Père Louis Hennepin Reported That: “During the Eight Months I Administered the Sacraments to Over Eight Thousand Wounded Men

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD:

FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN, O.F.M., AND SIEUR DE LA BORDE

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Cape Cod: Father Louis Hennepin HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

CAPE COD: Our host said that you would be surprised if you were PEOPLE OF on the beach when the wind blew a hurricane directly on to it, to CAPE COD see that none of the drift-wood came ashore, but all was carried directly northward and parallel with the shore as fast as a man can walk, by the inshore current, which sets strongly in that direction at flood tide. The strongest swimmers also are carried along with it, and never gain an inch toward the beach. Even a large rock has been moved half a mile northward along the beach. He assured us that the sea was never still on the back side of the Cape, but ran commonly as high as your head, so that a great part of the time you could not launch a boat there, and even in the calmest weather the waves run six or eight feet up the beach, though then you could get off on a plank. Champlain and CHAMPLAIN Poitrincourt could not land here in 1606, on account of the swell POITRINCOURT (la houlle), yet the savages came off to them in a canoe. In the Sieur de la Borde’s “Relation des Caraibes,” my edition of which DE LA BORDE was published at Amsterdam in 1711, at page 530 he says:–

“Couroumon a Caraibe, also a star [i.e. a god], makes the great lames à la mer, and overturns canoes. Lames à la mer are the long vagues which are not broken (entrecoupees), and such as one sees come to land all in one piece, from one end of a beach to another, so that, however little wind there may be, a shallop or a canoe could hardly land (aborder terre) without turning over, or being filled with water.” But on the Bay side the water even at its edge is often as smooth and still as in a pond. Commonly there are no boats used along this beach. There was a boat belonging to the Highland Light which the next keeper after he had been there a year had not launched, though he said that there was good fishing just off the shore. Generally the Life Boats cannot be used when needed. When the waves run very high it is impossible to get a boat off, however skilfully you steer it, for it will often be completely covered by the curving edge of the approaching breaker as by an arch, and so filled with water, or it will be lifted up by its bows, turned directly over backwards and all the contents spilled out. A spar thirty feet long is served in the same way. I heard of a party who went off fishing back of Wellfleet some years ago, in two boats, in calm weather, who, when they had laden their boats with fish, and approached the land again, found such a swell breaking on it, though there was no wind, that they were afraid to enter it. At first they thought to pull for Provincetown, but night was coming on, and that was many miles distant. Their case seemed a desperate one. As often as they approached the shore and saw the terrible breakers that intervened, they were deterred. In short, they were thoroughly frightened. Finally, having thrown their fish overboard, those in one boat chose a favorable opportunity, and succeeded, by skill and good luck, in reaching the land, but they were unwilling to take the responsibility of telling the others when to come in, and as the other helmsman was inexperienced, their boat was swamped at once, yet all managed to save themselves. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1626

May 12, Friday (Old Style): On this day Louis Hennepin was born (or, was baptized as “Antoine”), at Ath in the Spanish Netherlands southwest of Brussels (it’s now Belgium and he would always refer to himself as a Fleming).

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

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THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1659

Béthune (the town in the Spanish Netherlands where Louis Hennepin lived) was captured by the army of Louis XIV of France.

Shortly after his ordination to the priesthood, Hennepin’s superior sent him off on a tour of the great churches and most important convents of the Franciscan Order in Italy and Germany. Then, however, “Having returned to the Netherlands, the Reverend Father William Herenx, late bishop of Ypres, manifested his averseness to the resolution I had taken of continuing to travel by detaining me in the convent of Halles in Hainaut, where I was obliged to perform the offices of preacher for a year.” Afterward his superior would send him to Artois, France, and thence to Calais “to act the part of a mendicant ... in time of herring-salting.”

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

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THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1673

At Maastricht, in the midst of the war then in progress between the French and the Spanish, Père Louis Hennepin reported that: “During the eight months I administered the sacraments to over eight thousand wounded men. In which occupation I ventured many dangers among the sick people, being taken ill both of a spotted fever and of a dysenterie which brought me very low and near unto death; but God at length restored me my former health by the care and help of a very skillful Dutch physician.”

Fathers Jacques Marquette, S.J. (1636-May 19, 1675) and Louis Joliet (baptized September 21, 1645-1700) became the 1st people of European descent, which is to say, the 1st people we are interested to know anything about, to traverse the northern parts of the Mississippi valley, including the area now known as Chicago.1

Father Marquette noticed, among the Nadouessi and the Illinois, cross-dressers.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1. From the most numerous Indian tribe in the Southwest, the Choctaw, the name “Mississippi” was derived for the largest river of the North American continent. In that language, simple adjectives such as Missah and Sippah were used when describing the most familiar things; but those two words —though they are employed thus familiarly when separated— when compounded form the most characteristic name of that river: missah, literally, indicating “old big,” and sippah, “strong.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1674

Original publication at Paris of Sieur de La Borde’s RELATION CURIEUSE DES CARAIBES SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE, under the title RELATION EXACTE DE L’ORIGINE, MOEURS, COÛTUMES, RELIGION, GUERRES & VOYAGES DES CARAIBES (unless “1674” be a misprint for “1694,” a theory which I am tempted to embrace).

August 11, Tuesday (Old Style): Samuel Sewall received the degree of Master of Arts from Harvard College.

Père Louis Hennepin tended the wounded after the Battle of Seneffe between the forces of Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé and a Dutch/German/Spanish army under William III of Orange (there were 8,000 dead or wounded on the one side, 11,000 on the other; both sides claimed victory). He would afterward receive orders from his superiors to go to Rochelle, France, to embark there for Canada as a missionary. While waiting for the sailing of his ship, he would perform for nearly two months at a place near Rochelle the duties of a curate at the request of the local pastor, who had occasion to absent himself.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

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THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1675

July 14, Wednesday (Old Style): At the request of King Louis XIV, four missionaries of the Récollets (a French branch of the Franciscan Order), including Père Louis Hennepin, set sail as part of the company of René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, who had been recently endowed with a title, and had been appointed to the governorship of Fort Frontenac, one of the principle outposts of “Le Nouvelle France” — as the French dominions in America were then called. CANADA

September: The ship conveying Père Louis Hennepin arrived in Québec, after successfully holding off Turkish, Tunisian, and Algerian pirates. His first experience in the New World would be to serve for four years as a preacher in Advent and Lent in the cloister of St. Augustine in the hospital in Québec. He would employ his leisure time by traveling to regions within 20 or 30 leagues of that city –often on snow-shoes, his luggage being transported upon sledges drawn by dogs, sometimes travelling in a canoe– to learn the local languages and customs and thus prepare himself for mission work. He would be sent in company with Father Luke Buisset to take care of a mission on the north shore of Lake Ontario near the headwaters of the River St. Lawrence. The mission bore the Iroquois name Catarokouy and was the place at which Count Frontenac, Governor- General of Canada, had built in 1673 a fort which bore his name (this has become Kingston, Ontario). After remaining two years and a half at Fort Frontenac, where they built with their associates a large mission-house and laboured assiduously for the conversion of the natives, the two missionaries would travel down the River St. Lawrence in a canoe. Upon reaching Québec Hennepin would enter the Récollet convent of St Mary’s, in order to prepare and sanctify himself for the long expedition to the westward under the leadership of René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, then in process of preparation. CANADA

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

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THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1676

October 9, Monday (Old Style): Louis Mouet De Moras, Sieur de la Borde was baptized, the 4th son of Pierre Mouet De Moras, an ensign in the Carignan-Salières regiment, and Marie Toupin, Madame de Moras (born on August 19, 1651 at Québec, died on March 13, 1722/1723 at Trois-Rivières).

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

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THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1678

Père Louis Hennepin was sent by his provincial superior to accompany René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle on a voyage to explore the western part of New France. CANADA

September 18, Wednesday (Old Style): The Chevalier de la Salle inaugurated his expedition by sending forward from Fort Frontenac in a brigantine of about ten tons burden a detachment of his followers under the command of Pierre de St-Paul, Sieur de la Motte-Lussiére, a French military officer, with directions to establish a post on the Niagara River near Lake Erie and to make preparations for the building of a ship for the navigation of the Great Lakes.

December 6, Friday (Old Style): After great perils, the brigantine under the command of Pierre de St-Paul, Sieur de la Motte-Lussiére visited the mouth of Irondequoit Bay, but they did not attempt to drag the heavy vessel over the sand bar. Instead they sailed on to set up their trading post at the mouth of the Niagara River, future site of Fort Niagara.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Cape Cod: Father Louis Hennepin HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1679

Père Louis Hennepin reached the Niagara Falls. The first shipyard on the Great Lakes was created on the banks of Cayuga Creek, in the future Buffalo, New York area. René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle launched Le Griffin on Cayuga Creek above the falls. This was the 1st sailing vessel on the Great Lakes, and the expedition would be using it to explore Lake Erie and the western shore of Lake Michigan.

Hennepin was 39 when he sailed with LaSalle on Le Griffon from New France through the Great Lakes to explore the unknown western region of Canada. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

January 20, Monday (1678, Old Style): The Chevalier de la Salle arrived at the Niagara River near Lake Erie and took command of his expedition. Père Louis Hennepin was spending this winter at Fort Frontenac.

July 30, Wednesday (Old Style): Père Louis Hennepin had spent the winter at Fort Frontenac but by this day he was back at the outpost on the Niagara River near Lake Erie accompanied by two other Récollet Fathers, Gabriel de la Ribourde and Zénobe Mambré. All three had been directed by the superior of their order to accompany the expedition of the Chevalier de la Salle. Meanwhile Pierre de St-Paul, Sieur de la Motte-Lussiére had disentangled himself from the expedition and returned to Fort Frontenac.

August 7, Thursday (Old Style): The La Salle expedition sailed from the Niagara River on Le Griffon, which had been built during the preceding winter (a griffin being one of the figures on the coat of arms of the Chevalier de la Salle).

During this day and the following one in Boston, 80 homes and 70 warehouses were lost in a fire. On suspicion the ears were cut off a Frenchman.2 The General Court would order that “henceforth no dwelling house in Boston shall be erected … except of stone or brick” — but we see no evidence that this order altered local building practices in the slightest.

John Evelyn’s diary entry for the following day was in part as follows: August 8, Friday (Old Style): I went this morning to see my L[ord] Chamberlaine, his Lady, & the Dutchesse of Grafton, the incomparable work of Mr. Gibbons the Carver whom I first recommended to his Majestie, his house being furnish’d like a Cabinet, not onely with his owne work, but divers excellent Paintings of the best hands: Thence to Sir St: Foxes where I dined with my Lord, & all our Company, & so home:

August 10, Sunday (Old Style): The La Salle expedition arrived at the mouth of a stream which the Chevalier de la Salle gave the name Detroit River. Sailing up this river and through Lake St. Clair, named by him after the saint on whose feast-day he first beheld it, they passed through the St. Clair River and up Lake Huron, and late in the same month would arrive at a place called by the Indians Michilimacinac, and La Salle would christen this as St-Ignace.

September 2, Tuesday (Old Style): Leaving St-Ignace, the La Salle expedition soon reached Green Bay.

September 19, Friday (Old Style): Leaving Green Bay, the La Salle expedition headed south. Their trip would be stormy and they would encounter great dangers.

November 1, Saturday (Old Style): After storms and great dangers, the expedition of the Chevalier de la Salle reached the mouth of a river, then called the River of the Miamis and now named the St. Joseph River, the greater part of which lies within the present State of Michigan. At the mouth of this river La Salle would create a fort.

2. Having no ears presumably made this Frenchman look even more suspicious than before! HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

November 20, Thursday (Old Style): A principal lieutenant of the Chevalier de la Salle, a Sicilian named Enrico “Iron Hand” di Tonti, arrived with certain members of the expedition who had come along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan (La Salle, Père Louis Hennepin, and the rest having followed the western shore).

December 3, Wednesday (Old Style): The expedition of the Chevalier de la Salle went up the St. Joseph River to a point near its headwaters, then portaged to the Kankakee River and went down that river and then down the stream called by Père Louis Hennepin “the River of the Illinois” and still termed the Illinois River.

December 15 or 22, Monday (Old Style): According to the Concord Town Record, “Ebenezr son of Jos. Hayward born 22.15.79”

At some point later on in this month, the expedition of the Chevalier de la Salle moved on down the Illinois River to a village of the Illinois Indians which was situated, Père Louis Hennepin recorded, 130 leagues from the fort that had been built at the mouth of the St. Joseph River. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1680

New Years Day (January 1, 1679, Old Style): The exploring expedition had continued its journey, but on this day made a halt for celebration on the riverbank. There was a Mass and all wished a Happy new Year to M. de la Salle, with the missionaries providing words of encouragement and congratulation for their leader while exhorting the expedition members to preserve confidence and fidelity. Afterward they passed through a lake which has since been known as Lake Peoria and arrived at the principal village of the Illinois. Members of the expedition smoked the calumet with the locals and took a brief rest. A short distance below the outlet of this lake they would construct a fort which would be termed Crève-coeur. Père Louis Hennepin advises us that the structure was given this name “because the desertion of our men, and the other difficulties we laboured under had almost broken our hearts.” It is more likely, however, that this name was selected because, back in Europe in 1672, King Louis XIV had captured near Bois-le-due in the Netherlands a fortress named Crève-coeur. Once the structure was complete, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle would leave Enrico “Iron Hand” de Tonti in charge and begin to travel on foot to Fort Frontenac and Quebec.

At the home of John Evelyn, there was not the usual celebration of an entry into a new year, involving an invitation to the neighbors — due to his being under the weather: I tooke Physick my face & eye swelled by a Cold: HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

February 29, Sunday (1679, Old Style): Before his departure from Fort Crève-coeur on foot for Fort Frontenac and Quebec, M. de la Salle had instructed Père Louis Hennepin to proceed down the Illinois River and then up the Mississippi River as far as possible (note: up, not down) upon a voyage of discovery. This expedition included also two Frenchmen — Antoine Augelle, born at Amiens at Picardy and surnamed Picard du Gay, and Michel Accault, a native of the province of Poitou. The three set out on this day and would soon reach the Mississippi where, in accordance with their instructions, they would turn northward.

April 12, Monday (Old Style): Père Louis Hennepin, Antoine Augelle, and Michel Accault were captured by a war party of the Issati Sioux, living on or near the shores of a lake called by the original European explorers “the Lake of the Issati” (afterwards called Lac Baude in honour of count Frontenac, his family name being Baude), and now known as Mille Lacs. The war party had been on its way to attack the Miami and the Illinois, but changed its plan and turned back toward their homes with the three captives. They would travel 19 days, passing en route Lake Pepin, which was named by Hennepin the Lake of Tears because of his witnessing a grief ceremony by an Indian headman in honor of his son who had been killed in battle.

April 21, Wednesday (Old Style): The war party of the Issati Sioux with its three white captives Père Louis Hennepin, Antoine Augelle, and Michel Accault stopped at a village situated about 15 miles below the present site of the city of St. Paul, Minnesota. At this point they left their canoes and travelled on foot. The group stopped at the great cataract in the Mississippi which is now encircled by the city of Minneapolis, and which still bears the name of St. Anthony Falls, given to it by Hennepin in honour of St. Anthony of Padua. They traveled on to the principal village of the Issati at or near the place where a river, called by Hennepin the River St. Francis and now known as the Rum River, emerged from Mille Lacs.

July: The war party of the Issati Sioux with its three white captives Père Louis Hennepin, Antoine Augelle, and Michel Accault went down the St. Francis River and camped awhile. Hennepin and Augelle were then permitted to travel down the Mississippi River, under guard of course, to fetch supplies which La Salle had promised to send and deposit at the mouth of the Wisconsin River. After a journey of about 160 miles downriver, however, a large band of Issati overtook them and carried them back to the great camp at Mille Lacs. This was the end of Hennepin’s exploration down the Mississippi. He definitely did not go to the river’s mouth (as he would in a later timeframe publish). Along the way Hennepin and his guards met the famous French explorer Daniel Graysolon Du Lhut, who had been roaming the region to the west and southwest of Lake Superior.

End of September: Owing to the insistence of Daniel Graysolon Du Lhut, Père Louis Hennepin and his companions were released by the war party of the Issati Sioux to accompany him down the Mississippi River to the mouth of the Wisconsin River, and thence to the famous portage between the headwaters of that river and those of the Fox River, and thence down the Fox River to the French settlement at Green Bay, and thence to St-Ignace. At St-Ignace they would meet a Jesuit, Father Pierson, who had like Hennepin been born at Ath. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1681

Easter Week: After spending the winter at St-Ignace, Père Louis Hennepin journeyed to Fort Frontenac, arriving soon after Pentecost Sunday. A few days later he would arrive at Montréal and report to Count Frontenac, the Governor-General of New France. The governor-general directed Hennepin to proceed to Québec. On the way, at Fort Champlain, they would encounter Bishop Laval, who was ascending the St. Lawrence River on a tour of episcopal visitation. The bishop granted Hennepin permission to retire to the Franciscan monastery “Our Lady of the Angels” in the city of Québec, and Hennepin would spend the remainder of the summer within the cloisters of that institution.

Fall: Père Louis Hennepin sailed for Europe, where for a year or more he would be secluded in a monastery of his order at St-Germain-en-Laye, writing away at first book, DESCRIPTION DE LA LOUISIANA, NOUVELLEMENT DÉCOUVERTE AU SUD-OEST DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, PAR ORDRE DU ROY. AVEC LE CARTE DU PAYS: LES MOEURS ET LA MANIÈRE DE VIVRE DES SAUVAGES. DEDIÈE À SA MAJESTÉ PAR LE R. P. LOUIS HENNEPIN MISSIONAIRE RÈCOLLET ET NOTAIRE APOSTOLIQUE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1683

January: Père Louis Hennepin’s DESCRIPTION DE LA LOUISIANA, NOUVELLEMENT DECOUVERTE AU SUD’OÜEST DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, PAR ORDRE DU ROY. AVEC LA CARTE DU PAYS: LES MŒURS & LA MANIERE DE VIVRE DES SAUVAGES, DEDIÉE À SA MAJESTÉ PAR LA R.P. LOUIS HENNEPIN, MISSIONAIRE RÉCOLLET & NOTAIRE APOSTOLIQUE (Paris: Chez la Veuve Sebastien Huré), containing considerable material copied from Abbé

Claude Bernou’s RELATION DES DÉCOUVERTES ET DES VOYAGES DU SIEUR DE LA SALLE, SEIGNEUR ET GOUVERNEUR DU FORT DE FRONTENAC, AU-DELÀ DES GRENDS LACS DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, FAITS PAR ORDRE DE MONSEIGNEUR COLBERT, 1679, 1680 ET 1681, which was itself secondhand information accumulated by a non-traveler. DESCRIPTION DE LA LOUISIANE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1684

Father Louis Hennepin, in DESCRIPTION DE LA LOUISIANE, NOUVELLEMENT DECOUVERTE AU SUD’OÜEST DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, PAR ORDRE DU ROY. AVEC LA CARTE DU PAYS: LES MŒURS & LA MANIERE DE VIVRE DES SAUVAGES, DEDIÉE À SA MAJESTÉ PAR LA R. P. LOUIS HENNEPIN, MISSIONAIRE RÉCOLLET & NOTAIRE APOSTOLIQUE, published in Paris, reported having viewed a giant waterfall between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario in New York — Niagara Falls.

War broke out again between the Five Nations and France, in western New York. Mr. de la Barre made an unsuccessful inroad into the territories of the Five Nations; this was settled by the peace of September 5th, at Famine Cove, on Lake Ontario, and De la Barre with his whole army returned to Montréal. CANADA HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1694

Original publication at Paris of Sieur de La Borde’s RELATION CURIEUSE DES CARAIBES SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE, under the title RELATION EXACTE DE L’ORIGINE, MOEURS, COÛTUMES, RELIGION, GUERRES & VOYAGES DES CARAIBES (if the “1674” on the title page is considered to be a misprint for “1694,” a theory which I am tempted to embrace). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1697

Father Louis Hennepin’s NOUVELLE DECOUVERTE D’UN TRÈS GRAND PAYS SITUÉ DANS L’AMÉRIQUE, ENTRE LE NOUVEAU MEXIQUE, ET LA MER GLACIALE, AVEC LES CARTES, & LES FIGURES NECESSAIRES, & DE PLUS L’HISTOIRE NATURELLE ET MORALE, & LES AVANTAGES QU’ON EN PEUT TIRER PAR L’ÉTABLISSEMENT DES COLONIES. LE TOUT DEDIÉ À SA MAJESTÉ BRITANNIQUE, GUILLAUME III (Utrecht: Guillaume Broedelet) included the first illustration, ever, of Niagara Falls:

NOUVELLE DÉCOUVERT ...

Father Hennepin —who writes in 1697— says that his captors, Naudowessi (the Sioux!), near the falls of St. Anthony, feasted on wild-rice seasoned with blueberries, “which they dry in the sun during the summer, and which are as good as raisins of Corinth” — [that is, the imported currants]. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

It was at this point that Hennepin began to prevaricate, mentioning something he had not mentioned before, that he had traversed not only the upper but the lower Mississippi and had traced the course of the stream to its outlet in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact it would be implausible between the date when Hennepin left the country of the Illinois and the date upon which he was captured by the Issati to effect a canoe voyage from Fort Crève-coeur to the mouth of the Mississippi and then upstream to a point near the present southern boundary of Mississippi — the guy would have needed a jet-ski! The “Nouvelle Découverte” would be followed by another book coming from the press at Utrecht in the year 1698, entitled “Nouveau Voyage.” Almost simultaneously, English translations of the two last-mentioned works appeared in London.3 Both the French and the English versions would be dedicated to William III, King of England, for at that time Hennepin had lost the favor of the French monarch — the archives contain an order from King Louis XIV directing the governor of New France to arrest Hennepin should he make an appearance there and send him home.

3. A NEW DISCOVERY OF A VAST COUNTRY IN AMERICA, EXTENDING ABOVE FOUR THOUSAND MILES BETWEEN NEW FRANCE & NEW MEXICO: WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE GREAT LAKES … (London: H. Bonwicke, 1699) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1698

From this point in time into 1702 the French would be settling Louisiana.

The Count Frontenac died at Québec and was succeeded by Mr. de Callières, who succeeded in effecting peace with the Five Nations, as a power independent of Great Britain. CANADA

Père Louis Hennepin’s NOUVEAU VOYAGE D’UN PAYS PLUS GRAND QUE L’EUROPE (Utrecht). NOUVELLE VOYAGE D’UN PAYS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1699

March 27, Monday (Old Style): Louis Mouet De Moras, Sieur de la Borde died at the age of 22. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1701

Père Louis Hennepin, who had never returned to North America, died presumably in Rome. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

1711

Père Louis Hennepin, Jan van Vianen (engraver), Sieur de La Borde. VOYAGES CURIEUX ET NOUVEAUX DE MESSIEURS HENNEPIN & DE LA BORDE, OU L’ON VOIT UNE DEſCRIPTION TRÈS PARTICULIERE, D’UN GRAND PAYS DANS L’AMERIQUE, ENTRE LE NOUVEAU MEXIQUE, & LA MER GLACIALE, AVEC UNE RELATION CURIEUſE DES CARAIBES SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE, LES MOEURS, COUTUMES, RELIGION, &C. LE TOUT ACCOMPAGNÉ DES CARTES & FIGURES NECESSAIRES (A Amsterdam, Aux depens de la Compagnie. M.DCCXI.) VOYAGES CURIEUX...

(This would be in the library of Henry Thoreau.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1843

June 10, Saturday: Henry Thoreau was being written to by Waldo Emerson. The letter would be posted with a note added on the 15th. Concord, 10 June 1843 Dear Henry, It is high time that you had some token from us in acknowledgment of the parcel of kind & tuneful things you sent us, as well as of your permanent rights in us all. The cold weather saddened our gardens & our landscape here almost until now but todays sunshine is oblit- erating the memory of such things. I have just been visiting my petty plantation and find that all your grafts live excepting a single scion and all my new trees, including twenty pines to fill up interstices in my “Curtain,” [Emerson had had a shield of pines planted in the an- gle of the roads to the east of his home, to protect it from prevailing winds.] are well alive. The town is full of Irish & the woods of engi- neers with theodolite & red flag singing out their feet & inches to each other from station to station. Near Mr. Alcott’s [this was the Hosmer Cottage] the road is already begun. [The Fitchburg railroad was crossing the highway near that point.]— From Mr A. & Mr Lane at Harvard we have yet heard nothing. They went away in good spirits having sent “Wood Abram” & Larned & Wm Lane before them with horse & plough a few days in advance of them to begin the spring work. Mr Lane paid me a long visit in which he was more than I had ever known him gentle & open, and it was impossible not to sympathize with & honour projects that so often seem without feet or hands. They have near a hundred acres of land, which they do not want, & no house, which they want first of all. But they account this an advantage, as it gives them the occasion they so much desire of building after their own idea. In the event of their attracting to their company a carpenter or two, which is not impossible, it would be a great pleasure to see their building which could hardly fail to be new & beautiful. They have 15 acres of woodland with good timber. El- lery Channing is excellent company and we walk in all directions He remembers you with great faith & hope thinks you ought not to see Concord again these ten years, that you ought to grind up fifty Concords in your mill & much other opinion & counsel he holds in store on this topic. Hawthorne walked with me yesterday P.m. and not until after our return did I read his “Celestial Rail- road” which has a serene strength which one cannot afford not to praise,–in this low life. Our Dial thrives well enough in these weeks. I print W.E.C.’s “Let- ters” or the first ones, [an unfinished Youth of the Poet and Painter HDT WHAT? INDEX

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which praised the scenery of the Merrimac River and the Artichoke River near Newbury, while satirizing Cambridge and Boston.] but he does not care to have them named as his for a while. They are very agreeable reading, & their wisdom lightened by a vivacity very rare in the D.— [S. G.] Ward [at that time a Boston banker] too has sent me some sheets on architecture, whose good sense is eminent. I have a valuable manuscript – a sea voyage, from a new hand, which is all clear good sense, and I may make some of Mr Lane’s graver sheets give way for this honest story, otherwise I shall print it in Oc- tober. I have transferred the publishing of the Dial to Jas. Munroe & Co. Do not, I entreat you, let me be in ignorance of any thing good which you know of my fine friends Waldo & Tappan Tappan writes me never a word. I had a letter from H. James, promising to see you, & you must not fail to visit him. I must soon write to him, though my debts of this nature are perhaps too many. To him I much prefer to talk than to write. Let me know well how you prosper & what you meditate. And all good abide with you! R.W.E. 15 June— Whilst my letter has lain on the table waiting for a traveller, your letter & parcel has safely arrived. I may not have place now for the Winter’s Walk in the July Dial which is just making up its last sheets & somehow I must end it tomorrow — when I go to Boston. I shall then keep it for October, subject however to your order if you find a better disposition for it.— I will carry the order to the faithless booksellers [Bradbury & Soden]. Thanks for all these tidings of my friends at N. Y. & at the Island.— & love to the last. I have letters from Lane at “Fruitlands” & from Miss Fuller at Niag- ara. Miss F. found it sadly cold & rainy at the Falls.

Margaret Fuller later, in SUMMER ON THE LAKES, IN 1843, attributed some thoughts about the Niagara Falls to this date: Niagara, June 10, 1843. Since you are to share with me such foot-notes as may be made on the pages of my life during this summer’s wanderings, I should not be quite silent as to this magnificent prologue to the, as yet, unknown drama. Yet I, like others, have little to say, where the spectacle is, for once, great enough to fill the whole life, and supersede thought, giving us only its own presence. “It is good to be here,” is the best, as the simplest, expression that occurs to the mind. We have been here eight days, and I am quite willing to go away. So great a sight soon satisfies, making us content with itself, and with what is less than itself. Our desires, once realized, haunt us again less readily. Having “lived one day,” we would depart, and become worthy to live another. We have not been fortunate in weather, for there cannot be too much, or too warm sunlight for this scene, and the skies have been lowering, with cold, unkind winds. My nerves, too much HDT WHAT? INDEX

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braced up by such an atmosphere, do not well bear the continual stress of sight and sound. For here there is no escape from the weight of a perpetual creation; all other forms and motions come and go, the tide rises and recedes, the wind, at its mightiest, moves in gales and gusts, but here is really an incessant, an indefatigable motion. Awake or asleep, there is no escape, still this rushing round you and through you. It is in this way I have most felt the grandeur, — somewhat eternal, if not infinite. At times a secondary music rises; the cataract seems to seize its own rhythm and sing it over again, so that the ear and soul are roused by a double vibration. This is some effect of the wind, causing echoes to the thundering anthem. It is very sublime, giving the effect of a spiritual repetition through all the spheres. When I first came, I felt nothing but a quiet satisfaction. I found that drawings, the panorama, &c. had given me a clear notion of the position and proportions of all objects here; I knew where to look for everything, and everything looked as I thought it would. Long ago, I was looking from a hill-side with a friend at one of the finest sunsets that ever enriched, this world. A little cowboy, trudging along, wondered what we could be gazing at. After spying about some time, he found it could only be the sunset, and looking, too, a moment, he said approvingly, “That sun looks well enough”; a speech worthy of Shakespeare’s Cloten, or the infant Mercury, up to everything from the cradle, as you please to take it. Even such a familiarity, worthy of Jonathan, our national hero, in a prince’s palace, or “stumping,” as he boasts to have done, “up the Vatican stairs, into the Pope’s presence, in my old boots,” I felt here; it looks really well enough, I felt, and was inclined, as you suggested, to give my approbation as to the one object in the world that would not disappoint. But all great expression, which, on a superficial survey, seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes, after a while, to the faithful observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it. Daily these proportions widened and towered more and more upon my sight, and I got, at last, a proper foreground for these sublime distances. Before coming away, I think I really saw the full wonder of the scene. After a while it so drew me into itself as to inspire an undefined dread, such as I never knew before, such as may be felt when death is about to usher us into a new existence. The perpetual trampling of the waters seized my senses. I felt that no other sound, however near, could be heard, and would start and look behind me for a foe. I realized the identity of that mood of nature in which these waters were poured down with such absorbing force, with that in which the Indian was shaped on the same soil. For continually upon my mind came, unsought and unwelcome, images, such as never haunted it before, of naked savages stealing behind me with uplifted tomahawks; again and again this illusion recurred, and even after I had thought it over, and tried to shake it off, I could not help starting and looking behind me. As picture, the falls can only be seen from the British side. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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There they are seen in their veils, and at sufficient distance to appreciate the magical effects of these, and the light and shade. From the boat, as you cross, the effects and contrasts are more melodramatic. On the road back from the whirlpool, we saw them as a reduced picture with delight. But what I liked best was to sit on Table Rock, close to the great fall. There all power of observing details, all separate consciousness, was quite lost. Once, just as I had seated myself there, a man came to take his first look. He walked close up to the fall, and, after looking at it a moment, with an air as if thinking how he could best appropriate it to his own use, he spat into it. This trait seemed wholly worthy of an age whose love of utility is such that the Prince Puckler Muskau suggests the probability of men coming to put the bodies of their dead parents in the fields to fertilize them, and of a country such as Dickens has described; but these will not, I hope, be seen on the historic page to be truly the age or truly the America. A little leaven is leavening the whole mass for other bread. The whirlpool I like very much. It is seen to advantage after the great falls; it is so sternly solemn. The river cannot look more imperturbable, almost sullen in its marble green, than it does just below the great fall; but the slight circles that mark the hidden vortex seem to whisper mysteries the thundering voice above could not proclaim, — a meaning as untold as ever. It is fearful, too, to know, as you look, that whatever has been swallowed by the cataract is like to rise suddenly to light here, whether uprooted tree, or body of man or bird. The rapids enchanted me far beyond what I expected; they are so swift that they cease to seem so; you can think only of their beauty. The fountain beyond the Moss Islands I discovered for myself, and thought it for some time an accidental beauty which it would not do to leave, lest I might never see it again. After I found it permanent, I returned many times to watch the play of its crest. In the little waterfall beyond, Nature seems, as she often does, to have made a study for some larger design. She delights in this, — a sketch within a sketch, a dream within a dream. Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress in the fragment of stone, the hues of the waterfall copied in the flowers that star its bordering mosses, we are delighted; for all the lineaments become fluent, and we mould the scene in congenial thought with its genius. People complain of the buildings at Niagara, and fear to see it further deformed. I cannot sympathize with such an apprehension: the spectacle is capable of swallowing up all such objects; they are not seen in the great whole, more than an earthworm in a wide field. The beautiful wood on Goat Island is full of flowers; many of the fairest love to do homage here. The Wake-robin and May-apple are in bloom now; the former, white, pink, green, purple, copying the rainbow of the fall, and fit to make a garland for its presiding deity when he walks the land, for they are of imperial size, and shaped like stones for a diadem. Of the May- apple, I did not raise one green tent without finding a flower HDT WHAT? INDEX

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beneath. And now farewell, Niagara. I have seen thee, and I think all who come here must in some sort see thee; thou art not to be got rid of as easily as the stars. I will be here again beneath some flooding July moon and sun. Owing to the absence of light, I have seen the rainbow only two or three times by day; the lunar bow not at all. However, the imperial presence needs not its crown, though illustrated by it. General Porter and Jack Downing were not unsuitable figures here. The former heroically planted the bridges by which we cross to Goat Island and the Wake-robin-crowned genius has punished his temerity with deafness, which must, I think, have come upon him when he sunk the first stone in the rapids. Jack seemed an acute and entertaining representative of Jonathan, come to look at his great water-privilege. He told us all about the Americanisms of the spectacle; that is to say, the battles that have been fought here. It seems strange that men could fight in such a place; but no temple can still the personal griefs and strifes in the breasts of its visitors. No less strange is the fact that, in this neighborhood, an eagle should be chained for a plaything. When a child, I used often to stand at a window from which I could see an eagle chained in the balcony of a museum. The people used to poke at it with sticks, and my childish heart would swell with indignation as I saw their insults, and the mien with which they were borne by the monarch-bird. Its eye was dull, and its plumage soiled and shabby, yet, in its form and attitude, all the king was visible, though sorrowful and dethroned. I never saw another of the family till, when passing through the Notch of the White Mountains, at that moment glowing before us in all the panoply of sunset, the driver shouted, “Look there!” and following with our eyes his upward-pointing finger, we saw, soaring slow in majestic poise above the highest summit, the bird of Jove. It was a glorious sight, yet I know not that I felt more on seeing the bird in all its natural freedom and royalty, than when, imprisoned and insulted, he had filled my early thoughts with the Byronic “silent rages” of misanthropy. Now, again, I saw him a captive, and addressed by the vulgar with the language they seem to find most appropriate to such occasions, — that of thrusts and blows. Silently, his head averted, he ignored their existence, as Plotinus or Sophocles might that of a modern reviewer. Probably he listened to the voice of the cataract, and felt that congenial powers flowed free, and was consoled, though his own wing was broken. HERMIT The story of the Recluse of Niagara interested me a little. It is FRANCIS ABBOTT wonderful that men do not oftener attach their lives to localities of great beauty, — that, when once deeply penetrated, they will let themselves so easily be borne away by the general stream of things, to live anywhere and anyhow. But there is something ludicrous in being the hermit of a show-place, unlike St. Francis in his mountain-bed, where none but the stars and rising sun ever saw him. There is also a “guide to the falls,” who wears his title labelled on his hat; otherwise, indeed, one might as soon think HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of asking for a gentleman usher to point out the moon. Yet why should we wonder at such, when we have Commentaries on Shakespeare, and Harmonies of the Gospels? And now you have the little all I have to write. Can it interest you? To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph, — mere stops. Yet I suppose it is not so to the absent. At least, I have read things written about Niagara, music, and the like, that interested me. Once I was moved by Mr. Greenwood’s remark, that he could not realize this marvel till, opening his eyes the next morning after he had seen it, his doubt as to the possibility of its being still there taught him what he had experienced. I remember this now with pleasure, though, or because, it is exactly the opposite to what I myself felt. For all greatness affects different minds, each in “its own particular kind,” and the variations of testimony mark the truth of feeling.4 I will here add a brief narrative of the experience of another, as being much better than anything I could write, because more simple and individual. “Now that I have left this ‘Earth-wonder,’ and the emotions it excited are past, it seems not so much like profanation to analyze my feelings, to recall minutely and accurately the effect of this manifestation of the Eternal. But one should go to such a scene prepared to yield entirely to its influences, to forget one’s little self and one’s little mind. To see a miserable worm creep to the brink of this falling world of waters, and watch the trembling of its own petty bosom, and fancy that this is made alone to act upon him excites — derision? No, — pity.” As I rode up to the neighborhood of the falls, a solemn awe imperceptibly stole over me, and the deep sound of the ever- hurrying rapids prepared my mind for the lofty emotions to be experienced. When I reached the hotel, I felt a strange indifference about seeing the aspiration of my life’s hopes. I lounged about the rooms, read the stage-bills upon the walls, looked over the register, and, finding the name of an acquaintance, sent to see if he was still there. What this hesitation arose from, I know not; perhaps it was a feeling of my unworthiness to enter this temple which nature has erected to its God. At last, slowly and thoughtfully I walked down to the bridge leading to Goat Island, and when I stood upon this frail support, and saw a quarter of a mile of tumbling, rushing rapids, and heard their everlasting roar, my emotions overpowered me, a choking sensation rose to my throat, a thrill rushed through my veins, “my blood ran rippling to my fingers’ ends.” This was the climax of the effect which the falls produced upon me, — neither the American nor the British fall moved me as did these rapids. For the magnificence, the sublimity of the latter, I was prepared by descriptions and by paintings. When I arrived in 4. “Somewhat avails, in one regard, the mere sight of beauty without the union of feeling therewith. Carried away in memory, it hangs there in the lonely hall as a picture, and may some time do its message. I trust it may be so in my case, for I saw every object far more clearly than if I had been moved and filled with the presence, and my recollections are equally distinct and vivid.” Extracted from Manuscript Notes of this Journey left by Margaret Fuller. — ED. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sight of them I merely felt, “Ah, yes! here is the fall, just as I have seen it in a picture.” When I arrived at the Terrapin Bridge, I expected to be overwhelmed, to retire trembling from this giddy eminence, and gaze with unlimited wonder and awe upon the immense mass rolling on and on; but, somehow or other, I thought only of comparing the effect on my mind with what I had read and heard. I looked for a short time, and then, with almost a feeling of disappointment, turned to go to the other points of view, to see if I was not mistaken in not feeling any surpassing emotion at this sight. But from the foot of Biddle’s Stairs, and the middle of the river, and from below the Table Rock, it was still “barren, barren all.” Provoked with my stupidity in feeling most moved in the wrong place, I turned away to the hotel, determined to set off for Buffalo that afternoon. But the stage did not go, and, after nightfall, as there was a splendid moon, I went down to the bridge, and leaned over the parapet, where the boiling rapids came down in their might. It was grand, and it was also gorgeous; the yellow rays of the moon made the broken waves appear like auburn tresses twining around the black rocks. But they did not inspire me as before. I felt a foreboding of a mightier emotion to rise up and swallow all others, and I passed on to the Terrapin Bridge. Everything was changed, the misty apparition had taken off its many-colored crown which it had worn by day, and a bow of silvery white spanned its summit. The moonlight gave a poetical indefiniteness to the distant parts of the waters, and while the rapids were glancing in her beams, the river below the falls was black as night, save where the reflection of the sky gave it the appearance of a shield of blued steel. No gaping tourists loitered, eyeing with their glasses, or sketching on cards the hoary locks of the ancient river-god. All tended to harmonize with the natural grandeur of the scene. I gazed long. I saw how here mutability and unchangeableness were united. I surveyed the conspiring waters rushing against the rocky ledge to overthrow it at one mad plunge, till, like toppling ambition, o’er-leaping themselves, they fall on t’ other side, expanding into foam ere they reach the deep channel where they creep submissively away. Then arose in my breast a genuine admiration, and a humble adoration of the Being who was the architect of this and of all. Happy were the first discoverers of Niagara, those who could come unawares upon this view and upon that, whose feelings were entirely their own. With what gusto does Father Hennepin describe “this great downfall of water,” “this vast and prodigious cadence of water, which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel. ’Tis true Italy and Swedeland boast of some such things, but we may well say that they be sorry patterns when compared with this of which we do now speak.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1858

May 27, Thursday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, Père Louis Hennepin’s DESCRIPTION DE LA

DESCRIPTION DE LA LOUISIANE

LOUISIANE, NOUVELLEMENT DECOUVERTE AU SUD’OÜEST DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, PAR ORDRE DU ROY. AVEC LA CARTE DU PAYS: LES MŒURS & LA MANIERE DE VIVRE DES SAUVAGES, DEDIÉE À SA MAJESTÉ PAR LA R. P. LOUIS HENNEPIN, MISSIONAIRE RÉCOLLET & NOTAIRE APOSTOLIQUE (Paris: Chez la Veuve Sebastien Huré, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1683).5

5. May we presume that Thoreau was never aware that this book has subsequently been exposed as a plagiarization from Abbé Claude Bernou’s RELATION DES DÉCOUVERTES ET DES VOYAGES DU SIEUR DE LA SALLE, SEIGNEUR ET GOUVERNEUR DU FORT DE FRONTENAC, AU-DELÀ DES GRENDS LACS DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, FAITS PAR ORDRE DE MONSEIGNEUR COLBERT, 1679, 1680 ET 1681, which was itself secondhand information accumulated by a non-traveler? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(It had been in this volume, in 1684, that the first report had been made, of a gigantic waterfall between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario in New York — Niagara Falls. However, no illustration had been provided, and the illustration below, although the 1st, would not appear until another book at another time.)

Having already perused the JESUIT RELATION volumes for the years 1633-1643, and the volumes numbered 11 through 26, and the volumes for the years 1662-1663 and for 1663-1664, Thoreau also checked out the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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volumes for the years 1669-1670, 1670-1671, and 1671-1672.6

http://www.canadiana.org

“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson

6. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau consulted, at the Boston Society of Natural History, Thomas Bell’s A HISTORY OF BRITISH REPTILES ILLUSTRATED BY MORE THAN 40 WOODCUTS (London: J. Van Voorst). He would copy from this into his 2d Commonplace Book. THE BRITISH REPTILES

May 27. At Boston, Cambridge, and Concord. De Kay describes the Esox fasciatus, which is apparently mine of May 11th. As I count, the rays are the same in number, viz. “P. 13, V. 9, D. 14, A. 13, C. 20.” He says it is from six to eight inches long and abundant in New York; among other things is distinguished by “a muddy tinge of the roundish pectoral, abdominal, and ventral fins; and by a broad concave or lunated tail.” I do not observe the peculiarity in the tail in mine, now it is in spirits. JAMES ELLSWORTH DE KAY FISHES, VOLUME IV HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Ed. Emerson shows me an egg of a bittern (Ardea minor) (Green-backed Heron Butorides striatus) from a nest in the midst of the Great Meadows, which four boys found, scaring up the bird, last Monday, the 24th. It was about a foot wide on the top of a tussock, where the water around was about one foot deep. I will measure the egg.

[It is clay-colored, one and seven eights inches long by one and nine sixteenths, about the same size each end.] They were a little developed. Also an egg of a turtle dove, one of two in a nest in a pitch pine, about six feet from the ground, in Sleepy hollow Cemetery, by the side of a frequented walk, on a fork on a nearly horizontal limb. The egg is milk-white, elliptical, one and three sixteenths inches long by seven eighths wide. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 7, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, Enrico “Iron Hand” de Tonti’s RELATION DE LA LOUISIANA OU MISSISSIPPI PAR LE CHEVALIER DE TONTI (1734).7

7. Henry, Chevalier de Tonti was born in Gaeta, Italy in about 1650, a son of Lorenzo Tonti. He entered the French army as a cadet and served in addition in the French navy. In 1678 he accompanied René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643-1687) to Canada. In 1680, during an exploration of the Mississippi he was left in command of Fort Crevecoeur on the Illinois River near Peoria, Illinois. After making an unsuccessful attempt to found a settlement in Arkansas, in 1685 he took part in an expedition of the Western Indians against the Senecas. He twice went down the Mississippi to its mouth while in search of La Salle, and then needed to go down the river a third time to meet M. D’Iberville. During September 1704 he died at Fort Saint Loûis (now Mobile, Alabama). There is a report by him in Margry’s RELATIONS ET MEMOIRES, and an English translation of this report, “An Account of Monsieur de la Salle’s Last Discoveries in North America. Presented to the French King, and Published by the Chevalier Tonti, Governour of Fort St. Louis, in the Province of the Illinois ...,” would be printed in London by J. Tonson, S. Buckley, and R. Knaplock in 1698 and reprinted in New-York in 1814. Refer to Benjamin Franklin French’s HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF LOUISIANA AND FLORIDA (Volume I, 1846). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau also checked out Volume IV of the five volumes of Benjamin Franklin French’s HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF LOUISIANA, EMBRACING MANY RARE AND VALUABLE DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE NATURAL, CIVIL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THAT STATE. COMPILED WITH HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES, AND AN INTRODUCTION... (New York: Wiley & Putnam). Part I of this, Historical Documents from 1678-1691, contains La Salle’s memoir of the discovery of the Mississippi, Joutel’s journal, and Hennepin’s account of the Mississippi. Part II contains Marquette and Joliet’s voyage to discover the Mississippi, De Soto’s expedition, and [Dr. Daniel] Coxe’s “Carolana.” Part III contains La Harpe’s journal of the establishment of the French in Louisiana, Charlevoix’s journal, etc. Part IV, the volume from which Thoreau was extracting into his Indian Notebook #11, printed in 1852, contains narratives of the voyages, missions, and travels among the Indians, by Marquette, Joliet, Dablon, Allouez, Le Clercq, La Salle, Hennepin, Membre, and Douay, with biographical and bibliographical notices of these missionaries and their works, by John Gilmary Shea, and contains the 1673 Thevenot chart of the “R. Mitchisipi ou grand Riviere” indicating the native tribes along its tributaries, “Carte de la decouverte faite l’an 1673. dans l’Amerique Septentrionale.” THE MITCHISIPI RIVER

Part V contains Dumont’s memoir of transactions with the Indians of Louisiana, from 1712 to 1740, and Champégny’s memoirs. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau also checked out Jean-Frédéric Bernard’s RECUEIL DE VOYAGES AU NORD, CONTENANT DIVERS MÉMOIRES TRÈS UTILES AU COMMERCE & À LA NAVIGATION, 1715-1738 (A Amsterdam, Chez J.F. Bernard), and would make extracts in his Indian Notebook #11. According to the edition statement contained in the 4th volume, this is the 4th edition of the work and Volume 2 had been printed in 1715, Volumes 1 and 3 in 1716, Volume 6 in 1723, Volume 5 in 1724, Volume 7 in 1725, and Volume 8 in 1727 (of the final two of the 10 volumes, Volumes 9 and 10, this 1732 printing says nothing, of course because they had not yet been put through the press).

Unfortunately, Google Books has scanned so far of these ten volumes only Volume 4 — so that is all I am able to provide for you here: JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC BERNARD HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau also checked out Father Louis Hennepin’s VOYAGES | CURIEUX ET NOUVEAUX | DE MESSIEURS | HENNEPIN & DE LA BORDE, | OU L’ON VOIT UNE DESCRIPTION TRÈS PARTICULIERE, D’UN GRAND PAYS DANS L’AMERIQUE, ENTRE LE | NOUVEAU MEXIQUE, & LA MER GLACIALE, AVEC UNE RELATION CURIEUSE DES | CARAIBES SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE, | LEURS MŒURS, COÛTUMES, RELIGION &C. | LE TOUTE ACCOMPAGNÉ DES CARTES & FIGURES NECESSAIRES. | [Emblem.] | AAMSTERDAM, AUX DEPENS DE LA COMPAGNIE. MDCXI (this was an exact reprint of the edition of 1704, with merely a slight change to the title page).

Sieur de la Borde is a mysterious figure, for all we know for sure is that he worked, perhaps as a lay brother, for a short period with Jesuit missionaries, especially with Father Simon at the mission on St. Vincent Island in the Antilles.

I am guessing that he was part of the Langlade family that had come over from Castle Sarrasin in Bassee, Guyenne, France (at first known as the family Mouet de Moras) that had settled at Trois-Rivières, Québec in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1668, and I am guessing that his full name was Louis Mouet De Moras, Sieur de la Borde and that he was the 4th of the sons of Pierre Mouet, Landlord of Moras, who was an ensign in the Carignan-Salières regiment, with Marie Toupin, Madame de Moras (born on August 19, 1651 at Québec, died on March 13, 1722/1723 at Trois- Rivières),

that he had been baptized on October 9, 1676 and would die on March 27, 1699 (but this is guesswork based on family genealogies, and does not at all jibe with an original date of his publication of 1674 at Paris; none of this makes sense if his book was published before he was born, and everything of this makes somewhat more sense if his book actually was published in 1694, when he was perhaps 18 years of age and had perhaps already in his teens as a lay brother assisted Father Simon at his mission in St. Vincent Island, and simply went through the press with a numerical typo on its title page). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau would extract something about heavy surf from this source, for use in Chapter 8 “The Highland Light” of CAPE COD.]

CURIEUX ET NOUVEAU HDT WHAT? INDEX

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CAPE COD: Our host said that you would be surprised if you were PEOPLE OF on the beach when the wind blew a hurricane directly on to it, to CAPE COD see that none of the drift-wood came ashore, but all was carried directly northward and parallel with the shore as fast as a man can walk, by the inshore current, which sets strongly in that direction at flood tide. The strongest swimmers also are carried along with it, and never gain an inch toward the beach. Even a large rock has been moved half a mile northward along the beach. He assured us that the sea was never still on the back side of the Cape, but ran commonly as high as your head, so that a great part of the time you could not launch a boat there, and even in the calmest weather the waves run six or eight feet up the beach, though then you could get off on a plank. Champlain and Poitrincourt could not land here in 1606, on account of the swell (la houlle), yet the savages came off to them in a canoe. In the Sieur de la Borde’s “Relation des Caraibes,” my edition of which DE LA BORDE was published at Amsterdam in 1711, at page 530 he says:–

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD

The full title of the book to which Thoreau refers in CAPE COD, “the Sieur de la Borde’s ‘Relation des Caraibes,’ my edition of which was published at Amsterdam in 1711,” is VOYAGES | CURIEUX ET NOUVEAUX | DE MESSIEURS | HENNEPIN & DE LA BORDE, | OU L’ON VOIT UNE DESCRIPTION TRÈS PARTICULIERE, D’UN GRAND PAYS DANS L’AMERIQUE, ENTRE LE | NOUVEAU MEXIQUE, & LA MER GLACIALE, AVEC UNE RELATION CURIEUSE DES | CARAIBES SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE, | LEURS MŒURS, COÛTUMES, RELIGION &C. | LE TOUTE ACCOMPAGNÉ DES CARTES & FIGURES NECESSAIRES. | [Emblem.] | A AMSTERDAM, AUX DEPENS DE LA COMPAGNIE. MDCXI (this is an exceedingly rare volume, but was a mere reprint of the more available edition of 1704, with slight change in the title page). The original date of his publication RELATION CURIEUSE DES CARAIBES SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE had been 1674, when it had appeared at Paris under the title RELATION DE L’ORIGINE, MOEURS, COÛTUMES, RELIGION, GUERRES & VOYAGES DES CARAIBES, SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE. FAITE PAR LE SIEUR DE LA BORDE EMPLOYE A LA CONVERSION DES CARAIBES, ESTANT AVEC LE R.P. SIMON JESUITE; ET TIREE DU CABINET DE MONSIEUR BLOUDEL ... DIVIDED INTO 12 COMPARTMENTS, EXHIBITING THE UTENSILS, DWELLINGS, AND MANUFACTURES OF THE CARIBS.

While he was in Cambridge, Thoreau also checked out Père Claude Dablon’s RELATION OF THE VOYAGES OF FATHER JAMES MARQUETTE, 1673-75 (1677).

“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson

After leaving the Harvard Library with his load of books of the history of French Catholic8 exploration to study, such as JESUIT RELATIONS for 1670-1672, from which he would copy into his Indian Notebook #11, Thoreau visited the Boston Society of Natural History to do some ornithology.

December 7. To Boston. 8. It never ceases to amaze me how Thoreau, with his Huguenot family history of persecution by French Catholics, and despite the rampant anti-Catholicism that marred the USer attitudes of those times, was able so benignly to consider the positive accomplishments of French Catholics! Clearly he carried with him no grudge at all in regard to what had been in its day the largest mass religious expulsion and genocide (prior, of course, to the Holocaust). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At Natural History Rooms. The egg of Turdus solitarius is light-bluish with pale-brown spots. This is apparently mine which I call hermit thrush, though mine is [sic] redder and distincter brown spots. The egg of Turdus brunneus (called hermit thrush) is a clear blue. The rail’s egg (of Concord, which I have seen) is not the Virginia rail’s, which is smaller and nearly pure white, nor the clapper rail’s, which is larger. Is it the sora rail’s (of which there is no egg in this collection)? My egg found in R.W.E.’s garden is not the white-throated sparrow’s egg. Dr. Bryant calls my seringo (i.e. the faint-noted bird) Savannah sparrow. He says Cooper’s hawk is just like the sharp-shinned, only a little larger commonly. He could not tell them apart. Neither he nor Brewer9 can identify eggs always. Could match some gulls’ eggs out of another basket full of a different species as well as out of the same basket.

On this day his letter arrived in New Bedford, so in the evening Friend Daniel Ricketson was waiting for the train from Boston at the Tarkiln Hill depot at the head of the river, and picked up Thoreau with his load of books, and Thomas Cholmondeley, and took them to his Shanty — where they talked of the English poets Thomas Gray, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Wordsworth, etc. until they retired at 10 PM.

On this day Thoreau was being written to by Ticknor & Fields in Boston. Boston Decr 7/58 Henry D. Thoreau Esq Concord Mass. Dear Sir Referring to our file of letters for 1857 we find a note from you of which the enclosed is a copy. As our letter –to which it is a reply– was missent, we doubt not but our answer to yours of a few months since has been subjected to the same, or a similar irregularity. Respectfully Yours &c. Ticknor & Fields pr Clark

9. Thomas Mayo Brewer had written in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History for the years 1851-1854, on page 324 of volume 4, that Thoreau copied into his Commonplace Book #2. Spencer Fullerton Baird, Thomas Mayo Brewer, and Robert Ridgway would create the 3-volume A HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. LAND BIRDS (Boston: Little, Brown, 1874-1884). Brewer’s specialty in bird study was nesting and eggs. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1861

May 15, Wednesday: Crossing the river to Niagara Falls10 on the John Augustus Roebling span suspended from wire cables cost Henry Thoreau and Horace Mann, Jr. $1.50 each.

10. In considering Thoreau’s visit to Niagara Falls, you really should go back and review the treatment of the falls given by Margaret Fuller in her SUMMER ON THE LAKES, IN 1843 (Boston MA: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1844, Chapter I). She wrote several things which Thoreau must certainly have remembered, such as “It seems strange that men could fight in such a place.” The book begins with some utterly conventional remarks about the falls such as that it is a spectacle “great enough to fill the whole life, and supersede thought,” from which however we are immediately distanced by remarks such as that although Fuller has only been at the falls for eight days, once she had witnessed a fellow visitor appropriate them by spitting into them, she found that she was “quite willing to go away.” When she first saw the falls, her take was that it was just like its pictures. Referring to the first viewers of the falls who were not only white but also male, such as Father Hennepin (she was, after all, an inhabitant of the 19th Century, and a beneficiary of white civilization), she wrote “Happy were the first discoverers of Niagara, those who could come unawares upon this view and upon that, whose feelings were entirely their own.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“No one is afraid to cross.”

There is not a record that either Thoreau or Mann were in fear during their crossing.11 Their tickets to Goat Island cost an additional $0.25 each.

May 15: To Niagara Falls. Afternoon to Goat Island. Sight of the Rapids from the Bridge like the sea off Cape Cod – most imposing sight as yet. The great apparent height of the waves tumbling over the immense ledges – at a distance; while the water view is broad and boundless in that direction, as if you were looking out to sea, you are so low. Yet the distances are very deceptive; the most distant billow was scarcely more than a quarter of a mile off, though it appeared two miles or more. Many ducks [Oldsquaw Clangula hyemalis] were constantly floating a little way down from the Rapids, -then flying back and alighting again.

11. We may speculate that John Augustus Roebling’s claim “No one is afraid to cross” had been made because, five years earlier, 200 people had fallen to their deaths when a suspension bridge collapsed in France. However, when he passed over this bridge, Mark Twain commented “You drive over the Suspension Bridge, and divide your misery between the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, and the chances of having a railway train overhead smashing down onto you. Either possibility is discomfiting taken by itself, but, mixed together, they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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An editorial in the St. Paul, Minnesota Pioneer and Democrat elaborated on the needs of war and managed to stop a bit short of urging Minnesota’s farmers to immediately get their wives pregnant:

To Farmers. — Now is the time for the farmers to make money. The country is at war. A half million of men instead of being producers will become consumers. Flour, beef, pork, beans — the substantials — will be wanted in large quantity. Europe is convulsed, and the indications are that there will be a general outbreak across the water; if so, America must supply the armies of France, Italy and England with food. Let the farmers prepare for a great demand; let every cultivator put in an extra acre of corn or wheat, and carry his tilth to the best possible perfection; let every calf be saved from the butcher’s hand, for there will be a great demand for beef. Farmers, every where, now is your time!

In a letter to his mother, Mann said “We arrived at the Suspension Bridge last night at about half past eight, and stopped over night at the New York Central House.… a room at the American House … for one dollar a day.… I have seen the falls though I have not been to look at them yet, and I hear them roaring now all the time.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1869

Francis Parkman, in LA SALLE AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST, flatly denied the truth of much of the account of travels down the Mississippi River left by Père Louis Hennepin. Although attempts have been made to sort this out by interpreting the egregiously false information to interpolations by other parties, these attempts have never managed to persuade.

Inspired by a tour of Yosemite, and perhaps by the ideas of his friend Frederick Law Olmsted, Samuel Bowles published OUR NEW WEST. RECORDS OF TRAVEL BETWEEN THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AND THE PACIFIC OCEAN, AN INFLUENTIAL TRAVELLER’S ACCOUNT OF THE WILDS AND PEOPLES OF THE WEST, in which he advocated preservation of scenic areas such as Niagara Falls and the Adirondacks. CONSERVATIONISM

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Cape Cod: Father Louis Hennepin HDT WHAT? INDEX

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: January 8, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD:FATHER LOUIS HENNEPIN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.