The Canadian Civil War: Volume 1 - Birth of a Nation

by William Wresch

It was late October before I could meet with the President again, but I didn’t mind the delay. I had a problem. I looked back at my notes and listened to the tapes over and over, and I just could not find a smoking gun to point at my adversaries, the French. What had I learned that was useful so far? Jolliet had made some disparaging remarks about the Ottawas, but even if I used direct quotes, I wouldn’t cause him much damage. There weren’t enough Ottawas left to vote against him. They had scrapped with so many tribes, and done it so badly over so many centuries, the entire tribe could fit into a funeral parlor, a place where they seemed to spend most of their time these days, as the old died of infirmities and the young died of stupidity.

  What I wanted was a way to tarnish the founders. I didn’t expect that Jolliet would tell me directly that Marquette spent his days sleeping in the back of the canoe while the others did all the work, or that Louis Jolliet was drunk all day, or got chased up the Mississippi by a jealous husband, but I had hoped that some hesitation, some side comment, some odd glance would tip me that I would find gold if I did additional digging. So far, there was nothing. Both men spent year after year along the Western frontier, suffering in silence. That didn’t help me one bit.

  Then I got called home. I don’t know what kind of reports my parents were getting from the local manager, but in early October I got a polite – but firm – request from my father to come home to Philadelphia for a few days. The excuse was a wedding anniversary of my brother, and the usual comments about my mother missing me, but I knew there was more to the story. I didn’t like the ruse, but I could think of no reason not to go. After all, why spend an extra day in Green Bay? So I flew back that weekend.

  Our family home is a three-story brownstone just off Rittenhouse Square. It has been in the family for over a century and we are very proud of it. The US is so overcrowded, most families live in apartments, so it was a point of pride for us that we had a whole house to ourselves. It felt odd, though, as I rode the company limo in from the airport. I had been in New France for over a year, and I was already getting used to all the space they have. I will always be unimpressed by the chateaus along the Fox River. After all, the rich will always find space. But the average worker in Wisconsin had a small home on a quarter-acre lot, or even a half-acre lot. Why not? With all that endless prairie, land was cheap. Land in the U.S. is not. Our family home might be thought a mansion to some, including me, but now I saw how tightly wedged it was against its fellows. We were a country without space.

  My family greeted me at the door and there were hugs all around. They let me take my bags up to my boyhood room, and then waited for me in the old paneled library. This was my favorite room of the house, but today I entered a bit nervously. What did my father want? I quickly saw he was going to play me like he did his subordinates at work. He sat quietly and reviewed his strategy, while my big brother occupied the conversation.

  “So do you have a title now? Biographer to the President?” He was laughing and presenting this as light conversation, but it was clear this was to be the focus of my visit home. I was grateful. Now I knew what this trip was about.

  “I have had several conversations with President Jolliet, and I am scheduled for another next month. I am gathering information for a biography, but it would be about what his ancestors were doing three centuries ago. I hope that doesn’t create problems for the company?” I asked, and looked directly at my father. I was determined to take the conversation to him, and not let him sit through half an hour of bantering with my brother before he finally stated his intentions.

  “We can’t tell.” All eyes turned to him. Now that he chose to speak, we knew we would get direct answers. Even when he and I had had our most serious disagreements (what can the head of a family business say when one of his sons becomes an historian?), I knew any statement he made was heart-felt and sincere. He hid nothing from us.

  “The local manager thinks our sales may be up some out of curiosity, but he also fears the President’s enemies may now be more reluctant to buy from us. Their politics are wilder than ours and the French take their loyalties seriously.”

  “So, “ I asked, “do you want me to stop my interviews?”

  “You misunderstand,” he said. “Actually I am proud that my son is someone who can have private conversations with a head of state. As for the business, I was running the company when we and the French were shooting each other. If I could rebuild business then, I can rebuild it if necessary, should the politics of this get out of hand. I was more curious about why you are choosing to write a biography about that family. There are so many great Americans who deserve a book.”

  Now I understood. This was about national pride. He did business with the French and had learned to hate them less than most Americans did, but he was still an American first. Was my biography project a sign that I no longer put Americans first? How did I answer that? The obvious answer was that I was gathering information to use in an attack on the Jolliet family and the very foundations of their state. But if I said that, how long before my brother had one too many beers, or was provoked by a snide remark about me, and revealed to the world what I was trying to do. No, I needed to reassure my father, but also to protect my current efforts.

  “I am confident that my book will ultimately be about Americans. I want to see the world through Jolliet’s eyes, and learn how he sees past events between our countries. But I haven’t forgotten where I was born.” And with that, the conversation ended. At least the serious conversation was over. We had more than a few beers, and sampled some of my father’s more recent scotch purchases, and gabbed about football, business, and traffic. Maybe the high point of the evening was me trying to explain lacrosse after I had had too much scotch. I am not sure I could explain the rules sober, and after we had been drinking, we somehow thought it was a good idea to go out into the back yard and try some moves. Nobody was killed, but we ended up falling all over the lawn and laughing about the insane rules for that silly game.

  I woke up the next morning in my boyhood room. My father and brother had gone off to the office, and the women were out shopping, so I had a quiet house to myself. Good thing. My head was still buzzing from the scotch. I lay in bed for nearly an hour after I awoke, and looked around the room with my eyes mostly unfocused. Finally I found myself staring at my old books. These were the history books I had loved as a child, but was too embarrassed to have in my library these days.

  Somehow my eyes settled on that silly old book, “California Trail,” by Francis Parkman. How many children had read that stupid book? How old did you have to be before you realized the book was never really about the California Trail? It would be better titled, “How I spent a summer riding as far as Santa Fe before my butt hurt, so I spent a few days talking to Indians, went out once to chase buffalo, and then came home before it got cold.” What an old fraud. No wonder he couldn’t get tenure anywhere but Harvard.

  But then I noticed another of Parkman’s books. I guess I left it here because I didn’t want anyone to think I took the man seriously. But later in his career he wrote a few reasonable books, mostly about Indians. I began to wonder if he would have anything useful to say about the Ottawas and their flight from the Sioux and the role of Marquette. I got up, got the book, and then climbed back under the covers to read much as I had back in my childhood.

  I was too hung over to be very patient with the man’s deadly prose style, and his irritating habit of listing the exact day of every event, while never stating the year. To him it was important that something happened May 17th. The year that May happened to be located in was completely trivial. Very quickly my head started reacting to the writing and to the stale scotch flowing through my system. I started thumbing through the book pretty roughly when a name hit me – La Salle. Here was somebody I hadn’t given much thought to recently. His was one of the hard-luck stories of French pioneering.


  But it reminded me that he was a contemporary of Jolliet and Marquette as the two prepared for sainthood and eternal adoration. I slowed down and read a few paragraphs when it hit me – they had met.

  Here was an interesting story that the President had somehow forgotten to mention. In 1671 Louis Jolliet was sent to find out more about the copper Adrien had found lying around in the Keeweenaw Peninsula along the south shore of Lake Superior. Louis did a bit of prospecting and a bit of mapping and started to paddle home. On the way, one of his guides took him down through Lake Huron to Lake Ontario. Here he ran into none other than Mssr. LaSalle. LaSalle was leading a group of ten explorers to find the Ohio River, and with it the passage to California and the route to China.

  Here, if Parkman is to be believed, Jolliet stops the expedition, and convinces nine of the ten to forget Ohio and go north to look around Lake Superior. Who can’t he convince? LaSalle. La Salle sees he can’t change the minds of the fools in his group, so he gives some odd excuse like he hears his mother calling or something, and starts heading back east. He travels one day until he is out of sight of Jolliet, and then strikes due south as he had originally intended. He almost immediately finds the Ohio, rides it west to the Mississippi, then comes north along the Illinois River, and finishes his trip by paddling the length of Lake Michigan alone. In short, he does everything Marquette and Jolliett will soon be famous for, and does it two years ahead of them.

  Now this was getting interesting. Here I am looking for a smoking gun to use on the French, and I find the weapon in my childhood bedroom. Why hadn’t I thought of LaSalle before? He may have been the best explorer the French were capable of producing. I should have checked on his travels before. But Claude had been oddly silent about him. Why not tell me Louis had met LaSalle? This was an odd omission. Was he admitting that the whole family history was a tissue of lies, hoping that if he kept silent, I would not notice LaSalle’s absence? Sadly, that had almost been the case. I was almost one more stupid American, too ignorant of history to know when I was being lied to.

  I laid my head back, closed my eyes, and tried to think through a strategy. What would I say to President Jolliet? How could I bring up LaSalle? And when I did, what would he say? I smiled at the thought of the look on his face. He was a professional politician, but he was about to be presented with the central lie of his family. What would he say about the man who had bested Louis all those centuries ago?

  It was three weeks before I could find out. Our next appointment was for late October. This is not a beautiful time in Wisconsin. The oaks and maples have lost their leaves and the sky above the Fox tends to be leaden. Fall rains are cold, and the only blessing is that the snows are still a month off. My Citroen was already developing rattles as I turned off the Interstate to pass among the chateaus of the rich and famous. My mood was bad. No matter how much I thought of various strategies, I couldn’t picture myself uttering the one word I most wanted to say to the President – LaSalle. Did I let him continue with his story and bring up LaSalle later? If I pursued it now, would it end up with a short argument and no further visits? I was a chess player without a lead move. Lord, give me a pawn to play.

  We made no attempt to go outside during this interview. Picard escorted me to the president’s study, and there we sat in wing-backed leather chairs surrounded by endless bound volumes and dark oak paneling. The room was meant to show the president was a serious man – even a scholar. I understood from friends that he had even read some of the books in the room. I hoped the book I was writing would sell well enough so that I could have a room like it some day.

  “How was your trip to Philadelphia?” The President asked as I took the seat he pointed to. I could see it amused him to show off his access to such information. Was he still getting general intelligence reports from his government? Or did he just have a few people watched? I would have been annoyed, but of course I expected nothing less from the French.

  “It was great time to visit. My brother and sister-in-law were celebrating their tenth anniversary, and all the family was gathered. There are special joys in family, aren’t there?” I hoped my last question would turn the conversation back to him and we could resume the history of Louis.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “What is a man without family?”

  “Shall we talk some more about yours? When last we spoke, you were explaining the activities of Louis Jolliet in the years before his discovery of the Mississippi.”

  “Yes, those were busy times for Louis. He paddled all over the Great lakes.” He paused and mused about where to pick up his story. I felt my heart race as I debated whether to bring up LaSalle. Finally I decided to dare it. I was an American. We bow to no one.

  “Since our last meeting, I have been doing some additional reading, and discovered a curious event. Were you aware that in 1671 there was a chance meeting between Louis and Robert LaSalle along Lake Ontario?”

  “Ha,” he immediately laughed. “Was there anyone who did not meet with LaSalle? The man was everywhere. He covered so many miles in those years. What a tragedy that he accomplished so little.”

  “So little? He discovered the Ohio River, paddled the Mississippi all the way to the gulf, built a series of forts along the Mississippi, and brought settlers to Texas.”

  “I suspect you found all that information in American books, correct? Did you do any reading here in Green Bay?” There was no accusation in his voice, but he was unfortunately correct. As a foreigner there were some limits to my access to materials in the National Library, but much of the collection was open to me, and I had searched none of it for background on LaSalle.

  “No, you are right. I have not researched him in the National Library.”

  “You should, if only to see how little you find. I think you will see we French have real problems with LaSalle. We find him both confusing and embarrassing. And I must say I am among the number that is both confused and embarrassed.”

  “How could you be embarrassed by a man who explored so much of your country?”

  “Mssr. Murphy, maybe I should delay my description of Louis’ explorations and explain why every third grammar school in this country is named Jolliet, yet you will travel forever and not find even a bus terminal named for LaSalle. It will give you a sense of the times, and maybe more respect for the work of my ancestor.”

  “Please do.” I did not know where the conversation was heading, but if it involved embarrassment for the French, I was ready to listen.

  “In 1671 the colony was engaged in exploration in all directions. The colony was strong enough to spare the men, and rich enough to bear the costs of their travels. It needed to know where Indian tribes might be brought to Christ, and where resources might be found to support trade. And, if there really was an easy route to the West and China, it would be to our advantage to find it before competing nations.

  “Louis was sent to the west, to look for copper. Other explorers were sent north to locate what the English were calling Hudson’s Bay, and to determine what manner of creature might be trapped and traded there. La Salle went south. He had friends at Court, he was a successful businessman, and he could be very persuasive. Unfortunately his abilities did not include any knowledge of cartography or geography. He was also impossible to get along with.

  “So he headed west along Lake Ontario, preparing to venture south to tributaries of the Ohio that Indians had told him about. But after only three weeks with him, all nine of his crew were on the verge of mutiny. As it turned out, many lives might have been saved if they had killed him there and then, but Louis happened along. He explained where they were (one of the constant sources of fear among LaSalle’s fellow travelers was that he was always lost), and explained how they could travel to various outposts of the realm. The nine mutineers immediately began to plan for a new exploration along routes Louis gave them. LaSalle threatened them and even challenged Louis, but
withdrew his challenge the minute he saw he could not browbeat Louis. Seeking to avoid more trouble with his men and with Louis, LaSalle left in the middle of the night and struck off due south.

  “LaSalle never knew where he was, and was incapable of drawing anything approaching an accurate map. But he had a good knack for story telling. At the end of four months he was back in Quebec having – according to him –discovered the Ohio, the Illinois, the Mississippi, and Lake Michigan. Since he had traveled alone there were no witnesses to his adventure, and he had gathered no evidence from tribes. He did have a map, but it was so crudely drawn there was no telling where he had really been. In truth, the man had great energy, and he might have gone all the places he said he had gone, but without a map, nothing useful had been discovered. He might as well have spent the summer sampling wines.

  “Back in Quebec he began plotting to extend the empire south and west – to the lands he had “discovered,” and he was able to get enough support to build a fort on the south shore of Lake Ontario. This was to be the first of a string of forts that would follow the water routes and unite the nation from Quebec to the end of the Mississippi. It wasn’t a bad concept, and many of his ideas were used decades later, but it was clear he was not the man to make any of these ideas become reality. Every fort he built had a cemetery nearby, and every cemetery filled quickly. Either he couldn’t supply the forts, or he put them in the midst of malarial swamps, or he just moved on and left the people there to fend for themselves while he attempted his next adventure.

  “In 1682, nine years after Louis and Marquette had traversed much of the Mississippi, LaSalle finally had enough forts that he felt comfortable descending the river. He had a large party and made it all the way to the Gulf – the first person to make it all the way. And this time he had witnesses to prove he had actually been there. But, he did not have a map maker. He had enough knowledge to determine the latitude where the river met the gulf, but he could not calculate the longitude. Two hundred men, women and children, later died because of this lapse in his education.

  “When he got back to Quebec he had another scheme all planned. This time he needed the help of the King, so he sailed back to France and had an audience with Louis XIV. Since he had proven that the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, he now had a way for France to invade Mexico – or so he convinced the King. All that was needed was a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, and from there armies of Frenchmen could march the few short miles into the gold and silver mines of New Mexico. Better at speeches than at geography, LaSalle won the day. Two hundred lost souls sailed in three boats for the Gulf the next spring. They survived the Atlantic crossing and the storms of the Gulf, only to discover that La Salle had lost the Mississippi.

  “He knew the latitude, but unfortunately, the gulf coast is largely all the same latitude. What he needed was longitude. Since he didn’t have it, they sailed along the coast looking for the river. But there are so many rivers flowing into the gulf from the north, finding the tight one was impossible. As the passengers and crews got more impatient, LaSalle got more desperate to announce he had found it. Finally, near Galveston, Texas, he announced with great certainty that the river they saw flowing into the gulf was the great Mississippi.

  “He unloaded two hundred men, women, and children, and did his usual – he built a fort. The cemetery would follow. One of the ships dropped off all the passengers and supplies, and having done its work, sailed back for France. A second ship sailed up the river too far and tore out its bottom. It sank in minutes, costing the settlers many of their supplies. LaSalle quickly knew that he had landed the settlers in the wrong place, so he quietly sent the third ship back up the coast to find where the river really was. The ship was never heard from again.

  “It didn’t take long for the settlers to realize that they were marooned. And LaSalle being LaSalle, he had put their fort in the middle of a malarial swamp. The cemetery filled and the fort emptied and LaSalle finally admitted he didn’t know where he was. But he had a plan. He would lead those still able to walk back to the east where they would find the Mississippi, canoe its entire length, and return to Quebec. He may have said they would send food back from Quebec to anyone still alive in the fort, but those in the fort knew they were being left to die. And they died to the last man, woman, and child.

  “The men who left with LaSalle spent a year wandering through the swamps along the coast, never reaching the Mississippi. Finally they shot LaSalle. They left his body out to be eaten by wild animals, but I always thought it would have been more just to create yet another cemetery for this man who had already created so many cemeteries in our country. But now you see why you may not find much written about him in our libraries. A man whose reach so greatly exceeds his grasp is tragic. A man whose reach leads to the deaths of so many good people is more terrible than tragic.”

  “Yet his concept of an empire along the Mississippi was the central concept of your country.” I replied. I am not sure why I wanted to defend LaSalle, maybe because I was the one who had mentioned his name.

  “But concepts don’t make great men. While LaSalle was getting rich through his friends at Court, Louis had gone to Paris to study cartography at the Sorbonne. The state of the art in those years was limited, but the skills were certainly worth the six months Louis gave them. As a result, it is through Louis that we have the first useful maps of the Mississippi. It is Louis who is the real founder of the nation.”

  “I am sorry now I distracted you from telling his story.”

  “Not at all. There were many explorers in those days, and many deaths. LaSalle is more tragic than most, and irksome because of his arrogance and ignorance, but he was not alone in his errors. Maybe his story helps us better understand Louis’ story. Louis took six men on a two thousand mile canoe trip into lands never seen before by Europeans, and brought all six back alive. I think our family would be proud of that fact even if he hadn’t discovered the Mississippi or hadn’t gone on to found the cities that became our greatest strength.”

  “What do you think Louis and LaSalle said that day they met in 1671?” I asked.

  “LaSalle was nobility and Louis was not just a commoner, he was a commoner born outside of France. LaSalle should have said, where the Hell am I, and can you show me how to use this sextant? But he lectured Louis on his appearance, and then berated him as it became apparent all the men in camp had turned to Louis for leadership. It was an ugly meeting. But it probably saved the lives of those nine men, and it taught Louis enough about LaSalle that he was never tempted to join any of his expeditions.”

  “Is there anything else I should know about Louis before we start the discussion of his trip down the Mississippi?” I asked.

  “There is much we could discuss about the intrigues of court, and the various political parties of the time, but only one fact is really important. For all the aristocrats and generals sitting in Quebec, it was Louis who was chosen to lead the expedition. Maybe that was the ultimate contribution of LaSalle. They had seen the results of his work in 1671 and knew a different kind of man would be required to make this discovery.”

  “Now you will have to excuse me. I hate to cut our meeting short, but a number of things require my attention today. Pecard will find you another appointment in the next few weeks.” He must have pressed a button on his chair, or there was a microphone in the room, for Pecard immediately appeared and escorted me out of the house. I was unsure whether I had insulted the President through my questions, and whether the meetings would now be over. So I purposely stood extra long at the entrance to the house and talked with Picard. He had a minor ownership stake in a lacrosse team and I spoke at length about that. He was pleasant enough, but I was feeling desperate. Were the interviews now over? I almost asked him outright, but controlled myself. It was frustrating to get this close to the story of the Mississippi exploration and then lose it. But fina
lly I walked off with my head held high and a fake smile on my lips. If it was all ending, at least I would be out of Green Bay before winter struck.

  Chapter 7

  1672 – Preparations for the Voyage