Page:Joutel's journal of La Salle's last voyage, 1684-7 (IA joutelsjournalof00jout).pdf/219



The Remainder of the LETTER, ''written by him who revis'd this , the other Part whereof is at the Beginning of it, this being the Sequel to the said'' .

Three several Authors have given an Account of this Voyage; First, Father le Clerk, upon the Relations he had from the Fathers Zenobius and Anastasius, Recolets, as he was himself and both of them Eye-Witnesses: Secondly, The Chevalier Tonty, who was also a Witness to a considerable Part of those Adventures: And, Lastly, Father Hennepin, a Flemming, of the same Order of the Recolets, has done it more largely; he seems to be well

of July, after traversing a flooded country, in a ceaseless rain, sometimes by wading, sometimes by rafts, breaking their way with hatchets through the inundated cane brakes, and finally having to kill and eat their dogs. Even Tonti, the hero of many such emergencies of travel, confessed, "I never in my life suffered so much." Then followed an attack of fever, after the abatement of which he arrived at his fort, in September, 1689. This heroic attempt marks, more distinctly than any other, the character of Tonti, who, in the language of the missionary, St. Cosmo, who traveled under his escort in 1699, was "beloved by all voyageurs—the man who best knows the country—he is loved and feared everywhere." Tonti was a robust man in appearance, and had (as has been already said) but one hand, but he truly had a great soul within him—Courageous, generous and loyal. Though holding a captain's commission, he had, as late as 1690, never received any pay; but in that year the proprietorship of the Fort St. Louis of the Illinois was granted to him jointly with La Forest, La Salle's then lieutenant—and there they carried on a fur trade; and in 1699, they were granted further privileges of trade, by a royal proclamation. In 1702, a royal order assigned La Forest to Canada, and Tonti to residence on the Mississippi. Tonti, in that year, joined D'Iberville in Lower Louisiana, and was by him sent to secure the alliance of the Chickasaws. His after career or the time of his death are unknown.
 * [Footnote: only return to the Arkansas country which he only reached by the end

Never were mutiny, conspiracy and assassination more signally and justly followed by retribution than in the fate of these miscreants who had murdered La Salle—as graphically portrayed by Parkman (La Salle & the Discovery of the Great West, ii, pp. 212-216. Champlain edition.) Exiled, by their own deeds, from Canada; in fear of their Spanish neighbors, whose dominion they had invaded, they were finally overwhelmed by an Indian attack, many of them butchered and the fort laid waste. Compulsory domestication among their savage captors was the fate of the rest; and when, in 1689 the Spanish general Alonzo de Leon visited the ruined fort of St. Louis in Texas, they were handed over to him, and expiated their sins in the naval service or prisons of Spain.]