Hero Tales from History — La Salle And The Mouth of The Mississippi

LA SALLE AND THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI

Little is known now of the early life of Robert Cavelier de la Salle, until, at twenty-five or a little less, he came from Rouen, France, to Montreal.

But of his life in America, in those days when the land was still a howling wilderness, there is much to tell.

He was born a century and a half after Columbus thought he had found the coast of China; yet this young Frenchman still believed that China was only a little farther west than the land Columbus found, for he had but a narrow idea of the width of America.

The people who were living in Canada, the new country along the River St. Lawrence, were French.

They traded with the Indians and trapped and skinned wild animals for their fur.

Those were the days of Indian scouts and wigwams, and of war and scalp dances.

Many of the French lived like Indians; they played Indian games--running, shooting, snowshoeing, lacrosse--and they learned to hunt and hide, and to travel stealthily through the forests, like real red men.

So the Indians liked the French people better than they liked other white settlers.

The French called their scouts wood-runners.

These brave, shrewd messengers went out among the Indian tribes and learned their languages and customs.

Many of them ran from tribe to tribe, thousands of miles into the wilderness, and came back to the French settlement with skins of the mink, beaver, otter, and other animals.

They also had strange stories to tell of meadows, which they called prairies, as level as a floor and hundreds of miles wide, where there were no trees except along the rivers.

Down through this thousand-mile prairie region they said there were rivers which flowed together into a wide stream which the Indians called the Mississippi, or Father of Waters, which kept on in a mighty flood to the unknown south country.

These stories fired the fervent soul of Robert La Salle.

He believed that mighty river should be used as a water highway to the South Sea--as the Pacific Ocean was still called; and that if they could sail down to its mouth they would find an outlet to China like the outlet which the St. Lawrence gave toward Europe.

He was always talking about China and trying in every way he could to raise money for canoes and food and Indian guides to find the way to China through the western wilderness.

The French people laughed at his enthusiasm and called some land which he owned beside the rapids above Montreal _La Chine_--French for China.

That suburb of Montreal is still called Lachine, and the rapids are the Lachine Rapids.

Not having wealth enough of his own, La Salle went to France to ask the king to approve his plan, and to provide money for the planting of the lilies of France on the banks of the Mississippi.

La Salle’s practical way of planting French lilies was to build and maintain forts at different points through all that great western country.

Already Fort Frontenac had been built near the outlet of Lake Ontario, and Father Marquette, a heroic French missionary, accompanied by a trader named Joliet had found the Mississippi and explored that great river for hundreds of miles.

On his return to a French settlement Joliet wrote to Count Frontenac, governor of Canada, telling of the dangers of his voyage: “I had escaped every peril of the Indians.

I had passed forty-two rapids; and was at the point of debarking, full of joy at the success of so long and difficult an enterprise, when my canoe capsized, after all the danger seemed over.

I lost two men and my box of papers within sight of the first French settlements, which I had left almost two years before.

Nothing remains to me but life, and the ardent desire to employ it on any service which you may please to direct.

” When Robert La Salle had permission from the king and his treasurer, and had borrowed money of his rich relatives in France, he returned to Canada and made up a party of brave French and Indian guides, scouts, and interpreters, who were to fight, if need be, to plant the lilies and forts of France in the great western valley of the Father of Waters.

After they had paddled through Lake Ontario and carried their canoes past Niagara Falls and the rapids above the Falls, they built their sailboat, the _Griffin_.

On this ship they sailed through the lakes to the lower end of Lake Michigan.

They paddled their canoes down along the shore of that lake to the St. Joseph River, where they built Fort St. Joseph.

Canoeing up this river, which flows into Lake Michigan, they carried their barks across to a little stream which led away from the lake toward the greater rivers of the south country.

On their way they saw Indians of the Illinois tribes, and smoked the calumet, or peace pipe, with most of these red men.

Some tribes were so savage and unfriendly that the white travelers were afraid to shoot game for food, or even to build a fire lest a band of Indians on the warpath should see it and come to kill and scalp them all.

But it seems to have been the fate of most discoverers to find their bitterest foes among those who should be their friends.

One of La Salle’s own party was caught just in time to keep him from shooting their leader in the back.

Floating down a small stream the travelers came to the Illinois River.

On their way, among friendly tribes, they shot plenty of game.

Once they captured a huge bison, or buffalo, stuck in a swamp and left behind by the rest of the herd, and feasted on buffalo meat for many days.

At last they came to a place, now called Lake Peoria, where the Illinois is several miles wide.

They decided that this would be a good place to build a fort.

Seeing smoke, they guessed that it proceeded from the campfire of an Illinois tribe which was said to be hostile to the French.

Seeing wigwams in the distance La Salle arranged the canoes in rows, and pulled up to the Indian camp.

There was a stir in the Illinois village.

The Indian braves came out and received the white men as friends, and there were feasts and games and dances in honor of their French guests.

The Indians said that La Salle and his friends might build a fort there.

Built without delay, the fort was named Fort Breakheart, for Robert La Salle had been going through some heartrending experiences.

One of these was the loss of the lake boat, the _Griffin_, with all the supplies and equipments.

When La Salle explained to the Illinois tribe what he was seeking, the chief gave him and his men a solemn warning of perilous falls and precipices, of cannibal tribes and man-eating monsters.

He said that if they should get by those awful dangers, the mouth of the river was an awful whirlpool which would engulf them, for no man who had ever gone down into the mouth of the Father of Waters had returned alive.

These stories so frightened the men of the party--both red and white--that they deserted their leader.

They preferred to endure the ills they had and risk their lives among savages known to be cruel, rather than fly to ills they knew not of.

[Illustration: THE SHIPS OF FRANCE AT THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI _From the painting in the Versailles Collection_] So La Salle had to go hundreds of miles back to Canada for more men, funds, and supplies, before he could venture to make the rest of the trip.

After many months’ delay he started out again from Montreal.

There were now fifty-four in his party--twenty-three Frenchmen, eighteen braves, ten squaws to do the cooking, and three papooses.

When they got back to Fort Breakheart, La Salle gave up building a ship, as he had decided to make the voyage down the Mississippi in canoes.

There was plenty of game along the river, and in its muddy waters they caught catfish six feet long and weighing about two hundred pounds.

They saw wild beans along the banks with stalks “as big as your arm,” reminding one of the tale of “Jack and the Beanstalk.

” They had varied experiences with the different tribes of Indians--Chickasaw, Arkansas, Natchez--along their course, and found that the “man-eating monsters” described by the Illinois chief were only alligators.

When at last they reached the mouth of the Father of Waters, there was no whirlpool to swallow them down; but the river calmly divided into three mouths, each leading into a broad expanse of salt water which, they learned, was not the Pacific Ocean but the Gulf of Mexico.

On a hill near by, La Salle raised a wooden pillar on which he nailed the coat-of-arms bearing the lilies of France, and buried near it a leaden plate on which letters were engraved to tell future comers that the whole country drained by the Mississippi belonged to France.

At last, the patient worker and traveler had triumphed.

He went back to Paris and reported all he had done in the name of his beloved king and country.

Robert Cavelier de la Salle had done a greater thing than he realized.

One hundred and twenty years later, Napoleon, Emperor of the French, sold to the United States the territory of Louisiana, claimed by La Salle, which is now half of the great republic.

This was an achievement which meant more than the discovery of an outlet to China.

Although a boat may be sailed through long rivers and short canals from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, this fact is hardly thought worthy of mention in these days.

A far greater benefit to America and the whole world was achieved by Robert La Salle, because he enabled the French government to give to the United States her broad empire of the west.