The expedition wasn’t a vacation or a summer camp outing—Lewis had always said it was going to be hard. He was disappointed to see the dwindling enthusiasm and was troubled by the divisions among the group. Just when he needed most to inspire his men, leadership seemed to be slipping away. Between trying to ameliorate the crew’s relationship with the liaison team, coordinating with city officials, and making appearances as the public face of the expedition, he didn’t have a lot of time to come up with heroic speeches urging his men “once more unto the breach.” He sympathized with La Salle’s struggle to maintain morale among his crew. Though the problems the two men faced were unique to their respective eras, the underlying issue was a similar one—how to unite a group of men under a common purpose when a number of impediments blocked the way. The obstacles they faced might be different, but their effects were the same: diminished morale and increased resistance against the expedition leader.
“Such is the lot of those men whom a mixture of great defects and great virtues draws from the common sphere,” wrote Pierre-Francois-Xavier de Charlevoix in History of New France. “Their passions hurry them into faults; and if they do what others could not, their enterprises are not to the taste of all men. Their success excites the jealousy of those who remain in obscurity. They benefit some and injure others; the latter take their revenge by decrying them without moderation; the former exaggerate their merit. Hence the different portraits drawn of them, none of which are really true; but as hatred and the itching for slander always goes further than gratitude and friendship, and calumny finds more easy credence with the public than praise and eulogy, the enemies of the Sieur de La Salle disfigured his portrait more than his friends embellished it.”8
East Chicago, Indiana
December 14, 1976
If the morning set the tone for the rest of the day, this Tuesday was shaping up to be a disaster. At the 6:00 A.M. wake-up call, the wind was blowing thirty-five miles per hour out of the south, the waves were sloshing up around the ice, and the thermometer was showing the same low temperatures it had been displaying for weeks now. Braun wished he could declare the avants to be on strike, but the men sent to scout conditions the day before had reported limited ice on shore and minimal slush ice farther out in the lake. They decided there wasn’t enough of either to pose a real risk to the men’s safety, and they only had a short distance to cover. These days they needed to take every opportunity that presented itself to move ahead.
Three days ago, Braun’s parents had come down to the camp carrying five dozen donuts and milk for the crew. Yesterday he had woken early and enjoyed a hot shower at Crown Point High School and then had breakfast at Knoll restaurant. Today, on his 19th birthday, his only present would be heading out onto a wicked lake to paddle seven miles into a strong wind. A few people seemed uneasy about the decision, but the choice had been made. Braun anticipated a long, cold day. Happy Birthday, Jean du Lignon, he thought.
The first few miles weren’t so bad. It was windy and a little wet, but Braun’s three-man canoe was making forward progress. Then they came to Inland Steel. The company had built an artificial peninsula that jutted out into the lake, a massive complex of blast furnaces and roadways and landfills. The open-hearth mill was constructed at the turn of the 20th century and had dominated the area ever since then. In celebration of Indiana Day at Indiana Harbor in 1908, a writer penned some verses that captured the mill’s impact on life in the area: “The skies are often dreary, and air is filled with smoke, in Northwest Indiana, from the gas and coal and coke; but we wouldn’t be without it, for it’s just the way we grow, in Northwest Indiana, where the furnace fires glow.”9 To reach their destination at Indiana Harbor Yacht Club, the men would be traveling past the scene penned by that early writer, hugging the ugly shoreline of Inland Steel.
When Braun’s boat finished the trip two miles out into the lake and around the landfill, they continued parallel to the shore for several miles before making the turn back toward the south. It wasn’t until they turned inland that they were blasted by the powerful wind. No matter how hard they paddled, they couldn’t make progress. They’d gone four or five miles in the first three hours, and now they’d been paddling for what felt like ages without getting anywhere. The wind was too strong for the three men to overpower. They’d have to find somewhere to land and use a line to pull the canoe the rest of the way in, while the rest of the fleet made their way to the landing point by paddling.
The canoe approached a seven-foot break wall covered in ice. The boat bobbed up and down over waves that spilled over its edges, piling layer upon layer of ice on the gunwales. Braun would have to scramble up the wall with a line in hand, pulling the canoe alongside the wall for a mile or so while the others kept the canoe from scraping against it. It was probably less than a mile to their campsite, and lining a canoe was much easier than portaging it or fighting the wind all the way in. The only real problem would be getting up on top of the break wall.
Braun rose to his feet in the rocking boat, then balanced himself on the narrow, slippery gunwales and waited for a wave to nudge the boat up so that he could jump for the top of the bulwark. A little too far to the left or the right in any direction and he’d slip and fall. If he missed the top of the wall, he’d slip and fall. Either scenario ended the same way: him in the water, drowning or freezing to death. As Stillwagon had said at a crew meeting weeks earlier, at this point in the year it wouldn’t matter how fast help arrived if a canoe capsized or a man fell in the water—they’d probably be dead of hypothermia or heart failure before anything could be done. That prospect was terrifying. Four days earlier, Braun had been one of the ten people who voted in favor of continuing on the lake instead of following the river system south. Thirteen people—a majority—voted to follow the rivers, but the vote was close enough that Lewis was allowed to make the decision and chose to continue on the lake. Look where Braun’s vote had gotten him: he had made it to his 19th year on Earth, and now he wasn’t sure he’d live to see the 20th.
A combination of dexterity, balance, and good luck allowed Braun to momentarily overcome gravity. He landed at the top of the break wall without slipping off the side. Relieved, he pulled the canoe into their campsite down the shore. But the incident had severely shaken him. For the first time he seriously questioned his decision to continue with the expedition. All the camping experience and wilderness survival training in the world hadn’t prepared him to put his life on the line for a measly seven-mile day of paddling. What reason was there to think it would be getting any better in the coming months? They had at least ten or twelve weeks ahead of them before their route would take them far enough south to reach warmer weather.
Braun wasn’t the only crew member who felt serious trepidation about continuing. Steve Marr, a teenager who had played the violin and been involved in theater before joining the expedition, was so upset about the decision to keep traveling along the lake that he went to Reid Lewis almost in tears. When he joined the expedition, he thought of it as being something momentous, an event that would have its own place in history. But he didn’t want to be remembered for drowning in a lake in December. The point was to make it in one piece to the Gulf of Mexico. When Marr took Lewis aside to express his concerns, Ken edged in to lecture about not letting the shelf ice beat them. This only made Marr more upset. At that point, he was considering taking some time away from the expedition and going home for a few weeks. Nothing about paddling across a half-frozen lake appealed to him.
“I think you’ll be upset if you go home,” Lewis told him. He encouraged Marr to stick it out, to think about the integrity of the crew and what it would do to everyone else in his boat if he left. Marr was disappointed, but he accepted the logic in Lewis’s argument. He decided to stay with the crew and hope for the best. That didn’t make it any easier to face the lake, though.
The morning of December 15 unfolded bright and clear, a windless day with temperatures soaring into the fifties. Afte
r the last few weeks, it felt almost tropical. The main impediment to the crew’s paddling—the wind—wouldn’t be an issue on the lake today. If they left early enough, they could cover quite a lot of ground once they got past the ice. But instead of paddling, the men hopped on a bus and rode to Valparaiso and Michigan City, where they were expected for presentations all day long. Despite an agreement made at an earlier team meeting when Lewis said they would travel on the lake whenever possible, here they were stuck indoors when they could be making miles on the lake. Lewis simply felt, after considering the issue, that their obligation to the communities they’d promised to visit was just as important as making headway. Without the support of these towns and the people who saw the voyageurs, there would be no expedition. One of the stated purposes was to educate the public. They couldn’t just set off into the wilderness like the old explorers had done; they had performances and classroom visits and public appearances to make. When it came down to it, the voyageurs needed the public support. But that didn’t make it any easier for the men to swallow when they were forced to give up a day of paddling in order to stay indoors and perform, especially now that every good-weather window was so precious. That night when the crew got back to camp after completing their presentations in Valparaiso and Michigan City, they learned that forecasters were predicting twelve- to twenty-mile-per-hour winds for the next day. The mood was mutinous.
On the 16th, a strong breeze was sending icy surf over a three-foot-high wall of ice along the shoreline. A scouting party including John Fialko was sent in the liaison-team vans to Burns Harbor, a small town about sixteen miles to the east. If the paddlers could get there in one trip, they’d have a good place to camp and an ice-free spot to land the canoes. But there were no safe places to disembark between Burns Harbor and Indiana Harbor, and with the wind blowing the way it was, there was no chance of leaving. The scouts called a predetermined number that Lewis was waiting at using one of the factory’s phones. They told him to have the crew put the shelters back up, because there was no way they could go out. The men would have to spend the day mending and catching up on sleep. The simmering frustration from the day before seemed on the verge of boiling over.
Overnight the winds shifted to the southwest, then back to the northwest, remaining strong. The morning of the 17th presented a now-familiar prospect to the men sent to do reconnaissance on the ice levels: Burns Harbor had some slight openings, but there was ice spreading across the lake, and large sheets were piling up on top of one another. The scouts checked Michigan City, farther east, an Indiana town close to the Michigan border. The harbor there was also iced in. Out in the lake, frothing whitecaps lashed the icy shoreline. It was a scene reminiscent of the one they’d faced at Sand Banks on Lake Ontario. Going out to paddle was suicidal.
The crew gathered for a meeting in the afternoon, just as they’d done for the past several days. The uncertainty of what each new day would bring was chewing away at morale. Resentment over the decision to give performances instead of paddle on what now appeared to be one of the last nice days of the year hadn’t yet abated. The options were laid out before the crew members, with a list of pros and cons attached to each. First, there was the lake. They could continue to sit and wait for an opening, then make the last jump across the lake on a nice day. This option would mean finding a new place to camp, getting behind on their schedule, and possibly waiting indefinitely. By the time the wind died down, extensive ice cover might prevent travel. Second, they could head back to the Des Plaines River, either by following the nearby Chicago River or shipping the canoes to Joliet, Illinois. From there, they’d paddle down the Des Plaines to the Illinois River and then the Mississippi. This option would mean cutting out all the visits they planned to make in Michigan and Indiana along the St. Joseph and Kankakee rivers, but it might also be safer and allow them to paddle farther. Finally, they could send the canoes ahead of them on their original route to the St. Joseph River and equip themselves with a minimal amount of gear to make the hundred-mile walk to the St. Joseph. They’d probably get to the river before Christmas, but it would mean walking all day every day, then being bussed to presentations at night.
In the end, the decision was made to walk. La Salle had occasionally abandoned his canoes when the weather grew too dangerous for paddling, so there was a historical precedent. And even if they got a little behind, at least they’d still be moving forward. The crew could make up time when they got back on the rivers. Even if the rivers were iced over, they would be far less treacherous than Lake Michigan. On a river you can always see the shore and land. You don’t have to worry about the wind stirring up huge waves, and unlike on the St. Lawrence, a strong current wouldn’t be a problem until they got to the Mississippi, and then it would be working in their favor. It would be a hard hike across the northern shore of Indiana and up into Michigan, but then it would be over. At least they’d made a decision.
A flurry of organization began after the meeting and lasted for a day and a half. They needed to find someone who could safely transport the canoes and most of their gear; winnow down their belongings to a thirty- to fifty-pound bag; organize the march through U.S. Steel in Gary, Indiana; and find a new way to construct shelters since they could no longer camp beneath the overturned canoes. The last of these tasks was quickly accomplished by a group of men who took some of the tarps to an open area and cobbled together a large shelter held up by paddles, stakes, and rope. The new tent was large enough for everyone to sleep under and was dubbed the “circus tent” for its resemblance to a three-ring affair. Unfortunately, after a few nights sleeping beneath it, the men discovered one problem with the new arrangement: while they slept, the humidity from their breath and any precipitation that fell overnight and leaked through the tarps formed miniature icicles that dangled above their heads. Whoever got up first in the morning was likely to send bits of ice showering down on everyone else.
The next week passed in a monotonous haze of snow and ice and pain. On the 19th the men clumped through U.S. Steel. That evening they were bussed ahead to Benton Harbor, Michigan, and attended Advent mass, where Father Loran addressed the audience.
“I’m sure the expedition didn’t arrive as expected. But it arrived,” he told the assembled congregation. “I’m sure Christ didn’t arrive as expected—a great king. He arrived in a very humble way. It’s appropriate for the fourth Sunday of Advent that the La Salle expedition arrive in a very humble way.”10
On the 20th the group covered nineteen miles from Marquette Park in Gary to Michigan City, following Route 20 and Route 249. The snow came down in short-lived, sporadic blizzards, covering everyone in a layer of melting water and turning the landscape into a white wasteland. That night the men gave presentations to more than seven hundred people who braved snowy roads to see them at the St. Joseph Elks club and the Saint Joseph High School in South Bend. They returned to the circus tent shelter as always and slept as much as they could in the plunging temperatures. It was a constant struggle to get warm, between the freezing air and the icy ground that permeated the pads and sleeping bags they slept in. At least they were all in one space, so their combined body heat helped warm the shelter somewhat. Even so, sometimes at night the men woke up with their nostrils burning from inhaling the freezing air. They could pull their heads down beneath their sleeping bags, but after a short period of time that felt suffocating. Some, like Gorse, could sleep through anything, while others were lucky to get four or five restive hours of sleep at night. They made up for it by napping anywhere and everywhere.
The bright light at the end of the snowy tunnel was the prospect of putting the canoes back in the water on the St. Joseph. The approach of Christmas also brightened everyone’s moods. They made it to Bridgman, Michigan, on Christmas Eve and spent the afternoon visiting nursing homes. In the evening they celebrated with the liaison team. Everyone put aside their hard feelings for the holidays. The ladies of the liaison team performed a parody of one of the crew’s pe
rformances, then gave everyone gag gifts. For Sid Bardwell, a spelling book because his orthography was so horrendous; an eye patch for Sam Hess to remind him of his ocular injury; a book of travel mazes for George LeSieutre since he was drawing a map of the expedition using 17th-century tools. The crew and liaison team were all taken to the University of Notre Dame’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart for midnight mass, where there were pews reserved for them at the front of the church. Everyone chuckled at the fact that they were allowed to bring rifles into a cathedral.
When the crew got back to their camp late that night, they were cheered by the sight of a Christmas tree the town of Bridgman had set up for them. They weren’t at the best campsite—right outside a Texaco gas station—but at least they had bighearted hosts and a day of relaxation and family visits ahead of them. Saint Joseph High School was opened up to the crew on Christmas so that they could share a potluck meal with their families, away from the fans who flocked to them at the campgrounds, and away from members of the media. For a day they could take a break from being voyageurs and go back to being sons, brothers, and husbands. The festive mood was transitory. In the days following Christmas, the crew struggled to make any progress on the St. Joseph River. Although it rarely froze so early in the winter, the weather had already proven itself to be exceptional. Paddling through half-frozen water meant the avant had to chop away at the ice for the canoe to make any headway. More than one ax was lost when it slipped out of the avant’s hands. The canoes were beaten up daily on the ice and patching them in the evenings was a full-time job for Fialko. When the crew arrived in Niles, Michigan, the decision was made to build sleds to carry the boats until they could permanently return to the waterways. The crew spent an afternoon carving ladder-like sleds, paring down the runners with draw knives. The front ends of each of the runners were trimmed down to be narrower so that they could slope up and be strapped to the canoes. The six canoe sleds were augmented by two gear sleds that could transport whatever gear didn’t fit in the canoes.
The Last Voyageurs Page 19