The Last Voyageurs Read online

  Together the small crew set about crafting a world that had existed centuries earlier. They began in the autumn of 1974, with only two years to plan and prepare, a terribly short period of time considering how much there was to do if they truly wanted to resurrect the past. They’d have to work furiously and ceaselessly, spurred, perhaps, by the patriotic sentiments shared by their countrymen and even foreign visitors. As Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges said during a trip to the United States before its bicentennial, “The United States was a country of great individuals—Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, Poe—the people who really set your country apart. But America seems to be drifting away from the great ghosts who were so important to mankind . . . America is still the best hope. But the Americans themselves will have to be the best hope, too.”8 Reid Lewis was ready to accept that challenge.

  How does one explain a man such as Reid Lewis? Like René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, Lewis was consumed by an idea, incapable of accepting defeat, tenacious, and exacting. Unlike the French explorer, Lewis lived in a world of ever more astonishing technology, a world of democratic governments, rapidly changing social norms, and no more terra incognita. That last fact didn’t bother Lewis. His mission wasn’t to discover new land but to remind people of the history of this land, to reinvigorate them to great endeavors.

  At 34 years old, Lewis was thin and strong, with ropy muscle earned over the course of years spent canoeing for reenactments and for fun. His wavy brown hair was thinning at the top of his head. He planned to grow a mustache and wear a black wig during his appearances as La Salle. Lewis was charismatic and personable, equally comfortable in front of a classroom or a camera. He had a gift for drawing others into his vision, no matter how wild it seemed. He recognized that he asked a lot of other people and sometimes pushed them beyond a point of comfort. He demanded that much and more of himself. And when people weren’t living up to his expectations, it was frustrating. Sometimes during the preparation process for the voyage he wondered if everyone felt the same level of dedication as he did, or if his expectations were simply too high.

  Lewis hadn’t planned on becoming a professional reenactor when he entered college. He hardly knew what he wanted to do. At one point he’d entertained the idea of being a farmer, but that idea never progressed beyond a daydream. He knew he didn’t want to be a lawyer like his father, and he liked being outside. His real passion had always been learning about France. French language, culture, history, food—all of it was equally fascinating. The more he learned, the more his enthusiasm for the subject grew.

  The obsession began with his roots: his grandfather, Emile Henri, became an orphan when his family immigrated to the United States from France in the 1800s and his parents died shortly after their arrival. He was adopted by the Lewis family and stayed in Illinois, eventually passing on part of his name to his grandson Reid Henri Lewis. On a family trip to France during Reid’s high school years, the Lewises visited Fresse, the village in the Vosges Mountains where Emile’s parents had lived. They found a birth record for Emile and discovered distant cousins still living in the same town. It was something of an epiphany for Reid, to see that familial connection in flesh and blood. When he entered college, that experience was part of what led him to study history and the French language.

  By itself, successfully tracing his lineage back to Europe wasn’t enough to explain Lewis’s decision to be a reenactor. Plenty of people become absorbed in uncovering the secrets of their genealogy without ever wanting to live the way their ancestors did. For Lewis, it was some combination of upbringing and inherent personality. Adventure had been an essential part of his childhood. The Lewis family traveled extensively across the country and Reid’s parents never revealed the destination to their two boys. Once, the family climbed aboard an airplane on the runway to see what the inside looked like—before the days of airport security, family and friends could board the plane to see their loved ones off. The plane was equipped with seatbelts, a novelty that their car didn’t have. When the captain announced over the speaker that they’d be departing soon for Cuba and anyone without a ticket should exit the plane, Reid’s father held a finger up to his lips and said, “Let’s just stay here.” Only later did Reid find out that they’d purchased tickets in advance; Cuba had been their destination all along.

  From childhood adventures with his family, Lewis moved on to larger undertakings as an adult. He traveled extensively, including a stint at the Sorbonne to study French. He volunteered to join a team of shipwreck divers who traveled to Ecuador in search of the treasure of Sir Francis Drake’s ship Golden Hind, though they never discovered anything. For someone who loved travel and history, the world was full of potential. Stories of people who lived centuries earlier were etched in the surface of the earth, visible if you took the time to look for them.

  Teaching was never the career path Lewis had envisioned for himself, but it suited his personality. He made the decision to head to the classroom based on his experiences in Boy Scouts and his love of sharing knowledge with others. He knew he’d have the opportunity to expose kids to a new language and to his personal brand of stick-to-it-iveness, which he hoped would serve them throughout their lives even if they forgot how to conjugate French verbs. He spread his fondness for history and the outdoors to his students by encouraging them to sew costumes on weekends and get permission from parents to go on canoe trips down the Mississippi for miniature reenactments. The students, who tired quickly but loved the trips nonetheless, paddled up to Fort de Chartres near Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, belting out songs in French. Lewis was an enthusiastic teacher with a dramatic flair, and he was convinced that school could be every bit as exciting as any hobby.

  Lewis might be best summarized by one of his favorite inspirational quotes, originally voiced by the Chicago architect Daniel Burnham: “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence.”

  Chapter Two

  RECONSTRUCTING THE PAST

  Quebec, New France

  September 15, 1678

  During his first ten years in New France, La Salle did everything he could to become an explorer in the truest sense of the word. He wanted to reach a new frontier, to leave his mark on the history of the continent. Motivated by his own desire for prestige and economic prosperity, La Salle initially endeavored to find a passage across the continent to the Pacific. After selling his property in 1669 to finance his voyages, La Salle departed down the Ohio River. He undertook multiple voyages along that river, but they each came to nothing. In the meantime, Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette discovered the Mississippi River in 1673.

  Although La Salle’s attempts to find a water route to the Pacific were all abortive, they did teach him more about diplomacy and the languages and cultural traditions of various Native American tribes. The French colony in New France was small, and La Salle’s attempted explorations and newfound skills didn’t go unnoticed. He earned enough of a reputation that in 1673 the governor of New France, Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, included him as a translator and emissary on a mission to negotiate with local Iroquois chiefs at the mouth of the Cataraqui River (near modern-day Kingston, Ontario). After the successful conclusion of the discussions with the Iroquois, La Salle oversaw the construction of a fort at the opening of Lake Ontario, which he named for the French governor. Since neither Frontenac nor La Salle had explicit permission from King Louis to build the fort, La Salle returned to France in 1674 to argue for its necessity.

  While in France, La Salle explained why Fort Frontenac was so valuable: it helped the French maintain an upper hand against the Iroquois. He stated his case so eloquently that he was given control of Fort Frontenac and awarded the rank of nobility, complete with his own coat of arms (a greyh
ound on a sable field under a golden six-pointed star).1 La Salle returned to the North American colony in 1675, armed with loans from his family to fortify the fort. For several more years he worked from Fort Frontenac and managed fur trade from the fort, helping to increase his fortune. He also further developed his plan to travel deeper into the heart of the continent. Then, in 1677, he returned to France to meet with King Louis and his minister of finance, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who was charged with overseeing affairs in the colony. It was a voyage that marked a pivotal moment in La Salle’s career.

  Presenting his case to the French court, La Salle explained that he wanted to explore the Mississippi in order to expand trade into a more fertile climate. Not only would the French maintain their control of the St. Lawrence, they’d also have a warm-water port, which might help them stave off the British. Colbert began his tenure as manager of the colony with the goal of keeping the territory as small as possible. His rationale was that the colonists needed to create strong cities with cultivated land before spreading out to the interior of the country, which might have sounded feasible from his perspective in France but was absolutely ignored in North America. But the idea of having a warm-water port proved irresistible. Colbert wanted to exploit Canada’s boundless natural resources, but as it was, the St. Lawrence was too arduous a waterway for trade on a large scale: for half the year the channel was blocked with ice, and even when the route was clear, contrary winds often delayed ships for days from entering the St. Lawrence. The entrance had such a notorious reputation, it came to be known as “Cape Torment.”2

  With the urging of Colbert, King Louis was convinced. He granted La Salle letters of patent permitting the explorer to travel the Mississippi and build whatever forts he deemed necessary for the completion of his mission. Additionally, La Salle would have a monopoly on the fur trade that resulted from whatever territories he discovered on his voyage. There were two stipulations: La Salle would have to fund the mission on his own, and he would have only five years to finish the enterprise, after which he would no longer have a trade monopoly or the right to explore.3

  For much of history, exploration has been the privilege and the burden of wealthy aristocratic men—or of poorer men who convince rich ones to sponsor their voyages. La Salle belonged decidedly to the latter category and struggled to finance his travels. It didn’t help that currency in New France flew straight back to Europe almost as soon as it arrived—any coins that made it across the ocean were usually sent back as remittances by the importers. Colonists were forced to be creative when they wanted to spend locally. Beaver skins, moose hides, and even playing cards with their corners cut off were substituted for official French currency.4

  Since he knew he couldn’t expect to raise much money in the colony, La Salle spent several months in France raising the money necessary to fund his expedition. During this period he met an Italian soldier named Henri de Tonty. The two quickly became friends, and La Salle decided that the Italian’s experience in military affairs would make him a valuable second-in-command. The Sicilian was known as “Iron Fist” for the prosthetic metal hand he wore on his right arm to replace the hand he lost to a grenade while fighting in Sicily.5 Together, La Salle and Tonty set sail for New France in the late summer of 1678. It was the beginning of their goal to travel to the ends of the great Mississippi and find out what lands lay beyond the known world.

  Elgin, Illinois

  1975

  Reid Lewis stood in front of a chalkboard facing his audience as he described the various parts of a 17th-century musket. A drawing of the gun on the board was labeled with the French names for the flintlock mechanism: bassinet, batterie, couvre-bassinet. It would’ve been a strange enough lesson in a regular high school French classroom, where students are usually taught strings of verbs and useful nouns and the occasional colloquialism. But Lewis wasn’t just teaching his students the words for the parts of a French musket—he expected them to build the guns as well.

  Although Lewis still dressed like a high school teacher (today it was a red turtleneck sweater and a brown tweed jacket, his fingertips dusted white with chalk) and spent much of his time in classrooms with teenagers, he hadn’t been working as a salaried member of the staff at Larkin High School for a year. That’s not to say he’d given up on education. His methods simply didn’t follow the standard practice of having kids sit down, shut up, and absorb knowledge, and many of his lessons weren’t taught in a classroom. Lewis preferred a more hands-on approach, such as taking a group of teenage boys out into the wilds of Wisconsin at Kettle Moraine State Forest in the middle of winter to teach them about cold weather camping and test their stamina. He had them pitch tents and go to sleep, then abruptly woke them all up at 2 A.M., telling them to pack their gear and sprint out of the forest. Not everyone had appreciated the test. One participant was so frustrated that he swung his backpack into a tree and broke the pack’s frame. It was an unfortunate reaction, but the lesson was meant to uncover that sort of behavior. Lewis needed to see how the teenagers who expressed interest in the expedition would function in difficult outdoor experiences. Those who couldn’t cope with unpredictability on weekend trips would probably cave under the pressure of a yearlong out-of-classroom experience.

  The response to Lewis’s initial presentation about La Salle: Expedition II in the two Elgin high schools had been gratifying and tumultuous. He needed sixteen students and more than sixty had turned up with their parents at the first informational meeting.

  “We’ll begin with historical research, because we want this expedition to be as authentic as humanly possible in the 20th century,” he’d told the assembled group that fall night in 1974. It was a Wednesday at the beginning of the school year, and the Elgin High School library was packed. “The people with whom we come in contact will expect us to be authorities on the subject we’re portraying; and if we aren’t, we’re letting them down and letting down one of the basic principles of the expedition. During the two years of preparation, the research will be going on constantly. As we get information we’ll use it for our projects. In all, we’ll have nineteen interdisciplinary projects. These will be the expedition’s legacy.”

  Lewis’s interrelated projects were the cornerstone of what he hoped would eventually become an entire educational unit. During the twenty-month preparatory period before the expedition and then during the expedition itself, the students and adult leaders would each be assigned several areas, including: mapping the 1976 route using 17th-century techniques; creating authentic clothing; learning voyageur paddling songs; a physiological study of how the crew members changed over the course of the voyage; voyageur eating habits; canoe construction; musket construction; language studies (French and some Latin); dramatic presentations; studying the journals of early explorers; sketching; photography; physical conditioning; background reading on related topics; general historic research; religious history of New France; scientific projects such as meteorology, natural observations, and astronomy; political history; and student radio productions. Each of the projects had an adult director, plus a professional adviser from the community, who would volunteer his or her time to help with the students’ research. If all the materials were successfully compiled at the end of the expedition, they could be turned into lesson plans, studies, and teaching aids—or so Lewis hoped.

  It was an impressive vision, and an overwhelming one for about half of the sixty teenagers who’d submitted applications. Some didn’t want to give up their social lives, others balked at the idea of spending countless hours poring through scholarly research (including all seventy-one volumes of The Jesuit Relations). But even with the early wave of dropouts, more than thirty remained. Cutting the group down to sixteen, plus a few alternates, was a daunting task. Making the task more difficult were the age and temperament of his recruits. Lewis wanted young men who were capable and mature, who had a variety of academic backgrounds and could be counted on in a crisis. But he was choosing from a pool of 15-
to 17-year-olds, a demographic notorious for undergoing drastic changes over the course of a few months or even a few weeks. Who was to say they wouldn’t lose interest halfway through the trip?

  “Let’s say we’ve been gone just maybe a week; we just got to Lake Ontario, paddling the St. Lawrence. And you’ve already discovered that one member of your crew is not pulling his share of the load. How would you handle that?”

  “I would talk to them,” Chuck Campbell said in a quiet voice to the panel of adults in front of him. He was a shy kid, small and soft-spoken. He had outdoors experience from being in the Boy Scouts and described himself as a “willing worker” and an “interesting conversationalist.” At the end of his answer, the adults simply said, “Okay.” Without giving any positive or negative sign, they moved to the next question.

  “Later on in the trip, you’re tired, we get in real late one night and it’s been a particularly bad day on the lake,” the question began. “And when you’re setting up camp you find out one of the guys in your canoe has a sleeping bag that’s just drenched all the way through. And everybody is so tired and it’s so late, you’ve got to get up early in the morning to leave, he doesn’t want to spend the time staying up and letting it dry out. What’s your reaction to that?”

  One after another the questions came. Some were variations on the first two, others were about the group’s research projects and budget. The exercise was an attempt to gauge how Campbell might react to the hardships that would inevitably arise on the expedition—and how well prepared he was to deal with the media. If everything went as planned, the expedition would be followed by reporters every step of the way. Each of the adults had evaluation forms to rate every student’s capacity for leadership, commitment, attitude, dependability, and so on. The evaluation criteria were as close to exhaustive as Lewis could make them. He knew picking the right crew was the difference between making it all the way to the Gulf of Mexico and having a blowup before they reached the Great Lakes. What made the process tricky was the gap between theory and practice: answering questions in a classroom is nothing like being stuck outside in the rain with boiled beans for dinner and a horde of journalists poking microphones in your face.