70 FRENCH SETTLEMENTS IN THE WEST. The French French terms of surrender. allies would not listen to anything but complete extermination, and the warfare was continued. On a dark night, however, the able Outagamie warriors escaped and fortified themselves on the river a few miles above the fort. Here they were again attacked by the French and their allies and, after a brave resistance, were compelled by exhaustion to surrender. The women and children were either adopted or enslaved by the victors, but to the men no quarter was given, four or five of them being shot each day. Nevertheless, about 100 of the captives, including the war-chief Pemoussa, escaped and rejoined that part of the tribe which had not been involved in this bloody affair. For many years thereafter these Indians were thorns in the sides of the French.* Meanwhile another another offshoot of offshoot of Canada had grown up in the West. In 1682 La Salle had occupied the banks of the Illinois River, but the Indian colony which he gathered there at Fort St. Louis, numbering 4,000 warriors or 20,000 souls, and comprising members of the Illinois, Miamis, the Shawanese, etc.,† dispersed a few years after his death, * Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, vol. i., pp. 270-287; McMullen, Canada, pp. 91-92; Dubuisson's Journal of Siege of Detroit, in Smith, History of Wisconsin, vol. ii., p. 315; Moore, The Northwest under Three Flags, pp. 5558; Cooley, Michigan, p. 34. For a description of this fort and the Indians see Parkman, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, p. 291 et seq. See also Dunn, until only the Kaskaskias, a sub-tribe of the Illinois, remained.* In 1700 the Kaskaskias moved to the Mississippi and set up their wigwams where the town of Kaskaskia now stands.† Here the roving Canadians came to trade, married converted squaws,‡ squaws, and finally made their homes. White women also came from Louisiana and Canada and gradually these villages grew more French and less Indian, houses taking the places of huts. When the government of Louisiana was turned over to the Mississippi Company, the Illinois settlement, hitherto a dependency of Canada, was annexed to Louisiana and Pierre Dugué de Boisbriant sent to command it. He erected a fort on the banks of the Mississippi, sixteen miles above Kaskaskia and named it Fort Chartres; here sat the council which ruled the settlement and here was the garrison which enforced the decrees of the council, and gave the settlers protection against the formidable Chickasaws. But the most dangerous foes of the settlement were the Outagamies, between whom and Indiana, pp. 31-33; the Magazine of Western History, vol. i., p. 243; The Last of the Illinois, in Fergus Historical series, no. 3. * On the work of the Jesuits among the Illinois see Shea, American Catholic Missions, p. 410 et seq. Dunn, Indiana, p. 42. See Edward G. Mason, Illinois in the Eighteenth Century (Fergus Historical Series, no. 12, Chicago, 1881). See Edward G. Mason, Old Fort Chartres, in Illinois in the Eighteenth Century, also in his Chapters from Illinois History, pp. 212-250. See also Mason, Kaskaskia and Its Parish INDIAN WARS IN THE WEST. the Illinois was a deadly feud. In 1714 the former attacked the latter and killed or captured 77; and a few years later made a similar murderous onslaught in the same quarter. The Outagamies had now become the scourge of the West; nearly all the tribes of the lake region were their hereditary enemies; and the outrages continued until the wilderness was on fire. The French were perplexed as to the best methods of restoring peace and at the same time of preventing the Indians from turning the entire fur-trade over to the English. Governor Vaudreuil of Canada therefore determined to destroy the Outagamies and sent Louvigny, formerly commandant at Michillimackinac, against them. On May 1, 1716, Louvigny left Montreal with 225 troops and met 200 more at Detroit, where the Indian allies also joined him. He attacked the fort of the Outagamies and finally compelled them to make peace, to give hostages and to pay the costs of the war.* Peace was not yet secured, however, for the Kickapoos and Mascoutins attacked the Illinois; the Saginaws raided the villages of the Miamis; and finally the Illinois captured the nephew of an Outagamie chief and burned him alive. In retaliation the Records, in Magazine of American History, vol. vi., pp. 161-182; Richard B. Haughton. The Influence of the Mississippi River upon the Early Settlement of its Valley, in Mississippi Historical Society Publications, vol. iv., pp. 465483; Winsor, The Mississippi Basin, p. 120 et seq.; Dunn, Indiana, p. 47. *Winsor, The Mississippi Basin, p. 118. 71 Outagamies attacked the Illinois, drove them to the top of the rock, at Fort St. Louis and there held them until, wishing to appease the anger of the French, they were allowed to escape. In 1728 another French expedition under Sieur de Lignery was sent against the Outagamies, but it was unsuccessful, as the Indians had been warned of its approach and escaped. In 1730 Sieur de Villers with a body of Frenchmen from various western posts, another body from the Illinois led by Sieur de Saint-Ange, and over 1,200 Indian allies, struck them a deadly blow, killing about 200 warriors and 600 women and children. There are other stories of various attacks but the tribe seems to have survived them all.* While these events were transpiring in Louisiana and the region around the Lakes, other French adventurers were pushing further west. In 1683 Le Sueur visited the country of the Sioux in Minnesota returning in 1689 with the famous voyager Nicholas Perrot. Four years after he was again sent to the Sioux country by Frontenac, whence two years later he returned once more and went to France. There he secured a commission to command the upper Mississippi and also a monopoly of its fur-trade for ten years, with permission to operate the mines. With Louisiana as his base and with 25 For the entire situation see Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, vol. i., pp. 315-333; Winsor, The Mississippi Basin, p. 144. 72 EXPLORATIONS OF LE SUEUR, ST. DENIS, ETC. companions, he set out in April, 1700, for the Sioux country and toward the end of September, after a long, adventurous journey up the Mississippi and the St. Peter rivers, they reached the Blue Earth River, up which they rowed for a league and built a fort called l'Huillier. Here they spent the winter and in the spring began work on what they supposed to be mines, but which was nothing but the blue and green earth to which the river owed its name. Placing some of this in their vessel, the voyagers returned to Louisiana and then sailed to France with about 4,000 pounds of their worthless earth. In France Le Sueur again secured aid for his enterprise, but upon the return voyage to America fell ill and died soon after landing.* Various other schemes were now advanced for following the different rivers to their sources and locating forts at convenient places. In 1714 Juchereau de Saint-Denis was sent by La Mothe-Cadillac to explore western Louisiana, when he pushed up the Red The principal sources for this expedition are the accounts by Bénard de La Harpe and the carpenter Penicaut. The former is in French, Historical Collections of Louisiana, part iii., p. 19 et seq. and Shea, Early Voyages up and Down the Mississippi, pp. 89-111; and extracts are given in Hart, American History Told by Con River about 68 leagues beyond Natchitoches. In the next year he reached still further toward the Spanish settlements, to be seized near the Rio Grande and carried to Mexico City.* In March, 1719, Bénard de La Harpe, with seven others, left Natchitoches to explore the country contiguous to the Red River and after a journey across hills and prairies, passed two branches of the Wichita and came to the southwest branch of the Arkansas, where he found an extensive tribe of Indians. He then returned to Natchitoches.† Two years later he made an attempt to explore the Arkansas River, but accomplished little.‡ The next explorer was one Bourgmont, who had been sent out by the West India Company to build a post on the River Kansas, for the purpose of trading with Spaniards in times of peace and of preventing their incursions in times of war. Bourgmont also hoped to make peace between the Comanches and the tribes of the Missouri. He accomplished the first part of his mission by erecting Fort Orleans on the Missouri a short distance above the mouth of the Grand River, and then set out for the Comanche village, but was forced to return because of illness. In Sep temporaries, vol. ii., pp. 313-315. A partial tember, 1724, however, he again made translation of Penicaut's journal is in Minnesota the journey and at a meeting with the Comanche chiefs exacted from them a * Winsor, The Mississippi Basin, pp. 90-94. Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, vol. ii., pp. 9-13; Winsor, pp. 94 et seq., 112 et seq. Winsor, pp. 152-156. EXPLORATIONS IN THE NORTHWEST. promise that thenceforth they would live in peace with the Missouri, Osage, Kansas, Otoe, Omaha and Pawnee Indians.* This was the last voyage of discovery for fifteen years —until 1739, in which year two brothers named Mallet ascended the Platte River to its South Fork, then traversed the plains of Colorado, crossed the upper Arkansas and apparently the Cimarron, passed Taos and on July 22, 1739, reached Santa Fé, where they wintered. In May, 1740, their party divided, some crossing the plains to the Pawnees while the others coursed down the Arkansas to the Mississippi.† Numerous attempts had also been made to penetrate the northwest in an endeavor to find the Pacific Ocean. In 1727 a company was formed and invested with the Sioux fur-trade monopoly, on condition of building a fort, mission-house and chapel, and maintaining an armed force to guard them. The missionaries were to attach the Sioux to the French by the double ties of religion and trade, and also to utilize the knowledge of the Sioux to reach the Pacific. Father Guignas headed the missionaries, and René Boucher de la Périer was in charge of the military. The party left Montreal in June and soon reached Lake Pepin, where they erected a fort (which they named Beauharnois) and other necessary Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, vol. ii., pp. 14-21; Winsor, The Mississippi Basin, pp. 141-144. ↑ Parkman, vol. ii., pp. 21-22; Winsor, p. 200. 73 buildings. But in the spring of 1728 the Outagamies persuaded the Sioux to aid them in driving out the French, and the fort was therefore abandoned.* In 1731, however, another attempt was made and for a time a prosperous trade was carried on, but in 1737 the Sioux again became dangerous and Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, the commandant, was forced to abandon the fort.t Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la Vérendrye was authorized to find a way to the Pacific at his own expense, in consideration for which he was given a monopoly of the fur-trade in the regions north and west of Lake Superior. His party started from Montreal June 8, 1731, and penetrated far to the west, but his resources failed, his companions abandoned him, and he was forced to return. He then made several trips, exploring a vast region, hitherto unknown, and diverting a lucrative fur-trade from the English at Hudson Bay, securing it by means of six fortified posts - Fort St. Pierre on Rainy Lake; Fort St. Charles on the Lake of the Woods; Fort Maurepas at the mouth of the Winnipeg River; Fort Bourbon on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg; Fort La Reine, on the Assiniboin; and Fort Dauphin on Lake Manitoba. Two other forts which he built were abandoned built were abandoned - Fort Rouge on the site of the city of Winnipeg *Winsor, pp. 145-146. † Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, vol. ii., pp. 24-29. 74 ROCKY MOUNTAIN EXPLORATION. and another on the Saskatchewan. La On April 19, 1742, however, the two sons of La Vérendrye started on the same perilous journey, in three weeks reached the village of the Mandans, and then set out to find the Horse Indians, on August 11 arriving in the vicinity of a group of hills apparently west of the little Missouri and perhaps a part of the Powder River Range. Here they found only a band of Crow Indians with whom they remained three weeks, on October 9 again starting on their journey. They soon located the Horse Indians, but learned little of value from them, and then pressed on to the encampment of the Bow Indians. With these Indians they marched until on January 1, 1743, they beheld the Bighorn Range of the Rocky Mountains, about 120 miles east of Yellowstone Park. Being overtaken by winter, they turned to the southeast, on March 1 came to the village of the Chokecherry Indians on the Missouri and remained there until April, when they set out upon their return journey, following the Missouri until they reached the Mandan village May 18, and then Winsor, pp. 193-202. going with a party of Assiniboins to Fort La Reine, where they arrived July 2.* The work of these two men was of little benefit to them for the Marquis de la Jonquière had become governor, with the notorious François Bigot as intendant, and these men took away the commission to find the Pacific from the sons of La Vérendrye, conferring it upon Saint-Pierre. The two sons were also refused permission to return to the trading posts to protect and secure the goods they had left, and thus they were shamefully robbed of the fruits of their explorations. Saint-Pierre set out for Manitoba on June 5, 1750, but failing to accomplish his mission, he sent an ensign named Niverville to the Saskatchewan, where in 1751 near the "Rock Mountains " a fort called La Jonquière was erected. Saint-Pierre made several futile attempts to explore further west, but unfriendly Assiniboin Indians prevented, and in the winter of 1752 even compelled him to abandon Fort La Reine, which was soon after burned to the ground. Saint-Pierre therefore concluding that further discovery was impossible, set out for Quebec, where he arrived in the autumn of 1753, placing his journal in the hands of the new governor, Duquesne.† * Johnson, French Pathfinders, pp. 313-318; Thwaites, Rocky Mountain Exploration; Parkinan, Half Century of Conflict, vol. ii., pp. 2940; Winsor, pp. 202-203. ↑ Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, vol. ii., pp. 40-62; Winsor, The Mississippi Basin, pp. 204-210. |