"Louis le Grand, roy de France et de Navarre, regne; le neuviesme Avril, 1682."
And La Salle took possession of the country with just such ceremonies as had distinguished a similar proceeding at Sault Ste. Marie eleven years before. It can be said that Frenchmen had at least fairly laid a basis for future empire from the Lakes to the Gulf. It was for France to show her appreciation of the enterprise of her sons and make good her claim to such a vast imperial domain. The future was to show that she was unequal to the task.
The few remaining years of La Salle's life were crowded with misfortunes. Duchesneau, the intendant, who had succeeded Talon, was an enemy of both Frontenac and the explorer. The distinguished governor was recalled by his royal master, who was tired of the constant complaints of his enemies against him, and misled by their accusations. La Barre, the incompetent governor who followed Frontenac, took possession of Fort St. Louis, which La Salle had succeeded, after his return from the Gulf of Mexico, in erecting at Starved Rock on the banks of the Illinois not far from the present city of Ottawa, where a large number of Indians had returned to their favourite home. In France, however, the importance of his discovery was fully recognised, and when he visited his native country in 1683-4 he met with a very cordial reception from the King, and Seignelay, who had succeeded his father, Colbert, when he resigned. The King ordered that La Salle's forts be restored to him, and gave him a commission to found colonies in Louisiana, as the new country through which the Mississippi flowed had been called since 1682. By a strange irony of Fate, the expedition of 1684 passed the mouth of the Mississippi, and La Salle made the first French settlement on the Gulf somewhere in the vicinity of Matagorda Bay, in the present State of Texas. Misery was the lot of the little colony from the very first moment it landed on that lonely shore. When his misfortunes were most grievous, La Salle decided to make an effort to reach the Illinois country, but he was assassinated by two of his own men—-Duhaut and Liotot—near a branch of the Trinity River. His nephew Moranget, Nika, a faithful Shawnee who had been by his side for years, and Sayet, his own servant, suffered the same fate. The leader of the murderers was killed soon afterwards by one of his accomplices, and the others found a refuge among the Indians; but of their subsequent fate we know nothing positively, except that they were never brought to justice, if any one of them returned to Canada or France. The few Frenchmen remaining in Texas were either killed or captured by unfriendly Indians, before the Spaniards could reach the place to expel these intruders on their domain. La Salle himself never found a burial place, for his body was left to wolves and birds of prey. His name has not been perpetuated in Louisiana, though it has been given to a county of Texas as well as to a city and county of Illinois, which was originally included in French Louisiana. The most noteworthy tribute to his memory has been paid by the historian Parkman, who has elevated him almost to the dignity of a hero. La Salle's indomitable energy, his remarkable courage in the face of disaster, his inflexibility of purpose under the most adverse circumstances, must be always fully recognised, but at the same time one may think that more tact and skill in managing men, more readiness to bend and conciliate, might have spared him much bitterness and trouble, and even saved his life at the end. That he did good service for France all will admit, though his achievement in reaching the Mississippi was rendered relatively easy after the preliminary expedition of Jolliet and Marquette.
[1] Mr. W. Wilfrid Campbell, F.R.S.C., a well-known English-Canadian poet, has translated for "The Story of Canada" these verses of his French contemporary Fréchette.