44 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



ragingly save the Intendant Duchesneau and LaSalle, But the inten- 

 dant was a ipoor creature by nature and his position as an opponent to 

 and spy upon the governor, no doubt, must answer for many of his 

 faults.- As for LaSalle he was a silent, forbidding man, struggling 

 against a load of debt and the constant dread of a withdrawal of court 

 favour. Every man in the West who had any standing, with perhaps the 

 exception of Henri de Tonti, he looked upon with suspicion as a possible 

 intruder on his field. He would neither consult, advise nor co-operate 

 and he went his lonely way until the horrible tragedy on the borders of 

 Mexico ended his unhappy life. 



With these two exceptions every one speaks well of Dulhut: it is 

 technically true that Frontenac imptrisoned him, but when one reads that 

 though he kept him within the bounds of the Château St. Louis he had 

 a seat and cover for him each day at his own table; it is easy to see that 

 it was only a device to keep him out of the clutches of Duchesneau, the 

 intendant. 



He built the first post at Detroit, another at Kaministiquia (the 

 present Fort William) on Lake Superior, another, Fort La Tourette on 

 Lake Nepigon and for nearly thirty years from 1678 to 1707 he was ex- 

 ploring, trading and giving his best services to the Government to hold 

 the Indians not only in check but to keep them loyal to France. He 

 was the first to strike a blow after the awful massacre of Lachine by the 

 Iroquois in 1689; a massacre believed to have been instigated by the 

 English and which ushered in that long series of murderous raids which 

 Idrew a line of blood from the banks of the Mohawk to the shores of 

 Maine and was the beginning not of a seven but a seventy years' war 

 which lasted until the capitulation of Montreal in 1760. 



Dulhut was the earliest explorer of the ISTorthwest; he knew every 

 stretch and bay of Lake Superior and much of the country to the North, 

 he saw the upper waters of the Mississippi long before LeSueur made 

 his famous journey from its mouth, he knew of the Great Salt Lake 

 and only abandoned the journey there in order to save the Père 

 Hennepin, who repaid him with grudging thanks and not a few lies. 

 He held the wild tribes in 'effective subjectiLon and more than once led 

 them as allies to the French. For this at the end of twenty years he 

 received promotion, a captaincy in the colony troops which meant pay 

 of about 1,000 to 1,200 livres a year. He was heavily in debt and 

 when his old uncle, Jacques Patron, died in 1691, he bequeathed all 

 his property to La Tourette. Worse than this, he had been a life- 

 long martyr to gout; that he should have kept at his post so long 

 under this most exquisite of tortures speaks volumes for his endurance. 



