THE OHIO VALLEY-GREAT LAKES ETHNOHISTORY
ARCHIVES: THE MIAMI COLLECTION
It is noted that the following work from the Miami Archives should be read and
considered within the historical context in which it was composed and printed.
The opinions expressed and the language used do not reflect the opinions or
standards of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, but are, rather,
indicative of thought in that historical moment during which the document was
published.
Official Account of the Enterprise
of
Cavelier de la Salle from 1679 to 1681
[Zenobius Membré?]
In: English Translation of Margry,
vol. 1, pp. 472-586.
pp. 497, 498, 499, 500, 501, 502.
page 497 tribe wanted to wage against them, because the
French hated the Illinois. They also put forward many other arguments, which
alarmed the Sieur de La Salle's men and even caused him great uneasiness,
because all the Indians whom he had met on his way there had told him
practically the same things. Nevertheless, as he knew that these arguments
might have been suggested to them by those who were opposing his enterprise,
and by the jealousy of the Indians, who feared the Illinois on account of their
valour and dreaded lest they might become still bolder when, through the
French,, they obtained the use of firearms, he resolved to continue his
journey, taking all necessary precautions for his own safety and that of his
men. He therefore replied to the Outagamis that he thanked them for the advice
they had given him, but that he was not afraid of the Illinois, and that he
should be able to bring them to reason either by friendship or by force.
On the next day, the first of the month of November, he re-embarked with all his men and arrived the same day at the meeting-place which he had appointed for the Sieur de Tonty. It was at the mouth of the river of the Miamis, which, coming from the south, falls into the Lake of the Illinois. He was surprised to find nobody there, for the Sieur de Tonty had had a much shorter distance to go, and his boats were much more lightly laden. However, he took advantage of this state of affairs to gain time, and to carry out the plan which he had formed. He had made up his mind to wait until the winter to go to the Illinois, in order to avoid running unnecessary risks; for at that season these tribes disperse, and live apart by families or companies of two or three hundred persons, for page 498 convenience in hunting; and when he had been joined by the Sieur de Tonty, who was to bring him twenty men, he could safely make himself known to the first band he might meet, whom he could gain over by kind treatment and by making presents to them; from them he might gain some slight knowledge of the Illinois language; and by these means he could easily form an alliance with the rest of the nation.
With this intention he made use of the Sieur de Tonty's lateness in arriving at this juncture. He told his men that he had decided to wait for him; and in order to amuse them by some useful occupation, he proposed that they should build a fort and a house for the safety of the barque and the goods it was to bring, and to serve them as a place of refuge in case of need.
At the mouth of the river there was a hill, flat on top and naturally fortified; it was high and steep, triangular in shape, inclosed on two sides by the river and on the other by a deep ravine. He had all the trees cut down with which it was covered, and all the bushes cleared away within a distance of two gunshots from the side of the wood. After that he had a redoubt built, forty feet long by thirty wide, strengthened with beams and joists squared and musket-proof, placed crosswise one upon another. The two sides looking on the river he had strengthened with pointed stakes, and on the land side he drove in stakes twenty-five feet high as a tenaille. The whole month of November was taken up with these tasks, except the Feast days and Sundays, when the whole company was present at divine service and the sermon which Fathers Gabriel and Louis page 499 preached in turn after vespers.
At the beginning of that month the Sieur de La Salle had examined the mouth of the river and had observed a sand-bank there. He sounded it himself and marked the channel with two tall poles fixed on the two sides of the entrance, with flags and buoys all along, and he sent two men to Missilimakinak with information on all points to serve as guides to the pilot. Sieur de Tonty arrived safely on the 20th of November, and told the Sieur de La Salle that his barque had not anchored at Missilimakinak, and that he had not been able to get any news of it from the Indians who came from all the coasts of the lakes, nor from the two men he had sent to Missilimakinak, whom he had met. The Sieur de La Salle feared, with reason, that his barque had been wrecked. Nevertheless, he finished his fort; and as it did not appear, after waiting so long, he determined to start, for fear of being stopped by the ice which was beginning to close the river.
On the 3rd of December he embarked with thirty men in eight canoes, and they went up the river, travelling south-east, for about twenty leagues. One day the Sieur de La Salle sent off his canoes and followed them by land, as he generally did, hunting and trying to make some profitable discovery; he took up the chase after a stag which he had wounded, and did not overtake it until he had penetrated into the woods a distance of four or five leagues. He thought that two men, whom he had with him, were following him by his trail in the snow, and would very soon join him; but they had made a mistake and had retraced the path from the place where they had set out in the morning page 500 instead of following the route he took. So. after waiting some time in vain, he started off to rejoin the canoes. He came to some marshes which compelled him to make a long detour; and, being also inconvenienced by the snow, which fell heavily, he was unable to reach the bank of the river until two o'clock in the morning. He fired two shots to let his men know, but no one replied, and he continued his march, going up along the stream, believing that the canoes had got in front of him. After he had gone on over three hours in this way, he saw a fire on a little hill, and, after calling two or three times, he went straight up to it; but instead of finding his men there asleep, as he had expected, he found only a small fire between some bushes and, under an oak, the place where a man had lain down on the dry grass, who had apparently gone away on hearing the noise which the Sieur de La Salle had made. It was some Indian, who had posted himself there in order to surprise and kill one of his enemies along the river. The Sieur de La Salle called to him in three or four languages, and at last shouted that, to show him that he was not afraid of him, he was going to lie down in his place. He replenished the fire; and after he had thoroughly warmed himself, it occurred to him to protect himself from being surprised by cutting down a large number of the bushes, which, by falling crosswise among those left standing, so encumbered the way that no one could come near him without making a good deal of noise and awakening him. Then he put out the fire and went to sleep, although it snowed all night long.
The next day he looked for the trail of Indians, and found that some had come as far as the rampart of brushwood three or page 501 four tines, but had not ventured to cross it for fear of being discovered. He returned to the river bank, and as he found no trace there of the canoes having passed, he went back the way he had come the day before, following the current of the stream until noon; when he found Father Louis who was coming with his canoe to seek him, and he embarked in it and went to the place where the rest of his little fleet was awaiting him.
It was on the edge of an extensive plain, at the further end of which, on the western side, was a village of Miamis, Mascoutens and Ouyatanons combined.
The River of the Illinois takes its rise in this plain among a number of morasses, which it is scarcely possible to cross. This river is only a league and a half away from the River of the Miamis; and so the Sieur de La Salle had his canoes and all his baggage conveyed to it, by a good path which he found, leaving letters at the place where he quitted the River of the Miamis, as he had done at the fort which he built at its mouth, for the information of the men who, to the number of twenty-five, were to come in his barque to join him.
The River of the Illinois is navigable for canoes within a hundred yards of its source, and it increases in size so quickly, that, after a short distance, it is almost as broad and deep as the Marne. It flows through very extensive marshes, in which its course is so winding that, although the current is fairly strong, they sometimes found that they had not advanced as much as two leagues in a direct line after having rowed a whole day. They saw nothing, as far as the eye could reach, except marshes, reeds and alders; and for a distance of over forty leagues they would have found no place to encamp, but for a few mounds of frozen ground on which they made fires and slept.
Moreover, after they had traversed these marshes, they did not find any hunting, as they had hoped to do, for the country consists of nothing but wide open plains, where only very high grass grows, which is dry at this season, and the Miamis had burned it down when hunting the wild oxen; usually there are
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