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

1683.] A NEW ALARM. 325their anxiety when they heard that the Iroquois wereagain threatening to invade the Miamis and theIllinois; and thus La Barre, whose duty it wasstrenuously to oppose the intrigue of the English,and use every effort to quiet the ferocious bandswhom they were hounding against the Indian alliesof the French, was, in fact, but half-hearted in thework. He cut off La Salle from all supplies;detained the men whom he sent for succor;and, at aconference with the Iroquois, told them that theywere welcome to plunder and kill him. 1The old governor, and the unscrupulous ring withwhich he was associated, now took a step towhichhe was doubtless emboldened by the tone of theKing's letter, in condemnation of La Salle's enterprise.He resolved to seize Fort Frontenac, the propertyof La Salle, under the pretext that the latterhad not fulfilled the conditions of the grant, andhad not maintained a sufficient garrison. 2 Two of1Memoire pour rendre compte a Monseigneur le Marquis de Seignelayde l']£tat ou le Sieur de Lasalle a laisse le Fort Frontenac pendantle temps de sa decouverte. On La Barre's conduct, see " Count Frontenacand New France under Louis XIV." chap. v.2La Salle, when at Mackinaw, on his way to Quebec, in 1682,had been recalled to the Illinois, as we have seen, by a threatenedIroquois invasion. There is before me a copy of a letter which hethen wrote to Count Frontenac, begging him to send up moresoldiers to the fort, at his (La Salle's) expense. Frontenac, beingabout to sail for France, gave this letter to his newly arrived successor,La Barre, who, far from complying with the request, withdrewLa Salle's soldiers already at the fort, and then made itsdefenceless state a pretext for seizing it. This statement is madein the memoir addressed to Seignelay, before cited.