Joutel's Journal of La Salle's Last Voyage, 1684-7Joutel, Henri
History
Joutel's Journal of La Salle's Last Voyage, 1684-7
Joutel, Henri
La Salle, Robert Cavelier, sieur de, 1643-1687; Louisiana -- History -- To 1803; Mississippi River -- Discovery and exploration
In February, 1680, Hennepin, by La Salle’s orders, set out from Fort
Crevecœur for the upper Mississippi. He ascended that river to the
Sioux country, and discovered St. Anthony’s Falls. Hennepin’s first
work, “Description de la Louisiane,” Paris, 1683, relates the events
of this expedition, and also gives an account of La Salle’s journey
from Canada to the Illinois in 1679–80. Shea gives in his “Discovery
and Exploration of the Mississippi” the portion of this work relating
the voyage to the upper Mississippi. Hennepin’s works are held in
disrepute, owing to undoubted plagiarisms and falsifications which
characterize some of them. Shea, however, shows in the preface to
his edition of the “Description of Louisiana,” New York, 1880, that
this charge applies only to the “Nouvelle Découverte” and “Nouveau
Voyage,” and other works made up from these two last, and that they
were probably published without Hennepin’s sanction. Parkman agrees
with Shea in considering the “Description de la Louisiane” to be an
authentic work.
For criticisms upon Hennepin, see Sparks’ “La Salle;” Parkman’s
“Discovery of the Great West;” Harrisse’s “Notes pour servir à
l’Histoire [etc.] de la Nouvelle France,” p. 145; and the preface to
Margry’s Découvertes, etc. Shea’s early judgment upon Hennepin, which
he has modified as indicated above, is given in his “Discovery and
Exploration of the Mississippi.” E. D. Neill, in a pamphlet entitled
“The Writings of L. Hennepin,” lately published by the Minnesota
Historical Society, dissents from Shea’s exculpation of Hennepin, and
declares that no evidence has been produced to clear him from the
charge of plagiary.
The bi-centenary of Hennepin’s discovery of St. Anthony’s Falls was
celebrated by the Minnesota Historical Society in 1880, and the
proceedings on the occasion will be reported in the next volume of its
collections. The account of a pretended voyage by Hennepin down the
Mississippi, taken from the spurious “New Discovery,” London, 1698, is
inserted in “French’s Historical Collections,” part i., pp. 195–222;
also in volume one of the “Archæologia Americana,” published by the
American Antiquarian Society. The latter work also contains an account
of La Salle’s last voyage, taken from the same unreliable source.
Shea’s edition of Hennepin’s “Louisiana” contains a bibliography of
the numerous memoirs, issued under Hennepin’s name, where also may be
found a translation of La Salle’s letter of August, 1682, reporting
the voyage on the upper Mississippi. Du L’hut, who, in 1679, visited
the Sioux near Lake Superior, and later descended the St. Croix to the
Mississippi and rescued Hennepin from the Sioux, gives an account of
his adventures in a “Mémoire sur la Découverte du pays des Nadouecioux
dans le Canada,” which is printed in Harrisse’s Notes, pp. 177–181, and
translated in Shea’s Hennepin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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