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.
Father Zenobe to ?
Bibliotheque Nationale. fonds Clairambault 1016, fol. 163
and in Margry, microfilm, vol. II, pp. 209-215.
pp. 209, 210.
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From the River Mississippi, |
The hasty departure of M. de Tonty makes it impossible for me to write to you fully of all that has happened to me since my leaving Fort Frontenac last year; and I find my self obliged, after craving your holy blessing, to confine myself to telling the main part of it.
Your Reverence knew the motives which induced me to return to the Miamis, in order to accompany M. de La Salle from there on his journey to find the sea, as I have done up to the present time. After his arrival at the said place, we sent out with m. de Tonty a few days before M. de La Salle, who joined us at the Checago, where another company of his men also came to join us; so that, having all come together at the beginning of January 1682 at the place where the Checagon runs into the River of the Ilinois, as that river was frozen over as well as the one we came from, we continued our journey over the ice, dragging our canoes and baggage,- not only as far as the village of the Ilinois, where we met no one because they had gone to winter elsewhere, but also thirty leagues further down, to the end of Lake Pimedy, where we found navigation open and went down the said river in canoes to the River Mississippi. After (page 210) staying there a few days, detained by the masses of ice which were drifting down from the upper part of the river, we left on the . . . and came next day to a village which was deserted, like that of the Ilinois. M. de La Salle left tokens at both of them that he was coming in peace, and indications of his route, which we pursued for more than a hundred leagues along this river without seeing anyone. . .
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