villages were depopulated. As to the effects of liquor, an eyewitness says: "They were all lustily drunk, raving, Contempostriking, shouting, jumping, fighting each other, and raries, I. 589 foaming at the mouth like raging wild beasts. And this was caused by Christians!" 47. Opening of the St. Law rence basin While the Dutch were pushing into the central coast, the French were steadily developing the St. Lawrence basin, but they avoided Lake Erie, which was flanked by the Five Nations. In 1634 Jean Nicolet followed up the Ottawa River, crossed to Georgian Bay, and passed through upper Lake Huron to the Sault Ste. Marie and the (1634-1669) Strait of Mackinac; he was the first European on Lake Michigan. The Catholic missionaries speedily followed, and outran the traders in zeal and courage. The Iroquois followed their French enemies northward, exterminated the Hurons because they were friendly to the French, and martyred the missionaries (1649). In 1665 Lake Superior was discovered by the missionary Father Allouez, and before long French traders discovered an overland route from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay. Missions were soon after established at Sault Ste. Marie, at Mackinac, and at St. Xavier, on Green Bay. Contempo Parkman, Meanwhile the Jesuit missionaries were making heroic, though on the whole unavailing, efforts to Christianize the Iroquois. Father Isaac Jogues's account of his experience as a prisoner gives a frightful picture of his captors, who raries, I. 129 seemed to him like demons; they leaped upon him like Jesuits wild beasts, tore out his nails, and crunched his fingers with their teeth; his attendant Hurons were tortured on a scaffold in the midst of the Iroquois village; yet the heroic priest "began to instruct them separately on the articles of the faith, then on the very stage itself baptized two with raindrops gathered from the leaves of a stalk of Indian corn." Rescued by the Dutch, this brave and self-sacrificing man returned and plunged a second time into that misery, and died a martyr's death. On the upper lakes the French heard vaguely of a great south-flowing river, the "Missipi" or "Mich sipi," "Big Water," which they supposed to flow into the Gulf of 48. DiscovCalifornia. The first man to form an intelligent plan ery of the upper Mississippi (1669-1680) of reaching the great river was Robert Cavalier, com- Before La Salle could gather his resources to start again, the Mississippi had been reached, under the direction of Frontenac, the new governor of Canada. In 1673 the missionary Father Marquette, accompanied by Joliet, passed through Green Bay, up the Fox River, across the easy portage of two miles, and down the Wisconsin, till (June 17) they entered a mighty stream, which Marquette called the River Immaculate Conception. They found very deep water, saw prairies extending east and west, and discovered quantities of fish, turkeys, and buffalo. League after league they floated down the river, hoping to reach its mouth; they passed the mouth of the Missouri, so muddy that they would not drink it. By the time they reached the mouth of the Arkansas they felt sure that they were near Spanish and hostile territory; and therefore turned back, and paddled up the Illinois River, which they called the Divine, and crossed over the site now occupied by Chicago to Lake Michigan. Meanwhile La Salle was made commander of Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario, and he brooded over the possibilities of establishing a trade route to the valley of the river found by Marquette. In 1678 Louis XIV. gave him a grant, authorizing him to make discoveries and to build forts, and a year later he built the Griffon, the first European vessel on Lake Erie, and navigated her through the chain of Great Lakes to Green Bay; and thence in boats reached the river St. Joseph, near the head of Lake Michigan, where he built Fort Miamis. Crossing the portage to the Kankakee River, he made his way down the Illinois to a point near the present Peoria, where he built another fort, Crèvecœur, as a basis for further advance. A missionary friar, Father Hennepin, came out with La Salle and in 1680 was sent by him down the Illinois and thence up the Mississippi; he was taken prisoner by the Sioux Indians, and carried to the falls, which Hennepin named St. Anthony, at the site of Minneapolis. ery of the lower Mis Again La Salle was obliged to return to Montreal to recruit his forces. When he went west a third time, in December, 49. Discov- 1680, he found that his Fort Crèvecoeur had been destroyed by Iroquois and its garrison under Tonty had dississippi appeared. After a hasty trip to the mouth of the Illinois (1680-1687) he returned eastward, and then began his final and successful journey in 1681. His party crossed the divide of the Chicago River, and floated down the Illinois, reaching the Mississippi February 6, 1682. Then he floated down the same stretch that Marquette had traversed. Soon after passing the mouth of the Ohio he took possession of the country with great ceremony, and set up the king's arms. A few days later, at the Chickasaw Bluffs, he founded Fort Prudhomme. After a few weeks he passed Marquette's farthest point. April 6, 1682, he arrived at a point where the river divides into three channels. As one of the party wrote: "The water is brackish; after advancing two leagues it became perfectly salt, and advancing on, we discovered the open sea, so that . . . the sieur de la Salle, in the name of his majesty, took possession of that river, of all rivers that enter it, and of all the country watered by them." Thus was asserted the French title to the magnificent valley which La Salle named Louisiana, in honor of the French monarch, Louis XIV. On his way back La Salle founded Fort St. Louis at Starved Rock on the Illinois. His discovery made such an impression that the king sent him, in 1684, direct to the Gulf of Mexico, with a commission to plant a colony near the mouth of the Mississippi. By ill fortune he missed the river, and built another Fort St. Louis (1685) far west of the delta, somewhere near Matagorda Bay. He could not find his river; his men dwindled away; and he was murdered by his own followers in 1687. The fort was destroyed by Indians, while the Spaniards from Mexico were trying to reach it, so as to destroy the possible germ of a French settlement. La Salle was a hot-headed, impetuous man, who planned an enterprise of colonization beyond his means and his power to command men; yet he felt more than any other Frenchman the importance of the West. He opened up a trade between the Lakes and the Mississippi, and between the upper and lower reaches of that river, and he secured for France a valid title to the Mississippi valley. 50. Inter lations in America The keenness of the rivalry between European nations for the possession of North America was shown also in the West Indies, where the Dutch took several islands, and established a footing on the north coast of South America. national reOn the other hand, as will be seen in the next chapter, they lost New Netherland to the English in 1664. England, France, and Spain were thus left sole claimants for North America, and for a time the English showed less aggressiveness. In 1667, by the peace of Breda, the English a second time admitted the rights of the French to Acadia and Canada. By the treaty of Madrid (1670) Spain for the first time acknowledged that the English had rightful colonies in America. A hotly disputed territory lay about Hudson Bay, discovered in 1610 by Henry Hudson for the English. This bay was a back entrance to the fur country of the northwest, and in 1670 the English Hudson's Bay Company was chartered to get a foot |