France and England in N. America, Part III: The Discovery of the Great West

They hurried on till they saw the Indian huts. About fifty of them, oven- shaped, and covered with mats and hides, were clustered on a rising ground, with their inmates gathered among and around them. As the French entered the camp, there was the report of a cannon from the seaward. The startled savages dropped flat with terror. A different fear seized La Salle, for he knew that the shot was a signal of disaster. Looking back, he saw the "Aimable" furling her sails, and his heart sank with the conviction that she had struck upon the reef. Smothering his distress,– she was laden with all the stores of the colony,—he pressed forward among the filthy wigwams, whose astonished inmates swarmed about the band of armed strangers, staring between curiosity and fear. La Salle knew those with whom he was dealing, and, without ceremony, entered the chief's lodge with his followers. The crowd closed around them, naked men and half-naked women, described by Joutel as of a singular ugliness. They gave buffalo- meat and dried porpoise to the unexpected guests; but La Salle, racked with anxiety, hastened to close the interview; and, having without difficulty recovered the kidnapped men, he returned to the beach, leaving with the Indians, as usual, an impression of good-will and respect.

When he reached the shore, he saw his worst fears realized. The "Aimable" lay careened over on the reef, hopelessly aground. Little remained but to endure the calamity with firmness, and to save, as far as might be, the vessel's cargo. This was no easy task. The boat which hung at her stern had been stove in,—it is said, by design. Beaujeu sent a boat from the "Joly," and one or more Indian pirogues were procured. La Salle urged on his men with stern and patient energy; a quantity of gunpowder and flour was safely landed; but now the wind blew fresh from the sea, the waves began to rise, a storm came on, the vessel, rocking to and fro on the sand-bar, opened along her side, the ravenous waves were strewn with her treasures; and, when the confusion was at its height, a troop of Indians came down to the shore, greedy for plunder. The drum was beat; the men were called to arms; La Salle set his trustiest followers to guard the gunpowder, in fear, not of the Indians alone, but of his own countrymen. On that lamentable night, the sentinels walked their rounds through the dreary bivouac among the casks, bales, and boxes which the sea had yielded up; and here, too, their fate-hunted chief held his drearier vigil, encompassed with treachery, darkness, and the storm.

Those who have recorded the disaster of the "Aimable" affirm that she was wilfully wrecked, [Footnote: This is said by Joutel and Le Clercq, and by La Salle himself, in his letter to Seignelay, 4 March, 1685, as well as in the account of the wreck drawn up officially.—Procès verbal du Sieur de la Salle sur le naufraqe de la flûte l'Aimable à l'embouchure du Fleuve Colbert, MS. He charges it, as do also the others, upon Aigron, the pilot of the vessel, the same who had prevented him from exploring the mouth of the Mississippi on the sixth of January. The charges are supported by explicit statements, which render them probable. The loss was very great, including nearly all the beef and other provisions, 60 barrels of wine, 4 pieces of cannon, 1,620 balls, 400 grenades, 4,000 pounds of iron, 5,000 pounds of lead, most of the blacksmith's and carpenter's tools, a forge, a mill, cordage, boxes of arms, nearly all the medicines, most of the baggage of the soldiers and colonists, and a variety of miscellaneous goods.] an atrocious act of revenge against a man whose many talents often bore for him no other fruit than the deadly one of jealousy and hate.

The neighboring Bracamos Indians still hovered about them, with very doubtful friendship: and, a few days after the wreck, the prairie was seen on fire. As the smoke and name rolled towards them before the wind, La Salle caused all the grass about the camp to be cut and carried away, and especially around the spot where the powder was placed. The danger was averted; but it soon became known that the Indians had stolen a number of blankets and other articles, and carried them to their wigwams. Unwilling to leave his camp, La Salle sent his nephew Moranget and several other volunteers, with a party of men, to reclaim them. They went up the bay in a boat, landed at the Indian camp, and, with more mettle than discretion, marched into it, sword in hand. The Indians ran off, and the rash adventurers seized upon several canoes as an equivalent for the stolen goods. Not knowing how to manage them, they made slow progress on their way back, and were overtaken by night before reaching the French camp. They landed, made a fire, placed a sentinel, and lay down on the dry grass to sleep. The sentinel followed their example; when suddenly they were awakened by the war-whoop and a shower of arrows. Two volunteers, Oris and Desloges, were killed on the spot; a third, named Gayen, was severely wounded; and young Moranget received an arrow through the arm. He leaped up and fired his gun at the vociferous but invisible foe. Others of the party did the same, and the Indians fled.

This untoward incident, joined to the loss of the store-ship, completed the discouragement of some among the colonists. Several of them, including one of the priests and the engineer Minet, declared their intention of returning home with Beaujeu, who apparently made no objection to receiving them. He now declared that since the Mississippi was found, his work was done, and he would return to France. La Salle desired that he would first send on shore the cannon-balls and stores embarked for the use of the colony. Beaujeu refused, on the ground that they were stowed so deep in the hold that to take them out would endanger the ship. The excuse is itself a confession of gross mismanagement. Remonstrance would have availed little. Beaujeu spread his sails and departed, and the wretched colony was left to its fate.

Was Beaujeu deliberately a traitor, or was his conduct merely a result of jealousy and pique? There can be little doubt that he was guilty of premeditated bad faith. There is evidence that he knew the expedition to have passed the true mouth of the Mississippi, and that, after leaving La Salle, he sailed in search of it, found it, and caused a map to be made of it. [Footnote: This map, the work of the engineer Minet, bears the date of May, 1685. La Salle's last letter to the minister, which he sent home by Beaujeu, is dated March 4th. Hence, Beaujeu, in spite of his alleged want of provisions, seems to have remained some time in the Gulf. The significance of the map consists in two distinct sketches of the mouth of the Mississippi, which is styled "La Rivière du Sr. de la Salle." Against one of these sketches are written the words "Embouchure de la rivière comme M. de la Salle la marque dans sa carte." Against the other, "Costes et lacs par la hauteur de sa rivière, comme nous les avons trouvés." The italics are mine. Both sketches plainly represent the mouth of the Mississippi, and the river as high as New Orleans, with the Indian villages upon it. The coast line is also indicated as far east as Mobile Bay. My attention was first drawn to this map by M. Margry. It is in the Archives Scientifiques de la Marine.]

A lonely sea, a wild and desolate shore, a weary waste of marsh and prairie; a rude redoubt of drift-wood, and the fragments of a wreck; a few tents, and a few wooden hovels; bales, boxes, casks, spars, dismounted cannon, Indian canoes, a pen for fowls and swine, groups of dejected men and desponding, homesick women,—this was the forlorn reality to which the air-blown fabric of an audacious enterprise had sunk. Here were the conquerors of New Biscay; they who were to hold for France a region as large as the half of Europe. Here was the tall form and the fixed calm features of La Salle. Here were his two nephews, the hot-headed Moranget, still suffering from his wound, and the younger Cavelier, a mere school- boy. Conspicuous only by his Franciscan garb was the small slight figure of Zenobe Membré. His brother friar, Anastase Douay; the trusty Joutel, a man of sense and observation; the Marquis de la Sablonnière, a debauched noble whose patrimony was his sword; and a few of less mark,—comprised the leaders of the infant colony. The rest were soldiers, recruited from the scum of Rochelle and Rochefort; and artisans, of whom the greater part knew nothing of their pretended vocation. Add to these the miserable families and the infatuated young women, who had come to tempt fortune in the swamps and cane-brakes of the Mississippi.

La Salle set out to explore the neighborhood. Joutel remained in command of the so-called fort. He was beset with wily enemies, and often at night the Indians would crawl in the grass around his feeble stockade, howling like wolves; but a few shots would put them to flight. A strict guard was kept, and a wooden horse was set in the enclosure, to punish the sentinel who should sleep at his post. They stood in daily fear of a more formidable foe, and once they saw a sail, which they doubted not was Spanish; but she happily passed without discovering them. They hunted on the prairies, and speared fish in the neighboring pools. On Easter day, the Sieur le Gros, one of the chief men of the company, went out after the service to shoot snipes; but, as he walked barefoot through the marsh, a snake bit him, and he soon after died. Two men deserted, to starve on the prairie, or to become savages among savages. Others tried to escape, but were caught; and one of them was hung. A knot of desperadoes conspired to kill Joutel; but one of them betrayed the secret, and the plot was crushed.

La Salle returned from his journey. He had made an ominous discovery; for he had at length become convinced that he was not, as he had fondly hoped, on an arm of the Mississippi. The wreck of the "Aimable" itself was not pregnant with consequences so disastrous. A deep gloom gathered around the colony. There was no hope but in the energies of its unconquerable chief.

CHAPTER XXV. 1685-1687. ST. LOUIS OF TEXAS

THE FORT.—MISERY AND DEJECTION.—ENERGY OF LA SALLE.—HIS JOURNEY OF EXPLORATION.—DUHAUT.—INDIAN MASSACRE.—RETURN OF LA SALLE. —A NEW CALAMITY.—A DESPERATE RESOLUTION.—DEPARTURE FOR CANADA. —WRECK OF THE "BELLE."—MARRIAGE.—SEDITION.—ADVENTURES OF LA SALLE'S PARTY.—THE CENIS.—THE CAMANCHES.—THE ONLY HOPE.—THE LAST FAREWELL.

Of what avail to plant a colony by the mouth of a petty Texan river? The Mississippi was the life of the enterprise, the condition of its growth and of its existence. Without it, all was futile and meaningless; a folly and a ruin. Cost what it might, the Mississippi must be found. But the demands of the hour were imperative. The hapless colony, cast ashore like a wreck on the sands of Matagorda Bay, must gather up its shattered resources, and recruit its exhausted strength, before it essayed anew its desperate pilgrimage to the "fatal river." La Salle during his explorations had found a spot which he thought well fitted for a temporary establishment. It was on the river which he named the La Vache, [Footnote: Called by Joutel Rivière aux Boeufs.] now the Lavaca, which, enters the head of Matagorda Bay; and thither he ordered all the women and children, and most of the men, to remove; while the remnant, thirty in number, remained with Joutel at the fort near the mouth of the bay. Here they spent their time in hunting, fishing, and squaring the logs of drift-wood, which the sea washed up in abundance, and which La Salle proposed to use in building his new station on the Lavaca. Thus the time passed till midsummer, when Joutel received orders to abandon his post, and rejoin the main body of the colonists. To this end, the little frigate "Belle" was sent down the bay to receive him and his men. She was a gift from the king to La Salle, who had brought her safely over the bar, and regarded her as a main-stay of his hopes. She now took Joutel and his men on board, together with the stores which had remained in their charge, and conveyed them to the site of the new fort on the Lavaca. Here Joutel found a state of things that was far from cheering. Crops had been sown, but the drought and the cattle had nearly destroyed them. The colonists were lodged under tents and hovels; and the only solid structure was a small square enclosure of pickets, in which the gunpowder and the brandy were stored. The site was good, a rising ground by the river; but there was no wood within the distance of a league, and no horses or oxen to drag it. Their work must be done by men. Some felled and squared the timber; and others dragged it by main force over the matted grass of the prairie, under the scorching Texan sun. The gun-carriages served to make the task somewhat easier; yet the strongest men soon gave out under it. Joutel went down in the "Belle" to the first fort, and brought up the timber collected there, which proved a most seasonable and useful supply. Palisades and buildings began to rise. The men labored without spirit, yet strenuously; for they labored under the eye of La Salle. The carpenters brought from Rochelle proved worthless, and he himself made the plans of the work, marked out the tenons and mortises, and directed the whole. [Footnote: Joutel, 108. Procès Verbal fait au poste de St. Louis le 18 Avril, 1686, MS.]

Death, meanwhile, made a withering havoc among his followers; and under the sheds and hovels that shielded them from the sun lay a score of wretches slowly wasting away with the diseases contracted at St. Domingo. Of the soldiers enlisted for the expedition by La Salle's agents, many are affirmed to have spent their lives in begging at the church doors of Rochefort, and were consequently incapable of discipline. It was impossible to prevent either them or the sailors from devouring persimmons and other wild fruits to a destructive excess. [Footnote: Ibid.] Nearly all fell ill; and, before the summer had passed, the graveyard had more than thirty tenants. [Footnote: Joutel, 109. Le Clercq, who was not present, says a hundred.] The bearing of La Salle did not aid to raise the drooping spirits of his followers. The results of the enterprise had been far different from his hopes; and, after a season of flattering promise, he had entered again on those dark and obstructed paths which seemed his destined way of life. The present was beset with trouble; the future, thick with storms. The consciousness quickened his energies; but it made him stern, harsh, and often unjust to those beneath him.

Joutel was returning to camp one afternoon with the master-carpenter, when they saw game, and the carpenter went after it. He was never seen again. Perhaps he was lost on the prairie, perhaps killed by Indians. He knew little of his trade, but they nevertheless, had need of him. Le Gros, a man of character and intelligence, suffered more and more from the bite of the snake received in the marsh oil Easter Day. The injured limb was amputated, and he died, La Salle's brother, the priest, lay ill; and several others among the chief persons of the colony were in the same condition.

Meanwhile, the work was urged on. A large building was finished, constructed of timber, roofed with boards and raw hides, and divided into apartments, for lodging and other uses. La Salle gave to the new establishment his favorite name of Fort St. Louis, and the neighboring bay was also christened after the royal saint. [Footnote: The Bay of St. Louis, St. Bernard's Bay, or Matagorda Bay,—for it has borne all these names,—was also called Espiritu Santo Bay, by the Spaniards, in common with several other bays in the Gulf of Mexico. An adjoining bay still retains the name.] The scene was not without its charms. Towards the south-east stretched the bay with its bordering meadows; and on the north- east the Lavaca ran along the base of green declivities. Around, far and near, rolled a sea of prairie, with distant forests, dim in the summer haze. At times, it was dotted with the browsing buffalo, not yet scared from their wonted pastures; and the grassy swells were spangled with the bright flowers for which Texas is renowned, and which now form the gay ornaments of our gardens.

And now, the needful work accomplished, and the colony in some measure housed and fortified, its indefatigable chief prepared to renew his quest of the "fatal river," as Joutel repeatedly calls it. Before his departure, he made some preliminary explorations, in the course of which, according to the report of his brother the priest, he found evidence that the Spaniards had long before had a transient establishment at a spot about fifteen leagues from Fort St. Louis. [Footnote: Cavelier, in his report to the minister, says: "We reached a large village enclosed with a kind of wall made of clay and sand, and fortified with little towers at intervals, where we found the arms of Spain engraved on a plate of copper, with the date of 1588, attached to a stake. The inhabitants gave us a kind welcome, and showed us some hammers and an anvil, two small pieces of iron cannon, a small brass culverin, some pike-heads, some old sword-blades, and some books of Spanish comedy; and thence they guided us to a little hamlet of fishermen about two leagues distant, where they showed us a second stake, also with the arms of Spain, and a few old chimneys. All this convinced us that the Spaniards had formerly been here."—Cavelier, Relation du Voyage que mon frère entreprit pour découvrir l'embouchure du fleuve de Missisipy, MS. The above is translated from the original draft of Cavelier, which is in my possession. It was addressed to the colonial minister, after the death of La Salle. The statement concerning the Spaniards needs confirmation.]

It was the first of November, when La Salle set out on his great journey of exploration. His brother Cavelier, who had now recovered, accompanied him with thirty men, and five cannon-shot from the fort saluted them as they departed. They were lightly equipped, but La Salle had a wooden corselet as a protection against arrows. Descending the Lavaca, they pursued their course eastward on foot along the margin of the bay, while Joutel remained in command of the fort. It stood on a rising ground, two leagues above the mouth of the river. Between the palisades and the stream lay a narrow strip of marsh, the haunt of countless birds, and at a little distance it deepened into ponds full of fish. The buffalo and the deer were without number; and, in truth, all the surrounding region swarmed with game,—hares, turkeys, ducks, geese, swans, plover, snipe, and partridges. They shot them in abundance, after necessity and practice had taught them the art. The river supplied them with fish, and the bay with oysters. There were land-turtles and sea-turtles; and Joutel sometimes amused himself with shooting alligators, of which he says that he once killed one twenty feet long. He describes, too, with perfect accuracy, that curious native of the south-western prairies, the "horned frog," which, deceived by its uninviting aspect, he erroneously supposed to be venomous. [Footnote: Joutel devotes many pages to an account of the animals and plants of the country, most of which may readily be recognized from his description.]

He suffered no man to be idle. Some hunted; some fished; some labored at the houses and defences. To the large building made by La Salle he added four lodging-houses for the men, and a fifth for the women, besides a small chapel. All were built with squared timber, and roofed like the first with boards and buffalo-hides; while a palisade and ditch, defended by eight pieces of cannon, enclosed the whole. [Footnote: Compare Joutel with the Spanish account in Carta en que se da noticia de tin viaje hecho à la bahia de Espiritu Santo y de la poblacion que tenian ahi los Franceses: Coleccion de Varios Documentos, 25.] Late one evening in January, when all were gathered in the principal building, conversing perhaps, or smoking, or playing at games of hazard, or dozing by the fire in homesick dreams of France, one of the men on guard came in to report that he had heard a voice in the distance without. All hastened into the open air; and Joutel, advancing towards the river whence the voice came, presently descried a man in a canoe, and saw that he was Duhaut, one of La Salle's chief followers, and perhaps the greatest villain of the company. La Salle had directed that none of his men should be admitted into the fort, unless he brought a pass from him; and it would have been well, had the order been obeyed to the letter. Duhaut, however, told a plausible and possibly a true story. He had stopped on the march to mend a shoe which needed repair, and on attempting to overtake the party had become bewildered on a prairie intersected with the paths of the buffalo. He fired his gun in vain, as a signal to his companions; saw no hope of rejoining them, and turned back, travelling only in the night, from fear of Indians, and lying hid by day. After a month of excessive hardship, he reached his destination; and, as the inmates of Fort St. Louis

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worn and ragged. [Footnote: Joutel, 136, 137. The date of the return is from Cavelier.] Their story was a brief one. After losing Duhaut, they had wandered on through various savage tribes, with whom they had more than one encounter, scattering them like chaff by the terror of their fire-arms. At length, they found a more friendly band, and learned much touching the Spaniards, who were, they were told, universally hated by the tribes of that country. It would be easy, said their informants, to gather a host of warriors and lead them over the Rio Grande; but La Salle was in no condition for attempting conquests, and the tribes in whose alliance he had trusted had, a few days before, been at blows with him. The invasion of New Biscay must be postponed to a more propitious day. Still advancing, he came to a large river, which he at first mistook for the Mississippi; and, building a fort of palisades, he left here several of his men. [Footnote: Cavelier says that he actually reached the Mississippi; but, on the one hand, he did not know whether the river in question was the Mississippi or not; and, on the other, he is somewhat inclined to mendacity. Le Clercq says that La Salle thought he had found the river. Joutel says that he did not reach it.] The fate of these unfortunates does not appear. He now retraced his steps towards Fort St. Louis; and, as he approached it, detached some of his men to look for his vessel, the "Belle," for whose safety, since the loss of her pilot, he had become very anxious.

On the next day, these men appeared at the fort, with downcast looks. They had not found the "Belle" at the place where she had been ordered to remain, nor were any tidings to be heard of her. From that hour, the conviction that she was lost possessed the mind of La Salle.

Surrounded as he was, and had always been, with traitors, the belief now possessed him that her crew had abandoned the colony, and made sail for the West Indies or for France. The loss was incalculable. He had relied on this vessel to transport the colonists to the Mississippi, as soon as its exact position could be ascertained; and, thinking her a safer place of deposit than the fort, he had put on board of her all his papers and personal baggage, besides a great quantity of stores, ammunition, and tools. [Footnote: Procès Verbal fait au poste de la Baie St. Louis, le 18 Avril, 1686, MS.] In truth, she was of the last necessity to the unhappy exiles, and their only resource for escape from a position which was fast becoming desperate.

La Salle, as his brother tells us, fell dangerously ill; the fatigues of his journey, joined to the effects upon his mind of this last disaster, having overcome his strength though not his fortitude. "In truth," writes the priest, "after the loss of the vessel, which deprived us of our only means of returning to France, we had no resource but in the firmness and conduct of my brother, whose death each of us would have regarded as his own." [Footnote: Cavelier, Relation du Voyage pour découvrir l'embouchure du Fleuve de Missisipy, MS.]

La Salle no sooner recovered than he embraced a resolution which could be the offspring only of a desperate necessity. He determined to make his way by the Mississippi and the Illinois to Canada, whence he might bring succor to the colonists, and send a report of their condition to France. The attempt was beset with uncertainties and dangers. The Mississippi was first to be found; then followed through all the perilous monotony of its interminable windings to a goal which was to be but the starting-point of a new and not less arduous journey. Cavelier, his brother, Moranget, his nephew, the friar, Anastase Douay, and others, to the number of twenty, offered to accompany him. Every corner of the magazine was ransacked for an outfit. Joutel generously gave up the better part of his wardrobe to La Salle and his two relatives. Duhaut, who had saved his baggage from the wreck of the "Aimable," was required to contribute to the necessities of the party; and the scantily furnished chests of those who had died were used to supply the wants of the living. Each man labored with needle and awl to patch his failing garments, or supply their place with buffalo or deer skins. On the twenty-second of April, after mass and prayers in the chapel, they issued from the gate, each bearing his pack and his weapons; some with kettles slung at their backs, some with axes, some with gifts for Indians. In this guise, they held their way in silence across the prairie while anxious eyes followed them from the palisades of St. Louis, whose inmates, not excepting Joutel himself, seem to have been ignorant of the extent and difficulty of the undertaking. [Footnote: Joutel, 140; Anastase Douay, in Le Clercq, ii. 303; Cavelier, Relation, MS. The date is from Douay. It does not appear from his narrative that they meant to go further than the Illinois. Cavelier says that after resting here they were to go to Canada. Joutel supposed that they would go only to the Illinois. La Salle seems to have been even more reticent than usual.]