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

1681.] THE RETURN. 279way to attack the Illinois and Missouris, leaving theFrenchmen to ascend the Wisconsin unmolested.After various adventures, they reached the stationof the Jesuits at Green Bay; but its existence iswholly ignored by Hennepin, whose zeal for his ownOrder will not permit him to allude to this establishmentof the rival missionaries. 1 He is equallyreticent with regard to the Jesuit mission atMichilimackinac, where the party soon after arrived,and where they spent the winter. The only intimationwhich he gives of its existence consists in themention of the Jesuit Pierson, who was a Fleminglikehimself, and who often skated with him on thefrozen lake, or kept him company in fishing througha hole in the ice. 2 When the spring opened,Hennepin descended Lake Huron, followed theDetroit to Lake Erie, and proceeded thence toNiagara. Here he spent some time in making afresh examination of the cataract, and then resumedhis voyage on Lake Ontario. He stopped, however,at the great town of the Senecas, near the Genesee,where, with his usual spirit of meddling, he tookupon him the functions of the civil and military1 On the other hand, he sets down on his map of 1683 a missionof the Recollets at a point north of the farthest sources of the Mississippi,to which no white man had ever penetrated.2He says that Pierson had come among the Indians to learntheir language ; that he " retained the frankness and rectitude ofour country," and "a disposition always on the side of candor andsincerity. In a word, he seemed to me to be all that a Christianought to be " (1697), 433.