Louis Hennepin

“ The first was dedicated to Louis XIV, the last two to William III, king of England. For bibliography of Hennepin, see Victor Hugo Paltsits, "Bibliographical Data," in Thwaites, Hennepin's New Discovery (Chicago, 1903) , pp. xlv-lxiv.—Ed.
[14] M. Tonti, among other writers, speaking of the country, according to Mr. Peck's translation, says:
"The soil is, generally speaking, so fertile, that it produces naturally, without culture, those fruits that nature and art together have much ado to bring forth in Europe. They have two crops every year without any great fatigue. ”

“ In those days when each man took his individual life in his hands and guarded it in ways which seemed best to him, it was often expedient to change one's plan of action. About the time that Tonty was obliged to abandon Fort Crèvecœur, Hennepin and his companions set off eastward with Greysolon du Lhut's party. Hennepin sailed for France as soon as he could and wrote a book about his adventures. It was one of La Salle's misfortunes that this friar should finally even lay claim to discovering the mouth of the Mississippi, adding the glory of that to these real adventures on its upper waters. ”

“ 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 miist convict Father Hennepin of having palmed upon the world a pretended discovery and a fictitious narrative." ”

“ The crafty Aquipaguetin was with them, and as the days went by he kept thinking of the story Hennepin had told him of other white men sent out by La Salle with merchandise and arms to the mouth of the Wisconsin. Why should he not meet these men himself and receive their first lavish presents? Finally he could no longer restrain himself, and taking with him about ten men he paddled down the river after Hennepin and the Picard. The two white men had had many adventures. In their hunting they had not been fortunate, and many times they had come near to starvation. ”

“ Wazi-kuté—Wah-ze-koo-tay; literally—Pine-shooter,—he that shoots among the pines. When Father Hennepin was at Mille Lacs in 1679-80, Wazi-kuté was the head chief (Itâncan) of the band of Isantees. Hennepin writes the name Ouasicoude, and translates it—the "Pierced Pine." See Shea's Hennepin, p. 234, Minn. Hist. Coll. vol. i, p. 316.
[75]
When a Dakota brave wishes to "propose" to a "dusky maid," he visits her teepee at night after she has retired, or rather, laid down in her robe to sleep. He lights a splinter of wood and holds it to her face. If she blows out the light, he is accepted ”

“ After the pioneer voyage down the Mississippi, made by Joliet and Marquette, had become known in Europe, it intensified an already active spirit of discovery. In the summer of 1678 Hennepin joined La Salle and Laval Montmorency in the famous expedition of La Salle undertaken from Quebec to explore the interior, with a view to uniting Canada with the Gulf of Mexico by a chain of forts. On arrival in Quebec Father Hennepin was sent forward by La Salle to Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario. ”

“ Tired as he was, he was forced to set out with his self-styled father to his village, which was fortunately not far off. An unpleasant walk of a few miles through woods and marshes brought them to the borders of a sheet of water, apparently Lake Buade, where five of Aquipaguetin's wives received the party in three canoes, and ferried them to an island on which the village stood.
At the entrance of the chief's lodge, Hennepin was met by a decrepit old Indian, withered with age, who offered him the peace-pipe, and placed him on a bear-skin which was spread by the fire. ”

“ Jacques le Ber turned himself to face the chimney.
“Thou hast no doubt accomplished a great work, Father Hennepin,” he said, with the immediate benevolence a man feels toward one who has reached his point of view. “When I have had supper with my daughter I will sit down here and beg you to tell me all that befell your wanderings, and what savages they were who received the faith at your hands, and how the Sieur de la Salle hath turned even a Récollet Father against himself.” ”

“ From Quebec Hennepin continued his missionary wanderings, sometimes to remote stations, and at one time, in the spring of 1677, among the Iroquois,—not going, however, to Albany, as has been sometimes asserted. (Cf. Brodhead’s New York, ii. 307; Hist. Mag. x. 268.) Next he accompanied La Salle in his explorations west. Of Niagara he offers us the earliest picture in his 1697 publication,—of which a reduced fac-simile is here given. Others are in Gay’s Pop. Hist. U. S., ii. 511; Shea’s Hennepin, p. 379, and in his Le Clercq, ii. 112; and in the Carter-Brown Catalogue, vol. ii. no. ”

“ They made a lodge of skins so tight that it would hold heat, and put into it stones baked to a white heat. On these they poured water and shut Hennepin in the steam until he sweated freely.
The Sioux had two kinds of lodges—one somewhat resembling those of the Illinois, the [82] other a cone of poles with skins stretched around, called a tepee.
Father Hennepin did little missionary work among these Indians. He suffered much from hunger, being a man who loved good cheer. But the tribes went on a buffalo hunt in July and killed plenty of meat. ”

“ The canoe was well laden with gifts for the Indians,—tobacco, knives, beads, awls, and other goods, to a very considerable value, supplied at La Salle's cost; "and, in fact," observes Hennepin, "he is liberal enough towards his friends." ”

“ On his enterprises he was accompanied by Henri de Tonty, an Italian officer and ever faithful to La Salle, and by Father Hennepin, a brave Flemish friar, whose overwhelming vanity tempted him in later years to try to rob his leader of the honour of first reaching the sea by the Mississippi River. ”

“ Hennepin, however, had seen and dared much; for [Pg 137] among his many failings fear had no part, and where his vanity or his spite was not involved, he often told the truth. His books have their value, with all their enormous fabrications. [115]
La Motte and Hennepin, with sixteen men, went on board the little vessel of ten tons, which lay at Fort Frontenac. The friar's two brethren, Buisset and Ribourde, threw their arms about his neck as they bade him farewell ”

“ But God seems to have implanted in every human heart some sense of right and wrong, some conviction of responsibility to a Superior Being. So far as Father Hennepin could understand their sign language, the chiefs informed him that they were going down the Mississippi to attack a village of the Miamis on the Illinois River. The war party consisted of but one hundred and twenty braves. They intended to attack the village by surprise at night. In an hour they would accomplish their fiend-like deed of murder, scalping, and conflagration. ”

“ Doubtless no one felt himself a hero. The only intimation of any consciousness of a high mission comes from Hennepin, who, when the Griffin, some days later, was ploughing peacefully through the straits that led to the Mer Douce—"verdant prairies, dotted with groves and bordered with lofty forests" on either side, "herds of deer and flocks of swans and wild turkeys" within sight, and the "bulwarks plentifully hung with game"—wrote: "Those who will one day have the happiness to possess this fertile and pleasant strait, will be very much obliged to those who have shown them the way." ”

“ It was a hard experience for the Frenchmen to tramp with these athletic savages, wading ponds and marshes glazed with ice and swimming ice-cold streams. "Our Legs," says Hennepin, "were all over Blood, being cut by the Ice." Seeing the friar inclined to lag, the Indians took a novel method of quickening his pace. They set fire to the grass behind him and then, taking him by the hands, they ran forward with him. He was nearly spent when, after five days of exhausting travel, they reached the homes of the Sioux. ”

“ La Salle, seldom happy in the choice of subordinates, had, perhaps, in all his company but one man in whom he could confidently trust; and this was Tonty. He and Hennepin were on indifferent terms. Men thrown together in a rugged enterprise like this quickly learn to know each other; and the vain and assuming friar was not likely to commend himself to La Salle's brave and loyal lieutenant. Hennepin says that it was La Salle's policy to govern through the dissensions of his followers ”

“ Hennepin tells in a very agreeable way many things that occurred during his captivity: how astonished the Indians were at all the articles he had. A mariner's compass created much wonder, and an iron pot with feet like lions' paws they would not touch with the naked hand; but their astonishment knew no bounds when he told them that the whites only allowed a man one wife, and [6] that his religious office did not permit him to have any. ”

“ Hennepin, with several others, now ascended the river, in a canoe, to the foot of the mountain ridge of Lewiston, which, stretching on the right hand and on the left, forms the acclivity of a vast plateau, rent with the mighty chasm, along which, from this point to the cataract, seven miles above, rush, with the fury of an Alpine torrent, the gathered waters of four inland oceans. ”

“ The savages were pitiless, and would often give but a meagre portion to their adopted brethren. Father Hennepin often divested himself of his clothes, bound them upon his head, and swam across these streams. Upon reaching the shore, his limbs would be so chilled and benumbed that he could scarcely stand. The blood would trickle down his body and limbs, from wounds inflicted by the sharp edges of the ice. The trail invariably led to spots where the crossings of the swollen streams were not very wide. Several of the Indians were men of gigantic stature. ”

“ Hennepin is the county-seat of Putnam; and as it does not, I believe, aspire to the dignity of a great city, like most of its neighbors, will probably flourish long and happily, a memorial of the good father whose name it bears.
Father Joseph Marquette, whose name is also intimately associated with the early discoveries in this region, was a kindred spirit. According to Charleroix, who belonged to the same order of missionary knights errant, “he was a native of Laon, in Picardy, where his family still holds a distinguished rank. He was one of the most illustrious missionaries of new France ”

“ The party of hunters had now turned south, and in a few days they came upon Hennepin and the Picard, who joined them on the trail of big game. Many leagues down the Mississippi they hunted for buffalo, and altogether they captured a hundred and twenty of the shaggy beasts. While on the chase it was their practice to post old men on high points of the cliffs and neighboring hills to keep watch for enemies. One day Hennepin was busy with a sharp knife trying to cut a long thorn out of an Indian’s foot when an alarm was given in the camp. ”

“ They told him that Tonty was safe among the Pottawattamies, and that Hennepin had passed through their country on his return from among the Sioux. [Footnote: Relation des Découvertes, MS. A valuable confirmation of Hennepin's narrative.]
A thaw took place; the snow melted rapidly; the rivers were opened; the blind men began to recover; and, launching the canoes which they had dragged after them, the party pursued their way by water. They soon met a band of Illinois. La Salle gave them presents, condoled with them on their losses, and urged them to make peace and alliance with the Miamis. ”

“ Father Hennepin sailed from Quebec to France, where he published, in 1684, an account of his travels and discoveries. Thirteen years after this, and ten after the death of La Salle, he published his New Discovery of a Vast Country in America, between New Mexico and the Frozen Ocean, in which the love of the marvellous is regarded by historians as having far transcended the limits of authentic and trustworthy narrative, and as conflicting with the recognized and just pretensions of La Salle. ”

“ He then proceeds to recount, at length, the particulars of his alleged exploration. The story was distrusted from the first. [Footnote: See the preface of the Spanish translation by Don Sebastian Fernandez de Medrano, 1699, and also the letter of Gravier, dated 1701, in Shea's Early Voyages on the Mississippi. Barcia, Charlevoix, Kalm, and other early writers, put a low value on Hennepin's veracity.] Why had he not told it before? An excess of modesty, a lack of self-assertion, or a too sensitive reluctance to wound the susceptibilities of others, had never been found among his foibles. ”

“ Hennepin thus describes one of their encounters: "I shewed Picard [Du Gay] a huge Serpent, as big as a Man's Leg, and seven or eight Foot long. She was working herself insensibly up a steep craggy Rock, to get at the Swallows Nests which are there in great Numbers. We pelted her so long with Stones, till at length she fell into the River. Her Tongue, which was in form of a Lance, was of an extraordinary Length, and her Hiss might be heard a great way."
At last the two Frenchmen joined a band of hunters and among them found our friend Accau. ”

“ The friar bade farewell to La Salle, and embraced all the rest in turn. Father Ribourde gave him his benediction. "Be of good courage and let your heart be comforted," said the excellent old missionary, as he spread his hands in benediction over the shaven crown of the reverend traveller. Du Gay and Accau plied their paddles; the canoe receded, and vanished at length behind the forest. We will follow Hennepin hereafter on his adventures, imaginary and real. ”