They moved in procession down the surface of the frozen river, on foot,
and dragging their canoes after them on sledges.
At Peoria Lake they struck open water, and paddled thence
to the Mississippi and turned their prows southward.
They plowed through the fields of floating ice, past the mouth
of the Missouri; past the mouth of the Ohio, by-and-by;
‘and, gliding by the wastes of bordering swamp, landed on
the 24th of February near the Third Chickasaw Bluffs,’
where they halted and built Fort Prudhomme.
‘Again,’ says Mr. Parkman, ‘they embarked; and with every stage of their
adventurous progress, the mystery of this vast new world was more
and more unveiled. More and more they entered the realms of spring.
The hazy sunlight, the warm and drowsy air, the tender foliage,
the opening flowers, betokened the reviving life of nature.’
Day by day they floated down the great bends, in the shadow
of the dense forests, and in time arrived at the mouth
of the Arkansas. First, they were greeted by the natives
of this locality as Marquette had before been greeted by them–
with the booming of the war drum and the flourish of arms.
The Virgin composed the difficulty in Marquette’s case;
the pipe of peace did the same office for La Salle. The white man
and the red man struck hands and entertained each other during
three days. Then, to the admiration of the savages, La Salle set
up a cross with the arms of France on it, and took possession
of the whole country for the king–the cool fashion of the time–
while the priest piously consecrated the robbery with a hymn.
The priest explained the mysteries of the faith ‘by signs,’
for the saving of the savages; thus compensating them with
possible possessions in Heaven for the certain ones on earth
which they had just been robbed of. And also, by signs,
La Salle drew from these simple children of the forest
acknowledgments of fealty to Louis the Putrid, over the water.
Nobody smiled at these colossal ironies.
These performances took place on the site of the future town of Napoleon,
Arkansas, and there the first confiscation-cross was raised on the banks
of the great river. Marquette’s and Joliet’s voyage of discovery
ended at the same spot–the site of the future town of Napoleon.
When De Soto took his fleeting glimpse of the river, away back in the dim
early days, he took it from that same spot–the site of the future town
of Napoleon, Arkansas. Therefore, three out of the four memorable
events connected with the discovery and exploration of the mighty river,
occurred, by accident, in one and the same place. It is a most
curious distinction, when one comes to look at it and think about it.
France stole that vast country on that spot, the future Napoleon;
and by and by Napoleon himself was to give the country back again!–
make restitution, not to the owners, but to their white American heirs.
The voyagers journeyed on, touching here and there; ‘passed the sites,
since become historic, of Vicksburg and Grand Gulf,’
and visited an imposing Indian monarch in the Teche country,
whose capital city was a substantial one of sun-baked bricks
mixed with straw–better houses than many that exist there now.
The chiefs house contained an audience room forty feet square;
and there he received Tonty in State, surrounded by sixty old
men clothed in white cloaks. There was a temple in the town,
with a mud wall about it ornamented with skulls of enemies sacrificed
to the sun.
The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the site of the present
city of that name, where they found a ‘religious and political despotism,
a privileged class descended from the sun, a temple and a sacred fire.’
It must have been like getting home again; it was home with an advantage,
in fact, for it lacked Louis XIV.
A few more days swept swiftly by, and La Salle stood in the shadow
of his confiscating cross, at the meeting of the waters from Delaware,
and from Itaska, and from the mountain ranges close upon the Pacific, with the
waters of the Gulf of Mexico, his task finished, his prodigy achieved.