--a visionary or a madman. It galled him that they

had suffered for their trust in him, and that they had repented their

trust. His lonely and shadowed nature needed the mellowing sunshine of

success, and his whole life was a fight with adversity.

All that appears to the eye is his intrepid conflict with obstacles

without; but this, perhaps, was no more arduous than the invisible and

silent strife of a nature at war with itself,--the pride, aspiration,

and bold energy that lay at the base of his character battling against

the superficial weakness that mortified and angered him. In such a man,

the effect of such an infirmity is to concentrate and intensify the

force within. In one form or another, discordant natures are common

enough; but very rarely is the antagonism so irreconcilable as it was in

him. And the greater the antagonism, the greater the pain. There are

those in whom the sort of timidity from which he suffered is matched

with no quality that strongly revolts against it. These gentle natures

may at least have peace, but for him there was no peace.

Cavelier de La Salle stands in history like a statue cast in iron; but

his own unwilling pen betrays the man, and reveals in the stern, sad

figure an object of human interest and pity.[261]

FOOTNOTES:

[260] His cousin, François Plet, was in Canada in 1680, where, with La

Salle's approval, he carried on the trade of Fort Frontenac, in order to

indemnify himself for money advanced. La Salle always speaks of him with

esteem and gratitude.

[261] The following is the character of La Salle, as drawn by his

friend, Abbé Bernou, in a memorial to the minister Seignelay: "Il est

irréprochable dans ses moeurs, réglé dans sa conduite, et qui veut de

l'ordre parmy ses gens. Il est savant, judicieux, politique, vigilant,

infatigable, sobre, et intrépide. Il entend suffisament l'architecture

civile, militaire, et navale ainsy que l'agriculture; il parle ou entend

quatre ou cinq langues des Sauvages, et a beaucoup de facilité pour

apprendre les autres. Il sçait toutes leurs manières et obtient d'eux

tout ce qu'il veut par son adresse, par son éloquence, et parce qu'il

est beaucoup estimé d'eux. Dans ses voyages il ne fait pas meilleure

chère que le moindre de ses gens et se donne plus de peine que pas un

pour les encourager, et il y a lieu de croire qu'avec la protection de

Monseigneur il fondera des colonies plus considérables que toutes celles

que les François ont établies jusqu'à présent."--_Mémoire pour

Monseigneur le Marquis de Seignelay_, 1682 (Margry, ii. 277).

The extracts given in the foregoing chapter are from La Salle's long

letters of 29 Sept., 1680, and 22 Aug., 1682 (1681?). Both are printed

in the second volume of the Margry collection, and the originals of both

are in the Bibliothèque Nationale. The latter seems to have been written

to La Salle's friend, Abbé Bernou; and the former, to a certain M.

Thouret.