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

1680.] DU LHUT'S EXPLORATIONS. 275martyr to the gout, which for more than a quarter ofa century grievously tormented him; though for atime he thought himself cured by the intercession ofthe Iroquois saint, Catharine Tegahkouita, to whomhe had made a vow to that end. He was, withoutdoubt, an habitual breaker of the royal ordinancesregulating the fur-trade ;yet his services were greatto the colony and to the crown, and his name deservesa place of honor among the pioneers of Americancivilization. 11The facts concerning Du Lhut have been gleaned from a varietyof contemporary documents, chiefly the letters of his enemyDuchesneau, who always puts him in the worst light, especially inhis despatch to Seignelay of 10 Nov., 1679, where he charges bothhim and the governor with carrying on an illicit trade with theEnglish of New York. Du Lhut himself, in a memoir dated 1685(see Harrisse, Bibliographie, 176), strongly denies these charges. DuLhut built a trading fort on Lake Superior, called Cananistigoyan(La Hontan), or Kamalastigouia (Perrot). It was on the north side,at the mouth of a river entering Thunder Bay, where Fort Williamnow stands. In 1684 he caused two Indians, who had murderedseveral Frenchmen on Lake Superior, to be shot.He displayed inthis affair great courage and coolness, undaunted by the crowd ofexcited savages who surrounded him and his little band of Frenchmen.The long letter, in which he recounts the capture and executionof the murderers, is before me. Duchesneau makes his conducton this occasion the ground of a charge of rashness. In 1686Denonville, then governor of the colony, ordered him to fortify theDetroit; that is, the strait between Lakes Erie and Huron. Hewent thither with fifty men and built a palisade fort, which heoccupied for some time. In 1687 he, together with Tonty andDurantaye, joined Denonville against the Senecas, with a body ofIndians from the Upper Lakes. In 1689, during the panic thatfollowed the Iroquois invasionof Montreal, Du Lhut, with twentyeightCanadians, attacked twenty-two Iroquois in canoes, receivedtheir fire without returning it, bore down upon them, killed eighteenof them, and captured three, only one escaping.In 1695 he was in