Further revision of LaSalle's route? Another exercise in topology*

In my June 14 2009 Email "Revise LaSalle's Route? An Exercise in Topology" I discussed the new "tools" that have become available since I did my original research including Internet access, satellite imagery and the Natural Features Inventory pre-settlement vegetation maps.

In that memorandum I described what I believe to be a more accurate designation of the LaSalle party's probable route from where they abandoned their elm-bark canoe along side the Huron River to where they built the raft to float across the Detroit River.

In this exercise I am re-looking at how they got from Ft. Miami to the Paw Paw River valley on the first day of their cross-peninsula trek on March 24, 1680.

Those of you who know the Twin Cities know that downtown St. Joe where Ft. Miami was located sits on top of a very steep bluff overlooking the St. Joseph River on the north and Lake Michigan's beach on the west. Now the river is confined by Corps of Engineers' breakwaters to a straight west course out into the lake. In LaSalle's time it was free-flowing and curved around the base of the bluff a ways before entering the lake. The actual entrance shifted north or south over time according to the whims of storms and the along-shore current.

The Paw Paw River flows into the St. Joseph River from the northeast through an extensive low-land which in LaSalle's day was a large marsh. The extent of that marsh is shown very plainly on the pre-settlement vegetation map of Berrien County. The confluence of the Paw Paw with the St. Joseph is about 3/4 mile east of and inland from the Lake Michigan shore. The marsh extended most of that distance. There were low sand dunes between the marsh and the big lake.

The high and dry ground on both sides of the St. Joseph River was covered with a beech-sugar maple forest according to the pre-settlement vegetation map as was the dry land south of the Paw Paw River marsh now occupied by the City of Benton Harbor.

When LaSalle concluded that his ship the Griffon was lost and that he would have to return to Niagara by walking cross-country his first problem was getting across the St. Joseph River. They had walked up the Lake Michigan beach from the south and climbed the bluff to get to the fort. I am surprised that the two men occupying the fort didn't have a canoe but apparently not because LaSalle's party built a raft to cross the St. Joseph. LaSalle said that took them half a day on March 24, 1680.

My first job in this exercise is to figure out where they would have been able to cobble together a raft. It makes sense that it would have been on the left bank of the St. Joseph where there was relatively level, dry ground (as opposed to where the river flowed against the steep bluff or marshland) and where the river bank was covered by trees. This assumes that LaSalle and his men would have made their raft by lashing together riverside downed trees or large branches with vines.

A close examination of the pre-settlement vegetation map and the USGS Benton Harbor Quadrangle topographic map (1:24,000 1970) shows that the closest such place to the fort would have been along the left bank of the river a little less than a half mile downstream of the Napier Avenue Bridge (Napier Avenue follows the trace of an old Indian trail that eventually led to the Kalamazoo River ford). That location would have been about 1 3/4 miles from the fort. The route from the Ft. Miami Historical Marker would be kitty-corner south to the intersection of Wayne and Broad Streets then down Broad Street (past the house where my late wife Elaine grew up) to the bottom of the hill and then following Ann Street upstream along the river bank.

The next question becomes would they have crossed the river directly or would they have floated downstream before they landed and got off the raft on the right bank? If they could have floated or poled about 3/4 mile downstream they could have landed on a prominent point just beyond a gully cut in the right bank by an intermittent stream. They would have run into some marsh before they could reach the bank at that point but in spring flood the water level would probably have been high enough. Today Parker Avenue comes down to the river at that point, about a block south of Benton Harbor High School.

That side of the St. Joseph River was also covered with beech-maple forest. About a mile to two miles to the east began more open oak-hickory forest. LaSalle was deliberately avoiding Indian trails and open woods, savannas or prairies for fear of Iroquois war parties so he would have headed northeast along the edge of the Paw Paw River marsh still in the beech-maple woods until the marsh ran out where the Paw Paw flowed out of a relatively narrow valley.

To follow that route today you would zigzag through Benton Harbor on Empire Avenue, Colfax Avenue, East Market Street, Highland Avenue, Paw Paw Avenue and Territorial Road.

The area where LaSalle and his men would have started up the Paw Paw River valley is now mostly occupied by the Southwest Michigan Regional Airport.

The pre-settlement Paw Paw River marsh was over two square miles in area. It's extent can be plainly seen on a topographic map or by observation from high ground in St. Joe or Benton Harbor.

The vegetation type of the Paw Paw River valley bottom was (and mostly still is) mixed hardwood swamp. I believe the travelers would have been following the edge of the beech maple forest above the mixed hardwood swamp. Remember they were traveling in the leafless season thus would have been able to hike along away from the river a ways just keeping the left bank of the meanders in view without having to follow closely the Paw Paw's extremely sinuous path.

The problem of trespass on private land keeps us from laying out a trail closely following LaSalle's but there are places where the 1680 experience can be sampled such as the Sarrett Nature Center between Benton Harbor and Coloma, adjacent to the Watervliet Airport runways, and the Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy's Paw Paw River Preserve.

* In case you have forgotten or never knew, "topology" is defined as the topographic study of an area in relation to its history.

LaSalle Relay Inaugural - Second Leg

Son Jim took advantage of another of his unpaid State Worker furlough days to bicycle another leg of the LaSalle Relay St. Joe-to-Detroit River cross-peninsula route. You will remember that on July 24 he and fellow State Worker Dale Turton bicycled the route from St. Joe to Kalamazoo. I reported on that trip by Email of July 28.

This time on Friday August 7 he started at Springport and bicycled to the Waterloo Farm Museum. His route took him through Tomkins Center, Rives Junction, Pleasant Lake and Munith. He crossed the Grand River on the Maple Grove Road bridge. I volunteered to drive "Sag Wagon" for him and caught up with him in my Chevy Malibu Maxx at Munith and then waited for him at the Farm Museum.

Before heading back to his bicycle-carrying Pontiac Vibe parked at the Springport High School we toured the Portage Lake Swamp and Hugh Heward portage territory crossed by Charlie Parmelee and Doug McDougall in 2008; walked, waded and back-portaged by Neil Miller and Brian Prodin on April 17 of this year, and portaged with wheels by the Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge paddlers this last spring. We were really impressed by the difficulties of terrain and distances covered by these guys in 2008 and 2009 and by Hugh and his Frenchmen in 1790.

On the return trip we took an alternate route and made the Berry Road Bridge crossing of the Grand. You may remember that I believe the LaSalle party's 1680 encounter with the Mascoutin Indians (who mistook them for an Iroquois war party) took place at the Grand River crossing between the Maple Grove Bridge and the Berry Road Bridge.

The Jackson County roads were uniformly good to excellent for bicycling in contrast to Calhoun County's poor roads that we had explored by car earlier. The scenery and terrain are very attractive.

On a trip to Ron Sell's Unadilla Boat Works earlier in the summer for Jim to try out a Bell Rob Roy solo canoe we explored the route LaSalle had walked from the site of today's Waterloo Farm Museum to the Huron River at Dexter. Island Lake Road, which follows the old Indian trail, is very rough and unsuitable for bicycles as are most of the roads leading to it. Our tentative plans for next year's LaSalle Relay call for this 6 1/2 mile stretch to be hiked. If we go for bicycling beyond the Farm Museum we will have to work out an alternative route.

Jim is hoping for opportunities to bicycle the gap between Kalamazoo and Springport before he goes on the Dalmac Lansing-to-Mackinack bike tour on Labor Day weekend. We have not yet reconnoitered the roads between Kalamazoo and Pennfirld in Calhoun County by car.

LaSalle Relay Inaugural - Details, as promised.

(posted by Karen - written by the Topologist)

The LaSalle Relay Project has been launched by two intrepid bikers doing a 62 miler from St. Joe to northwest of Kalamazoo.

On Friday July 24 at 10:30 AM son Jim of Grand Ledge and his friend and fellow State worker Dale Turton of Kalamazoo took advantage of the first of Governor Granholm's mandatory unpaid furlough days to take off on their road bicycles from the Ft. Miami Historical Marker on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan and the mouth of the St. Joseph River on a route designed to trace the great French explorer LaSalle's Spring of 1680 hike up the Paw Paw River Valley on his way across the Peninsula to Lake Erie.

On hand to cheer them on was a group of my late wife Elaine's relatives who live in St. Joe and Sodus plus my niece Patty Geisler and husband Geoff of Watervliet who hosted the bikers and had scouted out the route by car.

The bikers mostly followed county roads and crossed the Paw Paw River several times. On their way they traveled via Riverside, Coloma, Watervliet, Hartford, Lawrence, Maple Lake north of Paw Paw (where Dale's brother joined them), Almena and Wolf Lake State Fish Hatchery ending at Dale's house northwest of Kalamazoo. The trip took them 6 hours.

LaSalle and the four Frenchmen and one Indian who accompanied him took three days to cover the same distance. They left Ft. Miami on the morning of March 24, 1680, spent a half day building a raft to cross the St. Joseph River (called by them River of the Miamis) then 2 1/2 days bushwhacking up the Paw Paw River valley. In his letter describing the trip LaSalle said "... we continued our march through the woods, which was so interlaced with thorns and brambles that in two days and one half our clothes were all torn and our faces so covered with blood that we hardly knew each other." After exiting the Paw Paw valley into "..woods.more open..." they camped on the edge of a prairie where they had an encounter with Pottawatomie Indians.

When white men explored and settled that area west of Kalamazoo they named it "Grand Prairie." That name survives today as "Grand Prairie School," "Grand Prairie Avenue," and "Grand Prairie Golf Course." When the bikers were traveling on the east end of H Avenue northwest of Kalamazoo they crossed the north end of that prairie.

The exact location of LaSalle's campsite where they were surrounded by Pottawatomie's can't be known but it was probably along highway M43 about a mile east of US 31.

I look forward to Jim and/or others road biking beyond Kalamazoo at least as far the Waterloo Farm Museum in northeastern Jackson County. From there on to Dexter the roads get so bad mountain bikes may be in order. Alternatively we may have to lay out a route that sticks to paved roads but deviates from LaSalle's route. The object is to get to Dexter where LaSalle's men built an elm-bark canoe and launched it on the Huron River.

The next leg of the LaSalle Relay would be by canoe down the Huron through Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti to French Landing with a stop at Belleville's LaSalle statue.

The final leg would be by land to Pte. Moulliee and up to Gibraltar where I am now convinced LaSalle had the raft built that would take him across the Detroit River to today's Ontario.

My ultimate hope with respect to the LaSalle Relay idea is to sucker at least six walkers into hiking from St. Joe to Dexter. I wouldn't object if they did it in stages.

LaSalle Relay Inaugural Slide Show

Photos from the recent LaSalle Relay Inaugural. Details to follow.

Revise LaSalle's Route? An Exercise in Topology

Since I did my research on the route of LaSalle's 1680 walk across the Lower Peninsula in the 90's many additional tools have become available to me. Some are technical like my kids' hand-me-down computers which have given me access to the magic of Internet mapping sites.

Others are newly published like the Natural Features Inventory pre-settlement vegetation maps for all Michigan counties.

Still others existed before but I had only limited access to them. I'm thinking of Hinsdale's 1931 "Archaeological Atlas of Michigan", for example. When I was doing my research in the Library of Michigan I could access that large atlas a couple hours at a time at most, and then only on those occasions that I was able to neglect other duties to spend time in the library. Now, thanks to the generosity of Karl Williams, I have my own photographic copy of Hinsdale for the counties I am working on.

Also thanks to Karl and Geneva Wiskemann I have color copies of the pre-settlement vegetation maps of those counties. And thanks to Jean King for her penetrating questions that send me back to the drawing board to justify some of my conclusions. Karl has also pushed my button by sending photographic copies maps showing old Michigan pioneer trails for me to study. These "old timers" (I can call them that, being older than they) are keeping me on my toes.

Enough of the cliches and thanks. Now to what I have set out to do, review and if necessary revise my conclusions from the 90's as to the route of LaSalle's cross-peninsula walk.

I remain satisfied as to the route I think that LaSalle and his men took in 1680 from his fort at today's city of St. Joseph on Lake Michigan nearly to the upper end of the Portage River in the northeast corner of Jackson County.

As I said in my May 25 message "LaSalle Relay-The "Corridor", if I could redo the map with the 1999 Michigan History article and the enlargement that hangs in the Michigan Historical Museum I would move the red line showing his route to take him north of the upper end of the Portage River (see my blog www.thetopologist.blogspot.com).

I am no longer happy with the route I showed the party using when walking to the Detroit River after they gave up trying to go down the Huron and abandoned thier elm-bark canoe. Here is my new take:

I still think they left the Huron at French Landing where the river takes its big bend to the south. I think they then followed an Indian trail that Hinsdale shows and calls the "Potawatomi Trail". This trail generally follows the trend of the Huron between its left bank and a couple of tributaries named Silver Creek and Smith Creek. It does not follow all of the Huron's meanders.

Hinsdale shows another Indian trail paralleling the Lake Erie shore and the right bank of the Detroit River. That trail is now traced by a highway called River Road on some maps and West Jefferson Avenue on others. It was the main Indian trail between the mouth of the Maumee River (Toledo) and present-day Detroit.

Between that trail and Lake Erie the pre-settlement vegetation map shows nothing but marsh to the south and for a long ways to the north. Hinsdale's Potawatomi Trail dead ends at that unnamed trail. I think LaSalle and his men would have turned left and followed the shore trail to the northeast for two reasons. First it would have been obvious from that location that to the south the marsh around the mouth of the Huron was very extensive. Second, they wanted to end up at the bank of the Detroit River, not the shore of Lake Erie.

Following the shore trail in a northerly direction they would have had marsh to their right between them and the river until they arrived at the peninsula now occupied by Gibralter. The pre-settlement vegetation map shows woods right up to the river bank there. They needed live and dead elm trees and materials to make a raft. LaSalle 's plan called for leaving two men to make an elm-bark canoe and go to Michilimackinac, while the remaining four would build a raft and cross the Detroit River to present-day Ontario.

I believe the raft would have been made from riverside downed trees and large branches lashed together with vines. Starting the river crossing at the Gibralter peninsula would have them launching in the shelter of the peninsula and Celeron Island and would give them room to diagonal towards the Ontario shore and land before they could be swept into Lake Erie by the river's current.

I think you who are interested can follow all this on your maps, but we really need to make one for the blog. I'll consult with my daughter the Blogmaster on that.

LaSalle Chronology

To place LaSalle into his Michigan historical context, here is a chronology of events in and around Michigan involving him. Remember, during his time what would become Michigan and the other Great Lake states was a complete wilderness, sparsely peopled by Indian tribes and frequently visited by war parties, by far the most dangerous being the Iroquois. LASALLE'S FIRST SIGHT OF MICHIGAN -1679 In his book LaSalle: The Life aand Times of an Explorer, author John Upton Terrel describes LaSalle's first sight of Michigan: "On August 10 the Griffon stood into the Strait of Detroit. All marveled at the beauty and richness of the country which reached away on each side of the passage. Groves of black walnut and wild plum trees and oaks festooned with grape vines stood like islands in the fine prairies." (Cadillac did not land at Detroit until 1701). LASALLE AT THE STRAITS OF MACKINAC-1679 After surviving a storm on Lake Huron the Griffon arrives at the Straits. The eminent historian Francis Parkman in his 1879 book, LaSalle and the Discovery of the Great West, describes the arrival of the Griffon: "...and now her port was won, and she found her rest behind the point of St. Ignace of the Michilimackinac, floating in that tranquil cove where crystal waters cover but cannot hide the pebbly depths". BUILDING FT. MIAMI-1679 LaSalle in the Griffon sailed on to Green Bay where the ship was loaded with furs and sent off to Niagara. Then LaSalle headed south. According to Parkman: "He pushed on...circling around the southern shore of Lake Michigan, till he reached the mouth of the St. Joseph, called by him the Miamis...It was the first of November. Winter was at hand, and the streams would soon be frozen." Here he waited for his second in command, Tonty, who was coming down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Parkman goes on: "The men clamored to go forward, urging that they should starve if they could not reach the villages of the Illinois before the tribe scattered for the winter hunt. LaSalle was inexorable...The men grumbled but obeyed; and to divert their thoughts, he set them to building a fort of timber on a rising ground at the mouth of the river...They had spent twenty days at the task, and their work was well advanced, when at length Tonty appeared." UP THE ST. JOSEPH RIVER TO THE SOUTH BEND PORTAGE - DECEMBER 1679 Parkman describes the ascension of the St. Joseph River and the portage to the headwaters of the Kankakee River as follows: "On the third of December, the party re-embarked, thirty-three in all, in eight canoes, and ascended the chill current of the St. Joseph, bordered with dreary meadows and bare grey forests. When they approached the site of the present day village of South Bend, they looked anxiously along the shore to their right, to find the portage or path leading to the headwaters of the Illinois. The Mohegan was absent, hunting; and, unaided by his practiced eye, they passed the path without seeing it." LaSalle went looking for the portage path, got lost and had to spend the snowy night in the woods alone. It wasn't until four the next afternoon that he found his way back by following the river. Parkman goes on: "The Mohegan had rejoined the party before LaSalle's return and with his aid the portage was soon found." The expedition then crossed the portage and launched their canoes in the marshes which were the headwaters of the Kankakee River, then went down the Kankakee to the des Plaines River. The joining of these two rivers forms the Illinois River which they followed south to about present-day Peoria where they built another fort. They spent the rest of the winter working on a ship to be used to explore the Mississippi. LaSalle decided to return to Fort Miami so with a party of four Frenchmen and the Mohegan they headed back north on the Illinois. From my "The Search for the Route of LaSalle's 1680 Walk Across Michigan": "Their journey began on March 1, 1680. Attempts to canoe up the Illinois were mostly frustrated by ice. Sometimes they had to haul the canoes across the snow like sleds. Finally they hid the canoes on an island somewhere near present-day Joliet, Illinois, and slogged cross-country through drowned prairie until they reached Lake Michigan. They then walked the beach along the Lake Michigan shore, arriving at Fort Miami on March 24." WALKING ACROSS LOWER MICHIGAN - SPRING 1680 I have already covered that trip from the St. Joseph River to the Detroit River to Niagara in detail. DOWN MICHIGAN'S SUNSET COAST - FALL 1680 Returning from Niagara to the Illinois country in the fall of 1680; LaSalle, with 12 men in three canoes, traveled from Michilimackinac down the east shore of Lake Michigan. On their way to the St. Joseph River they passed the mouths of the Betsie, Manistee, Pere Marquette, White, Muskegon, Grand, Kalamazoo, and Black Rivers. On this trip they would have passed the temporary grave of Father Marquette, who died on this shore five years previously, probably at the mouth of the river which bears his name. Their route to the Illinois country was again up the St. Joseph to the portage to the Kankakee headwaters at South Bend. BACK TO FORT MIAMI - JANUARY 1681 On his return trip up the Illinois River LaSalle and his men found the Kankakee frozen so they slogged cross country to Lake Michigan and up the shore to Fort Miami where they spent the rest of the winter. BY SNOWSHOE AND SLED ACROSS BERRIEN COUNTY - MARCH 1681 LaSalle, his aid LaForest, and 15 men left Fort Miami to go rendezvous with several Indian tribes, hoping to forge an alliance against the Iroquois. Since the rivers were still frozen and snow covered, they walked on snowshoes from the mouth of the St. Joseph River into present-day Indiana, pulling their canoes on runners like sleds. My Note: How about a " LaSalle Snowshoe Challenge" next winter? On the beach on snow from St. Joe to Michigan City.........(Kruger Sea Winds wouldn't need runners). TO MICHILIMACKINAC - SPRING 1681 After meeting with his Indian allies in present-day Indiana, LaSalle returned to Fort Miami and then canoed up to Michilimackinac along the east shore of Lake Michigan, the reverse of his trip in the fall of 1680. From there he went all the way back to Montreal. BACK TO FORT MIAMI - LATE FALL 1681 LaSalle led a large convoy of cargo canoes through Lake Ontario to the site of present-day Toronto. From there, instead of going on west in Lake Ontario, portaging around Niagara Falls and returning to the upper lakes via Lake Erie, he took two weeks to portage from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron, then proceeded to Michilimackinac. My Note: This has always seemed to me to be the hard way to get from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron, especially with heavily-laden cargo canoes. Maybe he was avoiding Iroquois war parties. Verlen Kruger never made that portage. He was considering doing it during his Paddle-to-the-Sea trip that never panned out. From Michilimackinac the convoy of canoes went down the east shore of Lake Michigan, arriving at the River of the Miamis (St. Joseph River) and Fort Miami during the first week of December, 1681. DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE GULF OF MEXICO AND BACK TO FORT MIAMI AND MICHILIMACKINAC - 1681 & 1682 On this trip of discovery, LaSalle did not go up the St. Joseph River and use the portage to the Kankakee, but rather canoed along the south shore of Lake Michigan in bitter December weather to the Chicago Portage to get to the des Plaines River and the Illinois River. After exploring the Mississippi all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, and having survived a serious illness on the return trip, he was back in Fort Miami by August of 1682. When he arrived, there were several hundred Indian lodges along the banks of the St. Joseph. In the early fall he went on to Michilimackinac, even though he had not yet fully regained his health. In late fall he returned to the Illinois country. LASALLE HEADS BACK TO FRANCE - 1683 Taking only six men in three small canoes, LaSalle set out for Quebec. He went by way of Lake Michigan, the Straits, Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River to Lake Erie. LASALLE'S LAST SIGHT OF MICHIGAN When the three canoes entered Lake Erie and turned eastward towards Niagara, Michigan faded from view to the west. The Michigan shore of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Detroit River is where LaSalle in the sailing ship Griffon first saw Michigan in 1679. It is also the place where he ended his cross-peninsula trek in 1680. EPILOG Author Russel McKee, in his 1966 book Great Lakes Country tells about the remainder of LaSalle's career and life after he left Michigan: "...he soon set sail for France to gain the King's ear. This time Louis XIV paid heed when LaSalle spoke. The explorer captured the court with his New World tales, and captured the King's interest with information about the vast colonial empire awaiting French development. Louis supplied a small army of soldiers and settlers, telling LaSalle to move his colony into the Gulf of Mexico. With four ships, the company sailed in the fall of 1684. In the Gulf, LaSalle knew he was in danger both from the Spanish, who claimed the adjacent land, and from hostile Indians. Without meeting either, he established a colony in December 1685 near the present site of Galveston, Texas,after failing to find the Mississippi on the coastal journey west. The settlement was a disaster. LaSalle landed with 180 soldiers and settlers, and in a little more than a year, the total had dwindled to 40. Those who remained were mutinous. Heat, barren land, poisonous snakes, and the failure of expected supplies, all cut into the colony. Realizing his only hope was in French Canada, LaSalle decided to push east to find the Mississippi. He would go up that river, he decided, to obtain help for the colony. With a small force he headed east." He never made it. Somewhere in South Texas in March of 1687, he was murdered by one of his own men. He was 43 years old.

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side IX

Finishing my 1999 "Michigan History" article: The construction of the canoe required cutting down a large elm tree---a formidable task with the hatchets the party were carrying. It was also challenging to strip the bark from the tree in one piece without breaking it or cracking it to the point where it would be unusable. The tree would have been either a slippery elm or an American elm. LaSalle, who called the tree by its Iroquois name of arondugalte recorded, "The bark of which can be stripped off at all times though with more difficulty at this season, when it must be continually moistened with boiling water". To make a canoe from a large cylinder of elm bark, the ends are squeezed together and sewn with strips of bark or roots; gunwhales of saplings, split or whole, are attached in the same manner. Then stick thwarts are inserted at intervals to spread the bark, and ribs of some flexible wood are inserted on the inside. Finally the insides of the ends are caulked with the bark of dead slippery elm, which swells when wet. Why not build a birchbark canoe? The Huron lies below the southern limit of where the paper birch grew. Although a birchbark canoe is far superior in most respects to a canoe of elm or hickory bark, its construction takes a lot of time, skill and experience---which neither LaSalle nor his men possessed. With the canoe completed and the sick men and all gear on board, the journey down the Huron began. All did not work out as hoped. As LaSalle described the trip, "For as the river was everywhere encumbered by heaps of wood, which the swollen waters carry down or cast into its bed, we got weary of carrying our baggage every moment when the masses of wood prevented the canoe from passing; moreover the river made wide bends, and we observed after five days of rowing we had made less progress than we normally made in one day's march." So they gave up on floating down to Lake Erie and, according to LaSalle, "...our sick men being better, we resumed our march and reached the strait by which Lake Huron falls into Lake Erie which is a league broad at this place". The "strait" is the Detroit River and LaSalle and his men reached it downstream of Grosse Isle and upstream of the extensive swamps and marshes where the Huron empties into Lake Erie. Here the Detroit River is more than three miles wide, which is reasonably consistent with LaSalle's estimate. A little arithmetic can provide a clue as to where the men abandoned their canoe and resumed walking. LaSalle equated five days on the Huron to one day's march, and one can assume a day's march to be about thirty miles. This about the distance from Dexter to the area near Belleville where the Huron makes a big bend to the south (French Landing). I think this is where the party gave up poling, paddling and portaging. They would have followed the left bank of the river on foot down to about present-day Rockwood. By heading straight east from there they would have avoided the drowned lands at the mouth of the Huron and reached the Detroit River south of Grosse Isle. There two men were tasked to build a canoe and head north to Michilimackinac, while LaSalle and the remaining three rafted across the river. They continued cross country to the shore of Lake Erie, probably just beyond Pte. Pelee, where another canoe was built. Then the Frenchmen and Saget, the Indian, paddled along the shore to Niagara. They arrived there on Easter Sunday, April 22, 1680. As Professor Prator concluded more than half a century ago, "We shall probably never be able to retrace the great Frenchman's steps with absolute accuracy". There is no archaeological evidence and only LaSalle's one letter documenting the trip. However, given the availability of modern topographic, presettlement vegetation and soil survey maps, we have far better technical resources at our disposal than did earlier writers. Further, if one conducts serious on-the-ground reconnaissance, visualizes things as they were three hundred years ago and carefully matches LaSalle's descriptions to the existing terrain, it is possible to retrace his steps with reasonable accuracy. Finally, we do know one other thing----LaSalle and his companions crossed the Lower Peninsula the hard way. This is the end of my 1999 article. I will follow up with some remarks on his route pertinent to the Relay idea and a chronology of LaSalle and Michigan's history.

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side VIII

Continuing from my 1999 article in "Michigan History" While struggling across the wetlands, the French party experienced an early April cold snap that brought trouble. According to LaSalle, "At last there came an unusually cold night on the second of April, and next day we were obliged to thaw our clothes before a fire in order to be able to use them, for they had become stiff as sticks because we had taken them off all soaked." The fire gave them away to the Mascouten war party that had been tracking them. LaSalle continued: "Our fire showed us to the Indians who had slept on the other end of the marsh, from which they ran with loud cries to about the middle, where there was a rather deep stream which they could not cross, because the ice that had formed during the night was not strong enough to bear them". When LaSalle wrote that the Mascoutens were "...at the other end of the marsh", that meant the Indians were ahead of them and across a stream that LaSalle's party had yet to cross. The description of a "rather deep stream" sounds like something bigger than the creeks they had been crossing. The stream must have been flowing across their easterly path in order for it to be a barrier to the charging Mascoutens. In this area, the Grand River flows from south to north, is bordered on both sides by marshes or swamps and is quite deep, especially when it floods. How did the Mascoutens, who had been tracking LaSalle for several days, end up ahead of him? There were two Indian trails that allowed the Indians to bypass LaSalle's party on either the north or south. The Mascouten's believed LaSalle's party was a band of Iroquois. What better spot to set an ambush than where the hunted ones would be struggling to cross a river in flood? LaSalle described his party's reaction when the Mascoutens charged and were stopped by the ice and river."We went to within gunshot of them; and either they were frightened by our position of advantage and our firearms, or believed there were more of us than there were, or else recognizing that we were Frenchmen, they did not wish to attack us". The two groups then palavered across the intervening water, the Indians saying they were "brothers" to the Frenchmen. The Mascoutens departed and LaSalle's party continued on their journey. On April 4 two of the Frenchmen became so ill that they could not walk farther. LaSalle does not describe the terrain traveled on April 3 and 4, but if the party continued in the same direction these two days there would have been more walking in marshes. Even today, there are extensive marshes between the Grand River and the highlands of northwest Washtenaw County, particularly the Portage Lake Swamp in the Waterloo State Recreation Area. After April 4 LaSalle gave no more dates until he arrived at Niagara on April 22. When the party reached the Huron River they built an elm-bark canoe. It is unclear when he found the Huron River, how long it took to build the canoe or when it was launched on the river. Nor does LaSalle's narrative offer any clue on how the two sick men got from the place where they became incapacitated to the site where the canoe was constructed. According to LaSalle, "I went to look for some stream which might fall into Lake Erie, where we wished to go, to make a canoe, so as to relieve those who were worn out with toil". This sounds as if he went ahead and left his companions and found the Huron River. LaSalle probably came to a well-used Indian trail adjacent to present-day Island Lake in Washtenaw County's Lyndon Township. At that juncture of time, place and circumstances he would have had no hesitancy in traveling on an Indian trail. It headed in the right direction and following it for eight or nine easy miles took him to the Huron River. Today this trail is Island Lake Road and it reaches Mill Creek near where the creek joins the Huron River at Dexter. NEXT: Building the canoe

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side VII

Continuing from my 1999 article in "Michigan History":

The next piece of the puzzle of LaSalle's route is the location of the fens and marshes through which they struggled. In the early spring the trees and shrubs were leafless and there was flooding everywhere from melting snows. Since LaSalle's journey occurred before the southern Lower Peninsula was logged, drained and plowed, the water table was much higher than it is today.

A cursory reading of LaSalle's account or the reading of secondary sources leaves the impression that the party waded through one vast swamp (wetland with trees) or marsh (wetland with sedges and rushes). Actually, they faced a series if marshes and swamps interspersed with higher and drier uplands, ridges and knolls.

LaSalle encountered this series of wetlands after crossing the floodplain of the Battle Creek River, probably near Pennfield northeast of Battle Creek. Going east today across the northern tier of townships in Calhoun County there are several tributaries of the Battle Creek River that flow to the north or northwest. At Duck Lake the tributaries of Rice Creek flow south or southwest. Further eastward lies the divide between the Kalamazoo River drainage basin and that of the Grand River. Continuing eastward, there are two northward flowing tributaries of the Grand River and then the Grand its self. Lowlands that must have been flooded swamps or marshes in the spring of 1680 border all these streams.

U.S. Department of Agriculture soil maps aid in determining the extent and nature of some of these wetlands. These maps show in great detail the types of soil and provide data on the slopes of the land and susceptibility to flooding and ponding, plus water table relationships. The key soil type is muck. Where muck exists today, marshes existed earlier. The maps identify and locate other types of soil subject to frequent flooding or with such a high water table that the land is unsuitable for septic tanks and drain fields. Soils that are flood-prone or water saturated today were wet and flooded during the spring high water in the late seventeenth century.

Highlighting the mucks and the flood-prone soils creates a mosaic that represents a birds-eye view of the wetlands and the intervening dry land over which the LaSalle party traversed. The longest stretch of marsh that the men waded through was twelve miles of almost continuous lowland, located today in Calhoun County's Convis, Lee and Clarence Townships. Interstate 69 crosses the west end of this stretch about one and one half miles north of the N Drive North exit.

NEXT: Ambush

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side VI

Continuing from my 1999 article in "Michigan History"

LaSalle recorded that on the evening of the twenty-eighth (of March 1680) the party camped on the edge of a prairie where they had encountered the Pottawatomies. Certainly one day's march across easy, open terrain by LaSalle's veterans should have taken them far beyond Grand Prairie. The next prairie the men encountered as they moved east was Gull Prairie, a distance of about sixteen miles beyond the Paw Paw River valley. This would have been a relatively easy march for LaSalle's men except for having to cross the Kalamazoo River.

LaSalle makes no mention of crossing a river on March 28. In fact, he fails to record the crossing of any of the sixteen rivers and creeks he and his men would have encountered between the St. Joseph and the Huron Rivers. The only information in LaSalle's account about building a raft and crossing a river comes from the first day when the party left from Fort Miami and the last day at the Detroit River. Nevertheless, the building of a raft and the crossing of the Kalamazoo would have taken perhaps half a day. But March 28 was not an ordinary travel day. Not only had LaSalle's men come out of the Paw Paw River flood plain, but the open land was rich with game. The men were too busy shooting, butchering, fire building, cooking and eating to make much progress that day. This proves to me that when they camped on the edge of a prairie it was at Grand Prairie (west of today's Kalamazoo), certainly not Prairie Ronde about thirteen miles south, and probably not at Gull Prairie on the other side of the Kalamazoo River.

Clues about where they crossed the Kalamazoo River come from topographic maps and the reminiscences of early Kalamazoo settlers. There was a ford across the river in what is now the city of Kalamazoo, less than a mile north of where the river changes direction from west to north. Riverside Cemetery on the east side of the river is adjacent to the site of the ford and is due east of Grand Prairie.

Today's muck land on the west side of the river, which extends about three miles north, was, according to one Kalamazoo pioneer, an "...impassable marsh and tamarack swamp, covered with water the year round". Given their narrow escape from the Indians, LaSalle's party would likely have avoided the ford and the Indian trail leading to and from it, as well as the marsh and tamarack swamp. Following the high ground on the west side of the river and going downstream (north) brought them to a logical crossing point right where the Kalamazoo Nature Center is today. If LaSalle and his men crossed at this point and headed straight east, they would have been at Gull Prairie, around present-day Richland.

My Note: The rafts LaSalle and his men would have constructed to cross rivers would have to have been small and relatively easy to lash together from downed trees or large branches found at riverside. No need or time for a Huck Finn float-down-river kind. They probably used poles and shuttled across the river two or three men at a time. During my research I found illustrations of such rafts. They probably just waded across creeks. The raft to cross the Detroit River would have to have been large enough for four men and they would have to have paddled. That must have been a tricky crossing. Back to the article:

Two significant natural barriers---Gull Lake on the north and the flood plain of the Kalamazoo River to the south---would have forced the Frenchmen and their Indian companion to travel straight eastward from Gull Prairie. Travel should have been relatively easy. Although hilly, the route to the east all the way to the Battle Creek River would have led LaSalle through mainly oak savanna and oak forest. (remember, they were setting the grass on fire to cover their tracks).The distance covered on March 29 and 30 along this route measures about twenty-seven miles---a reasonable distance for these two days---given the time it would have taken to make a raft and cross the Kalamazoo River.

On March 30 they "...came to extensive fens which were flooded by thaw, and had to cross them in mud or water up to our waists, and our tracks going deep into the mire revealed us to a band of Mascoutens who wanted to kill some Iroquois." The misconception that caused the Pottawatomies to run off---the belief that LaSalle's band was an Iroquois war party---is the same one that caused the Mascoutens to stalk them. According to LaSalle, "They followed us across these marshes for the three days it took to traverse them; but we made no fire at night, contenting ourselves with taking off our clothes, which were wet, and wrapping ourselves in our blankets on some dry knoll, where we passed the night".

NEXT: Where were the fens and marshes?

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side V

The long discussion of prairies in LWWS IV may have been a sleeper but very important to tying down where LaSalle and his men actually traveled. The following is from my "The Search for Route of LaSalle's 1680 Walk Across Michigan", the narrative/monograph of which LWWS is a condensation. (The parenthetical remarks are mine as of today. I would be delighted to debate them with anyone).

Many authors and historians have speculated on LaSalle's cross-Michigan route in books and magazines and newspaper articles. Many others have written about the journey without speculating on the route. Despite all that has been written over the years, there is but one primary source, LaSalle's single letter written to one of his investors in September of 1680.......

Strangely, the most recent authors' routes are farthest off the mark. By far the easiest to disprove are those in two 1992 publications. The most accurate interpretation in my opinion was one of the earliest, that of University of Michigan Professor Clifford H. Prator in the Spring 1941 issue of Michigan History Magazine, then a scholarly quarterly publication of The Michigan Historical Commission.

Volume III of Charles A. Weissert's Historic Michigan, published in 1928, contains an account of LaSalle's journey across Michigan. He states that "The explorer's route, as far as can be ascertained by notes taken during the journey, lay along the highlands between the Kalamazoo and St. Joseph River valleys" (Wrong). He contends that "there can be no doubt but that he crossed Prairie Ronde and Climax Prairie..." (Wrong again). He identifies the marshy wilderness through which the party waded as "...probably the long, flat tract in the lakes east of Prairie Ronde" (Still wrong).

In referring to LaSalle and his men J.S.Morton, author of Reminiscence of the Lower St. Joseph Valley,written in the 1930's says, "They were the first white men to follow the trail that became later the famous Territorial Road (Wrong).

The 1948 book Michigan--From Primitive Wilderness to Industrial Commonwealth, by Milo M. Quaife and Sidney Glazer, includes a map showing a route through southern Van Buren, Kalamazoo, Calhoun, Jackson and Washtenaw Counties. (Right counties but LaSalle traveled through the northern parts). Their route crosses the Huron River rather than following it and ends well upstream of the mouth of the Detroit River opposite Grosse Isle.(Does not allow for the 5 days down the Huron in a canoe).

In a 1949 article in the Lansing State Journal, history writer Birt Darling used Prator's 1941 Michigan History article in an attempt to show that LaSalle may have traversed southern Ingham County. (A real stretch. Birt liked to "localize" and "romanticize " and "popularize" historical happenings in or near mid-Michigan. I am forever grateful to him though, one of his articles led to my discovery of Hugh Heward and his journal).

In Michigan in Four Centuries, Dr.F.Clever Bald, then Professor of History at the University of Michigan, states that LaSalle's route is not known, "...but he probably passed through the second tier of counties above the the Ohio and Indiana boundaries." The book's map illustrating the route of various French explorers has LaSalle passing through the headwaters of the Kalamazoo, Grand and Raisin Rivers which are in the hills of Southern Jackson and northern Hillsdale Counties. (Way off).

Alberta Powell wrote a book for young Americans, LaSalle, River Explorer, published in 1954. She has LaSalle using a canoe to go up the Kalamazoo River.....(No wonder young Americans are lousy at history).

In his 1955 book, Michigan through the Centuries, Dr. Willis F. Dunbar, then Professor of History at Western Michigan University, states that LaSalle "...probably followed the Indian trail, slightly south of present US 12 as far as Paw Paw and thence to about present Ann Arbor by approximately the route followed by that road." (Wrong. Dr. Dunbar couldn't have read LaSalle's letter and come to such a conclusion.)

Then in his 1959 book, Kalamazoo and How it Grew, Dr. Dunbar says "His exact route is not recorded, but supposedly he followed Indian trails which led him through the prairie lands of southern Kalamazoo County" (Farther off than in his first book. LaSalle deliberately avoided Indian trails).

Certain recent history scholars have grievously misidentified LaSalle's route. In their 1992 book The Atlas of North American Exploration, Professors William A. Goetzman of the University of Texas and Glyndwn Williams of the University of London depict a route that avoids Michigan entirely! They show LaSalle's 1680 journey as following the Kankakee River in Illinois and Indiana and then along the Maume River from present Ft. Wayne, Indiana, to Toledo, Ohio, on Lake Erie. Furthermore, they show the route continuing across the open waters of Lake Erie to reach the Ontario shore. This route neither starts where LaSalle said he started, his fort at the mouth of the present-day St. Joseph River, nor reached where most other scholars and authors agree he reached, the Huron River. (This is an unimaginably bad piece of historical and geographical manure......).

In Anka Muhlstein's 1995 LaSalle, the explorer starts his cross-Michigan journey at Ft. St. Joseph, which did not even exist in 1680. Ft. St. Joseph was established upstream on the St. Joseph River near present-day Niles in 1691. This author also names Detroit, which was not established until 1701, as LaSalle's destination, rather than Lake Erie. However, the map in the book purporting to show LaSalle's route has him going to Lake Erie just north of Toledo. The map so distorts the locations and relationships of rivers that the headwater of the St. Joseph River is shown near Ft. Wayne, Indiana, instead of Michigan's Hillsdale County, an error of at least 60 miles. (Pitiful).

(Are you surprised that Dr. Rosentreter didn't include this part of my monograph in the "Michigan History" article? Most of these authors had PhDs in history).

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side IV

Continuing with my 1999 article in "Michigan History".

LaSalle recounted, "When we had lit a fire on the edge of a prairie we were surrounded by (Pottawatomies), but the man who was on watch awoke us, and we placed ourselves each behind a tree with our guns. The Indians, who are called Ouopous, believed us to be Iroquois, and being convinced that there must be larger numbers of us, since we had not concealed ourselves as they are accustomed to do when they go in small bands, they fled without shooting an arrow". To reinforce the misconception that his band was an Iroquois war party, LaSalle used charcoal from their fire to place marks on tree trunks like those victorious Iroquois used in announcing the taking of scalps and slaves.

To determine LaSalle's route it is important to identify which prairies he and his men crossed the last few days of March 1680. According to the Presettlement Vegetation map, a prairie is an area dominated by prairie grasses and forbs (herbaceous plants) with a tree density of less than one mature tree per acre. One gets the impression from reading Michigan history that Prairie Ronde in southern Kalamazoo County was not only the largest prairie but the only one of real consequence. However, the Presettlement Vegetation map locates forty-nine prairies in the ten-county area it covers. Furthermore, the 1838 Gazetteer of the State of Michigan describes Gull Prairie in northern Kalamazoo County as "the largest body of prairie in the county".

After their escape from the Pottawatomie's, LaSalle's men set fire wherever there was dry grass to obliterate their tracks. In his account of March 29 LaSalle described the prairie they were crossing as being "...four or five leagues broad and so long we could not see the end of it." A league is about 2.75 miles long. This makes the prairie about twelve miles wide. In the early nineteenth century Prairie Ronde was only about five miles across. Certainly the prairies could have been bigger in 1680. They are primarily products of fires that burn off shrubs and tree seedlings, keeping forest encroachment in check. Fewer fires during the 120 years from La Salle's visit until the arrival of the surveyors might explain the difference in the prairies' size. There is another explanation that could justify LaSalle's estimates. Adjacent to Prairie Ronde, Gull Prairie and Grand Prairie were bur-oak openings and oak savannas. Next to those were large and small patches of oak forest. In the case of Gull Prairie, these were far more extensive than around Prairie Ronde. Even Grand Prairie, which was considerably smaller than Prairie Ronde, was surrounded by a significantly larger area of oak openings and savannas.

The Presettlement Vegetation map defines bur-oak openings and oak savannas as having a density of between one and fifteen trees per acre. To a traveler these would seem open and park-like. Some travelers, including James Fenimore Cooper in his "Oak Openings", have likened them to orchards. Even oak forests tend to be quite open and relatively free of underbrush.

If one includes bur-oak openings and oak savannas as part of the prairies LaSalle described, the open country in the Gull Prairie area measures about fourteen miles wide and more than thirty miles from north to south on the Presettlement Vegetationmap. The same exercise in the Prairie Ronde area only measures a width of about nine miles and perhaps twelve from north to south. The Grand Prairie area is about ten miles wide. Considering all these factors, the Gull Prairie area most closely fits LaSalle's size estimate of March 29, 1680.

Given that both Grand Prairie and Gull Prairie are reasonably on line with an easterly exit from the upper end of the Paw Paw River valley, LaSalle most likely did not travel through Prairie Ronde. To have done so would have required a sharp detour to the south.

NEXT: Crossing the Kalamazoo River

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side III

Continuing with my 1999 article in "Michigan History":

LaSalle's party, which included four coureurs de bois and one Native American, a Mohegan Indian named Saget, left Fort Miami on March 25, 1680. According to LaSalle, after crossing the flooded St. Joseph River (then called River of the Miamis) on a raft, the men "...continued our march through the woods, which was so interlaced with thorns and brambles that in two days and a half our clothes were all torn and our faces so covered with blood that we hardly knew each other."

Thanks to the efforts of three Western Michigan University Professors, we know what the nature and extent of the forest cover was like three hundred years ago in southwestern Michigan. In 1984 Lawrence G. Brewer, Thomas W. Hodles and Henry A. Raup from the Department of Geography published a map entitled Presettlement Vegetation of Southwestern Michigan. They created the map based on upon field notes of the early-nineteenth-century surveyors who moved through a wilderness little changed from that which existed in the late seventeenth century. As part of their job, the surveyors located and identified the types of trees and terrain that existed in Michigan before it was disturbed by the pioneer's axe or plow.

After two and a half days in the briars and brambles, LaSalle's party came out of the Paw Paw River valley and "found the woods more open". But where?

About sixty years ago (seventy now) University of Michigan professor Clifford H. Prator concluded that LaSalle broke into the open woods somewhere in the northwest corner of Kalamazoo County. Trying to follow Prator's suggested route today takes one into the extensive mucklands in the northeast corner of Van Buren County. In the late seventeenth century this was one big swamp. Furthermore, modern topographic maps and road reconnaissance show the party then would have encountered difficult "knob and kettle" terrain where level land is virtually nonexistent. On the other hand, road reconnaissance around the upper end of the north branch of the Paw Paw River about seven miles south of there leads to the area of the Wolf Lake state Fish Hatchery and east up to high ground--about where Highway M-43 climbs up the ridge known to geologists as the Kalamazoo Moraine. This is close to the Van Buren-Kalamazoo county line. The Presettlement Vegetation map shows that this was a transition area from a southern swamp forest to an oak savanna. This is consistent with LaSalle's account of emerging from the briars and brambles and finding the woods more open.

I believe LaSalle actually traveled through oak savannas and forests and the relatively benign terrain of what is now the northern half of Kalamazoo County's Oshtemo Township (approximately along the route of M-43). If LaSalle and his party were on this route, they would have reached Grand Prairie within an easy five-mile walk after leaving the Paw Paw River valley. Grand Prairie was located just west and northwest of present-day Kalamazoo.

Hunger and the abundance of game made the party careless. The sounds of their guns and the trail of partially butchered carcasses attracted an Indian war party, and nearly led to disaster.

NEXT: Surrounded by Indians.

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side II

Continuing with my 1999 article in "Michigan History":

LaSalle's route across the Lower Peninsula has fascinated authors and historians for many years. There is, however, only one primary source documenting the trip - a letter LaSalle wrote to one of his investors in September of 1680. The text of the letter has been preserved in Pierre Margray's Memoirs et Documents Pour Servir a L'histoire des Origines Francaises des Pays D'outre-mer; Decouvertes et Etablissments desFrancais dans L'ouest et dans le Sud D'Amerique Septenrionale, published in Paris in the 1880s.

LaSalle clearly understood the difficulty facing him. Reflecting in that letter he explained,

Though the thaws of approaching Spring greatly increased the difficulty of the way, interrupted as it was everywhere by marshes and rivers, to say nothing of the length of the journey. . . and the danger of meeting Indians of four or five nations, through whose country we were to pass, as well as an Iroquois army, which we knew was coming that way; though we must suffer all the time from hunger, sleep on the open ground, often without food; watch by night and march by day, loaded with baggage, such as blanket, clothing, kettle, hatchet, gun, powder, lead and skins to make moccasins; sometimes pushing through thickets, sometimes climbing rocks covered with ice and snow, sometimes wading whole days through marshes when the water was waist-deep or even more, at a season when snow was not entirely melted----though I knew all this, it did not prevent me from resolving to go.

At the time of LaSalle's journey, the southern part of the Lower Peninsula, particularly the area between the Grand River valley and the St.Joseph river valley, was largely deserted. Many local tribes had left the area in fear of the rampaging Iroquois. According to LaSalle, it was a sort of no-man's land. "The Indians do not hunt there because it is situated between five or six tribes which are at war with one another, who, because they fear one another, dare not go to these parts without the greatest precautions; they never appear except with the intention of surprising one another, as secretly as possible."

LaSalle knew he had to travel approximately straight east to reach Lake Erie. He used a magnetic compass to determine direction and an astrolabe, which measures the angle of the sun or North Star above the horizon, to determine latitude. He was unable, however, to determine longitude so he did not know how far it was across the peninsula.

LaSalle was in a hurry. He didn't have time to build or acquire a canoe and take the longer route of going up Lake Michigan to Michilimackinac, then south through Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River to Lake Erie. Going overland through prairies, open oak forests and oak savannas would make for easy traveling, but would leave them exposed to wandering war parties. So LaSalle chose to travel through the Paw Paw River valley. The Paw Paw flows from the east, there were no Indian trails following the river and the southern hardwood forests of the valley made inconspicuous movement possible. The disadvantage was that hiking conditions were atrocious.

NEXT: They are traveling

LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side

In 1999 I wrote an article for "Michigan History Magazine" entitled "LaSalle's Walk on the Wild Side". That was not my choice of title. The title of my work of which the article was a condensation was "The Search for the Route of LaSalle's 1680 Walk Across Michigan", a perfectly respectable and understandable title, I thought. "Not jazzy enough"; said Roger Rosentreter, the magazine's Editor. When I objected, he said that I have to understand that in order for "Michigan History" to avoid the fate of "Michigan Conservation" magazine, once published by the Department of Conservation (now DNR), it has to attract a large and loyal audience and be self supporting. I guess he has a point. "The Michigan Historical Review" put out by the Historical Society of Michigan is a real sleeper. It's "Chronicle" is a little livelier but not up to "Michigan History". At least I got him to add LaSalle's name. His original title was just "A Walk on the Wild Side". He did a lot of other editing that I objected to and for the first time since college I pulled an "all nighter" trying to unfix some of his fixes in time to make the printing deadline. I can see why such Michigan history authors as Kit Lane, Larry Massie and Tim Kent self-publish so they don't have to deal with editors. I am going to serialize that article and add comments and notes pertinent to the LaSalle Relay idea. The article was published in the March/April 1999 issue and is illustrated by a beautiful two-page spread showing the Portage Lake Swamp in the leafless season as it would have looked to LaSalle and his party in 1680. The photo was taken by Rosentreter at my suggestion from the bridge over the upper Portage River on Waterloo-Munith Road. Here we go: On March 24, 1680, after an exhausting three-week journey from a wilderness fort near present-day Peoria, Illinois, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle, arrived at Fort Miami. He had built the small fort the previous fall on a bluff overlooking the mouth of the St. Joseph River, then known as the River of the Miamis. An explorer and entrepreneur whose life's mission was to establish a French commercial empire in the interior of North America, LaSalle learned at Ft. Miami that the Griffon, the sailing vessel he had constructed the previous year on the Niagara River, had disappeared. Desperate to know what had happened to his ship and its cargo of furs, the thirty-seven year old Frenchman decided to return to the Niagara country. LaSalle believed the shortest and quickest way to get there was on foot. Four weeks after leaving Fort Miami, LaSalle and his men reached Niagara. He never found the Griffon---it disappeared without a trace---but he became the first European to cross Michigan's Lower Peninsula. NEXT: The route

A refresher - how I do it

Since I am transitioning from stories of the Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge to stories of LaSalle's 1680 journey across Michigan (and a new Challenge) I think it's a good time to remind blog readers - and inform new readers - how I come to know what I know about LaSalle.

My retirement hobby for 23 years has been "topology," topographic studies of places in relation to their histories. I take a primary source describing someone's travel in and about Michigan centuries ago and - using my extensive topographic map collection, library research, and road reconnaissance - work out their route. Surprisingly in the process I prove (at least to myself) that most authors and history professors got it wrong. I'll expand on this in a later post.

All I or anyone else knows about LaSalle's 1680 walk across the Lower Peninsula is contained in a single letter he wrote to an investor back in France in September of 1680, describing his trek by canoe and foot from Ft Crevecoeur to the Niagara Country. For his walk across Michigan from Ft. Miami to the Detroit River I wrote what I call a narrative monograph, scholarly but not big enough to be a book but more than a booklet. I self publish and distribute mostly to historical libraries.

LaSalle Relay - The "Corridor" II

After our disappointment over the condition of the roads of our previously laid-out bicycling route, it became sort of an adventure hunting up new ways to get across Calhoun County.

The corridor contains some very interesting country; lots of rolling forested hills, small marshes flanked by higher-ground knolls, extensive forested swamps, open and hilly farm lands and in the area of the headwaters of the Battle Creek River, large lowlands that would have been under water in LaSalle's time. Duck Lake is a typical Lower Peninsula lake surrounded by cottages cheek-by-jowl. Prairie Lake is not crowded for some unknown reason. Eastern Calhoun County is not as scenic as the western portions.

Actually, the tentative alternative bicycling route we have laid out is probably closer to LaSalle's actual route than the original. It contains a lot of zigs north and then zags back south but generally is closer to the straight-east line that I think LaSalle established after they ran out of prairie and oak forests where they could burn the grass to cover their tracks.

When we get into Jackson County, if the roads we have chosen on paper prove to be deteriorated we are going to be in tough shape. There are only two bridges across the Grand River and if the county roads leading to them are shot we are screwed. We can't make the bicyclists go cross-country and wade the swamps and swim the river. They might be willing but they would be trespassing on private property and I doubt they could get away with Neil Miller's "Dumb Canoeist" stunt.

Berrien and Van Buren Counties are a long way away and if the county roads closest to the Paw Paw River are not bicycleable (if that's a word) it would be a no go. Under such circumstances I would say forget the bicycling and stick with automobile touring.

Of course if we could sucker some people into walking like LaSalle and his troops did, bad roads would not be a problem.

I hope to get an opportunity to check out the Kalamazoo County roads for bicycling but intend to road tour myself under any forseeable circumstances.

As for Washtenaw and Wayne Counties, I am going to push for hikers and canoeists to finish the reenactment from the Portage Lake Swamp to Lake Erie regardless.

LaSalle Relay - The "Corridor"

There is a natural geographical west to east corridor across part of the Southern Lower Peninsula through which LaSalle and his men walked and waded in the Spring of 1680. It is bounded at the western end by Gull Lake to the north and the northern bend of the Kalamazoo River Valley to the south. In the central part it is bound on the north by Pleasant Lake and Duck Lake. At the south is Prairie Lake (much larger inLaSalle's day). Pointing naturally towards the west end of my imaginary corridor is the Paw Paw River valley and LaSalle's crossing-place of the Kalamazoo River at the present-day Kalamazoo Nature Center. At the east end is the Portage Lake Swamp (actually a large marsh). Beyond, starting about at today's Lyndon Center, is the Indian Trail that led to the Huron River at present-day Dexter.

LaSalle knew that the mouth of the Detroit River at Lake Erie, which was his goal, was at almost exactly the same latitude as his fort at the mouth of the St. Joseph River, thus as much as possible he wanted to travel straight east. He deviated from east only to avoid the Indian trails through the oak openings leading to the ford at the big bend of the Kalamazoo River and to get around the large tamarack swamp along that river's left bank north of the ford.

Once he got into what I call "the corridor" about at the location of present-day Richland, I don't believe he ever deviated from straight east. On my 1999 map with the Michigan History article I show him crossing the upper end of the Portage River. I now believe he never did but rather stayed north of the Portage all the way to what Neil Miller, Brian Prodin and I call the Schumacher Road Peninsula. If I could do that map over (and its enlargement that hangs in the Michigan History Museum) I would move the red line showing his route above the river. That would make the place where the two men got sick about at the location of the Waterloo Farm Museum, and have him wading over the marsh to about the Harr Road peninsula and shortly thereafter climbing to the higher ground. I think he would have sensed that higher ground was the divide between the Lake Michigan and Lake Erie watersheds. LaSalle's own words: "I went to look for some stream near which might fall into Lake Erie, where we wished to make a canoe, so as to relieve those who were wore out with toil."

Back to the corridor.

Son Jim wants to trace much of LaSalle's route by bicycle. We have laid out a tentative route using maps and he has been recruiting companions. On the Sunday before Memorial Day we decided to check out the Calhoun County portion on the ground by car. Wise decision.

Together with granddaughter Jessica, we headed down towards Battle Creek and pulled off M 66 at the road leading to Pennfield and the crossing of the Battle Creek River. This is where LaSalle would have left the higher ground and prairies and oak forests and started wading in the marshes.

After just a very few miles of following our mapped-out route - to our chagrin and dismay - what used to be smooth county roads turn into mile after mile after mile of deteriorating blacktop, unsuitable or even dangerous for bicycling. I don't know what the Calhoun County Road Commission plans do about that, but thus far all they have done is erect a lot of "Rough Road" signs.

After much of a day's exploration I would guess that about 75-90 percent of our laid-out route in Calhoun County is unuseable.

NEXT: Hunting for alternative routes.

Inaugural LaSalle Cross-Michigan Relay - Ideas for a new Challenge

In the spring of 1680 the intrepid French explorer René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, together with four other Frenchmen and a Mohegan Indian, walked from his fort on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan at present day St. Joseph to the site of present day Dexter, there built an elm-bark canoe to float down the Huron River but abandoned it five days later because of all the floodwood in the river, then walked the rest of the way to the Detroit River where it flows into Lake Erie. A few of us who have been following the Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge are toying with the idea of a similar LaSalle challenge. Among us we have considerable experience in historical tours by automobile, long distance bicycle touring like the annual DALMAC tour from Lansing to the Big Mack Bridge, and organized canoeing on the Huron River. Encouraged by the success of the 2009 UHHC and widespread interest in it, I have been cogitating as to what could be done to remember LaSalle's feat. Try this for an itinerary: 1. Walk or ride golf cart from the LaSalle/Ft. Miami Historical Marker in St. Joe south along the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan past the LaSalle Memorial boulder to Broad Street. Then go down Broad Street to Clementine's restaurant at the Pier 33 Marina on the St.Joseph River. 2. Ride salmon fishing cruiser up and across and down the St. Joseph River to Riverview Drive marina in Benton Harbor. 3 (a) Automobile tour from Benton Harbor to: (a) Sarrett Nature Center on the Paw Paw River (briars and brambles in river valley) (b) boat launch site north of Lawrence on Paw Paw River (more briars and brambles) (c) Wolf Lake State Fish Hatchery (more open woods) (d) Grand Prairie Golf Course (Pottawatomie Indian encounter) (e) Kalamazoo Nature Center (river crossing) (f) Gull Prairie at Richland (burning grass to hide tracks) (g) Battle Creek River at Pennfield (wading marshes) (h) Turkeyville. About 90 miles. 3 (b) Automobile tour all the way from St. Joe to Dexter. About ___miles. 4 (a). Bicycle tour from Turkeyville to Waterloo Farm Museum via Duck Lake, Springport, Tompkins Center, Rives Junction, Grand River (Berry Road bridge or Maple Grove Road DNR launch site--Mascouten Indian encounter) and Pleasant Lake. About 40 miles. 4 (b) Bicycle tour from Richland to Waterloo Farm Museum with meal stop at Turkeyville. About 70 miles. 4 (c) Bicycle tour all the way from St. Joe/Benton Harbor to Dexter. About ___miles. 5. Hike from Farm Museum across Portage Lake Swamp in Waterloo State Recreation Area to Lyon Center and via North Territorial Road and Island Lake Road (Indian trails) to Dexter park at Mill Creek. About 16 miles. 6. Erik Vosteen and Kevin Finney display their elm-bark canoe at Dexter park and maybe put it in the river. 7 (a) Canoe down Huron River from Dexter to French Landing with a stop at LaSalle's statue at Belleville portaging all dams. Two day trip. Possible camping or shuttle arrangements at Gallup Park in Ann Arbor. 7 (b) One day canoe trip down the Huron from Dexter to Gallup Park. 8. UHHC Challengers put their canoes and kayak into the water at Portage Lake and paddle downstream on the Huron River far enough to cover all sections wheeled around going upstream last spring.and do it all in one day. 9 Hike through Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Park system to Lake Erie MetroPark. About 18 miles. At first this wouldn't have to be done serially or totally or with many participants. Various LaSalle and historical reenactment enthusiasts could do it in uncoordinated bits and pieces. Eventually one would hope for a coordinated, scheduled publicized annual affair like the annual Hugh Heward Challenge 50 miler (which has grown in 10 years from about 5 paddlers to well over 100). I would sure like to hear anyone's reaction to these ideas. Meanwhile I'll keep cogitating and trying to con people into joining the project. It occurs to me that this proposed LaSalle Relay is pretty much the reverse of the 2009 Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge only commemorating an event 110 years earlier and on foot rather than by canoe and using the St. Joseph and Kalamazoo River valleys instead of the Grand.. Thus I think you-all who followed the UHHC Challengers would be interested in following the LaSalle Relay if I can pull it off. What do you think? Son Jim is already planning to do the bicycle thing and is trying to hook some DALMAC types into the project. I have been communicating with Ron Sell on the canoe part. I would expect to have brief recognition ceremonies at St. Joe, Dexter park and LaSalle's statue in Belleville. My reporting would include extracts from LaSalle's Setember 1680 letter in the same way I included extracts from Hugh's journal in the UHHC coverage.