THE OHIO VALLEY-GREAT LAKES ETHNOHISTORY
ARCHIVES: THE MIAMI COLLECTION
It is noted that the following work from the Miami Archives should be read and
considered within the historical context in which it was composed and printed.
The opinions expressed and the language used do not reflect the opinions or
standards of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, but are, rather,
indicative of thought in that historical moment during which the document was
published.
Account of the Discoveries and
Journies of the
Sieur de La Salle, 1679-80-81
Sieur de La Salle, Robert Cavelier or Father Membré
In: Margry, I-1-472-586.
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(p. 518) one finds, fine prairies as far as the eye can see,
adorned at intervals by small forests of lofty trees which seem to have been
purposely planted there. The current of the river is scarcely perceptible,
except during heavy rains; it is capable at all seasons, of taking large
barques, up to the village or the Illinois, from which its course runs almost
constantly to the south by west.
On the 7th of March they found, two leagues from its outfall, a tribe called Tamaroas or Maroas, consisting of 200 families. They wished to take them to their village, situated to the west of the River Mississippi or Colbert, six or seven leagues below its confluence with the River Divine; but Father Louis and his companions preferred to continue their journey. They arrived, very soon after, at this confluence, which is fifty leagues from Crevecoeur and ninety from the village of the Illinois. It is situated between the 36th and 37th degrees of latitude, and is therefore 120 or 130 leagues from the Gulf of Mexico. In the angle which this river makes on the southern side at its outfall there is a flat rock with steep sides about forty feet high, very suitable as a site for a fort; on the north side, facing the rock, is a prairie extending further than the eye can reach, all ready to be cultivated, which would be a great advantage for maintaining a settlement. The masses of ice which were drifting on the Great River stopped them at this spot, until the 12th of March, when they continued their journey, going up along that river.
The River Mississippi below the Divine appears to go to the south-south-west; and above it, it comes from the north (p. 519) and north-north-west. It flows between two chains of somewhat high mountains which follow the windings of the river from which they sometimes recede leaving semicircular spaces covered with grass or woods. Beyond these mountains are found extensive plains, but the lands are not so fertile nor the woods so fine as those of the country of the Illinois. This great river is one or two leagues wide almost everywhere, and the stream is divided up by a number of islands covered with trees, having so many vines entwined about them that it is difficult to move about there. It receives no large tributary on the west side except the River of the Outoutanta. On the east side is found; first, the river called by the Indiana Ouisconsin, or Misconsing, which comes from the east and east-north-east for sixty leagues after which one leaves it in order to reach the Baye des Puans by another stream. It is almost as wide as the river of the Illinois and runs into the Mississippi a hundred leagues above the River Divine.
Twenty-four leagues higher up is the Black River called by the Nadouessioux, Chabadeba. It is of no importance. Thirty leagues further up, still on the east side, is the Oxen River (Riviere des Boeufs) so named an account of the number of these animals that are met there. They followed its course for ten or twelve leagues, throughout which it is level and free from rapids. It has mountains along both banks which recede from it at intervals, giving place to meadows. At its outfall, it has woods on both sides, and is as broad as the Divine River. Forty leagues above this river is another which is full of rapids by which one can reach Lake Superior, going north-eastwards until (p. 520) near the source of the Menitsakouat, which falls into the lake. This river has been called the River du Tombeau (Tomb River) on account of the tomb of an Indian Chief which was found there. Continuing to ascend the Great River for eighty leagues further, the navigation is found to be interrupted by a cataract which Father Louis called the falls of Sainte-Antoine de Pade. This cataract is thirty or forty feet high, with a small island in the middle of the fall. The mountains bordering the river end at this spot, and it begins to run from the east and northeast, and the Indians who have gone a very long distance up the stream have not been able to find the place at which it taken its rise. Eight leagues beyond the falls is the River of the Nadouessioux, narrow at its junction with the main stream, which you ascend, going towards the north, for 50 leagues up to the Lake of the Issati in which it rises. This lake spreads out into extensive marshes where wild oats grow, as well as in many other places up to the end of the Baye des Puans. This kind of grain grows of itself on marshy lands without anyone sowing it. It is like oats but has a better flavour and is much longer; and so is the straw. The Indians harvest it at the proper season and make their store of it for the whole year.
The Lake of the Issati is situated 60 leagues to the west of Lake Superior. The islands and the lands surrounding it and the other lakes in the vicinity from which many rivers issue are inhabited by the Issati, the Nadouessans; the Tintonha, the Ouadebaton, the Chougasketon and other tribes who are included under the one name Sioux or Nadouessious. These savages number eight or nine thousand warriors, very brave, great runners and (p. 521) very good bowmen, and it was a party of this tribe which captured Father Louis and his two companions in the following manner:
They were going up the River Colbert or Mississippi very pleasantly and without any difficulty when, on the 11th of April 1680, they found themselves surrounded by a hundred or a hundred and twenty Nadouessious warriors who were coming down in thirty-three canoes to go and make war on the Tchatchakigouas. Father Louis immediately offered them the Calumet, which they accepted; but they would not smoke it, which is a token of peace, until they had made them go to the other side of the river, where they chased them with loud cries in order, according to their custom, to afford some pleasure to their dead.
However, the savages stole some clothing from them; and although Michel Ako made them a present of two cases of goods, they took the Frenchmen off to their village, where they returned, this adventure having made them break off their journey. But they did not, however, inflict any other ill treatment on the Frenchmen, who were not sorry for this opportunity of continuing their explorations, than making them proceed with them on foot for 50 leagues from the Great River, under great difficulties and with very little food. It is true, however, that on approaching their villages they shared amongst them all the goods, half by consent and half by force, but at the same time they promised to pay for them; and the reason of this apparent outrage was that the band was made up of two different tribes, and that the more distant of them, fearing lest the others, might keep the whole of the goods when they got to their village, wished to take their (p. 522) share of them beforehand."
Three months after they went with the Indians to hunt oxen along the River Colbert, about 150 leagues away from their village, where they met the Sieur de Luth who was going to the Nadouessious with a man named Faffart as a guide, one of the Sieur de La Salle's soldiers, who had deserted from Fort Frontenac. They all went up together to the villages of the Nadouessious, where they remained about four months, and finally all returned together to Canada by the River Ouisconsing and the Baye des Puans.
During the stay of Father Louis and the two Frenchmen with the Nadouessious they saw Indians who came as delegates, who dwelt nearly 500 leagues to the west; and they learnt that the Assinipoualac, who are seven or eight days' journey to the north-west of the Sioux, and all the other tribes that are known, to (p. 523) the west and north-west, live on immense prairies where there are a large number of wild oxen and of furs, and they are sometimes obliged to make their fires with dried out ox-dung-- for want of wood.
(p. 524)
One day when he was more than two leagues from the fort, laden with four
turkeys which he had killed when hunting, he met a young Illinois warrior who
had just made some prisoners from southward and had preceded his comrades in
order to warn (p. 525) the village of their
return. As he was very tired and hungry, he asked the Sieur de La Salle for
something to eat and he gave him one of his turkeys.
(p. 526)
This occurence cured the minds of the Sieur de La Salle's men of some of their
fears; and they were completely delivered from them by the arrival of many Osages,
Sicacas and Akansas who came from the south to see the French and to buy
hatchets. They all testified that the river was navigable to the sea; and that,
as the coming of the French had been made known everywhere, they would be very
well received. The Sieur de La Salle made all of them small presents to show to
their fellow tribesman; and promised to bring them hatchets, knives, needles
and awls, which are the goods they value most; and he told them that our nation
had a very large quantity of them, and would therefore supply them to their
neighbours also, to whom he requested them to make him known.
A few days before, on the 17th of February, two of the chief men of the tribe of the Matoutenta, 80 or 100 leagues from the Great River towards the west, came to see the Frenchmen.
One of them had at his girdle, a horse's hoof with part of the skin of the leg which served as a tobacco pouch. He said that he had brought it from a country five days' journey from (p. 527) his own, towards the west, the inhabitants of which fought on horseback with lances and had long hair. These details showed he was speaking of the Spaniards of New Mexico, for the Indians of these parts do not let their hair grow longer than a finger's breadth."
The Illinois are brave and are feared by all their neighbors; their disposition is more gay and more frank than that of the other Indians, who are all secretive and melancholy. They are passionate, and often quarrel with one another,, which seldom happens among the other tribes of North America. They all have several wives sometimes as many as ten or twelve, and they usually marry all the sisters of their first wife, of whom they are very jealous, and they cut off their noses when they learn that they have been unfaithful to them. They are accused of being addicted to unnatural vice and of having men intended from childhood for that detestable purpose. The men are quite naked in summer. and only cover themselves in winter with oxhides and the wool on them; but their women are always modestly clothed from the head to the knees with dressed ox hides. They use pirogues, that is, boats made of one large tree, dug out, capable of carrying forty or fifty men, instead of bark canoes. Their arms, and their other customs, are like those of other Indians.
(p. 528)
The winter, as above stated, was longer than usual; the fort was beginning to
be in want of provisions, and the ice covering the river destroyed the means of
communication with the large village where the Indians' store of corn was. Nevertheless,
the Sieur de La Salle resolved to go up to the village and to make use of that
opportunity to go and find out what news there was of his barque. He gave his
orders to the Sieur de Tonty who did not disappoint the good opinion which he
had formed of his conduct and courage; and he set out on the first of March
with six of his strongest man and one Indian in two canoes.
The current, which was rather strong, kept the river free from ice near the fort. But after rowing a league, at the entrance to a widening of the streams or a lakes eight leagues in length formed by the river, they found it frozen. The Sieur de La Salle, who did not wish to abandon his canoes, intending to send them back to the fort laden with Indian corn, told his men that the current would have melted the ice at the end of this lake, and would open up a passage for them. They therefore determined to make two sledges, on which they put their canoes and all their luggage, and dragged them over the snow to the end of the lake. There they found, the next day, that the river was covered with ice, too thin to walk upon but too substantial to expose bark canoes to it. They were therefore compelled to carry the canoes and all the other things for four leagues, always in the snow up to the middle of the leg, and through the woods. In the evening they arrived at some Indian huts, where they took shelter from the heavy rains which fell all the night.
On the third of March they embarked on the river which they (p. 529) found frozen over in seven or eight places, where they broke the ice with poles to make a passage way. About four o'clock in the afternoon, the ice being more than a foot thick with so many uneven places and holes that they could not walk on it, they were obliged to go round a distance of nearly two leagues, dragging their canoes over frozen marshes, at the further end of which the river was free. They rowed upon it until noon, when the masses of ice floating all over the river compelled them from time to time to take to the land until they passed and then return to the water; and this they did several times before the evening. On the following day they made a portage of half a league, after which they continued their journey on a small channel or branch of the river for two leagues, sometimes rowing, sometimes breaking the ice with flails, or hatchets, or dragging their canoes knee-deep in the water. After that they dragged them over the snow in the woods until the evening of the next day when the snow, which fell heavily, forced them to stop. On the 9th, the frost having hardened the snow, they set off on their snow shoes which are used to keep them from sinking in it. That day they made seven or eight leagues; and the next day, after going ten leagues more they arrived at the village.
The heavy rain which fell on the next two days separated the blocks of ice with which the river was covered. But as the blocks were stopped by the islands and sand banks which they met below the village and formed great masses, which were carried up one on top of another with an extrordinary noise, the Sieur de La Salle lost all hope of being able to send provisions to the fort very soon. He did not even find anyone from whom he could (p. 530) buy any, and it was not at all likely that any Illinois would return to the village at such an inclement season. Nevertheless, as he had observed trails on the snow, he thought there were some Indians hunting in the neighbourhood, and in that belief he set fire to some reeds which the frost had dried, hoping that the smoke, which would show along way off, on those plains, would attract some Indian; and the plan succeeded.
The next day the Sieur de La Salle, went out while his men were buccaning, or drying by smoke, the flesh of an ox which they had killed, and he saw two Indians coming, followed at a short distance by Chassagoac, the most important chief of the Illinois, and the one who was most fond of our nation. He first made him present of a red blanket, a pot, some hatchets, and some knives; and then he told him that the Frenchmen whom he had left at the fort were in want of provisions and begged him to supply them with some, saying that on his return from the journey he was about to make, he would reward any service he might render him on this occasion.
Chassagoac promised to use all his influence in favour of the French, and to load the boat with corn which the Sieur de La Salle was leaving, with two men to take it back to the fort. Afterwards they had a long colloquy in which the Sieur de La Salle related to him all that had taken place at the other village where Chassagoac had not been present. He told him also the object of his journey; that his intention was to bring about a good understanding again between them and the Iroquois; that he would very soon come back, with a quantity of arms and goods and a greater number of Frenchmen, with the object of (p. 531) settling among the Illinois as soon as he had discovered the mouth of the Great River. Chassagoac showed as much pleasure at this news as he had shown grief at first at his departure. He confirmed all that he had been told a little while before as to the course of the rivers and assured him that he would contribute with all his power towards the successful issue of his enterprise.
Meanwhile the four Frenchmen and the Indian, whom the Sieur de La Salle had chosen to accompany him, conveyed his boat and baggage as far as a rapid,which was four leagues above the village. He went and joined them there after he had taken leave of Chassagoac; and an the state of the river seemed favourable they embarked on it and went twelve leagues on the 16th and l7th, although the masses of ice which were coming down often compelled them to land. On the 18th, they found the river so frozen that they had no hope of rowing further; so they concealed the canoe on an island, and started on foot laden with all their baggage, In two days they crossed a plain twenty-five leagues broad and longer than the eye could reach, walking all the time in the water from the snow melted by the heat of the sun, which was rather strong in the middle of the day,"
(p. 532)
On the 23rd they crossed three other rivers by the same means, In the evening
they reached the shore of the Lake of the Illinois, and next day the 24th the
River of the Miamis where the Sieur de La Salle found his forts which he had
built in the previous autumn, uninjured. There he met the two men whom he had
sent from that same place to meet his barque, and they greatly increased his
anxiety by telling him that they had not been able to obtain any news of it nor
to see any wreckage from it, although they had gone all round the lake. He was
stopped until noon on the 25th by the rain which lasted all day and by being
obliged to make a raft to cross the river, which is very broad. He then
continued his journey towards the east, and Lake Erie, going through woods so
interwoven with briers and thorns that, in two days and a half, he and his men
and their clothes all torn and their faces bleeding and cut about to such an
extent that they were not recognizable.
On the 28th they entered some fine woods where they found food in plenty. Before that they had many times been in want of it and had been obliged to go on all day without eating; but after reaching this place they never lacked game nor venison. As soon as they had killed a stag, a bear or a turkey they roasted part of it and eat it without bread, wine, salt or any other condiment. They were in a country where the Indians did not hunt because it lies between five or six tribes which were at war with one another, and they never entered it without taking great precautions, in order to surprise and kill some enemy. Hence the shots which the Frenchmen fired and the animals which they left on the ground very soon led these savages to find their trail.
(p. 533)
A body of Ouapous followed them and discovered them in the evening of the 28th
by the fire which they had lit on the edge of a fine plain, four or five
leagues broad and extending further than the eye can reach. The savages had
already surrounded them , and would certainly have surprised them if the man
who was keeping watch had not awakened them, and they had not promptly placed
themselves each behind a tree, gun in hand. The Indians took them for Iroquois;
and, believing that there was a large number of them because they did not
conceal their trail as these tribes are accustomed to do when going in small
parties, they fled without shooting their arrows, for fear of being themselves
surrounded; and they gave such an alarm on all sides, that the Frenchmen were
two days without meeting anyone.
The Sieur de La Salle guessed the cause of their flight; and, wishing to increase their fear, he showed the same signs that an army of Iroquois would have done, lighting several fires and painting slaves and scalps on the bark of the trees according to their custom. When he was in the midst of the plain, it occurred to him to set fire to the dry grass with which it was covered, so as to cover his trail the better, and it was very soon burnt up. He employed the same device to the end of these plains; but, on the 30th., they came to wide marshes flooded by the thaw, which he and his men were obliged to cross in mud and water up to the waist, and the traces they left very soon revealed their numbers to a party of Maskoutens, who were trying to kill some Iroquois. They followed them all the three days that they marched through the marshes, but could not come up with them because the Frenchmen lit no fires, contenting themselves with (p. 534) taking off their wet clothes, to let them dry on some rising bank where they passed the night wrapped in their blankets. But, as the frost was severe on the night of the 2nd of April, they were obliged to light a fire, to enable them to use their frozen garments. The light revealed them to these Indians, who were not far away, and they ran up with loud shouts to within a hundred yards of the French, where they were stopped by a rather deep stream which they could not cross The Sieur de La Salle, who saw them, advanced towards them till he was within gunshot, and then, whether it be that the Indians were restrained by the advantage of his position and firearms, or because they recognized them as Frenchmen, they called to them that they were their brothers and that they had taken them for Iroquois, and then they went back.
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