Page 4 - Fur Trade program Curriculum

be moved, he wanted to wait for Tonty. The men grumbled, but obeyed; and, to divert
their thoughts, he set them at building a fort of timber, on a raising ground at the mouth
of the river.

They had spent twenty days at this task and their work was well advanced, when at
length Tonty appeared. He brought with him only half of his men. Provisions had failed;
and the rest of his party had been left ninety miles behind, to sustain themselves by
hunting. LaSalle told him to return and hurry them forward. Tonty set out with two men.
A violent north wind arose. He tried to run his canoe ashore through the breakers. The
two men could not manage their vessel, and he with his one hand could not help them.
The boat began to take on water and was quickly swamped, rolling over in the surf.
Guns, baggage and provisions were lost; and the three voyagers returned to the
Miamis, subsisting on acorns by the way. Happily, the men left behind, excepting two
deserters, succeeded, a few days after, in rejoining the rest of the party. However,
LaSalle was still waiting on the Griffith. Plenty of time had passed for the ship to make it
around the portage of the Niagara (Falls) and back again. He could not wait any longer
for the replenishing supplies that the Griffith held below her decks. LaSalle sent two
men back to Michillimackinac to meet her, if she still existed, and pilot her to his new fort
of the Miamis, and then prepared to ascend the river, whose weedy edges were already
glassed with thin flakes of ice. The Griffith was never heard from again.

On the third of December, the party re-embarked, thirty-three in all, in eight canoes,
and ascended the chill current of the St. Joseph, bordered with dreary meadows and
bare gray forests. When they approached the site of the present village of South Bend,
they looked anxiously along the shore on their right to find the portage or path leading to
the headquarters of the Illinois. LaSalle Mohegan Indian guide was absent because he
was hunting for the group and the group passed the entrance of the portage without
seeing it. LaSalle landed to search the woods. Hours passed, and he did not return.
Father Hennepin and Tonty grew uneasy, disembarked and camped ordering the guns
to be fired and sent out two men to scour the woods. Night came, but not their lost
leader. Muffled in their blankets and powdered by the thick-falling snowflakes, they sat
speculating as to what had befallen him; nor was it until 4:00 the next afternoon that
they saw him approaching along the margin of the river. His face and hands were
covered with charcoal; and he was farther decorated with two possums, which hung
from his belt, and which he had killed with a stick as they were swinging head
downwards from the limb of a tree, as they have a habit of doing. He had got lost in the
forest, and had been forced to make a wide circle around the edge of a swamp
(evidently the swamp at Mishawaka); while the snow, of which the air was full, added to
his perplexities. Thus he pushed on through the rest of the day and the greater part of
the night, until about 2:00 in the morning he reached the river again and fired his gun as
a signal to the rest of the party. Hearing no answering shot, he pursued his way along
the bank, when he presently saw the gleam of a fire among the dense thickets very
close to him. Not doubting that he had found the camp of the exploring party, he quickly
ran to the spot. To his surprise, no human being was to be seen. Under a tree beside
the fire was a heap of dry grass impressed with the form of a man who must have fled
but a moment before, for the makeshift bed was still warm. It was, no doubt an Indian,
who was scared away by LaSalle’s firing his weapon. LaSalle called out in several
Indian languages; but there was dead silence all around. He then, with admirable