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Updated: May 15, 2025
We must now leap over a period of forty years, to arrive at Robert Cavelier de la Sale. During this time, the French establishments have acquired some importance in Canada, and have extended themselves over a great part of North America. Our hunters and trappers scour the woods, and bring, every year, with their load of furs, new information respecting the interior of the continent.
Thus perished Cavelier de la Sale, "a man of a capacity," says Father Charlevoix, "of a largeness of mind, of a courage and firmness of soul, which might have led him to the achievement of something great, if with so many great qualities, he had known how to master his gloomy and atrabilious disposition, and to soften the severity or rather the harshness of his nature...." Many calumnies had been spread abroad against him; but it is necessary so much the more to be on our guard against all these malevolent reports "as it is only too common to exaggerate the defects of the unfortunate, to impute to them even some which they had not, especially when they have given occasion for their misfortune, and have not known how to make themselves beloved.
Cavelier says that they once saw a band of a hundred and fifty mounted Indians attacking a herd of buffalo with lances pointed with sharpened bone. The old priest was delighted with the sport, which he pronounces "the most diverting thing in the world." Holding a north-easterly course, the travellers crossed the Brazos, and reached the waters of the Trinity.
The French sculptor may draw his inspiration from the sources of originality itself, his audience will measure the result by conventions. It is this fact undoubtedly that is largely responsible for the over-carefulness for style already remarked. Hence the work of M. Aimé-Millet and of Professors Guillaume and Cavelier, and the fact that they are professors.
Cavelier, fearing lest he and his party would lose the advantages which they might derive from his character of representative of his brother, was determined to conceal his death; and Joutel, as he himself confesses, took part in the deceit.
Two men, besides, deserve to be mentioned for the encouragements and facilities which they afforded to the explorers, viz., M. de Frontenac, Governor of New France, and Talon, intendant of justice and police. In 1678, there arrived in Canada, without any settled purpose, a young man named Cavelier de la Sale.
The narrative of Cavelier unfortunately fails us several weeks before the death of his brother, the remainder being lost. On a study of these various documents, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that neither Cavelier nor Douay always wrote honestly. Joutel, on the contrary, gives the impression of sense, intelligence, and candor throughout.
It seems that Cavelier de la Salle himself, in his store at Lachine where he dealt with the Indians, did not scruple to sell them this fatal poison. From 1668 to 1670, during the two years that Commissioner Talon had to spend in France, both for reasons of health and on account of family business, he did not cease to work actively at the court for his beloved Canada.
In other respects, every thing that appears concerning him is highly favorable, which is not the case with Douay, who, on one or two occasions, makes wilful misstatements. Douay says that the elder Cavelier made a report of the expedition to the minister Seignelay.
He had an elder brother in Canada, the Abbe Jean Cavelier, a priest of St. Sulpice. Apparently, it was this that shaped his destinies. His connection with the Jesuits had deprived him, under the French law, of the inheritance of his father, who had died not long before. By a recent ordinance, 1666, persons entering religious orders could not take the final vows before the age of twenty-five.
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