After a dinner of mixed vegetables, Fialko flipped back through a book he’d read before the expedition called Interpreting Our Heritage. Its author, Freeman Tilden, shared his experience in the National Park Service and offered advice on how best to ignite a spark of curiosity in audiences. “Through interpretation, understanding; through understanding, appreciation; through appreciation, protection,” Tilden wrote.7
Fialko also looked through some letters sent to him by Bill Voyles, one of the muzzleloaders from Indiana. Voyles wrote that he and the other members of his group wouldn’t want to appear with the voyageurs for fear of the unflattering light it would cast on them—the La Salle voyageurs were so dedicated to authenticity that most other historical interpretations looked shoddy by comparison. But Fialko wasn’t convinced the men were staying true to their mission.
“When we began, we made a simple rule—everything that people saw would be authentic or appear to be so, or, where concessions were made, they would be covered. There was a time when we would duck into our shelter to eat a candy bar and plastic did not appear to exist . . . Now we eat or drink anything in public, with Coke cans appearing in camp and plastic jugs and other containers abounding . . . I thought everyone was going to be a voyageur for eight months. When someone visits our camp, for example, he should expect to see (and hear?) 17th-century voyageurs, an optimal interpretation. Last week in Rosedale, the visitors to our camp were treated to a football game, paperback novels, and modern songs.
“I can make an excuse and say the length of the trip is getting to everyone, that we can’t be true voyageurs because we have a 20th-century schedule, or a number of other excuses, but for my part they are all weak excuses,” he continued. “When, in the final evaluation of any project, it is asked, did you do the job? Can we answer yes, or mostly, or sometimes? Has our pride lessened?”
Wrapped up in the desire for a perfect reproduction were both modern and timeless fears. The fear that the future would sweep away all remnants of the past in its rough current, the fear that no matter how well they performed their role as voyageurs, the act would be forgotten as soon as the curtain fell, the fear that all their work and suffering was ultimately meaningless. The world was changing so rapidly, from technological innovations (Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976) to societal expectations (women and men were starting to regularly live together outside of wedlock), that clinging to the past felt like one of the only ways to exert control on the present. The tension of a society struggling to recognize itself was palpable. Only a few years earlier French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing stated, “The world is unhappy. It is unhappy because it does not know where it is going and because it senses that if it knew, it would discover it was heading for disaster.” What could a crew of men paddling down the Mississippi River in strange costumes really do to help the world, to keep it from catastrophe? Who would remember their journey in five years or ten years or twenty?
But by the next morning, Fialko had come around once again. A quiet night of sleep on the river seemed to have calmed his crisis of faith in the expedition. Maybe he held himself and others to an unattainably high standard. “The editorial of last night I think is the result of my wanting us to be perfect,” he wrote. “We are voyageurs—but 20th-century voyageurs. People still respect what we are doing and are satisfied by what they see.”
Natchez, Mississippi
March 23, 1977
Dozens of girls in colorful hoop dresses and tight bodices emphasizing narrow waists spun around the dance floor with their partners. An audience that included two dozen grubby voyageurs looked on in delight. The crowd rose to its feet when the Confederate flag was brought out and joined in the singing when “America the Beautiful” was played. Reid Lewis had been singled out among the crew members and was asked to join the dancing. In his formal red jacket and black hat with a sword buckled at his hip, he looked the part of a dashing general. But he was a reluctant participant, Jan thought as she watched. Her husband wasn’t nearly as comfortable on a dance floor as he was in a canoe. He did well enough despite his embarrassment, spinning around with his partner. It was an incongruous pairing: a French voyageur with a Southern belle.
Sometime after February 15, the expedition had crossed the boundary between the “apparent South” (places north of the Mason–Dixon line but with some of the same cultural beliefs as the states below the line) and entered the “real South,” a land replete with antebellum mansions, twangy accents, and stories of the “War of Northern Aggression.” The air was warm, the mosquitoes had reappeared, and some of their Southern hosts joked about the voyageurs’ funny northern accents.
While the men were in Vicksburg on March 20, they visited the Old Warren County Court House Museum and went on a tour of the infamous Vicksburg battleground with a guide named Gordon Cotton, who was a member of the Warren County Historical Society. He liked to refer to the Civil War in terms of “us vs. them,” interspersing his account of the battle with statements like, “We fought hard but they outnumbered us.” Lewis mentioned that he’d once known a Southerner who was 17 before he learned “damn Yankee” was two words instead of one. As Civil War historian Shelby Foote, who was born in Mississippi, once pronounced, “Southerners are very strange about that war.”
Whatever beliefs the locals may have held about the war fought a century earlier, no one could say the expedition wasn’t benefiting from plenty of Southern hospitality. On the river they were cheered on by the captains of tugboats, who shouted from their megaphones things like, “History in the making!” and “You’re never gonna get out to the Gulf if you don’t get up and get after it,” when the crew was sleeping in late. They received large meals from 4-H clubs and restaurants in every town, a canoe escort out of Vicksburg, visits to antebellum mansions, and free mint juleps during their tour of the Mississippi Queen, the largest paddle wheel steamboat ever built. The magnificent ship was like a floating hotel, with 206 state rooms and a carrying capacity of 412 guests plus 157 crew. The ship had been on the Mississippi for less than a year and traveled 170 miles each way between Natchez and New Orleans, with a day of travel costing anywhere from $100 to $200.
Much as the men enjoyed the warmer weather and the friendliness of the locals, everyone was ready for the trip to be over. They were past the seven-month mark and well into the one-month countdown. In early April they’d arrive in New Orleans for celebrations with family, friends, and followers. From there it was a few hundred more miles down the river to the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the men were already antsy and ready to be done, while others weren’t quite ready to say good-bye to their voyageur lives.
“Most of the crew is hanging on pretty good,” Fialko wrote in his journal one evening outside Baton Rouge. “I think the attitude of most of the crew is ‘let’s get it over with.’ I wonder if we’ll look back at this and think of mostly the good times, or will the negative stuff come back to haunt us?”
Chapter Eleven
THE GREEN BUOY
Gulf of Mexico
April 9, 1682
The question of when exactly La Salle reached the end of the Mississippi River is difficult to answer. In one account, Henri de Tonty recorded that the party separated into two groups to follow a fork in the river on April 7 and on April 8 they reunited, having successfully found the Gulf of Mexico.1 The official account recorded by Jacques de La Metairie, the expedition’s notary, says April 9 was the date when a cross and a leaden plate engraved with the arms of France were placed on shore at the edge of the ocean. A third account, this one written by Nicholas de la Salle (no relation to La Salle), establishes April 22 as the date on which La Salle claimed the Mississippi River and the territory covered by its watershed for France.2 While the exact date surely held some importance for La Salle and his men, it is of slightly less concern for the armchair traveler. The goal in highlighting the discrepancies here is not to argue in favor of the veracity of one account over another but to illustrate ho
w much is lost in the passage of time. Even something as seemingly straightforward as the date of an event can be subject to debate. History is a series of events that have been recorded by a limited few but experienced by many. The tale is often altered in the retelling, and varies from one person’s perspective to another’s.
On whichever date La Salle arrived at the Gulf of Mexico, he followed the protocol required of all French explorers. He displayed the king’s arms along with the Latin inscription “Louis the Great reigns. Robert Cavelier, with the Lord Tonty as Lieutenant, R. P. Zenobe Membré Recollet, and twenty Frenchmen, first navigated this stream from the country of the Illinois and also passed through its mouth on the 9th day of April, 1692.” He also prepared a procès-verbal, a document that served as a title for the “discovered” land. As a final nod to the Christian God who had lead them there safely, La Salle had his men erect a cross and sing the national hymn “God Save the King” in Latin.3 He named the territory La Louisiane for the king.
Whether or not La Salle realized the scope of his claim in North America, it’s certain that King Louis XIV didn’t. An ocean and a world away, the Sun King was busy with the removal of the court to the Palace of Versailles and a campaign to take control of Luxembourg. For most of its history under France, the Louisiana territory would be overlooked and underfunded. In 1803, the United States, a fledgling country, purchased the territory from France for $15 million without France ever realizing what exactly she had been in possession of for 120 years.
As for La Salle, his dream of establishing a French colony where the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico slowly disintegrated. When La Salle’s ally, Governor Frontenac, was replaced by Joseph-Antoine de La Barre, La Salle had no choice but to return to France and present his case before the Court, since La Barre refused to offer his support the way Frontenac had. In France, La Salle argued that the mouth of the Mississippi held strategic importance and deserved to be the site of a new French colony. He was given command of three ships and more than three hundred crew members and colonists to sail for the Gulf of Mexico, but the voyage was plagued with problems as soon as they set sail. One ship was lost to privateers and another sank in Matagorda Bay. When La Salle’s ship landed in December 1684 with far fewer colonists than he’d anticipated having, La Salle believed they were near the Mississippi and instructed the men to construct a fort. But a navigational error had actually placed them close to modern-day Matagorda, Texas, some four hundred miles west of the Mississippi. Over the course of two years, more than 140 of the 180 colonists who lived in the colony La Salle created died in their struggle against the wilderness, local tribes, and lack of supplies. La Salle set out on multiple occasions to search for the Mississippi River in hopes of contacting the French forts farther up the Mississippi to request aid. Growing increasingly desperate, he made a final attempt with a group of men early in 1687.
One day in March, La Salle sent out a small hunting party that included his nephew, Colin Crevel; his servant; and their Indian guide, Nika. After an argument broke out between members of the hunting party, the three men were murdered by their compatriots. On March 19, 1687, La Salle went to investigate the hunting party’s delay and was lured into an ambush and killed, perhaps because the men no longer trusted his leadership, or perhaps for personal reasons. Seven men survived the mutiny and eventually made their way up the Mississippi River to report La Salle’s death.4 His body was never recovered. His legacy gradually faded into the relative obscurity of high school history books, his name becoming one of those familiar but meaningless placeholders that adorn street signs and townships.
Donaldsonville to the Delta Queen
March 31, 1977
The paddleboat appeared around a sharp bend in the river, its four white decks stacked one on top of the other like a delicately iced layer cake. All the levels were filled with people watching for the expedition’s arrival. As the canoes pulled closer to the vessel, the men raised their water-worn paddles to salute the assembled crowd. From this distance they could read the ship’s name printed in white block letters on a black stern: Delta Queen.
The voyageurs were welcomed to shore by the captain, dressed in a black jacket with two rows of golden buttons running down the front, and a small marching band complete with trumpet, trombone, and drum. One by one the crew walked up the red-carpeted gangplank and stepped onto the historic vessel. Unlike their small canoes, the Delta Queen herself barely shifted with the weight of the young men as they boarded. At 285 feet long and 58 feet wide, the paddleboat weighed 1,650 tons before any passengers stepped aboard. She was the oldest paddleboat still operating on the Mississippi River and had a reputation that stretched across the entire country. Originally the Delta Queen operated on the Sacramento River between San Francisco and Sacramento. In World War II she reported for duty in San Francisco Bay. After surviving the war, she was brought through the Panama Canal up to the Ohio River and traveled between New Orleans and Cincinnati. In 1970, nearly fifty years into her faithful service, the old ship was added to the list of National Register of Historic Places. It was onto this physical vestige of history that the voyageurs now stepped.
The captain directed the men to the Mark Twain room for their presentation. The enclosed space was dark compared to the bright, open river, despite the windows that lined either side of the room. A large audience crowded into padded chairs and behind rows of tables to listen to the presentation. The men went through the normal round of songs and skits, educating their audience on the history of the voyageurs and French exploration of the Mississippi Valley before eventually coming to one of their a cappella numbers, “À la Claire Fontaine.” The love song was used to explain the voyageurs’ connection to the people they left behind whenever they set out for the wilderness, and it rarely failed to evoke similar feelings of homesickness in its performers, especially now that they were so close to completing their expedition.
The day before, ten miles up the river in Donaldsonville, some of the men had ended their family phone conversations with “See you Saturday.” Only two days away. Three days from now they’d make their grand entrance in New Orleans, and in ten days the voyage would be over. It had been 233 days since they had set off from Montreal, a group of recently graduated high school students and their teachers wearing funny costumes on a mission for God and country—well, at least for country. They’d been awkward time travelers then, unaccustomed to the rigors of paddling all day and the discomfort of sleeping outdoors in all weather. Now they were confident voyageurs who could paddle canoes in their sleep (literally—some crew members were known for dozing while they paddled) and navigate the contours of the nation’s waterways. In ten days that lifestyle would end. The self-made time machine would be disassembled, one artifact at a time, until they were regular young men again, preparing to start the early years of their adult lives. But for now, the mixture of nervousness and unbearable eagerness for the end of the trip had to be pushed aside. The next ten days were going to be overflowing with engagements.
After their presentation in the Mark Twain room, the voyageurs were escorted around the rest of the ship. The captain invited them into the pilothouse, demonstrating the wheels and levers that propelled the paddleboat at a leisurely pace up and down the river. Outside the pilothouse he showed them the ship’s calliope. The instrument looked similar to an organ, with its wooden frame painted red. But instead of moving wind through pipes to produce sound, the calliope, which was made from large whistles sometimes pulled from old locomotives, used steam to produce its shrill music. This calliope was used to great effect when the Delta Queen entered or departed a harbor. Since the volume of a calliope couldn’t be controlled, the loud songs could be heard near and far.
From the Delta Queen the men were escorted into another era of the past, this time to the Antebellum South. Not far from where the Delta Queen was docked at Burnside lay the Houmas House. The magnificent Greek revival mansion was built in 1840 and named for the membe
rs of the Native American tribe who sold the land to its original French owners. The entrance to the mansion was an oak alley, the gnarled tree branches crisscrossed like manmade arches over a covered path. The mansion itself was enormous, surrounded by columns and topped with a belvedere that overlooked the manicured terrain. Waiting at the front of the mansion among the columns was a small group of Southern belles wearing hoop skirts, one in lilac, one in powder blue, one in navy blue, all with knitted shawls wrapped around their shoulders. The women chatted with the men as they went through their tour of the mansion, the two groups perhaps comparing the relative authenticity of their costumes and their knowledge of the period they were representing. The mansion was beautiful and seemed thick with ghosts of the pre–Civil War past. It was perfectly convincing except for one jarring absence: there were no slaves. That was the problem with re-creating the past—it was easy to get caught up in the grandeur of the illusion, immersing oneself in the minutiae of replicable details and avoiding the human tragedies that accompanied such lifestyles.
Both the visit to the Delta Queen and the Houmas House passed quickly. By 4:00 the men were back in their canoes, returned to the familiar era of the French voyageurs. They paddled for another hour before pulling off to look for a campsite in a field strewn with cow patties. It was easy work compared to the previous day, when they’d paddled sixty miles and arrived after dark on a black river illuminated by the lights of towns and industrial facilities. With the end of the expedition approaching, many of the crew members had grown more introspective in their nighttime musings. Just a few days ago, Bob Kulick had been ruminating on the Elton John song “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” There was college to think about now, and a move to Connecticut since his parents no longer lived in Illinois. What would happen next?
The Last Voyageurs Page 24
