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

248 THE ADVENTURES OF HENNEPIN. [1680.tried; and, on the whole, they square exceedinglywell with contemporary records of undoubted authenticity.Bating his exaggerations respecting the Fallsof Niagara, his local descriptions, and even his estimatesof distance, are generally accurate. He constantly,it is true, magnifies his own acts, and thrustshimself forward as one of the chiefs of an enterpriseto the costs of which he had contributed nothing,and to which he was merely an appendage ;and yet,till he reaches the Mississippi, there can be no doubtthat in the main he tells the truth. As for his ascentof that river to the country of the Sioux, the generalstatement is fully confirmed by La Salle,Tonty, andother contemporary writers. 1 For the details of thejourney we must rest on Hennepin alone, whoseaccount of the country and of the peculiar traits ofits Indian occupants afford, as far as they go, goodevidence of truth.Indeed, this part of his narrativecould only have been written by one well versed in thesavage life of this northwestern region. 2 Trusting,1 It is certain that persons having the best means of informationbelieved at the time in Hennepin's story of his journeys on theUpper Mississippi. The compiler of the Relation des Decouvertes,who was in close relations with La Salle and those who acted withhim, does not intimate a doubt of the truth of the report whichHennepin on his return gave to the Provincial Commissary of hisOrder, and which is in substance the same which he published twoyears later. The Relation, it is to be observed, was written only afew months after the return of Hennepin, and embodies the pith ofhis narrative of the Upper Mississippi, no part of which had thenbeen published.2 In this connection, it is well to examine the various Siouxwords which Hennepin uses incidentally, and which he must have