ways of commerce rear their arching columns. Hennepin's name is linked indissolubly with his discovery as every foot of soil for many miles in every direction from the Falls of St. Anthony is handed down from generation to generation through the records of the county which bears his name.

THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENNEPIN.

It is proper in this connection to look for a moment at the history and character of the discoverer. He was the first European to see and name the Falls of St. Anthony; the first to explore the Mississippi above the mouth of the Wisconsin; and the first to publish an account of his journeys and discoveries in Europe. The facts concerning the early life of Hennepin are meager.

He was born in Hainaut, a province of Belgium, in the town of Ath. During his early years he wished to visit foreign countries in search of adventure. In order to gain the object of his ambition he became a priest, as this was the surest road, in that age, to distinction. He became a member of the Recollect order of the Franciscans. He seems to have been chaplain, in an early part of his career, at a hospital in Flanders, and was subsequently present at the battle of Seneffe in 1674. Two years later he received an order from his superior to embark for Canada. With this he gladly complied, as he hoped to be able in the new world to carry out his long cherished plan of discovery and exploration. He spent two years in the neighborhood of Quebec and Kingston in various undertakings and adventures, on one of which he penetrated as far among the Iroquois of New York as Albany. In the year 1678 he was sent to join the expedition of La Salle, then about to embark on a voyage of discovery to the great lakes of the Northwest. His subsequent career has already been traced.

Considerable discussion and speculation has arisen as to the authenticity and veracity of the accounts he gave of his discoveries and explorations. In 1683, three years after his discovery of the Falls, he published in Paris his "Description of Louisiana." Subsequently many editions of this original work appeared. The many changes and variations in these subsequent accounts have given rise to grave doubts as to

Hennepin's veracity. His first book was published during the lifetime of La Salle, his superior officer on the expedition about which he was writing.

Let us examine the evidence in the statements of his contemporaries, and of those who lived at the time of the publication of the various editions. La Salle, in a letter written August 22, 1682, probably to the Abbé Bernou, about the time of Hennepin's return to France, says:

I have deemed it seasonable to give you a narrative of the adventures of this canoe, because I have no doubt it will be spoken of, and if you desire to confer with Father Louis Hennepin, Recollect, who has gone back to France, it is necessary to know him somewhat, for he will not fail to exaggerate everything; it is his character; and to myself, he has written me, as though he had been all ready to be burned, although he was not even in danger; but he believes that it is honorable for him to act in this way, and he speaks more in keeping with what he wishes than what he knows.

The researches of John Gilmary Shea inform us that Father Le Clercq, in 1691, referred to Hennepin and his first work in terms of praise; but that De Michel, the editor of Joutel in 1713, said:

Father Hennepin, a Fleming, of the same order of Recollects, who seems to know the country well, and who took part in great discoveries; although the truth of his Relations is very much contested. He is the one who went northward towards the source of the Missicipi, which he called Mechasipi, and who printed at Paris a Relation of the countries around that river under the name of Louisiana. He should have stopped there and not gone on, as he did in Holland, to issue another edition much enlarged, and perhaps not so true, which he dedicated to William III, Prince of Orange, then King of Great Britain, a design as odd as it was ridiculous in a religious, not to say worse. For after great long eulogies which he makes in his dedication of this Protestant prince, he begs and conjures him to think of these vast unknown countries, to conquer them, send colonies there, and obtain for the Indians the knowledge of the true God and of his worship, and to cause the gospel to be preached. This good religious whom many, on account of his extravagance, falsely believed to have become an apostate, had no thought of such a thing. So he scandalized the Catholics and set the Huguenots laughing. For would these enemies of the Roman church pay Recollects to go to Canada to preach Popery as they called it? Or would they carry any religion but their own? And Father Hennepin, can he in that case offer any excuse?

As a result of Hennepin's dedication and declarations in this edition published in Utrecht in 1697, the British were induced to send some vessels to enter and explore the Mississippi. The governor of Canada, Callieres, writing to the minister Pontchartrain, May 12th, 1699, said: "I have learned that they are preparing vessels in England and Holland, to take possession of Louisiana, upon the Relation of Père Louis Hennepin, a Recollect, who has made a book of it, dedicated to King William."*

That this action of Hennepin's actually took place seems to be incontrovertible, from the fact that when the good friar wished to return to America, Louis XIV sent the following despatch to Callieres, then governor of Canada:

His majesty has been informed that Father Hennepin, a Dutch Franciscan, who has formerly been in Canada, is desirous of returning thither. As his majesty is not satisfied with the conduct of the friar, it is his pleasure, if he return thither, that they arrest him and send him to the Intendant of Rochefort.

Still later Father Charlevoix said of Hennepin's writings:

All these works are written in a declamatory style, which offends by its turgidity and shocks by the liberties which the author takes and his unbecoming invectives. As for the substance of matters Father Hennepin thought he might take a traveler's license, hence he is much decried in Canada, those who had accompanied him having often protested that he was anything but veritable in his histories.

In recent years there have been apologists of the Franciscan priest who claim that his statements are both truthful and accurate. Notable among these are John Gilmary Shea and Archbishop Ireland. In 1880 Mr. Shea published a translation into English of Hennepin's "Discovery of Louisiana,” from which several of the citations in this paper are copied. In his preface to that work he says:

Doubts thrown upon Hennepin by the evident falsity of a later work bearing his name, have led to a general charge of falsehood against him. In justice to him, it must be admitted that there are grounds for believing that his notes were adapted by an unscrupulous editor, and the second book altered even after it was printed.

The claim is made that Hennepin's narrative is truthful, and that the inconsistencies and differences between the first *Smith's History of Wisconsin, vol. I, p. 318.

and subsequent editions of his work are caused by unauthorized interpolations by the editor. Shea, after dwelling at length on the various phases of this question, says:

To sum up all, the case stands thus: "The Description of Louisiana," by Father Hennepin, is clearly no plagiarism from La Salle's account, and on the contrary the so called La Salle Relation is an anonymous undated plagiarism from Hennepin's book, and moreover the Description of Louisiana is sustained by contemporary evidence and by the topography of the country, and our knowledge of the language and manners of the Sioux. It shows vanity in its author, but no falsification. So far as it goes, it presents Hennepin as truthful and accurate. A later work shows a suppression after printing, introduction of new and untrue matter, and the evident hand of an ignorant editor. For this book as finally published, Hennepin cannot be held responsible, nor can he justly be stigmatized as mendacious by reason of its false assertions.

The third book is evidently by the same editor as the second, and the defence which it puts forward in Hennepin's name cannot alter the facts, or make the original author responsible.

In view of all this, it seems that now at least the case of Hennepin should be heard with more impartiality; and we call for a rehearing in the view of documents now accessible, under the conviction that our earlier judgments were too hasty.

Shea, in his "Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi," published in 1852, was a severe critic of Hennepin. His explanation of the new view taken in 1880 does not seem to me sufficient.

Archbishop Ireland follows the same line of reasoning as Shea, and contends for the general truthfulness of Hennepin's books. In an address before this society at the "Hennepin Bi-Centennary," in 1880, he said:

Hennepin's book had made much noise in France. Utrecht was a great literary center. It is very easy to suppose, then, basing our verdict upon the facts which I have put before you, that the second volume, the one published at Utrecht, was made up, and published, not by Hennepin, but by some stranger, some man who had adopted the principal part of the Paris edition, adding on certain notations, which he got from Le Clercq's "Establishment of Christianity" in the new world, to bring it up, so to speak, to date. *

With reference to the interpolations about the discovery and exploration of the lower Mississippi, the same author said further in this address:

Minnesota Historical Society Collections, vol. VI, p. 70.

The very matter of these ten pages shows that they were interpolated. The pages tell us that Hennepin was at the mouth of the Arkansas on the 24th of April, and yet, in the following pages, he is said to have been captured, near the Wisconsin, on the 24th day of April, the date according to the Paris edition. Besides, in these ten pages it is stated that Easter Sunday occurred on the 23rd of March. Now, Hennepin could never have made such an error. In 1680, Easter Sunday occurred on the first of April, and it is so stated in Hennepin's first volume. These are very significant facts, which cannot be overlooked, and when we take them all into consideration, together with the general appearance of this second volume, when we remember him as the scholar and close observer which the Paris volume shows him to have been, when we remember the habits of literary piracy that were then common in Europe, have we not solid foundations for saying that it cannot be proven that Father Louis Hennepin wrote and published, himself, the second volume? This Utrecht volume is the one upon which all the accusations against him have been based, and once take away from it Hennepin's name, there is no ground whatever to impeach.

Let us examine, on the other hand, some of the critical estimates of Francis Parkman, an American historian, who has, more carefully than any other man, examined all the evidence on this vexed question. He says:

Hennepin's first book was published soon after his return from his travels, and while La Salle was still alive. In it, he relates the accomplishment of the instructions given him, without the smallest intimation that he did more. Fourteen years after, when La Salle was dead, he published another edition of his travels, in which he advanced a new and surprising pretension. Reasons connected with his personal safety, he declares, before compelled him to remain silent; but a time at length has come when the truth must be revealed. And he proceeds to affirm that, before ascending the Mississippi, he, with his two men, explored its whole course from the Illinois to the sea, thus anticipating the discovery which forms the crowning laurel of La Salle.

"I am resolved," he says, "to make known here to the whole world the mystery of this discovery, which I have hitherto concealed, that I might not offend the Sieur de la Salle, who wished to keep all the glory and all the knowledge of it to himself. It is for this that he sacrificed many persons whose lives he exposed, to prevent them from making known what they had seen, and thereby crossing his secret plans. . . ."

He then proceeds to recount, at length, the particulars of his alleged exploration. The story was distrusted from the first.* Why had he

See the preface of the Spanish translation by Don Sebastian Fernandez de Medrano, 1699, and also the letter of Gravier, dated 1701, in Shea's Early Voyages on the Mississippi. Barcia, Charlevoix, Kalm, and other early writers, put a low value on Hennepin's veracity.