Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from La Salle in the Valley of the St. Joseph: An Historical Fragment
In the light of present knowledge, it is not possible to assert beyond all danger of cavil whether this or that particular Canadian French man first beheld the banks of the St. Joseph. Some have thought that Father Claude Allouez, a Jesuit priest and missionary, first knew of our river. Some have supposed that Father Mar quette oncejourneyed this way. But that either of them was entitled to the honor of discovery, is purely a matter of conjecture. It does, indeed, seem not unlikely that Allouez, who was with the Miami Indians in 1672, should have followed them from their Wisconsin home when they migrated to this valley. He was certainly here at a later date, devoting the clos Ing years of his life to the work of the mission on the St. Joseph, where he died in 1690. But in the case of Father Marquette, there is not even good ground for conjecture, unless it be in the wish which we all share that the benison of a presence so gentle and gracious might have expressed the white man's first salutation to the bluffs and pebbly strands of our river. Then, there are the two adventurers, Radissonand Des Groseilliers, who explicitly declare that they themselves visited this entire region as early as 1659. This statement, however, is not generally believed by the historians. Some of the latter are probably not far from the truth in their intimation that many of the obscure Canadian voyageurs, in pursuit of the traffic in furs, and the wild coureurs de bois, while living with the Indians, may have been here before all others without leaving any record of their exploits. But if we are to satisfy ourselves with the positive assertions of unquestioned history, we must credit the discovery of the St. Joseph and the Kankakee rivers to the hero famous in American annals under the name of lasalle. His coming was late in the fall of 1679. A brief epitome of his career previous to that date may help us to keep in mind the motives that prompted his expedition and the circumstances that made it possible. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
