SIEUR DE LA SALLE,

The Great French Explorer, Along the Maumee and Wabash Rivers in the years 1669 and 1670.

BY CHARLES E. SLOCUM, M. D., PH. D., DEFIANCE, OHIO.

M. Jean Talon, Intendant of New France, wrote to Louis XIV king of France under date of 10th October, 1670, that he had "dispatched persons of resolution, who promise to penetrate further than has ever been done; the one to the West and to the Northwest of Canada, and the others to the South West and South." (Paris Document I, New York Colonial Documents, vol. ix, page 64.)

Réné-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, being thus authoritatively "dispatched", with a party of twenty-four people started from La Chine, just above Montreal, on their journey to the southwest 6th July, 1669, and, the 30th September, separated from the party that was going to the Northwest, near the head of Lake Ontario; after which, for a period of toward two years, the journeyings of La Salle, although much discussed by learned researchers, have not been fully described, nor understood.

La Salle's maps and papers, supposedly descriptive of these journeyings, were reported by his aged niece to have been in existence as late as the year 1750; but they have not been found by his reviewers. In 1674 he returned to France, and while there had "ten or twelve conversations" with a friend who soon thereafter wrote, anonymously, a "Histoire de Monsieur de la Salle," which is reproduced by Pierre Margry in the first volume, page 376, of his Decouvertes, and from which the following extract is taken, viz:—

Cependant M. de la Salle continua son chemin par une rivière qui va de l'est à l'ouest; et passe à Ononataqué, puis à six ou sept lieues au-dessous du Lac Erié; et estant parvenu jusqu'au 280me ou 83me degré de longitude, et jusqu'au 41me degré de latitude, trouva un sault qui tombe vers l'ouest dans un pays bas, marescageux, tout couvert de 'vielles souches, dont il y en a quelques-unes qui sont encore sur pied.

Il fut donc contraint de prendre terre, et suivant une hauteur qui le pouvoit mener loin, il trouva quelques sauvages qui luy dirent que fort loin de là le mesme fleuve qui se perdoit dans cette terre basse et vaste se reunnissoit en un lit. Il continua donc son chemin, mais comme la fatigue estoit grande, 23 ou 24 hommes qu'il avoit menez jusques lá le quittèrent tous en une nuit, regagnérent le fleuve, et se sauvèrent, les uns à la Nouvelle Hollande et les autres à la Nouvelle Angleterre. Il se vit donc seul à 400 lieues de chez luy, où il ne laisse pas de revenir, remontant la rivière et vivant de chasse, d'herbes, et de ce que luy donnèrent les sauvages qu'il recontra en son chemin.

This account must have been written from the poor memory of one evidently not familiar with the full significance of all the words used, in their relation to country wilds. Possibly it was done by La Salle's aged niece who affirmed that his maps were seen about 1750.

A very liberal translation of this excerpt is necessary to make it intelligible, and such naturally reads as follows:

Meantime, M. de la Salle [after parting with the Sulpitians near the west end of Lake Ontario] continued his way with the Onondaga [Aborigine, as guide], and up a river [the Maumee River] sixty leagues beyond Lake Erie. Having attained the 80th degree of longitude, or possibly the 83rd, and the 41st degree of latitude, he came to a decline westward through a low, marshy region covered with timber much of which was dead and fallen, and part standing. He was compelled to go a long way around on the high land; and there he met savages who told him that the water flowing from this large marsh soon united in a good channeled river [the Petite or Little River]. He continued his way until the distance, cold, hunger, and fears of his men became great, when his guide and company of twenty-four men left him in the night, some returning to New Holland and the others to New England. He then returned up the river, down which he went, living with the savages on their game, and vegetables.

This rendering accords with an extract given below that has been published and termed La Salle's memorial to Count Frontenac (Parkman, page 24), or with all that can be made out of it, viz:

L'année 1667, et les suivantes, il fit divers voyages avec beaucoup de dépenses, dans lesquels il découvrit, le premier beaucoup de pays au sud des grands lacs, et entrè autres la grande rivière d'Ohio; il la suivit jusqua'à un endroit où elle tombe de fort haut dans de vastes

marais, à la hauteur de 37 degrés, après avoir été grossie par une autre rivière fort large qui vient du nord; et toutes ces eaux se déchargent selon toutes les apparences dans le Golfe du Mexique.

Surely La Salle was not the writer of this paragraph, as Parkman and others allege. It was surely the work of a friend. or an amanuensis who did not understand clearly what La Salle told him. A literal translation of it, as of the preceding excerpt, is unintelligible. But, with a naturally free rendering, it accords with the preceding translation, viz:

In the year 1667, and the years following, he [La Salle] made several voyages with much expense, in which he was the first to discover a large extent of country south of the great lakes, and the great river Ohio. He came to this by way of a river which rises in a large swamp and is enlarged by other rivers, and with much fall. He followed it throughout its extent, and along another large river until it was enlarged by another very large river from the north, to the latitude of thirty-seven degrees. According to all appearances these waters are discharged into the Gulf of Mexico.

This rendering also makes good La Salle's claim of being the first to discover the Mississippi, it being that "very large river from the north."

SKETCH OF FRANQUELIN'S MAP OF 1682.

It is also significant that the latitude of 41°, named in the first extract, corresponds with that of the large swamp which,

even through the first half of the 19th century, often partook of the nature of a lake, as shown on Franquelin's map herewith sketched. This swamp existed, until the last few years, a few miles southwest of the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana, it being the broad channel which first drained the Glacial Lake Maumee, and which has since been drained by the Aboite and Little River, the first northern tributary to the Wabash. Also it is significant

BASIN OF THE GREAT LAKES, circa 1672.

Anonymous. Sketch of Central Part. Figures refer to Legends that cannot be given here.

that none of the maps preceding this date, 1669, indicated the River Wabash nor the Ohio, though several do show the Maumee. In 1672, however, the Ohio appears on the map of The Basin of the Great Lakes, and Joliet's Smaller Map. Further, the stated latitude of thirty-seven degrees in the second extract accords well with the debouching of the Ohio River into the Mississippi.

Fortunately we have corroborating evidence of the justness of the foregoing renderings of the befogged French by the writer. In Tract Number Twenty-five of the Western Reserve Historical Society, Mr. C. C. Baldwin then its Secretary, wrote as follows:

Mr. Margry, in a letter addressed to Col. Whittlesey, President of the Historical Society, after expressing in the kindest manner his thanks for the influence exerted here in behalf of his project [the publication of his researches], communicates the following extract of an unpublished letter of La Salle, (no date) which translated reads: The river which you see marked on my map of the southern coast of this lake [Erie] and towards the extremity called by the Iroquois Tiotontaenon, is without

doubt the passage into the Ohio, or Olighira Sipon as it is called in Iroquois, or in Ottawa The Beautiful River. The distance from the one to the other is considerable, and the communication more difficult; but within a day's journey from its mouth at Lake Erie (washing as it flows a beautiful country) and at a musket shot from its banks, there is a little lake [the marsh southwest of Fort Wayne? See Map No. 1] from which flows a stream three or four fathoms wide at the outlet from the lake one fathom in depth. It soon changes, however, into a river by the junction of a number of other streams, which after a course of a hundred leagues, without rapids, [without great fall] receives another