Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/53

Rh got his commission; returning to Canada, accompanied by the Chevalier Tonti, an Italian veteran, as his lieutenant, he made haste to build a small sloop with which he sailed up the Niagara river to the foot of the rapids below the great falls. Transporting his stores and material around the falls, he began the first rigged ship that ever sailed the Great Lakes. In this ship of sixty tons, which he named the Griffin, with a band of missionaries and fur traders, La Salle passed up Lake Erie, through the strait at Detroit, across St. Clair, and Lake Huron, through the Straits of Mackinaw, into Lake Michigan, and finally came to anchor in Green bay in the present state of Wisconsin, October, 1679. From this point, after sending the ship back for fresh supplies, La Salle and his companions crossed Lake Michigan, to the mouth of St. Joseph's river in the present state of Michigan, where Father Allouez had established a mission, with the Miami Indians, and where La Salle now added a trading post which he called the Fort of the Miamis. Here the party labored and waited in vain for a year, the return of their ship, which had been wrecked, and lost on its way back to Lake Erie. Tiring of his troubles in camp, and vexatious of delay, with a few followers they shouldered their muskets and packed their canoes and set out on foot from St. Joseph in December, 1679, tramping around the southern end of Lake Michigan, and across the frozen prairie to the head waters of the Illinois river, finding which they floated down the river to Lake Peoria, where the city of Peoria now stands. There they got into trouble with the Indians, large numbers of whom inhabited that part of the country. They had every imaginable kind of trouble with the Indians, with half-hearted followers, and open deserters. But La Salle, well named, "the lion hearted," was equal to every danger and emergency, and kept his grand ship of enterprise and exploration afloat under circumstances that would have overwhelmed any other man. But receiving no news from St. Joseph, and knowing nothing of the loss of his ship, and destitute of the tools, implements or supplies to enable him to go forward and compass the great scheme of exploration to the mouth of the great river, he resolved to return to Canada with only three men, painfully and tediously making their way by land across the vast wilderness from the heart of the present state of Illinois to Frontenac, in Canada, where the city of Kingston now stands, taking sixty-five days of foot-sore travel to accomplish the trip. But before leaving Peoria lake. La Salle detached one of his men, Tonti, who had only one arm, and the priest. Father Hennepin to make further explorations of the country in his absence. Hennepin was to explore the upper Mississippi, and Tonti, the Illinois country. Hennepin has always had credit of being the first white man to explore the upper portion of the river. He claimed to have gone up the Mississippi from the mouth of the Illinois to the falls of St. Anthony, where St. Paul now stands; and when he returned to France, he published an account of such explorations. But the correctness of Father Hennepin's story has been disputed by the historian. Sparks, who, after receiving the report of Hennepin says: "These facts, added to others, are perfectly conclusive, and must convict Father Hennepin of having palmed upon the world, a pretended discovery, and a fictitious narrative."

Leaving Father Hennepin, and coming back to his one armed co-laborer, Tonti, we find that the Illinois promptly banished him on the departure of La Salle, so that he had to take refuge at the old camp on Green bay. And from which point, Tonti sent back to Canada, a dismal report of all his troubles, and the destruction 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 and fortune wrecked, stolen, lost and ruined. But the dauntless 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 city today, where there is forty million dollars of