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Title: The Man with the Iron Hand
Author: Parish, John Carl
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Man with the Iron Hand" ***
THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND
BY
JOHN CARL PARISH
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: La Salle took possession in the name of the King of
France.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
True Tales of the Great Valley
EDITED BY BENJAMIN F. SHAMBAUGH
The Man with the Iron Hand
BY
JOHN CARL PARISH
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1913
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published October 1913
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let us picture in imagination the history of the Great Valley of the
Mississippi as a splendid drama enacted upon a giant stage which reaches
from the Alleghanies to the Rockies and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf
of Mexico and through which the Father of Waters sweeps majestically.
Let us people this stage with real men and women—picturesque red men and
no less interesting white men, Indians, Spaniards, Frenchmen,
Englishmen, explorers, warriors, priests, voyageurs, coureurs de bois;
fur traders, and settlers. Let the scenes be set about the lakes, along
the rivers, among the hills, on the plains, and in the forests. Then,
viewing this pageant of the past, let us write the true tales of the
Great Valley as we write romance—with life, action, and color—that the
history of our Great Valley may live.
Benjamin F. Shambaugh
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
The purpose of this book is to present in readable narrative form, yet
with strict accuracy, some of the events which attended the coming of
the French explorers into the Mississippi Valley, and to deal with these
events as much as possible from the standpoint of the Indians whose
country the white men entered. In other words, an effort has been made
to place the reader in the position and environment of the native
inhabitants in order that he may witness the coming of the whites
through the eyes and minds of the Indians instead of viewing from the
outside the exploration, by men of his own kind, of an unknown land
peopled by a strange and vaguely understood race.
For the sake of preserving the standpoint of the Great Valley, the story
of explorations is centered about Henry de Tonty—the “Man with the Iron
Hand”—who, unlike his leader La Salle, remained in the valley of the
Mississippi and in close relations with its inhabitants for a quarter of
a century.
This book is not in any sense fiction. It has been written directly from
the original sources and from the best information available upon the
life of the Indian at the time of the arrival of the whites. The sources
consist mainly of the letters and relations of Father Marquette and
other Jesuits, of Joliet and La Salle and Tonty, and the writings of the
various friars, priests, and soldiers who accompanied them. A few
fragments are accessible in manuscript form only; but the most important
material has been compiled, edited, and published by Pierre Margry, John
Gilmary Shea, B. F. French, Reuben Gold Thwaites, and others.
Where conversations are given they have been taken from the reports of
those who held them or heard them. Usually they have been translated
literally from the French records. Sometimes the direct discourse has
been turned into indirect, or abridged, and in a few cases the indirect
has been turned into the direct form.
The writings of the early explorers and priests abound in descriptive
details of a climatic, physical, or personal nature; and this
information, wherever illuminative, has been drawn upon to reproduce as
vividly and as truly as possible the conditions surrounding the events
described.
There is one secondary writer who will always deserve the gratitude of
the student of subjects connected with the French and Indians in Canada
and the Mississippi Valley, and acknowledgments are here made to Francis
Parkman, not as a source of information—although his conclusions, drawn
from an exhaustive study of original documents, are invaluable—but as a
pioneer and unrivaled master in the field and a source of unfailing
inspiration.
There are many persons who have aided the work in various ways, and
their assistance has been duly appreciated; but space will permit the
mention of only two of them. The helpful criticism and suggestions of my
wife throughout the entire preparation of the volume have materially
benefited the text; and the constant advice and encouragement of the
editor of the series, Dr. Benjamin F. Shambaugh, and his careful
editorial revision of the manuscript have added much to the value of the
book.
John Carl Parish.
Denver, Colorado
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
I THE CAPTIVE
II THE COMING OF THE STRANGERS
III DOWN THE GREAT RIVER
IV THE CAPTIVE RELEASED
V THE BLACK GOWN
VI “THE IROQUOIS ARE COMING”
VII THE SECRET COUNCIL
VIII THE FORT CALLED CRÈVECŒUR
IX THE WHITE INVASION
X THE MYSTERIOUS HAND
XI “WE ARE ALL SAVAGES”
XII THE DEATH OF CHASSAGOAC
XIII THE IROQUOIS COME
XIV THE SCATTERING OF THE TRIBES
XV A SIOUX WAR PARTY
XVI THE LAND OF THE SIOUX
XVII A BUFFALO HUNT
XVIII THE MIAMIS REPENT
XIX A CHIEF COME TO LIFE
XX STRANGE RITES
XXI THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI
XXII THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES
XXIII FORT ST. LOUIS
XXIV THE LOST CHIEF
XXV NEWS FROM LA SALLE
XXVI AN ILL-STARRED VOYAGE
XXVII HUNTING THE MISSISSIPPI
XXVIII FROM THE GULF TO THE ILLINOIS
XXIX WHEN HE LEFT THEM
XXX WHITE AND RED SAVAGES
XXXI TONTY’S HEROIC VENTURE
XXXII THE PITIFUL REMNANT
The frontispiece is from a painting by Frank T. Merrill
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Man with the Iron Hand
CHAPTER I
THE CAPTIVE
A sudden, far-off cry broke the stillness that had brooded over the
long, low Indian lodges on the hill. Instantly the whole village awoke
to intense excitement. Women dropped their work by the fireside; old men
put away their long-stemmed pipes and leaped like young braves to the
doors of the lodges; while in the fields young girls stood straight to
listen. Again came the cry, but nearer now and as of many voices. From
every lodge by the side of the river and on the hill came pouring the
red-skinned villagers, their straight, black hair glistening in the
sunlight. From the fields of corn and squashes and out from among the
bean-vines came lithe maidens and sturdy Indian women; and from their
play by the riverside naked children tumbled breathlessly into the open
space before the lodges.
In the distance, with wild, triumphant cries, came the war party for
which the women and old men of the village had waited so long. Now they
could see the gay feathers that decorated the heads and the red paint
that smeared the bodies of the returning braves. Now they caught sight
of scalp-locks waved in the air; and in the midst of the throng of
warriors they saw the figure of a strange Indian lad plodding along
between two tall braves. “Scalps and a captive” went up the cry from the
waiting villagers, and out into the open with shouts of welcome they
poured to meet the home-coming band.
It was an occasion long to be remembered. The women of the tribe
gathered in the open, and with weird songs and wild music, with arms
flung high and feet shuffling and leaping, and with bodies twisting and
bending, danced the scalp dance.
The captive was only a boy, who did not speak the language of the
Illinois into whose triumphant hands he had fallen. He was a stranger in
the midst of enemies. Sometimes, as he well knew, in the camps of the
Peoria tribe, when darkness had fallen after a day of battle, captives
were burned alive. Such a scene his terrified mind now pictured. He
imagined himself bound at the foot of a stake in the midst of a
clearing. He could see flames reach out hungrily and consume the dried
sticks and underbrush. Each second they mounted higher, throwing a
circle of light on a close-packed crowd of heartless and rejoicing
Indians, who watched the growing flames leap up and lick at the limbs of
the helpless captive tied to the stake.
Perhaps, if he had been an Iroquois, burning would have been the young
boy’s fate. But on this particular occasion the Iowa River, which ran
past the Peoria village, witnessed no such barbaric torturings, for the
wife of the chief claimed the captive and took him to her own lodge,
where in due time and with proper ceremony he was adopted as a member of
the chief’s family.
It was in some such train of events that this captive Indian boy came,
with strange words upon his lips and fear in his heart, to live with the
Peoria tribe of Illinois Indians. He had many forebodings, but with all
his Indian imagination he could not foresee that from this village of
his adoption he would set out upon a series of adventures such as no boy
or man of his tribe had yet experienced—that he would pass through
countries and among people like none he had ever known and come upon
dangers that would make his capture in battle seem as tame as a day’s
fishing.
CHAPTER II
THE COMING OF THE STRANGERS
It was many days later, and the quiet and beauty of June had come upon
the Mississippi Valley. From in front of the Peoria lodges on the banks
of the Iowa River, a slender trail slipped off across the prairies
through two leagues of sunshine over a country fair to see, and came at
length to the west bank of the Mississippi. But on this summer day no
Indian traveled the pathway that led from the village. There was no one
in the streets of the Indian town, and no movement to be seen save the
slow rising of smoke from the tops of the three hundred lodges which
dotted the hill like so many long arbors, with rounded roofs made
waterproof by layers of plaited rush mats. But from the lodges came the
murmur of voices, for inside the windowless walls the Indians of the
Peoria tribe were gathered.
Down the center line within each lodge four or five fires were burning,
and beside each fire two families made their home. Indian women squatted
by the smouldering embers, or pounded corn into meal in stone bowls;
while here and there on rush mats or on the dirt floor sat the men with
tattooed and sinewy bodies, smoking long-stemmed pipes or mending bows.
Against the walls brown papooses, on end in their cases, blinked at the
light from doorway and fires or gazed stolidly and silently at nothing.
Life among the lodges, except in time of war, was uneventful. Nor was
there on this day in late June any reason to look for events other than
those which had fallen upon the tribe for generations.
Then of a sudden the village was startled by a shout. It was not that
peculiar cry of war which sometimes echoed along the valley, nor yet the
cry of returning hunters or warriors. It had an odd new note in it that
halted the busy work of the Indian women and woke to activity the
dreaming braves. Pipes were laid aside, stones with which the squaws
were grinding corn fell quiet into the bowls, and papooses were
forgotten as the villagers swarmed out of the lodges into the sunlight.
Strange was the sight which met their curious gaze. There in the pathway
that came over from the Mississippi were two men. The Peorias had seen
no Indians like these. Although it was the month of June the strangers
were covered from head to foot with garments of cloth. One, a man yet in
his twenties, was dressed in a coat and heavy breeches; the other, a
quietfaced man somewhat older than his companion, wore a long black
robe, gathered about his waist by a cord and reaching to his feet. Swung
from this cord was a string of large beads from which hung a cross.
Unannounced these strange beings had appeared in the pathway before the
village almost as if dropped by some spirit from the sky. No paint was
on their pale faces, no feathers in their hair. They carried no weapons
and displayed neither the pipe of war with its red paint and feathers
nor the pipe of peace that told of the coming of friends. Yet there were
those among the Indian villagers who doubtless knew whence the strangers
came. Perhaps among them were some of the Illinois warriors who, six
years before, had made a visit to a group of cabins many leagues to the
north, on the shore of Lake Superior, and who had there seen the
energetic fur traders, with their blanket coats and stout breeches, and
the Jesuit priests who, dressed like this man in black gown and hood,
had pushed their way into the villages all about the Great Lakes.
Perhaps in the journeys which the Peorias sometimes made to the village
of their Kaskaskia brothers over on the Illinois River, they had heard
of the men with white faces who lived near Green Bay and at the Straits
of Mackinac.
The word quickly passed among the men of the Peoria village that these
two strangers were of the great French nation from over the sea.
Moreover, since it was customary for the Indian to be hospitable to
peaceable visitors, these two men who had appeared so unexpectedly in
the pathway must be fitly welcomed. Four Indians—old men with authority
in the tribe—stepped out from the crowd and advanced down the path. They
walked slowly, two of them holding above their heads in the glowing
sunlight the calumets or pipes of peace decorated with feathers and
finely ornamented. Without a word they drew near the strangers, holding
their pipes to the sky as if offering them to the sun to smoke. Finally
they stopped and gazed attentively, yet courteously, upon the white men.
Then spoke up the man in the black gown. “Who are you?” he said in a
broken Algonquian tongue.
“We are Illinois,” the old men answered. There was pride in their tones,
for the name Illinois means “the men”—as if no other Indians were so
worthy to be called men. Then they gave the white men the pipes of peace
to smoke and invited them to visit the lodges.
Together the Indians and their guests walked up the path to the village.
At the door of one of the lodges was an old man who stood naked and
erect, with hands extended to the sun. Toward this lodge the strangers
made their way; and as they drew near, the old man spoke:
“How beautiful is the sun, O Frenchmen, when thou comest to visit us!
All our village awaits thee and thou shalt enter all our lodges in
peace.”
Within the lodge were many of the tribe, and in their minds was great
wonder as they looked upon the curious men from the East. The elders of
the tribe again gave to the visitors the pipe of peace; and when they
had smoked, the Indians also drew upon the calumet, thus binding upon
themselves peace and good will to their strange guests.
A little way off was a group of lodges where lived the greatest chief of
the tribe. When he heard of the coming of the white men, he sent to
invite them to his lodge. The strangers accepted, and a great retinue
attended them as they passed through the village. Eager to see such
unusual visitors, the Indians followed them in throngs. Some lay in the
grass and watched them as they passed by; others ran ahead, and then
walked back to meet them. Yet without noise and with great courtesy they
looked upon the two white men. Finally they all came to the lodge of the
Peoria chief.
The chief stood in his doorway, while on either side of him stood an old
man. Naked were the three, and up toward the sun they held the
long-stemmed calumet. With a few dignified words the chief drew the
white men into his lodge, where again they smoked together in
friendship. Then silence fell upon those within the lodge, for the time
had come when the strangers should tell of their mission. Impassive but
full of expectancy, the Indians waited. It was the man in the black gown
who spoke; and after the manner of the Indians he gave them four
presents and with each present he gave them a message.
Silently the red men listened as with his first present he told them of
the object of his coming. He was Jacques Marquette, a priest of the
Order of Jesuits, and his companion was Louis Joliet, a fur trader and
explorer of the great French nation. They had come journeying peaceably
to visit the tribes that dwelt upon the Mississippi, and they were eager
to go as far as the sea into which the Great River flowed.
Again he gave them a present and told them of the God of the white men,
who had created the Indian as well, and who had sent the black-robed
priests into the far corners of the earth to tell the Indians of his
glory. Then a third present he gave to the Peorias and told them of the
great chief of the French who sent word that he had conquered the fierce
Iroquois and made peace everywhere. With the fourth and last present he
begged the Peorias to tell him of the Indian nations to the south along
the windings of the great river and beside the sea into which it flowed.
When the priest ceased speaking, the chief of the Peorias rose. Beside
him stood an Indian boy of about ten years. He was not a Peoria, but the
captive who had been taken in battle and adopted into the chief’s
family. Placing his hand on the boy’s head, the chief spoke these
words:—
“I thank thee, Black Gown, and thee, O Frenchman, for having taken so
much trouble to come to visit us. Never has the earth been so beautiful
or the sun so bright as to-day. Never has our river been so calm or so
free from rocks, which thy canoes have removed in passing. Never has our
tobacco tasted so good or our corn appeared so fine as we now see it.
Here is my son whom I give thee to show thee my heart.”
Thus the captive Indian lad came to be one of the party of explorers and
to share their strange wanderings and adventures in the Great Valley.
As the priest spoke of the God of the French who had sent his men across
seas and into forests, the Indian chief, and those who sat with him,
thought of their own manitous and gods, and of their own medicine men
who understood and knew the powerful spirits, and by prayers and
incantations could influence them to bring sunshine to ripen the corn
and rain in time of drought, to guard them in warfare, and to cure them
in sickness. This black-robed priest must be a great medicine man in the
lodges of the whites; and so the chief said:—
“I beg thee to have pity on me and on my nation. It is thou who knowest
the Spirit who made us all. It is thou who speakest to Him and hearest
his word. Beg Him to give me life and health and to come and dwell with
us that we may know Him.”
Then the chief gave the priest a pipe like that which the two old men
had carried. It was carved, and decked with the plumage of birds, and
its stem was as long as a tall brave’s arm. It was a token of peace
which the white men would often need in the countries they were about to
explore. With this present the Peoria spoke of the love he bore for the
great chief of the French.
With another present he warned the white men of the dangers ahead of
them; and he begged them not to go farther. Tribes fierce and deadly
lived toward the south, and other dangers more mysterious and awful
lurked along the waters of the river. But the gentle-faced priest
replied that he had no fear of death, saying that he counted no
happiness greater than to die teaching of his God.
Amazed were all the Indians who sat in the chiefs lodge and heard this
answer. To scalp a foe in honor of one’s manitou and to the glory of his
nation seemed the height of joy and triumph; but they could not
understand the courage of one who would willingly be scalped or tortured
in honor of his God. So they made no reply and the council closed.
Meanwhile among the lodges Indian women and girls had busied themselves
in preparing a feast for the strangers. Papooses were hung up out of the
way on trees or leaned against the lodge walls while their mothers
brought corn and meat, stirred the fires, and killed a dog for the
distinguished guests. A woman whose nose had been cut off as a
punishment for unfaithfulness to her husband came out of a near-by
lodge. Young girls, whose daily duty it was to care for the rows of corn
and beans in the fields, now helped to bring into the lodge the food
which the women had made ready.
The first course at this Peoria feast was sagamite, a dish made from the
meal of Indian corn and seasoned with fat. It was served on a great
wooden platter. An Indian, acting as master of ceremonies, took a spoon
made from the bone of a buffalo, filled it with sagamite, and presented
it several times to the mouths of the strangers as one would feed
children. Then they brought, fresh from the fires which the Indian women
had tended, a dish containing three fish. The same Indian took the fish,
removed the bones, blew upon some pieces to cool them, and fed them to
the guests. The third course, which was served only upon rare and highly
important occasions, consisted of the meat of a dog freshly killed. To
the great surprise of the Indians the white men did not eat of this
dish, and so it was taken away. The fourth course was buffalo meat, the
choicest morsels of which were given to the priest and his companion.
After this elaborate feast, the Peorias took their visitors through the
whole village, and the open-mouthed and open-hearted Indians brought
them gifts of their own make—belts and bracelets made from the hair of
buffalo or bear and dyed red, yellow, and gray. At length when night
came upon the Peoria lodges, Marquette and Joliet were made comfortable
on beds of buffalo robes in the lodge of the chief.
In the afternoon of the next day the strangers departed from the Indian
lodges on the Iowa River and followed the pathway back to the bank of
the Mississippi; and with them, courteous to the last, went the chief
and full six hundred members of the tribe. When they came out upon the
river bank, the Indians gazed in wonder at the five white men who had
been left by their leaders to guard two small canoes—small, indeed, in
comparison with the great boats of the Peorias which, hollowed out of
three-foot logs, were half a hundred feet long.
The sun was about halfway down the sky when the strangers embarked. The
Peorias, gathered on the bank, looked on curiously as the two white men
and the Indian boy joined their companions in the birch-bark canoes,
pushed out from the shore, swung into the current, and paddled off
downstream. Then they faced the dropping sun and walked back to the
village. As they thought of the savage tribes to the south and the awful
dangers of the river, they doubted greatly if the gallant strangers
would again come to their village and pay them the visit which the
black-robed priest had promised.
They did see these same voyagers again, but not in the village by the
side of the Iowa River; for during that very summer the Peoria tribe
moved. One day the Indian women stripped the lodge-poles, packed up the
camp implements, loaded themselves with supplies of food and robes, and
together with the men of the village started on a journey eastward which
led them far beyond the Mississippi. On the banks of the Illinois River,
not far from the lake that still bears their name, the Peoria women set
up new lodges and kindled the fires that were to burn day and night in
the new home. Farther up the same river another tribe of the Illinois
Nation—the Kaskaskias—were living in a village on the north bank.
Between these two Illinois towns the young braves no doubt often passed
during the summer of 1673; and as they sat by the fires of their
Kaskaskia brothers and smoked the long calumets, the Peorias told of the
coming of the whites to the village beyond the Mississippi and of their
departure with the Indian boy to journey down the length of the
mysterious river to the great salt sea of the south.
CHAPTER III
DOWN THE GREAT RIVER
A black-robed priest, a young fur trader, five Frenchmen, and a young
Indian boy sat in two birch-bark canoes on the broad current of the
Mississippi River one summer evening. Having eaten a hurried supper
beside a camp-fire on the bank, they paddled on down the darkening river
so that the fire might not betray them to Indian enemies. Night overtook
them and they anchored their canoes in midstream. Leaving one man on
guard, the rest of the party made themselves as comfortable as possible
in the narrow boats and tried to get some sleep.
The sentinel sat silent in his canoe, but with every sense alert.
Through the long hours of night he watched with keen eye for unnatural
shadows in the dim light of moon or stars and listened for sound of
paddle or stir of wild animals. The adventurers were in a strange
country and they knew not what dangers might lurk beside them while they
slept.
The Indian boy, into whose valley the strangers had come, knew the ways
of the night upon river and shore, but he was now in strange company. It
may be that he, too, was awake, thinking over in his childish heart the
curious ways of these white men. The Peoria village where he had so
lately made his home was many leagues up the river. What lands were they
coming to? When would the monsters of the river, of whom his people had
told him, swallow them, canoes and all, into a terrible death?
When a certain constellation crossed the zenith the sentinel reached
over and waked one of his comrades, then joined the others in sleep. At
length the darkness began to lift, as to the left the faint light of
dawn crept up over the rocky bank of the river. Soon the Frenchmen
awoke, took to their paddles, and began another day’s journey.
Each stroke of the paddles carried the Indian boy farther from his home
and nearer the monsters of the great river. By training a keen observer,
he looked up at a steep wall of rock and caught sight of two strange and
fearsome figures. Terror possessed him, for he knew he was in the
presence of the dread beings of which his people had warned him. There,
painted on the rocks in red, black, and green colors, were two monsters
as large as buffalo calves. They had faces like men, but with horrible
red eyes, and beards like those of bull buffalo; and on their heads were
horns like the horns of deer. Scales covered their bodies; and their
tails were so long that they wound about the body and over the head and,
going back between their legs, ended in the tail of a fish.
It was as if the Indian boy were alone with an evil spirit, for no
Indian was near him. He could ask the white men no questions. They, too,
now saw the dread animals; and with much pointing and excitement began
to talk among themselves, but in a tongue the Indian boy could not
understand. Not daring to look long at the pictured rock, he turned his
face away and sat in his narrow seat uncomforted and filled with that
mystic awe which only people of his own race could feel. The white men
talked on as the canoes swept smoothly downstream.
Suddenly as they talked a dull roar met their ears, growing louder as
they descended the river until they saw a great opening in the bank at
the right and a broad river pour in from the northwest to join them. It
was the Missouri coming down from the mountains a thousand miles away
and hurling into the Mississippi a mass of mud and debris, huge
branches, and even whole trees. The two canoes dodged here and there,
while the men at the paddles, alert now and forgetful of painted
dragons, drove their craft now to the right, now to the left, swerved to
avoid a great tree, or paddled for their lives to outrace a mass of
brush. Vigorous work alone saved them.
Out of danger, the adventurers fell to wondering from what lands came
the mighty stream. The stout-hearted Marquette vowed to stem its
powerful current at some future day and follow its waters to their
source, thinking that he might thus find another stream which would take
him westward into the great Vermilion Sea that lay on the road to China.
But the Indian boy did not easily forget the monsters on the rocks, and
he still looked about him with apprehensive glances.
It was not many leagues farther down the stream that the voyagers came
to another of the fearful dangers of which the Peorias had warned them—a
place in the river where, according to Indian legend, there lived a
demon who devoured travelers and sucked them down into the troubled
depths. As they approached the dreaded spot, they saw a fierce surging
of the waters, driven with terrific force into a small cove. Rocks rose
high out of the stream; and against these the river dashed mightily,
tossing foam and spray into the air. Balked in their course, the waters
paused, then hurled themselves down into a narrow channel.
To the Indian mind, which saw life and humanity, good spirits and bad,
in all of nature, there was an evil spirit in these turbulent waters. It
was with the eyes of his own race that the Indian boy now watched the
high-tossed spray. But the two canoes passed by in safety and soon came
to smoother waters.
Presently the voyagers drew near the broad mouth of the Ohio, in whose
valley, raided from time to time by fierce tribes of the Iroquois, were
the villages of the Shawnee Indians. Along the shores were canes and
reeds that grew thick and high. Mosquitoes began to gather in swarms
that made life miserable for the men as they toiled in the heat of the
day. But following the way of the Indians of the Southern country, they
raised above their canoes tents of canvas which sheltered them in part
from both the mosquitoes and the burning sun.
So sailing, they came one day unexpectedly upon a group of armed
Indians. Up rose Marquette and held high the pipe of peace, while Joliet
and his comrades reached for their guns to be ready should an attack be
made. This time, however, they were safe; for the Indians were only
inviting them to come ashore and eat. The voyagers landed and were led
to the village, where the Indians fed them upon buffalo meat and white
plums.
It was evident that these Indians were acquainted with white men, and
that they bought goods of traders from the East; for they had knives and
guns and beads and cloth and hatchets and hoes, and even glass flasks
for their powder. Venturesome Englishmen from the Atlantic Coast had
perhaps sold them these things in exchange for furs. With the Spanish
firmly settled in the Southwest, and the English—long-time enemies of
France—pushing in from the East, it was high time that the French came
down the river, if the Great Valley of the Mississippi were ever to be
brought under the flag of France.
The Indians now told Marquette and Joliet that the great sea to the
south was only ten days’ journey away; and so with renewed energy the
band of eight set out once more in their canoes. Huge cottonwoods and
elms now lined either shore, and bright-plumaged birds darted from limb
to limb; while in the hidden prairies beyond could be heard the
bellowing of wild buffalo.
As they drew near a village of Michigamea Indians, whose lodges were
almost at the water’s edge, the voyagers heard the savage yells of
warriors inciting one another to an attack. Soon they swarmed along the
shore with bows and arrows, and with hatchets and great war clubs. In
vain did Marquette hold up the calumet of peace. Downstream the Indians
climbed into their long dugouts and pushed up to attack the strangers
from below; while upstream other young warriors launched their wooden
canoes and swept down the river with hoarse cries of battle. Hemmed in
by the two war parties in boats, and with armed enemies howling along
the river bank, death seemed very near to the Frenchmen. The warning
words of the Peoria chief had told them of just such an end.
Perhaps the twinkling lights of the Canadian river towns and the smiling
face of France had never seemed so far away as now in these untraveled
stretches of the Great Valley. And the Indian lad—before him lay either
death or captivity. In just such scenes as this he had passed from tribe
to tribe. It may be that his young mind now carried him back to the
village where the smoke rose from the lodges of his own people, where
his own mother had unloosed the thongs that bound him to the cradle of
his papoose days, and taught him to run over the green prairies and in
the cool woods with the other lads, learning to draw a bow and trap wild
creatures of the forest and roll about in the sun, naked and healthy and
happy.
But this was not a time to think of other days. A handful of young
braves threw themselves into the river to seize the small canoes of the
white men; but finding the current too strong, they put back to the
shore. One raised his club and hurled it at the black-robed priest.
Whirling through the air it passed over the canoes and fell with a
splash into the river. Nearer and nearer closed the net of enemies about
them, until from every side bows began to bend and arrows drew back,
tipped with death.
Suddenly their weapons dropped. Older men among them, perhaps
recognizing for the first time the pipe of peace which Marquette still
held, restrained the impetuous young braves. Coming to the water’s edge
as the white men drew nearer, two chiefs tossed their bows and quivers
into the canoes and invited the strangers to come ashore in peace.
With signs and gestures Indians and white men talked. In vain did
Marquette try, one after another, the six Indian languages which he
knew. At length there came forward an old man who spoke a broken
Illinois tongue. Through him Marquette asked many questions about the
lower river and the sea. But the Indians only replied that the strangers
could learn all they wished at a village of the Arkansas Indians, about
ten leagues farther down the stream. The explorers were fed with
sagamite and fish; and, not without some fear, they spent the night in
the Indian village.
The next morning they continued their journey, taking the old man with
them as an interpreter; and ahead of them went a canoe with ten Indians.
They had not gone many leagues when they saw two canoes coming up the
river to meet them. In one stood an Indian chief who held a calumet and
made signs of peace. Chanting a strange Indian song, he gave the white
men tobacco to smoke and sagamite and bread made from Indian corn to
eat. Under the direction of their new guides the Frenchmen soon came to
the village of the Arkansas, which lay near the mouth of the river of
that name.
Here under the scaffold of the chief they were given seats on fine rush
mats. In a circle about them were gathered the elders of the tribe; and
around about the elders were the warriors; and beyond the warriors in a
great crowd were the rest of the tribe eager to see and hear the strange
men who had come down from the north. Among the young men was one who
spoke the Illinois tongue better than the old man, and through him
Marquette talked to the tribe. In his talk he told of the white man’s
religion, and of the great French chief who had sent them down the
valley of the Mississippi.
Then he asked them all manner of questions about the trip to the sea.
Was it many days’ journey now? And what tribes were on the way?
It was only on occasions like this that the Indian boy understood what
was said, for usually his companions in the canoes spoke the melodious
but to him wholly unintelligible French. He now listened to the Illinois
tongue with keen interest. The young interpreter was telling of their
neighbors to the north and east and south and west. Four days’ journey
to the west was the village of an Illinois tribe, and to the east were
other friendly people from whom they bought hatchets, knives, and beads.
But toward the great sea to the south, where the white men wished to go,
were their enemies. Savage tribes with guns barred them from trade with
the Spaniards. All along the lower river the fierce tribes were
continually fighting; and woe betide the white men if they ventured
farther, for they would never return.
As the Indians told of the dangers of the river below the mouth of the
Arkansas River, large platters of wood were continually being brought
in, heaped with sagamite, Indian corn, and the flesh of dogs. Nor did
the feast end before the close of day.
Meditating upon the warnings of their hosts, the white men made ready
for the night. When they had retired on beds raised about two feet from
the ground at the end of their long bark-covered lodge, the Indians held
a secret council. Some of the warriors had looked with envious eyes upon
the canoes, clothes, and presents of the whites. Why not fall upon the
strangers by night, beat out their brains with skull-crackers or Indian
war clubs, and make away with the plunder? To some of the covetous
Indians it was a tempting plan. The whites were defenseless and hundreds
of leagues from their friends. Who was there to avenge their death?
But to the chief, who had welcomed the visitors with the pipe of peace,
the bond of friendship was sacred. He broke up the schemes of the
treacherous braves, dismissed the council, and sent for the white men.
Then with the pipe of peace in his hand he danced before the strangers
the sacred calumet dance; and as he closed the ceremony he gave into the
hands of Marquette the calumet. It was a token, sacred among all
Indians, that peace should not be broken, and that the whites would be
unharmed.
The Frenchmen, however, did not sleep much. Joliet and the priest sat up
far into the night and counseled together as to whether they should go
on to the sea or turn back. They were now very near to the sea, they
thought—so near that they were confident that the river continued
southward to the Gulf of Mexico, instead of turning to the west or east
to the Vermilion Sea or the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, they believed that
in two or three days they might reach the Gulf.
But in the country between the mouth of the Arkansas and the mouth of
the Mississippi skulked fierce and murderous tribes; while not far away
were the Spaniards. Should they fall into the hands of enemies and lose
their lives, who would tell to France the story of their marvelous
journeyings? Their beloved nation would lose all knowledge of their
expedition and therefore all claim to the Great Valley by right of their
exploration. Then, too, there seemed little more to be learned in
traveling the balance of the way to the mouth. Joliet was anxious to
report to his government the story of the expedition, and Marquette was
full of eagerness to tell his brother priests of the Indians whom he had
met and the great work that lay open to their missionary efforts.
As a matter of fact, the voyagers were many a long day’s journey from
the river’s mouth. But happy in the thought that they were nearly there,
Joliet and the priest at last determined to turn back upstream and carry
to New France the wonderful tale of their pioneer voyage down the great
untraveled river.
CHAPTER IV
THE CAPTIVE RELEASED
It was about the middle of July, 1673, when the Arkansas Indians saw the
band of white men leave their village to start out upon the return
voyage. The weeks that followed their departure from the Arkansas town
were full of toil for the voyagers; for now in the heat of summer they
must paddle against the current of the greatest of American rivers. At
length, coming to the mouth of the Illinois and believing that it
offered a shorter route than the one by which they had come, they turned
into its waters and paddled up its smooth stream toward the Lake.
In the course of this journey up the Illinois River they came one day,
with great surprise, to a village in whose lodges lived the same Peoria
Indians whom they had last seen on the other side of the Mississippi, in
the town on the bank of the Iowa River. The Peorias, too, were surprised
to see the seven white men and the Indian boy come paddling up the
stream.
Here the tired voyagers were welcomed with such hospitality that they
lingered for three days in the village. The Indian boy renewed old
acquaintances, while Marquette passed from lodge to lodge, telling the
Indians of the God of the French who had guarded them in their long
journey and protected them from pestilence and the disasters of the
river, and from torture and murder by hostile tribes of Indians. The
Peorias in turn told the priest of their brother tribes along the
Illinois River and of the wars they waged together against the Sacs and
Foxes of the North and the bands of Iroquois from the East. But as they
looked into the face of the priest, they saw lines of suffering and
sickness, and they knew that he had not borne with ease the long and
arduous trip.
When the voyagers made ready to depart, the Indians gathered at the
river bank to bid them good-bye. As they were about to embark, some
Indians brought to the edge of the stream a sick child and asked Father
Marquette to baptize it. With great joy the priest complied, for it was
the first and, indeed, the only baptism on the whole summer’s voyage. A
few minutes later the little child died.
The canoes were then pushed into the stream, the men dipped their
paddles, and, rounding a point of land a short distance up the stream,
disappeared from view. The group of Indians turned back to the village,
bearing the body of the dead child. They wrapped it tenderly in the
skins of wild animals and laid it away on a scaffold of poles high above
the reach of prowling wolves.
* * * * *
Autumn came upon the land and through the fallen leaves along the shore
the young Indians passed back and forth among the villages on the
Illinois. From the Kaskaskias, who dwelt farther up the river, the
Peorias learned that Marquette and Joliet had stopped at the upper
village, and that the black robe had promised to come again and preach
to them. Moreover, when they left this village, one of the chiefs of the
nation, with a band of his own men, went with them up the river, across
the portage, and as far as the Lake of the Illinois—as they then called
Lake Michigan. There they left the white men paddling valiantly up the
west shore toward Green Bay and the Jesuit Mission of St. Francis
Xavier.
At Green Bay, Marquette stopped with his brother priests and tried to
gain strength enough to return to the Illinois villages. But Joliet went
farther. Taking the Indian lad with him, he journeyed as far as the
settlement at the Straits of Mackinac. There the young Indian spent such
a winter as he had never known before. About him were the great log
lodges of the French; and in the streets of the little town walked men
of strange and curious ways. There were dark-bearded traders, priests
with black robes and cowls, trappers and _coureurs de bois_ in blanket
coats, and fur caps; and Indians, from about the Great Lakes, gathered
there to sell furs and buy the white man’s guns and liquor.
The Indian boy soon began to understand and talk the language of the
white men, and by the end of the winter he could even read and write a
little in French. He was quick to learn the ways of the Frenchmen; and
his many attractive qualities endeared him to Joliet.
When the spring of 1674 came on, Joliet and several Frenchmen embarked
in a canoe and began the descent of the Great Lakes. They were bound for
the home of the governor of New France at Quebec, high on the rocks
beside the St. Lawrence. As a gift to the governor, Joliet was taking
the Indian boy who had shared his wanderings in the Great Valley.
Joliet and his companions were weeks upon the journey, paddling steadily
by lake shore and river, through straits and past wooded islands. Only
once were they compelled to carry their canoe over a portage. At last
they came near to the town of Montreal, with the high hill rising up
behind it. They were nearly home now, and the heart of Joliet must have
leaped high as he thought of the long months he had spent on his
perilous journey. Soon he would come in triumph before Frontenac,
governor of Canada, and tell him of his explorations and put into his
hands his map and papers and the precious journal of his voyage. These
documents lay beside him in the bottom of the canoe in a box, together
with some relics of the far-away valley of the Mississippi.
Only La Chine Rapids—the Sault St. Louis as they were then called—lay
between the voyagers and Montreal, and then the road was clear and
smooth to the high rock of Quebec. The canoe entered the swift-running
water. Foam-covered rocks swept past them. Many a time had Joliet passed
through these rapids. Probably, after all the perils through which he
had safely come on the Great River, he looked only with joy upon this
familiar rush of waters. Perhaps to the Indian boy came the thought of
the demon whom his people feared in the surging waters of the
Mississippi. Surely another such demon lived in this troubled passage,
with death in its relentless grasp.
As if to prove real the fears of the Indian, the demon of the water
reached out a great wet arm and overturned the frail canoe. Tossed into
the fierce current were Joliet and his French boatmen, the Indian boy,
and the precious box of papers; while downstream went blindly bobbing
the bark canoe. Wildly the men struggled in the rushing stream, the
current all the while wrenching at their legs and playing with their
feeble efforts. Joliet fought till the breath was gone from his lungs
and the strength from his limbs. Then he lost consciousness.
The unpitying sun made a long arc in the heavens above the tossing human
bodies. Four hours had Joliet been in the water when fishermen pulled
him out on shore and brought him back to life. Two of his men were
drowned; and his precious box of papers lay somewhere beneath the
rushing waters.
And the Indian boy? He, too, had given up to the evil spirit of the
rapids. No more would he pass like a waif from tribe to tribe; no longer
would he try with eyes and tongue and fingers to learn the ways of his
new white friends. Forever he had left the rolling hills and streams of
the Great Valley, the green prairies so full of sunshine, and the woods
so full of game. He had passed to the happy hunting-ground of his
people.
CHAPTER V
THE BLACK GOWN
In the valley of the Mississippi it was summer again. Father Marquette,
still sick, had not come back to the Illinois tribes. The Peorias and
Kaskaskias, in their two villages on the Illinois River, lived
comfortable, happy lives, for theirs was a beautiful and fertile valley
in these sunny summer months. In the rich soil of the prairies the
Indian women had planted seeds which had been carefully preserved from
the year before. And now in the fields the young girls were working
among the long rows of Indian corn and tending the bean-vines. In their
season melons and squashes grew plentifully. The woods along the river
were full of game; and in the quiet water of the Illinois, fish by the
hundred swam to and fro, an easy target for the swift-winged arrow of
the Indian youth. Far back on the plains roamed great herds of buffalo,
which afforded both sport and food for the Indians. When fall came, the
Indians would surround a herd of buffalo and then set fire to the
prairie, taking care to leave an open space by which the frightened
animals could escape. As the big animals passed out through this break
in the circle of fire, they were easily shot by the Indian hunters.
All up and down the river and over on the Lake of the Illinois, the
winter of 1674 fell upon the land with stinging fierceness. The air was
so cold that it was almost brittle. The winds howled and swept through
the valley with gusts that drove the Indians chilled to their firesides;
while the snow, as it piled higher and higher, often brought despair to
the men scattered far and wide on their long winter hunts. Sometimes the
deer were so lean as to be scarcely worth the shooting. From the
Mississippi to the cold shores of the Lakes the men of the Illinois
tribes were hunting and trapping and trading furs.
One day during this bleak winter there came striding into the village of
the Kaskaskias an Indian of great note among the Illinois. He was
Chassagoac, the famous Kaskaskia chief and fur trader. Having just come
from the upper shores of Lake Michigan, he reported that near Green Bay
he had come upon Father Marquette with two Frenchmen, setting out at
last for the villages of the Illinois. Coming into camp with a deer on
his back, he had shared his meat with these white men and on the next
day had set out with them down the west shore of the Lake. The
courageous priest was still far from well, but he was determined to keep
his promise to the Illinois Indians. Accompanied by a number of Illinois
men who were out on the winter hunt, and by the Illinois women who had
packed the canoes and equipments across the portage from Green Bay to
the Lake, the party made their way slowly southward along the shore.
Father Marquette spent part of the time teaching the Indians; while his
two men, Pierre and Jacques, mended the guns of the Indian hunters and
went out with them in search of game. Their canoes were too frail to
stand much of the weather that now hung about the edge of the Lake.
Floating ice drove them ashore again and again. Rain, sleet, and fierce,
chilling winds kept them off the water for days at a time, while deep
snows impeded their progress on land.
Early in December, they reached the mouth of the Chicago River, where,
moving inland a few leagues, the white men built a rude cabin and made
ready to encamp for the winter. Marquette still suffered greatly and
could go no farther. Here Chassagoac and his Illinois followers left the
party and came on to the village; but not before they had bought of the
whites, for three fine beaver skins, a cubit of the French tobacco. Then
they had journeyed on to bring the news that the Black Gown would come
in the spring. Great was the rejoicing among the Illinois.
Weeks had passed when Jacques, the priest’s servant, came to one of the
Illinois camps and told of how the Black Gown lay sick in the cabin near
the Lake. Thereupon the Indians sent back a delegation with corn and
dried meat and pumpkins and beaver skins. With these presents they asked
for powder and other merchandise. The priest replied that he had come to
encourage peace—that he did not wish them to make war upon the
Miamis—and so he could not send them powder; but he loaded them down for
their twenty-league journey with hatchets and knives and beads and
mirrors.
Now it happened that there were two white traders who had also ventured
into the land of the Illinois; and from their cabins they brought
supplies to the sick priest. One of these men, who called himself a
surgeon, stayed awhile at the lonely cabin of Marquette, glad to hear
mass and do what he could to relieve the sufferings of the black-gowned
father.
It was with exceeding great joy that the white men in their cabin near
the Lake and the Indians in their hunting-camps and villages along the
river welcomed the warmer winds from the south that broke up the ice in
the river and unlocked the wintry hold that had bound the land. Wild
animals appeared and meat became plentiful once more. The snow melted
down into rushing streams or sank into the friendly earth. As the sun
became warmer at midday, the Indian women prepared for the season of
planting.
On the 8th day of April, in the year 1675, a shout of welcome went up in
the Kaskaskia village, for the long-expected priest had come. This quiet
man, kind of face and gentle of manner, found himself among friends who
looked with sorrow at the signs of sickness graven upon his patient
face. They knew as well as he that he had not many months to live. But
they saw also upon his face a wonderful joy, for the priest had
accomplished the one great purpose that had upheld him in the weary
weeks of suffering—he had come again to preach to the Illinois Indians.
In one cabin after another the good Father spoke to the chiefs and
warriors who gathered to hear him. Finding the cabins too small, he held
a great meeting in the open air on a broad level prairie. Here the whole
village gathered. The chiefs and elders seated themselves next to the
priest; and around them stood hundreds of young Indian braves; and still
farther from the centre of the vast circle of red men were gathered the
women and children of the tribe. For a long time he talked to them, and
with each message he gave them presents after the manner of Indian
councils.
This was the last visit of the black-robed priest to the Illinois
Indians. His strength soon failed him, and with Jacques and Pierre he
started back up the river and across to the Lake, hoping against hope
that he might reach the Mission of St. Ignace at Mackinac before he
died. Friendly Indians went with them more than thirty leagues of the
way, contending with one another for the privilege of carrying his few
belongings.
Finally they reached the Lake and embarked. Jacques and Pierre paddled
the canoe along the shore, as each day the priest grew weaker. He had
always prayed that he might die like his patron saint, St. Francis
Xavier, in the far and lonely wilderness of his ministry. One Friday
evening, about the middle of May, he told his companions with great joy
that he would die on the morrow. As they passed the mouth of a small
river, Marquette, pointing to a low hill rising beside it, asked his two
men to bury him there.
They carried him ashore and built for his protection a rude cabin of
bark. There he died quietly on Saturday, May 18, 1675. He was buried by
his two men on the rising knoll which he had chosen; and over his grave
they rang his little chapel bell, and erected a rude cross to mark the
spot.
Some time later a party of Kiskakon Indians, returning from a hunting
trip, came by the site of the lonely grave. They had known Father
Marquette years before when he lived on the shores of Lake Superior. Now
they determined to carry his remains to the church at the Mission of St.
Ignace. Reverently they gathered up the precious bones, dried and
prepared them after their own Indian fashion, laid them in a box of
birch bark, and bore them in state with a convoy of thirty canoes to the
Mission at Mackinac. There in a vault of the church the remains of
Father Marquette were laid away with funeral honors; and there priests
and traders venerated his memory and Indians came to pray at his tomb.
And out in the valley of the Illinois, the tribes to whom he had made
his last pilgrimage mourned the death of their gentle-spirited visitor;
and the Peorias, as they went about their daily occupations in fields or
lodges, on the prairies or on the streams, often thought of the day in
June when the black-robed priest and his French companion had walked up
the little pathway and stood out to meet them in the glorious sunshine
at their old village on the banks of the Iowa River.
CHAPTER VI
“THE IROQUOIS ARE COMING”
“The Iroquois are coming!” It was a cry that shook the heart of even the
boldest among the Illinois Indians. Fierce as the northwest wind in
winter, the cruel, bloodthirsty red men from the East had spread terror
in their path all along the Great Lakes and out as far as the
Mississippi. Down near the mouth of the Ohio, Marquette and Joliet on
their memorable voyage in 1673 had found the Shawnee living in deadly
fear of the warriors of the Five Nations.
Five years had passed over the lodges of the Peorias and Kaskaskias
since that memorable summer; but fear still hung about the villages of
the upper basin of the Great Valley. Three years of winter and summer
hunts, of ripening corn and snow-locked landscape, had come and gone in
the valley of the Illinois since the black-robed Marquette, gentle-faced
and sick unto death, had bade farewell to the young Kaskaskia Indians
and journeyed off with his two men along the shore of the Lake of the
Illinois, never again to be seen alive save by his two faithful
companions.
Through all these years the Indian women whispered their fears among
themselves in the lodges; and the men, as they chipped their stone
arrowheads or shaped their strong bows, prayed to their manitous that if
the Iroquois should come, the stone tips might fly straight and sure,
lest their lodges be burned and the naked, howling men of the East carry
torture and death among their women and children.
The Iroquois did come. It was in the year 1678 that war parties of these
fierce tribes descended upon the valley of the Illinois. Out on the
wooded plains the allied tribes advanced to meet them; while the women
and children and the old men of the villages waited in dread and fear
till runners came breathless to tell them of the repulse of the hated
foe. This time the villages were saved, but fear did not die out with
the victory. The valley lay like an ancient stronghold whose defenders
had fought the besiegers away from the walls, yet slept on their arms in
constant dread of a still more deadly attack.
In this same year of 1678, Allouez, another black-robed priest, came to
settle among the Indians of the Kaskaskia village. He had come out to
them for a few weeks in the spring of the year before, when eight of the
tribes of the Illinois Nation were gathered at the village of the
Kaskaskias that they might be in constant readiness to repel invasions
of the Iroquois. Now the priest had come to stay, to baptize their
children, and to teach them more about the strange manitou of whom
Marquette had first told them. A huge cross, twenty-five feet high, had
been erected in the middle of the town, and the Indians listened
respectfully while he chanted the mass and preached to them.
The winter with its long hunting season went by; the river froze over
and thawed out again; the time of planting came once more; and the
children again played in the sun through the long hours of summer. So
events moved on toward the strange happenings of the winter that
followed. In the Kaskaskia village the women and girls had gathered the
harvest of Indian corn and had stowed it away in caches or pits dug in
the ground, lined with rushes and twigs and covered over for the long
winter. It was a precious store, for it must provide corn for the spring
sowing and food until the next harvest came around again. Then as the
leaves dropped one by one from the trees along the river and the colder
winds came, the whole village went off for the winter hunt.
It was the night before Christmas in 1679, and Allouez, the black-robed
priest, still lingered in the Kaskaskia village, thinking, more than
likely, of Christmas Eve in his beloved France far across the ocean,
where amid the lights of a hundred candles priests were conducting
midnight mass. Or perchance he thought of the high rock of Quebec where
a frontier settlement held frowning watch above the river. Even it was
hundreds of leagues nearer civilization than he.
But hark! There was a sound that brought the priest out of his reveries
and back to the forest and rocks along the snow-skirted river of the
wilderness. Out of the darkness came a group of Indians—young braves
from some wandering bands of Miamis and Mascoutins. Well did Allouez
know these tribes, for he had lived with them years before in their
village near the portage of the Fox River. Strange and exciting was the
news which they brought him this night. Alarm deepened on the priest’s
face as he gathered his few belongings and made his way across the snow
and through the woods to the village of the Miamis and Mascoutins.
The village of the Kaskaskias, on the north shore of the Illinois, now
lay silent and deserted. The lonely lodges and the well-filled caches
alone gave evidence that the Indians would return. Many leagues down the
river was the village of the Peorias. Here, too, the young men were off
on the winter hunt; but the older men and the women and children were
still at the village. With them was Nicanopé, brother of Chassagoac, and
many others of the Kaskaskia tribe.
Not a hint of the message that brought such alarm to Allouez at the
upper village had come to the Peorias. Aside from the ever-present dread
of the Iroquois, that lurked in each Indian’s mind, they lived as
peacefully as the hardships of winter would permit. Smoke from their
lodges rose up into the wintry sky, or veered off to the south and east
when the blasts of wind swept across the plains. The river was open, and
by the bank on either side lay pirogues—heavy canoes fifty feet long and
big enough to hold more than a score of men.
Less than two weeks had passed since Allouez had fled from the upper
village. The sun had been up an hour or more, and the Peoria village was
bustling with life. Warriors and old men stalked here and there in their
winter garments of buffalo hide, or sat smoking and gazing placidly upon
river and sky. The ever busy women sat weaving rush mats or bestirred
themselves in gathering wood. Children played about in the open, and on
the sunny side of the lodges zealous mothers had already set up on end
the brown papooses bound like little mummies in the cradles.
Then, stirring the village as an arrow startles a covey of birds, came
the wild cry, “The Iroquois.” From behind a jutting point up the river
swept a long line of canoes. Indescribable confusion followed. On both
sides of the river men sprang for their bows and arrows; while women,
hardly pausing to seize their babes, scuttled away between the lodges
and on to the friendly woods back on the hill. With them went the young
girls and children, fleeing like scared rabbits.
Meantime the current of the river bore the canoes down to the village.
They turned to the left, and a tall figure leaped from the nearest canoe
to the bank and then stood quietly watching the confusion of the
villagers. Some of the warriors fled to the woods with the women. Others
with eager weapons were about to attack the newcomers, when a cry from
one of their chiefs on the other shore made them pause. He had seen
that, although the men from the canoes, armed with guns and ready for
war, could have shot down a dozen Illinois in their first confused
scramble for weapons, they had not fired a single shot. These men were
evidently not Iroquois, but Frenchmen who seemed bent on peace rather
than battle.
Quickly the calumet was raised by the reassured Peorias, and another was
offered by the French. The canoes were drawn up to the bank, and
together the white men and the villagers went to the lodges. Old men
reappeared from the woods and women came out of their hiding-places.
Children with wary eyes looked up into the faces of three friars,
Fathers of the Recollet Order with gray robes and pointed cowls, who
took them by the hand and poured out friendly but unintelligible words.
In the lodges the warriors and chiefs—now that the fear of an Iroquois
attack had subsided—welcomed the visitors with every sign of good will.
They rubbed their feet with bear’s oil and the fat of buffalo and fed
them with the best the village had to offer. Then they sat down for a
council of peace, ready to hear the message of the white men. Chassagoac
was away on the hunt, and so his brother Nicanopé was the highest in
rank of the Indian chiefs who were present.
There were bold men among the French in this council; and the Indians
gazed with kindling eyes upon the tall figure of the white chief who had
first leaped from his canoe, and upon the dark face of another man who
seemed to be next in command. This second man had sat in the canoe at
the farther end of the line that had swept down to the village. He was
among the last to come ashore; but something unusual and strangely
awkward about his movements caught the quick attention of the Indians.
In the council, however, their eyes turned from the swarthy,
black-haired lieutenant to the tall white leader as he rose to speak.
Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was a man still under middle age,
but an indomitable will and a restless and unceasing activity had
already crowded his years with the experiences of an ordinary lifetime.
No Indian could look upon his cold, finely chiseled features and
unflinching eyes without feeling the relentless force of the man. They
listened with quiet attention to his words.
He offered them a present of Martinique tobacco and some hatchets,
saying that first of all he wished to tell them of a thing he had done
and explain it to them. A few days before he and his men had come to the
village of their brother tribe, the Kaskaskias, many leagues up the
river. The village was empty where they had hoped to find friendly
Indians with food. Unable to kill game, they were in danger of
starvation. They well knew how precious was the corn hidden in the
caches of the deserted town, but in their extremity they had borrowed
some; and now they wished to pay for it in presents or to return it to
the Peorias if the Indians could not spare it. At the same time he added
that if they could not let him have food for his men, he would go down
the river to their neighbors, the Osages, and there set up the forge
which he had brought to mend their knives and hatchets and make them new
tools for the warpath and the chase.
Behind the impassive faces of Nicanopé, Omawha, and other chiefs were
minds alive to a new situation. This man was not a mere black robe, come
among them to preach and to baptize their dying; nor was he a lone
trader, a _coureur de bois_ passing by in his bold profession of
trapping, hunting, and trading furs. Here was a great chief with men at
his back, a warrior with fire-spitting guns, a trader with canoes full
of hatchets and knives and tobacco and a forge to keep their weapons in
order and to make them new ones. Surely he was a great and powerful man
who had come into their country this cold winter day, and well would it
be for the tribes of the Illinois if he stayed among them.
But what is this he is saying? He speaks of the Iroquois. They, too, are
subjects of the King of the French. Yet if the bold Iroquois should fall
upon them, La Salle and his followers would be with the Illinois, would
give them guns, and would help them protect their villages from the
onslaughts of the Five Nations. Only they must let him build a fort near
their village for the protection of his men. He wished, also, to build a
great canoe, big enough to hold all his men and goods, and by means of
it to travel down the Illinois to the Mississippi and thence on its
broad current to where it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico—so that he
might bring back more hatchets and presents.
The Indians were overjoyed. Many of the Kaskaskias were present, and
among them was Nicanopé, one of their chiefs. They told La Salle to keep
the corn he had taken at the upper village, and begged him to stay among
them and set up his forge and build his fort. If he wished to descend
the river that flowed through the length of the Great Valley, he would
find it an easy waterway and the country through which it flowed a land
of beauty and plenty.
Finally the conference broke up and the Indians retired to their own
lodges in great happiness of mind. Among them none was happier than
Chief Omawha, for La Salle had shown him special favor and had given him
two hatchets and a number of knives.
CHAPTER VII
THE SECRET COUNCIL
Night came on cold and still. In the river the floating particles of ice
grew into a solid sheet until the stream was covered from shore to
shore. La Salle, having retired with his men to the quarters assigned,
set guards about the lodges and dropped off to sleep. In their own long
lodges the Indians rolled up in blankets and dreamed perchance of the
warpath and the triumphant return of warriors bearing the scalps of the
Iroquois.
In the darkness off to the northeast half a dozen Indians quietly filed
along the trail toward the village. They were loaded down with burdens.
Into the village they slipped stealthily and came to the lodge of the
chief. Soon furtive figures of Indian men were creeping from this lodge
and that until the chiefs and warriors had gathered in a secret night
council with the strangers from the northeast.
La Salle and his men slept on in peace, while Nicanopé and Omawha and
their friends sat in a circle and listened to the words of the nocturnal
visitors. Monso, a Mascoutin chief, was the spokesman, and with him were
five or six Miamis. The burdens they bore were kettles and hatchets and
knives, as presents to accompany the story they had come so secretly to
tell to the Illinois. And this was their message. La Salle was a friend
of the Iroquois. Even now he was on his way to the enemies of the
Illinois on the Great River beyond. He would give these foes arms and
ammunition and come back with them from the west while the Iroquois
closed in from the east. Thus, surrounded and trapped, the Illinois
would meet their ruin. Their only hope was to prevent La Salle from
going farther and from joining their enemies on the Mississippi.
Monso told his message with effect; and fear fell upon the men of the
Peoria village as they pondered over the warning which had come to them
in this weird night council. Beneath the dirt floor of the lodge they
buried the presents which Monso had brought. The strangers, having given
their disquieting news, slipped out into the dark and disappeared as
quietly as they had come; while the Peoria men crept back to their
lodges and tried to forget the alarm which Monso had brought into the
village.
At the secret council in which Monso and the Miamis told their story
there was one who did not share the fear of his fellows; but he said
nothing. The chief Omawha sat quietly throughout the council and passed
out with his brother chiefs without a word. But in the early morning he
came in secret to La Salle and unfolded to him the story of the night.
As on the face of the river that had frozen over since the arrival of
the French, there had come by morning a change in the mood of the
Illinois Indians. Yesterday they were happy and friendly, full of smiles
and good words for La Salle and his dark-skinned companion and the score
and more of their men. To-day they were cold and suspicious. They
believed Monso and feared—feared for their homes and for the lives of
every man, woman, and child of the tribes. The dread of the Iroquois
rose fresh in their minds as they saw in the powerful Frenchmen the
allies of their enemies. The cold sun of winter rose to its highest in
the sky and started on its journey down to the west. Something must be
done and at once or they were lost.
Nicanopé sent word to the lodge of La Salle that he was preparing a
feast for him and his men. Presently through the streets of the Indian
town stalked the strange procession of white men on their way to the
feast. From the entrance of every lodge curious Indians watched the
visitors pass. Most of them, perhaps, followed the movements of La
Salle—long of limb and steadfast of face, with keen eyes, and hair that
flowed down over his collar. But many eyes strayed from him to his
dark-faced, black-haired companion, who appeared to be second in command
and whose right arm as he walked hung by his side with a peculiar
heaviness. This man was Henry de Tonty; and in all the Western world
there beat no braver heart than his. Nor did the gallant La Salle have
truer friend and follower in the troublous days that were at hand.
Besides these two men there were perhaps thirty Frenchmen—some of them
weatherbeaten with many years’ experience in the wilds, and some of them
young and not long arrived from distant France. Here also were three
long-robed and sandaled friars, not gowned in black like Marquette and
the lately departed Allouez, but in gray gowns and hoods. One was young
and short and vigorous; one was old, yet full of spirit. The third
walked with a pompous tread, and a complacent pride sat upon his round
face.
Into the lodge where the feast was to be given the white men filed and
seated themselves with the chiefs and men of the Illinois tribes. Less
than twenty-four hours had passed since the midnight visitors from the
Miami village had told their tale in low voices in the same lodge. It
was not alone a feast that was to be celebrated; for in the minds of the
Illinois was the determination that these bold men should be stopped by
some means from going on to incite their Western enemies. As they looked
upon the two leaders and their company, hostile were their thoughts,
though their eyes did not show it. Yes, La Salle and his men must be
stopped. And so as they squatted on mats on the earthen floor of the
lodge and waited for the feast, the chief Nicanopé rose and began to
speak.
He had not brought the white men there, he said, so much to feast their
bodies as to cure them of the strange madness which possessed them of
going on down the Mississippi. No one went there except to his death.
Terrible tribes who by force of numbers could overwhelm the French dwelt
along the shores. The waters of the river were full of huge serpents and
deadly monsters. Even if their great canoe saved them from these perils,
the channel of the river ran over rapids and fell in torrents over steep
precipices, and finally shot down into a great abyss where it was lost
under the earth, and no living man knew where it went. Such would be the
awful fate of the French if they pursued their journey farther.
The Peorias squatted in silence as they listened to the chief’s warning.
Surely the white men would not venture into such dangers. They watched
the faces of La Salle and his followers for some flicker of fear. Upon
the countenances of La Salle and Tonty no shadow moved. Here and there
among their men were _coureurs de bois_—men who had lived in the Western
country and who understood the words of Nicanopé. They translated them
in whispers to their comrades. Uneasy looks crossed the faces of these
less experienced adventurers, and the keen eyes of the Peorias caught
flashes of fear and dismay on the face of many a French voyager. Their
own hearts rejoiced at these signs of alarm, but their faces showed
nothing save calm unconcern.
But in the words of La Salle they found little comfort when in turn he
rose to reply. For the kindness of Nicanopé in warning them, he thanked
him most cordially. But he was not daunted. If the dangers were great so
much greater would be their glory. Frenchmen were happy, he said, to
perish in carrying the name of their great chief to the ends of the
earth. He believed that the story of deadly perils related by Nicanopé
was prompted either by the friendly desire of the Illinois to have the
white men remain in their village or else by some evil spirit who had
whispered words of distrust. If the Illinois were in truth friendly to
him, let them tell him frankly of the things which disturbed them.
Otherwise he must believe that the friendship they had first shown came
only from their lips.
Nicanopé, discouraged at the failure of his ruse, made no reply, but
presented his guests with food. When they had eaten sagamite and venison
and buffalo meat in silence, La Salle once more rose and continued his
speech. He was not surprised to find the other tribes jealous of the
advantages about to be enjoyed by the Illinois from their relations with
the French, nor was he surprised that the other tribes should start
false rumors; but he was astonished that the Illinois should believe
those tales and hide them from him who had been so frank. Then he turned
and directed his words to the astounded Nicanopé:—
“I was not asleep, my brother, when Monso last night in secret told his
tales against the French and said that I was a spy of the Iroquois.
Under this very lodge the presents with which he tried to persuade you
of the truth of his story are still buried. Why did he take his flight
so quickly? Why did he not speak to you by daylight if he spoke the
truth?”
The Illinois sat silent, but with agitated minds. Amazement and awe
filled their wary eyes. What manner of man was this who, though asleep
in his lodge, divined the hidden secrets of their midnight council? What
great medicine gave him power over the things of the night as well as
the day? Could he read their thoughts? The ringing voice of the white
man continued:—
“Do you not know that, had I wished, in your confusion at my arrival, I
could have killed you all? What need had I of Iroquois allies? Could I
not this very hour with my soldiers slaughter all your chiefs and old
men while your young men are off on the hunt? Look at our burdens. Are
they not tools and merchandise for your benefit rather than weapons with
which to attack you? Run after this liar Monso. Bring him back and let
him face me whom he has never seen, yet whose plans he pretends to
know.”
There was a short pause. Nicanopé had no word to say. Monso was gone and
a snow had fallen upon his tracks. They could not trace him and bring
him back. Their plans had failed. The leader of the French was to them
now a man of wonder as well as fear. Only Omawha of all the Illinois
understood, but he said not a word. Red men and white passed out from
the feast and returned to their lodges. The wooded hills across the
frozen river swallowed the winter sun and early twilight closed down
upon the white landscape.
By the lodges given up to the Frenchmen, La Salle set a guard, and then
lay down to sleep. Tonty, after a last look at the village, turned in
among the robes. In the other lodges, stretched upon mats and wrapped in
buffalo skins, Indian men lay sleeping or thinking of the strange
happenings of the night and day that were gone. If any had watched, as
mayhap they did, they would have seen a second nightly gathering—this
time in the shadows of the Frenchmen’s lodges. Six figures stealthily
exchanged words and signs; and then without noise crept past the
farthest lodge and out across the snow toward the village of the Miamis
whence Monso had come. They were some of those Frenchmen upon whose
faces the observant Indians had seen signs of fear at the words of
Nicanopé.
An hour went by, when a new light began to touch the sky and the woods.
Out from the lodge of La Salle the tall figure of the leader stepped
into the cold morning air. He looked about in surprise. Not one of his
men was to be seen on guard. With quick, fierce stride he visited one
after another of the lodges. In one of them he found only a single
Frenchman, whose companions had not taken him into their plot.
Tonty, awaking, found his leader beside him with serious news upon his
lips. Six of their men—cowards and knaves—had preferred the dangers of
exposure and starvation to the dangers which Nicanopé had described.
They had taken advantage of their position as guards to desert their
leader in the hope of reaching the village from which Monso had come.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FORT CALLED CRÈVECŒUR
For ten days the air was snapping with cold, and the river beside the
Peoria village remained frozen. In the hearts of the Peorias lingered
the chill of fear, for in spite of his denunciation of Monso they could
not banish their doubts of the French chief; and the dreaded Iroquois
invasion, which had haunted them for years, was very present in their
thoughts as the Frenchmen passed among them.
When Indians once see fear betrayed in public, they never forget; and
now for some of La Salle’s men the Peorias had only contempt, for not
all of those who had shown fear at the words of Nicanopé had fled to the
woods. Others of the French, such as Ako, the _coureur de bois_, were of
a different breed. Bold, strong, experienced in woodcraft by many years
in the wilds, they commanded at least consideration from the Indian
warriors.
As for the three gray-robed friars, they did no harm and there was a
curious mystery about their ceremonies that pleased the Indians’
childlike hearts. One of these friars—Father Hennepin—looked far more
like a man who loved the world and the joys of life. He strutted about
the village with all priestly meekness smothered by his interest in his
surroundings. Very conscious was he of his own greatness, and well
satisfied that without him the little band of French would be in sore
straits.
It was with different feelings that the Peorias looked upon La Salle and
Tonty. They feared them greatly and still retained their suspicions, but
with their fear and suspicion there was also respect and awe. They
recognized in them the qualities an Indian loves—strength, utter
fearlessness, and a determination that breaks down all obstacles. About
each of these men there was mystery which baffled the wits of the
Indians and excited their interest even more than did the medicine men
of their own tribes.
Of the past of these two remarkable men the Indians knew nothing; they
could not read the tale of danger and hardship that had marked the years
of La Salle, or the story of the pitfalls and snares laid by his enemies
for his destruction. They could not know that at Fort Frontenac, when La
Salle was on his way to their country, one of his men had put poison in
his food. Nor did they know of the incident at the Miami portage, where
one of his followers, walking behind, had raised his gun to shoot his
leader in the back and was prevented only by the quick arm of a comrade.
They knew that six of the men had deserted and gone off into the woods,
but they did not know that on that same day in their own village another
of his treacherous knaves had again tried to poison him.
They knew nothing of the early experiences of Henry de Tonty, of the
seas he had sailed and the fights he had fought by land and water in the
service of the King of France. Nor did they yet know the faith with
which he served his leader and friend La Salle. But a sure instinct told
the red men that here were two men whom they would love as friends or
fear as enemies.
One chill day followed another. Most of the young men were still off on
the hunt and warpath. Those who remained at home mended their weapons,
smoked, and idly watched the women at work on mats and robes—but never
for a moment let go the thought or sight of the white strangers in their
midst.
In the middle of January the ice melted, the air dropped its sting, and
the friendly earth appeared from beneath the snow. La Salle and the
friar Hennepin stepped into a canoe and paddled down the river to a
point half a league below the village. Soon Tonty and the rest of the
band joined them. On the left-hand side of the river, two hundred paces
from the edge of the water, rose a small hill. In front of it there was
a stretch of low swampy ground, and on either side were deep ravines.
The inquisitive Indians who slipped along the shore to watch the
movements of the white men saw them at work digging a ditch behind the
hill to connect the two ravines. Around the edge of the hill a line of
earth was thrown up, making a wall which sloped down into ditch and
ravine and marsh. Then a palisade of logs was erected twenty feet high.
Inside this stockade in two corners the busy Frenchmen built lodgings
for themselves, a cabin for the three friars in the third corner, and a
storehouse in the fourth. Along the rear wall the forge was set up, and
in the very midst of the inclosure were the quarters of La Salle and
Tonty. To this stronghold beside the Illinois River, La Salle gave the
name of Fort Crèvecœur.
Another work that astonished the Indians still more went on at the bank
of the river. Here the men felled great trees, hewed them into timbers,
sawed planks, and began to build a mighty canoe such as the men of the
tribe had never seen. With a forty-foot keel and a twelve-foot beam, no
Peoria could doubt that it would make its way safely down the Great
River that ran through the land of their enemies.
Many times did the Indians wonder in their hearts whether or not the
French chief believed in the tales of terror that Nicanopé had spoken.
They saw him little at the village now, for he and his men had moved
down to the new Fort Crèvecœur; but there was never a time when Indian
figures, none too busy at home, did not peer through the bushes or sit
boldly by, fascinated by the busy doings at the fort and primitive
shipyard.
Far to the south, meanwhile, a band of the young men were on their way
home from the warpath. Many leagues ahead of them hurried one of the
band, a young warrior sent on to tell the village of their approach.
Over the plains and through tangled woods he plodded on weary feet. He
was less than three leagues from the village now, but he was tired and
very hungry. As he trudged along, he came upon a figure somewhat strange
to his eyes. But he had seen the traders who came now and then down the
rivers from Canada and he knew this man for a Frenchman. He saw, what
was more pleasing to his needs, that the stranger carried four wild
turkeys. Far spent with hunger, he called to him and asked for food.
The white man handed him one of the wild turkeys. With eager hands the
Indian lighted a fire, swung over it a kettle which he carried with him
and proceeded to cook the fowl. While the fire licked the sides of the
kettle the strange white man asked him of his journey and inquired about
the Great River that ran through the countries of the South. The young
warrior picked up from the fire a charred bit of wood and with it drew,
on a piece of bark, a careful diagram which showed the course of the
river and the streams that fell into it. Then he gave the names of these
streams and told of the tribes that dwelt along them, and the white man
wrote them down in his own language on the bark.
Everywhere along the Mississippi the young Indian had traveled in a
pirogue, and never was there a fall or rapids to obstruct his way. Not
even were there sandbars, save near the mouth in the heat of
summer-time. The two men talked of these things for some time, while the
Indian rested and appeased his hunger. Finally the Frenchman gave to the
red man a hatchet and asked him to say to no one that he had met him.
With his lips thus sealed by the white man’s gift and his stomach made
glad by the white man’s game, the young Indian turned aside and
accompanied his new friend with some awe to the newly built fort,
instead of passing on to the village.
Early on the morning of the next day, in the village of the Peorias, a
group of Indians were gathered in the lodge of one of the chiefs. They
were feasting in great joy upon the meat of a bear—a delicacy much
prized among them. Suddenly a form darkened the entrance to the lodge
and La Salle strode in among the squatted Indians. He paused in their
midst and looked about before he spoke. A smile of triumph was on his
lips.
“Perhaps you do not know,” he said, “that the Maker of all things takes
especial care of the French. In answer to my prayers he has revealed to
me the truth concerning the Great River, which your frightful tales
prevented me from learning.”
Then he went on to tell the astounded Indians of all the windings of the
Mississippi, of the smooth current upon which a canoe might ride to its
mouth. He described each river that entered it from the east and from
the west, and named each tribe that dwelt on its borders. Nowhere was
there fall or rapids to obstruct one’s way, and only where the river
broadened out at the mouth were there shallows and sand and mud-bars.
Each twist and turn, each rocky cliff and entering stream he seemed to
know as if he had spent months in paddling up and down the river in an
Indian pirogue.
The bear meat was forgotten. The Indians sat silent, their hands clapped
to their mouths in amazement. What great power or “medicine” did this
man possess that enabled him to watch what occurred in secret nightly
councils, and to see and describe hundreds of leagues of the course and
valley of the Great River he had never visited? Like children caught in
mischief, they confessed that all he said was true and that they had
deceived him only to keep him in their midst.
La Salle departed from the lodge, leaving them with troubled minds. How
strange and wonderful were these men of fair faces and flowing hair. And
what did their presence bode for the Indian? Were they their friends, or
were they at heart friends of the Iroquois? Who knew how near to their
villages were bands of painted warriors of the Five Nations? Yet, though
suspicion lay heavy upon their hearts, they looked with covetous eyes
upon the hatchets and knives, the kettles and weapons that the white men
brought.
CHAPTER IX
THE WHITE INVASION
Not a day passed but the Illinois followed with inquisitive eyes the
movements of the men at the fort. They watched the great white beams by
the river bank as the Frenchmen laid them out and fastened them together
till the growing ship began to look like the white skeleton of an
immense buffalo lying bleached and bare to the four winds of heaven.
Omawha, the friendly chief, adopted as a son the short young friar of La
Salle’s party; and so the gray robe of Father Membré passed freely in
and out of the lodges of the village. Like one of the chief’s family, he
ate of the Indian fare and slept on buffalo robes beside smouldering
lodge-fires. His fellow-whites were at the new fort; and he alone
watched the coming of spring in the Indian town.
As winter began to break up, the hunting parties came home. The war
party from the South brought captives with them, and the village became
more populous. But Chassagoac, the indefatigable hunter, was still off
in the woods.
Even in the long stretches of the Indian country, winterlocked and
drear, news traveled fast; and the Illinois well knew that runners were
carrying all up and down the Great Valley tales of the white men among
the Peorias, of the fort on the hill, and of the ship that was to sail
down the long river. It was, therefore, with concern that the Peorias
saw one day a gathering of Indians encamped about the fort. They were
Osages and Chickasaws and Arkansas—tribes that lived along the
Mississippi far to the south. And the villagers knew that they—jealous
of the advantages of the Illinois—would tell the white chief of the easy
navigation of the river and urge him to come down and live in their
country.
Not many days passed before another group of Indians arrived, this time
from the Far West—so far beyond the Mississippi River that they told of
long-haired Spaniards who rode to war on horses and fought with lances.
One of the Indians proudly wore at his belt a tobacco pouch made from
the hoof of a horse with some of the skin of the leg attached. A week
later came still another delegation to see the far-famed whites. They
were Sioux from the distant Northwest, in the land where the Mississippi
took its rise; and they were long-time foes of the tribes of the
Illinois.
In the councils of the Illinois Indians there was much debate. Each
chief had his own opinion. It was a time of new and strange happenings.
Long had the Illinois tribe lived proud and comfortable in the valley.
They had hunted and fished up and down the rivers at their will. In the
open spaces before their arbor-like lodges they gambled and smoked and
basked in the summer days, the bright sun warming their naked bodies.
And when they were tired of basking, they put on their garments of red
and black paint, gathered howling in the war dance, and set out on a
raid against the Sacs and Foxes west of the Lake of the Illinois, or the
Sioux by the headwaters of the Mississippi, or the Osages and Arkansas
and other tribes on its southern banks. Often, too, war came to them,
and sometimes so desperate that even the Indian women fought hand to
hand with the enemy in the spaces between the lodges of the village.
But of late years had come new dangers. Faint whisperings reached them
of white-faced men who brought from across the sea weapons that roared
like the thunder and smote their victims like bolts of lightning. Their
ancient enemies, the Iroquois, bought these weapons with furs and
carried their ravages upon the Western tribes with increased deadliness.
Then they learned that the white men themselves were beginning to appear
on the Great Lakes—first at the eastern end, but finally on the shores
of Lake Superior and the Lake of the Illinois.
By and by there pushed out from the Lakes into the valleys of the
Wisconsin and the Illinois, and even as far as the Upper Mississippi,
the black-robed priest and the lone fur trader. Restless _coureurs de
bois_ floated down the rivers in greater numbers. They set up cabins and
wintered in the lands which once the Indians alone knew. Priests, having
come to visit, came again to stay. Soldiers and explorers pierced the
far wilderness. Strange canoes shot up and down the waters. The ringing
of axes sounded in the woods, and forts sprang up. These new bold
habitants brought hatchets that put the old stone clubs to shame,
kettles such as the Indians had never dreamed of, knives with a deadly
edge, blankets of bright color and fine texture—and the childlike heart
of the Indian was made glad.
A new force had come upon the land and the end of the old days was at
hand. No Indian fully realized it. The novelty of the white man’s ways
and the charm of his gifts shortened their vision, and so they lived
each in the eventful present. But as surely as the river flowed down to
the sea, the Great Valley was passing out of their grasp. The wide
reaches of meadow, the leagues of hill and plain, the waters that ran
past a thousand hills, virgin forest for their game, live soil for their
corn, all the freedom and bounty of the greatest valley in the world had
been theirs—a valley to roam over at will, to hunt in with the changing
seasons, to fight for in the glory of battle among themselves.
The red men did not know that things were really going to be different,
for they were not wise in prophecy. But they were restless in mind and
they felt some of the dangers of the present; for like children they
feared a power they could not understand.
Among the Illinois tribes this vague fear rose and then died out in the
more placid courses of their lives. Then lurking suspicion seized upon
some event and all was alarm again. So it was with other tribes, for
fierce courage and abject terror alternated in the Indian mind.
Over on the shores of the Fox River and about the foot of the Lake of
the Illinois lived the nation of Miamis. They were relatives of the
Illinois tribes as well as neighbors, and their language was much the
same. The fear of the Iroquois, armed with white men’s weapons, had
seized such firm hold upon them that once they migrated to the
Mississippi. But in a time of peace they had wandered back to their
former homes. Now and then trouble arose between Miami and Illinois, and
for years they waged war upon each other.
The secret embassy of Monso with his Miami followers left the Illinois
uneasy. How did the Miamis know so much about the Iroquois? If the
Iroquois came, would the Miamis join them against the people of the
Illinois? And what would La Salle and Tonty and the men at the fort do?
Round and round went question and answer as the spring came on. Soon
would Chassagoac, their greatest chief, be back with his hunters.
Perhaps his wisdom might help them.
In the meantime they went about their duties and pleasures in the
village. The end of February, 1680, came, and on the last day of the
month they saw a great stirring—an unusual bustling about and strutting
up and down on the part of the gray-robed Hennepin. Finally he planted
his figure solidly in a canoe laden with skins and weapons and knives
and kettles. The veteran woodsman, Michael Ako, was with him and Antoine
Auguel—called the Picard by his comrades because he came from Picardy in
France. Bidding good-bye to those on the bank, the three men slipped
swiftly down the current and out of sight. What new move was this?
The Indians wondered until the next day when the village welcomed the
return of one of its hunting parties, just arrived from down the river.
They had passed Ako and his fellows about sundown the night before and
tried to persuade them to return. But no, they were bound for the land
of the Sioux, where Ako meant to trade in furs and learn of the country;
and the affable friar pronounced himself bound to undertake the great
perils of an unknown land to preach to the Indians of the Upper
Mississippi. So the red hunters let them pass—the boastful friar and his
two companions. Little did the three know what experiences were to
befall them before they saw again the lights of white men’s cabins.
On the day that the hunters returned, those who watched the fort saw two
other canoes set out, this time going up the river. Here was a still
more important event, for in one of the boats was the figure of La Salle
himself. Six Frenchmen were with him, and also a Mohegan warrior whom
they called the Wolf, from the name of his people. The Indians waited in
wonderment. Was the fort being deserted? Not yet, for the mysterious
Tonty, his arm swinging heavily at his side, passed about among the men
at the fort giving orders in the absence of his chief.
CHAPTER X
THE MYSTERIOUS HAND
The Indians of the Peoria village were interested spectators of the
events which were being acted out by the band of Frenchmen. Father
Membré lived in their town and they gave him respectful attention. Among
themselves they talked much of his white friends within the stockaded
walls of the fort. There were scarcely a dozen men with Tonty now, and
upon them the Indians looked with a mixture of curiosity, contempt, and
awe. Among them there were ship carpenters and soldiers, on some of
whose faces rascality and cowardice were written. Had the Peorias not
seen them nervous with fear while Nicanopé told them of the imaginary
terrors of the river, and at a public council, too,—what could more
clearly stamp the coward?
The old friar Ribourde shuffled about in his gray gown and bare sandaled
feet, saying mass among the Frenchmen as Membré did among the Peorias.
The strong-armed man, Le Meilleur, whom his comrade called La Forge,
swung the hammer on the red-hot iron and mended the tools of the French
at the precious forge. Down by the river, Moyse Hillaret and La Roze and
the other shipbuilders and carpenters laid out and joined together the
ribs of the huge wooden skeleton. Among these brawny men was a muscular
young lad from Paris named Renault, L’Espérance, a brave-hearted young
servant of La Salle, and Boisrondet, a man of higher birth than the rest
and a special friend of Tonty. But it was not of these men that the
Peorias talked most to the bands of hunters and warriors returning now
to the village—it was of La Salle, the white chief, who had left the
fort, and of Tonty, the man of mystery, who remained in charge of the
garrison.
The Indians could not understand the curious commander of the fort. Why
was his skin darker than that of his comrades and his hair so black—like
the hair of their own Indian women, though not so straight? But most of
all they wondered at the queer way in which he used his right hand. They
told the newly arrived Indians of the day the white men came to the
village. At the feast of welcome Tonty had used his left hand always as
he ate of their sagamite and meat, and now they watched him as he passed
here and there among his men. If he pulled a canoe up on shore or
grasped a piece of timber down at the shipyard it was never with his
right hand. Yet they had seen him deal blows with that mysterious right
hand which had the effect of an Indian war club. With what strange
“medicine” his powerful arm was gifted they could not tell; and it was
partly for that reason that they feared him. Often, in the adventurous
years that followed, red-skinned warriors in many parts of the Great
Valley were startled and awed by the ease with which this man could by
one heavy swing of his right hand break the teeth or crack the skull of
an unruly Indian.
If the Peorias could have looked off into lands they had never seen and
read the events of other times and places, as it now seemed to them that
La Salle could do, they might have found the explanation of the mystery.
Not many years before the white men came to the Peoria village, the
little island of Sicily, in the far-away Mediterranean Sea, was in the
throes of a bitter war. Along its coast grim-mouthed ships of war and
galleys, propelled by the oars of convicts and captives, bore the flags
of three nations—France, Holland, and Spain.
In one of the battles the figure of Henry de Tonty might have been seen
fighting under the flag of France. For many years he had so fought—four
campaigns on ships of war and three on galleys—and had gained high rank
in the service. But he was not of French birth. His father had come to
Paris as an exile from Naples in the sunny land of Italy after taking a
prominent part in the Neapolitan Revolt of 1647. Sicily like Naples had
long been under the hated rule of Spain, and now the Sicilians rising in
revolt had called upon the French for help. The Spaniards, hard pressed,
called a Dutch fleet in to aid them. So the war was waged, now on sea,
now on land; and Tonty, in the thick of the battle, rejoiced in a
struggle to free men of his father’s country from the Spanish yoke.
The cannon flashed and roared. Men fell all about him. A hand grenade,
thrown by the enemy, burst near by into a thousand pieces and tore away
the right hand of Henry de Tonty. He was captured by the enemy and held
prisoner for six months. Then he was released in exchange for the
governor’s son. In place of his lost member he substituted a hand of
metal which he wore encased in a glove. But now peace had settled upon
the Mediterranean, and the restless Tonty joined La Salle and came
across the sea to where the land was young and adventure lay in every
river valley.
In time the Indians learned the story of his “medicine” arm; and
throughout the Great Valley, from the Lakes to the mouth of the
Mississippi, Tonty came to be known to the tribes as the “Man with the
Iron Hand.”
CHAPTER XI
“WE ARE ALL SAVAGES”
The winter was a long one in the valley of the Illinois. Food was scarce
and the little band at Fort Crèvecœur had many hungry days. Once there
passed the Peoria village a canoe headed downstream, and in it the
Indians recognized two of the men who had set out with La Salle. The
canoe was loaded to the gunwale with provisions. Where could the white
chief have found such a store? The answer came later from the lips of
Chassagoac himself when he returned from his winter hunt.
Trailing through the woods one day Chassagoac had seen the smoke of a
camp-fire. Drawing near with two of his men he met a strange white man
who presented him with a red blanket, a kettle, and some hatchets and
knives. Chassagoac soon learned that the stranger was La Salle, the
chief of the company of white men who had settled near the Peoria
village. The white man knew the fame of Chassagoac, and the two chiefs
sat down for a long conference, during which La Salle told of all the
things that had happened at the village and explained to the red chief
that his men at the fort were in sad need of food. If the red brother
would furnish them with provisions he would repay him on his return from
the East.
Then, as the kindly Chassagoac promised his help, the white chief went
on to tell of his plans. He told of the fort and the great ship that was
being built on the riverside. Even now he was on his way to the East to
make peace with the Iroquois for the Illinois, and he would come back
with arms for their defense and with merchandise to distribute among
them; and many more Frenchmen would return with him to establish
themselves at the Illinois villages. He told of his plans for a great
expedition down the river to its mouth, whence he could set up more easy
trade and bring from across the sea goods of all kinds for the tribes of
the Illinois.
Chassagoac was deeply interested, and with generous hand he filled a
canoe with stores from the caches of the deserted Kaskaskia village near
at hand. He urged the white man to return soon, and assured him that
what had been said about the beauty and the easy passage of the
Mississippi was all true. Then after courteous leave-taking the two
chiefs separated. La Salle continued his way up the river, while two of
his men paddled the canoe full of supplies down the stream to Fort
Crèvecœur. After parting from La Salle, Chassagoac went on with his
hunting until the day when he came once more to the village of his
people. Here his arrival was welcomed by the Indians, whose fears were
perhaps somewhat quieted by his stanch belief in the white men. He spent
much time with the gray-robed friars and talked with them of how he had
met the black-gowned Marquette on the distant shores of the Lake of the
Illinois and had given him part of the deer he had killed. Indeed,
Chassagoac thought so well of the teachings of the friars that he agreed
to follow their strange manitou, and so was baptized after the manner of
the Frenchmen.
Meanwhile two more Frenchmen slipped down the river past the village to
the fort, which they reached about the middle of April. At once there
was much stirring among the whites, and soon Tonty with a few of his men
passed up the river toward the village of the Kaskaskias. The Indians
were curious at this new move. Some time before the veteran Ako,
together with the Picard and the friar Hennepin, had set off down the
stream, and La Salle with more men had gone up the river the day after.
Now even Tonty was departing.
The Indians watched closely the handful of men who remained in the
stockaded walls. Nöel Le Blanc and Nicolas Laurent, the two men who had
lately arrived at the fort, had come with orders from La Salle to Tonty
to build another fort at the upper village. In Tonty’s absence, Le Blanc
seemed to be moving about like a restless spirit, talking earnestly
among the men. With the blacksmith and the ship carpenters in particular
he appeared to be plotting some deep-laid scheme.
Into the village of the Peorias, likewise, crept strange whisperings and
rumors. Men from other villages came to tell them that their distrusted
neighbors, the Miamis, had been seeking an alliance with the hated
Iroquois. Was the fort to be abandoned, and were the Frenchmen to creep
off by twos and threes leaving the Peorias to be eaten by the Iroquois?
Presently those who watched the fort saw another party start out. This
time there were five men in the canoe—Father Ribourde, Boisrondet,
L’Espérance, and two others, Petit-Bled and Boisdardenne. After their
departure a strange commotion arose within the walls of the fort. Ship
carpenters ran here and there plundering the cabins: they tore down the
doors, and pillaged and robbed on every hand. They even overturned the
effects in the lodgings of the priests. Hillaret and the brawny
blacksmith forced open the storehouse and brought out powder and balls
and arms, and furs and merchandise. From every corner of the fortress La
Roze and Le Blanc and their fellow-conspirators gathered things of
value. Then, loaded down with guns and beaver skins and fine linen and
moccasins, they made for the riverside. One man with a sharp instrument
scratched on the gleaming white timbers of the half-built ship the
words, “Nous sommes tous Sauvages”—“We are all savages”—and the date:
“Ce 15 A—1680.” Then off into the woods they vanished, leaving the fort
wrecked and plundered.
Meantime night had come upon the aged friar and his four companions on
their way to Tonty at the upper village. Petit-Bled and Boisdardenne, in
league with the conspirators at the fort, rose up and spiked the guns of
L’Espérance and Boisrondet, and made off with the canoe after their
fellows, leaving the Recollet and the two young men to find their way on
foot and without means of defense to the village of the Kaskaskias.
Tonty heard the news of the mutiny with consternation and anger, and
hastened back to the ruined fort. Everything of value seemed to have
been taken, except the forge and some tools and arms too heavy for the
deserters to carry on their flight. With this freight the heavy-hearted
Tonty made his way back to the Kaskaskia village, where the lodges were
once more filled by the returning warriors and hunters. After sending,
by two routes, messengers to tell La Salle of the catastrophe, Tonty
prepared for a new order of life. The fort and its garrison no longer
gave him protection; but the Man with the Iron Hand was no coward. With
his fragment of a band he entered the village and asked the Kaskaskias
if he might live in their midst. They welcomed him to their kettles and
their cabins, and shared with him and his men their food and their
buffalo robes. The band of thirty or more that had come into the valley
a few months before was now reduced to six—Tonty and his friend
Boisrondet, the two young men, L’Espérance and Renault the Parisian, and
the two friars—Father Membré having come up from the lower village.
CHAPTER XII
THE DEATH OF CHASSAGOAC
The summer of 1680 was an unquiet season, when every whisper of the wind
seemed to bring ill news. Persistent rumors came to the Illinois of an
alliance between the Iroquois and the Miamis. Seeing their fears the
energetic man with the “medicine” arm began to teach his red brothers
the arts of the white man: he showed them the use of guns and taught
them how to fight as the white men fought.
One day a runner came into the village with news of the death of La
Salle, followed a little later by another Indian who confirmed the evil
tidings. The Illinois saw gloom in the face of Tonty; but his eyes
flashed no less of fire and his step lacked none of its usual vigor, for
he was every inch a chief. Then into the village a new rumor came
whispering to the Indians that this dark-visaged chieftain with flowing
hair was no Frenchman at all; that he came from a country far beyond
France whose people bore no kinship or allegiance to the great King of
the French.
Surely the situation looked worse for the Illinois with each passing
day. If the white men were in league with the Iroquois, and if their
kinsmen, the Miamis, had joined the enemy, they and their wives and
children might well fear the time when the war cry of the painted
Iroquois would echo in the valley of the Illinois. Defeated and
overwhelmed, they would be eaten by their enemies. Did not the tribes of
the Five Nations thus treat their captives? Consternation rose on the
wings of fear. What hope had the Illinois against the tribes from the
East?
From their long houses at the other end of the Great Lakes the famous
Iroquois warriors had spread desolation among a hundred tribes. They had
conquered and subjugated whole nations. Toward the south as far as the
Cherokees and Catawbas they had made easy conquests. North of the
Iroquois were the French on the St. Lawrence. Since Champlain had taken
sides with the Canadian Indians against the Iroquois, three quarters of
a century ago, the tribes of the Five Nations had hated the French. But
they did not dare attack them. So now the West offered the best field
for their eager ravages. From the Dutch in New Netherland, and later
from their English successors, they had purchased guns and ammunition,
and they had set their cruel hearts upon laying waste the valley of the
Illinois—at least so the tribes of the West had heard and believed.
The Illinois had fought off the Iroquois before. Could they do it again?
Their own warriors were experts with bows and arrows, and some of them
had guns now; but the Iroquois warriors had every man his gun, and also
his shield to ward off the feeble arrows of Western tribes. By their
attacks other tribes had been almost exterminated, and their captives
burned by slow fires with inconceivable tortures. What better chance had
the Illinois, particularly if the treacherous Miamis joined the foe and
the white men also proved to be enemies? So they watched Tonty narrowly;
but the dark-eyed chief, with his forge and his tools, his restless
stride, and his proud bearing, lived among them, and heeded not their
anxious or suspicious looks.
The year seemed truly a calamitous one for the Indians. It was in those
trying days that some Illinois were gathered in one of the long-roofed
lodges, where on a bed made soft by the skins of buffalo lay a man close
unto death. About him stood the men upon whom the nation relied to heal
the sick and cure the wounded, to drive away the evil spirits, and to
conjure the good spirits—the mysterious medicine men. They had worked
long with the man who lay upon the bed, for he was a chief great in the
councils of the Illinois nation.
A skillful hunter, a brave warrior, the greatest chief of the Illinois,
Chassagoac lay dying. Five years ago he had known Father Marquette, and
now just a little while ago he had been baptized by one of the
gray-robed friars who belonged to the band of his friend La Salle. But
as his death came on, it was to his own people that he turned. The
manitou of the French was so far away, while the medicine men of his
tribe were so near. So they gathered about him with their dances and
their incantations; they made passes over his body and muttered strange
words; they lifted their eyes and their voices toward the four winds of
the heavens; and they waved rattles in a vain effort to appease the
spirit that sought to rob them of their chief. It was useless.
Chassagoac had looked about him for the last time. For a moment it was
quiet in the lodge. Then a long despairing wail rent the air; and
outside among the lodges every man and woman and child knew that the
spirit of the great Chassagoac had gone out of him forever.
CHAPTER XIII
THE IROQUOIS COME
The level stretch of land along the north bank of the Illinois River,
where lay the lodges of the Kaskaskias, swarmed with hundreds of Indian
braves who were eager to be off into the woods and across the plains.
What was so stupid as life among the lodges with the women and old men
when the far-off wilds called them, when streams might carry their
pirogues into lands where their enemies lay sleeping and unwatchful,
when the trails to north and south and east and west might lead them
into woods and fields where bountiful game would fall before their
arrows? Why should the white chief make so serious objection? Other
bands had set off some days before in spite of his protests.
No one had seen signs of the Iroquois, and the alarm raised so often
began to lose its terror. Besides, was Tonty such a good prophet after
all? He had told them that La Salle would return by the end of May, and
now May had long been gone and sure tidings had come that La Salle was
dead.
It was not yet fall. Across the river the leaves of the trees, still
fresh and green, were turning and rippling in the winds. Even the sound
of their whispering said to the Indians: “Soon we will be dropping off
and the frosts will come. Hunting is good. Come away into the woods.”
And they went.
September found not half the warriors left in the village; but Tonty and
his three young men were still there. The two gray-robed Recollets—one
short and sturdy and young, and the other who had seen the seasons
change as often as the old men in the village—withdrew to a cabin in the
midst of a field some distance from the town. La Salle had not come
back; nor had the round-faced priest, who strutted so pompously down to
the water’s edge in February and paddled off with Ako and the Picard
toward the sunset.
The Indians hoped Tonty would continue to stay with them. More than four
months he had lived in their midst, and now it was twice that time since
he had first come into their valley. He dealt with them honestly and
without fear, and he had taught them many new ways. The Illinois were
archers whose fame had spread throughout the length and breadth of the
valley of the Mississippi; but Tonty had shown them how to use the guns
that spat fire and dropped a foe while the bow was bending—the guns that
made the Iroquois so dreaded.
In spite of privation and discouragement, desertions and loss of
friends, Tonty gave no sign that he had lost heart. If only the Indians
could hear again the reassuring words of the lamented Chassagoac and
forget the warnings of his still suspicious brother, Nicanopé, they
could learn to trust the French and to love this white leader like a
brother.
Once Tonty had set off in a canoe to see if he could learn at the
settlement at Mackinac some news of his chief who all people said was
dead. The Indians protested against his departure, but in vain. He did
not go far, however, for the river was at that time so low that he ran
upon shoals and was obliged to return to the village.
Toward the middle of September came the hoped-for rains, and one day
Tonty and his men drew their canoe out of the water, turned it upside
down, and began to renew its coat of gum ready for another trial of the
river. Some of the Indians watched him as he worked with his curious
left-handed movements. Others were too busy entertaining a friendly
Shawnee who was paying a visit to the village. As night came on, the
Shawnee departed, making his way toward the south and west. The rounded
roofs of the village caught the arrows shot by the setting sun and then
sank into dusk. Under each roof Indian men stretched out upon buffalo
hides and lost themselves in dreams. The women arranged the lodges for
the night and then lay down beside brown little papooses whose round
eyes had long been closed. So the quiet night settled down upon the
village. Three times would the oaks along the river sow their leaves to
the winds of winter before another such peaceful night would come upon
the village and its people.
The next day Indians of the village saw the Shawnee come hurrying back,
cross the river, and rush hot-foot into the town. “The Iroquois!” he
panted to the excited chiefs. Two leagues off to the southwest, on the
banks of the Aramoni, a tributary of the Illinois River, he had
discovered an army of five or six hundred Iroquois coming to attack the
village. Turmoil fell upon the Kaskaskias. Where were their warriors?
More than half of them were scattered to the four quarters of the
valley. Only four or five hundred remained. And where were the guns
which Tonty had so carefully trained them to use? Gone for the most part
with the absent warriors. Only a few were left, with ammunition for
three or four shots apiece. The rest of the braves had only bows and
arrows and war clubs. Tonty had been right, but it was no time now to
lament.
A reconnoitring party sent out to spy upon the enemy soon came back in
great excitement. About five hundred Iroquois were encamped along the
Aramoni. They had guns and pistols and sabers. Most of them had shields
of wood or of leather, and some wore wooden breastplates. And with the
Iroquois were a hundred Miamis, armed with bows and arrows. The anger of
the Illinois rose with their fear. The Miamis, their neighbors and kin,
should smart for this afterward. But the spying party had still further
news to tell. Among the moving figures of the enemy they had seen one
arrayed in a black robe and a Jesuit’s cowl. Calmer eyes would have seen
that it was only an Iroquois chief decked out in a black coat and hat.
But the heated imagination of the scouts saw a French priest; while in
another figure they made sure they saw La Salle himself.
If the village had been in a turmoil before, now it was in a fury. Their
worst fears, then, had come true: the French were all traitors. Even
Tonty had deceived them and had his own reasons for trying to get out of
the village before the Iroquois came. Like angry bees the Indians
swarmed to the lodge of Tonty. “Now,” said one of their chiefs, “we know
you for a friend of the Iroquois. The winds of rumor have told us no
lies. We are lost, for the enemy are too many for us and you and the
Frenchmen are their friends.”
In the midst of the furious, gesticulating crowd of warriors Tonty stood
calm. “I will show you that I am not a friend of the Iroquois,” he
replied. “If need be, I will die with you. I and my men will help you
fight your battle.”
Their anger turned to joy as they thought that with such a leader the
good spirits might yet give them victory. There was much to do before
the battle. With swift hands they gathered together a supply of corn;
and when night came ghostly figures moved to and fro as they embarked
the women and children in their long pirogues. Each wooden canoe would
hold thirty or more, and there were hundreds to crowd the little fleet.
With a guard of fifty or sixty men the boats slipped out, one after
another, upon the dark waters. Noiseless paddles dipped in and out as
the barks, filled with provisions and the closely huddled figures, shot
down the stream. They passed the black mouth of the Aramoni, and after
several hours came to a spot six leagues below the village. Here, in a
place made almost inaccessible by the river on one side and a swamp on
the other, they landed and set up camp.
In the Kaskaskia village there was no rest that night. The young braves
were preparing for the battle of the morrow. By long rows of camp-fires,
kettles were hung. Dogs were killed and cooked, for the occasion was one
deserving of so great a ceremony. By turns they feasted and danced in
the flickering light of the fires—weird dances, punctuated with howls
and whoops. The flames of the camp-fires cast the shadows of the dancers
across the open space and against the walls of the lodges like ghostly,
ever-changing spirits; and into the night air rose chants, rhythmic and
uncanny. All the long night through the Indians kept up their rites to
work themselves into a proper spirit for the attack upon the Iroquois—a
fight against odds wherein they needed the help of every manitou or
spirit that could aid them.
Gradually the fires die out as in the east a faint light begins to
spread. The day has come at last, the day which for years the Illinois
have dreaded. They gather with fresh war paint and ready weapons—bows
and arrows, heavy-headed clubs, or skull-crackers, and the few guns that
are left. Tonty is there with two of his men. L’Espérance is to remain
in the village to guard the papers of La Salle; and the two friars,
ignorant of the excitement, are a league away in their retreat in the
fields.
Together the warriors crowd to the river bank, Tonty and Boisrondet and
Renault in the lead, with the naked and painted Indians howling and
whooping about them. Their pirogues cross the stream in a trice. Through
the strip of oaks, over the hill and out across the open meadow, the
warriors, white and red, dash on to the conflict. They approach the
ranks of the Iroquois, but halt in an open field in sight of the enemy.
Tonty will make a last effort at peace and is given a wampum necklace as
a truce offering. Handing his gun to a friend, he walks across the
intervening space attended by a single Illinois. The Indians watch him
closely as he nears the foe. There is a sharp, deadly volley from the
Iroquois. Tonty stops, and sending back the Indian who is with him, goes
on alone. Arrow and ball fly about him, but he reaches the lines
unscathed. Iroquois warriors swallow him from the view of the anxious
Illinois. Only the Indian who has crossed half the open space with him
sees the knife of an Iroquois flash out and bury itself in the side of
the white chief. Then the staggering figure is lost even to his view. A
moment later his hat is raised upon the end of a gun high above the
heads of the foe.
With a cry of rage the whole force of the Illinois breaks again into a
charge, furious to avenge such treachery. The young Boisrondet and
Renault are in the lead, their hair flowing back in their speed, their
set faces full of the lust of battle and revenge. The twisting, howling
figures of five hundred Indians hurl themselves upon the ranks of the
enemy. Then like fiends they fight. The report of the Iroquois guns is
like the cracking of twigs in the forest to the new-found courage of the
Illinois. Their war cries rise above it sharp and shrill. Swift arrows
fly like driving hail. Heavy war clubs crash on Iroquois shield or on
painted head and body. Even the vaunted Iroquois cannot hold against
them. Their left side weakens, then yields, and gives back for half a
league across the meadow.
Then goes up the sudden cry that Tonty is alive. Out of the press of
battling foes he comes motioning them to hold. Gradually the din and the
tumult cease. The Illinois withdraw and count their losses. Tonty
reaches them, weak with the loss of blood from a gaping wound in his
side, but he carries in his hand a wampum peace offering from the
Iroquois.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SCATTERING OF THE TRIBES
Throughout the fight Tonty’s life hung upon a thread. An impetuous
Onondaga had stabbed him in the side, but fortunately the knife had
glanced from a rib. Another Indian seized him by the hair; and a third
raised his hat upon a gun. Then one of the chiefs recognized him as a
white man and intervened. He was carried into the midst of the camp,
where the chiefs gathered about him and heard his plea for peace. The
Illinois, said Tonty, were just as much the friends of the governor of
Canada as were the Iroquois. Why should the Iroquois make war upon them?
It was an unquiet parley. Behind Tonty stood an Indian warrior with
ready knife; and now and then as they talked he wound his fingers in the
white man’s hair and raised his black locks as if to scalp him. Outside
of the circle the fight went on. Then came the report that Iroquois men
were killed and wounded and that the left side was yielding. Dismayed,
the chiefs asked their white captive how many men were in the fight.
Tonty, seeing a chance to prevent hostilities, replied that there were
twelve hundred Illinois and that fifty Frenchmen were fighting with
them. Overcome with consternation at these figures, the chiefs hastened
to give Tonty the present of wampum and beg him to make peace for the
Iroquois.
The Illinois with their wounded white leader and his two men turned back
to the village. A league from home they came upon Father Membré hurrying
out to meet them. The sound of guns had brought him from his cabin in
the fields back of the town. They crossed the river together, and Tonty
was glad enough to lie down in one of the lodges and let the priest and
young men tend his wound.
Scarcely had the Illinois reached their lodges when, looking back, they
saw little groups of Iroquois on the other side of the river. A few of
these soon found means of crossing, and they hovered near the village in
a pretense of seeking food. But the Illinois, who were not children in
the art of Indian warfare, were well aware of the ways of the
treacherous Iroquois, and they watched these straggling bands with
gloomy foreboding.
By a magnificent sally the Illinois had daunted their enemy, and Tonty’s
exaggeration of their numbers had completed the impression of their
power in the minds of the Iroquois. But the Illinois well knew that they
were no match for the Iroquois with their abundance of arms and
ammunition and their allies, the Miamis. Sooner or later the Iroquois
would learn the true numbers of the villagers. Then the fierce warriors
of the Five Nations would harry them until they found an opportunity to
crush them out of existence. Massacres, tortures, and burnings could be
their only possible end if they stayed in the village. After their
warriors were slain, what of the women and children, anxiously waiting
in the secluded refuge down the river?
Tonty and his men were probably safe, for the Iroquois had too much fear
of the French in Canada to harm them without great provocation. But the
Illinois were not safe. So they deserted their village, took to their
pirogues, and passed downstream to join their wives and old men.
In their hearts the Indians saw the wisdom of flight, for they knew what
had happened in the past. They did not forget the fate of other nations
whom the Iroquois had practically exterminated. Would the invasion of
the Illinois country have any other end? Yet it was with heavy and
reluctant hearts that they gave up their lodges to the hated foe; and
bands of warriors trailed back up the river for another look at their
one-time home. Appearing on the hills a short distance behind the
village they gazed down upon the ruined lodges which had been fired by
the Iroquois, who had piled timber and half-burned posts in the form of
a rude fort. In a lodge some distance away Tonty had been left still
suffering from his wound and attended by his five men.
More and more of the Illinois gathered on the hill, until the array of
warriors alarmed the Iroquois, who still nursed the belief that twelve
hundred Illinois were haunting their rear. The Illinois continued their
watch day by day and presently saw two men leave the town and climb the
hill toward them. They soon distinguished the peculiar swing of their
friend Tonty. With him was an Iroquois Indian. Joyfully they welcomed
him and listened to his message. The Iroquois wished to make a treaty of
peace and had sent one of their men as a hostage.
The Illinois in turn sent back with Tonty one of their own young men,
and negotiations were soon begun. But the peacemaker had been badly
chosen, for the young Indian, eager for a treaty of peace, promised
everything and finally revealed to the Iroquois the true number of the
Illinois warriors. The Iroquois said little to the Illinois messenger,
but sent him back to his people that night to tell the chiefs to come
next day within half a league of the fort and conclude the peace. Then
they turned on Tonty with wrath and reproaches for having deceived them.
The next day at noon Illinois and Iroquois met not far from the village.
The Iroquois, hiding their true plans, gave presents to their late
opponents and bound themselves to a firm and lasting peace. But Tonty,
who was not misled, managed to send Father Membré to the Illinois to
tell them that the peace was only a pretense, that the Iroquois were
making elm-bark canoes, and that if the Illinois did not flee at once
they would be followed and their whole tribe massacred.
At night the Iroquois called Tonty and Father Membré into the rude fort,
and having seated the white leader they laid before him presents
consisting of six bundles of valuable beaver skins. By the first two
presents the Iroquois meant to inform Governor Frontenac that they would
not eat his children and that he should not be angry at what they had
done. The third bundle of skins was to be a plaster for the white man’s
wound. The fourth represented oil to be rubbed on the white men’s limbs
because of the long journeys they had taken. With the fifth they told
Tonty how bright the sun was; and with the sixth they said that he
should profit by it and return the next day to the French settlements.
“When are you going to leave the Illinois country?” asked the dauntless
white man.
“Not until we have eaten these Illinois,” replied the angered chiefs.
With a quick motion of his foot Tonty kicked the beaver skins from
him—an unpardonable offense among Indians. Angry looks and
gesticulations from the Indians greeted this act, but they hesitated to
lay hands upon Tonty for he was a friend of Frontenac, the powerful
governor of New France. Perhaps, too, they realized, better even than
did the Illinois, the power of his heavy right hand, for he had lived in
the land of the Iroquois before he had come out into these Western
wilds.
Scarcely restraining themselves, they drove the two men from the fort.
Tonty and the friar returned to their comrades at their lodge. No longer
was their presence in the Iroquois camp useful to the Illinois or safe
for themselves. Hardly expecting to see the dawn, they passed the night
on guard resolved to sell their lives as dearly as possible. But they
were not molested, and when day came they embarked for the far-off
settlements. They were the last white men to leave the valley of the
Illinois where carnage and woe were to reign.
The journey of Tonty and his companions was a difficult one, and
calamity met them early on the way. After some five hours’ paddling,
they stopped to mend their canoe. The old friar Ribourde went off in the
woods a little distance to pray, and was set upon and murdered by a
roving band of Kickapoos. After searching for him in vain, the rest of
his party went on. By short journeys they reached the Lake of the
Illinois and turned northward. Winter overtook them; their food gave
out; and they fell to eating acorns and grubbing up roots from beneath
the snow. When their moccasins wore out,—for most of their travel was
now by land,—they made themselves shoes out of a cloak which the
murdered friar had left behind. Weeks passed by as they journeyed on.
They came now and then upon deserted Indian camps, and, desperate with
hunger, they tried to eat the leather thongs which bound together the
poles of the Indian lodges. They even chewed the tough rawhide of an old
Indian shield which they had found. Tonty was sick almost constantly
with fever and scarcely able to walk. Not until December did the party
of five men reach Green Bay, where at last they were given a warm
welcome by the Indians and some Frenchmen in a Pottawattomie village.
Back in the valley of the Illinois, after the departure of the little
group of French from the village, all pretense at peace was cast aside,
and Iroquois fury turned itself loose. The Illinois had gone, leaving
them only a deserted village, on which they wreaked their vengeance.
Having destroyed the lodges by fire, they dug up the caches of corn and
burned and scattered the contents. Then they moved on to the village
graveyard and tore down from the scaffolds the bodies that had been left
there for a time before burial. From the graves of the village they dug
up the long-buried relatives of the departed inhabitants, and scattered
the bones in every direction. Out of pure fiendishness they despoiled
this most sacred spot in the Indian town. On the half-burned poles of
the lodges they hung skulls for the crows to pick. Then they followed
the fleeing Illinois down the river.
The Illinois gathered again at the place where their women and children
had taken refuge. It was a long narrow bit of land on the north bank of
the river. Between it and solid ground was a heavy, muddy swamp across
which only a four-foot path of firm ground was to be found. On this
semi-island, half a league in length and but fifteen or twenty paces
wide, the women had built temporary lodges. Only from the water side
could attack be made, and here they piled up their pirogues in the form
of a wall.
The Iroquois, following close after, camped on the shore directly across
the river, where over a hundred huts were soon erected. On the bark of
near-by trees they cut the savage story of the raid, and traced rude
pictures of the chiefs and the number of warriors that each chief led
out. Five hundred and eighty-two braves were thus recorded. On one tree
a diagram was traced showing the scalps of the Illinois who had been
killed and the number of captives who had been taken; while on their own
record of warriors were figures represented as pierced with gunshot or
wounded with arrows.
The Illinois, terrified by the pursuit of their enemy, crossed the
narrow path to the mainland and took up their journey downstream. At
night they again camped beside the river; and soon the fires of the
Iroquois camp shot up from the other shore. Another day’s march, and
again two camps appeared at night on opposite banks. The Iroquois, who
did not yet dare to make an attack, hung on the flanks of the Illinois
like a pack of cowardly wolves.
The Illinois traveled slowly, for they were greatly impeded by the women
and children and old men, and food must be gathered by the way. But just
as slowly and deliberately followed the Iroquois. Occasionally they
tried to put the Illinois off their guard by offerings of peace; but the
Illinois were wary. The two armies, marching side by side with only the
river between, passed Peoria Lake, and the men of the Peoria village
crossed over and joined their brethren. When the Iroquois came to the
deserted ruins of Fort Crèvecœur below the village, they stopped long
enough to pull the nails out of the timbers of the skeleton of the boat
by the water’s edge.
Day after day the Illinois and Iroquois walked beside the river. Night
after night camp-fires faced each other across the waters. On the way
the Illinois had gathered many of their tribes together. The Peorias,
the Cahokias, the Moingwenas, the Tamaroas, and several minor tribes had
joined the moving army like parts of a rolling snowball. If only they
were armed with guns and free from their wives and children, they might
strike a blow that the Iroquois would long remember. But wiser counsels
prevented such a move.
It became more and more difficult to find food for so many; and as they
neared the Mississippi River they longed to separate and go off each
tribe to its own hunting-ground. They held a parley with the enemy
across the river, and a truce was declared. Then the Illinois tribes
separated. The Moingwenas with several of the smaller tribes went down
the Mississippi; the Peorias crossed to the western side; while the
Kaskaskias and Cahokias preferred to go up the river toward the land of
the Sioux. But the Tamaroas, most luckless of all, lingered near the
mouth of the Illinois River. It was the opportunity for which the
Iroquois had waited, for their long-time policy had been to “divide and
conquer.” Such had been their plan when they came into the valley,
separating the Miamis from the Illinois and falling upon the latter.
As soon as the other tribes were out of the way, the Iroquois attacked
the Tamaroas. That feeble tribe fled in terror. Some of the men escaped,
while the rest were massacred. Along the margin of the Illinois, not far
from its mouth, was an open meadow; and here were enacted scenes such as
had long made the Iroquois hated and feared. The captives were put to
horrible torments: some were roasted to death, some skinned alive. The
nerves and sinews of some were torn out; and when their tortures had
done their work, the heads and even whole bodies of women and children
were placed upon upright poles and upon stakes driven into the ground.
CHAPTER XV
A SIOUX WAR PARTY
A little more than seven months before the Iroquois drove the Illinois
tribes out of their river valley, a band of Tamaroas were paddling in
wooden dugouts upon the Illinois River not far from the place where
later occurred the massacre of so many of their tribes. It was early in
March, and throughout the land parties of Indians of every tribe were
still roaming about on their winter hunt. That they should meet other
wanderers along the streams and trails was therefore not surprising.
This day they chanced upon a single canoe coming down the river. It was
not one of the wooden pirogues so common among their tribes, but a small
canoe of birch bark, and in it were three white men. Two of them were
bearded and brown with wind and weather; while the third was smooth of
face and large of frame, and was clothed in a long gray robe.
The Tamaroas had seen few white men, but like most of the tribes of the
Upper Mississippi Valley they had heard of the French fort near the
village of their brother tribe, the Peorias; and they had a keen desire
to have the whites settle near their own town and bring them presents of
iron weapons and bright-colored pieces of cloth. So now they stopped the
canoe and begged the three men to come home with them and pay a visit to
the village of their tribe on the western shore of the Mississippi a
little way below the mouth of the Illinois.
One of the bearded voyagers, Michael Ako, answered with an excuse, the
big gray friar nodding pompous approval as the canoe slipped on
downstream. Although the time of their parley was brief, the Indians had
observed that the canoe of the whites was loaded not only with
provisions, but with furs and merchandise, and, most important of all,
with guns and powder and ball. They were going, not down the Mississippi
to the village of the Tamaroas and their southern neighbors, but up the
Great River to the land of the Sioux, their enemies.
Quickly the Tamaroas resolved that the Sioux warriors should never lay
hands on the white men’s guns. Already, armed only with arrows and
clubs, they were a foe to be held in no light esteem. As countless as
the trees in the woods and swift enough in their bark canoes to far
outstrip the clumsy Illinois pirogues, what could the Northern braves
not do with guns? There was still a chance to prevent such a
catastrophe.
The Tamaroas could not overtake on the water the swift-paddling white
men. They tried it and the men in the canoe only laughed at them. But
there was a place downstream quickly reached on foot and well fitted for
an ambuscade. The fleet young Tamaroas braves darted across country and
were soon lying in wait on a narrow point jutting out into the river.
Unfortunately, however, for the plans of the Tamaroas, they were not
careful enough with their camp-fire, and the white men, seeing the
smoke, stole quietly by near the opposite shore. And so the little bark
canoe continued its way to the mouth of the Illinois River; and before
the end of the month its occupants, the friar Hennepin and his two
companions, were well on their way up the Mississippi.
While they were pushing their bark with difficulty against the current
of this strange new stream, there was great excitement in the Sioux
villages toward which they were journeying. Parties of Indians had
gathered in the war dance, and painted savages, stripped and ready for
battle, were leaving the towns of the Sioux for the south. They soon
reached the waters of the great river not far from the Falls of St.
Anthony, and from this point thirty-three bark canoes, manned by more
than a hundred men, swept swiftly downstream. The Sioux were embarked
upon a war against the Miamis and the Illinois; and bitter with the
desire for revenge was their leader, the old chief Aquipaguetin, for it
was not long since that the Miamis had killed one of his sons.
They had not traveled many days when, early one April afternoon,
Aquipaguetin and his Sioux warriors, skimming swiftly over the waters,
saw on the bank ahead of them three strange men. One of them, long of
body and long of robe, was busily gumming a bark canoe which lay upon
the shore. The other two men were engaged in boiling some meat in a
kettle over a camp-fire. The three men looked up and saw the swarm of
Indians coming down upon them. Hastily they threw away the fowl they
were cooking, tossed the canoe into the water, jumped to their places,
and began to paddle upstream to meet the Sioux braves.
Here was adventure already for the eager Sioux. The young braves drew
back their bows, and arrows sped through the air. While they were still
some distance off, they could hear the men calling out to them in words
of a strange tongue. At last the older men, having caught sight of the
upraised calumet of peace, held back the young braves with their too
impetuous weapons.
In a few moments the Sioux had reached the canoe of the white men. Some
of the Indians leaped into the water and some on shore, completely
surrounding the three strangers. Quickly the canoes all came to land,
and Aquipaguetin and his fellow-chiefs made the prisoners sit down upon
skins on the river bank. They were Frenchmen—two bearded traders and a
big gray-robed friar—and around them in circles the Indians sat. True,
the Sioux had seized the pipe of peace; but they would not smoke it, for
they were not yet ready for peace. Michael Ako understood the
significance of this conduct and was troubled.
Ordinarily Father Hennepin might have been glad to omit the smoking
ceremony, for ever since his boyhood he had detested tobacco smoke. As a
young Recollet friar he had many years before been sent to the seacoast
town of Calais, where he heard the stories of sailors just home from the
seas. Indeed, so keen was his desire to hear accounts of travel and bold
deeds that he would hide himself behind the doors of taverns, where the
sailors came to smoke and drink, listening (in spite of the odor of
tobacco which made him sick) to the tales of their voyages. But now,
disagreeable as was the smoke of tobacco, he no doubt would have gladly
drawn deep upon the pipe of peace if only he could see these Sioux put
the calumet to their lips and thus banish the fear of an ever-ready
tomahawk.
“The Miamis! The Miamis! Where are they?” cried the Sioux in words which
even Ako, the man learned in Indian tongues, did not understand at
first. At length he caught their meaning; and with a paddle he drew on
the sand a diagram to show that the Miamis had moved over to the land of
the Illinois and were out of reach of the Sioux warriors. This was
bitter news to the war party. Three or four of the old men laid their
hands upon the heads of the white men and burst into weeping and
lamentations. Then with loud cries they leaped into their canoes, forced
their captives to take up their paddles, and crossed the river to
another landing-place. Here they held a council as to what they should
do with the prisoners.
The Sioux party decided to give up their expedition against the Miamis,
but the disappointed Aquipaguetin seemed bent upon the killing of the
whites. Two of the chiefs went to inform the captives by signs that they
were to be tomahawked. The white men replied by heaping axes, knives,
and tobacco at the feet of the crafty leader of the Indians, and,
satisfied with the ransom, he said no more for a while of slaughter.
That night the Indians gave back to the white men their calumet, still
unsmoked. The captives divided the hours into three watches lest they be
massacred in their sleep. Hennepin was resolved to let himself be killed
without resistance, all for the glory of his faith; but Ako and the
Picard slept with their weapons close to their hands.
CHAPTER XVI
THE LAND OF THE SIOUX
When morning came, Narrhetoba, one of the chiefs of the Sioux, appeared
before the white men, asked for their calumet, filled it with his own
tobacco, and smoked it in their presence. Henceforth he was their
friend, despite the wiles of the old chief Aquipaguetin. Taking to their
canoes that day, the party with the three white captives paddled
upstream toward the home of the Sioux.
Each day at dawn an old man roused the braves with a cry, and before
taking up the day’s paddling they scoured the neighborhood for enemies.
For nearly three weeks they were on the way before they drew near to the
Falls of St. Anthony. Time and again the old chief, mourning over his
son’s unavenged death, threatened to kill the whites; then with covetous
fingers he would gather up the gifts with which he made them buy their
lives. Carrying with him constantly the bones of a dead friend, wrapped
in skins decorated with the quills of porcupines, he would often lay
this bundle before the captives and demand that they cover the bones
with presents in honor of the dead.
As they journeyed the old chief would at times break out into a fierce
temper and vow the destruction of the three strangers. But on such
occasions he would be restrained by the other chiefs, who realized that
if they killed these white men no more traders would come to the Sioux
country bringing merchandise and guns—which they spoke of as “the iron
possessed by an evil spirit.”
The Sioux watched the curious ways of Friar Hennepin, and when they saw
him looking upon an open book and moving his lips in muttered words they
were almost on the point of killing him—for surely he was a sorcerer
conversing under his breath with an evil spirit that might be persuaded
any moment to kill them all. Ako and the Picard, seeing the effect of
the friar’s devotions, urged him to leave off such dangerous practices.
But the stubborn Hennepin, instead of muttering his holy offices, now
fell to singing from the book in a loud and cheerful voice, much to the
relief of the Indians who feared this far less than the mumbled
undertones.
At last they left the river not far from the Falls of St. Anthony and
hurried away northward toward the villages that lay in the region of the
broad Mille Lac, the long-limbed Sioux covering the ground with great
speed. They waded streams covered by a coat of ice from the frost of the
night before. Neither Ako nor the Picard could swim, and so they often
passed over on the backs of the Sioux. Hennepin was not built for speed,
and the Indians, impatient at his slow progress, set fire to the prairie
behind him and then, taking his hands, hurried the frightened man of
prayer ahead of the licking flames. When they came to the first village
the war party finally separated, each Sioux going to his own home town.
The poor Picard, unable to conceal his growing fears, had roused the
quick contempt of the Sioux, who seized him with no gentle hands, for
they saw in him a coward deserving of no such respect as they willingly
bestowed upon his sterner friend Ako. He should be treated like an
ordinary Indian captive. So they painted his head and face with
different colors, fastened a tuft of feathers in his hair, placed in his
hand a gourd filled with small round stones, and made him sing shaking
his rattle in the air to keep time to the music.
Yet like the tribes of the Illinois Valley, the Sioux were a hospitable
people. They fed the white men with fish and with wild rice, seasoned
with blueberries, and served upon dishes made of birch bark. Then they
proceeded to divide among themselves such supplies as still remained in
the hands of the white men. Three chieftains, moreover, living in as
many villages, adopted the three prisoners and carried them off to their
homes. Perhaps Ako was not sorry to part with the friar, for the
boastful ways of Hennepin had sorely tried his patience.
It was the old chief Aquipaguetin who adopted Hennepin into his own
family to take the place of the son he had lost. He gave the friar a
great robe of ten beaver skins, trimmed with porcupine quills, and bade
his half-dozen Indian wives treat him as a chieftain’s son. And when he
observed how fatigued Hennepin was after the long journey, the chief
ordered that a sweat-bath be prepared for him.
A sweat-house was set up with buffalo skins. Through a small opening,
which was closed behind them, Hennepin and four braves entered, stripped
to the skin. In the middle of this house, red-hot stones had been
placed, and these, now sprinkled with water, gave off clouds of steam.
As the perspiration poured from the men’s bodies the four Indians laid
their hands upon the friar and rubbed him briskly; and when he was on
the point of fainting with weakness he was carried out of the
sweat-house and covered again with his robe. Three times a week the
friar was given this sweat-bath, which he said made him as well as ever.
Hennepin and many of his belongings were a mystery to the Sioux Indians.
His shaven head and face aroused their admiration, and so they put him
to work shaving the heads of the young boys. He also bled the sick, and
the strange medicines he carried about with him performed many a useful
purpose among the ailing Sioux. He had brought with him an iron pot with
three feet moulded in the shape of lion paws. This the Sioux dared not
touch, unless they first wrapped their hands in a buffalo or deer skin.
Not daring to keep it in the tepees or lodges, the women with great fear
in their hearts hung it up outside on the limb of a tree.
In two other towns of the Sioux lived Ako and the Picard in primitive
Indian fashion. The villagers found Ako a man after their own hearts,
for he had lived with Indians, enjoyed their wild life, and knew their
ways as did few white men. Gradually he learned the language of the
Sioux, as he had learned the tongues of other tribes who dwelt in the
river valleys to the south and east.
In their home country which stretched west and north for many a league,
the Sioux tribes lived for the most part in groups of tepees—lodges far
different from the rounded houses of the Illinois. In building the
tepee, which was small and conical in shape, the squaws first planted
about twenty poles in a circle and then bound them together near the top
with a stout leather thong. This framework was covered with buffalo
hides, sewed tightly together into one piece with a flap for an entrance
which was always toward the east. From the fire in the center of the
tepee the smoke rose and passed out of a hole where the poles were
joined at the top. Some of the Sioux, however, lived in so-called bark
lodges, which were made with a ridgepole and roofed with the bark of the
elm tree.
The spring months of 1680, as they grew warmer and ran into summer,
found the Sioux braves in the villages near Mille Lac eagerly looking
forward to a buffalo hunt. Aquipaguetin urged his foster son to join the
party in a long trip to the southwest. But Hennepin wanted now to get
back to civilization, for he had found little success in his ministry.
So he asked permission to make a journey down to the mouth of the
Wisconsin, where he said La Salle had promised to send men with supplies
and merchandise. After some discussion the Sioux bade him do as he
wished and take the Picard with him. Accordingly when the buffalo
hunters gathered together from the various villages, the Picard once
more joined his friend the friar. Ako, on the other hand, not loath to
see them go, cast his lot in with the hunters.
With Ouasicoudé, or the Pierced Pine, the greatest chief of all the
Sioux, as their leader, the hunting party followed the stream now known
as the Rum River until it fell into the Mississippi a few leagues above
the Falls of St. Anthony. Here the women of the party halted to commence
work on birch-bark canoes. While awaiting the arrival of those who had
gone to collect long strips of bark, the women set up frames or little
docks of poles upon which to build the canoes. The buffalo hunters,
having first sent a few of their number down to the Falls to offer a
sacrifice to the spirit of the water, set off on their trip with Ako in
their midst; and Friar Hennepin and the Picard started down the
Mississippi alone in their canoe, hoping to reach the band of whites at
the mouth of the Wisconsin.
CHAPTER XVII
A BUFFALO HUNT
Into a tree that stood beside the Falls of St. Anthony, a devout Sioux
climbed, weeping and lamenting bitterly as he fastened to the branches a
fine beaver skin. On the inside the skin had been carefully dressed and
painted white, and it was decorated with the quills of porcupine. And
while he offered this sacrifice to the spirit of the Falls, he cried out
in a loud voice:—
“Thou who art a spirit, grant that our nation may pass here quietly
without accident, may kill buffalo in abundance, conquer our enemies and
bring in slaves, some of whom we will put to death before thee. The
Foxes have killed our kindred. Grant that we may avenge them.”
Unk-ta-he, the god who dwelt under the Falls of St. Anthony, must have
heard his prayer, for all that he asked was granted. Many buffalo fell
to the lot of the hunters, and later in the season they attacked the
nation of Foxes and great was their victory. They brought their captives
home to offer to the spirit that had given them such glorious success.
On this early July day Hennepin and the timid Picard, looking up as they
made the portage around the Falls, saw the Sioux presenting his
ornamented robe and heard him offer up his prayer. Then they pushed
their canoe into the water and took up their journey upon the stream
that shot out so swiftly from the foot of the Falls. The Sioux climbed
down out of the tree and joined his friends on their hunt along the
river and out over the plains.
The crafty Aquipaguetin was with them, and as the days went by he kept
thinking of the story Hennepin had told him of other white men sent out
by La Salle with merchandise and arms to the mouth of the Wisconsin. Why
should he not meet these men himself and receive their first lavish
presents? Finally he could no longer restrain himself, and taking with
him about ten men he paddled down the river after Hennepin and the
Picard. The two white men had had many adventures. In their hunting they
had not been fortunate, and many times they had come near to starvation.
Once they had passed two days without food, when they came upon some
buffalo crossing the river. The Picard managed to shoot one of the cows
in the head. The animal being too heavy to haul ashore, they cut it into
pieces in the water. Then they feasted so heartily that for several days
they were too sick to resume the journey.
Hennepin and the Picard were yet some distance above the Wisconsin when
Aquipaguetin overtook them. He did not stop long, but dipped paddle once
more and soon reached the mouth of the river where Marquette, seven
years before, had first seen the Mississippi. There he halted and looked
about for signs of white men. No camp was beside the river, nor did any
smoke rise as far as his eye could reach. Having searched in vain he at
length turned northward with great wrath to seek out his foster son.
The Picard had gone off to hunt and the friar was alone under a shelter
they had set up to protect them from the sun. Glancing up he saw his
foster father coming toward him, club in hand. In terror of his life, he
reached for a pair of the Picard’s pistols and a knife. Perhaps the
friar, armed with these unholy weapons, daunted the chief, for he
contented himself with showering upon his adopted son maledictions for
camping on the wrong side of the river and thus exposing himself rashly
to the enemy. Then he pushed on to rejoin his fellow-Sioux.
The party of hunters had now turned south, and in a few days they came
upon Hennepin and the Picard, who joined them on the trail of big game.
Many leagues down the Mississippi they hunted for buffalo, and
altogether they captured a hundred and twenty of the shaggy beasts.
While on the chase it was their practice to post old men on high points
of the cliffs and neighboring hills to keep watch for enemies. One day
Hennepin was busy with a sharp knife trying to cut a long thorn out of
an Indian’s foot when an alarm was given in the camp. Two hundred bowmen
sprang to their arms and ran in the direction of the alarm. Not to be
left out of the fighting, the Indian with the wounded foot jumped up
likewise and ran off as fast as any of them. The women started a
mournful song, which they kept up until the men returned to say that it
was not an enemy, but a herd of nearly a hundred stags.
A few days later the men from their high posts announced that there were
two warriors in the distance. Again the young braves ran out only to
find two Sioux women who had come to tell the chiefs that a party of
Sioux, hunting near the end of Lake Superior, had found five other white
men who were coming south to learn more about the three whites with
Ouasicoudé’s band.
Returning from their hunt some days later, they met these five new white
men. Their leader was the Sieur Du Luth, a famous hunter and explorer
who had come into the upper end of the Mississippi Valley by way of Lake
Superior, and with him were four French _coureurs de bois_. Du Luth was
a cousin of Henry de Tonty, and with great eagerness did he hear from
Ako and his friends the story of the band of whites who had settled at
the Peoria village and of the fort they had built beside the Illinois
River.
There were eight white men now in the band that journeyed northward
toward the Sioux towns about the Lake. The Indians soon made up their
minds that Du Luth was a man of power among the whites—more so, perhaps,
than Ako, the leader of the first three visitors who had come into their
country. But neither Ako nor Du Luth seemed to hold the gray-robed friar
in the high esteem to which he thought himself entitled.
When they had arrived at the villages the Sioux gave a great feast to
the palefaces, who had come into their country from the south and from
the north, and for more than a month red men and white lived together in
peace, each learning from the other. September drew near to a close, and
as winter approached the white men grew anxious to return to their own
kind. They secured the consent of Ouasicoudé, who with his own hand
traced for them a map of the route they would need to take.
With this chart they embarked in two canoes upon the Rum River, and a
few days later they had reached the Mississippi and were carrying their
light craft around the Falls of St. Anthony. Here two of Du Luth’s men,
much to their leader’s wrath, stole robes which were hanging in the
trees as sacrifices to the spirit of the water. They stopped at the
mouth of the Wisconsin to smoke the meat of some buffalo they had
killed. While they were camped at this point, three Sioux came to tell
them of something which had happened since they had left the northern
villages. A party of Sioux, led by one of the chiefs, had plotted to
follow after the eight white men and kill and plunder them. But
Ouasicoudé, the Pierced Pine, the ever friendly chief, was so enraged
that he went to the lodge of the chief of the conspirators and in the
presence of his friends tomahawked him.
Thankful for their deliverance, the whites paddled their canoes up the
Wisconsin River, crossed the portage to the Fox River, and followed that
stream to Green Bay and its settlements of French priests and traders.
Meantime back in the country they had left, the Sioux were waging fierce
war with the Illinois and other nations of the South. Paessa, a
Kaskaskia chief who had left the village of his people, in spite of
Tonty’s remonstrances, before the coming of the Iroquois, had led a
party of Illinois braves into the fastnesses of the Upper Mississippi
against their long-time foes.
In the valley of the Illinois and in the valleys of the rivers which
flowed together to make the current of the mighty Mississippi, no white
man was now to be found. When the first snows came, the tribes of the
Upper Mississippi found themselves with a few guns and knives and bits
of bright cloth and the memory of the white man’s ways. But instead of
the pale-faced Frenchmen, who came bearing presents and asking for
peace, they now had with them, skulking through their valleys, the
faithless Iroquois, with hands red with the blood of conquered nations
and hearts seared with the flames with which they burned their captives.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MIAMIS REPENT
The camp-fires of five hundred Iroquois glowed in the frosty night air,
the smoke hovering above like a drifting cloud under the moon. Some of
the five hundred lay sleeping, their weapons close to their hands, while
others were standing guard against possible danger. Many weeks had
passed since they had hounded the Illinois out of the valley of the
river that bore their name, and now all up and down its length was
quiet. No Illinois village along the shores sent the smoke of its
lodge-fires upwards. No winter hunting party camped by the frozen
stream. At the same time, though deserted by its ancient dwellers, the
valley was not wanting signs of the thing which had caused their
departure. The moon which that night hung over the returning Iroquois
shone upon all the length of the river, revealing scenes for a hundred
leagues that spoke as plainly of the Iroquois passing as does the track
in fresh snow tell of the passing of a wolf.
The trail began at the great village of the Kaskaskias. Here the pale
light fell upon the half-burned ruins of lodges, the scattered contents
of the caches, the desecrated graveyard, and the wolves that with savage
howls still hung about the town their human cousins had ravaged. Down
the river went the trail marked by ashes of deserted camps, past the
lodges of the Peorias, the ruined Fort Crèvecœur, and the ribs of the
unfinished ship gleaming white in the moonlight. Then came the ashes of
more camps, always facing each other as they followed the river down to
the open meadow near the mouth where stood the grim figures of the
tortured Tamaroas.
No, the trail of the Iroquois was not hard to trace in the Illinois
Valley. Nor was it a difficult task for an Indian to find the route they
had taken when, after massacring the Tamaroas, they had moved across
country to the valley of the Ohio River many leagues to the southeast.
The Iroquois warriors, proud of their victories and glorying in their
cruel deeds, traveled with little fear. Laden with furs and plunder,
with scores of Illinois slaves in their camp, they did not know that
they were being followed. But they were. The Kaskaskia chief, Paessa,
who had set out with a war band against the Sioux before the Iroquois
raid, had now come back to the valley of his nation only to find ruins
and the well-marked trail of the Iroquois.
There were only a hundred in the band, but in their desire for revenge
they knew no such thing as numbers. With fury adding to their speed they
started upon the track of the enemy and now night by night through the
Ohio Valley their camp-fires were coming nearer to those of the
Iroquois. The Iroquois were moving on toward home. Far to the east lay
their villages of long houses in the land where the Ohio River had its
northern source. They had scattered the Illinois and devastated their
country. The weaker Miamis they had not harmed, perhaps because they had
not yet found it to their advantage. But now they were entering the
hunting-grounds of the Miamis who ranged from the Lake of the Illinois
south as far as the Ohio.
They happened one day upon a party of Miami hunters and without
hesitation the Iroquois fell upon them, killing some and adding others
to the Illinois prisoners whom they were carrying home. The winter
descended upon them with such vigor that they halted and built three
forts at the corners of a triangle, each fort at two leagues distance
from the others. Here the Miamis sent a delegation asking for the
release of their captives. But they were mocked at by the vainglorious
Iroquois. Then they offered a present of three thousand beaver skins as
a ransom for their men. The overbearing conquerors, having attacked
their own allies, now committed an unpardonable sin against Indian
custom. They accepted the gift of the Miamis, but refused to release
their captives. The Miamis sadly realized that they had deserted their
neighbors, the Illinois, only to ally themselves to a band of traitors.
The winter did not halt the avenging party under Paessa. And one night
the daring band slipped between two of the forts and pitched camp in the
middle of the Iroquois triangle. At daybreak some in those forts should
taste death for the outraged graveyard and for the trampled meadow where
Tamaroas had died.
But that same night two Iroquois hunters saw their camp-fire and
approached to see who they were. One of the two had entered the camp
when a young and rash Illinois brave, unable to contain himself, leaped
upon him and struck him dead. Quick as a flash the other was gone. Their
secret was out. Surprise was now impossible and the band prepared for a
terrific encounter. It came with the daylight. On every side the
Iroquois bore down upon them. Outnumbered five to one, the brave
Illinois held their ground all through the winter day. At evening both
sides withdrew. A third of the dauntless hundred were dead, among them
the gallant Paessa. Yet with the morning the unconquerable band again
took up the fight. Three times they hurled themselves upon the enemy. At
last, seeing the hopelessness of their battle, they drew away and
cleared themselves from the hated triangle.
The news of these battles in the Ohio Valley passed quickly throughout
the Miami tribes. The chiefs at the great village on the headwaters of
the Kankakee, near the foot of the Lake of the Illinois, pondered over
the situation in council with much concern. They had allied themselves
with the Iroquois against the Illinois, and now their Iroquois allies
had treacherously attacked them. In view of the indomitable courage
which the Illinois had just displayed in the battle of the triangle,
what would happen to the Miamis when the Iroquois were gone and the
Illinois tribes came back to avenge themselves upon their neighbors?
They had other important things to think about as well. A few leagues
north of their village, where the St. Joseph River emptied into the
Lake, there had lain for many months the ruins of Fort Miami, built a
year before by La Salle and demolished in April by the deserters from
Fort Crèvecœur. But now Fort Miami was rebuilt; for out of the East La
Salle had come again. Away back in July on distant Lake Ontario he had
found some of the Fort Crèvecœur deserters, shot two who showed fight,
and captured the rest. Then he had set out to the Illinois country to
rescue Tonty; but it was November before he landed at the mouth of the
St. Joseph River. On the day that his canoes touched shore, Tonty, sick
and more than half-starved, was struggling northward along the west
shore of the Lake, trying to reach the French settlements with the news
of the Iroquois raid.
La Salle left some of his men to rebuild the fort and pushed on down the
Kankakee, his anxiety for Tonty steadily increasing. At the Kaskaskia
village he struck the trail the Iroquois had left behind them, and
followed it down the river to the meadow of massacre near the mouth.
Nowhere did he find trace of Tonty, and with heavy heart he came back to
his men at Fort Miami. In his absence a band of New England Indians,
mostly Abenakis and Mohegans, had pitched their lodges about the fort,
and when La Salle appeared they joined themselves to his party and swore
to follow him as their chief.
One important fact now stood out clearly in the mind of La Salle. If he
was to accomplish anything in the exploration and settlement of the
Mississippi Valley, he must bring the Miamis, the Illinois, the
Shawnees, and other inhabitants of the Great Valley into such firm
alliance with each other and with himself that they need have no fear
from Iroquois or any other invaders. If he could get such an alliance
started, he would feel free to make his long-delayed trip to the mouth
of the Mississippi and open up trade by that means with France across
the seas. With this in mind he took fifteen men and set out on the 1st
of March to open communication with the Illinois, occasional bands of
whom were beginning to wander back into their valley.
The men traveled easily over the snow with their snowshoes, but the
glare of the sun was so intense that La Salle was stricken for several
days with snow-blindness. While he lay suffering, unable to see or to
sleep, some of his men came upon tracks which led them to the lodges of
a hunting party of Fox Indians, from whom they learned to their great
joy that Tonty was alive and had reached a village of Pottawattomies on
Green Bay. They also learned that Ako and Hennepin and the Picard had
returned safely to the settlements on the Lake.
Pressing on down the valley, not long afterwards, he met with a band of
Illinois. They told him the story of the Iroquois raid and showed him
letters from black-robed priests, which had been given them by the
Iroquois. These letters seemed to be in the nature of passports
safeguarding the Iroquois in case of their capture by the Illinois. The
Illinois added that their enemies had other letters addressed to Father
Allouez, and they interpreted the whole affair as meaning that the Black
Gowns wished them to be attacked.
Now La Salle had for many years disliked the Jesuits, and he had accused
them of trying to block his plans and wreck his enterprises. Especially
did he hate the black-robed Father Allouez. The priest knew this, and it
was the news of La Salle’s coming that had caused him to slip out of the
village of the Kaskaskias on that Christmas Eve of 1679. But now La
Salle wished to quiet the fears of the Illinois, and so he assured them
that their distrust of the black-robed priests was groundless. He told
them of his plans to start a colony in the Illinois Valley and settle
many French soldiers there to protect the tribes that made their homes
along the river; and he urged them to make friends again with the Miamis
and join forces with them against their common foe from the outside.
The Illinois were well pleased with the plans of La Salle, and they went
off promising to carry his message to their people. La Salle sent a
messenger to tell Tonty to wait for him at Mackinac, and then returned
to his fort on the St. Joseph. He had made a beginning with the
Illinois; his next step was to bring the Miamis into an alliance.
In the Miami village south of his fort, during this time, there was much
uncertainty. The Indians watched the white men’s movements with anxiety
and dreaded the wrath of the Illinois when they should return. Yet the
Iroquois still seemed to hold them under a spell. Into the Miami village
that spring came three Iroquois warriors, swaggering and boastful. But
in spite of their treachery the Miamis dared not harm them. The visitors
told of their feats of battle, derided the French, and urged the Miamis
to continue the war against the Illinois.
But one fine spring day La Salle himself, with ten of the despised
Frenchmen and a handful of New England Indians, entered the village.
With curious eyes the Miamis watched the boastful Iroquois. Would they
defy the French now? Upon the moment of La Salle’s arrival, the three
warriors made haste to visit him and pay him devout respect. But the
white chief received them coldly, threatened them, and dared them to say
in his presence what they had said before his coming. Abashed and silent
they slunk away and fled from the village that night.
The Miamis had had their lesson—a lesson which they had been slow to
learn. The discomfiture of the boasting Iroquois had broken the last tie
that held them to their false friends of the Five Nations. They came
together now in a grand council with La Salle in the lodge of the
principal chief, and in order that all might hear they stripped the bark
sides from the lodge and opened it up to the throng outside.
CHAPTER XIX
A CHIEF COME TO LIFE
When the Miamis had assembled in and about the open lodge of the chief,
La Salle had one of the New England Indians bring into the council the
presents which he wished to give. Then he chose first from the pile a
roll of tobacco, and presenting it to the Miamis said:—
“May this tobacco, as you smoke it in your pipes, clear the mists from
your minds, that you may think without confusion.
“And this,” he said, laying down a piece of blue cloth, “is to cover the
bodies of your relatives just killed by the Iroquois. May it turn your
eyes from their dead forms to the peaceful blue sky where the sun shines
so brightly.
“And here is a piece of red cloth to cover the earth so that you may see
no longer the blood of your brethren. Its color is like that with which
you paint your faces for a feast, and will mean to you that hereafter
you will always live in pleasure and joy.
“Here are cloaks to cover the bodies of the loved ones you have lost.
May they be a mark of our esteem and friendship. And take these fifty
hatchets to help you raise a magnificent tomb in their memory. And those
who have no beautiful ornaments to wear in the feast which you will give
to those who are gone—let them wear these necklaces and bracelets, these
rings and glass beads and little bells, and let them paint themselves
with this paint.”
Then he drew forth thirty sword blades and, stooping over, he planted
them in a circle in the dirt floor of the lodge, around and inclosing
the presents he had given.
“And so,” he said, “will I make a palisade of iron about you so that the
bodies of your dead friends may receive no harm.”
He straightened himself beside the circle of iron, and while the Miamis
within the lodge and outside watched him he continued:—
“Your dead friends must be contented now. We have paid them our
reverence. They will only ask further that we let them lie in peace;
that we wipe away our tears and take care of the loved ones who step
into their places. But I wish to do more than this.
“I know how sadly you have mourned for Ouabicolcata, your great chief
who is dead. Think of him no longer as dead. His spirit and his soul
have come to life once more in my body. I will raise his name among you.
I am another Ouabicolcata, and I will take the same good care of his
family as he did while he lived. No more am I Okimao as you used to call
me. Henceforth my name is Ouabicolcata. Your chief lives again in the
body of a Frenchman who is able to give you all the things which you
need.”
Seldom do Indians in council interrupt a speaker, but as the white
leader promised to take up the name and life of their dead chief the
whole gathering broke into cries of rejoicing and praise. When a son was
lost from an Indian family the sorrowing parents often adopted in his
place a captive from another nation. So now it did not seem strange that
in place of their lamented chief they should take to their hearts and
homes this white chief, and call him by the old name Ouabicolcata, and
love him as they loved the man who was dead.
La Salle’s men now brought three immense kettles. “In these,” said the
white chief, “you will make a great feast for the dead come to life.”
Then to his newly found relatives he presented shirts and cloaks, a box
of knives and hatchets, and many other wonderful things saying: “See how
I will give to my people the things they need.”
“And now, my brothers,” said La Salle, “we come to a matter of much
consequence”—and he presented the Miamis with six guns. “There is a
great master across the sea. He is famous everywhere. He loves peace. He
is strong to help us, but he wants us to listen to his words. He is
called the King of France, the greatest chief of all those who rule on
the other shore. He is anxious that peace shall come upon all people and
that no one shall wage war without asking permission of his servant
Onontio, the governor at Quebec. Therefore, be at peace with your
neighbors and most of all with the Illinois. You have had your quarrels
with them. But have you not been enough avenged by their losses? They
want peace with you, yet they are still strong enough to do you harm.
Content yourselves with the glory of having them ask for peace. And
their interest is yours. If they are destroyed, will not the Iroquois
destroy you the more easily? So take these guns, but use them not for
waging war, but for the hunt and for self-defense.”
Then at last La Salle chose from his bundles two wampum necklaces—the
gifts most common among Indians. Turning to the thirty New England
Indians who were with him, he said: “These are other Miamis who come to
take with you the places of the warriors whom the Iroquois have killed.
Their bodies are the bodies of Indians from New England, but they have
the spirit and the heart of the Miamis. Receive them as your brothers.”
The council broke up in a tumult of joy and brotherly feeling. High
honor had been paid to the dead and splendid gifts bestowed upon the
living. On the next day the Miamis came before La Salle to dance and
present gifts. They did homage to the good spirits of the sky and the
sun and to the God of the French. Then one of their chiefs,
Ouabibichagan, presented to their new brother ten beaver skins saying:—
“Never, my brother Ouabicolcata, have we seen so wonderful an event.
Never before have we seen a dead man come to life. He must be a great
spirit who can thus bring back life. He makes the sky more fair and the
sun more bright. He has given you with life, clothes with which to cover
us who are wont to be naked.
“We are ashamed that we have not equal gifts to give you. But you,
Ouabicolcata, are a brother. You will excuse us. For it was to redeem
your bones from the Iroquois that we made ourselves poor. We gave them
three thousand beaver skins. This little gift of ten skins is but a
sign—is only like the paper which you Frenchmen give to one another—it
only means that we promise you all the beavers in the river when next
spring shall come.”
Again he gave him ten beavers and told him of the joy the Miamis would
feel as they went upon their hunts with their brother alive again, and
the spirit that gave him back his breath guarding over their happiness.
With a third gift of skins he spoke of the French king in these words:—
“We will listen to him; we will put aside our arms; we will break our
arrows, and hide our war-clubs at the bottom of the earth. The Illinois
are our brothers since they acknowledge our father, and the French king
is our father since he has given life back to our brothers.” A fourth
and a fifth gift of beaver skins he made and bound the Miamis to
Ouabicolcata and their new brothers from New England. At last he handed
the white chief for the sixth time ten beavers and said:—
“Do not count the skins, my brother, for we have none left. The Iroquois
have all the rest. But accept our hearts in trust for what we will do
when spring has come again.”
After the gifts the dancing began again and also the feasting from the
new kettles. And all day long the three wives of Ouabibichagan, sisters
to one another, and the wives of Michetonga, also sisters, danced in the
sunshine of spring and in the joy of a people reconciled to their
neighbors and happy in the pleasant childlike pretension of a lost
brother come back to live with them once more.
As the Miamis danced a band of Illinois were following swift trails
westward to the banks of the Mississippi. They had talked with the great
white chief who had left Fort Crèvecœur so long ago in the good old days
when Chassagoac was alive and when their villages smiled in the sun
along the Illinois River. They were carrying back to the Peorias and the
Kaskaskias and the Tamaroas and to all their brethren the message from
La Salle, that he was still determined to make his trip to the mouth of
the Great River, and that he had come to reunite the Miami and Illinois,
to plant his men as a guard against the Iroquois, and to snatch back for
them the beautiful valley of the Illinois.
CHAPTER XX
STRANGE RITES
Spring was coming, and the giant of the Great Valley, lying stretched at
full length, was beginning to stir uneasily. Too long had he slept with
his head in the snow far up in the country of the Sioux. His outspread
arms, flung to the mountains on either side, began to move, and to the
tips of his fingers, entwined in the hills of the Alleghanies and the
rough piles of the Rockies, a new life came. The Mississippi River was
waking from its winter sleep.
In the land of the Iroquois, by distant Lake Ontario, the ice in little
brooks was melting, and snow-water was running down from their banks to
flow through the length of the Ohio Valley into the Great River. Over by
the foot of the Lake of the Illinois, where the headwaters of the
Kankakee crept out from the country of the timorous Miamis, cakes of ice
were starting on a long journey down the widening river into the
Illinois, there to run smoothly through a deserted valley, past the
mined village of the Kaskaskias, the empty Peoria lodges, and the
forsaken fort to find the wide river in the land of the luckless
Tamaroas.
Even in the cold Sioux country the tiny sources of the Mississippi were
stirring; and the waters grew less chill as they slipped out of the
sight of the Sioux hunters and took their way southward past the
far-driven tribes of the Illinois—here the Kaskaskias, lower down the
Peorias—until they reached the haunts of the Tamaroas and were joined by
the waters of the Illinois.
Southward ever the spring water flowed. Here from the Western plains
came rushing like a buffalo bull the tawny Missouri, bringing down logs
and trees that had passed many and strange peoples on their way from the
far unknown West. Out of these Western countries came also the Arkansas
to cast its burden into the river farther down.
Now all these waters, gathered in a mighty stream, flowed on past the
strange Southern tribes—past the Taensas, watching their sacred fires
and guarding their temples in eight villages gathered on a
crescent-shaped lake, and past the Natchez and the treacherous Coroas
and Quinipissas—till at last, under the warm Southern sun, the river
poured itself out of the bottom of the valley into the salt waters of
the Gulf of Mexico.
Thus in the year 1682 the Great Valley awoke from its quiet winter. Soon
in the North the Indian women could stir the eager soil and begin their
planting. The Indian braves could toss their snowshoes into a corner of
the lodge, throw off their winter garments of buffalo hide, and go out
into the sunshine as free and happy and unencumbered as God had made
them.
All the valley was a playground for the Indians. Its woods and its
streams, its prairies and its hills, its herds of buffalo, its deer and
bear and wild fowl were theirs. They could build their lodges and hunt
game where they willed. They could trade with the tribes of the North
and South and of the river valleys on either side; or they could fight
with them if they chose. It was a valley full of the best gifts of the
good spirits—this land of the Indians. What if there were up around the
rivers of the North and East occasional white men? They were few and
they brought wonderful gifts. Surely there was room for all.
Below the villages of the Arkansas tribes, which Marquette and Joliet
had reached nine years before, the Indians had seen no white man’s
canoe. It is true their old men told a tale, handed down through long
years, of a Spaniard who came into the Great Valley from the East with
an army that ravaged and plundered and killed. The leader disappeared,
and his men drifted down the river to its mouth and left forever the
basin of the Mississippi. But many generations had passed since the time
of the mysteriously vanishing De Soto and his cruel followers. Between
the French far to the northeast and the Spaniards as far to the
southwest there lay the length of the river with room in its broad and
smiling valley for the homes and hunting-grounds of a hundred tribes.
It was the month of March, in the villages of the Arkansas tribes, and
the air was soft and mild, and the peach trees were in blossom. The
banks of the river were low and drowned now with the spring floods; and
thick barriers of cane rose up from the swampy shores. Since Marquette
and Joliet visited the Arkansas, no white men had entered their
villages; but they had learned of the events in the North. When they
found that a powerful white chief was building a fort on the Illinois
River and giving wonderful presents to the neighboring tribes, they sent
a delegation to invite him to come to their country and live.
La Salle had said that he was coming down the river soon, and they had
seen the ribs of the great ship he was building. The Arkansas, moreover,
had brought home gifts from him to their neighbors and friends. But he
had not come in these two long years, and the Indians had been busy with
their own concerns—with their hunting and their care of the fields, and
with a constant vigilance to prevent an attack by surprise from their
enemies the Chickasaws.
On this particular March day a dense fog lay upon the river. In the
spring fogs were frequent and were not without danger; for under cover
of these concealing mists the Chickasaws might more easily approach
unawares. But this morning there were those who watched and they brought
news into the upper village that a band of men was coming down the river
in canoes. The village flew to arms. The women gathered together and
hurried away to the inland, their papooses in cradles swinging from
their shoulders. The men, weapons in hand, began to howl their war cries
and beat their skin drums. Within an hour the fog disappeared, and they
saw a party of men encamped on the bank opposite the village. On a point
of land jutting out into the river stood a man who called across to
them.
The Arkansas thrust one of their dugouts into the stream and hastened to
meet the visitors. When they were within earshot, the man on shore
called out in the Illinois tongue to ask who they were. There happened
to be an Illinois Indian in the dugout and he replied that they were
Arkansas. One of the warriors from the village drew back the string of
his bow and let fly an arrow. Then they sat silent and waited. It was
their way of inquiring whether peace or war was sought by the strangers.
The man on shore did not attempt to return the fire. So with lightened
hearts they drew near to learn more of the peaceful newcomers.
It was a white man who met them. His hair was black and long, and his
right hand was encased in a glove. It was the Man with the Iron Hand who
greeted them on behalf of his leader La Salle. Without delay the Indians
sent an embassy to smoke the calumet with La Salle, and soon the
Arkansas were welcoming in their village on the west bank of the river
the entire band of strangers. La Salle had come at last as he had
promised, but he had not come in a mighty ship, but in a fleet of bark
canoes with nearly half a hundred men.
There were old friends in his company besides Tonty. The stout-hearted
young Boisrondet and the gray-gowned Father Membré were there, and
perhaps a score of other Frenchmen. There were also nearly as many of
the New England Indians who had joined La Salle at Fort Miami; and with
them was a handful of Indian women, who had refused to be left behind,
and three little Indian children.
The tribes living in this upper Arkansas village were known as Kappas or
Quapaws; and they proved themselves royal entertainers. They gave the
strangers quarters by themselves, built lodges for them, and brought
them provisions in great abundance. The day following his arrival they
danced before La Salle the calumet dance. First the chiefs of the tribe
took their places in the midst of an open space, while warriors brought
them two calumets decorated with plumage of many colors. The bowls of
the calumets were of red pipestone and full of tobacco. Warriors who
took part in the dance held gourds hollowed out and filled with pebbles;
and two of them had drums made of earthen pots covered with dried pieces
of skin.
One group of Indians began to sing, at the same time dancing and shaking
their gourd rattles—all in perfect rhythm, though not necessarily in the
same time. An Indian might sing with one time, dance with a different
time, and shake his gourd with a rhythm more slow or rapid than either.
Yet the rhythm of each series of motions or sounds would be perfect in
itself.
When the first group stopped, another group took up the song and the
dance. Two men beat the skin drums, while the chiefs gravely drew smoke
from the long-stemmed calumets and passed them on to La Salle and his
men. Then those of the warriors who had gained renown seized, one after
another, a great war club, and with it struck blows upon a stout post
planted in the ground. With his blows each brave recounted his feats of
bravery and told of the scalps he had taken, the enemies he had killed,
and the times when he had been first of his band to strike the enemy.
When they had finished this ceremony, they presented gifts of buffalo
hides to La Salle. Then La Salle’s men also one by one struck the post
and told of their own brave deeds and gave presents to the Indians. And
all the while the chiefs, Indian and French, smoked the pipes that bound
them to peace.
Doubtless this ceremony of the calumet—with the dancing and singing, the
recounting of brave deeds, and the giving of gifts—seemed a very curious
performance to the French. But equally curious to the Indians must have
seemed the ceremonies of the white men on that selfsame day.
La Salle asked permission of the chiefs to raise, in the village, an
emblem of the God of the French and of the great King of France. To this
the Indians readily agreed. Whereupon Tonty was dispatched with some of
the men to make preparations. They cut and smoothed a huge wooden
pillar, and upon it they drew a cross, and above the cross they carved
the arms of France with these words:—
“Louis the Great, King of France and Navarre,
reigns this thirteenth day of March, 1682.”
A procession was formed, and the pillar was carried in state to the open
space in the midst of the Indian town. Here the procession divided into
two columns, with La Salle at the head of one and Tonty leading the
other. Every Frenchman was in arms, while the New England Indians with
their wives and children steadfastly followed their white leaders.
Father Membré began to sing a curious song; and then the whole
procession took up the chant and marched three times around the open
square. Three times they sent up a great cry, “Vive le Roi,” and
discharged their guns in the air. Then they planted the pillar firmly in
the ground, cried again, “Vive le Roi,” and shot off another volley with
their guns.
When it was quiet once more La Salle began a solemn speech in French.
The awe-stricken Indians did not understand his words; but later the
speech was interpreted for them and they knew that, by the sign of the
cross and the king’s arms, the white chief was claiming the whole broad
valley for his king beyond the seas. What mattered it to the Indians? If
the white men would bring them gifts, and if this mysterious pillar
would protect them from harm and safeguard them from their enemies, the
distant king was welcome to his claim.
With wondering faces the Indians gathered about the pillar when the
strange ceremony was over. They placed their hands upon the hewed wood
and then rubbed their naked bodies—as if to transfer to themselves some
of the medicine in the white men’s shaft.
Two days later the strangers embarked in their canoes and left the
village of the Kappas; and with them went two Arkansas guides to point
out the way to their allies, the Taensas, who lived on a lake near the
river many leagues below.
CHAPTER XXI
THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI
For several days the canoes of La Salle’s party passed wet banks and
thick canebrakes. No longer were to be seen the otter and the flattailed
beaver, for they had been driven out or devoured by the alligators that
now infested the river. As the canoes slid past these huge monsters,
sometimes nearly twenty feet in length, the Frenchmen sat snugly in the
center of their barks for fear of following the way of the beaver.
At length the Arkansas guides indicated a small cove into which a little
brook flowed. It was the beginning of the inland trail to the Taensas;
and so the whole party landed and pitched camp on the shore of the bay.
La Salle asked Tonty to take with him the two guides, a Frenchman, and
one of the New England Indians and proceed up the brook toward the
villages.
The men paddled their canoe as far as the water would permit, then
packed it upon their shoulders, and under the guidance of the Arkansas
Indians picked their way across the swampy country. Finally they reached
a lake lying in the form of a crescent, and crossing it in their canoe
they came upon an Indian town. The men in the canoe drew in their
paddles and stepped out on the shore of the lake. Tonty looked in
amazement at the Indian village before him, for in all of his wanderings
over the continent he had never seen houses like these. Instead of
lodges made of bark or mats or skins fastened to a framework of poles,
here were great houses built with thick walls of sun-dried mud and
dome-shaped roofs of canes.
To the Arkansas guides, however, the village presented no strange scene.
They were in familiar country; and when they reached the shore they
began a weird Indian song. Back in the village the Taensas who heard
them knew they were friends, and came out to welcome them. They led the
visitors first to the lodge of the chief, which was a building forty
feet in length with walls two feet thick and ten or twelve feet high,
surmounted by a domed roof that reached to a height of about fifteen
feet.
They passed through the doorway and stood in the semi-darkness of a
large room. In the center of the room a torch, made of dried canes, was
burning. Its light gleamed upon shields of burnished copper that hung on
every wall and lit up dimly hides painted with all manner of pictures.
In the flickering light of the torch white-robed figures stood out from
the dusk of the room. They were old men of the tribe, sixty of them, and
they stood facing an alcove where, on a couch, with his three wives
beside him, sat the chief. He was dressed like the old men, in a white
robe made from the bark of the mulberry tree; and pearls as big as peas
hung from his ears.
There were girls and women in the room, and here and there a child with
its mother; but over all the group was a respectful quiet, a dignified
reverence for the chief who sat upon the couch gazing curiously at Tonty
and his companions. The old men, standing with their hands upon their
heads, burst out in unison with a cry, “Ho-ho-ho-ho,” and then seated
themselves upon mats laid on the floor. The visitors also were given
mats to sit upon.
One of the Arkansas guides rose and began to address the chief. He told
him that the white men had come to make an alliance with him, but just
now they were sorely in need of food. Then he swung from his own body a
buffalo skin and presented it to the chief. Tonty, too, delighted him
with the gift of a knife—for the knives and hatchets of the Taensas were
rude instruments made of flint.
The chief ordered food to be sent to the men who were waiting over on
the Mississippi and a banquet to be prepared for their guests. It was a
dignified feast, at which slaves waited upon the chief. They brought him
dishes and cups, made of pottery with the fine art in which his people
excelled. No one else used his dishes or drank out of his cup.
A little tottering child started to cross the floor between the chief
and the flaming torch. With a quick reproof his mother seized him and
made him walk around the torch. Such was the respect which they paid to
the living chief; and when a chief died it was their custom to sacrifice
perhaps a score of men and women, that they might accompany him to the
country beyond the grave and serve him there.
When the feast was over and the visitors came out from the lodge of the
chief, they saw across the way a building somewhat similar in shape and
size. It was the sacred temple of the tribe. Into the mud walls that
inclosed it were stuck spikes on which were hung the skulls of enemies.
On the roof, facing the rising sun which the Taensas worshiped, were the
carved figures of three eagles. Inside the temple were preserved the
bones of departed chiefs. An altar stood in the middle of the room, and
here the sacred fire was kept burning. Two old medicine men sat beside
it, unwinking and grave, guarding it by day and by night.
The chief was highly pleased with his visitors. If the man who had sent
Tonty to his village had been an Indian, it would have been beneath the
chief’s dignity to call upon him. But he sent word to La Salle by Tonty
that he would pay him a visit, and on the next day he set out. He sent
before him a master of ceremonies with six men to prepare the way. They
took with them a beautifully woven mat for him to rest upon, and with
their hands they swept the ground over which he would pass. As he came
down the little creek in his dugout canoe his followers beat upon drums
and his wives and the other women in the party sang songs of praise. He
landed and approached La Salle’s camp, dressed in his white robe and
preceded by two men carrying white plume fans and a third bearing two
shields of shining brass. The two chiefs met and exchanged presents; and
after a quiet call the dignified Taensas chief returned to his village
on the lake.
When La Salle’s men pushed their canoes out from the shore of the cove,
well laden with provisions from the Taensas, they left behind their
Arkansas guides and four of the New England Indians who were fearful of
the dangers below. But there were now two new members of the party, for
the Taensas had given to Tonty and his Mohegan companion two slave boys,
captured from the Coroas farther south.
They had not gone far when they observed upon the river a single canoe,
to which a number of the party gave chase. The canoe of Tonty,
outstripping the others, had nearly reached the strange bark when they
saw a band of perhaps a hundred Indians, armed with bows and arrows, on
the shore ready to defend their comrade in the canoe. Tonty, after
consulting with La Salle, offered to take a pipe of peace to the band of
savages. He crossed to the shore, presented the calumet for the Indians
to smoke, and made a gift of a knife to one of the old men who seemed to
be a chief. The Indians were of the nation of Natchez, and they showed
their desire for peace by joining hands. This presented some difficulty
to Tonty, but he bade his men join hands in his place, and the treaty of
peace was concluded. Soon the rest of the party came ashore, and La
Salle, taking with him a few of his men, made a visit to the village
which lay three leagues from the river.
The Natchez were a powerful people related to the Taensas, and, like
them, they worshiped the sun and maintained a sacred temple. La Salle
spent the night in their village; and while he slept a swift runner
hurried through the darkness to the village of the Coroas to ask the
chief to come and visit their guest. The chief of the Coroas set out at
once and traveled all night to reach the Natchez village and pay his
respects to La Salle. For several days the white leader visited with the
Natchez, and when he rejoined Tonty on the shore of the river the Coroa
chief came with him. He accompanied the white men down the river to his
own village, six leagues below, where his tribe gave the strangers a
friendly reception. Here Tonty’s little Coroa slave seized the
opportunity to escape to his people. But the boy who had been given to
the Mohegan was not so fortunate and remained with the party of
explorers.
Thus far peace had attended the journey of La Salle; but it was not to
be so always. Without stopping they passed the village of the Humas and
the high bank where a red pole, or _baton rouge_ marked the boundary
between the territory of the Humas and the tribes to the south. As they
approached the village of the Quinipissas, they heard the sound of drums
and war cries, and a party sent out by La Salle to reconnoiter was
received with a volley of arrows. La Salle decided not to stop; and
picking up his men, passed on down the river.
At length, early in April of the year 1682, the party reached the
long-dreamed-of mouth of the river; and La Salle, on the 9th of the
month, full of joy, took possession, in the name of the King of France,
of all the lands watered by the rivers that flowed into the basin of the
Mississippi. No white man before them had traveled from Canada to the
Gulf. As they saw the cross rise in the swampy land near the sea and the
arms of their king held up to the southern sky, the hearts of La Salle
and Tonty, of Father Membré and every Frenchman there beat high with
pride.
And the dusky New England Indians—devoted to their leader and
far-wandered in a valley which meant nothing to them—rejoiced also, as
every Indian rejoices and feels pride in the end of a long journey, be
it for vengeance, for game, or for adventure. As for the young Coroa
lad, who stood in their midst, the only representative of the people of
the Mississippi, he was too young and his people and his race were too
young to understand what had happened in their valley.
The voyagers now turned the prows of their canoes to the north and began
the slow ascent of the river. They were so nearly out of provisions that
La Salle determined to stop at the Quinipissa village for food, in spite
of their former hostility. Coming upon four women of the tribe, he sent
one of them home to her people with presents and a message of peace.
Keeping the other three as hostages, he waited across the stream from
the village. Soon there came Quinipissas who invited him to cross over
to their side. La Salle did so and pitched camp a short distance from
the village. The Indians brought him food and he released the three
women, but still kept a careful guard.
That night watches were posted with unusual care. Crevel, one of the
Frenchmen, was the last to keep guard. It was now within a half-hour of
dawn. Already faint lights were beginning to shine, when he heard a
noise in the canes. He spoke to a comrade who said it was only some
dogs. But Tonty had heard their words and called to them to be on guard,
and La Salle, in whose eyes was little sleep, leaped up with the cry,
“To arms.” In a moment the camp was ready for an attack.
At the same instant came the war cries of the Quinipissas on all sides
of them. Guns flashed and arrows flew in the spreading light. When the
sun came up and the Quinipissas looked upon their slain warriors they
turned and fled, with the whites after them until recalled by La Salle.
The New England Indians came excitedly back to camp waving scalps which
they had taken from the enemy.
Later in the morning La Salle with half of his men went to the edge of
the village and broke up the Indians’ pirogues under their very eyes.
Then with no one hurt, the party of explorers put off upstream in their
canoes. Coming again to the country of the Coroas they were welcomed to
the village, but there was a strange new feeling in the air. The French
saw Quinipissas among them, and learned that they were allies. The young
Coroa captive soon had told the story of the battle to his people. When
the voyagers sat down to eat they found themselves surrounded by more
than a thousand warriors. They ate with their arms within quick reach,
for no one knew when massacre might be attempted. Taking counsel,
however, the Indians finally allowed their visitors to proceed up the
Mississippi in peace.
When they reached the village of the Taensas, the chief in his white
cloak was as dignified and kind as ever, and rejoiced greatly at the
scalps which the Mohegans showed him. Again they passed the villages of
the Arkansas. And now La Salle fell sick—so seriously that, in alarm
lest he should not reach Canada, he sent Tonty ahead to carry the good
news of the trip to the French settlements. Tonty with four men hurried
northward. He had passed the Ohio and was drawing near the Illinois
Valley when one day thirty Illinois warriors burst out of the woods with
drawn bows, taking the party for Iroquois. But just in time one warrior
recognized Tonty and cried out, “It is my comrade! They are Frenchmen!”
After a short stop at the Tamaroa village, Tonty pushed on to the white
settlements.
By the time La Salle, slowly recovering from his illness, joined Tonty
at Mackinac, word had come to the white men about the Lakes that the
cross and the arms of France had been raised at the mouth of the
Mississippi. And the Illinois tribes in the upper valley, still afraid
to return to their deserted homes, took heart when they heard of the
safe return of La Salle and the Man with the Iron Hand from their long
trip to the sea. For they had not forgotten La Salle’s promise to build
a fort to protect them from the Iroquois, and make it safe for them to
return to the valley they had lost.
CHAPTER XXII
THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES
On the south bank of the river Illinois, a mile or more above the plain
where lay the deserted village of the Kaskaskias, a great rock rose
sheer from the water to a height of over a hundred feet. Three sides of
the rock were like the walls of a mediæval castle. At the fourth side by
a rugged pathway one might climb laboriously from behind to the level
top where oaks and cedars grew.
In the month of January, 1683, this rock was the scene of busy doings.
On the scant acre of ground upon its summit, Frenchmen had felled trees
and were building cabins and storehouses and palisaded walls and
erecting a fortification about the whole area. Up the steep pathway
other Frenchmen and stalwart Indians were dragging timbers to aid in the
construction of fort and dwellings. Moving here and there among the men
was the dominant figure of La Salle; and yonder were the iron-handed
Tonty and his friend Boisrondet. Many of the Frenchmen had been with La
Salle on his trip to the Gulf the year before; and the busy Indians were
his faithful band of Mohegans and Abenakis.
La Salle had reached Mackinac after his arduous trip to the sea, with
little strength left, but with many plans for the future. He had
explored the river to the mouth. It now remained for him to make use of
the Great Valley. His enemies, the rich merchants of Quebec and
Montreal, had become so bitter in their opposition to him that he knew
it would be difficult to carry out his plans from Canada as a base. And
so he determined to cut loose as soon as possible from the valley of the
St. Lawrence and bring his supplies and men by sea from France to the
mouth of the Mississippi, thence up the river to the trading-posts which
he would found among the tribes along its banks.
Such was the vision that rose before La Salle day and night—a vision of
the long river valley held together by a chain of forts and depots for
the fur trade, of friendly Indians coming with their canoes laden with
furs to exchange with the French for merchandise, of French settlements
growing up in the wilderness, of a great post at the mouth of the river,
and of swift-sailing ships plying between the Gulf and far-away France.
But to bring this vision to reality La Salle must first repopulate the
Illinois Valley and unite the Indian tribes of that region to repel the
bands of Iroquois who threatened again to invade the valley of the Great
River. So he sent Tonty out from Mackinac, in the fall of 1682, to begin
a fort around which they might gather a colony of the far-scattered
tribes. Not long afterward, La Salle, hearing fresh rumors of an
Iroquois invasion, sent Father Membré on to Canada and France to report
the exploration of the Mississippi, and then joined Tonty on the
Illinois River.
Many times in their journeyings up and down the Illinois, La Salle and
Tonty had noted the high rock rising from the riverside near the
Kaskaskia village. What a rallying-point this would make for the
scattered people! La Salle was well content to build here his wilderness
fort; and without waiting for winter to loosen its icy grip upon the
land he put his men, red-skinned and white, at work.
They were many weeks building the citadel upon the rock; and when,
toward spring, it was finished, La Salle and Tonty looked out upon the
country roundabout with a feeling of great security. In the river below
them was a small island, and here they prepared to plant their crops. It
was within gunshot of the fort, from which a raking fire could prevent
any enemy from landing and attacking the men while at work in the
fields. Four heavy pieces of timber were placed so as to project over
the edge of the rock, and from these, in case of need, water could be
drawn straight up from the clear current of the Illinois River.
The fortress completed, there remained the gathering of the tribes. On a
day in March, 1683, Tonty climbed down the rugged pathway and set out
across the prairies to visit the Indian tribes. Nearly a hundred leagues
he trailed from village to village. In the lodges of the Shawnees he
told of the return of La Salle to the Illinois Valley and reminded them
of their promise to come and join him.
He visited the Miamis and talked of the Iroquois who had killed so many
of their braves. Even now rumors of another invasion were in the air.
But if the Miamis would come out to the colony of the French they need
have no fear, for Ouabicolcata had come again into the valley of the
Illinois and on the bank of the river had built a strong fort to guard
his brothers the Miamis.
It was many leagues toward the setting sun that Tonty traveled before he
found the tribes of the Illinois. But one day he walked into the camp of
his old-time companions and seated himself upon their mats. With great
joy they received him and gave into his left hand the calumet of peace
and feasted him as they had done three years before in their ancient
home.
They were wondering, perhaps, if the ice were now breaking up in the
river beside the forsaken village and if the snow were melting down to
nourish the white-oak trees on the opposite shore. They saw the whole
river again as they listened to the words of the Man with the Iron Hand.
Well did they know every bend in its course. And what Indian could
forget that great pile of rock on the south side of the river a
half-league above their old town? Every crevice and seam in its
weather-worn sides came back to them. They saw in their minds the ravine
on the eastern side where a little brook ran down to the river. They saw
again the rugged path that led to the summit; and they tried to picture
Frenchmen climbing to the heights where the fort of La Salle now stood.
It was a fort to guard them from the Iroquois, said Tonty, if only they
would come back and settle in their old haunts. Nor was it difficult to
persuade them. La Salle was their father, they said. Only a year ago he
had visited them, told them of his plans, and urged them to forgive the
Miamis and join with them against the common foe.
Their fear of the Iroquois called them; their love for their father La
Salle and their brother Tonty and for the gifts these men brought called
them; and perhaps, not least of all, the old village where they had
wooed and married their Indian women, where they had brought home scalps
and captives, where they had entertained their friends and buried their
dead—their home of other days—called them. Yes, they would come back to
the river of the Illinois and raise new lodge-poles on the site of their
old town in the colony of their father La Salle.
So Tonty returned from his circuit of the tribes and climbed the rock to
Fort St. Louis to report to La Salle the coming of the Indians. Soon the
tribes began to gather. The Shawnees came with some smaller tribes from
the south and settled directly behind the rock. Nor was it many weeks
before the Illinois, trailing back through the valley they had given up,
came in a great rejoicing army, with their women and their papooses, to
the north bank of the river. Strong-armed Indian women raised the poles
for new lodges and laid fresh mats upon the framework. They brought wood
which they laid in piles down the center of each long lodge; and soon
out of holes in a hundred roofs rose the smoke from the fires of the
Illinois. They stirred the soil in the neglected fields and planted new
crops. As best they could they put to rights the desecrated graves of
their dead, and took up again the life they had left off at the time of
the Iroquois invasion.
But it was not quite the same to these Illinois, for the blight of
overwhelming disaster still lay upon them and fear smoldered deep down
in each heart. When they looked up the river to where Fort St. Louis
stood guard like a sentinel upon its high rock, they took courage; but
when they turned away and looked upon the scenes which they had just
redeemed from Iroquois desolation, their hearts sometimes failed them.
Families from all of the tribes of the Illinois Confederacy now gathered
in the village, ready to join hands in a common cause with the Shawnees
and other nations from the south, and eager to ally themselves once more
with the fickle Miamis who were still at their villages to the east.
Only the return of La Salle to the Illinois country had kept the Miamis
from leaving their villages near the foot of the Lake and fleeing to the
Mississippi; and even now, with Fort St. Louis built and garrisoned and
with the Illinois and Shawnees gathered in the vicinity, they were
thrown into a panic by news from the St. Lawrence River that the
Iroquois were on their way to the valley of the Illinois.
The French and Indians at La Salle’s colony having learned of the Miami
alarm, La Salle made ready to go at once to their villages to reassure
them. The Illinois, however, looked with dread upon his going, and they
tried to dissuade him. Perhaps they recalled too vividly the disasters
that followed his departure three years before. Then, too, they had
heard evil rumors. The French at Green Bay had told their traders that
if the Illinois settled near La Salle, he would abandon them to the
Iroquois. The Indians frankly recounted these tales, and La Salle
patiently told them of his enemies at Green Bay who wished him
ill,—perhaps because they were jealous of his beaver trade,—and he
promised them that, although it was important for him to go on from the
Miami villages to Canada, he would come back at once if the Iroquois
should approach.
Partly reassured they let him go. They did not know what grievous
burdens weighed upon La Salle as he took his way eastward. At the fort
in charge of Tonty he had left only twenty Frenchmen, with hardly a
hundred rounds of powder and ball. Again and again he had sent men down
to the Canadian settlements to bring back supplies and ammunition and
French volunteers for his garrison. But they had not come back; and La
Salle rightly suspected that the new governor, La Barre, who had
succeeded Frontenac at Quebec, was in league with his enemies and
willing to wreck his colony by preventing his men from returning with
supplies and reinforcements. His only hope was to go in person to Canada
to secure aid; and this he intended to do after seeing the Miamis.
Finding the Miamis full of terror and ready to fly, he immediately
called the chiefs and elders in to a council. If the Miamis, instead of
fleeing to the Mississippi, would move over and join his colony at the
fort, they would all fight their battles together. He was going East now
for reinforcements; but if he should hear of the near approach of the
Iroquois, he would join them at Fort St. Louis at once. The Miamis gave
attentive ear to La Salle. Was he not their brother Ouabicolcata, raised
from the dead to protect them? The next day they began to move in three
great armies toward Fort St. Louis, while La Salle went on toward the
Lake.
From the Miami camp a hunter started out one day accompanied by his dog.
Following a roebuck, he strayed off from his band and was suddenly
attacked by four Iroquois and fatally wounded. The dog, seeing his
master shot down, began to bark at the top of his lungs. The Iroquois,
in alarm, took to their heels. At once the Miamis were hot upon their
trail. They followed their tracks until they came to a trail so broadly
beaten as to indicate a large army of the enemy. Realizing their lack of
numbers, the Miamis retraced their steps and made haste to combine their
three armies into one before continuing the journey.
The alarm, meanwhile, had reached the colony about the fort, and war
parties of Illinois left their village to meet the oncoming foe. Soon
they encountered an Iroquois party of forty and took one of them
prisoner. With savage glee they brought him into camp. Perhaps he was
one of the hated band that had despoiled their village. It was their
turn now for vengeance. They presented the captive to Tonty to be put to
death. But Tonty replied that it was not the custom of his people to
kill their prisoners of war. Then they offered him to their allies, the
Shawnees, who with savage ceremonies burned him to death.
The Illinois had won a victory over the invaders, but it did not bring
them security. They wished for the return of La Salle; and Tonty sent
off two runners at top speed to tell his chief that if he did not return
at once the tribes were likely to melt away to the Far West and out of
reach of the Iroquois.
It was not long until the army of the Miamis arrived. A league above the
fort, on the north side of the river, was a long rock bluff, and here
they settled and put up their lodges. La Salle, true to his promise,
soon came back to the colony, much to the joy of both Indians and
whites. From his high fort on the rock he now looked down upon Indian
villages, with their thousands of Indian braves gathered like the army
of a mediæval baron, and rejoiced in the thought that a long step had
been made toward the realization of his dream of the Great Valley.
CHAPTER XXIII
FORT ST. LOUIS
The summer that followed the return of La Salle to Fort St. Louis was an
anxious one for the colony. Iroquois were still in the valley, and the
Indians about the fort were full of an apprehension that sometimes
almost amounted to panic. Yet they clung to their faith in their French
protectors; and the bands of invaders, not wishing to taste the
vengeance of so strong a union of their enemies, did not that summer
molest the group of villages.
But the months of waiting brought no aid or reinforcements to the fort
on the high rock, and each day made it more clear that La Salle’s
enemies were in power in Canada. More strongly than ever there grew upon
him the determination to go in person to France and fit out an
expedition which could come by sea to the mouth of the Mississippi and
thence with men and supplies to the fort on the Illinois. Finally he
could wait no longer; and so, late in August, accompanied by two Shawnee
Indians, he left the fort in charge of Tonty and started upon his long
journey.
La Salle had not gone far upon his way when he met a fleet of canoes
laden with Frenchmen and supplies. If there arose in his mind any
flicker of hope that these were his own men returning at last with
reinforcements, it soon died out, for the leader of the party, the
Chevalier de Baugis, brought with him a commission as commander of Fort
St. Louis in place of La Salle, to whom he presented an order from the
new governor of Canada commanding him to proceed at once to Quebec.
There was nothing to be done but submit. Before continuing his journey,
La Salle sent a letter to Tonty telling him to give up gracefully, but
to remain at the fort to take care of their private possessions.
When the Chevalier de Baugis arrived at the rock, Tonty turned over the
command of the fort; and the garrison, now reinforced but full of
unquiet, began to prepare for the winter season. It was not a period of
harmony at the fort, for the new officer had little ability in governing
a Western post and spent much of his time in trying to alienate the
followers of La Salle. Tonty, in spite of his leader’s orders to live at
peace with his successor, was not able to endure such performances, and
many and bitter were the clashes between the two men that winter.
But with the spring came an event which, for the time at least, made the
men at the fort put aside their quarrels and work side by side. Iroquois
bands, it appeared, still lingered in the Western country, particularly
around the headwaters of the Kankakee and over toward the Mississippi.
They had not had sufficient courage to attack the colony which La Salle
had founded; but they found other prey.
A group of fourteen Frenchmen, in canoes, was making its way, in March,
1684, toward the Illinois. The new governor, La Barre himself, had sent
them out to trade in that region in spite of the fact that the King of
France had given to La Salle exclusive control of the fur trade in the
valley of the Illinois. They were approaching some rapids in the
Kankakee River one day, little suspecting danger, when two hundred
Iroquois suddenly appeared on the bank.
Sixty Indians leaped into the water and captured the canoes, which with
little ado they drew to the bank. The terror-stricken Frenchmen wildly
protested as the dripping savages, their wet bodies glistening and their
faces lighted with the lust of plunder, pillaged the seven canoes and
carried off the owners. With fine contempt the Iroquois tore into pieces
the Frenchmen’s permits from the governor. A few of the Indians took
charge of the canoes with their valuable load of merchandise, while the
others drove their captives across country for nine days toward Fort St.
Louis.
As they went the white men were plied with questions as to the fort. Was
the Man with the Iron Hand there? Was La Salle at the fort? When the
French replied that a new commander was in charge and that La Salle had
been recalled, the wily savages said that they knew it, but were asking
to see if the French were telling the truth. They were going, they said,
to attack the fort. Finally they let the Frenchmen go, threatening to
break their heads, however, if they were found in the neighborhood of
the fort.
The Iroquois pushed on to their conquest. When they sighted the high
rock, they advanced cautiously, only to find the frowning citadel
prepared for battle. Runners had come to the fort the day before with
news of the Iroquois approach. Up to the base of the rock the invaders
crept and drove arrow and ball at the heights above. They even tried an
assault up the rugged pathway, but were repulsed with great loss. For
six days they besieged the wilderness castle, but all in vain. At length
they made a few captives from the neighboring tribes and tried to creep
off. But the bands of Shawnees and Illinois and Miamis had been waiting
their turn, and now hard upon the heels of the retreating foe they
pushed with eager weapons. They killed many and brought their scalps
home in triumph to the villages around the rock. Fort St. Louis had had
its baptism of fire—and the fire had only hardened the courage of the
garrison and the Indians of the colony.
Two months after this attack upon the fort, there came down the river a
fleet of French canoes under command of Sieur de la Durantaye and
containing sixty Frenchmen as reinforcements for the garrison upon the
rock. Durantaye was a brave officer who had been sent out the year
before by Governor La Barre to the posts on the Lake of the Illinois.
Many a time he had found it necessary to make trips to Fort St. Louis to
give assistance to the incapable Chevalier de Baugis. On this occasion
there came with him from Green Bay the priest Allouez, who gathered up
his black robe as he climbed the steep pathway to the fort.
Well did the Indians know this priest. Years before he had come to take
the place of their beloved Father Marquette. And then on Christmas Eve,
in the winter of their disaster, he had heard from the Miamis that La
Salle was coming and had vanished like a spirit into the night. In the
years that followed there had come from Green Bay, where he had gone,
constant rumors that La Salle was their enemy. Now was this man come
again to them when La Salle was gone and Tonty robbed of his power.
The visit of Durantaye was not alone to bring reinforcements, for he had
with him an order from Governor La Barre commanding Tonty to leave the
fort and go to Quebec. Tonty did not hesitate. Boisrondet, with a few
faithful followers, remained in the fort, while the Man with the Iron
Hand, taking leave of white and red friends, set off almost alone up the
river toward distant Canada. He had spent nearly six years in the
wilderness—faithful years in which he had followed his leader through
ill fate and fortune. He had made warm friends with a dozen tribes and
helped gather them together in the colony about Fort St. Louis. Now with
a great bitterness he saw fort and colony turned over to those who,
though French, were yet enemies of his friend La Salle.
Durantaye returned to the Lake, and De Baugis was left to do as he
pleased. The Indians did not find in him the qualities they had admired
in La Salle and Tonty. He knew little of their ways and perhaps cared
less to learn about them. Trouble soon arose in the colony and he was
powerless to check it. The Miamis, rising suddenly, fell upon the
Illinois with great slaughter; thus making probable a disruption of the
colony and the inevitable destruction of both nations by the Iroquois.
A year of incompetent rule went by. Then in the month of June, 1685,
word came to the tribes that Tonty had come back. Down the river which
he had ascended alone with sorrow in his heart, he now came in triumph,
and climbing the path to the fort held out in his left hand an order to
De Baugis to give him back the command of the fort and garrison.
La Salle in France had won the favor of the king. He had been given
ships to make a voyage to the mouth of the Mississippi and men to man
them, and guns and supplies and merchandise. All this had happened in
the spring and summer of 1684. La Forest, one of La Salle’s lieutenants,
was sent from Paris to Canada to take charge of Fort Frontenac, which La
Barre had seized, and to give to Tonty a commission as captain and the
governorship of Fort St. Louis. La Forest had gone out to Fort Frontenac
that fall, but winter prevented Tonty from reaching his far western post
until June of the following year.
After the disappointed De Baugis had left, Tonty set about conciliating
the tribes. This was no easy task. But the Illinois and the Miamis
finally listened to his persuasions, accepted his gifts, and agreed once
more to live in peace.
To Tonty it must have seemed that the vision which he cherished and
shared with La Salle was nearer realization than ever before. It was now
almost a year since La Salle had set sail from France. Perhaps by this
time he had already founded his fort at the mouth of the Mississippi and
was coming up the Great River to join the followers who so eagerly
waited for him at Fort St. Louis.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE LOST CHIEF
From their winter camp on the river banks eighty leagues below Fort St.
Louis a band of Illinois looked up, late in February of 1686, to see
their friend Tonty, with twenty-five Frenchmen and a handful of
Shawnees, come paddling down the stream. In June of the year before, he
had come back to take command of the fort with the good news that La
Salle had sailed from France for the mouth of the Mississippi. During
the summer he had persuaded their chiefs to join in peace once more with
the Miamis.
But with the fall disquieting news had come. Rumor said that La Salle
had landed on the shore of the Gulf; that one of his ships was wrecked
and pillaged by the Southern tribes who had attacked him; and that he
was struggling with Indian foes and sorely in need of food. Tonty,
greatly alarmed, had gone up to Mackinac, but had learned little to
encourage him in regard to his leader.
Returning to the fort, most of the way on foot, he sent out Indians to
the Mississippi River in search of news. But they found none. Then Tonty
determined to go himself down the river to the sea in search of his lost
chief. He started in the middle of winter with nearly half of his
garrison. For forty leagues they dragged their canoes over the ice of
the river until they came to open water halfway down to the Indian camp.
Tonty had little time to linger in the camp, but he had exciting news to
tell the Indians. La Barre, governor of Canada, had been withdrawn and
the new governor, Marquis Denonville, was planning a great war upon the
Iroquois villages. He wanted Tonty to gather a band of Western Indians
and join with other bands under Du Luth and Durantaye to reinforce the
army from Canada, and he had sent word to Tonty to come to Canada to
confer with him about the matter. But Tonty had insisted that his first
duty was to search for La Salle; the other must await his return. Would
the Illinois join him the next spring and help wage war upon the land of
their enemies?
Tonty knew well that there could only be one answer to his question. The
Illinois, who keenly-remembered the fiendish raids upon their land, now
saw their opportunity for revenge; and at once they began to dream of
the time when Tonty should return from his voyage. But they were
anxious, too, for news of La Salle, and they gave Tonty five of their
men to accompany him to the mouth of the river.
With this addition to the party Tonty’s men dipped their paddles into
the cold stream and were soon out of sight, leaving the Illinois camp
buzzing with excitement. The fleet of canoes soon entered the
Mississippi and made swift progress down its broad current. Somewhere
above the mouth of the Arkansas River, after Tonty and his men had been
traveling many days, they happened upon a war party of a hundred Kappas.
The Indians made ready for war at first sight of the canoes, but,
finding who it was, brought out the pipe of peace and together the two
parties went on to the village.
Here and at the lower Arkansas villages the Indians danced the calumet
dance before Tonty and sent him on his way in peace. The Frenchmen made
a visit to the village on the lake where the white-robed Taensas
welcomed them. They, too, danced the calumet dance and were most cordial
to the visitors. But Tonty could not stop long. His canoes were full of
food for the hungry La Salle, and he had men and guns to help his chief
fight battles. He must hasten on to the sea. At the village of the
Coroas he stopped long enough to upbraid the chief for the treachery of
his tribe four years before. He passed the village of the Quinipissas
without landing.
On the 9th day of April, Tonty and his party came to the sea. Four years
before on this same day La Salle had raised the cross and the arms of
France and had taken possession of the Great Valley for the king. But
now, though he had had nearly two years to reach the mouth of the river
by sea, La Salle was nowhere to be found. Nor was there any sign that he
and his ships and men had been there. Tonty’s anxiety deepened as he
searched in vain the neighboring channels. He made up two exploring
parties and sent one east and one west along the coast of the Gulf.
Throwing together a rude fort on an island near the mouth, he waited.
When three days were gone both parties had returned. They had explored
more than half a hundred leagues of the coast, and had come back because
their drinking-water was gone. They had seen nothing but wet shores and
the salty sea. Nowhere was there sign of the lost chief.
Up in Canada, meanwhile, Governor Denonville was waiting for Tonty to
come and confer with him about the Iroquois raid. Tonty took counsel
with his men. One thing more might be done. They were a considerable
party—a third of a hundred—and they had stout canoes. Why not skirt the
coast of the Gulf, round the point of Florida, pass up the eastern shore
of the continent as far as New York, and thence across to Canada and the
waiting governor? It was a bold plan, but a reckless one, and Tonty did
not insist upon it.
With heavy heart he finally began the ascent of the river. The wind and
waves had wrought havoc with the arms of the king which La Salle had
raised, and Tonty replaced them. In a hole in a tree he left a letter
for La Salle, and then went on to the village of the Quinipissas. These
Indians were a chastened people, for the years had not wiped from their
memory the punishment that La Salle had put upon them for their
treachery. Now they sued humbly for peace, and Tonty granted it. Then he
wrote another letter to his leader and gave it to the chief of the
Quinipissas, telling him to deliver it to La Salle if he ever came into
this region. The Indian clung to this letter like a sacred treasure and
thirteen years later gave it proudly into the hands of a white chief who
had come up the river from the sea.
Tonty and his companions continued their journey. When they reached the
mouth of the Arkansas some of the men asked leave to plant a new French
settlement on a tract of land which La Salle had granted to Tonty four
years before. Tonty was willing; and so Jean Couture and several others
pitched camp on the shore of the Arkansas River near its mouth and
watched their comrades pass on without them. Then they built a log house
with a palisade of stakes around it. It was a small settlement, but it
was of strange importance in the story of the next three years.
On the 24th of June the disappointed search party was welcomed on the
high rock of Fort St. Louis. But Tonty could not tarry at the fort.
Taking with him two Illinois chiefs, he went on up the river and across
the Great Lakes to where Denonville waited to talk with him.
Plans for a great gathering of the enemies of the Iroquois took form
rapidly. The two Illinois chiefs, who came back from the visit to the
Canadian governor late in 1686, were full of tales that roused their
people. Runners, sent out from the fort, informed all the tribes that
war was to be waged in the spring and asked them to join Tonty at Fort
St. Louis.
When April of 1687 came, the fort on the rock saw the smoke rise from
many fires, for Tonty was giving a dog-feast for his Indian warriors.
Illinois, Shawnees, Mohegans, and Miamis gathered for the fray. La
Forest had already set out with a band of Frenchmen; Durantaye and Du
Luth were gathering together their warriors over on the Lake; and in the
latter part of April, Bellefontaine, left with twenty men in charge of
the fort, watched Tonty with sixteen Frenchmen and the band of Indian
braves depart for the war in the far East.
CHAPTER XXV
NEWS FROM LA SALLE
Spring and summer passed quietly along the Illinois River. Tonty and his
combined army had not yet returned from the Iroquois war; and those who
had stayed at home to protect the fort and villages found no invaders to
molest them. Boisrondet, the commissary of the fort, was busy with the
fields of the French. The Indians, too, planted their crops and tended
them. The braves visited the little garrison from time to time, hunted
and fished some, gambled with cherry-stones more, and basked in the sun
most of all.
September was half gone, and still there was nothing to break the
monotony. The fourteenth of the month was Sunday, and perhaps in the
fort the black-robed Father Allouez, sick and confined to his room, took
some notice of the day. But to the Indians, one day was like another. It
so happened that a group of them early in the afternoon were in the
fields down the river from the fort. Suddenly one of their number, a
Shawnee named Turpin, looking off to the stream sparkling in the sun,
saw an Indian dugout approaching. In a moment he was at the water’s edge
scanning with eager eyes the occupants of the bark. They came nearer,
were even with him, passed by upstream; but he recognized no one of
them. There was a strapping big Frenchman, two men in priestly robes,
two other white men, and several strange Indians. Where had these men
come from? No one knew of their going down the river.
When the strangers had passed, Turpin slipped across the fields and
again came to the bank of the river higher up. This time the men in the
dugout called to him. They were of the party of La Salle, they said. For
a while the Indian studied them intently. Then catching the name La
Salle, he was off on the dead run to the fort. Up the steep pathway he
went as if on wings, and burst into the palisaded entrance with the cry
that La Salle was coming.
Out of the inclosure with a bound jumped Boisrondet and the blacksmith,
and down the side of the rock and around the base to the bank of the
river they went faster than the Indian had come. Another Frenchman and a
group of Indians were ahead of them, however, and were already leading
the white men to the fort. Full of surprise and joy Boisrondet and his
comrade embraced the strangers, who were five in number. The quick eye
of Boisrondet ran over all of them, then looked back toward the river.
“But where is La Salle?” he asked. Of the two men who replied, one was a
heavy-built, honest-faced man, the other a priest. The priest was the
Abbé Cavelier, an own brother of La Salle; his companion was Henri
Joutel, a trusted follower of the lost chief. La Salle, they said, had
accompanied them part of the way and had left them at a place about
forty leagues from the village of the Cenis; and when he left them he
was in good health.
If there was anything peculiar about their reply Boisrondet did not at
the time seriously note it. Nor did he notice the silence of the
gray-robed friar who stood beside the speakers. He was too full of joy
at news from his chief, and listened with ready ear as they added that
they had orders from La Salle to go on to France to report his travels
and bring aid.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon when, after their exchange of
greetings, the whole party climbed to the fort towering high above the
landscape. Volleys from the guns of the garrison saluted them, and the
commander, Bellefontaine, came forward to greet them. Then the strangers
crossed over to the little chapel to give thanks on that September
Sabbath for their safe arrival among friends.
Father Allouez, who lay sick in his room, received with alarm the news
that a party of La Salle’s men had arrived at the fort. Was La Salle
among them? With great relief he learned that he was not. Allouez sent
word that he would like to talk with some of the party; and so La
Salle’s brother and the quiet Father Douay, together with Joutel,
entered the sick man’s chamber.
At first they talked of other matters—of affairs in far-away France, of
the stamping-out of the heresy of Calvinism, and of the twenty years’
truce with the Emperor. At length the sick man asked them of La Salle.
As they had told Boisrondet, so they now told Allouez that La Salle was
well when they parted from him—and they added that he also had planned
to come to the Illinois country and perhaps would be there before long.
Thereupon the look of foreboding deepened upon the face of Allouez. As
they left the sick-room the three men asked themselves why the priest
seemed so displeased at the coming of La Salle.
The arrival of the five men of La Salle’s party was a welcome break in
the monotony of life in the little colony; and glad would the garrison
and the Indians alike have been to have had them stay. But they were
anxious to go on—in particular the Abbé Cavelier, who seemed to be
impatient of delay. He asked Boisrondet for a canoe and men to take them
on to the Lakes, for the Arkansas guides who had brought them up the
river must now return with their canoe to their own people. Yes,
Boisrondet replied, he had a canoe, but the difficulty was to find
capable men for guides. On Wednesday, however, three canoe-men arrived
from Mackinac and agreed to conduct the party to that post.
Four days after their arrival at the fort the visitors were again on
their way to the Lakes and Canada with Shawnee Indians to carry their
provisions. When they reached the Lake of the Illinois the waves were
tossing to an alarming height and storms kept them on shore for a week
or more. At last, giving up in despair, they turned about, buried their
supplies in a cache, and walked across country back to the fort.
Already the Indian warriors from Tonty’s party were straggling back full
of the good news of an overwhelming defeat of the Seneca Nation of
Iroquois. Tonty, with his Frenchmen and their Indian allies, had taken a
valiant part in the great raid in July, and now was on his way homeward.
The colony took on new life, as with each incoming group the joy of the
Indians increased.
At length, on October 27, Tonty himself came down the river and climbed
the path to Fort St. Louis. Guns roared, the men at the fort crowded
around him, and admiring Indians hung upon his footsteps. But these five
strangers! Tonty’s eyes fell upon the long robe and the priestly face of
the Abbé Cavelier. La Salle’s brother here in his fort! Well did he know
the face, and little did he like its owner; but he had been one of the
lost party. What, then, of La Salle? Quick and intense came the
questions from the iron-handed commander.
Again the Abbé and Joutel told their story. La Salle had come from the
far southwest coast with them almost to the villages of the Cenis
Indians who lived west of the Arkansas, and there he had left them; and
when he left them he was in good health. Beside the little group stood
Father Anastasius Douay with silent lips. Nor did the mariner Teissier
or young Cavelier, the nephew of La Salle and the Abbé, add anything to
the story.
Tonty paid small heed to their silence; for in his mind was the one
great thought that La Salle was alive and might reach the fort at any
time. Four years before, his beloved leader had gone from the fort on
the Illinois to Canada and across to France; and three years before, he
had sailed from France for the mouth of the Mississippi. In all that
time, alternating between hope and the gloomy despair which lately had
so often fallen upon his soul, Tonty had waited hoping each day for news
from his lost chief. Now it had come.
Little had Tonty liked the priestly elder brother of his friend; for in
the days of the past the Abbé Cavelier, with his captious ways, his
complainings and his intrigues, had been a source of much annoyance to
La Salle. But let such things be forgotten now, for the man came
bringing news—good news of the lost chief. And so within the walls of
Fort St. Louis, in the far wilderness of this Indian country, Tonty
listened as the Abbé and Joutel told the story he so long had waited to
hear, the tale of the adventures of three anxious and exciting years.
CHAPTER XXVI
AN ILL-STARRED VOYAGE
On the 24th day of July, three long years before, these five
weather-worn men and their comrades had seen the shores of France fade
slowly from their sight. Out of the harbor of Rochelle had sailed that
summer day twenty-four ships. Twenty of the number soon drew away from
the rest and turned their bows toward the mouth of the St. Lawrence and
New France; the other four sailed on alone.
On board the four ships were near three hundred souls, embarking on a
voyage no one of them had made before. One of the boats, the Joly, a
ship of war, carried thirty-odd pieces of cannon. But it carried also
more precious cargo. Monsieur Beaujeu, a proud man and bold, was its
captain; and with him, as leader of the colony that thus fared forth to
the glory of the King of France, was Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.
Restless and ambitious as ever, he now felt under his feet the roll of
decks which the king had given him with godspeed to find the mouth of
the Mississippi River and plant there a settlement that would be the
beginning of a great new empire in the heart of the American wilderness.
The King of France had caught a glimpse of La Salle’s vision of the
future of the Great Valley. He had listened, too, while La Salle had
whispered into his eager ears the story of how the hated Spaniards,
clinging these many years to the rich lands of Mexico, would fall before
the attacks of the French, aided by the hordes of Indians whom they
would recruit from the colony about Fort St. Louis and from the lower
Mississippi Valley.
In the four ships were a hundred soldiers; and since colonies have need
of such, there were carpenters and tool-makers and bakers and
stonemasons and engineers. There were also priests and friars—among
others La Salle’s brother, the Abbé Cavelier, and Father Anastasius
Douay. On board one of the ships was the energetic figure of Father
Membré, who was no stranger to the Great Valley of the Mississippi. He
had entered it with La Salle, and later had hardly struggled out of it
with his friend of the iron hand after the Iroquois raid. He had come
back with the gallant party that paddled down the length of the valley
to the sea, and had been the one to carry news of the voyage to Canada
and to France. Still did he cling to the side of his leader, stanch
friend that he was.
Born in the same town of Rouen with La Salle was a man named Henri
Joutel. When a mere boy he joined the army, and after serving about
sixteen years he had come back to his native town in time to join others
who were shipping with their townsman for the trip across the sea. Last
of all, these four ships held a handful of women and girls who were
ready to try the perils of the sea and the fearsome dangers of a strange
land.
Thus they had sailed, a company of colonists of all classes and
descriptions—good men and bad, brave men and weak, workers and drones,
gentlemen and stout-hearted peasants, debauched nobles and the riffraff
of seaport towns; men who took their load and endured through hardship,
sickness, and despair; and men whom Joutel declared were fit only to eat
part of the provisions.
Never had the unconquerable spirit of La Salle met such stubborn blows
as now. In the first place the arrangements of the voyage were well-nigh
fatal to success, for the company had two heads, each one a man
accustomed to command alone and impatient of any other authority.
Beaujeu, an old naval officer who was the captain of the fleet, saw
little of greatness in La Salle, and looked upon him as a dreamer if not
a fanatic. La Salle, leader of the colony, with authority to determine
the route to be taken, looked with distrust upon Beaujeu, held his own
counsel about his plans, and regarded the captain as his enemy and the
chief obstacle to the successful outcome of his mission. Before ever the
ships set sail these two men had their quarrels, and on the open seas it
was no better.
Years of bitter experiences, of wilderness hardships, of daily and
nightly perils, of disappointments and losses, had hardened the temper
of La Salle’s will; and these years had not softened a certain coldness
and harshness of manner that lost him many friends. Suspicion and doubt
of his fellows deepened in his heart with every turn of his wheel of
fortune. With all his remarkable power over the Indians, he constantly
failed to understand and make himself loved by the men of his own race
over whom he was in command. Naturally with his mongrel company of
voyagers things went sadly wrong. No one appreciated better than Tonty,
as he listened to the tale of the Abbé and Joutel, how adventures and
trials such as the party were bound to meet would try each man and show
him for a true man, a knave, or a weakling.
At the island of Santo Domingo the Joly made port and lay to, waiting
for the balance of the fleet which had fallen behind. There were fifty
sick in the company, among them La Salle. But there was much to be done
on shore. While walking one day with Joutel in the streets of the little
town of Petit Gouave, La Salle was overcome by a sudden weakness and
sank to the ground. Joutel took him as soon as possible to a house which
had been temporarily rented by the Duhaut brothers, two members of La
Salle’s company. Before he was himself again one of the Duhauts rashly
told him that Spanish buccaneers had captured one of the four ships, and
straightway his sickness returned. Joutel and the Abbé said little to
Tonty of the elder of these Duhauts, but in their own minds they thought
of him with a hate that had no basis in the tale they were telling.
For many weeks La Salle and his voyagers were delayed at Santo Domingo,
gathering supplies for the rest of the voyage. More of the company fell
ill; and some, fearful of coming dangers, deserted. At last they got
away late in November and sailed west along the southern coast of Cuba.
Soon they had passed the long island and turned the prows of their ships
toward the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.
Two or three days before the end of the year 1684, they sighted land.
Thinking that they were near the Bay of Appalache, they sailed westward,
in cold wind and rain and fog, hoping each day to find the mouth of the
Great River. Sometimes they landed men to explore a river mouth or
lagoon. Once, on the 6th of January, they came to what appeared to be
the mouth of a bay with an island in the midst of it, but La Salle,
still convinced that the Mississippi was far to the west, pushed on
along the coast. As January drew to a close they found the shore line
trending more and more to the south, and even La Salle began to think
they had gone beyond the river they were seeking.
At length they landed on the shore of a bay where a river ran down to
the Gulf, and the perplexed leader of the wandering colony made up his
mind that they had found the western mouth of the Mississippi. One of
the ships, coming into the bay under the ill-management of the pilot,
ran aground and broke apart. In despair La Salle put his men to saving
the cargo. Under great difficulties provisions and ammunition were
rescued from the fated ship and piled on the lonely shore. Through the
long night that followed unfriendly Indians prowled about eager for
plunder, and sentinels walked up and down upon the sand keeping watch
among the precious boxes and barrels, while the miserable band of
colonists tried to get sleep.
Discouraging as was this beginning, greater misfortunes were not slow in
coming to the colony. La Salle’s nephew, Moranget, hotheaded and unwise,
visited an Indian village with some of the men to trade and to look for
stolen property; and when they took leave they made off with Indian
blankets and canoes. Upon their return they camped at night, their
sentinel slept, and the Indians crept upon them. War-whoops rose in the
air and into the group of sleeping white men by the smouldering fire
came a volley of arrows, killing two of the company. Moranget finally
succeeded in reaching the camp by the shore with the ill news upon his
lips and an arrow in his shoulder.
No man knew better than La Salle the evil results that would surely
follow such relations with the Indians; but there was no mending matters
now. Ill luck blew in every wind; what with keeping constant watch upon
prowling Indians, fighting prairie fires that threatened to reach the
provisions and gunpowder, and burying along the sandy shore those of the
company who fell sick and died, the colony of La Salle was making
wretched progress.
Leaving a hundred and thirty of the company in charge of Joutel, La
Salle with a handful of men went off to explore. He came back with his
own stubborn mind convinced that he was not so near the Mississippi as
he had supposed. Beyond a doubt he and all of his men were lost.
Beaujeu and a part of the company had already sailed away; they were
returning to France to tell their friends that La Salle was landed on
the shore of the Gulf amid hostile Indians and with no certain knowledge
of where he was. As a matter of fact La Salle had passed the mouth of
the Mississippi by nearly four hundred miles and was camped on the
shores of what is now Matagorda Bay in Texas.
CHAPTER XXVII
HUNTING THE MISSISSIPPI
Somewhere off to the east the Mississippi River was running down through
the Great Valley to the sea; and La Salle’s determination to find it
deepened with his discouragements. But first they must make the location
near the sea habitable as a supply station for further exploration. To
that end a rude fort had been erected near where they had landed, and
Joutel with part of the company had been left in charge while La Salle
explored the neighborhood. Soon he came upon a site a little farther up
the river which seemed more suitable for a permanent fort; and so he
sent back word to Joutel to square timbers ready for the new building
and join him later at this upper location.
In these widespread sandy plains of the Southland there was no high rock
like that of Fort St. Louis on the Illinois. But there was a rising hill
near the river, and here with his own hands La Salle laid the outline of
the fort and directed its construction. The new fort took rapid shape;
and La Salle, after his favorite saint, called it Fort St. Louis, and he
named the inlet where they landed the Bay of St. Louis.
Out of squared timbers the men built a large dwelling and divided it
into apartments. Around this they built a palisade, and set up the eight
precious cannon. It was a pleasant location. The river bathed the foot
of the hill on the north and northeast and ran on down to the bay.
Across the river was a marshy tract where birds innumerable sang in
their season. To the west and southwest, crossed and recrossed by herds
of shaggy buffalo, the plains stretched as far as the eye could reach.
Here and there were little groups of trees, including many which
remained green the whole year through. From a distance these bits of
foliage gave to the lonely colonists the pleasing picture of the groves
about country homes in far-away France. In their imaginings they seemed
to see the country peopled by white settlers instead of the Indians who
prowled about the new settlement and sometimes fell upon their wandering
hunters.
The colony had grown steadily smaller: during the summer more than
thirty had died of sickness; some had been killed by the Indians; and a
few had deserted. Among the sick was the Abbé Cavelier. La Salle,
consumed with the desire to hunt for his lost river, only waited for his
brother to recover sufficiently to go with him. By fall the priest was
well, the fort was established, and La Salle made ready to go. But
before he departed he called Joutel aside and gave him charge of the
colony, with careful instructions not to receive any of the exploring
party if they should come back unless they brought a letter from La
Salle himself containing the password: “In the name of the very blessed
Trinity.” Then as October of 1685 drew to a close, La Salle, with his
brother and a goodly number of men, amid the firing of cannon, set out
along the bay with all of the canoes and the bark La Belle to seek what
they might find to the eastward.
Joutel, who had been left with thirty-four persons,—men, women, and
children,—kept them all busy. Some he sent out as hunters and others he
put to carrying wood and completing their dwellings and storehouses. Now
and then Indians were seen, but they did not come near the fort. For
their better protection Joutel divided the night into watches and with
great care posted sentinels—a duty which even the women shared. Weeks
passed and the new year came upon them; and still La Salle had not
returned.
One evening in the middle of January the men and women, in from their
work, were gathered within the palisaded house on the hill, when
suddenly the sentinel cried out to them that he heard a voice calling
from the river. In great haste the men ran out of the house and down to
the shore. Out on the water they could see the outlines of a canoe and
in it one lone man, who called out at the twinkling lights of the
settlement, “Dominick!”
Dominick was the younger of the Duhaut brothers; and as the voyager
neared the shore the men from the fort saw that he was the elder Duhaut
who had set out with La Salle nearly three months before. Now he was
returning alone, and so Joutel questioned him closely. Had he a letter
from La Salle? No. Joutel pondered. “Let no one come back to the fort
unless he brings a letter from me with the password in it,” La Salle had
said in parting. Should he turn Duhaut away again into the wilderness,
or should he throw him into irons until the return of the leader? It was
a puzzling predicament which confronted Joutel; but at least he might
listen to the man’s story. When Duhaut had finally told of his
adventures, the good-hearted Joutel saw nothing wrong in taking him in
again as a member of the garrison.
La Salle, so said Duhaut, had coasted along the shore with canoes and
the Belle for many days. Once he sent out a party of six to reconnoiter
the land. They did not return, and later a search party found their dead
bodies along the shore where Indians had massacred them. La Salle was
discouraged but not completely disheartened. Gathering meat on shore and
drying it for preservation, he loaded it with other provisions on board
the Belle, and ordered a portion of his men to stay on the ship and
remain out in the bay until his return. Then with twenty men he went
ashore, sunk his canoes, and trailed inland—still hoping to come upon
the Great River.
The elder Duhaut was one of this exploring party, as was also Moranget,
who had orders from La Salle to bring up the rear. Now it so happened
that Duhaut’s knapsack and shoes were in bad condition and he stopped to
mend them. Moranget, coming up, urged him to move on; and Duhaut in turn
asked Moranget to wait for him. Moranget, however, would not stop, but
passed on with the rest of the company. Finally when Duhaut looked up he
found no one in sight. With hurried steps he followed in the direction
his companions had taken. When night fell he was still alone in a plain
full of weeds and buffalo tracks, but with no sign of men. He fired his
gun, but nothing save the echo answered the report. At last he lay down
under the open sky to sleep.
When morning came Duhaut rose with fresh hope and fired again several
times; but there was no answer. He was lost. All that day and night he
remained near the same spot, hoping that some of the party might return
to find him. At length, when no one came, he determined to hunt his way
back to Fort St. Louis. Leagues of wilderness lay between him and the
fort, and he well knew that in every clump of trees might lurk hostile
Indians.
Each day he lay in fear and suspense, hiding under logs and underbrush;
and by night he stumbled on toward home. His provisions gave out and he
must kill game for food—each time with difficulty and in great danger of
discovery by the Indians. Weeks of this nightly wandering passed before
he finally reached the place where La Salle had sunk the canoes.
Laboriously he raised one of the boats from its watery bed, and in it
paddled on down the bay. When the wind blew he hoisted his shirt for a
sail. At last he reached the fort after he had been a month on the way,
miraculously escaping death from Indian foes and suffering almost
incredible hardships. Joutel could not find it in his heart to refuse to
accept the man. He contented himself with watching him carefully for a
few days, but saw nothing to arouse suspicion or displeasure.
A favorite post of Joutel’s was the housetop, from which he could see in
every direction. It was from this lookout, about two months after
Duhaut’s return, that he saw, far off across the plains, a little group
of men. Hurrying down he gathered a few of his men, put them under arms,
and advanced to see who the newcomers might be. They were La Salle, the
Abbé, Moranget, and five or six others. Their clothes were ragged and
worn beyond description. Scarcely a hat was there in the party or a
whole garment, and the Abbé’s cassock hung upon him in tatters.
La Salle had sent some of his men to find the Belle. On the day after La
Salle’s return, they, too, came to the fort and reported that they could
not find the ship. Later it was learned that the bark had run aground
and the crew had been forced to desert it. Thus the last one of the
ships was gone and with it the hope of going to the West Indies for aid.
La Salle had traveled far, but he had found little to encourage him in
his journeyings. Yet like a will-o’-the-wisp the desire to find the
river would not let him rest. Hardly a month did he tarry at the fort.
It was during this month that Tonty was at the mouth of the Mississippi
hunting with heavy heart for his lost leader.
By the end of April, La Salle again ventured forth with a score of men,
this time on foot. Again the Abbé and Moranget were of the party; and
with them were Dominick Duhaut, a German buccaneer named Hiens, a
surgeon, and a dozen others fitted by constitution for hardship and
danger.
Once more Joutel was left in charge of the settlement which thrived
under his hand. All about the house he planted grain and vegetables and
melons. He repaired the buildings, and here and there trained climbing
vines. Father Membré kept a vegetable garden of his own. Game being
fairly plentiful, Gabriel Barbier was sent out as head of the
hunting-parties, and some of the women and girls went along to help
dress the game. At the fort there was target practice, and prizes were
offered for marksmanship. Being somewhat limited in ammunition, Joutel
instructed those who dressed the game on the hunt to search for the
bullet; and often the same ball was used to bring down several animals.
Sometimes the hunters had encounters with the Indians and once several
of the men were wounded; yet withal they were little molested. When in
the house at night the company kept in good cheer with music and
dancing. Thus the summer of 1686 passed comfortably enough.
Not until August did La Salle come back; and when he did come it was
with only a fragment of his band. A part of his men had become separated
from the rest and never returned—and the younger Duhaut was one of the
lost. This time La Salle brought back with him five horses, and reported
that he had traveled to the northeast as far as the villages of the
Cenis Indians. But he had not found the Mississippi River.
The undaunted leader now made plans to gather a party which, with
provisions and supplies loaded on the five horses he had bought, would
make for Fort St. Louis, on the Illinois River, where Tonty and his men
were waiting, and thence go on to Canada and France to bring aid and
supplies to the colony on the Gulf. He asked Joutel to join the party,
while Gabriel Barbier was put in charge of the fort and the men and
women who remained there.
He was a man with a story—this Gabriel Barbier. About eight years
before, while in the service of La Salle, he had been persuaded by other
men to desert with them. La Salle went on out to the Illinois country,
built Fort Crèvecœur, and in the spring of 1680 went back to Canada for
supplies. That summer Barbier came to him begging to be taken back, and
La Salle consented. He had gone down the Great River with his leader in
1682 and had been a valuable member of the party; and now, after being
further tried by the experiences of the expedition to the Gulf, he was
placed by his leader in a position of trust and power.
CHAPTER XXVIII
FROM THE GULF TO THE ILLINOIS
There were seventeen men who set out on foot, early in January, 1687, to
travel from Fort St. Louis on the Gulf of Mexico to the other Fort St.
Louis on the Illinois River—a journey of over a thousand miles. They
knew no trails which they could follow, nor were there bridges on which
to cross the rivers; and to a large extent they must gather their food
as they went. They must sleep where night found them; and they must
trust the Indians whose country they were crossing to treat them as
friends and give them guidance upon the way, for as far as they knew
there was no white man in all the distance between the two forts. Yet
forth they went bravely—La Salle and his brother and two nephews
(Moranget and the young Cavelier), Joutel, and Father Douay, Duhaut the
elder and his man L’Archevêque, whom he had picked up at the isle of
Santo Domingo, Liotot the surgeon and Hiens the buccaneer, a young boy
named Pierre Talon whom La Salle planned to leave at the Cenis village
to learn their language, and a half-dozen others.
Father Membré, full of grief, remained with Barbier and the party at the
fort and saw the slender band of explorers start off across the plains,
their five horses loaded with supplies for a long and arduous journey.
It being winter in the Southland, rains came upon them frequently and
swamps and swollen streams blocked their way. Sometimes for days they
walked drearily along the wet banks of rivers, looking for a place to
ford. Occasionally they used logs to cross upon, but finally they found
the streams so wide that they stopped and made portable boats out of
buffalo hides.
There was no lack of game; and the broad paths of the buffalo often
served as trails. Time and again the party came across Indians, with
whom La Salle almost invariably made friends. Sometimes he visited their
hunting-camps and smoked with them the pipe of peace. At other times he
called them into his own camp to smoke and eat, and then sent them away
happy with presents. They came upon Indian villages with round huts like
French ovens, and stopped to trade beads and hatchets for a horse or
provisions or deer-hide for fresh moccasins, listening meantime to the
tales of Indian wars or of the Spaniards from whom their horses first
came. They crossed the rivers now known as the Colorado and the Brazos
and drew near to the Trinity River.
Many were the adventures which Joutel and the Abbé related to Tonty at
Fort St. Louis on the Illinois. Before they reached the Cenis village,
they said, La Salle separated from them, but intended to follow them
soon. He was in good health when he left them. Without their leader they
had pushed on to the village of the Cenis, and from there they went with
guides to the Arkansas towns.
It was the 24th of July, 1687, three years to a day since they had
sailed out of the harbor of Rochelle, when they came at last to a
village on the shore of the Arkansas and saw on the river bank a house
built like the houses of Frenchmen and the blessed cross rising straight
to the sky. Out of the house on the shore came running two white men to
welcome them. They were Jean Couture and De Launay, two of the men whom
Tonty had left there on his return from his trip to the mouth of the
Mississippi the year before. At the village the Arkansas danced the
calumet dance before the Abbé. Later Couture accompanied the five men as
far as the village of the Kappas, from which place, with Arkansas guides
and an Indian canoe, they had come up the Mississippi and the Illinois
and reached Fort St. Louis in the month of September.
Such in brief was the tale that the two men—brother and companion of La
Salle—told to Tonty on the high rock of Fort St. Louis. The Man with the
Iron Hand listened to each word with intense feeling. Nearly ten years
before he had cast his lot with La Salle. With him and for him he had
literally hungered and suffered and bled. He had given what he had of
worldly goods, and his time, his strength, his whole self he had thrown
into the balance to uphold the plans of his chief. He knew him as few
men did—he knew his faults as well as his great abilities—and he loved
him. Often he had remonstrated with him over some actions or methods
that lost him favor with his men; but he also saw the breadth and power
of his leader’s vision.
Time and again he had thought his friend lost and dead—as he had been
told so stoutly in the days long before when he lived almost alone in
the Kaskaskia village. In despair he had hunted the Great River to its
mouth—little dreaming, when he gave the letter into the hands of the
Quinipissa chief, that La Salle was in the wilderness more than a
hundred leagues to the west.
But now had come news that La Salle was alive and in good health and
perhaps coming fast upon the heels of his men to the citadel on the high
rock where Tonty and Boisrondet and other faithful comrades had waited
and dreamed of his coming for four long years. Yes, he was on his way to
the Illinois country whose Indians never forgot him, but loved him as
one of their own great chiefs. He was coming back to the Kaskaskias
whose home he had restored, to the Shawnees whom he had gathered at the
foot of his great fort, to the Miamis whose chief he had raised from the
dead in his own person. It was like the coming back from the dead to
Tonty, too, after these years of despair. And so, in his joy, he paid
little heed to the quiet friar in the gray robe or the mariner Teissier,
who moved so silently among the buildings of the fort.
The entire colony on the Illinois River—Indian villages and French
garrison alike—buzzed with excitement that winter. Nothing was too good
for the men of La Salle’s party. Around the fires in the quarters of the
French, men gathered to sing songs and tell stories of adventure and
battle and strange countries, and to talk of him who was coming.
Especially among the Indian lodges was there great good cheer, for the
white father was alive and on his way back to their villages and
camp-fires. There was joy, too, among the tribes over the raids the
Illinois were making. It seemed as though the Iroquois scourge was being
driven out of the valley for good, as band after band of Illinois left
the lodges to the women and old men and struck out upon the trail of the
Iroquois. Scalps they brought home and captives, and many were the
burnings by which they paid interest upon their debt of vengeance. With
Tonty in New York they had laid waste the Iroquois fields, and now their
good fortune still continued. So white men and red together were glad.
The five men who had come to the fort in September were anxious to get
on with their journey, and Tonty promised them all the aid in his power
as soon as the spring should make travel possible. But with all their
hurry, there was one who seemed even more full of anxiety. The priest
Allouez, who had recovered from his sickness, did not lose his apparent
dread of the approach of La Salle. Spring, coming on apace, increased
his scarcely concealed restlessness; and when in March the way became
somewhat open, the black-robed Jesuit was the first to slip out of the
fort and up the valley to his friends on the Lake.
Then the Abbé with his four companions made ready to go. But they must
have means to buy food and transportation on their way to Canada and
France. So the Abbé showed to Tonty a letter from La Salle, asking Tonty
to furnish his brother, the Abbé, with money or furs. Tonty, with the
greatest content, supplied them with what they needed for the journey,
and late in March the five men of La Salle’s party, with guides to
accompany them, left the high rock on their long homeward journey.
After bidding the five men farewell, Tonty turned his attention to the
fort which must be put in readiness for the coming of the master. Month
after month passed and he hoped each day to see a canoe or canoes
cutting the water of the Illinois far downstream. Summer went by and no
La Salle. September came without bringing the leader. La Salle was now a
year behind his advance party. But one day there did appear a canoe on
the stream below the fort, and in it were a Frenchman and two Indians.
Tonty full of excitement made haste to welcome them. It was not La
Salle: it was Tonty’s man Couture from the Arkansas post. But surely he
came with news from La Salle; and so quick questions leaped at Couture
almost before he was in sound of Tonty’s voice.
CHAPTER XXIX
WHEN HE LEFT THEM
Couture did, indeed, bring news concerning La Salle. Within the
palisaded walls that crowned the rock of Fort St. Louis, the Man with
the Iron Hand now listened to a story that hardened his soul with anger
and despair. The Abbé and Joutel had told him much, but they had not
told him all. From what Couture said it became evident that when the
Abbé and his party reached the post on the Arkansas, they had told some
things which they did not afterwards relate at Fort St. Louis. Thus
through Couture’s account, pieced out by other details learned later,
Tonty came to know the real heart of the story which the Abbé and Joutel
had only told in half.
The thread of the hidden tale ran back to the beginning of the voyage
from France. On the way across the sea there was a growing discontent
among the men, which ripened into intrigue when they landed. While
Joutel with part of the colony was guarding the supplies on the shore
and squaring timbers to be used in the fort upstream, a confession by
one of the men enabled him to foil a conspiracy to kill Le Gros, who
guarded the storehouse, and himself steal arms and supplies from the
storehouse and desert to the wilds. Joutel turned the men over to La
Salle, but the incident did not make sufficient impression upon his own
unsuspicious nature. When some months later Duhaut came back alone from
La Salle’s first expedition, Joutel contented himself with watching him
narrowly for a few days. When La Salle set out on his second expedition,
Duhaut remained behind with the men at the fort.
As the weeks of La Salle’s absence lengthened into months, discontent
spread among the members of the colony at the fort. Probably La Salle
was lost; at all events, it did not look as if he were coming back.
Little knots of men drew off together to talk of their wrongs. Why not
desert La Salle and take matters into their own hands? Duhaut passed
among the discontented with words of encouragement: under his management
things would be different. Having staked considerable wealth in the
enterprise of La Salle’s colony, Duhaut had grumbled much at the ill
fortune that had come upon them; but in spite of all the losses of the
colony he had managed to keep a large supply of goods,—knives, hatchets,
cloth for garments and for Indian trade,—and these and many other
possessions he now promised to divide among those who would follow him.
Joutel, learning of the mutterings of the men and the intrigues of
Duhaut, called the conspirator before him with sharp words. Later he
felt that he would have done better service to La Salle if he had put
Duhaut to death upon the spot. After talking with the men and quieting
their discontent, he tried to prevent further trouble by keeping them
busily at work about the fort. It was not long after this incident that
La Salle came back from his search for the lost river.
The party which journeyed forth upon the final expedition in January of
1687 was not large, but it was one which held great possibilities for
trouble. There were stanch friends of La Salle in the party—among them
his hotheaded nephew Moranget. But Duhaut also was there with his
devoted tool L’Archevêque and his friend Liotot the surgeon—a man who,
like Duhaut, had money invested in the colonial venture and was sorely
put out at the progress of affairs.
For more than two months the seventeen men traveled together across the
prairies until, about the middle of March, they drew near to a place
where La Salle on his former trip to the Cenis villages had hidden some
supplies.
They halted and La Salle sent out a party of men to bring the food into
camp. It was on the fifteenth of the month that this party of seven set
out—Duhaut and L’Archevêque, Liotot and Hiens the buccaneer, Teissier, a
servant of La Salle’s named Saget, and Nika, a faithful Shawnee who had
crossed the ocean twice with La Salle and served him with undying
devotion. They did not have far to go; but they found the food spoiled
and unfit for use.
On the way back the keen-eyed Shawnee saw two buffaloes, and, slipping
along after them, killed them both. The men halted where they were and
sent Saget back to camp to tell La Salle that if he would send horses
they would bring the meat home. No one having returned by nightfall the
six men slept upon the ground. The next day they cut up the buffaloes
and placed the meat upon scaffolds to dry. Then, as was the custom of
hunters, they laid aside the marrow bones and some other portions for
their own use.
Saget returned from the camp with three men—Moranget, De Marie, and
Meusnier—and with horses on which to pack the meat. Now Moranget, the
nephew of La Salle, was not a favorite with the men to whom he came this
day. When he had been ill for weeks on the shore of the bay from the
arrow which rash adventure had lodged in his shoulder, Liotot the
surgeon had cared for him with a patience which no man of the colony
forgot; but when he was well again his surly temper vented itself upon
even the doctor who had tended him. None the less did Duhaut dislike
him, for he felt that his long month of hardship when lost in the wilds
would not have come upon him if Moranget had been more patient in
waiting for him.
No March wind was ever more blustering than this young man as he rode
into the little camp and saw the meat drying on the scaffolds and the
men guarding the marrow bones and other bits for themselves. In an
unreasoning fury he seized, not only the drying meat, but the men’s own
portion. He would take care of the meat thereafter, he said, and not let
them eat it up as they had in the past.
His words fell upon the hatred of these fierce men like a match tossed
into gunpowder. The five drew apart and held council. Too long had they
borne with this young upstart. Night fell, but the conspirators did not
sleep. Liotot rose quietly, while Moranget, Nika, and Saget were fast
asleep. Hatchet in hand the surgeon stole over beside them and with a
single blow split open the head of the hated Moranget. Nika and Saget he
treated in the same fashion.
Meanwhile the other conspirators crouched with guns in hand ready to
shoot if any one made resistance. Moranget was the only one to stir.
Half sitting up he gasped and tried to speak. Then the murderers, to
implicate the innocent De Marie, who had accompanied Moranget, forced
him upon pain of death to finish the killing of his friend.
Murder had lifted its horrid head at last in the voyage that had known
almost every other disaster. Could it stop there? The men took counsel
together. What would be their chance of life when the news reached their
leader? Their only safety now lay in going at once to the camp and
killing both La Salle and Joutel. They started, but the river, swollen
by a heavy rain, made them pause to construct a raft to transport their
meat. While thus delayed they suddenly heard a gun fired as if in
signal. Duhaut and his man L’Archevêque quickly crossed the river and a
moment later they saw La Salle in the distance coming to seek them.
Duhaut dropped quietly in the weeds to await his approach. La Salle,
accompanied by the Recollet Douay, drew nearer, caught sight of
L’Archevêque, and called out to him to know where Moranget was. Without
removing his hat or otherwise saluting his astonished chief,
L’Archevêque answered in an indifferent tone that he was along the river
somewhere. La Salle started toward him with a rebuke. L’Archevêque
answered with still more insolence. Then the crack of a gun came from
the tall grass where Duhaut was hiding and La Salle, shot in the head,
fell upon the ground. Without a word he died.
Douay, speechless, stood still in his tracks. The others came running
up, Liotot in scornful exultation crying out over the body of La Salle:
“There thou liest! Great Bashaw! There thou liest!”
Hiens, rough man that he was, perhaps already felt remorse—for La Salle
had been good to him. Teissier the mariner, who had neither joined in
the plot nor tried to prevent it, looked on while the men stripped the
fallen leader and dragged his dead body into the bushes.
There they left him, their leader, a prey to the birds of the air and
the wolves of the plains, unburied in the far corner of the Great Valley
of whose waters and prairies and people he would never dream again.
CHAPTER XXX
WHITE AND RED SAVAGES
At the main camp on that fatal 19th of March, La Salle had left Joutel
with four others—the Abbé, young Cavelier, Pierre Talon, and another
young boy called Barthelemy. From time to time during the day Joutel had
lighted fires on rising ground near the camp so that La Salle, if he
lost his way, could return easily. He was alone on one of these little
hills toward evening, looking down upon the horses grazing in the field
near by, when some one came running up to him in great excitement. It
was L’Archevêque, a man who had always been kindly disposed toward
Joutel. There was very bad news to tell, he said, confused and almost
beside himself.
“What is it?” asked Joutel in quick alarm.
“La Salle is dead,” he replied, “and also Moranget, his nephew, and two
others.” He added that they had been murdered and that the assassins had
sworn to come on and kill Joutel as well.
Joutel stood dazed, scarcely knowing what to say or do. Should he fly to
the woods and trust to Providence to guide him to civilization? Having
come away from camp without his gun, life was scarcely more secure in
the wilds than in the camp with the murderers. But, added L’Archevêque,
the conspirators had decided on the way home not to kill Joutel unless
he offered resistance. After all, perhaps it was better to risk death in
the company of white men than in the wilderness alone; and so the two
men turned back to the camp.
There they found the Abbé Cavelier in a corner praying, and Father Douay
still overwhelmed and not daring to speak to Joutel for fear of the
murderers. The murderers had come wildly into camp and had seized the
belongings of La Salle. Duhaut had assumed the place of leader.
“You may kill me if you wish,” said the Abbé, “but give me a half-hour
to prepare for the end.”
But the white savages had had enough of killing. If all would yield to
the new leaders they might keep their lives. There was nothing else to
do. Those who were not in the plot stood guard that night; and in the
long hours Joutel and the Abbé, young Cavelier and Douay, made a solemn
agreement to stand by each other until death—which now seemed very near
to them.
The next morning, under Duhaut’s direction, the forlorn band of thirteen
packed up their camp supplies and continued their journey toward the
Cenis village. A common tie—the need of escape from the wilderness—held
them together. Yet even that tie was honeycombed with fears and hates
and distrusts. Joutel, his soul rising in rebellion, wanted to kill the
murderers in their sleep, but the Abbé dissuaded him.
With the guidance of Indians they soon crossed the Trinity River, and as
they drew near to the town of the Cenis, four of the number—Joutel,
Liotot, Hiens, and Teissier—were sent in advance to buy food. They
camped at night outside the village; and the next morning they were met
and escorted into the town by chiefs and elders dressed in great pomp
with painted goatskins over their shoulders, crowns of feathers on their
heads, and streaks of black and red paint on their faces.
The Cenis lived in round huts, shaped like old-fashioned beehives and
made of a circle of poles bent over and lashed together at the top. The
poles were interlaced with willow rods, and covered over with a thick
thatch of grass. In the middle of the floor the Indians built their
lodge-fire, which the several families living in the hut used in common.
Joutel’s three companions soon left him to trade with the villagers
while they went back to camp. Alone in the village of people whom his
experiences on the shores of the Gulf had taught him to fear, Joutel
drove his little bargains and listened and nodded his head to the chiefs
as they told him of the war they were getting ready to make upon their
enemies.
Fearful lest they should steal his merchandise, Joutel did not sleep
well one night. He was tossing upon his robes about one o’clock when he
heard some one move near him. Looking up, he saw, by the light of the
fire in the center of the lodge, a man who was naked except for the
tattoo marks upon his body. This stranger came and sat down by him,
without saying a word. In his hands were a bow and two arrows. Joutel
watched him a moment, then spoke. The man did not answer. Joutel reached
for his pistol; whereupon the man rose, walked over to the fire, and
again sat down.
Utterly puzzled, Joutel rose from his bed and followed the man, studying
him intently all the while. The man returned his gaze, then threw his
arms about Joutel, embraced him, and spoke to him with French words. He
was Ruter, one of La Salle’s sailors who had deserted him, two years
before, for the woods and the wild life of the Indian camps. Another
deserter, Grollet, had been afraid to come with him to the grass house
where Joutel slept, for fear of La Salle.
For two years these white men had lived like the red men, they had
married Indian women, and they had fought in the Indian wars. There was
little now to distinguish Ruter from his dusky companions—except that
long-buried yearning for his own people which made him come to Joutel
and listen eagerly to his tale of adventures. The story of La Salle’s
death seemed to affect him deeply, and for a long time in the passing
night the two men talked beside the fire in the Indian lodge. Later,
Grollet also came to see and talk to Joutel.
For several days Joutel stayed in the village. Then messengers came from
the camp to say that the leaders had decided to return to the fort on
the Bay of St. Louis and there build a ship and sail for the West
Indies. With what provisions he had secured, Joutel went back to the
camp of the murderers, where he and the Abbé took counsel together. It
was intolerable to continue life in the same camp with those who had
killed La Salle, and so they made up their minds to leave their
murderous companions and go on with those who had not been in the plot,
toward the Mississippi River. They told Duhaut they were too fatigued to
make the trip back to the Gulf and would remain with the Cenis, to which
Duhaut finally agreed.
Hiens and several others, who had been sent to the village for horses on
which to carry supplies back to the fort, had not yet returned. While
they were waiting, one of the French deserters, who knew of the true
plans of the Abbé and Joutel, told them to Duhaut and added that he
believed the Mississippi to be not far off to the northeast; whereupon
Duhaut changed his plan and decided that he too would go to the
Mississippi.
News of Duhaut’s decision soon reached Hiens at the Cenis village, and
in a few days he came back to the camp, accompanied by Ruter and others.
Hiens walked directly to Duhaut and declared that it was not safe to go
to the Mississippi and on to the white settlements. As for himself, he
would not go, and he demanded his share of the goods. When Duhaut
refused, Hiens raised his gun and fired, saying, “You wretch! You
murdered my master!” Duhaut fell dead. Almost at the same instant Ruter,
the half-savage deserter, opened fire upon Liotot and mortally wounded
him. Thus did the murderers of La Salle and Moranget come to their end.
Hiens was now in command of the party, which had decreased to eleven.
The old buccaneer had promised the Cenis to go to their wars with them
and, with Ruter and Grollet and three or four other Frenchmen, started
out with the exultant Indian warriors, leaving the Abbé and his party in
the village with the women and old men. Late in May the warriors
returned, flushed with a great victory which the guns of the white
allies had enabled them to win.
The Abbé and Joutel and their little group now asked leave to separate
and try to make their way across to the Mississippi. Hiens gave his
consent with much reluctance. As for himself he did not care to risk his
life going back to civilized people; and the wild savage life in the
Indian villages held him with a strong fascination. He divided supplies
and merchandise with those who were leaving, gave them six horses to
carry their goods, and with much advice set them on their way. Thus they
took their departure—a band of seven—to make the last long march toward
the settlements of white men. Hiens and L’Archevêque, Meusnier, and
Pierre Talon cast in their lot with the Indians.
* * * * *
Innumerable were the adventures of the seven travelers. Town after town
they passed, stopping often to smoke the pipe of peace, trade
merchandise, and gather news of the way. One morning De Marie, while
bathing in the river near an Indian village, was drowned before the
Indians could rescue him. The six moved on, Indian guides leading them,
until at last with a great feeling of joy they came to the establishment
of Couture on the Arkansas.
Couture was the last man in America to whom they related the story of La
Salle’s death. The Abbé decided to keep it a secret from both the
Indians and from Tonty, and not even to tell it in Canada, but to take
the news across the seas with them to the court of France. Dreading that
young Barthelemy would disclose their secret, they left him with
Couture. The young boy told many things to the men at the Arkansas post.
And now Couture was pouring out the whole tale to the commander of Fort
St. Louis on the Illinois.
CHAPTER XXXI
TONTY’S HEROIC VENTURE
Couture had added the fatal sequel to the story of the Abbé and Joutel.
Tonty heard it with mingled despair and rage. He thought of La Salle
lying dead and unburied among the weeds beside a river hundreds of
leagues in the wilderness; and he thought of the five men who had come
to his fort and withheld the truth from him, the trusted lieutenant of
their master. So La Salle was in good health when he parted from them on
the other side of the Cenis villages! He remembered now the strange
silence of Father Douay. The friar could not say that La Salle was well
when he left him.
But the anger of Tonty rose most strongly against that priestly
brother—the Abbé who had prevented Joutel from taking vengeance upon the
murderers, who had accepted Tonty’s hospitality all through the winter
while deceiving him, and who had run off with his secret to France after
begging supplies under a letter from his dead brother.
But what of the little garrison on the shore of the Gulf, the forlorn
fragment of the colony under Gabriel Barbier at the other Fort St.
Louis? Tonty thought of Father Membré and of the hardships they had gone
through together. Was it too late to save them? A year had gone by since
the Abbé and his party had reached the fort on the Illinois. It was
almost two years since they had left Barbier; yet the colony might still
be alive. The master was gone and there was no one left to save them but
himself.
Perhaps in making ready to lead a rescue party to the fort on the Gulf,
Tonty forgot some of his anger atthe Abbé. Moreover, the Indian tribes
between the Illinois and the sea had given the Abbé assurances that they
would rally to an attack upon the Spaniards of the Southwest. Possibly
he could do more than save the colony: it might be that he could fulfill
the long cherished hope of La Salle by gathering a force of French and
Indians and invading the territory of the hated Spaniards.
Twice Tonty had gone to the Gulf—once with La Salle and once in search
of him. Now all that remained for him to do was to rescue the survivors
whom La Salle’s death had left almost without hope. He sent Couture back
on the trail by which the Abbé and his party had come, to get what
information he could; but Couture’s canoe was wrecked a hundred leagues
from the fort and he returned without news.
Then Tonty bought an Indian dugout and taking with him four or five
Frenchmen, a Shawnee, and two Indian slaves, was on his way early in
December. On the 17th, a village of Illinois Indians at the mouth of the
river saw him go by; and a month later, near the mouth of the Arkansas,
the Kappa tribe welcomed him with great joy and danced the calumet
before him. He could not stop long at the Arkansas towns, but pushed on
down the river to the country of the Taensas and the Natchez.
With a band of Taensas he left the Mississippi and struck off toward the
west. After traveling some days across country they came upon the
village of the Nachitoches, where they distributed presents and
concluded peace with the Indians. Taking guides at this point they went
up the Red River till they reached the village of the Cadadoquis, which
lay upon the route by which the Abbé and Joutel and their companions had
struggled out of the wilderness. Here the Indians told Tonty that Hiens
and his party were farther on at a village known as Nabedache. These
Nabedaches were the same Indians whom Joutel and the Abbé called the
Cenis. At last Tonty was nearing the object of his expedition; a few
more days and he would join the fragment of the party of La Salle and
push on to the Gulf.
But what was this murmuring? The Frenchmen flatly refused to go farther;
only one of them would stay with their leader. Tonty would push on
nevertheless. With his one white man, the Shawnee, the two slaves, and
five Cadadoquis as guides, he took up his march again early in April.
The Frenchman strayed from the party and it was two long days before he
found them again. Meanwhile, in crossing a river he had lost most of
their powder—a serious misfortune.
Before the end of the month Tonty and his party reached the Nabedache
village where two years before the Abbé and his companions had left
Hiens and his crew among the Indians. The Indians told various stories
of the Frenchmen for whom Tonty was searching. Some said that Hiens and
his party had gone off with their chiefs to fight the Spaniards; while
others told him that three had been killed by another tribe and the rest
had gone away in search of arrowheads. Tonty himself came to the firm
conclusion that the Cenis had killed the survivors.
He was now many leagues beyond the Red River and within a few days’
journey of the scene of La Salle’s murder. Eighty leagues more would
take him to the fort on the Bay of St. Louis. Tonty begged for guides,
but the Cenis would give him none. Hiens and his men were not to be
found. He looked at his remaining supply of gunpowder, so necessary for
providing food as well as defense. It was almost gone. Even Tonty could
go no farther. With heavy heart he gave the Indians some hatchets and
glass beads in exchange for Spanish horses and turned back toward the
Mississippi.
It was the 10th of May when they reached the Cadadoquis village on the
Red River, and here they stopped for a week to rest their horses. Then
with an Indian guide they started once more for the Coroa village. In
all the ten years Tonty had spent in the wilds he never had suffered
such hardships—not even during his bitter experiences in the winter of
1680, when with Father Membré and his young French companions he had
struggled out of the clutches of the Iroquois in the valley of the
Illinois and fought his way against cold and starvation to the friendly
Pottawattomie village on Green Bay.
While leading one of the horses by the bridle across a swamp the guide
imagined himself pursued by an alligator and tried to climb a tree. In
his haste he entangled the bridle of Tonty’s horse, which was drowned.
Fearful of punishment the guide made off to his people, leaving the
party to find their way alone.
With Tonty in the lead they crossed, by one means or another, eight or
ten swollen streams. Everywhere the country seemed drowned, for the
spring freshets were on. They gave up their horses and carried their own
baggage, wading day after day in water often up to their knees. They had
to sleep and light their fires and cook their food on the trunks of
fallen trees placed together. Only once did they find anything like dry
land in the endless leagues of flooded country.
Their food gave out and they ate their dogs. There was nothing left and
no wild animals were to be found in all the wet dreariness. One, two,
three days passed with nothing to eat—only the water everywhere. On the
evening of the third day, the 14th of July, they came at length to the
Coroa village, where the chiefs feasted them for as many days as they
had fasted. Here they found two of the men who had deserted; and toward
the end of the month they all went on together to the towns at the mouth
of the Arkansas River. The months of hardship had sapped even Tonty’s
endurance, and now for nearly two weeks he lay sick with a fever among
these kindly Indians.
It was late in September, 1689, when Tonty finally reached the towering
rock at Fort St. Louis and climbed to its friendly summit to rest. In
the weary ten months’ expedition he had neither found the bones of his
friend, nor reached his fort on the Gulf, nor led an invading force into
the land of the Spaniard. But he had done all that lay in his power to
rescue his leader’s last garrison.
The Abbé had left his own brother unburied in the wilds, had
deliberately for more than a year delayed any effort to rescue the
survivors at the fort, and had gone off to France on funds obtained by
fraud and deceit. But Tonty, almost alone, had braved every peril and
hardship for nearly a year in a last courageous but unsuccessful effort
to save the pitiful remnant of his friend’s ill-fated colony on the Bay
of St. Louis.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE PITIFUL REMNANT
It was perhaps as well that Tonty was compelled to turn back, for he
could have done little good even if he had been able to press on and
reach the Bay of St. Louis. When he was at the Cenis or Nabedache
village pleading for guides, the Spaniards had already marched from
Mexico to attack the French fort and its little garrison, and were
encamped on the hill where La Salle had left Barbier in charge of the
survivors. But others had preceded them, and they found the buildings in
ruins. Scattered here and there were boxes and bits of supplies; doors
were unhinged, barrels broken open, and in the near-by meadow were dead
bodies of Frenchmen.
On May 1, into the camp of the Spaniards walked two men. Painted and
savage and dressed in buffalo hides, these two strangers were
L’Archevêque and Grollet, the servant of Duhaut, and Ruter’s half-savage
companion. They had come to give themselves up to the Spaniards rather
than endure longer their wretched existence among the Indians.
Three months before, so they told the Spanish officer, the meager
garrison under Barbier, just recovering from a siege of smallpox, was
set upon by howling Karankawan Indians who massacred the inhabitants and
pillaged the fort. Gabriel Barbier and Father Membré both were killed
outright. Barbier’s wife with a three-months-old babe at her breast was
saved for a time by the Indian women; but the warriors, returning and
finding her still alive, murdered her also, and, seizing the baby by the
feet, beat its brains out against a tree.
Thus the colony had paid for the offense of Moranget and his men when
they had first landed on the red men’s shores and robbed the native camp
of canoes and blankets. After the massacre, L’Archevêque and Grollet
claimed that they had come to the fort and buried fourteen of the dead.
Many years later there came to the ears of Tonty a remarkable tale of
some who had escaped the killing at the fort on the Bay. Among those who
had remained with Barbier was the widow Talon, whose husband had been
lost on one of La Salle’s first expeditions to hunt the river. One of
her daughters had died of sickness at the fort. Her oldest boy Pierre
had been taken by La Salle to the village of the Cenis to learn their
language. Though she did not know it on the day of the massacre, Pierre
had for a year and a half been running wild like the Indians themselves,
in the Cenis country. A chief of the Cenis had taken him, together with
young Meusnier, under his own protection.
But the widow still kept four of the children with her in the fort. Then
came that awful day when the Indians fell upon them. Before the eyes of
her children the widow was killed. But the Indian women took compassion
upon the four little ones, carried them off on their backs, and adopted
them into their own families. The oldest was a young girl named Mary
Magdalene Talon, and her younger brothers were Jean Baptiste, Robert,
and Lucien—one of whom, now a boy of four, had been born on the way over
from France. With these four the squaws had rescued a young boy called
Eustache Bréman.
In the lodges of Indians the five children were brought up by their
foster mothers with as much care as the dusky children of the tribe. For
many years the girl and her young brothers lived as the Indians lived.
They ate meat as their red brothers did—raw, sun-baked, or half-cooked.
The boys learned to run and to ride and to draw the bow; and like the
Indians themselves they learned to run to the nearest stream each
morning at break of day and plunge naked into the water, whatever the
season might be.
One day the Karankawas took sharp thorns and pricked holes through the
skin of the arms and faces and other parts of the bodies of these French
children. Then, having burned in the fire a walnut branch, they crushed
the charcoal into powder, mixed it with a little water, and forced it
into the holes in their fair skin. It was very painful at first, but the
pain soon passed away and then each adopted child appeared tattooed with
marks that no washing could take out.
Jean Baptiste and young Bréman were soon old enough to be off with the
braves. Perhaps the only habit of life which they could not learn was
the eating of human flesh. Once the warriors fell upon a tribe of the
Tonkawans and killed many, and for three days Jean Baptiste went without
food because his foster people gave him nothing to eat save the flesh of
the men they had slain.
Meanwhile among the Cenis or Nabedaches, Hiens and his party had been
having strange experiences—fighting in the savage wars and living in the
round thatched huts of the Indians. But it was not in the nature of
things for this band of survivors to live peaceably among themselves.
Ruter, the half-savage deserter who had talked one night with Joutel by
the Cenis lodge-fire, quarreled with Hiens (so came the tale to Tonty)
and killed the old buccaneer. As for Ruter, never more was he heard
from. His companion, Grollet, and the miserable L’Archevêque, tiring of
their life among the Indians, had already given themselves up to the
Spaniards.
There remained, under the protection of the Cenis chief, Pierre Talon
and his comrade Meusnier. One day an Indian friend came to them with
warning on his lips: the Spaniards, cruel enemies of their countrymen,
were marching into the Indian country looking for these refugee white
men. In fear they fled from town to town; but their flight was in vain,
for it was not long before they had fallen into the hands of the Spanish
horsemen. Their captors marched them back to the village of the Cenis,
hoping to find more whites there. They were disappointed, but during
their brief stop they became so impressed with the Indians that they
left three Spanish Franciscan friars and built them a chapel in the
village. Two of the Spanish officers spoke the French language as well
as their own; Talon and Meusnier had become familiar with the tongue of
the Cenis; and so by means of a four-sided conversation the friars
learned from the Indians a few words of their language before their men
took the captives away to the southwest.
Pierre was greatly astonished at all this. These men seemed to be
Christians even if they were Spanish, and instead of cruelty they had
bestowed upon him only kindness. If the Spaniards were like this, he
would have them capture also his sister and younger brothers. And so he
told the Spaniards that he had three brothers and a sister living with
the Karankawas, down near the Bay of St. Louis.
On the way back to Mexico the Spanish troops with swords and guns and
horses rode into the village where the Talon children were. Jean
Baptiste Talon and Eustache Bréman they did not find; but Mary Magdalene
and Robert and Lucien were there. The officers agreed to give the
Indians who had fostered them a horse for each child. But when they came
to the girl Mary, who was older and larger, the Indians protested; for
they thought that they ought to get two horses for her. The dispute grew
hot and both sides sprang to arms. The Spanish guns spoke, two or three
Indians fell dead and the others fled terrified. The subdued Indians
finally gave up the girl for one horse, and the Spaniards rode out of
the village, after giving the Indians some tobacco to ease the hearts of
those whose dead lay upon the ground.
The foster mothers mourned over their lost children, especially the
younger ones, for in the years of their stay with the tribe they had
found warm places in Indian hearts. Jean Baptiste and young Bréman
remained for another year with their Indian people. Then there came
another Spanish troop and carried them off. Again the Indians wept and
urged young Talon to escape as soon as possible and come back to them
and bring with him as many Spanish horses as he could. He promised, but
they never saw him again. Thus the Talons came to Mexico.
Pierre and Jean Talon, after many years with the Spaniards, came at last
to their own country of France. Long before them the Abbé, Joutel, and
their three companions had also come home to the land of the lilies.
In the wild reaches of the Great Valley there remained little trace of
the last expedition of La Salle to found a colony at the foot of what
Joutel had come to call the fatal river. Up and down the broad highway
that ran through the valley from north to south, red men pushed their
wooden dugouts or bark canoes. With moccasined feet they trailed the
deer through the woods and followed the track of the shaggy beasts of
the plains. And at break of day beside the enemy’s camp they sent up the
cry of war quite as they and their fathers had done for many hundred
years. From one end of the valley to the other the white men had
traveled; and yet, as the track of a canoe dies out of the water or the
shadow of a flying bird passes over the plain and is gone, so now it
seemed that the trail of the white men’s passing had vanished out of the
valley and that the dream that had led to their coming had been lost
with the dreamer beneath the waving grass of the Southern plains.
Yet down by the Gulf a Quinipissa chief guarded year by year a precious
letter, waiting, and not in vain, to give it to a white man who should
come into the mouth of the river from the sea. And, far in the north, on
a high rock beside the river Illinois, the Man with the Iron Hand, known
and loved and feared by all the tribes, kept alive year after year the
vision of his chief. His days were to be long in the valley he loved and
his services many to his king and his Indian friends; and the time was
yet to come when he would see the flag of France waving over a colony of
Frenchmen at the mouth of the river which had run like a silver thread
through a quarter of a century of dreams and deeds.
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
U. S. A.
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