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

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The fathers were delighted with the country, which Dablon. calls an earthly paradise; but he adds that the way to it is as hard as the path to heaven. He alludes especially to the rapids of Fox River, which gave the two travellers great trouble. Having safely passed them, they saw an Indian idol on the bank, similar to that which Dollier and Galinée found at Detroit; being merely a rock, bearing some resemblance to a man, and hideously painted. With the help of their attendants, they threw it into the river. Dablon expatiates on the buffalo; which he describes apparently on the report of others, as his description is not very accurate. Crossing Winnebago Lake, the two priests followed the river leading to the town of the Mascoutins and Miamis, which they reached on the fifteenth of September. [Footnote: This town was on the Neenah or Fox River, above Lake Winnebago. The Mascoutins, Fire Nation, or Nation of the Prairie, are extinct or merged in other tribes.—See "Jesuits in North America." The Miamis soon removed to the banks of the River St. Joseph, near Lake Michigan.] These two tribes lived together within the compass of the same inclosure of palisades; to the number, it is said, of more than three thousand souls. The missionaries, who had brought a highly-colored picture of the Last Judgment, called the Indians to council and displayed it before them; while Allouez, who spoke Algonquin, harangued them on hell, demons, and eternal flames. They listened with open ears, beset him night and day with questions, and invited him and his companion to unceasing feasts. They were welcomed in every lodge, and followed everywhere with eyes of curiosity, wonder, and awe. Dablon overflows with praises of the Miami chief; who was honored by his subjects like a king, and whose demeanor to wards his guests had no savor of the savage.

Their hosts told them of the great river Mississippi, rising far in the north and flowing southward,—they knew not whither,—and of many tribes that dwelt along its banks. When at length they took their departure, they left behind them a reputation as medicine-men of transcendent power.

In the winter following, Allouez visited the Foxes, whom he found in extreme ill-humor. They were incensed against the French by the ill-usage which some of their tribe had lately met with when on a trading-visit to Montreal; and they received the faith with shouts of derision. The priest was horror-stricken at what he saw. Their lodges,—each, containing from five to ten families,—seemed in his eyes like seraglios; for some of the chiefs had eight wives. He armed himself with patience, and at length gained a hearing. Nay, he succeeded so well, that when he showed them his crucifix, they would throw tobacco on it as an offering; and, on another visit, which he made them soon after, he taught the whole village to make the sign of the cross. A war-party was going out against their enemies, and he bethought him of telling them the story of the Cross and the Emperor Constantine. This so wrought upon them that they all daubed the figure of a cross on their shields of bull-hide, set out for the war, and came back victorious, extolling the sacred symbol as a great war-medicine.

"Thus it is," writes Dablon, who chronicles the incident, "that our holy faith is established among these people; and we have good hope that we shall soon carry it to the famous river called the Mississippi, and perhaps even to the South Sea." [Footnote: Relation , 1672, 42.] Most things human have their phases of the ludicrous; and the heroism of these untiring priests is no exception to the rule.

The various missionary stations were much alike. They consisted of a chapel (commonly of logs) and one or more houses, with perhaps a storehouse and a workshop,—the whole fenced with palisades, and forming, in fact, a stockade fort, surrounded with clearings and cultivated fields. It is evident that the priests had need of other hands than their own and those of the few lay brothers attached to the mission. They required men inured to labor, accustomed to the forest life, able to guide canoes and handle tools and weapons. In the earlier epoch of the missions, when enthusiasm was at its height, they were served in great measure by volunteers, who joined them through devotion or penitence, and who were known as donnés , or "given men." Of late, the number of these had much diminished; and they now relied chiefly on hired men, or engagés . These were employed in building, hunting, fishing, clearing and tilling the ground, guiding canoes, and if faith is to be placed in reports current throughout the colony in trading with the Indians for the profit of the missions. This charge of trading—which, if the results were applied exclusively to the support of the missions, does not of necessity involve much censure—is vehemently reiterated in many quarters, including the official despatches of the Governor of Canada; while, so far as I can discover, the Jesuits never distinctly denied it; and, on several occasions, they partially admitted its truth. [Footnote: This charge was made from the first establishment of the missions. For remarks on it, see "Jesuits in North America."]

CHAPTER IV. 1667-1672. FRANCE TAKES POSSESSION OF THE WEST

TALON.—ST. LUSSON.—PERROT.—THE CEREMONY AT SAUT STE. MARIE.– THE SPEECH OF ALLOUEZ.—COUNT FRONTENAC.

Jean Talon, Intendant of Canada, was a man of no common stamp. Able, vigorous, and patriotic,—he was the worthy lieutenant and disciple of the great minister Colbert, the ill-requited founder of the prosperity of Louis XIV. He cherished high hopes for the future of New France, and labored strenuously to realize them. He urged upon the king a scheme which, could it have been accomplished, would have wrought strange changes on the American continent. This was, to gain possession of New York, by treaty or conquest; [Footnote: Lettre de Talon à Colbert , 27 Oct . 1667. Twenty years after, the plan was again suggested by the Governor, Denonville.] thus giving to Canada a southern access to the ocean, open at all seasons, separating New England from Virginia, and controlling the Iroquois, the most formidable enemy of the French colony. Louis XIV. held the king of England in his pay; and, had the proposal been urged, the result could not have been foretold. The scheme failed, and Talon prepared to use his present advantages to the utmost. While laboring strenuously to develop the industrial resources of the colony, he addressed himself to discovering and occupying the interior of the continent; controlling the rivers, which were its only highways; and securing it for France against every other nation. On the east, England was to be hemmed within a narrow strip of seaboard; while, on the south, Talon aimed at securing a port on the Gulf of Mexico, to hold the Spaniards in check, and dispute with them the possession of the vast regions which they claimed as their own. But the interior of the continent was still an unknown world. It behooved him to explore it; and to that end he availed himself of Jesuits, officers, fur-traders, and enterprising schemers like La Salle. His efforts at discovery seem to have been conducted with a singular economy of the king's purse. La Salle paid all the expenses of his first expedition made under Talon's auspices; and apparently of the second also, though the Intendant announces it in his despatches as an expedition sent out by himself. [Footnote: At all events, La Salle was in great need of money about the time of his second journey. On the sixth of August, 1671, he had received on credit, "dans son grand besoin et nécessité," from Branssat, fiscal attorney of the Seminary, merchandise to the amount of four hundred and fifty livres; and, on the eighteenth of December of the following year, he gave his promise to pay the same sum, in money or furs, in the August following. Faillon found the papers in the ancient records of Montreal.] When, in 1670, he ordered Daumont de St. Lusson to search for copper-mines on Lake Superior, and, at the same time, to take formal possession of the whole interior for the king; it was arranged that he should pay the costs of the journey by trading with the Indians. [Footnote: In his despatch of 2d Nov. 1671, Talon writes to the king that "St. Lusson's expedition will cost nothing, as he has received beaver enough from the Indians to pay him."]

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