Parkman Vol. 3, Chapter 4

In the name of the Most High, Mighty, and Redoubted Monarch, Louis, Fourteenth of that name . . . .”

Previously in The Discovery of the Great West.

Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians.

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.” [1] Most things human have their phases of the ludicrous; and the heroism of these untiring priests is no exception to the rule.

[1: Relation, 1672, 42.]

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 dispatches 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.

[This charge was made from the first establishment of the missions. For remarks on it, see “Jesuits in North America.”]

Chapter 4

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; [2] 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 dispatches as an expedition sent out by himself. [3] 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. [4]

[2: Lettre de Talon à Colbert, 27 Oct. 1667. Twenty years after, the plan was again suggested by the Governor, Denonville.]

[3: 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.]

[4: 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.”]

St. Lusson set out with a small party of men, and Nicolas Perrot as his interpreter. Among Canadian voyageurs few names are so conspicuous as that of Perrot; not because there were not others who matched him in achievement, but because he could write, and left behind him a tolerable account of what he had seen. [5] He was at this time twenty-six years old and had formerly been an engagé of the Jesuits. He was a man of enterprise, courage, and address; the last being especially shown in his dealings with Indians, over whom he had great influence. He spoke Algonquin fluently, and was favorably known to many tribes of that family. St. Lusson wintered at the Manatoulin Islands; while Perrot — having first sent messages to the tribes of the north, inviting them to meet the deputy of the Governor at the Saut Ste. Marie in the following spring — proceeded to Green Bay, to urge the same invitation upon the tribes of that quarter. They knew him well and greeted him with clamors of welcome. The Miamis, it is said, received him with a sham battle, which was designed to do him honor, but by which nerves more susceptible would have been severely shaken. [6] They entertained him also with a grand game of la crosse, the Indian ball-play. Perrot gives a marvelous account of the authority and state of the Miami chief; who, he says, was attended day and night by a guard of warriors, — an assertion which would be incredible were it not sustained by the account of the same chief given by the Jesuit Dablon. Of the tribes of the Bay, the greater part promised to send delegates to the Saut; but the Pottawattamies dissuaded the Miami potentate from attempting so long a journey, lest the fatigue incident to it might injure his health; and he therefore deputed them to represent him and his tribesmen at the great meeting. Their principal chiefs, with those of the Sacs, Winnebagoes, and Menomonies, embarked, and paddled for the place of rendezvous; where they and Perrot arrived on the fifth of May. [7]

[5: Moeurs, Coustumes, et Relligion des Sauvages de l’Amérique Septentrionale. This work of Perrot, hitherto unpublished, appeared in 1864, under the editorship of Father Tailhan, S.J. A great part of it is incorporated in La Potherie.]

[6: See La Potherie, ii. 125. Perrot himself does not mention it. Charlevoix erroneously places this interview at Chicago. Perrot’s narrative shows that he did not go farther than the tribes of Green Bay; and the Miamis were then, as we have seen, on the upper part of Fox River.]

[7: Perrot, Mémoires, 127.]

St. Lusson was here with his men, fifteen in number, among whom was Louis Joliet; [8] and Indians were fast thronging in from their wintering grounds; attracted, as usual, by the fishery of the rapids, or moved by the messages sent by Perrot, — Crees, Monsonis, Amikoués, Nipissings, and many more. When fourteen tribes, or their representatives, had arrived, St. Lusson prepared to execute the commission with which he was charged.

[8: Procès Verbal de la Prise de Possession, etc., 14 Juin, 1671. The names are attached to this instrument.]

At the foot of the rapids was the village of the Sauteurs, above the village was a hill, and hard by stood the fort of the Jesuits. On the morning of the fourteenth of June, St. Lusson led his followers to the top of the hill, all fully equipped and under arms. Here, too, in the vestments of their priestly office, were four Jesuits, — Claude Dablon, Superior of the Missions of the Lakes, Gabriel Druilletes, Claude Allouez, and Louis André. [9] All around, the great throng of Indians stood, or crouched, or reclined at length, with eyes and ears intent. A large cross of wood had been made ready. Dablon, in solemn form, pronounced his blessing on it; and then it was reared and planted in the ground, while the Frenchmen, uncovered, sang the Vexilla Regis. Then a post of cedar was planted beside it, with a metal plate attached, engraven with the royal arms; while St. Lusson’s followers sang the Exaudiat and one of the Jesuits uttered a prayer for the king. St. Lusson now advanced, and, holding his sword in one hand, and raising with the other a sod of earth, proclaimed in a loud voice, —

“In the name of the Most High, Mighty, and Redoubted Monarch, Louis, Fourteenth of that name, Most Christian King of France and of Navarre, I take possession of this place, Sainte Marie du Saut, as also of Lakes Huron and Superior, the Island of Manatoulin, and all countries, rivers, lakes, and streams contiguous and adjacent thereunto; both those which have been discovered and those which may be discovered hereafter, in all their length and breadth, bounded on the one side by the seas of the North and of the West, and on the other by the South Sea: declaring to the nations thereof that from this time forth they are vassals of his Majesty, bound to obey his laws and follow his customs: promising them on his part all succor and protection against the incursions and invasions of their enemies: declaring to all other potentates, princes, sovereigns, states and republics, — to them and their subjects, — that they cannot and are not to seize or settle upon any parts of the aforesaid countries, save only under the good pleasure of His Most Christian Majesty, and of him who will govern in his behalf; and this on pain of incurring his resentment and the efforts of his arms. Vive le Roi.” [10]

[9: Marquette is said to have been present; but the official act, just cited, proves the contrary. He was still at St. Esprit.]

[10: Procès Verbal de la Prise de Possession.]

– The Discovery of the Great West, Chapter 4 by Francis Parkman

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Introduction.

If, at times, it may seem that range has been allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or on personal observation.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

With respect to that special research which, if inadequate, is still in the most emphatic sense indispensable, it has been the writer’s aim to exhaust the existing material of every subject treated. While it would be folly to claim success in such an attempt, he has reason to hope that, so far at least as relates to the present volume, nothing of much importance has escaped him. With respect to the general preparation just alluded to, he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any means within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true.

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