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Updated: June 26, 2025
Among those, were his brother, his ever-faithful Indian attendant, M. Douay, to whose pen we are indebted for the record of the last expedition, and M. Joutel, who kept a daily journal of the events of this journey. M. Douay wrote also quite a minute account of the expedition. Both of their narratives now lie before me. We have no reason to doubt the accuracy of either.
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.
An old Indian, one of the patriarchs of the tribe, observing his dejection, and anxious to relieve it, one evening brought him a young wife, saying that he made him a present of her. She seated herself at his side; "but," says Joutel, "as my head was full of other cares and anxieties, I said nothing to the poor girl.
The procession being thus formed in front of the chief's cabin, and the whole population of the village, many hundred in number, men, women and children, gathered around to witness the spectacle, M. Joutel and his attendants, led by the chief, were brought out to be received by the ancients and conducted to the council house. These venerable men greeted them with much formality.
Louis, with its fence of rigid palisades, its area of trampled earth, its buildings of weather-stained timber, and its well-peopled graveyard without, were hateful to their sight. La Salle had a heavy task to save them from despair. Joutel, 152.
To their surprise and delight they saw, upon the opposite bank, a large cross, and near by a spacious log-cabin, such as the French were accustomed to rear at their stations. "No one," writes M. Joutel, "can imagine the joy with which this sight inspired our hearts. We threw ourselves upon our knees, and with tearful eyes thanked God for having so safely led us.
They stopped before the honored guests, and, raising their hands aloft, uttered howls so extraordinary, that Joutel had much ado to preserve the gravity which the occasion demanded.
La Salle drew up very minute directions for the administration of affairs during his absence. "We parted," writes M. Joutel, "in a manner so tender, so sorrowful, that it would seem that we had a secret presentiment that we should never again see each other. Father Membré was deeply affected. He said to me that never before had he experienced a parting so painful."
Joutel and his companions were now filled with alarm; for there was no likelihood that the assassins would permit them, the witnesses of their crime, to reach the settlements alive. In the midst of their trouble, the sky was cleared as by the crash of a thunderbolt.
There were solemn dances, too, in which the warriors some bedaubed with white clay, some with red, and some with both; some wearing feathers, and some the horns of buffalo; some naked, and some in painted shirts of deer-skin fringed with scalp- locks, insomuch, says Joutel, that they looked like a troop of devils leaped, stamped, and howled from sunset till dawn.
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