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

V1680.3 FRESH INTRIGUES. 175as a partisan and spy of theIroquois, affirming thathe was now on his way to stir up the tribes beyondthe Mississippi to join in a war against the Illinois,who, thus assailed from the east and from the west,would be utterly destroyed.There was no hope forthem, he added, but in checking the farther progressof La Salle, or, at least, retarding it, thus causinghis men to desert him.Having thrown his firebrand,Monso and his party left the camp in haste, dreadingto be confronted with the object of their aspersions. 1In the morning, La Salle saw a change in thebehavior of his hosts. They looked on him askance,cold, sullen, and suspicious. There was one Omawha,a chief, whose favor he had won the day before bythe politic gift of two hatchets and three knives, andwho now came to him in secret to tell him what hadtaken place at the nocturnal council. La Salle atonce saw in it a device of his enemies; and thisbelief was confirmed, when, in the afternoon,Nicanope*, brother of the head chief, sent to invitethe Frenchmen to a feast. They repaired to hislodge ; but before dinner was served, — that is tosay,while the guests, white and red, were seated oni Hennepin (1683), 151,(1704), 205; Le Clerc, ii. 157; Memoiredu Voyage de M. de la Salle. This is a paper appended to Frontenac'sLetter to the Minister, 9 Nov., 1680. Hennepin prints a translationof it in the English edition of his later work. It charges theJesuit Allouez with being at the bottom of the intrigue. CompareLettre de La Salle, 29 Sept., 1680 (Margry, ii. 41), and Memoire deLa Salle, in Thomassy, Geologie Pratique de la Louisiane, 203.The account of the affair of Monso, in the spurious work bearingTonty's name, is mere romance-