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Updated: June 15, 2025
Tonty had finally found rest and security in a village of the Pottawattomies at the head of Green Bay. On the 6th of February, 1682, La Salle passed down the swift current of the Mississippi on that memorable voyage which led him to the Gulf of Mexico. He was accompanied by Tonty, and Father Membré, one of the Recollet order, whom he always preferred to the Jesuits.
"Memoires de Bertrand Barere": publies par MM. Hippolyte Carnot, Membre de la Chambre des Deputes, et David d'Angers, Membre de l'Institut: precedes d'une Notice Historique par H. Carnot. 4 tomes. Paris: 1843. This book has more than one title to our serious attention.
Each had for the other a tale of disaster; but, when La Salle recounted the long succession of his reverses, it was with the tranquil tone and cheerful look of one who relates the incidents of an ordinary journey. Membre looked on him with admiration. Tonty, in his unpublished memoir, speaks of the joy of La Salle at the meeting.
The friar, Membré, who chronicled the expedition, describes them as "gay, civil, and free-hearted, exceedingly well-formed and with all so modest that not one of them would take the liberty to enter our hut, but all stood quietly at the door." He adds, "we did not lose the value of a pin while we were among them." La Salle had now reached the furthest point of Joliet and Marquette's exploration.
At this point they landed, and encamped in the midst of a dense and almost tropical forest, upon the bank, but slightly elevated above the surface of the water. In the morning La Salle divided his fleet into three bands, one to descend each of these three branches. He took the one on the extreme right, or the western branch. Lieutenant Tonti, with Father Membré, took the middle.
He estimates the number of fires at five or six hundred. Membre, who was here in 1680, says that it then contained seven or eight thousand souls. Membre, in Le Clercq, Premier Etablissement de la Foy, ii. 173. On the remarkable manuscript map of Franquelin, 1684, it is set down at twelve hundred warriors, or about six thousand souls. This was after the destructive inroad of the Iroquois.
Father Membré has given the following account of their productions: "The whole country is covered with palm-trees, laurels of two kinds, plums, peaches, mulberry, apple, and pear-trees of every variety. There are also five or six kinds of nut-trees, some of which bear nuts of extraordinary size. They also gave us several kinds of dried fruit to taste. We found them large and good.
They proposed that he should act as mediator, to which he gladly assented, and crossed the meadow towards the Illinois, accompanied by Membre, and by an Iroquois who was sent as a hostage. The Illinois hailed the overtures with delight, gave the ambassadors some refreshment, which they sorely needed, and sent back with them a young man of their nation as a hostage on their part.
Towards the end of May, he set out in canoes from Fort Miami, and reached Michillimackinac after a prosperous voyage. Here, to his great joy, he found Tonty and Zenobe Membre, who had lately arrived from Green Bay. The meeting was one at which even his stoic nature must have melted.
Father Membré writes: "This was not a very agreeable mission to a savage tribe. Nevertheless, I made up my mind, and God preserved me from all harm." The chiefs received him kindly. They were ashamed of the course which the warriors, notwithstanding their remonstrances, were pursuing. They said to him frankly: "Our real trouble is that we are starving.
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