La Salle and the discovery of the great West - North Central ...

";118 PARTY STRIFE. [1678.Monsieur, if anybody shared the suspicion which Ifelt,oblige me by undeceiving him.This letter, so honorable to La Salle, explains thestatement made in the memoir, that, notwithstandinghis grounds of complaint against the Jesuits, he continuedto live on terms of1courtesy with them, entertainedthem at his fort, and occasionally correspondedwith them. The writer asserts, however, that theyintrigued with his men to induce them to desert, —employing for this purpose a young man namedDeslauriers, whom they sent to him with letters ofrecommendation. La Salle took him into his servicebut he soon after escaped, with several other men,and took refuge in the Jesuit missions. 2 The objectof the intrigue is said to have been the reduction ofLa Salle'sgarrison to a number less than that whichhe was bound to maintain, thus exposing him to aforfeiture of his title of possession.He is also stated to have declared that Louis Jolietwas an impostor, 3 and a donne of the Jesuits, — that1 The following words are underlined in the original :" Je suispourtant oblige de leur rendre une justice, que le poison qu'on m'avoitdonne n'estoit point de leur instigation." — Lettre de La Salle au Princede Conti, 31 Oct., 1678.2 In a letter to the King, Frontenac mentions that several menwho had been induced to desert from La Salle had gone to Albany,where the English had received them well. Lettre de Frontenac auRoy, 6 Nov., 1679. The Jesuits had a mission in the neighboringtribe of the Mohawks and elsewhere in New York.8 This agrees with expressions used by La Salle in a memoiraddressed by him to Frontenac in November, 1680. In this, heintimates his belief that Joliet went but little below the mouth ofthe Illinois, thus doing flagrant injustice to that brave explorer.