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

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CHAPTER XX.1681-1682.SUCCESS OF LA SALLE.His Followers. — The Chicago Portage. — Descent <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Mississippi.— The Lost Hunter. — The Arkansas. — The Taensas.— The Natchez. — Hostility. — The Mouth <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Mississippi.— Louis XIV. proclaimed Sovereign <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Great<strong>West</strong>.The season was far advanced. On <strong>the</strong> bare limbs<strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> forest hung a few wi<strong>the</strong>red remnants <strong>of</strong> itsgay autumnal livery; <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> smoke crept upwardthrough <strong>the</strong> sullen November air from <strong>the</strong> squalidwigwams <strong>of</strong> <strong>La</strong> <strong>Salle</strong>'s Abenaki <strong>and</strong> Mohegan allies.These, his new friends, were savages whose midnightyells had startled <strong>the</strong> border hamlets <strong>of</strong> New Engl<strong>and</strong>;who had danced around Puritan scalps, <strong>and</strong>whom Puritan imaginations painted as incarnatefiends. <strong>La</strong> <strong>Salle</strong> chose eighteen <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>m, whom headded to<strong>the</strong> twenty-three Frenchmen who remainedwith him, some <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> rest having deserted <strong>and</strong> o<strong>the</strong>rslagged behind.The Indians insisted on taking <strong>the</strong>irsquaws with <strong>the</strong>m. These were ten in number,besides three children; <strong>and</strong> thus <strong>the</strong> expeditionincluded fifty-fourpersons, <strong>of</strong> whom some were useless,<strong>and</strong> o<strong>the</strong>rs a burden.

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