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Updated: June 5, 2025
White men had probably seen the cataract before, but he is the first who wrote a description of it that has come down to us. Hennepin's character has been severely criticized. He was much given to exaggeration, and he magnified his own importance. Mr. Thwaites describes him as "hardy, brave and enterprising," but "lacking in spiritual qualities." The actual height is 167 feet.
Alarms were frequent, and only for Father Hennepin's exhortations, shipbuilding would have been abandoned to a later period, on the lake. But carpenter Tuti persevered, and amid enthusiastic cheering, the chanting of a Te Deum, and the firing of guns, she was safely launched. The "Cataraqui" was square rigged.
The eight Frenchmen now accompanied the Sioux back to Mille Lacs and were treated with great honor. Then they started east and, in due time, reached the Jesuit missions at Green Bay. And here we take leave of Father Hennepin. Hennepin's language in the passages which have been quoted is given as it appears in an old English translation.
This pirated account, written in Hennepin's picturesque style, met with great success in Europe and was translated into several languages. We are reminded of the sensation which was made by Amerigo Vespucci's fanciful tales of the New World. One more question. If Hennepin lied in saying that he descended the Great River, how do we know that he really ascended it?
Some of these parallel passages will be found in Sparks's Life of La Salle, where this remarkable fraud was first fully exposed. In Shea's Discovery of the Mississippi, there is an excellent critical examination of Hennepin's works. Such being the case, what faith can we put in the rest of Hennepin's story?
It was reserved for the geographer Franquelin to give, in his map of 1688, the first fairly-accurate idea of the Ohio's path; and Father Hennepin's large map of 1697 showed that much had meanwhile been learned about the river.
They occur, not in the early editions of Hennepin's narrative, which are comparatively truthful, but in the edition of 1697 and those which followed. La Motte and Hennepin, with sixteen men, went on board the little vessel of ten tons, which lay at Fort Frontenac.
The tribe of Indians encamped in July, 1680, upon the Upper Mississippi, opposite the mouth of St. Francis River, numbered between four and five hundred souls. There was a great want of food in the camp. According to Father Hennepin's estimate, they were about two hundred miles above the mouth of the Wisconsin River.
And when these savages learned by questioning with signs, and by drawing on the sand with a stick, that the Miamis, whom they were pursuing to fight, were far eastward out of their reach, three or four old warriors laid their hands on Hennepin's shaven crown and began to cry and howl like little boys.
Hennepin's first book was published soon after his return from his travels, and while La Salle was still alive. Reasons connected with his personal safety, he declares, before compelled him to remain silent; but a time at length has come when the truth must be revealed.
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