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

274 HENNEPIN AMONG THE SIOUX. [1680.be Daniel Greysolon du Lhut, with four well-armedFrenchmen.This bold and enterprising man, stigmatized by theIntendant Duchesneau as a leader of coureurs de bois,was a cousin of Tonty, born at Lyons. He belongedto that caste of the lesser nobles whose name waslegion, and whose admirable military qualities shoneforth so conspicuously in the wars of Louis XIV.Though his enterprises were independent of those ofLa Salle, they were at this time carried on in connectionwith Count Frontenac and certain merchants inhis interest, of whom Du Lhut's uncle, Patron, wasone; while Louvigny, his brother-in-law, was inalliance with the governor, and was an officer of hisguard. Here, then, was a kind of family league,countenanced by Frontenac, and acting conjointlywith him, in order, if the angry letters of the intendantare to be believed, to reap a clandestine profitunder the shadow of the governor's authority, and inviolation of the royal ordinances. The rudest partof the work fell to the share of Du Lhut, who with apersistent hardihood, not surpassed perhaps even byLa Salle, was continually in the forest, in the Indiantowns, or in remote wilderness outposts planted byhimself, exploring, trading, fighting, ruling lawlesssavages and whites scarcely less ungovernable, andon one or more occasions var}dng his life by crossingthe ocean to gain interviews with the colonial ministerSeignelay, amid the splendid vanities of Versailles.Strange to say, this man of hardy enterprise was a