See Parkman's La Salle, p. 658, concerning Sâgean's pretensions. Shea published Sâgean's narrative in 1863, with the title, "Extrait de la Relation des avantures et voyage de M. Sâgean."
In February, 1680, Hennepin, by La Salle's orders, set out from Fort Crevecœur for the upper Mississippi. He ascended that river to the Sioux country, and discovered St. Anthony's Falls. Hennepin's first work, "Description de la Louisiane," Paris, 1683, relates the events of this expedition, and also gives an account of La Salle's journey from Canada to the Illinois in 1679-80. Shea gives in his "Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi" the portion of this work relating the voyage to the upper Mississippi. Hennepin's works are held in disrepute, owing to undoubted plagiarisms and falsifications which characterize some of them. Shea, however, shows in the preface to his edition of the "Description of Louisiana," New York, 1880, that this charge applies only to the "Nouvelle Découverte" and "Nouveau Voyage," and other works made up from these two last, and that they were probably published without Hennepin's sanction. Parkman agrees with Shea in considering the "Description de la Louisiane" to be an authentic work.
For criticisms upon Hennepin, see Sparks' "La Salle;" Parkman's "Discovery of the Great West;" Harrisse's "Notes pour servir à l'Histoire [etc.] de la Nouvelle France," p. 145; and the preface to Margry's Découvertes, etc. Shea's early judgment upon Hennepin, which he has modified as indicated above, is given in his "Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi." E. D. Neill, in a pamphlet entitled "The Writings of L. Hennepin," lately published by the Minnesota Historical Society, dissents from Shea's exculpation of Hennepin, and declares that no evidence has been produced to clear him from the charge of plagiary.
The bi-centenary of Hennepin's discovery of St. Anthony's Falls was celebrated by the Minnesota Historical Society in 1880, and the proceedings on the occasion will be reported in the next volume of its collections. The account of a pretended voyage by Hennepin down the Mississippi, taken from the spurious "New Discovery," London, 1698, is inserted in "French's Historical Collections," part i., pp. 195-222; also in volume one of the "Archæologia Americana," published by the American Antiquarian Society. The latter work also contains an account of La Salle's last voyage, taken from the same unreliable source.
Shea's edition of Hennepin's "Louisiana" contains a bibliography of the numerous memoirs, issued under Hennepin's name, where also may be found a translation of La Salle's letter of August, 1682, reporting the voyage on the upper Mississippi. Du L'hut, who, in 1679, visited the Sioux near Lake Superior, and later descended the St. Croix to the Mississippi and rescued Hennepin from the Sioux, gives an account
