which was the first to sail Lake Erie or the upper lakes. She was named the Griffin, in honor of the arms of Frontenac. This ship started on her first voyage in August, 1679, amid the most imposing ceremonies. The Te Deum was chanted, cannons were fired, and a crowd of curious Indians stood upon the bank, filled with speechless wonder at the size of the wooden canoe, and awed by the carved figure of a god (a griffin) crouched with expanded wings upon the prow. prow. The crew of the Griffin consisted of voyageurs and three priests. The head of the mission was Gabriel de la Rebourde, the last living nobleman of an aristocratic house of Burgundy; another was Hennepin, who wrote a history of this expedition. He was not a favorite with La Salle, and was also distrusted by Tonti. The Jesuits' anxiety to extend a spiritual kingdom was often met and opposed by as great a zeal to extend an earthly kingdom, and La Salle was often at variance with the missions, as their methods were seldom one or the same. The Griffin entered the Straits of Detroit on the 10th of August, 1679. Hennepin describes the prospect "so well disposed that one would not think nature alone could have made it." They passed through Lake St. Clair on the saint's-day for which it is named, and when they reached Mackinaw La Salle rebuilt the old fort, after which he sailed to Green Bay and there met the coureurs de bois he had sent out the year before, with a valuable cargo of furs, which he placed upon the Griffin and despatched her with her valuable cargo to Niagara to pay the debts he had contracted. The Griffin sailed away, but was never heard from again. This great misfortune detained La Salle many months at Fort Miami on the St. Joseph River, where he waited for supplies the ill-fated Griffin was to bring on her return. In view of the cold wintry weather and the limited supplies, he concluded to continue his journey. He left the fort in charge of a few men and with a small band and three monks proceeded to the Illinois River, upon whose banks he built a fort and named it Creve Cœur (Broken Heart), to commemorate his disappointment at the loss of the Griffin. This expedition was badly equipped for so extended a journey, and as there was no hope of further aid, La Salle was nearly discouraged. His men, worn out with exposure and threatened with famine, were deserting him and entering

the camps of the Indians, and spreading suspicion and discontent among them. La Salle's pacific policy which he had advocated among the warlike Indians was viewed by the Indiaus as a pretense to deceive them, and in formal council they sentenced him to death; but he who had braved so many dangers was equal to the emergency. La Salle, unattended, repaired to the camp of the Illinois, and defended his conduct. He refuted with scorn the charge of treachery, and boldly demanded the author of the slander. He placed before the Indians such convincing arguments for maintaining peace between the tribes, they yielded to his eloquence. The calumet was smoked and a treaty of peace signed. The intrepid La Salle determined to return to Canada for re-enforcements and a better outfit. The fort was left in charge of a few men, and facing a toilsome and dangerous journey he pursued his way on foot over twelve hundred miles of frozen wilderness. He subsisted on what he could kill with his gun; was threatened continually by wild beasts or the lurking savage. When he at last reached his destination he met fresh discouragements. His enemies had circulated the report of his death, and all his property had been seized for debt. Frontenac proved a friend indeed in this dark hour, and joined him in a battle against these adversities; and soon, with fresh supplies of men, ammunition and necessary stores of various kinds, he embarked for another expedition. When he reached the fort on the Illinois River not a man was there. All had fled before the treacherous foe, and sought peace and safety he knew not where. Again the undaunted explorer repaired to Frontenac, with whose credit and every available means of his own, he succeeded in again being equipped for another enterprise. He found himself upon the waters of the Illinois in January, 1683, and his faithful friend and constant companion, Tonti, reported that they reached the Mississippi on the 7th of February. As they sailed down this long-sought stream, they marked the shoals by "hanging a bear skin on a pole driven into the sand.” They were welcomed by peaceful Indians at various times, and once when their provisions were well-nigh exhausted, they came upon a deserted village of the Illinois and found quantities of corn hidden in holes under their wigwams. They appropriated the supplies and

loaded their canoes. The never-failing supply The never-failing supply of fish seasoned their frugal fare. La Salle, thoroughly impressed with the right of France to all he could pre-empt in her name, took possession of the Mississippi valley. His own notary accompanied him from Fort Frontenac, and at important points as he met the Indians at his landings, he made public proclamations and with imposing ceremony placed tablets or rude memorials on trees or rocks. These were attested by his notary, and the Indians made to understand they were under the protection of the greatest King on earth.

The long-sought outlet of the Mississippi was reached on the 9th of April, and the achievement was celebrated with many demonstrations of joy. The Te Deum was chanted, cannons were fired, and the successful Frenchmen shouted Vive le roi. La Salle took formal possession of the country in the name of Louis the Great, King of France and Navarre, and Louisiana was named in honor of Louis XIV. The chevalier saw at once the importance of planting permanent colonial settlements in this rich and beautiful land, and he determined to establish one near, or on, the present site of New Orleans. He returned to France for this purpose and again appeared before the Court. He met a well-earned welcome, and presented his cause to the willing ears of interested and influential men. La Salle proposed to his government the feasibility of taking all the Spanish provinces in America; that they were rich in silver and gold mines, and were only defended by a few effeminate Spanish soldiers; that he could rely on four thousand Indian warriors from Fort St. Louis, who would respond with alacrity to his summons and descend the Father of Waters and join him in the expedition. Such prospects of untold treasure won the hearts of all who heard La Salle, and he was given four ships, one hundred soldiers were enrolled, besides mechanics and laborers, including a number of gentlemen and burgers of distinction. Nor were the missionaries wanting. Among them were La Salle's brother and two other priests of the order of St. Sulpice, and three Recollects. The company, including the families of the colonists and the sailors, numbered two hundred and eighty. They were ordered to stop at St. Domingo to take on board fifty buccaneers. The largest ship was named the Jolly, and

carried thirty-six guns. All the ships were laden with goods, provisions, farming implements, guns and other necessary articles for a pioneer's outfit. Thus amply provided with men and materials to found a colony, La Salle left his native land full of hope. After the ships were well on their voyage a spirit of rivalry, from the captain of the Jolly to the smallest officer, became manifest, and one disaster after another but added to the discontent. The squadron missed the mouth of the river, one ship after another was wrecked, and at last as the store ship sunk and the worthless captain deserting, the men who saw from the land the mismanagement displayed in this last priceless loss, broke out openly in their reproaches against one who had led them on their ill-starred adventure. The spirit of insubordination had permeated the hearts of the colonists for so long a period, it was impossible to restore confidence and courage. La Salle shared all their hardships, and promised, if necessary, to go on foot to Quebec for re-enforcements and supplies. The half-famished men with a few families depended upon game for food; their clothing was worn to shreds; they protected their feet on the rough way with buffalo-hide, which they were obliged to keep moist in order to walk without pain. While all about him were discouraged and reproaching him for the unlookedfor and unavoidable disasters that encompassed them, La Salle, constant in adversity and undismayed in the midst of the gravest difficulty, pursued his journey to Creve Coeur. At times he seemed oppressed by a profound melancholy, as if warned of his approaching doom, and the last day of his weary march on earth expressed himself surprised at his want of confidence in every one of his followers, as he had never injured any one, and had not lived for himself, but had endured many hardships that he might lead his countrymen to a land of plenty, if only they had the required means to obtain it. While he was alone in the fading day, wrapped in meditation, he was assassinated by a vindictive miscreant on the 19th of March, 1687. Thus perished ingloriously the ardent, selfsacrificing La Salle. Hennepin said, "He was generous, courteous, ingenious, learned, and capable of everything." One of the many heroes, who in seeking glory, wealth and dominion for their country, sacrifice their comfort, their own happiness and their life.

ROM the time when the footsteps of the

FR

white man first penetrated the forests of our Commonwealth, until the power of France on our continent was terminated by the victory of Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, the entire Territory of Michigan was under the undisputed dominion of France, and virtually it remained a part of Canada until 1796, when, under the provisions of Jay's treaty, it was surrendered to the United States. From France we received our first laws, our original social polity, our early religious character; and although the wave of Anglo Saxon emigration has within a third of a century rolled in upon us a population of half a million, it has not obliterated, and it is to be hoped it never will obliterate, the clear and distinct influence upon our social character of the era of French dominion.

We may not forget-we should ever be proud to remember-that for the first century of its existence the metropolis of our State, the City of the Straits, was essentially French in all its characteristics. We should never forget that the pioneers of civilization and Christianity along the shores of the noble rivers and mighty lakes that form the boundaries of our State, were French Jesuits. These men, with a firm and intrepid step, in the face of dangers, toils, sacrifices and sufferings which no language can portray and no imagination adequately conceive, bore aloft the torch of Christian truth amidst the moral darkness and desolation that here reigned in terrible and savage grandeur; and, sustained by a mental and moral discipline known to few, and by that unfaltering trust in God which, thank heaven, is confined to no creed or sect, they met - nay, welcomed—torture and death with a calm joyousness that finds few parallels in the annals of mankind.

The memory of those early Jesuit missionaries to the Indians has been embalmed in the

* From Pioneer Collection, by C. I. Walker.

glowing pages of Bancroft. Be mine the far humbler task to call your attention for an hour, somewhat more in detail than comports with general history, to the labors of these men on our own soil, or so immediately adjacent thereto as appropriately to form a part of our history.

On the 3d of July, 1608, less than fourteen months after the establishment of the first permanent English colony at Jamestown, the gallant Champlain founded Quebec

"On the rock whose haughty brow

Frowned o'er St. Lawrence' foaming tide," and for a century and a half, during which the fearful struggle was kept up on this continent between France and England for its dominion, it continued the center of French power in America. In 1615 the first priests reached New France. They were Recollects, four in number, with Father Carron, the Superior of the Mission, at their head. In 1625 they were re-enforced by three other priests of the same order, and at this time the first religious seminary in America was founded by them at Quebec.

In 1625 the first company of Jesuits arrived. They were sent out under the patronage of the Duke de Ventadour, a nobleman of great piety, who was Viceroy of the colony, but who gave to Champlain the entire direction of temporal affairs, reserving to himself the charge of promoting the conversion of the Indians to Christianity. Up to 1627 the colony of Quebec, although founded under the regal sanction, had been established and mainly governed by a company of traders, many of whom were Huguenots; and, although they were restrained by royal authority from teaching the Indians anything but the Catholic faith, among the colonists themselves religious differences and dissensions sprang up and disturbed their harmony. Cardinal Richelieu, who then with an absolute sway governed France in the name

of the King, and whose universal panacea for social evils was the harsh exercise of an iron power, revoked the privileges of the original company, and transferred Canada, its trade and its government, to the Company of the Hundred Associates, granting to them extensive powers and privileges. The company on their part were to take out sixteen thousand emigrants in fifteen years, none of whom were to be Protestants or other heretics, or Jews.

In 1629 the infant colony, not yet rooted to the soil, was captured by an English fleet under Sir David Kirk. So feeble was it in numbers that in the articles of capitulation Champlain provided for a single ship to be furnished to take the settlers back to their native land. Most of the ecclesiastics returned to France with Champlain, but the body of the colonists remained. The French Government scarcely deemed the colony of sufficient value to make an effort for its recovery, but the counsels of the enlightened Champlain prevailed, and Canada was restored to France by the Peace of St. Germain, in 1632. In 1633 Champlain returned to Quebec to resume his government, and with him came Brebeuf and one other Jesuit.

The Recollects were not permitted to return, under the pretense that, being a mendicant order, they were not well adapted to a new country, nor was it until 1669 that they were re-established in the colony.

Up to this period (1633) but little progress had been made in the conversion of the Indians. The Hurons were the first nation that cordially opened their hearts to the reception of the Christian faith. They occupied a somewhat anomalous position in relation to the two great divisions into which the Indians bordering on the St. Lawrence and its tributaries were divided the Algonquins and the Iroquois.

When Jacques Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence in 1534, he found its banks inhabited by tribes of the great Algonquins, and at Hocelaga, or Montreal, he found a very populous Indian town. When Champlain first raised the banner of France on the rock of St. Louis, the Algonquins gathered around him to give him welcome. He found them the hereditary enemies of their neighbors, the Iroquois, a race with similar habits but a radically different language, fewer in numbers and occupying a country far less in extent of territory; but

these disadvantages were more than compensated by their compactness, their admirable system of government, by their superior prowess, and by their haughty ambition. Occupying a territory but little larger than the State of New York, they arrogantly aspired to be the Romans of the western world, the arbiters of peace and war from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from the great lakes to the everglades of Florida. Their tomahawks carried terror and destruction to the villages of the peaceful Illinois on the broad prairies of the West, and the fiendlike yell of their war-parties was echoed back by the rocks that ranged themselves on the shores of the mighty lake of the North.

The Hurons, or Wyandots, were of the same lingual stock as the Iroquois, and occupied for a time a sort of neutral position between the great contestants for aboriginal dominion. They had the intellectual superiority of the Iroquois without their love of war or their lust of power. They had gathered in large numbers about Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe, where they sustained themselves by hunting, fishing, and a more perfect system of agriculture than generally prevailed among the Indians. The year of the settlement of Quebec, Champlain joined an expedition of the Algonquins of the St. Lawrence into the country of the Iroquois, by way of the beautiful lake that bears his name; and from him in that expedition those fierce warriors first learned the terrible power of firearms. From that moment they became the bitter enemies of the French, who had thus espoused the cause of their hereditary foes, and at frequent intervals for a century and a half the French colonies suffered from their vindictive and cruel wrath.

The Hurons at a very early day became the fast friends of the French. As early as 1615 Father Carron visited them on an embassy of peace and love, and from 1622 to 1625 the Recollects had a mission among them. On the arrival of Brebeuf they commenced their labors amongst the Hurons-labors which were to have so tragic an end. Brebeuf acquired a knowledge of the language and manners, and was adopted into their nation. By the conquest of Canada, 1629, the mission was broken up, but it was renewed with increased zeal and numbers in 1633, on the restoration of French power. Then villages were reached by the

circuitous, laborious and dangerous route of the Ottawa River, the more direct route being through a country occupied by the Iroquois, who were found upon the war-path. The journey was replete with difficulties, hardships and dangers, reaching for three hundred leagues through dense forests. The rivers were full of rocks and waterfalls, and the missionaries were compelled to ply the paddle, draw the canoe over rapids, and carry heavy burdens over roughest portages. Food was scarce and the Indians unfriendly, but after severe toil and intense suffering, the sacred envoys, Brebeuf and Daniel, reached the heart of the Huron wilderness and commenced their labors, soon to be followed by Lalemant and many others. Here for fifteen subsequent years the Jesuits continued with calm, impassive courage and unwearied patience their self-denying labors, in the midst of privations, peril, suffering, insult, contumely, and danger the most imminent, the details of which would make a volume of thrilling interest.

The arm of French power had not yet taught the savages the sacred character of the Black Coats, as the Jesuits were called to distinguish them from the Recollects, or the Gray Coats. The medicine men of the Indians, feeling that their craft was in danger, spared no opportu nity to arouse against them savage hate. Misfortune, sickness and death were all charged upon them as the fruit of their prayers and ceremonies, and the baptism of a dying infant was sometimes a source of imminent danger. To avoid this they often resorted to stratagem. Father Pigart, being rudely repulsed from a cabin whose inmates refused to have a dying infaut baptized, offered to the little sufferer a piece of sugar, and unperceived, though watched, pressed from a wet cloth a drop of holy water upon his favorite's brow. But ultimately the patience and loving perseverance of the missionaries overcame all opposition, and the Huron nation received the truth. But the hour of their destruction was at hand. The terrible Iroquois came down upon them like a wolf upon the fold.

In July, 1648, at carly dawn, while the men were mostly absent on a hunting party, the populous town of Te-an-an-sta-gue was aroused by the fearful war-cry of the Iroquois. The few defenders arrive at the feeble palisades, en-. couraged by the godly Father Daniel. Hastily,

as if the salvation of souls hung on each flying moment, he confesses, baptizes by aspersion, pronounces general absolution, and flies to the chapel, where many of his flock have gathered for safety He does the same there, exhorts them to flee from the rear of the chapel, and himself boldly opens the front door and faces the approaching foe to give a moment's time to his flying flock. They recoil at the brave man's presence, but soon they rally, his body is riddled with arrows, a fatal bullet finishes the work-he falls, breathing the name of Jesus, and his body is cast into the fire made by his burning chapel.

The following year, in March, other towns fell, and the brave and noble Brebeuf and the gentle and loving Gabriel Lalemant met death by tortures that only demons could invent or demons inflict. The whole annals of martyrdom scarcely afford a parallel either of the ingenious cruelty of the tormentors or the wonderful fortitude and Christian heroism of the victims.

The Huron nation was destroyed. Many perished by the hand of the enemy, others submitted and became incorporated in their tribes. Another portion settled near Quebec; and a small fraction, consisting of six or eight hundred, fled first to the Manitoulin Islands, thence to Mackinaw, from there to Bay de Noquet, and when the mission at La Pointe was established, 1665, they gathered around the standard of the cross erected by Father Allouez. Driven from thence by the Dacotahs, they were established at Mackinaw by Marquette in 1671. When Detroit was founded in 1701, they removed to this point. In 1751 they removed mostly to Sandusky, and subsequently, by the name of the Wyandots, took an active and conspicuous part on the side of the British in the War of the Revolution. They have been from the time of their dispersion, wanderers without territory of their own, depending for a home upon the hospitality of other nations.

It was from the Huron mission that the first missionary explorers were sent forth to examine the moral desolation of our Territory. At a feast of the dead held in Huronia, in early summer, 1641, there was in attendance a delegation from the Chippewas of Sault Ste. Marie. The missionaries, with that skill which was peculiar to them, soon ingratiated themselves