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

;182 FORT CR^VECCEUR. [1680.doubt, the " Griffin " was lost;all his plans seemed ruined alike.and in her loss he andNothing, indeed, was ever heard of her.Indians,fur-traders, and even Jesuits, have been chargedwith contriving her destruction. Some say that theOttawas boarded and burned her, after murderingthose on board; others accuse the Pottawattamiesothers affirm that her own crew scuttled and sunkher; others, again, that she foundered in a storm. 1As for La Salle, the belief grew in him to a settledconviction that she had been treacherously sunk bythe pilot and the sailors to whom he had intrustedher; and he thought he had found evidence that theauthors of the crime, laden with the merchandisethey had taken from her, had reached the Mississippiand ascended it, hoping to join Du Lhut, a famouschief of coureurs de bois, and enrich themselves bytraffic with the northern tribes. 21 Charlevoix, i. 459 ; La Potherie, ii. 140 ; La Hontan, Memoir onthe Fur-Trade of Canada. I am indebted for a copy of this paperto Winthrop Sargent, Esq., who purchased the original at the sale ofthe library of the poet Southey. Like Hennepin, La Hontan wentover to the English ; and this memoir is written in their interest.2 Lettre de La Salle a La Barre, Chicagou, 4 Juin, 1683. This is along letter, addressed to the successor of Frontenac in the governmentof Canada. La Salle says that a young Indian belonging tohim told him that three years before he saw a white man, answeringthe description of the pilot, a prisoner among a tribe beyond theMississippi. He had been captured with four others on that river,while making his way with canoes, laden with goods, towards theSioux. His companions had been killed. Other circumstances,which La Salle details at great length, convinced him that the whiteprisoner was no other than the pilot of the " Griffin." The evidence,however, is not conclusive.