La Salle's Colony in Texas, 1684-1689
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story of their wanderings but they gave very meager details. It seems they wandered on through various savage tribes, some of whom received them kindly. Those who had offered resistance had quickly fled, terrified at the loud report of the French arquebuses. After going a considerable distance they came to Indians who were more friendly, who gave them much information concerning the Spaniards. They declared that the Spaniards were generally hated by the tribes of that country and that it would be easy to gather a host of warriors and lead them over the Rio Grande. La Salle, however, was in no condition to attempt the conquest suggested after his long march. "The invasion of New Biscay must be postponed to a more propitious day." He seems to have gone still farther until he came to a large river which he mistook for the Mississippi and where he built a fort with a palisade to leave some of his companions there.: 7 It should be noticed that La Salle and his companions had been away for a period of six months; that they had visited tribes who were well acquainted with the Spaniards; and that La Salle admitted that he had found a large river which he knew was not the Mississippi; and that the only reason why he did not proceed to invade Nueva Vizcaya was because of the poor condition of his men and his lack of confidence in his Indian allies. It is evident that he must have gone west and not east, otherwise he could not have found Indians acquainted with the Spanish settlements west of the Mississippi. It is significant that the Rio Grande is mentioned specifically. All these details prove conch1- sively that in this first expedition La Salle was not in reality looking for the Mississippi but rather for the outposts of New Spain. The decla- rations made later by the Indians in Nueva Vizcaya, to which we shall refer in the following chapter, corroborate the meager account of the western wanderings of La Salle during the winter of 1685 and the spring of 1686. It was after his return that La Salle learned of the loss of his only remaining ship, the Belle. This last blow to his hopes of securing aid to carry out his great enterprise, proved too much for his weakened con- dition. Worn out by fatigue, he fell seriously ill. "In truth," says his brother, the priest, "after the loss of the vessel which deprived us of our only means of returning to France, we had no resource but in the 27 The details here summarized concerning this expedition are taken mainly from Parkman, op. cit., 403, who gathered them from the accounts o{ Joutel , Le Clercq and the Prflcus 1•erbal found in l\fargry, op. cit. , Vols. II and III .
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