THE FIRST SAIL ON LAKE ERIE.

61

The men

La Salle from the further prosecution of the enterprise. worked industriously on the ship. The most of the Iroquois having gone to war with a nation on the northern side of Lake Erie, the few remaining behind were become less insolent than before. Still they lingered about where the work was going on, and continued expressions of discontent at what the French were doing. One of them let on to be drunk and attempted to kill the blacksmith, but the latter repulsed the Indian with a piece of iron red-hot from the forge. The Indians threatened to burn the vessel on the stocks, and might have done so were it not constantly guarded. Much of the time the only food of the men was Indian corn and fish; the distance to Fort Frontenac and the inclemency of the winter rendering it out of power to procure a supply of other or better provisions.

The frequent alarms from the Indians, a want of wholesome food, the loss of the vessel with its promised supplies, and a refusal of the neighboring tribes to sell any more of their corn, reduced the party to such extremities that the ship-carpenters tried to run away. They were, however, persuaded to remain and prosecute their work. Two Mohegan Indians, successful hunters in La Salle's service, were fortunate enough to bring in some wild goats and other game they had killed, which greatly encouraged the workmen to go on with their task more briskly than before. The vessel was completed within six months from the time its keel was laid. The ship was gotten afloat before entirely finished, to prevent the designs of the natives to burn it. She was sixty tons burthen, and called the "Griffin," a name given it by La Salle by way of a compliment to Count Frontenac, whose armorial bearings were supported by two griffins. Three guns were fired, and "Te Deums" chanted at the christening, and prayers offered up for a prosperous voyage. The air in the wild forest rung with shouts of joy; even the Iroquois, looking suspiciously on, were seduced with alluring draughts of brandy to lend their deep-mouthed voices to the happy occasion. The men left their cabins of bark and swung their hammocks under the deck of the ship, where they could rest with greater security from the savages than on the shore.

The Griffin, under press of a favorable breeze, and with the help of twelve men on the shore pulling at tow-ropes, was forced up against the strong current of the Niagara River to calmer waters at the entrance of the lake. On the 7th of August, 1679, her canvas was spread, and the pilot steering by the compass, the vessel, with La Salle and his thirty odd companions and their effects aboard, sailed out westward upon the unknown, silent waters of Lake Erie. In three days they reached the mouth of Detroit River. Father Hennepin was fairly

delighted with the country along this river it was "so well situated and the soil so fertile. Vast meadows extending back from the strait and terminating at the uplands, which were clad with vineyards, and plum and pear and other fruit-bearing trees of nature's own planting, all so well arranged that one would think they could not have been so disposed without the help of art. The country was also well stocked with deer, bear, wild goats, turkeys, and other animals and birds, that supplied a most relishing food. The forest comprised walnut and other timber in abundance suitable for building purposes. So charmed was he with the prospect that he "endeavored to persuade La Salle to settle at the 'De Troit,'" it being in the midst of so many savage nations among whom a good trade could be established. La Salle would not listen to this proposal. He said he would make no settlement within one hundred leagues of Frontenac, lest other Europeans would be before them in the new country they were going to discover. This, says Hennepin, was the pretense of La Salle and the adventurers who were with him; for I soon discovered that their intention was to buy all the furs and skins of the remotest savages who, as they thought, did not know their value, and thus enrich themselves in one single voyage.

On Lake Huron the Griffin encountered a storm. The main-yards and topmast were blown away, giving the ship over to the mercy of the winds. There was no harbor to run into for shelter. La Salle, although a courageous man, gave way to his fears, and said they all were undone. Everyone thereupon fell upon their knees to say prayers and prepare for death, except the pilot, who cursed and swore all the while at La Salle for bringing him there to perish in a nasty lake, after he had acquired so much renown in a long and successful navigation on the ocean. The storm abated, and on the 27th of August, the Griffin resumed her course northwest, and was carried on the evening of the same day beyond the island of Mackinaw to point St. Ignace, and safely anchored in a bay that is sheltered, except from the south, by the projecting mainland.

CHAPTER IX.

LA SALLE'S VOYAGE CONTINUED.

ST. IGNACE, or Mackinaw, as previously stated, had become a principal center of the Jesuit missions, and it had also grown into a headquarters for an extensive Indian trade. Duly licensed traders, as well as the Coureurs de Bois,- men who had run wild, as it were, and by their intercourse with the nations had thrown off all restraints of civilized life, resorted to this vicinity in considerable numbers. These, lost to all sense of national pride, instead of sustaining took every measure to thwart La Salle's plans. They, with some of the dissatisfied crew, represented to the Indians that La Salle and his associates were a set of dangerous and ambitious adventurers, who meant to engross all the trade in furs and skins and invade their liberties. These jealous and meddlesome busybodies had already, before the arrival of the Griffin, succeeded in seducing fifteen men from La Salle's service, whom with others, he had sent forward the previous spring, under command of Tonty, with a stock of merchandise; and, instead of going to the tribes beyond and preparing the way for a friendly reception of La Salle, as they were ordered to do, they loitered about Mackinaw the whole summer and squandered the goods, in spite of Tonty's persistent efforts to urge them forward in the performance of their duty. La Salle sent out other parties to trade with the natives, and these went so far, and were so busy in bartering for and collecting furs, that they did not return to Mackinaw until November. It was now getting late and La Salle was warned of the dangerous storms that sweep the lakes at the beginning of winter; he resolved, therefore, to continue his voyage without waiting the return of his men. He weighed anchor and sailed westward into Lake Michigan as far as the islands at the entrance of Green Bay, then called the Pottawatomie Islands, for the reason that they were then occupied by bands of that tribe. On one of these islands La Salle found some of the men belonging to his advance party of traders, and who, having secured a large quantity of valuable furs, had long and impatiently waited his coming.

La Salle, as is already apparent, determined to engage in a fur trade that already and legitimately belonged to merchants operating at

Montreal, and with which the terms of his own license prohibited his interfering. Without asking any one's advice he resolved to load his ship with furs and send it back to Niagara, and the furs to Quebec, and out of the proceeds of the sale to discharge some very pressing debts. The pilot with five men to man the vessel were ordered to proceed with the Griffin to Niagara, and return with all imaginable speed and join La Salle at the mouth of the St. Joseph River, near the southern shore of Lake Michigan. The Griffin did not go to Green Bay City, as many writers have assumed in hasty perusals of the original authorities, or even penetrate the body of water known as Green Bay beyond the chain of islands at its mouth.

The resolution of La Salle, taken, it seems, on the spur of the moment, to send his ship back down the lakes, and prosecute his voyage the rest of the way to the head of Lake Michigan in frail birchen canoes, was a most unfortunate measure. It delayed his discoveries two years, brought severe hardships upon himself and greatly embarrassed all his future plans. The Griffin itself was lost, with all her cargo, valued at sixty thousand livres. She, nor her crew, was ever heard of after leaving the Pottawatomie Islands. What became of the ship and men in charge remains to this day a mystery, or veiled in a cloud of conjecture. La Salle himself, says Francis Parkman, "grew into a settled conviction that the Griffin had been treacherously sunk by the pilot and sailors to whom he had intrusted her; and he thought he had, in after-years, found evidence that the authors of the crime, laden with the merchandise they had taken from her, had reached the Mississippi and ascended it, hoping to join Du Shut, the famous chief of the Coureurs de Bois, and enrich themselves by traffic with the northern tribes.*

The following is, substantially, Hennepin's account of La Salle's canoe voyage from the mouth of Green Bay south, along the shore of Lake Michigan, past Milwaukee and Chicago, and around the southern end of the lake; thence north along the eastern shore to the mouth of the St. Joseph River; thence up the St. Joseph to South Bend, making the portage here to the head-waters of the Kankakee; thence down the Kankakee and Illinois through Peoria Lake, with an account of the building of Fort Crevecœur. Hennepin's narrative is full of interesting detail, and contains many interesting observations upon the condition of the country, the native inhabitants as they appeared nearly two hundred years ago. The privation and suffering to which La Salle and his party were exposed in navigating Lake Michigan at that early day, and late in the fall of the year, when the waters were vexed with * Discovery of the Great West, p. 169.

FIRST VOYAGE ON LAKE MICHIGAN.

65

tempestuous storms, illustrate the courage and daring of the undertaking.

Their suffering did not terminate with their voyage upon the lake. Difficulties of another kind were experienced on the St. Joseph, Kankakee and Illinois Rivers. Hennepin's is, perhaps, the first detailed account we have of this part of the "Great West," and is therefore of great interest and value on this account.

"We left the Pottawatomies to continue our voyage, being fourteen men in all, in four canoes. I had charge of the smallest, which carried five hundredweight and two men. My companions being recently from Europe, and for that reason being unskilled in the management of these kind of boats, its whole charge fell upon me in stormy weather.

"The canoes were laden with a smith's forge, utensils, tools for carpenters, joiners and sawyers, besides our goods and arms. We steered to the south toward the mainland, from which the Pottawatomie Islands are distant some forty leagues; but about midway, and in the night time, we were greatly endangered by a sudden storm. The waves dashed into our canoes, and the night was so dark we had great difficulty in keeping our canoes together. The daylight coming on, we reached the shore, where we remained for four days, waiting for the lake to grow calm. In the meantime our Indian hunter went in quest of game, but killed nothing other than a porcupine; this, however, made our Indian corn more relishing. The weather becoming fair, we resumed our voyage, rowing all day and well into the night, along the western coast of the Lake of the Illinois. The wind again grew to fresh, and we landed upon a rocky beach where we had nothing to protect ourselves against a storm of snow and rain except the clothing on our persons. We remained here two days for the sea to go down, having made a little fire from wood cast ashore by the waves. We proceeded on our voyage, and toward evening the winds again forced us to a beach covered with rushes, where we remained three days; and in the meantime our provisions, consisting only of pumpkins and Indian corn purchased from the Pottawatomies, entirely gave out. Our canoes were so heavily laden that we could not carry provisions with us, and we were compelled to rely on bartering for such supplies on our way. We left this dismal place, and after twelve leagues rowing came to another Pottawatomie village, whose inhabitants stood upon the beach to receive us. But M. La Salle refused to let anyone land, notwithstanding the severity of the weather, fearing some of his men might run away. We were in such great peril that La Salle flung himself into the water, after we had gone some three leagues farther,