Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/309

Rh was the traitor L'Archévèque, and Santiago Grolee was his accessory in a lesser degree, the sailor Grollet. I wrote at once to Mr. Francis Parkman, the historian of Canada, and received the answer that my supposition seemed to him perfectly well founded, although all that is known concerning the fate of the two men after La Salle's death is that they were found among the Indians in 1689 by Alonzo de Leon, commanding a Spanish expedition to Texas, and were taken to New Mexico. They were sent from Mexico to Spain, where they were supposed to have ended their lives in the galleys.

The last supposition was soon shown to be erroneous. The Jesuit father Andrés Cavo, author of the work "Los tres siglos de Mexico," says: "After a number of days the messengers [whom Leon had sent to the Indians] came back with two Frenchmen, whose names were Jacob Grollet and Juan l'Archiveque. . . . After Monclova returned, the governor [Leon] sent the two Frenchmen to the viceroy, and they legitimated themselves before him. The Conde de Galve, convinced that the affair was of particular importance, sent them both to the court of Charles II. under the care of Captain Don Andrés Perez. . . . In this year [1691] Don Andrés Perez came back from Madrid with both of the Frenchmen." This is now also confirmed by the deposition of Santiago Grolee himself, which I found in Santa Clara in the investigation (Information) concerning his own person. It is of the year 1699, and he said in it: "We remained lost in that country five years among the wild infidel Indians, and after we had at