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

by William Wresch

Picard phoned the next day to give me an appointment later the following week. I had nine days with nothing scheduled. I continued my visits to the national library and phoned Elise each evening. Her class was off to a good start, and her dissertation was coming together quickly. She had even been given a date to defend her research – April 10. If that defense went well, she would receive her Ph.D. at May commencement. I was happy for her and miserable for myself. After my calls to her I found myself sitting alone on my balcony looking down at the park and drinking French wine – too much French wine. I wasn’t nineteen any more. I should have been better able to handle our separation.

  Finally I decided to follow the President’s advice and see a bit of the river. I checked my maps one evening and the next morning headed south out of town on the Belle Chasse Highway. I could see from my maps that I wasn’t going to be able to go all the way to the gulf, but I could get about fifty miles south of town. Maybe somewhere along there I would see whatever the President wanted me to see. But it didn’t appear likely. Mostly what I saw was swamps. Nobody lived down here. There were tiny fishing villages about every ten miles, but they looked ready to sink into the soft ground and disappear. As for the river, much of it was diked, so I only saw it in glimpses. What I saw looked pretty much like what I had been seeing for weeks in New Orleans.

  But I kept driving. I found myself thinking not about the river, but about the journal entry of Marquette. What was he thinking? He sees one river and suddenly he merges it with old Indian legends and declares exactly how many miles one paddles, how long one portages, and when one will get to the Pacific. God willing he will make the voyage himself? Dying as he did was bad enough. It would have been cruel of God to let him attempt the voyage he so optimistically describes, only to discover his mental map was off by a thousand miles and neglects two huge mountain ranges and endless desert. How horrible to let his last sights be of the Rockies and their impenetrable heights.

  How many others had died with that sight before them? The truth was the Missouri was a mirage. It went west, but not nearly far enough. Hundreds of men in canoes and on horseback had gone into those mountains and never come back. One hundred and fifty years passed after Marquette wrote his description of the way west before anyone was able to make it all the way to the Pacific and return to tell the tale. The stories they told were so discouraging, even the discovery of gold could not get Americans to cross the mountains and deserts of the west. They crossed at Panama or rounded the Horn to get to California. The mountains could not be conquered.

  DeVoto had been wrong. I saw it more plainly every day I lived in Canada. America go from coast to coast? The continent was designed to make that impossible. Each coast was hemmed in by mountains. The only place where this huge land could be crossed with ease was in the middle – from north to south. Jolliet could paddle from Green Bay to Arkansas without encountering a rapids, much less a water fall. Railroads were built without a single grade. Highways had no hills. Even the lousy French cars would work here since there was never any reason to strain their shoddy engines. The largest, most fertile valley on the planet was open from one end to the other to any Frenchman with a canoe and a paddle. God must be French.

  As you can tell, I was not in a great mood as I drove. The end of the ride did not improve my mood. The last village on the highway is named for Jean Lafitte, the pirate adored by the French for all the British and Americans he helped kill in 1814. I drove slowly through town looking for something worth seeing. There wasn’t much to choose from. Finally I just parked and got out to stretch my legs.

  I saw a café, but it looked about ready to fall into the river along with every other building in town. I wasn’t hungry enough to risk whatever diseases awaited the unwary in there. So I wandered over to the river and walked along its raised bank. What was I supposed to see here? It was just water flowing south. I followed the current and found myself amidst some docks. Fishing charters left from here. Half a dozen boats sat beneath painted signs advertising the best fishing on the gulf. Two were taking on passengers armed with rods and tackle boxes. The rest sat hopeful that tourists would venture down from the north as I had.

  “Five hundred francs for the day.” I looked around and noticed that one of the captains was shouting at me. He was a very sunburned man in his late forties dressed all in white – a Huguenot. He had several men on board already, but apparently wanted more cash. “I will supply the tackle and the bait. All you need to do is sit on your ass and catch the best fish in the gulf. Just hop in. We are about the leave for a great day on the river.”

  On the river. Why not? I had nothing else to do all day, and maybe I would see something on the river that I wasn’t seeing next to the river. I climbed onboard.

  “All right,” I said as I stepped onto the boat. “But I don’t want to fish, I just want to see the river.”

  “It is still five hundred francs.” He held out his hand and waited while I counted out the cash. “The head is at the bottom of those steps, the wine is in that chest, and if you change your mind, I can rig a pole for you.” With that, he took one more look around the dock for possible customers and then cast off. The boat was about twenty-five feet and set up like most boats of that size. There was a wheel on the first level, and another wheel and set of controls in the higher, flying bridge. He climbed up there immediately and left me with the other fishermen. It turned out they were salesmen from Toronto down for a week’s vacation. I had the sense they had already had a couple glasses of wine to loosen up for the trip, and they were having a good time harassing each other about how they were baiting their lines and how schooled they were in the ways of the gulf. They quickly ignored me and concentrated on a bottle of wine they had already gotten from the cooler.

  The captain had pulled out of the berth and was heading down river at increasing speed. I climbed the ladder up to the flying bridge so I could get a better view of the river.

  “You from Toronto too?” He asked, but didn’t wait for my reply. “It seems like folks from the north come down here in waves. This week it is Toronto. Last week it was Montreal. Two weeks ago I had mucki-mucks from Green Bay in my boat every day. Boy is that one fussy bunch. You’re not from Green Bay, are you?” He suddenly became aware he had said too much.

  “I’m from Philadelphia.”

  “You’re an American? Welcome to Louisiana.” He instantly smiled and held out his hand. “We don’t get many Americans down here. You guys do most of your fishing down in Florida. Or do you think more Americans will start coming this way?” He looked at me with so much eagerness I was sorry to disappoint him.

  “The Keys are still pretty popular. Guys can drive it, and there’s no custom problems, no visas, it’s just simpler.”

  “Yeah, I suppose.” He seemed disheartened for a minute, but then brightened and went into his salesman routine. “But I swear we have better fishing here. We’ve got freshwater fish a mile out into the gulf because of the Mississippi, and we have saltwater too, so there is much more variety. Want bass, we have it. Want marlin, we have it. You can’t do that in the Keys.”

  “I’ll pass that along to my friends.”

  “Do that. You sure you don’t want to fish yourself? I can set you up in a few minutes.”

  “No, I just wanted to see the river. I have been in New Orleans for the past few weeks, constantly seeing the river flow by. Finally I decided I would see it flow into the gulf. Sort of see it to the end.”

  “It’s a beautiful river, but it’s tricky. It moves. It will be one place for weeks or months, and then suddenly it has turned another way. Maps are always out of date. We used to get people who would want to just rent a boat and take themselves down to the gulf for fishing. We lost too many boats that way and now the province requires a licensed captain on every boat. Did you know there are three places where the river enters the gulf? Ten years ago
there were four. By the time you visit next, there might be five entries, or there might be two. The river has a thousand miles of dirt in its clutches, and it puts it where it wants, and then goes around it.”

  “Which route will we take today?”

  “I always take Passage A. I know it the best and it takes us past Blind Bay.”

  “Is that where the best fishing is?”

  “No.” He turned fully toward me so I could see his face while he answered. “I want those bastards from up north to see what they are doing to my Louisiana. They want to live in those fancy chateaux up north where it is cold nine months out of the year, they need my oil and my gas. Then when it comes time to tax the flow, they give all the money to the national government and peanuts to the province. Let them at least see what Blind Bay looks like. Of course by the time we get there, they are usually too drunk to know where they are or what they are doing – just like this bunch.” He pointed over his shoulder at the men below. They were having a great time throwing bait at each other. “You Americans are fairer. Florida gets rich from its wells. We in Louisiana stay slaves to the Papists.” Having mouthed that insult he knew he had gone too far, and he dropped into silence. I said nothing. What was there to say? That I was a Papist? I let the remark go and watched the river.

  He was right about the river. There were bends in the channel and sand bars that he carefully negotiated. Once a huge ship came up the river and we had to pull way over to our right to give him room to maneuver. I was glad an experienced hand was at the wheel. He and I made small talk on occasion, but mostly just watched the water. Had the President wanted me to see the river, or was it the oil platforms that he had steered me towards. I didn’t see how it did him any good for me to know how discontented the Huguenots were. Maybe he was just suggesting that I get out in the sun more, and I had gone overboard in my interpretation. Oh well, I was here now, and I would be for some eight hours until the drunks form Toronto had landed their trophies and we had returned up river.

  When we turned into Passage A, we were headed almost due east. Here too, efforts had been made to mark the main channel and it appeared this was one of the favored channels for larger ships. I was in awe every time we came near one of these behemoths. The drunks in back waved whenever one of the ships went by, but the waves were never returned. I wasn’t sure the crew could even see us so far below them. Eventually we got to the gulf. The mud and the trees and the grasses on each side of us just dropped away and there was the Gulf of Mexico.

  “Watch below us,” the captain told me. “See how long it takes for the water to change from brown to blue. The river takes the dirt a good distance out into the gulf before it finally drops it.” I watched over the side of the boat and he was right. We were still traveling on brown water for another fifteen minutes. When the water finally cleared, he throttled back and went down to the fishermen. He helped them bait their lines and made the first cast for them. Once he had each one positioned so their lines would not tangle, he climbed back up and slowly pulled the boat ahead.

  What can I say about the rest of that day? Nothing that matters. The salesmen from Toronto each got several fish. They seemed happy enough with what they got, and drunk enough so that the ride back was much quieter than the ride down. I got to see the oil platforms in Blind Bay. They were huge and ugly. The captain looked at me as if to say “See what I mean?” But didn’t say anything as we went by. The guys from Toronto never took their eyes from their fishing lines. We could have been trolling past Martians and they would not have noticed.

  Eventually the day ended. We docked and I went back to my car while the salesmen took pictures at some scales and looked for ice to preserve their treasures. I had seen the Mississippi all the way to the Gulf. One final thought occurred to me as I drove back into town. This was the river LaSalle couldn’t find. But it entered the gulf at three different places. How bad do you have to be at navigation to miss a river that has three entry points?

  “Are you ready for some drama?” The President asked. I had gone over to his residence a week after my fishing trip. The sun was out and the day was warm enough that we could sit out in his imitation Luxemburg Garden. “South of St. Louis is where Louis and the men were almost killed.”

  “Yes, if I remember the story, they were greeted with a hail of arrows.” Periodically I needed to point out that I was not a complete neophyte and had read a few books.

  “Well, it was never that dramatic, but they did meet the first Indians who might have been hostile to them. Let’s begin again where we left off. They had found the Missouri River and carefully mapped its juncture with the Mississippi. As they continued down the river, they found the river beginning to turn toward the southeast. So It might flow to Virginia after all. Then two days later, they came to what we now call the “Ox Bow.” It is just south of the present day Cape Girardeau. The river bends back on itself and turns directly north for about ten miles. Not only did this confuse and concern them, since they were afraid now that the river might not go to the gulf, but the canoeing is some of the most difficult they would encounter on their trip. Imagine, if you will, the forces at work when a river that size is bent back upon itself. The water boils and froths against one bank and currents spin the canoes. Even today we have drownings in that area, even though the dangers are well known.”

  “It took them a full day to make their way back up the ox bow and then around the bend. Once they saw the river would head south again, they beached their canoes and took a well-deserved rest. Although resting from here on was not easy. These men were used to mosquitoes, and they all wore buckskin so they had some protection, but any place that was not covered was constantly under attack. What they didn’t know was that these mosquitoes were malarial. Their nights were never restful, and their days were hot and hard. They were beginning to feel the effects of their journey.”

  “The day after they cleared the ox-bow, they found the Ohio River. I wish I could tell you that they knew they had found where the Ohio entered the Mississippi. But they had no idea which river they were encountering -- so many flowed into the Mississippi. They mapped each and tried to measure the width and depth of each as well as they could. They also fixed the latitude of the place each river merged with the Mississippi. Marquette called the river the “Ouaboukigou” after some Indian stories he had heard. Louis thought the river was the Wabash, another great river they had heard of. Neither had any idea they had found the Ohio. They even got the latitude wrong, placing it a full degree north of where the entrance really is.

  “But they had a sextant, right?” I asked.

  “Yes. And we know from other measurements he made that Louis was good with it. And for that matter, so was everyone else who had some basic training. The sextant is one of the best inventions of its time. Even the basic ones of this period could work accurately, because all they do is measure the angle between the sun and the horizon. Assuming you knew when the sun was at its peak – when it was noon – and assuming you had a table that told you how high the sun would be on this day in the year, you found the angle and calculated your latitude. What went wrong this time? Maybe he missed noon. Maybe his horizon was obscured. Maybe the instrument was getting banged up in the canoe. But to be off by a full degree is a significant error for a map maker.”

  “Do you know if he tried to calculate longitude?”

  “No. They had no time piece. All they could do was carefully measure their passage to see how far they had come in any direction. His map turns out to be within fifty miles of the real longitude of the Mississippi, but then the river flows mostly south, so many measurements east and west were not required.”

  “But, back to their voyage. It was south of the Ohio that they began to encounter Indians who threatened them. First it was a group of Indians armed with muskets on the eastern shore. Marquette stood up in the canoe and showed their calu
met – peace pipe – and the Indians allowed them to come to the shore. There Marquette talked with them in Huron and discovered the Indians had had much contact with Europeans – “to the east.” They had many trade goods and had even learned a bit about Christ. As you can imagine, the Jesuits spent many years subsequently trying to determine where these Indians might have gotten such training, and came to believe these Indians had encountered Spanish Franciscans who had a mission in Georgia.”

  “Louis was more interested in learning how far away these Europeans might be. He had been told to steer clear of the Spanish, not that he needed to be warned what might happen to them if Spanish troops found them in territory they claimed for their own. The Indians gave various answers, but were sure of one thing – the river was near its end. Ten more days paddling would bring the group to the gulf.”

  “Over the next several days they became more convinced that the Indians were right. The land changed. The prairie was gone and forests rose up on either side of the river. The land here was less promising of agriculture and more foreboding. They paddled on believing they were near the gulf.”

  “And then they were attacked. Indians in wooden boats surrounded the canoes while other men on shore marched up and down shouting and threatening to fire arrows at Louis’ party. Marquette stood up with the calumet as he had in the last village, but this time an Indian threw a war club at him and nearly killed him. Other Indians threatened to swim out to the canoes and pull them over.”

  “As it should be, wiser heads ultimately prevailed. Two older chiefs watched from shore and when the voyageurs got close enough for them to see that Marquette was waving a calumet, they called on the younger men to cease. They still had to struggle to keep the young men back, finally ending the conflict by wading out to the canoes and putting their personal weapons inside. With this sign of their personal protection, the other Indians backed off and let the voyageurs land.”

  “Communication was a problem. Marquette knew six Indian languages but none of them made sense. For their part, the Indians brought forward members of their own tribe who knew languages, hoping that they could find some common dialect. At last they found one young man who knew some Illinois. Marquette and he were able to talk well enough to explain who they were and what they were doing. And of course Marquette also wanted to describe the life of Christ.”

  “It turned out these Indians were Arkansa. They were not having an easy time of it. South of them some other tribe was at war with them, preventing them from trading with the Spanish down the river. They had a larger village a day’s travel farther south and invited the voyageurs to it. Louis and his men were not very comfortable staying with this tribe, given how hostilely they were greeted, but they decided to spend a couple days with them to learn as much as they could about lands further south.”

  “The first night went well. They were fed and treated as guests, but you can imagine they posted guards. In the morning they paddled down river to the larger village where they were met by more Indians in canoes. Once again they went onshore and once again they were able to find someone who spoke Illinois. They exchanged gifts, spoke of their travels, learned about the peoples to the south, and hoped they wouldn’t be murdered in their sleep.”

  “After two days in the larger village, one of the chiefs came to them and told them he had prevented their murders. A plot had been building to kill the Frenchmen and take all their trade goods. He had stopped the murders. Had there really been an attempt on their lives? They had no way of knowing if the chief told the truth, but everything they had seen and every encounter they had told them that they were in danger here.”

  “The voyageurs met that night to determine their next steps. Louis had measured their latitude that noon and determined that they had reached thirty-three degrees. Their maps showed that the gulf was at thirty-one degrees, a distance they could cover in several days. Should they go south to the gulf? If so, they risked capture by the Spanish, or murder by this or some other tribe on the way south or on the way back. They had already established that the Mississippi flowed south into the gulf – that was obvious. Why not start back north to report on all the things they had seen? It was the wise course, the prudent course, and one of the reasons Louis always returned from all his explorations with all his men. He didn’t take stupid risks.”

  “Of course his political enemies always used this decision against him. He hadn’t gone to the gulf. The gulf was hundreds of miles south of where he stopped. He was a coward. It was LaSalle who was the real discovered of the Mississippi since he traversed its entire length – LaSalle the great explorer. So it is said yet today. But as they sat together in that village, surrounded by hundreds of warriors who had already threatened them and had tried to kill Marquette, the choice of the seven was obvious. They needed to go back north. This was ugly country – forests and swamps and Indians anxious to kill. It was time to leave.”

  “The next morning they made a graceful exit, full of speeches and gifts, and then started back north. It was July 17th. They had been on the Mississippi for a month. They had paddled a thousand miles, knew the path of the great river, had found and mapped huge rivers that flowed into it, had met and talked with Indians, and had hunted and described the many animals to be found along the river. They had done much and knew much. It was time to take that knowledge back to Quebec. Little did they know how much more they would accomplish on their journey home.”

  “But I must end our story there for the time being. As Louis and his party start north, it is time for our family to start our preparation for our return north. I expect you are also anxious to return to Green Bay.” There was just a hint of a smile on his face, leaving me to believe he was referring to Elise. In truth, I was anxious to return to Elise, even if it meant returning to the frozen wasteland she chose to live in.”

  “Yes, there are many attractions in Green Bay.” That was as far as I was willing to go to describe my love life. We shook hands and Picard came to escort me from the garden. He and I spoke at length as we walked through the house. For security reasons, the President’s travel plans were kept secret, but I was to expect a call in a couple weeks setting up our next meeting in Green Bay. We talked briefly about the opera season which would begin within weeks in Green Bay as the elite returned from their winter sojourns, and about lacrosse. Picard seemed in no hurry to end our conversation. It appeared that his schedule would be more relaxed now that the time in Louisiana was winding down. The parties were over, the packing was beginning. The elite were on the move north.

  Chapter 13

  1673 -Up the Mississippi