Box 2, Folder 2: Scrapbook - Historical Societies

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Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes; they certainly claimed under the name of Florida the whole sea coast as far a Newfoundland and even to the remotest North: in Spanish geography Canada was a part of Florida. (1)

In 1528, Narvaez landed in Florida, probably near Appalachee bay with three hundred men. The success of Corts in Mexico acted as a powerful stimulant on all cotemporary adventurers; and the deluding accounts given by the Indians of the gold regions, led them to believe that Florida was equally wealthy in the precious metals with Mexico or Peru. Narvaez and his companions, (of whom eighty were mounted,) in the fruitless but alluring search for the object of their warmest hopes, wandered over the lands lying north of the Gulf, untl disappointment and suffering compelled them, after six months endurance of unrequited hardships to seek the sea shore again. Naked and famished, the remnant of the party having reached the bay of Pensacola, manufactured rude boats, in which most of the company, with Narvaez, desperately embarked and finally perished in a storm, and by famine after shipwreck, near the mouths of the Mississippi. Four only of the three hundred ultimately reached Mexico by land, after years of hardships, courageous enterprise, and wanderings that extended across Louisiana and the Northern part of Mexico to the shores of the Pacific Ocean near Sonora; yet even this melancholy remnant notwithstanding all their sufferings and defeated expectations still persisted in the tale of the golden regions of Florida (2) and even confirmed it by oath.

Stimulated by such reports. Ferdinand de Soto, one of the conquerors of Peru under Pizarro, obtained leave to conquer Florida without expense to the Spanish king. In may 1539, accompanied by a well armed and brilliant band of six hundred men, with between two and three hundred horses, De Soto landed in the Bay of Spiritu Santo, or Tampa Bay, eager adventurous, and full of hope in the contemplated enterprise. For the first five months the adventurers toiled in vain, until they reached the neighborhood of Appalachee Bay; during the year 1540 they passed to the nort east, and climbed the mountains of Georgia; again they turned Westward, and in October having arrived on the Alabama river, they fought with the Indians and captured the town of Mavilla, or Mobile; resuming their march towards the Mississippi, they passed the winter near the Yazoo; on the first of April 1541, De Soto reached the Great River not far from the 35th parallel of latitude, and after spending a month in preparing barges, to transport across the stream such of their horses as still ___________ (1) Bancroft vol. p. 60 (1)[2]Bancroft vol. 1 p. 40

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were alive, the explorers crossed, pursued their way northward to the neighborhood of New Madrid, and turning Westward again, marched more than two hundred miles from the Mississippi to the highlands of the White river; again they toiled on to the south, and spent a third winter of their wanderings on the Washita. In the spring of 1542, De Soto descended this river to its junction with the Mississippi, anxious to learn the distance and direction of the sea. On reaching the Great River he was informed that, below, it flowed through endless uninhabitable swamps; in order to learn the truth he sent forward horsemen, who advanced only thirty miles in eight days. Disappointment struck the intrepid warior to the heart--his men and horses were daily wasting and falling aroun him. The Indians challenged him to the combat with impunity--at length a wasting melancholy seized him--his health sunk under a conflict of emotions--and a malignant fever at length brought his life to a close in May 1542. His body was sunk in the stream of the Mississippi; the first European "discoverer of the Great River of the West slept beneath its wa"ters; he had crossed a large part of the continent in search of gold, and "found nothing so remarkable as his burial place." (1)

His remaining followers hoping to reach Mexico by land, again turned their steps Westward, and penetrated to the Red River, the sport of inimical Indians in their forest wanderings. They were unable to cross the Red River, and once more going eastward they reached the Mississippi in December 1542. In despair of rescuing themselves by land, they proceeded to prepare such vessels as they could, to carry them to the sea.-They laboured from January to July 1543, and in that month, in the vessels thus constructed, they reached the Gulf of Mexico, and in September entered the river Panuco. One half of the six hundred who landed with De Soto full of golden hopes, and gay in the display of warlike habilments, had left their bones among the mountains, and in the morasses of the South from Georgia to Arkansas! (2) Such is the history of the expedition, and such the fate of Ferdinand De Soto.

It was reserved for religion to accomplish that enterprise, in which a desire of conquest and a thirst for gold had failed; the Mississippi valley had yet to be reached from the North East, by the route of the Great Lakes; and all the countless benefits which have flowed from its settlement and cultivation, not only to its own inhabitants, and to the United States, but to all mankind in a commercial point of view, have had their foundation in a prominent measure in the religious zeal of the disciples of Loyola. The __________ (1) Bancroft vol. 1 p. 57. For dates see Bancroft (passim)--also see Perkins West. An. p.1 and Sequ. ([2]) Ibid.

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discovery of the North West region was made, missionary posts established, friendship cultivated with the numerous Indian tribes, churches established and converted red men formed into congregations of worshiping christians; the country was explored, and the upper Mississippi not only discovered, but traced from the Falls of Saint Anthony of Padua, to the Gulf of Mexico; and these, through the privations, the sufferings, the untiring labours of the French Missionaries. To use the language of our eloquent historian (1) they were employed "in confirming the influence of France in those vast regions, mingling business with suffering and winning enduring glory by their fearless perseverance. For to what inclemencies from nature and from man, was each Missionary among the barbarians exposed! He defies the severity of climate, wading through water or through snows, without the comfort of fire; having no bread but pounded maize, and often no food but the unwholesome moss from the rocks; laboring incessantly; exposed to live as it were without nourishment, to sleep without a resting place, to travel far, and always incurring perils;--to carry his life in his hand, or rather daily and oftener than every day, to hold it up as a target, expecting captivity, death from the tomahawk, tortures, fire. And yet the simplicity and the freedom of life in the wilderness, had their charms. The heart of the Missionary would swell with delight, as, under a serene sky, and with a mild temperature, and breathing a pure air he moved over waters as transparent as the most limpid fountain. Every encampment offered his attendants the pleasures of the chase. Like a patriarch he dwelt beneat a tent; and of the land through which he walked, he was its master in the length of it, and in the breadth of it, profiting by its productions, without the embarrassment of ownership. How often was was the pillow of stones like that where Jacob felt the presence of God! How often did the ancient oak, of which the centuries were untold, seem like the tree of Mamre beneath which Abraham broke bread with angels! Each day gave the pilgrim a new site for his dwelling, which the industry of a few moments would erect, and for which nature provided a floor of green inlaid with flowers. On every side clustered beauties, which art had not spoiled and could not imitate. Alas! how deplorable the contrast, in their enterprises, and the results of them, between warlike Spanish adventurers, and the meek and robe-clad Missionaries of the West!

More than a century had passed from the expedition of De Soto, and no result had sprung from it, except a deadly hatred of the white man, among all the tribes of Indians which had been visited and warred upon by the Spaniard. In 1611 the French settled in Eastern Maine, nine

(1) Bancroft vol 3 p. 152

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years previous to the landing of the Pilgrims. So early as 1616, Le Caron, a Franciscan Friar, the companion of Champlain, had reached the rivers of Lake Huron from the land of the Mohawks, on foot and paddling a bark canoe. In 1627, a number of opulent merchants in France obtained from Louis XIII a charter grant of New France. After the restoration of Quebec in 1632, by the English, they entered on the government of their province. Within the limits of their grant was included the whole basin of the St. Lawrence and of such other rivers as flowed directly into the sea, and also Florida, or the country south of Virginia, which was claimed as a French province, although an attempt by Coligni to settle it, had failed. The commercial enterprise of colonizing Canada was attended by the powerful stimulant of religious zeal; but the vowed poverty of life and simplicity of the Franciscans, although the chosen friends of Champlain the Governor of Canada, rendered them free from ambition, and the great office of establishing the honours of the Gallican church, and converting the heathen of Canada, and thus enlarging the borders of French dominion was entrusted solely to the rival order of the Jesuits. "The history of their labours is connected with the origin of every celebrated town in the annals of French America; not a cape was turned, nor a river entered but a Jesuit led the way." [1]

After undergoing great fatigue and suffering, the Jesuits Brebeuf and Daniel, followed soon by Lallemand, made their way to the West in 1634. They had joined a party of Hurons returning from Quebec, and by lakes, rivers and forests had now penetrated to the heart of the Huron wilderness. Near the shore of Lake Iroquois, North West of Lake Toronto, was raised the first house of the society of Jesus, and soon two villages named St. Louis and St. Ignatius sprung up among the Huron forests. The Mission of Brebeuf gave us a knowledge of the water course of the St. Lawrence valley, and from the map published in 1660 it appears that the Jesuits had examined the country from the waters of the "Unghi"ara" or Niagara as we write it, to the head of Lake Superior, and had even gained a glimpse of Lake Michigan; Missions were also established and converts made, but the martyrdom of Daniel, of Jogues, of Brebeuf and of Lallemand by their savage enemies, was the price at which they obtained a knowledge of the West, and endeavoured to lay the foundation of the Christian Church among the heathen. (2)

As early as 1638, an Indian chief who dwelt on the head waters of the Ohio, visited the Missions, and constant mention is made in the annals of the Jesuits of the Algonquins from the West, especially from Green Bay.

(1) See Bancroft vol. 3 p. 118 to 122. (2) Ibid 328.

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In 1640 the hostility of the Five Nations prevented the access of Raymbault and Picard to the West, the place of their destination; but in 1641 at a great feast of the dead (1) held by the Algonquins of Lake Nipising, the Jesuits were invited to visit the nation of the Chippewas at Sault St. Marie, and on the 17th of May 1641, we find Father Raymbauldt and Jogues, the first envoys from Christendom to St. Mary's Falls, where after a passage of seventeen days they met two thousand Indians who had assembled to receive them. From them the worthy Fathers learned of many unknown nations; they heard of the Nadouisses or Sioux, as living eighteen days journey farther west, beyond the great Lake, then without a name; and thus the French were looking towards the homes of the Sioux in the Valley of the Mississippi, five years before the New England Eliot had addressed the tribes of Indians that dwelt within six miles of Boston harbor. (2)

The hospitable Chippewas invited the Jesuits to dwell with them as brothers, and expressed a willingness to derive profit from their words, but sickness seized upon Raymbault the first apostle to the tribes of Michigan, and he died in 1642; in the extent of his enterprising views of discovery, he expected even to reach the ocean that divides America from China. In August, 1654 two fur-traders joined a band of Ottewas and ventured on a western voyage of 500 leagues; in two years they returned accompanied with 50 canoes and 250 men; they described the vast lakes of the West, spoke of the Knisteneaux, whose homes stretched to the Northern sea and of the Sioux who dwelt beyond Lake Superior, and demanded commerce with the whites for the wants of the Red man. The traders pressed forward to Green Bay, and two of them passed the winter of 1659 on the banks of Lake Superior; and to establish a residence, and a place of Assembly for all the surrounding Nations. In October, 1660, Mesnard reached Keweena on the south shore of Lake Superior, and eight months afterwards he left that place for the bay of Chegoiemegon with only one attendant, for the purpose of visiting the Hurons in the Isle of St. Michael. He took the route by the way of Keweena Lake and Portage; there, while his attendant was transporting the canoe, Mesnard wandered in the forest and was never more seen; long after, his Breviary and Cassock were kept as Amulets among the Sioux. (3)

In 1665, Pere Claude Allouez embarked on a mission to the Far __________ (1) Bancroft, vol. 3, p. 130. (2) Ibid. (3) Bancroft, vol. 3, p. 148.

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West. He reached the Falls of St. Marie in September; he entered the Lake and sailing along the southern shore, in vain search of the mass of pure copper of which he had heard, at length arrived at the great village of the Chippewas at Chemoimegon. A grand council was there held, of ten or twelve of the neighboring nations. To this council, came the Potowatamies from Lake Michigan; the Sacs and Foxes from the West; the Hurons from North of Lake Superior; the Illinois also came, whose tale of sorrow, of ancient glory and diminished numbers in consequence of warfare with the Sioux on the one side, and the Iroquois on the other., was accompanied with their enticing description of their noble river flowing to the South, on which they dwelt, their vast prairies, and the absence of forests in their land, although replete with buffalo and herds of deer; there also came the Sioux from the west of Lake Superior, the land of prairies and wild rice, who reported the great river on whose banks they dwelt, and which Father Allouez states as named "Messippi." To the assembled nations Allouez offered commerce and an alliance with France against their enemies the Iroquois; in 1667 he returned to Quebec; and in 1668 Claude Dablon and James Marquette repaired to the Chippewas at the Sault, to establish the Mission of St. Mary's; it is the oldest settlement began by Europeans within Michigan. (1)

The purpose of discovering the Mississippi, of which the natives had told the grandeur, sprang from Marquette himself, in 1669. In the interval of delay which occurred, he devoted his time to the study of the Illinois tongue with a view to facilitate his intercourse with the nations he expected to meet in his contemplated voyage of discovery; and in the period which elapsed from 1668 until 1673, the "illustrious triumvirate "Allouez Dablon and Marquette were employed in confirming the influ"ence of France in the vast regions which extend from Green Bay to "the head of Lake Superior, mingling happiness with suffering and win"ning enduring glory by their fearless perseverance." (2)

A scene of much interest occurred at the Falls of St. Mary in May, 1671; a great Congress of Indian nations was gathered there, from the whole country from the head springs of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi and the Red river, and it was announced that they were placed under the protection of the French kings; and in the same year Marquette gathered the remains of one branch of the Hurons at Point S. Ignace, which establishment was long considered as key to the west. The countries south of this were explore by Allouz and Dablon, who bore the cross __________ (1) Ibid 152 (2) Bancroft, vol. 3, p. 152.

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through eastern Wisconsin and the north of Illinois, visiting the Mascoutens and Kickapoos on the Milwaukee, and the Miamies at the head of Lake Michigan (1) and extending their journeyings to the Foxes on the river of that name, fearless of danger and indefatigable in religious zeal.

The discovery of the Upper Mississippi, the great western river, whose course was to the south, was now at hand, to be accomplished by Joliet of Quebec, of whom there is not record, but of this one excursion, and by Marquette, who after years of attention to the welfare of the Hurons at the cold extremity of Michigan, entered with equal zeal and humanity upon a career of danger in which life was perilled, and which, in its results has affected the destiny of Nations. (2)

On the 13th of May, 1673, Marquette with the Sieur Joliet, who had been chosen to conduct the enterprize, (3) and five other Frenchmen, in two bark canoes, with a little Indian corn and some dried meat for their only provision, embarked from their Mission on the daring adventure of exploring the country and discovering the nations of the unknown West. The Indians called the Fols Avoine (wild oats or wild rice) tribe, when informed of his design, were astonished and endeavored to dissuade him, by representing the distant nations as always at war with each other and never sparing strangers; that the great river was not only dangerous of navigation, but was full of frightful monsters who devoured men and canoes together; and that there was even a Demon, who closed the passage of the river, and swallowed up those who dared to approach; and in fine that the heats were so excessive as infallibly to cause death. [Note A.]

Nothing daunted by these terrifying descriptions, Marquette told them he was willing to lay down his life for that cause in which the salvation of souls was concerned, and after having prayed together, they separated, and the adventurers arrived at the Bay des Pauns, now Green Bay.

Marquette relates that this bay has a name among the Indians of not so bad an explanation as that of "Puans;" they call it the "Salt Bay," but he searched in vain for salt springs, such as he had seen in the country of the Iroquois; nevertheless he found bad vapors continually arising from the mud deposites of the bay, which caused the "greatest thunders he had ever heard."

Leaving the Bay, the good father entered the Fox river and found the ascent difficult on account of the current, and also of the rocks which cut the feet of those who dragged the cauoes when the water was low.-At the station which terminated the discoveries of the French, he found __________ (Bancroft, Vol. 3, p. 154. (2) Ibid. 156. (3) Marquette Decouverte, &c. Reprint of O. Rich, Paris and London, 1845.

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a village composed of three Indian nations, as he termed them, the Miamies, the Mascoutens, and the Kikabeaux, and had the extreme consolation of seeing a beautiful cross planted in the middle of the town, ornaented with white skins, red girdles and bows and arrows which these good people had offered to the great Manitou, or God, to thank him for the pity he had bestowed on them, during the winter, in having given them an abundant chase. Here also Marquette drank of mineral waters and was made acquainted with the secret of the root which cures the venomous bit of the rattle snake; and he describes the beauty of the site of the village, as being a mound surrounded by extensive prairies interspersed with woods and groves, and fertile in the production of Indian corn, of plums and of grapes. [Note B.]

The old men of the village were assembled by the explorers; Marquette told them that Joliet had been sent on the part of the Governor of Canada, to discover new countries, and himself on the part of God to spread the light of the holy Evangelists; that the Sovereign Master of their lives would, that he should be known unto all nations, and to obey his will, he feared not death itself, to which he was exposed in his perilous journies; that they wished two guides to put them on their route; the request was accompanied with a present, and the guides were furnished to them, together with a Mat to serve as a bed during the voyage.

The following morning, June 10, 1673, in the presence of a great number of Indians assembled to witness so extraordinary and hazardous an expedition, seven Frenchmen and two Miami guides embarked in their two canoes, with the knowledge only, that at three leagues from the Maskoutens was a river which discharged itself into the Mississippi; that its course was west of south-west; that the route to it was replete with marshes and small lakes, and the channel often so obstructed with wild oats, as to render its discovery difficult. "For this," says Marquette, "we had occasion for our guides, and they conducted us, happily to a "portage of two thousand seven hundred paces, and aided us to transport "our canoes to enter this river, after which they returned, leaving us alone, "in this unknown country, in the hands of Providence." [Note C.] In 1542, DeSoto had crossed the great river of the West, with an army of mail clad warriors, brilliantly equipped in "pomp and circumstance" in search of conquest and of gold; in 1673, the pious and gentle Marquette, clothed with the coarse habit of his order, with only six companions, embarked in frail bark canoes on unknown waters, to search their outlet into the same great river of the west, to explore new countries in the spirit of peace, and to spread the knowledge of the Gospel in the bonds of love.

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And now "France and Christianity were in the Valley of the Mississippi." (1)

In leaving waters which flowed towards Quebec, to enter those which conducted them henceforth into strange lands, Marquette and his companions addressed themselves in prayer to the Holy Virgin, which devotion, he meekly says, they practised daily, placing under her protection their persons and the success of their voyage. After having eacouraged each other, they stepped into their canoes, and boldly embarked on the bosom of the Mescousin, since known as the Ouisconsin, but when or in what manner the name was altered is not accurately ascertained. [Note D.] The first mention of the river by this latter name, is by Hennepin, when he ascended it in 1680, on his return to Quebec. This river is described as very wide, with sandy bottoms, causing many banks, and rendering the navigation very difficult, full of vine covered isles, and bordered with fine lands, comprising woods, prairies, and rising grounds: The adventurers found roe bucks and buffalo in abundant numbers, and perceived appearances of iron mines. After a navigation of forty leagues on this river, on the 17th of June, 1673, with a joy, says Marquette, which I cannot express, we happily entered the Mississippi, in the latitude of 42 degrees and a half. [Note E.]

It is somewhat remarkable that during the whole course from the Portage to the mouth of the Wisconsin, Marquette neither saw an Indian village, nor met with a native Indian; nor did he in descending the Mississippi, see an inhabitant of the country, until he reached the 40th degree of latitude, or near that elevation, when, on the 25th of June, footsteps and a path were perceived on the western bank. Leaving the men to guard the canoe, Marquette and Joliet fearlessly followed these indications of human beings, and after a walk of six miles discovered a village on the banks of a river, and two others, on the rising grounds, about a half a league distant. They boldly penetrated into the village and were received not only with great astonishment by the inhabitants, as they were unquestionably the first Europeans who had tread the soil of what is now Iowa, but the peace pipe and its accompanying hospitality was tendered to them. They were informed that the Nation was called "Illini," or "the Men," and that their village and the river on which it was situated, was called Mou-in-gouina, now called by us the Des Moines. The adventurers stayed six days with their new friends, obtaining information of their customs, and having been accompanied to their canoes, by the chief, and hundreds of warriors,

(1) Bancroft, Vol. 3, p. 157.

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they again embarked on their voyage, whilst Marquette was ornamented by the Illini with the sacred calumet, the mysterious arbiter of peace and war, the safe-guard among the nations. (1)

The voyagers proceeded; they passed the Pekatonini, now known as the Missouri, and the good Marquette determined at some future period to explore it to its source, hoping to find thence, another river which flowing westwardly would discharge itself into the Vermilion Sea, or flowing southwardly would lead to California; of such streams he had been informed by the natives. In a distance of forty leagues, they passed the Wabash, as the Ohio was then and long afterwards called, and finally descended the Mississippi until they had reached a point below the mouth of the Arkansas, about five days journey from the sea. Having ascertained the fact of the discharge of the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, in Florida, and not in Virginia, on the east, Marquette and Joliet determined on their return. On the 17th of July, they left the village of Akamsca, and ascended the Mississippi until they came into the 38th parallel of latitude, when they left the river, and journeying eastward, across the country, they struck the river, now called the Illinois, by means of which, they reached the Lake of the Illinois, now Lake Michigan, (2) by a shorter route says Marquette, than by the Mescousin. They were guided by an Illinois chief and his young men, to the Lake, whence the adventurous travellers proceeded to the Bay des Puants about the end of the month of September, from which they had departed near the beginning of the month of June.

Joliet returned to Quebec; the discovery of the great river and adjoining countries resounded through France; the meek Marquette remained with his converted Miamis who inhabited the country around what is now Chicago. Sailing from Chicago to Mackinaw two years afterwards, Marquette stopped at a little river emptying into Lake Michigan on the eastern coast. He erected there his rude and lowly altar to celebrate the mass after the rites of his church; he desired to be left alone for half an hour; his desire was complied with, and when he was sought for at the end of that time, the gentle, unassuming, brave and good Marquette was no more! He died and was buried by the canoemen on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, at the mouth of a small river, that still bears his name; the memory of his important discoveries will be one of his imperishable monuments; Marquette deserves some tribute to be given to his honor, even in our days, by the inhabitants of the West.

(1) Marquette, Reprint of O. Rich, Paris and London 1845 passim. (2) Ibid.