CHAPTER XXI.

THE FRENCH IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.

THE EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI AND THE SETTLEMENT OF LOUISIANA. FRENCH MISSIONARIES AND HUNTERS.-DISCOVERY OF OHIO, INDIANA, AND OTHER NORTHWESTERN STATES. THE POLICY OF COLBERT AND TALON.-DISCOVERY OF THE UPPER LAKES.-CONGRESS OF NATIVE TRIBES AT MACKINAC.-MARQUETTE AND JOLIET SAIL FOR THE DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. - FRENCH COLONY OF 1699. D'IBERVILLE AND HIS BROTHERS.-BILOXI AND POVERTY POINT.-WAR OF SUCCESSION. - PENSACOLA.- MINES.-CROZAT'S GRANT.

THE English and Dutch settlers, to whose history this volume has thus far been for the most part devoted, never showed any disposition to make permanent homes with the aborigines. Their efforts to Christianize them were made loyally, but did not include life in their wigwams or villages. Even the hunter or trapper of English blood, who brought furs from the frontier to the sea, was not a man who had carried on his hunting or trapping in league with the natives. He had lived in a solitary hut, or he had made his excursions from a frontier village.

toward ex

and adven

From the very beginning, however, a different disposition showed it- Tendency of self in the French colonies of the French Acadie and of Canada. When ploration the white population of Canada ture. was not more than three hundred persons, a considerable number of those persons were living in the villages of the Hurons, whose homes were then further to the east than that great lake which now preserves their name. Some of these Frenchmen were traders for furs, some were priests, at first of the

Totem of the Hurons (from La Hontan).

1 The handful of Wyandots, now in Kansas, represents the great tribe of Hurons. The spelling Yendat is the carlier form. See Gallatin's Synopsis. The word "Huron" is itself not Indian but French, derived from the French word hure, meaning a rough mane or head of hair.

Récollet order, afterwards of the fraternity of Jesuits. It was by such traders and missionaries that several of the western States of the American Union were first opened to the knowledge of Europe.

neers.

The great Champlain, from whom the real history of Canada begins, arrived in Quebec on the 3d of July, 1608, only a year after the French pio- settlement at Jamestown. In 1615 he discovered Lake Ontario, and Lake Nipissing. He pressed his explorations westward, and recent research has shown that as early as 1634, Jean Nicollet, a Frenchman who had become an Indian in all his habits, visited, in the course of his western travels, the region which we now know as Wisconsin. These were pioneer adventures. Nicollet was himself a sincere Catholic. He and other pioneers were followed, as early as the year 1640, by the Fathers Chaumonot and Brébœuf, who

Island of Mackinac.

coasted along the northern shore of the State of Ohio, and the eastern shore of Michigan as far as the Straits of Mackinac. In 1659, two young traders, who pushed their explorations farther west, joined a tribe of Indians, with whom they went so far west upon Lake Superior, that they heard for the first time of the great tribe of the Sioux, whose conflicts against the whites occupy the journals even as late as our day. At that time, the Sioux appeared to these travellers a powerful nation, of more gentle manners than the eastern Indians, whom they had known before. The Frenchmen reported that they were not cruel to their prisoners, and that they wor1 See vol. i., p. 321.

1660.]

FRENCH MISSIONARIES.

501

shipped one God. These pioneers returned to Montreal in the spring of 1660, with sixteen canoes packed with furs. In these movements, dictated now by adventure, now by religious zeal, and often by both combined, our States of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, were first visited by the whites. Perhaps it would be too much to say, in all cases, that those who made these explorations were what we should call civilized men.

In the summer of 1660 Father Mesnard took with him some In

mission.

dians of the Algonkin race, and founded a new mission. He Mesnard's established himself at first at a point on the southern shore Algonkin of Lake Superior which is still known as Chagwamegan,2 the name it then bore. Mesnard, however, on the invitation of the Hurons, returned to the western bay of Lake Huron, where he lost his life in some unknown way. In 1665, Father Allouez established a mission at the same point, and was able to preach in the Algonkin language to twelve or fifteen different tribes. The same language is still used by the Chippeways of that region.

sions.

The Jesuit writers say that the fame of Father Allouez extended even to the Sioux, and that they Other mistold him of the prairies on the banks of the Mississippi. Father Dablon, another missionary, learned of the Mississippi from a map which the Sioux drew for him, and as early as 1669 proposed to himself an expedition to discover it. With Father Allouez he went as far as the Fox River, and learned that the Wisconsin River, of the present State of Wisconsin, was one of the affluents of the Mississippi.

Meanwhile the genius of Colbert in France had apprehended the value of the French establishment in Canada. He was beginning to undo the unfortunate results of the narrower policy of Cardinal Richelieu. In pursuance of

this policy, Jean Talon, who had gained the Totem of the Foxes (from La favor of the king in France, was entrusted

Hontan).

with the oversight of commerce in Canada. He arranged a great coun

1 The Sioux call themselves Dahcotahs.

2 Chagwamegan means

on the long, narrow point of land, or sand-bar." For this, and many similar interpretations, we are indebted to Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, the learned master of the Indian tongues.

Talon's Inlian Council.

cil of Indians at the Sault Ste. Marie, at the foot of Lake Superior, in 1671. Nicolas Perrot, who knew their languages and customs, convened the assembly. It is in the report of this council that the name "Chicago" first appears in literature. M. de St. Lousson represented Louis XIV. He found here the chiefs of tribes. as distant as Hudson's Bay on the east, and the head of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan on the west and south. In the joint hyperbole of French genius and the Indian dialect he described the glories of Le grand Monarque. The chiefs declared that they asked for no other father than the great Onnonthio 1 of the French.

L. Jollies

Signature of Joliet.

A cross was erected, to which the Arms of France was fastened, and possession was assumed in the name of the French crown.

France, the appointment of Poulet, a captain of Dieppe, for an exploration of the Pacific by way of the Straits of Magellan. Father

The name lingers among the Indians of the St. Lawrence. In the deposition of Charles Soskonharowane, of Caughnawaga, taken to determine whether Rev. Eleazer Williams should or should not be known as King Louis XVII., son of Louis XVI, this Indian says, "Many incidents of his youth would remove the thought of his being the son of the great Anonthica." Sworn to April 16, 1853.

1673.]

MARQUETTE'S VOYAGE.

508

Marquette, who had already gone as far as Wisconsin as a missionary, joined Joliet, and, in 1673, they started on the expedition in Marquette's which, so far as we know, the source and course of the Mis- voyage. sissippi were discovered by Europeans. Of the discovery of its mouth by the adventurous Spaniards, and part of the region above, the history is already told in an earlier chapter.1

In this eventful voyage, the first in which civilized men navigated a large part of the course of a river, which has since become the highway of half a nation, Marquette and

The Wild Rice.

Joliet descended the Mississippi as far as the mouth of the Arkansas River. They satisfied themselves that they were in the neighborhood of the Gulf of Mexico, and wishing to avoid any collision with the Spaniards returned to Canada. We have a charming account of the enterprise by Marquette himself, which was published in Paris in 1681. The voyagers passed up Green Bay, and the Fox River. Near the head of the Bay was the most advanced French station, and here they bade their compatriots good-by. The Indian village there was made up of Miamis, Mascoutins, and Kickapoos, of whom the priests rated the Miamis most highly for civility. The travellers saw, with pleasure, a cross, which had been erected in the village, and was adorned by the devotion of the natives. The mission They addressed the assembly of them, explained their on Fox object, and enlisted two Miami guides, who should show them the difficult passage by which to cross from the Fox to the Wisconsin River; from the waters of the St. Lawrence to those flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. The channel of the river was so choked with wild rice, that the Frenchmen could not have found its course. without such help. A passage of little more than a mile brought the explorers to the waters of the Wisconsin. The two guides there left the party of seven Frenchmen alone on these strange waters, five or six hundred leagues from Quebec, according to Marquette's calculation, to take the stream which would bear them into lands wholly new. Marquette's own map preserves, with curious accuracy, their route in Wisconsin, through the county of Portage, which takes its 1 See chapter vii., vol. i.

River.