EARLY NOTICES OF THE MISSOURI RIVER AND INDIANS. 113 



■many and scattering the remainder. Upon the return of the warriors from their 

 hunt, the battling was renewed, but the Illinois were finally forced to retire 

 across the Mississippi and seek refuge among the Osages. 



Father Membre,* another missionary in La Salle's party, in his narrative of 

 "Discoveries in the Mississippi Valley," published in Le Clercq's "First Estab- 

 lishment of Faith in New France," Paris, 1691, mentions this as follows : "There 

 had been several engagements with equal loss on both sides, and at last, of the 

 seventeen villages, the greater part had retired beyond the river Colbert, f among 

 the Osages, where a part of the Iroquois pursued them." Of La Salle's voyage 

 down the Mississippi, the same writer gives an extended account, and mentions 

 the Missouri as follows : " The floating ice kept us at this place till the 13th of 

 February, when we set out and six leagues lower down found the Osage river 

 coming from the West. It is as full as large as the river Colbert into which it 

 empties, troubling it so that, from the mouth of the Osage the water is hardly 

 drinkable, the Indians assure us that this river is formed by many others and that 

 they ascend it for ten or twelve days to a mountain where it rises, that on the 

 river are a great number of large villages of many different nations, arable and 

 prairie lands, and abundance of cattle and beaver. Although the river is very 

 large, the Colbert does not seem augmented by it, but it pours in so much mud 

 that from its mouth the water of the great river is more like clear mud than river- 

 water." 



After his return from the mouth of the Mississippi, La Salle conceived the 

 project of establishing a colony of French and Indians at Fort St. Louis,| on the 

 Illinois river near the Kaskaskia village. He hoped to embrace in this confeder- 

 ation a majority of the western tribes,and among them the Missouris. Out of the 

 profits of their trade and the furs gathered, he expected to be remunerated for the 

 losses he had sustained in his enterprises and which now amounted to forty thou- 

 sand crowns. But while he had been contending in the valley against difficulties 

 and obstacles calculated to dishearten the stoutest spirit, a change had been in 

 the government of the province detrimental to his interests. Govenor Frontenac § 

 his friend and supporter had been recalled to France and his place supplied by 

 Le Febre de la Barre, an old naval officer, illy fitted for the station to which he 

 had been promoted. La Salle made an effort to secure his good will and wrote 

 him early in 1683, expressing the hope that he should have from him the same 



♦Lenobious Membre, a Franciscian friar, native of Bafaume, France, arrived in Canada in 1675. Stationed 

 at Fort Frontenace in 1678 Accompaied La Salle to the Illinois country and the Gulf of Mexico in 1862. Re- 

 turned to France and sailed again ,vvfith La Salle as Superior of Missionaries and landed with the colony in 

 Texas. Was left there when La Salle started on his fatal journey and was killed with his companions at the 

 destruction of Fort St. Louis in 1689. 



fColbert. This name was given to the Mississippi River by Joliet on his return to Canada, in honor of the 

 French Minister of that name and was adopted by the French for a considerable period. 



tFort St. Louis. La Salle gave this name to the post he established on the Illinois in 1680, it being on the 

 summit of a great rock near the present village of Utica. He also gave the same name to the post he estab- 

 lished or the coast of Texas in 1685. 



§Louis de Baude, Count of of Pallua and Frontenac, was appointed govenor and arrived in Canada in 1672. 

 was recalled in 1682. 



