The first passage, and the French century upriver

DECEMBER 1679, AND THE CENTURY THAT FOLLOWED

The first European passage of this valley is dated to the month: in December 1679 La Salle's party — thirty-three persons in eight canoes, Tonty and Hennepin among them, with three Récollet friars — ascended the St. Joseph from its mouth toward the portage to the Kankakee, passing this ground's river rim where the Baugo comes in; they missed the portage, went too far up, and came back down to it, where on 5 December, in Hennepin's relation, Fr. Gabriel de la Ribourde's crosses marked the landing. The marker tradition dates the passage 1678; the expedition relations date it December 1679; the division is printed whole, as the sister legs print it, and the relations govern. Marquette's crossing of the portage in the spring of 1675 is "very probable" on Baker's authorities, not documented, and is printed at that strength. The century that followed governed this ground from elsewhere: from Fort St. Joseph, raised in 1691 at present Niles on the lower river, from the missions that attended it, and from the post at the portage where South Bend now stands — the carrying place measured in the relations at a league and a half, in the Sabrevois memoir of 1718 at three leagues, in Beckwith at about two miles, in Baker's measured trail at four to five. The fort, the missions and the portage are South Bend's and the lower river's ground and are carried there; this ground's share of the French century is the river road itself, running past the creek's mouth, and a south bank that answered to a fort a day's paddle downriver.