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

With regard to his alleged voyage down the Illinois, the case is different. Here, he is reported to have made a statement which admits but one interpretation,—that of the discovery by him of the Mississippi prior to its discovery by Joliet and Marquette. This statement is attributed to a man not prone to vaunt his own exploits, who never proclaimed them in print, and whose testimony, even in his own case, must therefore have weight. But it comes to us through the medium of a person, strongly biased in favor of La Salle and against Marquette and the Jesuits.

Seven years had passed since the alleged discovery, and La Salle had not before laid claim to it; although it was matter of notoriety that during five years it had been claimed by Joliet, and that his claim was generally admitted. The correspondence of the Governor and the Intendant is silent as to La Salle's having penetrated to the Mississippi; though the attempt was made under the auspices of the latter, as his own letters declare; while both had the discovery of the great river earnestly at heart. The governor, Frontenac, La Salle's ardent supporter and ally, believed in 1672, as his letters show, that the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of California, and, two years later, he announces to the minister Colbert its discovery by Joliet. [Footnote: Lettre de Frontenac au Ministre , 14 Nov . 1674. He here speaks of "la grande rivière qu'il (Joliet) a trouvée, qui va du nord au sud, et qui est aussi large que celle du Saint- Laurent vis-à-vis de Québec." Four years later, Frontenac speaks slightingly of Joliet, but neither denies his discovery of the Mississippi nor claims it for La Salle, in whose interest he writes.] After La Salle's death, his brother, his nephew, and his niece addressed a memorial to the King, petitioning for certain grants in consideration of the discoveries of their relative, which they specify at some length; but they do not pretend that he reached the Mississippi before his expeditions of 1679 to 1682. [Footnote: Papiers de Famille , MSS.; Mémoire présenté au Roi . The following is an extract: "Il parvient … jusqu'à la rivière des Illinois. Il y construisit un fort situé à 350 lieues au-delà du fort de Frontenac, et suivant ensuite le cours de cette rivière, il trouve qu'elle se jettoit dans un grand fleuve appellé par ceux du pays Missisippi, c'est à dire grande eau , environ cent lieues audessous du fort qu'il venoit de construire." This fort was Fort Crêvecoeur, built in 1680, near the site of Peoria. The memoir goes on to relate the descent of La Salle to the Gulf, which concluded this expedition of 1679-82.] This silence is the more significant, as it is this very niece who had possession of the papers in which La Salle recounts the journeys of which the issues are in question. [Footnote: The following is an extract, given by Margry, from a letter of the aged Madeleine Cavelier, dated 21 Février, 1756, and addressed to her nephew M. Le Baillif, who had applied for the papers in behalf of the minister, Silhouette: "J'ay cherché une occasion sûre pour vous anvoyé les papiers de M. de la Salle. Il y a des cartes que j'ay jointe à ces papiers, qui doivent prouver que, en 1675, M. de Lasalle avet déja fet deux voyages en ces decouverte, puisqu'il y avet une carte, que je vous envoye, par laquelle il est fait mention de l'androit auquel M. de Lasalle aborda près le fleuve de Mississipi." This, though brought forward to support the claim of discovery prior to Joliet, seems to indicate that La Salle had not reached the Mississippi, but only approached it, previous to 1675.

Margry, in a series of papers in the Journal Général de l'Instruction Publique for 1862, first took the position that La Salle reached the Mississippi in 1670 and 1671, and has brought forward in defence of it all the documents which his unwearied research enabled him to discover. Father Tailhan, S.J., has replied at length, in the copious notes to his edition of Nicolas Perrot, but without having seen the principal document cited by Margry, and of which extracts have been given in the notes to this chapter.] Had they led him to the Mississippi, it is reasonably certain that she would have made it known in her memorial. La Salle discovered the Ohio, and in all probability the Illinois also; but that he discovered the Mississippi has not been proved, nor, in the light of the evidence we have, is it likely.

THE OLD MISSIONS AND THE NEW.—A CHANGE OF SPIRIT.—LAKE SUPERIOR AND THE COPPER-MINES.—STE. MARIE.—LA POINTE.—MICHILLIMACKINAC. —JESUITS ON LAKE MICHIGAN.—ALLOUEZ AND DABLON.—THE JESUIT FUR-TRADE.

What were the Jesuits doing? Since the ruin of their great mission of the Hurons, a perceptible change had taken place in them. They had put forth exertions almost superhuman, set at naught famine, disease, and death, lived with the self-abnegation of saints and died with the devotion of martyrs; and the result of all had been a disastrous failure. From no short-coming on their part, but from the force of events beyond the sphere of their influence, a very demon of havoc had crushed their incipient churches, slaughtered their converts, uprooted the populous communities on which their hopes had rested, and scattered them in bands of wretched fugitives far and wide through the wilderness. [Footnote: See "The Jesuits in North America."] They had devoted themselves in the fulness of faith to the building up of a Christian and Jesuit empire on the conversion of the great stationary tribes of the lakes; and of these none remained but the Iroquois,—the destroyers of the rest, among whom, indeed, was a field which might stimulate their zeal by an abundant promise of sufferings and martyrdoms; but which, from its geographical position, was too much exposed to Dutch and English influence to promise great and decisive results. Their best hopes were now in the North and the West; and thither, in great part, they had turned their energies.

We find them on Lake Huron, Lake Superior, and Lake Michigan, laboring vigorously as of old, but in a spirit not quite the same. Now, as before, two objects inspired their zeal, the "greater glory of God," and the influence and credit of the order of Jesus. If the one motive had somewhat lost in power, the other had gained. The epoch of the saints and martyrs was passing away; and henceforth we find the Canadian Jesuit less and less an apostle, more and more an explorer, a man of science, and a politician. The yearly reports of the missions are still, for the edification of the pious reader, stuffed with intolerably tedious stories of baptisms, conversions, and the exemplary deportment of neophytes; for these have become a part of the formula; but they are relieved abundantly by more mundane topics. One finds observations on the winds, currents, and tides of the Great Lakes; speculations on a subterranean outlet of Lake Superior; accounts of its copper-mines, and how we, the Jesuit fathers, are laboring to explore them for the profit of the colony; surmises touching the North Sea, the South Sea, the Sea of China, which we hope ere long to discover; and reports of that great mysterious river of which the Indians tell us,—flowing southward, perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the Vermilion Sea,—and the secrets whereof, with the help of the Virgin, we will soon reveal to the world.

The Jesuit was as often a fanatic for his order as for his faith; and oftener yet, the two fanaticisms mingled in him inextricably. Ardently as he burned for the saving of souls, he would have none saved on the Upper Lakes except by his brethren and himself. He claimed a monopoly of conversion, with its attendant monopoly of toil, hardship, and martyrdom. Often disinterested for himself, he was inordinately ambitious for the great corporate power in which he had merged his own personality; and here lies one cause, among many, of the seeming contradictions which abound in the annals of the order.