nk, though La Salle was backed by the King, he had no right
to trade at Michilimackinac, for his monopoly explicitly states he shall
not interfere with the trade of the north, but barter only with the
tribes towards the Illinois. Never mind! he loads his ships to the water
line with furs to pay his increasing debts, and sends the ship on down to
Niagara with the cargo, while he and Tonty, with different parties,
proceed to the south end of Lake Michigan to cross the Chicago portage
leading to the Mississippi. Did the jealous traders bribe the pilot to
sink the ship to bottom? Who knows? Certain it is when Tonty and La
Salle went down the {138} Illinois early in the new year of 1680, news of
disasters came thick and fast. The _Griffon_ had sunk with all her
cargo. The ship from France with the year's supplies for La Salle at
Fort Frontenac had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence; and
worse than these losses, which meant financial ruin, here among the
Illinois Indians were Mascoutin Indian spies bribed to stir up trouble
for La Salle. Small wonder that he named the fort built here Fort
Crevecoeur,--Fort Broken Heart.

[Illustration: THE BUILDING OF THE _GRIFFON_ (After the engraving in
Father Hennepin's "Nouvelle Decouverte," Amsterdam, 1704)]

If La Salle had been fur trader only, as his enemies averred, and not
patriot, one wonders why he did not sit still in his fort at Frontenac
and draw his profits of $20,000 a year, instead of risking loss and
poison and ruin and calumny and death by chasing the phantom of his great
desire to found a New France on the Mississippi.

Never pausing to repine, he orders Hennepin, the friar, to take two
voyageurs and descend Illinois River as far as the Mississippi. Tonty he
leaves in charge of the Illinois fort. He {139} himself proceeds
overland the width of half a continent, to Fort Frontenac and Montreal.

Friar Hennepin's adventures have been told in his own book of marvels,
half truth, half lies. Jolliet, it will be remembered, had explored the
Great River south of the Wisconsin. Hennepin struck up from the mouth of
the Illinois, to explore north, and he found enough adventure to satisfy
his marvel-loving soul. The Sioux captured him somewhere near the
Wisconsin. In the wanderings of his captivity he went as far north as
the Falls of St. Anthony, the site of Minnesota's Twin Cities, and he
finally fell in with a band of Duluth's bushrovers from Kaministiqu