Explorers of the Mississippi (Search Book 8) by Tim Severin

Author:Tim Severin [Severin, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2019-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

7

Iron Hand

When La Salle’s assassination removed the leading character from the drama that was now rapidly unfolding along the Mississippi Valley, his place on the center of the stage was taken by his second-in-command, Henry de Tonti. For nine difficult years Tonti had worked in the shadows of the renowned Sieur de la Salle; now, quite unexpectedly, he found himself heir to La Salle’s dreams and half-finished ambitions in a New World which was changing rapidly. At Montreal and Quebec, in the British coastal settlements, and among the Anglo-Dutch of the Hudson, the tempo of expansion was quickening. There was a surge in the scramble for America; the prizes were the profits of the fur trade, the allegiance of the Indians, and possession of the interior. The deciding factor was, of course, the direct struggle for supremacy in the northeast corner of the continent where the midget colonies of New France and Massachusetts struck at one another with raid, counterraid, and intrigue. But the inter-colonial rivalry was also an important motive in the efforts of the explorers whether they were traders, government agents, or missionaries. France had stolen a march on England by making the basic discovery that the Mississippi flowed south to the Gulf of Mexico, and she had followed up this advantage by establishing a flamboyant claim to the entire area drained by the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri without even knowing the extent of this region. However, there was nothing to prevent England challenging the validity of this claim provided that English agents could cross the Appalachians and enter the great central valley. So a situation developed in which English explorers and traders moving westward from their coastal settlements encountered French agents working in the opposite direction from their headquarters on the Mississippi. Both groups were intent on persuading the Indians to trade with them alone and both sides were prepared to employ deceit and treachery in the struggle. It is no surprise, therefore, that England’s most successful agents were a Dutchman, Arnout Viele, and a renegade French voyageur, Jean Couture, who defected to Carolina. In 1692 Viele, an enterprising boschloper, pioneered a route for the English from the Mohawk to the Ohio and not only persuaded the Shawnee living in that area to trade with Albany but also successfully tapped a large portion of the lower Great Lakes Indian market. Farther south Jean Couture, who had once worked under La Salle, showed the Carolinians that their traders could take trains of pack horses up the Savannah River, cross to the Tennessee, and so win through to the tribes of the Mississippi valley. His work complemented a trip in 1698 by one Thomas Welch, a Carolinian, who opened up the even easier route direct from Charleston to the mouth of the Arkansas. Significantly, this venture isolated even more thoroughly the Spanish colonists in Florida so that the real contest for the Mississippi was left to the French and the English. These two nations pushed their activities inland—one down

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