Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/72

 from which point Tonti sent back to Canada a dismal report of all his troubles, and the destriiction of the fort at Peoria, and the probable death of La Salle at the hands of Indians. But La Salle was not dead. The lion-hearted hero of the great American wilderness was alive and equal to the great reverses of his fortune. On reaching his old home and establishment at Frontenac, he found it plundered and all his property wrecked, stolen, lost and ruined. But the daunt- less man refused to be defeated. To raise money in a wilderness and outfit a new expedition seemed an impossibility. There are a thousand promoters of all sorts of schemes in this state today, where there is fifty million dollars of money. But if all these thousand promoters were boiled down into one man (he) they could not do in Oregon what La Salle did in the wilderness of Canada two hun- dred and thirty years ago. With his eloquence of speech, his courage, his desper- ate determination to succeed and his refusal to accept defeat, he gathered a new party, of men, he procured supplies for a year, he laid in arms and ammunition to fight Indians, if fight he must, and again sallied forth to claim and conquer the mightiest empire of rich land on the face of the earth, for his God and his king. The grandeur and heroism of the man is simply paralyzing.

With his new company of men and ample supplies, he returned, collected together his old men, went on to Peoria lake, to find his fort destroyed and all the Indian camps in ruins, and the ground covered with the bones and corpses of the slain Illinois who had been literally wiped out by the merciless Iroquois. Then La Salle constructed a barge — not a ship with sails as he had told the In- dians — but a barge like what may be seen in Portland harbor loaded with wood or ties today, and with this comfortably outfitted, he floated down the Illinois from Peoria lake to the ' ' Father of Waters, ' ' and thence day after day on down, down, down, until he came to the point where the great river divided into three branches to discharge its vast flood into the Gulf of Mexico. The party divided. La Salle followed down the Western outlet, D'Autray the East,' and Tonti, the Central. They came out on the great gulf where not a ship had ever disturbed its waters, and where there was no sign of life. The three parties assembled, and re-united, proceeded to make formal proclamation, April 9, 1682, of the right of discovery of all the lands drained by the mighty river, and the ownership of the same by the king of France. They erected a cross as a signal that the country was devoted to the religion of the Holy Roman Catholic church; and buried a tablet of lead with the arm^s of France, and erected a slab on which were en- graved the arms of France and the inscription: Louis Le Grande, Roy De France Et De Navarre, Regne; Le Neuvieme, Avril, 1682.

The Frenchmen fired a volley, sang the Te Deum and then La Salle raised his sword and in the name of his king, claimed all the territory drained by the Mis- sissippi. A region "watered by 1,000 rivers and ranged by 1,000 warlike tribes; an empire greater than all Europe, passed that day beneath the sceptre of the king of France by this feeble act of one man." And now we can see on what slight and trivial circumstances the titles to continental empires of land turned in the easy-going times 230 years ago. When Columbus discovered America, Pope Alexander VI., of bad repute, gave the whole of it to Spain, and that dis- position of the continent was acquiesced in for a long time. When Hernando De Soto discovered the Mississippi river in 1539, he claimed the river and all the regions that it drained for the king of Spain. How the Holy Father ever