THE FIRST VOYAGE OF EXPLORATION, 1669–1675.
This joint expedition, under command of La Salle, started from La Chine, July 6th, 1669, with the Ohio river as its objective point. It consisted of 4 canoes, and 15 men of La Salle’s party; 3 canoes and 7 men of the Sulpitian contingent, and 2 canoes of Seneca Indians, acting as guides—9 canoes and 24 men in all. Thirty-five days travel brought them to the Seneca village (Irondequoit, on the south side of Lake Ontario), where they found a cordial welcome, but, also, difficulty in obtaining guides. While thus delayed, there arrived in camp two Frenchmen, one of whom was Louis Joliet, fur-trader and voyageur, himself an honorable figure in the annals of western discovery. Joliet, who had visited the upper lakes, whither he had been sent by Talon, the French Intendant at Montreal, to discover and report upon the copper mines of Lake Superior, showed to the priests of La Salle’s party a map which he had made of that region, and of which he gave them a copy; and he told them, moreover, of the heathenish condition of the Pottawatomies and other tribes dwelling in those parts. This so inflamed the religious zeal of the priests that they incontinently lost all their interest in the Ohio project, and determined to deflect their course toward the lake region, despite all the objections which La Salle could urge. So that, being firmly set in his own designs, he urged a recent illness as his excuse for parting with them; and the Sulpitians started northward, and got back to Montreal in June, 1670, with nothing to show (owing to sundry misfortunes and losses, especially that of their altar-service, without which they could not convert the heathen) either in the way of discovery, or of missionary results. La Salle’s movements, after this “parting of the ways,” and for two years following, are somewhat involved in obscurity. There is little doubt, however, that he was busily engaged in explorations and discoveries of some importance.[5] Certain it is, that he discovered the Ohio, since his own assertion of the fact, in a memoir addressed to Count Frontenac, in 1677, is confirmed by the testimony of his rival, Joliet, upon whose two maps of the Mississippi and the great lakes, the Ohio is depicted with an inscription stating that it had been explored by La Salle.