PREFACE OF THE ELEVENTH EDITION. 

WHEN the earlier editions of this book were published, I was aware of the existence of a collection of documents relating to La Salle, and containing important material to which I had not succeeded in gaining access.  This collection was in possession of M.  Pierre Margry, director of the Archives of the Marine and Colonies at Paris, and was the result of more than thirty years of research.  With rare assiduity and zeal, M.  Margry had explored.  not only the vast depository with which he has been officially connected from youth, and of which he is now the chief, but also the other public archives of France, and many private collections in Paris and the provinces.  The object of his search was to throw light on the career and achievements of French explorers, and, above all, of La Salle, A collection of extraordinary richness grew gradually upon his hands.  In the course of my own inquiries, I owed much to his friendly aid; but his collections, as a whole, remained inaccessible, since he naturally wished to be the first to make known the results of his labors.  An attempt to induce Congress to furnish him with the means of printing documents so interesting to American history was made in 1870 and 1871, by Henry Harrisse, Esq. , aided by the American minister at Paris; but it unfortunately failed. 

In the summer and autumn of 1872, I had numerous interviews with M.  Margry, and at his desire undertook to try to induce some American bookseller to publish the collection.  On returning to the United States, I accordingly made an arrangement with Messrs.  Little, Brown & Co. , of Boston, by which they agreed to print the papers if a certain number of subscriptions should first be obtained.  The condition proved very difficult; and it became clear that the best hope of success lay in another appeal to Congress.  This was made in the following winter, in conjunction with Hon.  E.  B.  Washburne; Colonel Charles Whittlesey, of Cleveland; 0.  H.  Marshall, Esq. , of Buffalo; and other gentlemen interested in early American history.  The attempt succeeded.  Congress made an appropriation for the purchase of five hundred copies of the work, to be printed at Paris, under direction of M.  Margry; and the three volumes devoted to La Salle are at length before the public. 

Of the papers contained' in them which I had not before examined, the most interesting are the letters of La Salle, found in the original by M.  Margry, among the immense accumulations of the Archives" of the Marine and Colonies and the Bibliotheque Nationale.  The narrative of La Salle's companion, Joutel, far more copious than the abstract printed in 1713, under the title of " Journal Historique," also deserves special mention.  These, with other fresh material in these three volumes, while they add new facts and throw new light on the character of La Salle, confirm nearly every statement made in the first edition of the . Discovery of the Great West.  The only exception of consequence relates to the causes of La Salle's failure to find the mouth of the Mississippi in 1684, and to the conduct, on that occasion, of the naval commander, Beaujeu. 

This edition is revised throughout, and in part rewritten with large additions.  A map of the country traversed by the explorers is also added.  The name of La Salle is placed on the titlepage, as seems to be demanded by his increased prominence in the narrative of which he is the central figure. 

BOSTON, 10 December, 1878,

NOTE. The title of M.  Margry's printed collection is"De’couvertes et 6tablissements des Francaisdans L'Ouest et dans le Sud de L'Amerique Septentrionale (1014-1754), Mernoires et Documents originaux. . " I. , II. , III.  Besides the three volumes relating to La Salle, there will be two others, relating to other explorers.  In accordance with the agreement with Congress, an independent edition will appear in France, with an introduction setting forth the cir cumstances of the publication. 

THE discovery of the " Great West," or the valleys of the Mississippi and the Lakes, is a portion of our history hitherto very obscure.  Those magnificent regions were revealed to the world through a series of daring enterprises.  of which the motives and even the incidents have been but partially and superficially known.  The chief actor in them wrote much, but printed nothing; and the published writings of his associates stand wofully in need of interpretation from the unpublished documents which exist, but which have not heretofore been used as material for history. 

This volume attempts to supply the defect.  Of the large amount of wholly new material employed in it, by far the greater part is drawn from the various public archives of France, and the rest from private sources.  The discovery of many of these documents is due to the indefatigable research of M.  Pierre Margry, assistant director of the Archives of the Marine and Colonies at Paris, whose labors as an investigator of the maritime and colonial history of France can be appreciated only by those who have seen their results.  In the department of American colonial history, these results have been invaluable ; for, besides several private collections made by him, he rendered important service in the collection of the French portion of the Brodhead documents, selected and arranged the two great series of colonial papers ordered by the Canadian government, and prepared with vast labor analytical indexes of these and of supplementary documents in the French archives, as well as a copious index of the mass of papers relating to Louisiana.  It is to be hoped that the valuable publications on the maritime history of France which have appeared from his pen are an earnest of more extended contributions in future. 

The late President Sparks, some time after the publication of his Life of La Salle, caused a, collection to be made of documents relating to that explorer, with the intention of incorporating them in a future edition.  This intention was never carried into effect, and the documents were never used.  With the liberality which always distinguished him, he placed them at my disposal, and this privilege has been kindly continued by Mrs.  Sparks. 

Abbe Faillon, the learned author of " La Colonie Franchise en Canada," has sent me copies of various documents found by him, including family papers of La Salle.  Among others who in various ways have aided my inquiries are Dr.  John Paul, of Ottawa, III  ; Count Adolphe de Circourt, and M.  Jules Marcou, of Paris; M.  A.  Germ Lajoie, Assistant Librarian of the Canadian Parliament; M.  J.  M.  Le Moine, of Quebec ; General Dix, Minister of the United States at the Court of France; 0.  H.  Marshall, of Buffalo ; J.  G.  Shea, of New York; Buckingham Smith, of  Saint  Augustine; and Colonel Thomas Aspinwall, of Boston. 

The smaller map contained in the book is a portion of the manuscript map of Franquelin, of which an account will be. found in the Appendix. 
The next volume of the series will be devoted to the efforts of Monarchy and Feudalism under Louis XIV.  to establish a permanent power on this continent, and to the stormy career of Louis de Buade, Count of Frontenac. 

BOSTON, 16 September, 1869

LA SALLE

DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST.

INTRODUCTION.

THE Spaniards discovered the Mississippi. De Soto was buried beneath its waters; and it was down its muddy current that his followers fled from the Eldorado of their dreams, transformed to a wilderness of misery and death. The discovery was never used, and was well-nigh forgotten. On early Spanish maps, the Mississippi is often indistinguishable from other affluents of the Gulf. A century passed after De Soto's journeyings in the South, before a French explorer reached a northern tributary of the great river.

This was Jean Nicollet, interpreter at Three Rivers on the  Saint Lawrence. He had been some twenty years in Canada, had lived among the savage Algonquins of Allumette Island, and spent eight or nine years among the Nipissings, on the lake which bears their name. Here he became an Indian in all his  habits,   but   remained,   nevertheless,   a zealous Catholic, and returned to civilization at last because he could not live without the sacraments.    Strange stories were current among the Nipissings of a people without hair or beard, who came from the West to trade with a tribe beyond the Great Lakes.    Who could doubt that these strangers  were  Chinese  or Japanese?   Such   tales   may   well    have    excited Nicollet's curiosity; and when, in 1635, or possibly in 1638, he was sent as an ambassador to the tribe in question, he would not have been surprised if on arriving he had found a party of mandarins among them.    Perhaps it was with a view to such a contingency that he provided himself, as a dress of ceremony, with a robe of Chinese damask embroidered with birds and flowers.    The tribe to which he was sent was that of the Winnebagoes, living near the head of the Green Bay of Lake Michigan.     They had come to blows with the Hurons, allies of the French; and Nicollet was  charged to  negotiate  a peace.    When he 'approached the Winnebago town, he sent one of his Indian attendants to announce his coming, put on his robe of damask, and advanced to meet the expectant crowd with a pistol in each hand. The squaws and children fled, screaming that it was a manito, or spirit, armed with thunder and lightning; but the chiefs and warriors regaled him with so bountiful a hospitality that a hundred and twenty beavers were devoured at a single feast.    From the Winnebagoes,   he  passed  westward,   ascended Fox River, crossed to the Wisconsin, and descended it so far that, as he reported on his return, in three days more he would have reached the sea. The truth seems to be that he mistook the meaning of his Indian guides, and that the "great water" to which he was so near was not the sea, but the Mississippi.

It has been affirmed that one Colonel Wood, of Virginia, reached a branch of the Mississippi as early as the year 1654, and that about 1670 a certain Captain Bolton penetrated to the river itself. Neither statement is sustained by sufficient evidence. It is further affirmed that, in 1678, a party from New England crossed the Mississippi, reached New Mexico, and, returning, reported their discoveries to the authorities of Boston,   a story without proof or probability. Meanwhile, French Jesuits and fur-traders pushed deeper and deeper into the wilderness of the northern lakes. In 1641, Jogues and Raymbault preached the Faith to a concourse of Indians at the outlet of Lake Superior. Then came the havoc and desolation of the Iroquois war, and for years farther exploration was arrested. In 1658-59 Pierre Esprit Radisson, a Frenchman of  Saint Malo, and his brother-in-law, Me’dard Chouart des Groseilliers, penetrated the regions beyond Lake Superior, and roamed westward till, as Radisson declares, they reached what was called the Forked River, " because it has two branches, the one towards the west, the other towards the south, which, we believe, runs towards Mexico,"   which seems to point to the Mississippi and its great confluent the Missouri. Two years later, the aged Jesuit Me’nard attempted to plant a mission on the southern shore of Lake Superior, but perished in the forest by famine or the tomahawk. Allouez succeeded him, explored a part of Lake Superior, and heard, in his turn, of the Sioux and their great river the "Messipi." More and more, the thoughts of the Jesuits   and not of the Jesuits alone   dwelt on^ this mysterious stream. Through what regions did it flow; and whither would it lead them,   to the South Sea or the "Sea of Virginia;" to Mexico, .Japan, or China? The problem was soon to be solved, and the mystery revealed.