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

402 ST. LOUIS OF TEXAS. [1686.upon them, and butchered them all. La Salle,alarmed by their long absence, had searched alongthe shore, and at length found their bodiesabout the sands and half-devoured by wolves. 1scatteredWellwould it have been, if Duhaut had shared their fate.Weeks and months dragged on, when, at the endof March, Joutel, chancing to mount on the roof ofone of the buildings, saw seven or eight men approachingover the prairie. He went out to meet themwith an equal number, well armed; and as he drewnear recognized, with mixed joy and anxiety, LaSalle and some of those who had gone with him.His brother Cavelier was at his side,with his cassockso tattered that, says Joutel, "there was hardly apiece left large enough to wrap a farthing's worth ofsalt. He had an old cap on his head, having lost hishat by the way. The rest were in no better plight,for their shirts were all in rags. Some of themcarried loads of meat, because M. de la Salle wasafraid that we might not have killed any buffalo,We met with great joy and many embraces. Afterour greetings were over, M. de la Salle, seeingDuhaut, asked me in an angry tone how it was thati Joutel, Relation (Margry, iii. 206). Compare Le Clerc, ii. 296.Cavelier, always disposed to exaggerate, says that ten men werekilled. La Salle had previously had encounters with the Indians,and punished them severely for the trouble they had given his men-Le Clerc says of the principal fight " : Several Indians werewounded, a few were killed, and others made prisoners, — one ofwhom, a girl of three or four years, was baptized, and died a fewdays after, as the first-fruit of this mission, and a sure conquest sentto heaven."