Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/54

34 money. But if all these thousand promoters were boiled down into one man (he) they could not do in Portland what La Salle did in the wilderness of Canada two hundred and thirty years ago. With his eloquence of speech, his courage, his desperate 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 Indians — but a barge like what may be seen in Portland harbor loaded with wood or ties to-day 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 divides 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 arms of France; and erected a slab on which were engraved the arms of France and the inscription:

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 Mississippi. 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 228 years ago. When Columbus discovered America, Pope Alexander VI. of bad repute, gave the whole of it to Spain, and that disposition of the continent was acquiesced in for a long time. When Hermando 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 settled the matter between the two loyal Catholic nations has probably never been ascertained.

The sad fate of so great a man as La Salle should not be omitted from this record. Gathering up his followers, being unable to take his barge back, he turned his canoes up stream and for many months paddled his way back; stopping 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 nations in reclaiming the wilderness for the purposes of civilization.

After thus rapidly bringing the Illinois Indians to his support and the defence of the interests of France, he returned to Canada to find his friend and supporter. Governor Frontenac recalled to France and the weak and fool-