Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/73



settled the matter between (he two loyal Catiiolic nations has prol)al)ly never been ascertained.

The sad fate of so great a man as La Salle slionld not be omitted from tliis record. Gathering up his i'oUowers, being unable to take his barge back, he turned his canoes up-stream and i'or many months paddled his way back, stop- ping to build a fort at where the city of St. Louis now stands, and organizing the Illinois Indians into an effective force to withstand the attacks of the Iroquois and hold the country for France. Of all the explorers of the west, La Salle seems to have been the only man who appreciated or tried to organize and utilize the natives in reclaiming the wilderness for the purposes of civilization.

After thus rapidly bringing the Illinois Indians to his support and the de- fence of the interests of Prance, he returned to Canada to find his friend and supporter. Governor Frontenac, recalled to France and the weak and foolish old man, La Barre, in his place. And this man, wholly unable to comprehend the great work La Salle had accomplished, treated him with cruel ingrati- tude, denouncing him as an impostor. He ridiculed the explorer's story of his explorations as a base fiction, saying the country was utterly worthless even if he had found such a country. Stung with mortification and exasperated by in- sult, La Salle at once sailed for France to lay his case before the king in person. The king met La Salle for the first time, and the great explorer made the speech of his life, detailing with a passionate eloquence the grandeur of the great river, the beauty of the great countries it passed through, the value of the forests, and the future of its commerce, and captured the king and court of what was then the most powerful government on the earth. Too much could not be done for him. WTiat did he want? He should have anything he asked for. He asked for ships and men to found a colony at the mouth of the great river. They were granted. The ships, the men, and women with them. The ships were good enough, but their commander turned traitor to La Salle and the colonists to found a new state were the scum of all France. They sailed for the Missis- sippi, but on the way the Spanish captured one of the ships and the other missed the mouth of the great river and landed at Matagorda bay in the terri- tory of what is now Texas. The ships sailed away leaving La Salle and his worthless colonists. They started a settlement where the town of Lavaca now stands. Sickness broke out among them, and they died off like sheep. Of the one hundred and eighty men and women who landed from the ship, one hundred and thirty-five perished within six months. La Salle made two efforts to get away from the doomed settlement and find the Mississippi, but failed. Then made a third attempt and got as far as the Teche river in what is now St. Lan- dry county in the state of Louisiana, where he was brutally murdered by the mutiny and treason of three of his men, shooting him from ambush. And the murderers, quarreling over the spoils of their leader, hastily suffered the same retributive fate at the hands of their associates; while one Jontel, the narrator of these bloody deeds, and only five others of all that ship's load of people, ever lived to reach the great river. La Salle was killed on the 19th of March, 1687. And the good priest, Antase, who had faithfully followed to the last sad end, dug his grave, bui'ied him, and erected a cross over the remains of the greatest land explorer the world ever saw, at the place where the town of Washington, in Louisiana, is now located.