Louis Hennepin
and
Jonathan Carver
HENNEPIN
CARVER
Was Hennepin County Named for a Charlatan?The name is well-known to Minnesotans, and it is generally accepted that Hennepin was one of the first Europeans to explore the area which became Minnesota. But a world of controversy surrounds the adventures and writings of Father Louis Hennepin. He was a notorious liar, and many claim that his personality would have made him tedious company as well. Prompted by his efforts at political maneuvering and his own penchant for exaggeration, Hennepin’s accounts of his journeys along the Mississippi vary from only slightly overblown to outright plagiarism. Nevertheless, his books gained enormous popularity as European thirst for American travel narratives raged unabated, and the impact of his travels endures in place names in the areas through which he journeyed. But who was this notorious man? The answer can be as full of contradiction and confusion as the character of the man himself evidently was.
 This anonymous portrait is in the collection of the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.Hennepin was born in Ath, Belgium in 1640, the son of a well-to-do baker. Around the age of twenty he became a Franciscan Recollect priest in France, where he was deeply impressed by the examples of the missionaries of his order. While in Calais, the stories about journeys to other lands and fascinating experiences which he heard from sailors further excited his desire to travel. In 1675, he received orders to travel to Canada as a missionary. He left France on July 14 as a member of an expedition placed by Louis XIV under the leadership of René Robert, Sieur de la Salle. La Salle had been appointed governor of Fort Frontenac, one of the principal outposts of “Le Nouvelle France”, as the French dominions in America were then called, and in his accounts Hennepin claims close association with La Salle, but La Salle thought little of Hennepin, even warning his colleagues about Hennepin’s habit of exaggeration (Severin 170).In September they arrived in Quebec, having successfully withstood attacks by Turkish, Tunisian, and Algerian pirates. For the next two years, Hennepin worked as a missionary among the Iroquois Indians. In 1678, he accompanied La Salle on his expedition through the Great Lakes. He served as the historian, and was a member of the first detachment sent to establish a post on the Niagara River near Lake Erie. This detachment made preparations to build a ship which could navigate the Great Lakes. La Salle joined them in January, and finally on August 7, 1679, the expedition sailed from the Niagara River on the Griffon. They reached the mouth of the Detroit River on August 10, and continued up it through Lake St. Clair, the St. Clair River, and Lake Huron, until they arrived at St-Ignace. From there they traveled to Green Bay, made a short stop, and departed for the south on September 19. Despite many storms and other dangers, the party reached the mouth of the River of the Miamis, now the St. Joseph River, on November 1. La Salle built a fort at the mouth of the river, then continued on, following the western shore of Lake Michigan. After reaching Lake Peoria, another fort, called Fort Crève-coeur, was built, and in 1680 La Salle sent Hennepin with two experienced voyageurs, Michel Accau and Picard du Gay, to explore up the Mississippi as far as possible by canoe. They were to investigate the feasibility of using sailing vessels for trade with the north, and make contact with the Indians. As they were travelling northwards, they met a band of Issati Sioux living near “the Lake of the Issati” (now Mille Lacs lake). The Sioux were on their way downstream to raid the Miamis, but when the Frenchmen foolishly informed them that the Miami had already taken refuge with the French on the Illinois, the Sioux decided to seize the men, their canoe and its contents “as a consolation prize,” (Severin 172). Hennepin and his companions were carried upriver beyond Lake Pepin, and stopped at an Indian village fifteen miles below the present site of St. Paul. Here they left their canoes and traveled on foot to the principal village of the Issati near where the Rum River emerges from Mille Lacs. Hennepin called this the River St. Francis in his account of his travels.
Click the map to get a larger view For Hennepin, one of the most momentous events of his captivity occurred during an excursion with their captors. The Sioux tended to take their captives everywhere with them up and down the river, and on one such excursion, they stopped at the Falls of St. Anthony, which are now surrounded by the city of Minneapolis. Though not as impressive as Niagara Falls, described earlier in Hennepin’s account, he named them for his patron saint, St. Anthony of Padua, a name which has endured.
St. Anthony Falls, from Hennepin 1698, p. 29
Chapter XLIV, p. 146
Chapter XI, p. 29-30
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Carte d’un tres grand Pais …, from the 1697 editionBy the late 1690s, he had moved to Holland, where he published Nouvelle Découverte d’un tres grand Pays, situé dans l’Amerique, Utrecht, 1697. In it, he claims to have traversed both the upper and the lower Mississippi all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico, but the time between his departure from the country of the Illinois and his capture by the Issati is not sufficient for such a long canoe voyage. Even in his own lifetime Hennepin was accused of exaggeration and plagiarism, and Francis Parkman of Boston declared that “this reverend father was the most impudent of liars, and his narrative … is a rare monument of brazen mendacity,” (Gilman 1). Hennepin even went so far as to claim that he and his companions had been the first white men to travel on the Mississippi by canoe, declaring that the voyage of Joliet and Marquette had been a fabrication engineered by the Jesuits to gain prestige (Severin 175). In 1698 he published another book, Nouveau voyage d’un pais plus grand que l’Europe avec les reflections des enterprises du Sieur de la Salle, and soon after English translations of these two books appeared in London. Both were dedicated to William III, King of England, and as a result Hennepin fell permanently out of favor with the French monarchy. Louis XIV even gave orders to the governor of New France that if Hennepin appeared again in America, he should be arrested and sent home. Hennepin’s last years were probably spent in Rome; a letter by a man named Dubos mentions Hennepin and his hopes of returning to America under the protection of Cardinal Spada. The actual time and place of Hennepin’s death are unknown, but it is generally believed to be around 1705. Despite the falsehoods contained in his narratives about some aspects of the expeditions, Hennepin’s book became a standard text on North America. It should also be said that he was an acute observer, and his books contain detailed and accurate descriptions of the characteristics, arts, and customs of the Indians. He made careful note of the wildlife they encountered, and his descriptions of natural history convey not only a physical description of the animal in question, but Hennepin’s own personal reaction to the creatures as well.
Chapter XLIV, p. 138
Chapter XXX, p. 91 buffalo
Buffalo, from Hennepin 1698, p. 114— Ann K.D. Myers Sources:
Gilman, Rhoda R. Reversing the Telescope: Louis Hennepin and Three Hundred Years of Historical Perspective. Minneapolis: The Associates of the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota, 1981. Severin, Timothy. Explorers of the Mississippi. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1967. (165-183) http://www.lib.cmich.edu/clarke/detroit/hennepin1679.htm: “I Arrived at Detroit…” A Presentation of the Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University. http://www.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/lewis_clark/ch2-8.html: “Exploring the West from Monticello: A Perspective in Maps from Columbus to Lewis and Clark,” An Exhibition of Maps and Navigational Instruments on View in the Tracy W. McGregor Room, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, July 10 to September 26, 1995 http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07215c.htm: by John W. Willis, Transcribed by M. Donahue. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, Copyright ) 1910 by Robert Appleton Company, Online Edition Copyright ) 1999 by Kevin Knight. Works by Hennepin mentioned aboveDescription de la Louisiane. Paris, Sebastien Huré, 1683. Nouveau voyage d’un pais plus grand que l’Europe avec les reflections des enterprises du Sieur de la Salle. Utrecht, Ernestus Voskuyl, 1698. Nouvelle Découverte d’un tres grand Pays, situé dans l’Amerique. Utrecht, Guillaume Broedelet, 1697. Hennepin quotes are from: Hennepin, Louis. A new discovery of a vast country in America … between New France and New Mexico. London, For M. Bentley [etc.] 1698.
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