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Updated: May 9, 2025
It seems so odd to realize that Tonty and La Salle paddled up and down here. They may have camped where we are now. Sometimes in the evenings when we are on the river, I imagine I can see a line of canoes with strange, dark men in buckskin, and painted Indians, and solemn old monks, with Father Hennepin in the first canoe. So many curious old memories hover over this stream."
But he greatly needed the credit which its load of furs would give him. So he determined to send it manned as it was, with orders to return to the head of Lake Michigan as soon as the cargo was safely landed; while he voyaged down the west side of the lake, and Tonty, returning from the Sault, came by the east shore.
With a fleet of canoes, this was of course impossible; and there was nothing to offset the enormous outlay which he and his family had made. Membre, in Le Clercq, ii. 248. He rejoined Tonty at Michillimaekinac in September.
"He put out in a canoe when the Indians were embarking their women and children," said Étienne Renault. "I saw him go." And so it proved afterwards. But L'Esperance had slipped away to bring back Father Membré and Father Ribourde to tend the wounded and dying. Having crossed the river and reached the prairie, Tonty and his allies saw the Iroquois.
The forces which he brought together for this task were greatly superior to any that had been mustered in Canada before. Not only were they adequate in numbers, but they comprised an important band of coureurs de bois, headed by La Durantaye, Tonty, Du Lhut, and Nicolas Perrot men who equalled the Indians in woodcraft and surpassed them in character.
He named the tribes which had gathered there for protection, trusting in La Salle, and believing De Tonty their friend Illini, Shawnees, Abenakies, Miamis, Mohegans at one time reaching a total of twenty thousand souls. There they camped, guarded by the great fort towering above them, on the same sacred spot where years before the Jesuit Marquette had preached to them the gospel of the Christ.
This portage, varying in length with the season from three to five miles, was the St. Joseph-Kankakee Portage. La Salle, Tonty, and Hennepin passed over it in 1679 on a less spiritual errand to the same land whose inhabitants Marquette had tried to instruct in the mystery of the faith. And it was well worn by adventurous and pious feet in the century that followed.
Early in the autumn, he left Tonty in command of the Rock, bade farewell to his savage retainers, and descended to Quebec, intending to sail for France. On his way, he met the Chevalier de Baugis, an officer of the king's dragoons, commissioned by La Barre to take possession of Fort St.
When he landed, the Indians made signs of friendship by joining their hands, a proceeding by which Tonty, having but one hand, was somewhat embarrassed; but he directed his men to respond in his stead. La Salle and Membre now joined him, and went with the Indians to their village, three leagues distant. Here they spent the night.
The messengers who brought this letter were speedily followed by two of the habitans of Fort Frontenac, who had been trading on the lakes, and who, with a fidelity which the unhappy La Salle rarely knew how to inspire, had travelled day and night to bring him their tidings. Four men from Niagara were to go with him, and he was to rejoin Tonty with such supplies as that post could furnish.
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